from_name: Delirium

subject: [WikiEN-l] Mr-Natural-Health

body:
Fred Bauder wrote:

>>Item 1: MNH. I think MNH is rude, insulting, insistent on pushing bias,
>>making statements (coming back under other names and ISPs, for one) that are
>>the clear mark of a troll and vandal, and generally making it obvious he
>>should be banned. Certainly some people's actions have provoked him, but
>>this is no excuse for his conduct. This is the only item that should have
>>been at issue on the list... and I think it rather clear.
>>
>>
>
>Because of the repeated attacks that have been made on him it is not at all
>clear he should be banned. The virulent attacks and their effects muddy the
>situation.
>
>
I agree with both of these comments, oddly.  It's always unfortunate to
have to ban someone, so I think certainly "forgive and forget" is the
best option, regardless of past behavior, if MNH begins henceforth to
act in a reasonable manner.  However, several people appear to have
tried to contact him both by talk-page and email, and he does not appear
to have responded in a reasonable manner.  If there's a chance he's
going to "shape up", so to speak, then I think that's certainly the best
option, but obviously we can't sit around forever waiting for that to
happen either.  Has anyone here actually tried to contact him via email
and gotten a response?

-Mark


list: wikien-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Jake Nelson

subject: [WikiEN-l] Question

body:
I find people's use of "Micronation", especially as in the [[Micronation]]
article, terribly inconsistent- the only way I've ever seen it used outside
of Wikipedia (Note the "I've seen", don't list Google results of other uses,
I'm sure they exist) is to refer to very small nations that actually exist
and have some degree of legal recognition (even if it's just that they're
islands outside any other nation's territory): [[Sealand]], North Dumpling
(Dean Kamen's island, near Long Island- has a non-aggression pact with the
US signed by then-President George H.W. Bush), and several dozen others.
However, many people seem to use the term to describe entirely fictional
entities with no territory. I would simply call these "Fantasy nations",
"Imaginary nations", or something like that, as the prefix micro- makes no
sense in that context.

-- Jake

----- Original Message -----
From: "aridd" <aridd at wanadoo.fr>
To: "sannse" <sannse at delphiforums.com>; "English Wikipedia"
<wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>; "English Wikipedia" <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
Sent: Sunday, December 07, 2003 7:17 PM
Subject: Re: Re: [WikiEN-l] Question

Sorry, I didn't see this before replying... Thank you, yes, such a warning
would definitely have been helpful. I would have appreciated being told what
was consisered an appropriate / valuable addition. (Contrary to what Rick
seems to believe, I have put work and effort into this micronation, and am
continuing to do so). Here's hoping your suggestion will be acted upon...
Again, thanks all for your time and comments.

Regards,
Adrian

Message du 07/12/03 20:11
De : sannse
A : English Wikipedia
Copie ? :
Objet : Re: [WikiEN-l] Question
Rick wrote: > Ariddia is the creation of this user on NationStates, which is
a GAME. The creations at NationStates are not to be considered as even on
the same level as the crackpot "nations" that crop up from time to time on
[[List of microstates]]. *I* have a country on NationStates, and if you look
at any of the informatoin on that page, you can see that NOBODY on
NationStates take their creations seriously. There are THOUSANDS of fake
"nations" on NationStates. If everybody there wanted to come to Wikipedia to
add their fake country to it, we would be swamped (I know, "slipper slope
argument"). But Ariddia is not a real place, it is not registered at a real
place, it is not intended to be a real place, it is nothing but a place
created to play the game. > > RickK I think the question here is, was there
any attempt to communicate with Adrian in any way before the block? Did
anyone explain to him why his edits to [[List of micronations]] were being
reverted and why his article at [[Ariddia]] is not suitable for the 'pedia?
I see that RickK used a comment on one of his reversions to communicate
("rv. The entries at NationStates are imaginary") but maybe a comment on a
talk page might have been helpful? I guess you might feel that it would be a
waste of your editing time to do this in each similar case, but it might be
worth it if it helps retain a potentially useful user (anyone who spends
lots of time on the details of inventing a country might spend lots of time
on the details of an encyclopaedia too!) Personally I think it should be
general practice to at least give a "stop that or you will be blocked"
message on a IPs talk page before most blocks (I'm not making that a
stronger statement because I recognise there are many variable situations).
Regards sannse _______________________________________________ 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_name: Fred Bauder

subject: [WikiEN-l] Mr-Natural-Health

body:
> From: "Jake Nelson" <jnelson at soncom.com>
> Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Date: Mon, 8 Dec 2003 04:29:42 -0600
> To: "English Wikipedia" <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Mr-Natural-Health
>
> There are three issues people have trouble separating: MNH's behavior,
> people's dogmatic arguments over "alternative medicine" and "scientism", and
> the content of the articles about "alternative medicine".
>
> Item 1: MNH. I think MNH is rude, insulting, insistent on pushing bias,
> making statements (coming back under other names and ISPs, for one) that are
> the clear mark of a troll and vandal, and generally making it obvious he
> should be banned. Certainly some people's actions have provoked him, but
> this is no excuse for his conduct. This is the only item that should have
> been at issue on the list... and I think it rather clear.

Because of the repeated attacks that have been made on him it is not at all
clear he should be banned. The virulent attacks and their effects muddy the
situation.

>
> Item 2: "Alternative medicine" and "scientism". I tend to only use these
> words in quotes, as they tend to both be ill-defined terms used to push a
> particular side's point of view.
> "Alternative medicine": I agree with snoyes's comment that if something is
> accepted and proven to have some degree of efficacy, it is by definition no
> longer alternative; also, there is the "alternative to what" issue.

There is a relatively clear meaning as to what alternative medicine is and
it includes the many methods such as acupucture, chiropractic (in all its
forms) herbal medicine, color therapy etc. Some of these are accepted and
used by medical doctors, some scoffed at but althernative medicine is an
umbrella term that includes them all. Their status in terms of reasearch
varies, sometimes by country, herbs, for example, are tested much more in
Germany than elsewhere.

>"Western
> medicine" is an equally loaded and ill-defined term.

What is meant by conventional medicine is simply what you get when you go to
a typical doctor, but more and more frequently that may include alternative
medicine.

>As a point of
> reference, I live in the US, and have a chronic illness (fibromyalgia) that
> the majority of doctors I've seen have denied the very existence of, then
> refused to believe I had, and the rare few that actually deal with it have
> been unable to successfully treat (though it's better than it used to be). A
> large portion of what improvement I have had has come via chiropractic
> treatment, which was once called "alternative", and by some still is. (I'm
> not talking about "straight chiropractic", the now-uncommon belief that
> subluxation is the cause of all ills, here.) I continue to explore a great
> many other measures, few of which are accepted as valid by the majority of
> American MDs I know of (but this does not make them unscientific).

>However,
> I can't stand charlatans, which many of today's herbmongers (the vast
> majority of "Dietary supplements" sold in drugstores and elsewhere, the
> effects of what they're suppoded to be aside, don't even contain what they
> claim to. Few are more than placebos. Such is the effect of an unregulated
> industry.) and suchlike are. I do consider myself a scientist, but that
> doesn't mean what many people seem to think it does... which is my next
> point:

> "Scientism": I constantly see this term used as a pejorative by those who
> hold beliefs they beleive to be incompatible with science. The thing is,
> whenever they describe it, they describe a mindset completely unrelated to
> science.

Anyone who has been in an edit war with RK knows what scientism is. For our
purposes it can be decribed operationaly as what he (and apparently a few
others) does.

> I think none of this discussion truly belongs here (and apologize for going
> on as I just have, but felt it necessary), and most of it wouldn't happen at
> all if people (on both sides) stopped to look at what science actually is...
> "sides" are much of the problem.

No. It belongs here, on the list the purpose of which is to discuss such
issues.
>
> Item 3: article content. I think the articles on "alternative medicine" and
> such should be expanded and have more information on other views... but
> progress is being made, and I expect that like all of Wikipedia's articles,
> they will continue to improve over time. Further discussion on this topic
> also doesn't belong on the list, but on the relevant talk pages.
>
> -- Jake

Discussion belongs in both places. The notion that an article on one thing
should have a lot of information about another thing fails. An article on
alternative medicine is not an appropriate vehicle for a long discourse on
conventional treatment. A link will do.

Fred


subject: [WikiEN-l] Request for Arbitration

body:
> From: Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net>
> Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Date: Sun, 07 Dec 2003 23:59:31 -0800
> To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Request for Arbitration
>
> A [name omitted for privacy reasons] wrote:
>
>> Wik keeps removing "Halloween" from [[October 2003]]; in my part of
>> the world, Halloween was front page news for a week -- there was a
>> great deal of discussion about the decline of Halloween in Europe.
>> Please arbitrate this issue.
>>
> Isn't this just a little too trivial to call for arbitration?
>
> Ec

Halloween is a major holiday, celebration, or whatever in the US, not quite
as big as Christmas. It is an established fact, not subject to serious
dispute. Removal of any known, well-established fact from an article where
it clearly belongs is a serious matter. Hiding behind a claim of triviality
is not a defense. It is like someone who shortchanges you a nickel every
time you deal with them.

Fred


body:
> From: Angela <sloog77 at yahoo.co.uk>
> Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Date: Mon, 8 Dec 2003 05:57:12 +0000 (GMT)
> To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] How and When is Arbitration Invoked?
>
>> Fred Bauder wrote:
>> First, is hope of mediation abandoned in this case?
>
> I think mediation has already been tried. Both Ed Poor
> and I have e-mailed him and many users have tried
> communicating with him on his talk page, but he now
> seems to make no contributions other than comments on
> talk pages criticising and provoking RK.

Yes, informal attempts have been made, but that is not mediation as we
envision it. I suggest we try it if the parties are willing.
>
>> Third, who invokes arbitration?
>
> Perhaps if anyone suggests it be invoked and no-one
> objects then it just is. There are numerous calls on
> the "conflicts between users" page for this user to be
> banned, so it seems clear that arbitration should be
> invoked.
>
> Angela.

So, who would decide and what are the procedures then? (Understanding that
the mediation-arbitration scheme is not effective until January 1)

You all seem to define the question as "Should Mr. Natural Health be banned"
But larger questions exist regarding the scientist point of view and the
behavior of his opponents.

Fred


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] Conversion without a script

body:
On Dec 8, 2003, at 04:10, Erik Moeller wrote:
> Then each of these projects can do the transition manually and as soon
> as
> they're finished they give us a holler and we move xy2 to xy and take
> down
> the UseMod install. An automated transition is problematic anyhow
> because
> of the lack of namespaces, different image handling etc. Any reasonably
> large wiki should have enough users to reduce the workload to max. 100
> pages per user.

The primary purpose of the conversion script is to preserve the page
editing histories. That is the one thing that the current one _does_;
it requires manual fixing up of case changes, namespaces, images, etc.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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subject: [WikiEN-l] Mr-Natural-Health

body:
There are three issues people have trouble separating: MNH's behavior,
people's dogmatic arguments over "alternative medicine" and "scientism", and
the content of the articles about "alternative medicine".

Item 1: MNH. I think MNH is rude, insulting, insistent on pushing bias,
making statements (coming back under other names and ISPs, for one) that are
the clear mark of a troll and vandal, and generally making it obvious he
should be banned. Certainly some people's actions have provoked him, but
this is no excuse for his conduct. This is the only item that should have
been at issue on the list... and I think it rather clear.

Item 2: "Alternative medicine" and "scientism". I tend to only use these
words in quotes, as they tend to both be ill-defined terms used to push a
particular side's point of view.
"Alternative medicine": I agree with snoyes's comment that if something is
accepted and proven to have some degree of efficacy, it is by definition no
longer alternative; also, there is the "alternative to what" issue. "Western
medicine" is an equally loaded and ill-defined term. As a point of
reference, I live in the US, and have a chronic illness (fibromyalgia) that
the majority of doctors I've seen have denied the very existence of, then
refused to believe I had, and the rare few that actually deal with it have
been unable to successfully treat (though it's better than it used to be). A
large portion of what improvement I have had has come via chiropractic
treatment, which was once called "alternative", and by some still is. (I'm
not talking about "straight chiropractic", the now-uncommon belief that
subluxation is the cause of all ills, here.) I continue to explore a great
many other measures, few of which are accepted as valid by the majority of
American MDs I know of (but this does not make them unscientific). However,
I can't stand charlatans, which many of today's herbmongers (the vast
majority of "Dietary supplements" sold in drugstores and elsewhere, the
effects of what they're suppoded to be aside, don't even contain what they
claim to. Few are more than placebos. Such is the effect of an unregulated
industry.) and suchlike are. I do consider myself a scientist, but that
doesn't mean what many people seem to think it does... which is my next
point:
"Scientism": I constantly see this term used as a pejorative by those who
hold beliefs they beleive to be incompatible with science. The thing is,
whenever they describe it, they describe a mindset completely unrelated to
science.
I think none of this discussion truly belongs here (and apologize for going
on as I just have, but felt it necessary), and most of it wouldn't happen at
all if people (on both sides) stopped to look at what science actually is...
"sides" are much of the problem.

Item 3: article content. I think the articles on "alternative medicine" and
such should be expanded and have more information on other views... but
progress is being made, and I expect that like all of Wikipedia's articles,
they will continue to improve over time. Further discussion on this topic
also doesn't belong on the list, but on the relevant talk pages.

-- Jake


from_name: Jimmy Wales

subject: [WikiEN-l] Request for Arbitration

body:
A [name omitted for privacy reasons] wrote:
> Wik keeps removing "Halloween" from [[October 2003]]; in my part of
>the world, Halloween was front page news for a week -- there was a
>great deal of discussion about the decline of Halloween in
>Europe. Please arbitrate this issue.

Technically, this should say "request for mediation", as opposed to
arbitration.  The mediators are going to try to resolve the conflict
to your mutual satisfcation.  I would imagine that the the efforts to
resolve the conflict may go beyond just this particular issue and into
the broader ongoing low-level conflict between Wik and Lir.

--Jimbo


subject: [WikiEN-l] Mr-Natural-Health

body:
> From: Delirium <delirium at rufus.d2g.com>
> Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Date: Mon, 08 Dec 2003 03:08:37 -0800
> To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Mr-Natural-Health
>
> Has anyone here actually tried to contact him via email
> and gotten a response?

email this user works for him and he does respond (at least to friendly
inquiries).

Fred


subject:
[WikiEN-l] Mr-Natural-Health says he is a Nazi. What can we make
	of this?

body:
Fred, I don't think this kind of comment is very helpful.  I think you can
be more constructive than this.

Fred Bauder wrote:

>
>
> > From: Robert <rkscience100 at yahoo.com>
> > Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> > Date: Sun, 7 Dec 2003 15:56:03 -0800 (PST)
> > To: wikien-l at Wikipedia.org
> > Subject: [WikiEN-l] Mr-Natural-Health says he is a Nazi. What can we make of
> > this?
> >
> > A few contributors to Wiki-En forum seem devoid of common
> > sense; it would be a shame if their lack of sense allowed
> > Wikipedia to be damaged by allowing wackos free reign.
> >
> > Robert (RK)
>
> Oh but we do, and you are exhibit one.
>
> Fred
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Ashar Voultoiz

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Opteronically good!

body:
On Sat, 6 Dec 2003 20:53:23 -0600, Nick Reinking wrote:
> Perhaps it could be possible to include a bit of data in the TXT DNS
> record for the various people who have trouble remembering if the
> machine is a database server or a web server?

Hello,

Security wise, I don't think that's a good idea :)

cheers,

--
Ashar Voultoiz
http://fr.wikipedia.org/Utilisateur:Hashar
do not send mail to listme at listme.dsbl.org


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: rampant scientism

body:
Sheldon Rampton wrote:
> Setting aside the question of scientism's merits, isn't the talk page
> _supposed_ to be a place where POV statements are allowed?

Allowed, yes.  Encouraged, no.

The talk page is supposed to be about the article, about how to
improve the article.  As such, the debate or discussion can be more
wide-ranging there than in the actual article.  But even on the talk
pages, things work best when people try not to _argue_, but rather to
_co-operate_ in finding a wording that works well for everyone.

If someone thinks "Well, no one will let me put my advocacy on the
encyclopedia article, so I'll just post my polemical essay on the talk
page" they are thinking wrong about the purpose of the talk pages.

> Actually, what are the terms of allowed discourse on talk pages? I've
> had a user recently on the Disinfopedia who hasn't done any damage to
> actual articles, but he has made a number of nasty remarks on talk
> pages, accusing other users of "paranoid ravings" and referring to me
> personally as a fascist. I've been operating on the assumption that
> even intemperate remarks like this should be acceptable if they are
> limited to comments on talk pages. At what point do Wikipedians draw
> the line on this sort of thing?

I think we find it completely unacceptable, but at the same time we're
very slow to do anything about it most of the time.

This is one reason I personally rarely edit, by the way.  Not because
I don't want people to call me a fascist, I really don't care about
that.  But because I would feel compelled to accept bad behavior
directed towards me that I would not accept when directed towards
others.

--Jimbo


body:
On Dec 8, 2003, at 04:38, Erik Moeller wrote:
>> The primary purpose of the conversion script is to preserve the page
>> editing histories. That is the one thing that the current one _does_;
>> it requires manual fixing up of case changes, namespaces, images, etc.
>
> Then why not use the semi-working conversion script and let the users
> do
> the rest of the work by hand?

That's what I was going to ask you! :) That's exactly what we've done
for the Frisian, Finnish, and other wikis, on request.

>  Does the script break anything?

Hopefully not, other than that it doesn't attempt to make up for the
difference in case-sensitivity between UseModWiki and MediaWiki, which
breaks a lot of links. (Most links with more than one word that aren't
proper names.)

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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subject: [Wikitech-l] SQL dump?

body:
On Dec 8, 2003, at 04:02, Alfio Puglisi wrote:
> Hello,
> the SQL dumps on http://www.download.wikipedia.org seem quite old.
> Maybe
> the cron job gost lost while switching servers?

That just had the old dumps because it's on the old server, where the
new dumps aren't.

> I remember there were problems with the "old" english db, that was over
> 2GB and apache was refusing to server it. We could host it from
> geoffrin,
> since apache 64bit shold not complain.

Yes, that's what I was figuring. Should be more or less working now
(but you may wish to wait a couple hours, I'm running a new dump right
now).

Until DNS changes go through you may see 'geoffrin.wikimedia.org' in
the URL. Please don't link directly there; use download.wikimedia.org.

(If your DNS is way behind and doesn't recognize geoffrin properly, try
130.94.122.204.)

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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from_name: Angela

subject: [WikiEN-l] How and When is Arbitration Invoked?

body:
> Fred Bauder wrote:
> First, is hope of mediation abandoned in this case?

I think mediation has already been tried. Both Ed Poor
and I have e-mailed him and many users have tried
communicating with him on his talk page, but he now
seems to make no contributions other than comments on
talk pages criticising and provoking RK.

> Third, who invokes arbitration?

Perhaps if anyone suggests it be invoked and no-one
objects then it just is. There are numerous calls on
the "conflicts between users" page for this user to be
banned, so it seems clear that arbitration should be
invoked.

Angela.

________________________________________________________________________
BT Yahoo! Broadband - Save ?80 when you order online today. Hurry! Offer ends 21st December 2003. The way the internet was meant to be. http://uk.rd.yahoo.com/evt=21064/*http://btyahoo.yahoo.co.uk


subject: [WikiEN-l] Edit War over [[Edit conflicts]] (!)

body:
Quote from Wik's talk page:

>>I can live with the new policy, if it's stable now.
>>--[[User:Wik|Wik]] 06:38, Dec 8, 2003 (UTC)

Yay!

Angela

 --- Geoff Burling <llywrch at agora.rdrop.com> wrote: >
Okay, Angela pointed out that I was
> intervening/interfering after the
> battle had come to an end. I undid my act.
>
> I'd promise that I would use my sooper sysop powurs
> more carefully in
> the future, but I'm never certain if I'll bother
> using them again.
> (I'd rather contribute to articles than club people
> with sysop rights.)
>
> Geoff
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l

________________________________________________________________________
BT Yahoo! Broadband - Save ?80 when you order online today. Hurry! Offer ends 21st December 2003. The way the internet was meant to be. http://uk.rd.yahoo.com/evt=21064/*http://btyahoo.yahoo.co.uk


subject:
[WikiEN-l] Mr-Natural-Health says he is a Nazi. What can we
	make of this?

body:
I guess the point I am making is that while Mr. Natual Health is a newbie
making the usual mistakes those who are attacking him are experienced users
using tried and true provocative techniques and are much more a matter for
serious concern.

Fred

> From: Jimmy Wales <jwales at bomis.com>
> Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Date: Mon, 8 Dec 2003 04:33:07 -0800
> To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Mr-Natural-Health says he is a Nazi. What can we make
> of this?
>
> Fred, I don't think this kind of comment is very helpful.  I think you can
> be more constructive than this.
>
>
>
> Fred Bauder wrote:
>
>>
>>
>>> From: Robert <rkscience100 at yahoo.com>
>>> Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
>>> Date: Sun, 7 Dec 2003 15:56:03 -0800 (PST)
>>> To: wikien-l at Wikipedia.org
>>> Subject: [WikiEN-l] Mr-Natural-Health says he is a Nazi. What can we make of
>>> this?
>>>
>>> A few contributors to Wiki-En forum seem devoid of common
>>> sense; it would be a shame if their lack of sense allowed
>>> Wikipedia to be damaged by allowing wackos free reign.
>>>
>>> Robert (RK)
>>
>> Oh but we do, and you are exhibit one.
>>
>> Fred
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> 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_name: Robert

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: WikiEN-l Digest, Vol 5, Issue 13

body:
Toby,

Please stop your personal attacks on me. This list is for
discussion of issues related to the English Wikipedia, such
as the recent spate of attacks and damage by
Mr-Natural-Health (MNH). If you want to insult me, do it
offlist.

I am amazed that MNH's highly disturbing behaviour is being
defended by so many, or at least ignored by so many.  It
seems as if there are two Wikipedias. Those Wikipedians who
actually contribute to the articles that MNH contributes to
see him as dangerous.  Just see the Talk pages. But here on
the Wiki-En list, a few people bizarrely see him as an ally
in their fight against science. That's unproductive, and in
fact detrimental.

Please take steps to insure the integrity of Wikipedia.

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!?
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subject: [WikiEN-l] Please stick to the topic

body:
Fred writes:

> Oh but we do, and you are exhibit one.

If you are unable to contribute to this list and discuss
actual issues, and propose solutions, then just leave.
Filling this e-mnail list with ad homenin attacks is
counterproductive, and just vile.

The current problem is Mr-Natural-Health. Deal with this
problem on this list. If you feel the need to harass me,
then do it offlist.

Robert (RK)

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from_name: Vicki Rosenzweig

subject: [WikiEN-l] Request for Arbitration

body:
At 04:05 AM 12/8/03 -0700, Fred wrote:

> > From: Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net>
> > Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> > Date: Sun, 07 Dec 2003 23:59:31 -0800
> > To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> > Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Request for Arbitration
> >
> > A [name omitted for privacy reasons] wrote:
> >
> >> Wik keeps removing "Halloween" from [[October 2003]]; in my part of
> >> the world, Halloween was front page news for a week -- there was a
> >> great deal of discussion about the decline of Halloween in Europe.
> >> Please arbitrate this issue.
> >>
> > Isn't this just a little too trivial to call for arbitration?
> >
> > Ec
>
>Halloween is a major holiday, celebration, or whatever in the US, not quite
>as big as Christmas. It is an established fact, not subject to serious
>dispute. Removal of any known, well-established fact from an article where
>it clearly belongs is a serious matter. Hiding behind a claim of triviality
>is not a defense. It is like someone who shortchanges you a nickel every
>time you deal with them.

"Halloween" belongs on the list of holidays on the [[October 31]] page, as
Christmas does on [[December 25]] and Bastille Day on [[July 14]]. That
doesn't make it a specific [[October 2003]] event; certainly newspaper articles
on the lack of interest in it this year don't strike me as making it an
October 2003 event.


from_name: The Cunctator

subject: Micronation (was Re: [WikiEN-l] Question)

body:
On 12/8/03 7:06 AM, "sannse" <sannse at delphiforums.com> wrote:

> Jake wrote:
>
>> I find people's use of "Micronation", especially as in the [[Micronation]]
>> article, terribly inconsistent- the only way I've ever seen it used
> outside
>> of Wikipedia (Note the "I've seen", don't list Google results of other
> uses,
>> I'm sure they exist) is to refer to very small nations that actually exist
>> and have some degree of legal recognition (even if it's just that they're
>> islands outside any other nation's territory): [[Sealand]], North Dumpling
>> (Dean Kamen's island, near Long Island- has a non-aggression pact with the
>> US signed by then-President George H.W. Bush), and several dozen others.
>> However, many people seem to use the term to describe entirely fictional
>> entities with no territory. I would simply call these "Fantasy nations",
>> "Imaginary nations", or something like that, as the prefix micro- makes no
>> sense in that context.
>>
>> -- Jake
>
> The [[micronations]] article makes a distinction between "micronations" and
> "microstates", but I've no idea if this is a common way of using the words.
> I've never come across the concept before this, so am probably using it
> wrong.

The main promoter in print of the term "micronation" to refer to small
nation-like groups without official recognition is this Wired Magazine
article from March 2000:

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/8.03/kingdoms.html

Until a more precise term comes along, one might as well call Talossa a
micronation. Micronations, also known as counternations and ephemeral
states,  consist of one or more people united by the desire to form and/or
inhabit  an independent country of their own making. All micronations have
governments,  laws, and customs; the main distinguishing factor is whether
their citizens  want to establish a physical home country and seek
international recognition,  or whether, as is the case with Talossa, they're
happy just to pretend.


from_name: Andre Engels

subject: [WikiEN-l] Perceived scientism just doesn't exist

body:
"Robert" <rkscience100 at yahoo.com> schrieb:

> Every day scientists from western countries scour nations
> all across the globe to learn about traditional
> fold-remedies, drugs and treatments. They constantly test
> them in peer-reviewed studes to see if they actually work.

Unfortunately, the latter is not true. The great majority of studies is
financed by the pharmaceutical industry. And the pharmaceutical industry
is not interested in testing traditional remedies, because they cannot
be patented. They are interested in them, but then to analyze the herbs
etcetera used, hoping to find out what substance in them is having the
desired effect, and then go on with only this substance or one that looks
like it.

Andre Engels


from_name: Poor, Edmund W

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Newbie Influence (was: New policy on edit conficts
	Re:Martin)

body:
Ray (Eclecticology) wrote:

> I'd like to see statistics about how many users
> create multiple ID's for the purpose of mischief.
> When a vote or policy making takes place, how much
> influence do these newbies have now.  If a newbie's
> opinion is overly na?ve it will stand out like a
> sore thumb and be ignored.  On voting, I don't think
> that most newbies feel confident enough to participate,
> and those who do will not be in significant numbers.
> Reducing hierarchy by adding another level of hierarchy
> doesn't make sense.  I don't support the proposal.
> It's trying to solve an imagined problem, not a real one.

Newbies have hardly any influencies on "old hands" such as myself. Oh, they can make suggestions and even "vote" on stuff, and if what they propose makes sense I'll try it. But if their proposals don't make sense to me I /disregard/ them.

I refuse to be tyrannized by a majority or a minority. I follow the rules laid down by our PhilosopherKing Jimbo Wales -- or, I do the best I can to follow them; I have my occasional lapses, like anyone else (Hi, Erik!).

Jimbo has consistently preached against hierarchy, which is perhaps one reason he has encouraged our Arch-Anarchist, the Cunctator, to stick around and play a leadership role. Our ideal is:

=> "Any page may be edited at anytime, by anyone."

Jimbo persistently strives to reach this ideal, and shows no signs of fatigue even in Wikipedia's third year (or is it the fourth already?).

So policy will be changed only via the interplay between Genuine Consensus and Jimbo occasionally putting his foot down. This will continue until someone comes up with a better idea.

Uncle Ed


body:
Andre,

I hope you aren't leaving Wikipedia, as a recent post at "request to
de-sysop myself" suggested. I like your observation about remedy
studies.

You wrote:

<< The great majority of studies is financed by the pharmaceutical
industry. And the pharmaceutical industry is not interested in testing
traditional remedies, because they cannot be patented. They are
interested in them, but then to analyze the herbs etcetera used, hoping
to find out what substance in them is having the desired effect, and
then go on with only this substance or one that looks like it. >>

This text should be entered into the Wikipedia, if it's not already
there.

Cheers.

Ed Poor, aka Uncle Ed


subject:
[WikiEN-l] Neutrality and the "majority" view (was: "Rampant
	scientism")

body:
When people say "most scientists believe X" I daresay what
they really mean is:

* X is true, so let's stop arguing about it

Wikipedia's policy on controversial subjects clearly
forbids this kind of pre-emptive shutdown of discussion.
So let's talk about what we ought to do instead of that.

First, a question:

1. What is a majority view?

If indeed 51% of scientists (or doctors holding a Western
M.D. degree, or moviegoers, or Linux enthusiasts) BELIEVE A
CERTAIN THING, then the article should simply report that
the indicated proportion of the group in question adheres
to that POV.

If the majority is larger than 51% - say, 95% - we can
safely call that an "overwhelming majority". If it is 99.8%
we can say "virtually all". (Note that some published
writers might considered 2/3 to be "overwhelming", but that
is just THEIR POV! If as many as 1/3 of a group disagree
with something, our readers are better served by telling
them that 2/3 of the group believe it, and that 1/3 of the
group disbelieve it).

Having stated the general principle, I wonder how many are
still with me? Getting bored? Angry? . . .

2. Chiropractic as an example

I'd L-O-V-E to know what proportion of Western M.D. "health
professionals" give credence to any of the "alternative"
practices our Wikipedia articles are starting to describe.

In two out of two cases I know of (admittedly not a
'scientific' sample), men with severe back pain got
immediate, lasting relief via chiropractic. One was a
soldier who said he wrenched his back when he stepped into
a hole on a road march; muscle relaxants and so on tried by
military doctors didn't help him at all, he said; he
wound up spending his entire monthly salary on chiropractic
treatment, which he said "worked".

The other case was me: I suffered a muscle spasm when I
bent over to plug in a computer; after getting my back
cracked at a chiropractor's office I immediately felt
better and didn't even need aspirin.

Perhaps we can distinguish chiropractic's effectiveness at
treating back pain, from its more general claims; there
might be a part of the system which can be proven to work,
even if other parts remain dismissed by M.D.'s as
pseudoscientific quackery.

3. Approaches to alternative medicine

Can we generalize from how we talk about chiropractic
(which seems to work for SOME complaints) to how we ought
to describe other "alternative" approaches?

How about acupuncture? I've read anecdotal reports that
inserting needles at certain points can dull pain, even
that as intense as a woman experiences in childbirth.
Surely this has been the object of controlled studies.

I just read last month about a study on Echinacea,
comparing its effectiveness vs. placebo. Well, can't we
report those study results?

4. Conclusion

Some people believe surgery and synthetic drugs are "bad
for you" and are looking for other ways to treat ailments.
I suggest we report NEUTRALLY on their motives and results.

Uncle Ed


body:
On 12/8/03 9:50 AM, "Poor, Edmund W" <Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com> wrote:

> When people say "most scientists believe X" I daresay what
> they really mean is:
>
> * X is true, so let's stop arguing about it
>
You're wrong.


body:
So, let's not bother reading the rest of my post or discussing it?

Hm, you seem to be proving my point.

Is this another one of your "classical rhetoric" devil's advocate
techniques? ;-)

Ed

-----Original Message-----
From: The Cunctator [mailto:cunctator at kband.com]
Sent: Monday, December 08, 2003 9:55 AM
To: English Wikipedia
Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Neutrality and the "majority" view (was:
"Rampantscientism")

On 12/8/03 9:50 AM, "Poor, Edmund W" <Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com> wrote:

> When people say "most scientists believe X" I daresay what they really

> mean is:
>
> * X is true, so let's stop arguing about it
>
You're wrong.


from_name: Alwin Meschede

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Opteronically good!

body:
Brion Vibber schrieb:
> Honestly we'd just forget to keep it up to date. We don't even remember
> to keep http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Servers up to date...

BTW:
Someone should update
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Technical_FAQ with the hardware
specifications of the new server and the new setup of the boxes (e.g.
"Are there any databases left on pliny?").

Alwin Meschede


subject: [WikiEN-l] Mr. Natural Health - a candidate for banning

body:
Viajero observed,

> Mr Natural Health was a problematic user when he first
> appeared, and you could have helped us incorporate his
> material in a constructive way, but your hostility and
> rabid scientism only aggravated the situation. The
> ultimate victim is the encyclopedia.

It is always difficult to embrace a new immigrant to our
shores, when he comes to enlighten us according to his
agenda. It took me longer than I care to remember, before
people stopped accusing me of OPPOSING the norms of Wikipedia.
I wonder how long it really took before people started
regarding me as a champion of our Neutrality Policy?

In my dealings with MNH I've tried to assume good faith,
but that didn't get me very far. He's a loose cannon.

When mediation fails, I think mediators should let the
community know about it. Angela has already done so, and
I endorse her report.

I have no problem with his /ideas/ and in fact I wish that he would
write neutrally about them. But like user:Lir once did, he is causing a
lot of annoyance around here, and the damage this causes to the morale
of our noble staff of volunteer writers far outweighs the value of
whatever contributions we /hope/ he could make.

When Lir came back, with a new determination to follow our social norms,
he turned over a new leaf. I think MNH might be able to follow Lir's
example.

I don't want to wait three and a half weeks and make MNH
the first case for the arbitration committee. I invite
Jimbo to "talk" to him now.

Reluctantly,

Uncle Ed


subject: [WikiEN-l] Let's not attack each other

body:
Robert asked Toby to stop his "personal attacks" on him.

Toby, as list administrator I would like you to consider whether remarks
like the following really ADD to the discourse, or merely SIDETRACK us
from the actual topic at hand:

"It's a darned good thing that other people noticed MNH before you did,
RK, or it might have been EoT all over again -- where the regular
Wikipedians ignore your charges because you back them up with
exaggerations and biased rhetoric."

Please remember that some people are more sensitive than others. My skin
is thick enough that you could talk to me like that, but Robert has
taken offense.

You could say the same thing, albeit more gently, if you write:

* I think the complaints about MNH are exaggerated. He's not that bad,
because of blah, blah, blah.

Or

* I worry that opposition to MNH is rooted is bias against the /points/
he is making.

Note that both of these approaches criticize IDEAS themselves rather
than any PERSON on this list.

May this provide you food for thought.

Ed Poor
Wikien-l List Administrator


list: wikipedia-l

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Arbitration/mediation on en

body:
On Fri, 5 Dec 2003, Delirium wrote:

> Arbitration: *Only* tasked with reviewing potential bans of users.  Does
> *not* have any power with regards to arbitrating the disputes over
> content or content presentation.  Basically, this committee is what
> decides when someone simply cannot work within Wikipedia, after an
> appeal from someone who has made that claim and asked the user to be
> banned.  The actual disputes themselves stay at the mediation level
> indefinitely, and are not subject to arbitration (any "voting" decision
> on them would be a wider vote on the talk page, presumably).

Your own statement already says it. "Indefinitely". What if I want A,
someone else wants B, and mediation does not find a solution, either
because one or both of us is too stubborn, or because there simply is
no compromise between the two? Should we just be left alone fighting?
Should we be told time and again "Come on, there should be a solution"?

I do agree that getting to a solution through mediation is the
preferred solution. But there are times when it does not work. Under
your scheme, it seems to me that in that case there is no choice
between "just let the edit war keep going" and "Mr. A is banned".

Andre Engels


subject:
[WikiEN-l] Neutrality and the "majority" view (was:
	"Rampantscientism")

body:
On 12/8/03 9:57 AM, "Poor, Edmund W" <Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com> wrote:
> 12/08/03 9:55 AM The Cunctator [mailto:cunctator at kband.com] wrote:

>> On 12/8/03 9:50 AM, "Poor, Edmund W" <Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com> wrote:
>>>
>>> When people say "most scientists believe X" I daresay what they really
>>>
>>> mean is:
>>>
>>> * X is true, so let's stop arguing about it
>>>
>> You're wrong.

> So, let's not bother reading the rest of my post or discussing it?
>
> Hm, you seem to be proving my point.
>
> Is this another one of your "classical rhetoric" devil's advocate
> techniques? ;-)
>
No, it's not, and I resent the facetious insinuation.

To expand on "You're wrong": When you assert that those who you consider the
opposition are acting in bad faith, a mutually respectful conversation is
impossible. So I ask to stop making such implications.

This is why I said you're wrong:
When people say "most scientists believe X" what they mean is "most
scientists believe X".

Moreover, the standard understanding of what is the scientific consensus *is
not* "most scientists believe X". It's "what hypotheses explain the
collected evidence, using the scientific method." Since the standard for
peer-reviewed scientific journals is to only publish hypotheses which
explain the collected evidence, using the scientific method, one can safely
say that the scientific consensus is by and large represented by what is
published in peer-reviewed scientific journals.

And *there is* a close correspondence between what most scientists (at least
in a particular field) believe and what is published in the journals (and
what hypotheses explain the collected evidence).

So there is a close correspondence between "most scientists believe in X"
and "scientific consensus". But they are not the same thing.

By way of example:

Most scientists believe that the Earth rotates around the Sun.

The scientific consensus is that the Earth rotates around the Sun.

The scientific consensus that the Earth rotates around the Sun is not
because scientists believe it to be so.

The scientific consensus that the Earth rotates around the Sun is not
intended to end investigation or discussion of what that means. (For
example, the advent of relavistic physics significantly redefined our
understanding of reference frames, giving us a better tools to explicitly
describe how it is that it's a natural assumption for someone standing on
Earth that the Sun rotates around the Earth.)

It is because the hypothesis that the Earth rotates around the Sun is a much
better explanation for the observed data than alternative hypotheses.

--tc.


from_name: Alex R.

body:
 From: "sannse" <sannse at delphiforums.com>
 >
> > > Fred Bauder wrote:
 >
> > Angela wrote:

> Do we have a page set up yet explaining the role of the mediation
committee?
> I'll set one up at [[Wikipedia:Mediation committee]], it can be deleted if
I
> missed one elsewhere.

There were some pages sent up previously that tried to explain the general
overview of mediation and arbitration [[Wikipedia:Mediation Committee]]
[[Wikipedia:Arbitration Commitee]] and [[Wikipedia:Mediation and Arbitration
(proposal)]].

Since you guys are now a duly constituted committee it would seen that
you and Jimbo should decide what kind of structure is best for your mutual
operations. Just remember that it is supposed to be consensual, i.e. the
mediators are trying to reach an agreement between the parties concerned,
and you should also be flexible to do it any way (individually, as a group,
etc.)
as the situation demands.

Alex R. aka [[en:user:alex756]]


subject: [WikiEN-l] Let's not attack each other

body:
On 12/8/03 10:48 AM, "Poor, Edmund W" <Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com> wrote:

> Robert asked Toby to stop his "personal attacks" on him.
>
> Toby, as list administrator I would like you to consider whether remarks
> like the following really ADD to the discourse, or merely SIDETRACK us
> from the actual topic at hand:
>
> "It's a darned good thing that other people noticed MNH before you did,
> RK, or it might have been EoT all over again -- where the regular
> Wikipedians ignore your charges because you back them up with
> exaggerations and biased rhetoric."
>
> Please remember that some people are more sensitive than others. My skin
> is thick enough that you could talk to me like that, but Robert has
> taken offense.
>
It  *is* a problem, though. RK often damages his side by overstating the
situation and taking disputes personally.

One of the basic principles of WikipediAhimsa is that when someone is
offended by someone else, both parties have failed to do no harm.

Usually the offender has committed more harm, but that is not always the
case.

Robert: I promise you that we all take the problem of Mr. Natural Health's
behavior seriously, and we intend to come to a positive solution to the
issue. That action has not been as rapid as you wish should not be taken as
a slight against you.

--tc


from_name: Stuardo Rodríguez (StR)

subject: [Wikitech-l] Search engine. - HTDIG!!!

body:
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

On Thursday 04 December 2003 22:22, Daniel Mayer wrote:
> Giving people the option of live database search and Googlesearch should
> reduce database server load as well (I always felt guilty using the
> Wikipedia search before but was still too lazy to visit my user page to
> click on my own link to the Wikipedia search form on Google. ).

Hi! , i'm new in the list... and i didn't have the time to read all mails,
but... with this search stuf ....

Have anyone tried htdig?
if you have a site, with all links to all articles, this search could work
very fine.. is the one I use to a - laws - site we develope... we have like
1500 laws and from 5 to 15 pages each, and we use htdig for searching,  it
does not store the idexed db in any db - like mysql.. it has it's own db-like
way to save the keywords....

we have it to reindex the db every day... just because we do not need it to be
runed wevery hour... but...   will. try to see if it does not consume to much
CPU...

I think htdig could be the one that helps this issue....   just try it... you
do not loose a thing just with trying..

- --
		StR <str at strgt.cjb.net>
- -[http://strgt.cjb.net]-[Just me 'n the world I created]-
- -[http://www.gamersgt.com]- <str at gamersgt.com>

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.2.3 (GNU/Linux)

iD8DBQE/1LKk7NyBNYWmhiIRAm9cAKDTtNS1MDHVabYgmjipdEmVMAm7ngCfTM1E
8sxv11CILLv0wnFcGnC0tCI=
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from_name: sannse

subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia hierarchy

body:
>>>Toby Bartels wrote:

>>>Undeletion should never require more official validation than deletion.

>> Jimmy Wales wrote:

>>And generally less, right, since after all a person can always 'undelete'
>>by just starting the article over and copying and pasting the text?

>Toby Bartels wrote:

> Not entirely.

> For one thing, your solution destroys the edit history.
> Also, only admins can even view the text that they want to copy and paste
> (although that point is not relevant to current issue,
> since it is only about relative numbers of administrators).

> In short, undeleting by your method is not as good as undeleting by
software.
> That is one reason why undeleting shouldn't be unduly restricted.

If undeletion were made unrestricted then I think we would also have to
allow everyone to view the text of deleted articles.  Otherwise we would
have people undeleting in order to view the text and (unless deletion was
also unrestricted) being unable to delete again once they had done so.

I can also see a big increase in "deletion wars" if the ability to undelete
is general.

I'm not saying that I think the ability to undelete /shouldn't/ be opened
up, just seeing a few problems that should be looked at first.

Regards

sannse


subject: [WikiEN-l] Let's not attack each other

body:
I just don't want a to see a situation like the following:

"Yes, we admit we all ganged up on him, but the way he defended himself
against our attack was worse than anything we did to him; so, he should
be punished, and we should all get away scott free!"

I would tread VERY CAREFULLY before advocating any 'princples' that
smack of this, especially in the hearing of any Jewish men or women who
have strong feelings about the Holocaust.

Uncle Ed


from_name: Sascha Noyes

subject: [WikiEN-l] Mr-Natural-Health

body:
On Monday 08 December 2003 06:00, Fred Bauder wrote:
> There is a relatively clear meaning as to what alternative medicine is and
> it includes the many methods such as acupucture, chiropractic (in all its
> forms) herbal medicine, color therapy etc. Some of these are accepted and
> used by medical doctors, some scoffed at but althernative medicine is an
> umbrella term that includes them all. Their status in terms of reasearch
> varies, sometimes by country, herbs, for example, are tested much more in
> Germany than elsewhere.
>

Maybe you wouldn't mind sharing that "clear meaning" with us. Simply listing
things that are considered alternative medicine does not constitute the
definition of the term.

> >"Western
> > medicine" is an equally loaded and ill-defined term.
>
> What is meant by conventional medicine is simply what you get when you go
> to a typical doctor, but more and more frequently that may include
> alternative medicine.

So if I understand your logic correctly, one gets conventional medicine when
one goes to a typical doctor. But one can also increasingly get alternative
medicine there. So are conventional and alternative medicine one and the same
thing? At what point of adoption does an alternative become conventional? Or
is it even usefull to talk in terms of conventionality when discussing
medicine? (I submit that it isn't.) Maybe this illustrates that there does
perhaps not exist a clear meaning for the term "alternative medicine"?

Best,
Sascha Noyes


from_name: John Stracke

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: [Sodipodi-list] Wikiclips (was Re: Map Symbols)

body:
On Sun, 2003-12-07 at 21:00, Evan Prodromou wrote:

    What I wonder is whether a Wiki format might not work better for
    collaboration than CVS. CVS requires setting up user permissions for
    lots of people, and it can be a hassle. Wikis lower the bar for
    participation considerably.

But doesn't it also lower the bar for pranks and such--say, person A
adds a piece of clipart that person B doesn't like, so B modifies it
surreptitiously? CVS would log things like that.

--
/==========================================================\
|John Stracke        | http://www.thibault.org |HTML OK    |
|Francois Thibault   |=====================================|
|East Kingdom        |I will not buy this .signature, it is|
|francis at thibault.org|scratched.                           |
\==========================================================/
My medieval art for sale: http://www.thibault.org/store/


body:
> > Fred Bauder wrote:

> > First, is hope of mediation abandoned in this case?

> Angela wrote:

> I think mediation has already been tried. Both Ed Poor
> and I have e-mailed him and many users have tried
> communicating with him on his talk page, but he now
> seems to make no contributions other than comments on
> talk pages criticising and provoking RK.

But did you try as individual users or as part of the mediation committee?
I think (hope!) that people will react differently to an approach by the
mediation committee than to what they might see as random input.  So maybe
any "official" mediation needs to start with an introduction of the
mediator(s) and an explanation of the role of the mediation committee.  I
think it also needs to start with an agreement from both parties to work
with the mediator(s).  I can't see this working at all without that step.

I'm still not really clear how this is supposed to work anyway.  Are we to
mediate individually, perhaps with assigned conflicts?  Or should the
mediation committee as a whole be directed to a conflict to start mediation?

Do we have a page set up yet explaining the role of the mediation committee?
I'll set one up at [[Wikipedia:Mediation committee]], it can be deleted if I
missed one elsewhere.

Regards

sannse

p.s.  you might have noticed, I'm pushing for us to be a committee - seems
an appropriate commentary on our likely effectiveness   </pessimism>


from_name: Delirium

body:
sannse wrote:

>>I think mediation has already been tried. Both Ed Poor
>>and I have e-mailed him and many users have tried
>>communicating with him on his talk page, but he now
>>seems to make no contributions other than comments on
>>talk pages criticising and provoking RK.
>>
>>
>
>But did you try as individual users or as part of the mediation committee?
>I think (hope!) that people will react differently to an approach by the
>mediation committee than to what they might see as random input.  So maybe
>any "official" mediation needs to start with an introduction of the
>mediator(s) and an explanation of the role of the mediation committee.  I
>think it also needs to start with an agreement from both parties to work
>with the mediator(s).  I can't see this working at all without that step.
>
>
I think this is definitely a good idea.  Especially if you can convey to
the person that the role of the mediation committee is explicitly to try
to resolve disputes to the mutual satisfaction of all, and *not* as a
"first cut" vetting candidates for the arbitration committee to ban.
People naturally get very defensive when things like potential bans come
up, so I think it'll work better if they understand that being involved
in mediation is not really a first step towards banning, but instead an
honest attempt to resolve the problem.  They need to understand that any
concerns they have will be given a fair hearing.

Not being on the mediation committee myself I'll leave it you who are to
decide how to best organize things, but I think having some sort of
central information repository might be a good idea, where each person
on the committee can check up on disputes and see who has done what,
like "[x] emailed MNH, got a friendly response'" or "[[blah]]: dispute
between polish and german nationalists; [y] is currently trying to find
a compromise on the talk page".

-Mark


subject: [WikiEN-l] Question

body:
Jake wrote:

> I find people's use of "Micronation", especially as in the [[Micronation]]
> article, terribly inconsistent- the only way I've ever seen it used
outside
> of Wikipedia (Note the "I've seen", don't list Google results of other
uses,
> I'm sure they exist) is to refer to very small nations that actually exist
> and have some degree of legal recognition (even if it's just that they're
> islands outside any other nation's territory): [[Sealand]], North Dumpling
> (Dean Kamen's island, near Long Island- has a non-aggression pact with the
> US signed by then-President George H.W. Bush), and several dozen others.
> However, many people seem to use the term to describe entirely fictional
> entities with no territory. I would simply call these "Fantasy nations",
> "Imaginary nations", or something like that, as the prefix micro- makes no
> sense in that context.
>
> -- Jake

 The [[micronations]] article makes a distinction between "micronations" and
"microstates", but I've no idea if this is a common way of using the words.
I've never come across the concept before this, so am probably using it
wrong.

Regards

sannse


from_name: Erik Moeller

body:
How about we give each of the non-converted Wikipedia a MediaWiki like
this:

it2.wikipedia.org -> MediaWiki
it.wikipedia.org -> UseMod

ca2.wikipedia.org ->MediaWiki
ca.wikipedia.org -> UseMod

etc.

Then each of these projects can do the transition manually and as soon as
they're finished they give us a holler and we move xy2 to xy and take down
the UseMod install. An automated transition is problematic anyhow because
of the lack of namespaces, different image handling etc. Any reasonably
large wiki should have enough users to reduce the workload to max. 100
pages per user.

What do you think?

Regards,

Erik


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Narrowing focus

body:
On Fri, 5 Dec 2003, Evan Prodromou wrote:

> So, I like this, as it's visually distinct from namespaces.
>
> My only caveat is that it would prohibit any article titles with "="
> in the name. For example, [[F=ma]] or [[Silence = Death]] or
> something. I don't know if that's an issue.

Not really, because article titles with '=' go to the title without '='
instead anyway.

Andre Engels


subject: [WikiEN-l] Mr-Natural-Health

body:
Pedro Fortuny wrote:

>Sorry to meddle, but we may be forgetting that what *people* expect
>from a doctor is not *science* ''stricto sense'' but healing...
>
>
Not to dictate what people should be discussing, but I think we may be
entering into a philosophical debate the scope of which is somewhat
wider than this mailing list ought to accomodate.  There's entire books
written on the proper relationship between 'medicine', 'healing', and so on!

-Mark


body:
Brion-

> The primary purpose of the conversion script is to preserve the page
> editing histories. That is the one thing that the current one _does_;
> it requires manual fixing up of case changes, namespaces, images, etc.

Then why not use the semi-working conversion script and let the users do
the rest of the work by hand? Does the script break anything?

Regards,

Erik


subject: [WikiEN-l] REPOST: Neutrality and the "majority" view

body:
In light of the Cunctator's keen observations....

I wonder what people mean when they say "most scientists believe X".
This has a bearing on how we write about non-mainstream ideas such as
alternative medicine.

1. What is a majority view?

If indeed 51% of scientists (or doctors holding a Western
M.D. degree, or moviegoers, or Linux enthusiasts) BELIEVE A CERTAIN
THING, then the article should simply report that the indicated
proportion of the group in question adheres to that POV.

If the majority is larger than 51% - say, 95% - we can
safely call that an "overwhelming majority". If it is 99.8%
we can say "virtually all". (Note that some published
writers might considered 2/3 to be "overwhelming", but that
is just THEIR POV! If as many as 1/3 of a group disagree
with something, our readers are better served by telling
them that 2/3 of the group believe it, and that 1/3 of the group
disbelieve it).

Having stated the general principle, I wonder how many are still with
me? Getting bored? Angry? . . .

2. Chiropractic as an example

I'd L-O-V-E to know what proportion of Western M.D. "health
professionals" give credence to any of the "alternative" practices our
Wikipedia articles are starting to describe.

In two out of two cases I know of (admittedly not a 'scientific'
sample), men with severe back pain got immediate, lasting relief via
chiropractic. One was a soldier who said he wrenched his back when he
stepped into a hole on a road march; muscle relaxants and so on tried by
military doctors didn't help him at all, he said; he wound up spending
his entire monthly salary on chiropractic treatment, which he said
"worked".

The other case was me: I suffered a muscle spasm when I
bent over to plug in a computer; after getting my back
cracked at a chiropractor's office I immediately felt
better and didn't even need aspirin.

Perhaps we can distinguish chiropractic's effectiveness at treating back
pain, from its more general claims; there might be a part of the system
which can be proven to work, even if other parts remain dismissed by
M.D.'s as pseudoscientific quackery.

3. Approaches to alternative medicine

Can we generalize from how we talk about chiropractic
(which seems to work for SOME complaints) to how we ought
to describe other "alternative" approaches?

How about acupuncture? I've read anecdotal reports that inserting
needles at certain points can dull pain, even that as intense as a woman
experiences in childbirth. Surely this has been the object of controlled
studies.

I just read last month about a study on Echinacea,
comparing its effectiveness vs. placebo. Well, can't we
report those study results?

4. Conclusion

Some people believe surgery and synthetic drugs are "bad
for you" and are looking for other ways to treat ailments.
I suggest we report NEUTRALLY on their motives and results.

Uncle Ed


from_name: Fred Bauder

subject: [WikiEN-l] Mr-Natural-Health

body:
> From: Sascha Noyes <sascha at pantropy.net>
> Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Date: Mon, 8 Dec 2003 11:28:47 -0500
> To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Mr-Natural-Health
>
> On Monday 08 December 2003 06:00, Fred Bauder wrote:
>> There is a relatively clear meaning as to what alternative medicine is and
>> it includes the many methods such as acupucture, chiropractic (in all its
>> forms) herbal medicine, color therapy etc. Some of these are accepted and
>> used by medical doctors, some scoffed at but alternative medicine is an
>> umbrella term that includes them all. Their status in terms of reasearch
>> varies, sometimes by country, herbs, for example, are tested much more in
>> Germany than elsewhere.
>>
>
> Maybe you wouldn't mind sharing that "clear meaning" with us. Simply listing
> things that are considered alternative medicine does not constitute the
> definition of the term.

Those who regularly use the term use it to mean the options (alternatives)
other than going to an MD.
>
>>> "Western
>>> medicine" is an equally loaded and ill-defined term.
>>
>> What is meant by conventional medicine is simply what you get when you go
>> to a typical doctor, but more and more frequently that may include
>> alternative medicine.
>
> So if I understand your logic correctly, one gets conventional medicine when
> one goes to a typical doctor. But one can also increasingly get alternative
> medicine there. So are conventional and alternative medicine one and the same
> thing? At what point of adoption does an alternative become conventional? Or
> is it even usefull to talk in terms of conventionality when discussing
> medicine? (I submit that it isn't.) Maybe this illustrates that there does
> perhaps not exist a clear meaning for the term "alternative medicine"?
>
> Best,
> Sascha Noyes

We had an MD here who also practiced Acupuncture (and he was quite a quack
about it too--often using it in dubious ways). That is an example of such a
use. One thing about medical doctor licensing: They are permitted to use any
method which in their judgement might be effective, for example placebos may
legitimately be prescribed in appropriate cases by a medical doctor, or
indeed any althernative method he or she might feel approriate, whether or
not there is any scientific proof of their effectiveness.

I don't think that confuses the issue or the definitions of conventional
versus alternative medicine. It just shows that there is an absence of a
sharp boundary. Conventional practice of pills and surgery is still
distinguishable from a more holistic approach whether it is a medical doctor
or an alternative practicioner delivering the service.

Fre


from_name: Alfio Puglisi

subject: [Wikitech-l] SQL dump?

body:
Hello,
the SQL dumps on http://www.download.wikipedia.org seem quite old. Maybe
the cron job gost lost while switching servers?

I remember there were problems with the "old" english db, that was over
2GB and apache was refusing to server it. We could host it from geoffrin,
since apache 64bit shold not complain.

Ciao,
Alfio


from_name: Viajero

subject:
[WikiEN-l] "Rampant scientism" - actually reading too much into
	an edit summary

body:
On 12/09/03  at 04:31 AM, Robert Graham Merkel <rgmerk at mira.net> said:

> Whilst that edit summary may have been unwise, I don't think the edit I
> made was unreasonable.  In fact, did you bother to read the edit that
> comment was attached to?

Yes, of course I did.

> Basically, I take the view that articles should generally be written in
> "news style" with a very quick summary of the most pertinent facts at
> the top, and then dealing with each point in more detail later.

I completely agree and strive for the same in the articles I write.

> Now, as it happens, the majority medical/scientific view on alternative
> medicine, whether the proponents of alternative medicine like it or not,
>  is that most of it is at best ineffective New Age mysticism that
> generates strong placebo effects, or at worst a particularly cruel fraud
> on  very sick people with nothing to lose.  They may be wrong, but I
> believe  that to be an accurate summary of a majority of doctors' views,
> and I don't  think there's terribly much dispute on that.

Sorry, it isn't an accurate summary. It is a crass generalization which
reflects a hidden POV and doesn't belong in an encyclodia.

For the record: I am NOT a proponent of alternative medicine. Like many
people in the part of the world where I live, at times I have recourse to
mainstream medicine, and times to alternative, depending on the
affliction. Each has its advantages and disadvantages.

> What I actually said in the article, in the fourth paragraph, was
> something along the lines of
> "mainstream Western medicine views most alternative medicine as either
> [[pseudoscience]] or [[quackery]]".  In other words, a quick summary  of
> a sentiment expanded greatly later on in the article.

Yes, I know, I saw this. I thought it completely blind to reality; a
wretched lapse of NPOV. That is why we are discussing it here.

> So, in essence, I think my edit was quite reasonable and in good faith,
> and my edit summary was an accurate (if indelicate) summary of the
> content of my edit and my reasoning.

In good faith, I have no doubt. But in no way reasonable.

> Read the relevant edit in full
> next time before making unjustified claims.

A completely superfluous rejoinder.

V.


from_name: Evan Prodromou

subject: [Wikitech-l] List Items

body:
Is there a good reason this:

---8<---
#Item 1

#Item 2

#Item 3
---8<---

...should render to this:

---8<---

Item 1

Item 2

Item 3

---8<---

...instead of this:

---8<---

Item 1

Item 2

Item 3

---8<---

? If I file an RFE to do this, am I dumb?

~ESP

--
Evan Prodromou <evan at wikitravel.org>
Wikitravel - http://www.wikitravel.org/
The free, complete, up-to-date and reliable world-wide travel guide


from_name: Anthere

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Perceived scientism just doesn't exist

body:
Andre Engels a ?crit:
> "Robert" <rkscience100 at yahoo.com> schrieb:
>
>
>>Every day scientists from western countries scour nations
>>all across the globe to learn about traditional
>>fold-remedies, drugs and treatments. They constantly test
>>them in peer-reviewed studes to see if they actually work.
>
>
> Unfortunately, the latter is not true. The great majority of studies is
> financed by the pharmaceutical industry. And the pharmaceutical industry
> is not interested in testing traditional remedies, because they cannot
> be patented. They are interested in them, but then to analyze the herbs
> etcetera used, hoping to find out what substance in them is having the
> desired effect, and then go on with only this substance or one that looks
> like it.
>
> Andre Engels

Or they find the traditionnal plants, that inspired modern medicine.
They make a little genetic twist on them, just enough for it to be
declared "invention", they patent the resulting plant, and if possible
the genetic sequence.

Then they put everything aside. It is not to be used *now*. It is meant
to be a reservoir for latter needs. And mostly, a nice way to prevent
competition from other firms.

It is patenting not to be paid back research, time and money involved,
it is just patenting for protection of business future.


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: [Sodipodi-list] Wikiclips

in_reply_to:
<1070884124.2040.3435.camel@barrayar.local.thibault.org> (John
	Stracke's message of "08 Dec 2003 06:48:43 -0500")

body:
>>>>> "JS" == John Stracke <francis+dated+1086436124.b8e8db at thibault.org> writes:

    Me> Wikis lower the bar for participation considerably.

    JS> But doesn't it also lower the bar for pranks and such--say,
    JS> person A adds a piece of clipart that person B doesn't like,
    JS> so B modifies it surreptitiously? CVS would log things like
    JS> that.

So, a couple of things about this:

    * Yes, it lowers the bar for abuse, too. But experience with Wikis
      like Wikipedia has shown that the good tends to overwhelm the
      bad. If you have a community of people dedicated to the idea of
      the project, they can "self-police" the wiki. After all, A can
      always revert B's changes. Or C can, or D or E or F.

      I think it works because, since it's so easy to change stuff, B
      will get bored with abuse pretty quickly. Also, A, C, D, E, and
      F are more committed usually to the project, than B is to causing
      mayhem.

    * There are a number of features in the MediaWiki software that
      runs most of the Wikimedia projects (and Wikitravel, by the way)
      to track edits and quickly detect abuse. It's hard to do things
      "surreptitiously".

        * Recent changes
        * Page histories
        * User contributions lists
        * New pages lists
        * Upload, delete, protect

    * Most of the features that could cause permanent damage, on
      MediaWiki sites, are reserved for special administrator
      users. So, for example, most people can't delete an image, a
      page, or whatever. They can take out all the content, but they
      can't delete the marker, or the history, or whatever.

There's a few pages that go over how Wikis actually can work for
sharing important data. On Wikipedia, there's the replies to common
objections:

        http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Replies_to_common_objections

On Meatball Wiki (a Wiki about how Wikis and other online communities
work), there's a page on "Soft Security":

       http://www.usemod.com/cgi-bin/mb.pl?SoftSecurity

...and one on limiting damage:

       http://www.usemod.com/cgi-bin/mb.pl?LimitDamage

Anyways, lots of blather about Wiki, which is probably off-topic for
both sodipodi-l and wikipedia-l. Sorry to both communities for
excessive cross-posts, but I think this is an interesting topic that
should probly be looked into.

~ESP

--
Evan Prodromou <evan at wikitravel.org>
Wikitravel - http://www.wikitravel.org/
The free, complete, up-to-date and reliable world-wide travel guide


subject: [Wikitech-l] Conversion without a script

body:
On 8 Dec 2003, Erik Moeller wrote:

> Brion-
>
> > The primary purpose of the conversion script is to preserve the page
> > editing histories. That is the one thing that the current one _does_;
> > it requires manual fixing up of case changes, namespaces, images, etc.
>
> Then why not use the semi-working conversion script and let the users do
> the rest of the work by hand? Does the script break anything?

Having done the handwork for fy:, I can say that it's quite a bit of work.
However, the work can be _greatly_ diminished by running the recently
implemented update script for the links-table after the move, since the most
work is in making an edit to every page to do so. Apart from that, one will
have to move every page of which the title is wrongly capitalized (the
script will capitalize every word), and move every page that should go
to another namespace.

On fy: the conversion cost me about 4 1/2 hours for 120 pages. In the same
speed, a really large phase I Wikipedia (ca: or it:) would cost about
180 man-hours. However, as said the hardest work (updating the link tables)
can probably now be automated, which makes the process much faster.

Andre Engels


body:
On Mon, 8 Dec 2003, Brion Vibber wrote:

>On Dec 8, 2003, at 04:38, Erik Moeller wrote:
>> Then why not use the semi-working conversion script and let the users
>> do the rest of the work by hand?

>That's what I was going to ask you! :) That's exactly what we've done
>for the Frisian, Finnish, and other wikis, on request.

I'm soliciting opinions on the wiki-it mailing list about the conversion,
and the associated manual work. In case it is decided to go ahead, would
it be possible to do it in the following days/weeks?

Ciao,
Alfio


from_name: Sheldon Rampton

subject: [WikiEN-l] talk pages policy (was rampant scientism)

body:
Jimbo wrote:

>Sheldon Rampton wrote:
>>  Setting aside the question of scientism's merits, isn't the talk page
>>  _supposed_ to be a place where POV statements are allowed?
>
>Allowed, yes.  Encouraged, no.

That's different from my understanding of how things are intended to
operate. I've been operating on the understanding that articles
themselves strive to attain NPOV, but that in order to achieve that
goal, individual users need a place to express their differing points
of view so that they can work toward a satisfactory synthesis. It
would seem therefore that expression of points of view is actually
_necessary_ on the talk pages. Am I understanding things properly?

>The talk page is supposed to be about the article, about how to
>improve the article.  As such, the debate or discussion can be more
>wide-ranging there than in the actual article.  But even on the talk
>pages, things work best when people try not to _argue_, but rather to
>_co-operate_ in finding a wording that works well for everyone.

Agreed.

With regard to name-calling and other linguistic abuse on the talk
pages, Jimbo wrote:

>I think we find it completely unacceptable, but at the same time we're
>very slow to do anything about it most of the time.

Is being "slow to do anything" a policy, a custom, or merely lack of
vigilance? I'm asking because I'm trying to better determine policy
for myself. At Disinfopedia, I'm following a "two strikes and you're
out" policy for self-evident vandalism (e.g., insertion of profanity,
flagrantly false information, etc.) The reason I'm making it "two
strikes" rather than one is that sometimes people who happen upon the
site for the first time might make a semi-accidental edit while
they're experimenting with the system to see how it works. I've also
had lots of cases where someone has inserted the word "hi" into an
article and then immediately deleted it. I don't regard that as
vandalism.

We've only recently started to encounter cases of what I consider
"gray areas" -- belligerent behavior from people who don't like
someone else's edits and express themselves through name-calling on
the talk pages. If you find this kind of behavior "completely
unacceptable," does that mean that you would support a policy of
banning users the first time sort of behavior emerges? Would you try
to reason with them first? I think an argument could be made both
ways. Banning them quickly makes a clear statement that such behavior
is indeed "completely unacceptable," and may elevate the overall tone
of discussions and save everyone from aggravation by putting out
flame wars before they have a chance to reach full blaze. On the
other hand, it creates a greater risk of arbitrary enforcement, may
drive away users who have the potential to become worthwhile
contributors, and might even provoke banned individuals to escalate
through other means, such as starting up multiple user accounts or
even attempts at outright hacking.

Jimbo also wrote:

>This is one reason I personally rarely edit, by the way.  Not because
>I don't want people to call me a fascist, I really don't care about
>that.  But because I would feel compelled to accept bad behavior
>directed towards me that I would not accept when directed towards
>others.

That's an interesting approach. Why do you think that personally
editing would compel you to accept worse behavior directed toward
yourself than you would accept toward others?

In a possibly related vein, Ed Poor wrote:

>Newbies have hardly any influencies on "old hands" such as myself.
>Oh, they can make suggestions and even "vote" on stuff, and if what
>they propose makes sense I'll try it. But if their proposals don't
>make sense to me I /disregard/ them.
>
>I refuse to be tyrannized by a majority or a minority. I follow the
>rules laid down by our PhilosopherKing Jimbo Wales -- or, I do the
>best I can to follow them; I have my occasional lapses, like anyone
>else (Hi, Erik!).

This statement clearly suggests that there is a hierarchy operating
here, with Jimbo as Philosopher King and old hands like Ed enjoying a
status that newbies do not possess. I don't necessarily oppose such a
hierarchy (in fact, I think it's necessary), but is there a sliding
scale of "newbie-ness," so that someone who has been around for a
year like myself is still more of a newbie than someone like Ed, who
has been around longer? Is it also okay for newbies to "refuse to be
tyrannized by a majority or a minority" of old hands? Does Ed's
statement reflect a general custom or policy for the Wikipedia, or is
Ed simply describing his personal practice? And getting back to
Jimbo's statement above, should "old hands" feel an obligation to
some degree of self-restraint along the lines of the self-restraint
that Jimbo imposes on himself? Or is Jimbo's decision to "rarely
edit" a rule that only applies to Philosopher Kings?

I don't have answers to any of these questions, but I think it would
be interesting to see how others answer them.


from_name: Toby Bartels

subject: [WikiEN-l]

body:
RK wrote in part:

>I am amazed that MNH's highly disturbing behaviour is being
>defended by so many, or at least ignored by so many.

You're amazed every time, it seems, when people excuse bad behaviour
from biased contributors -- like EoT or MNH -- that you tangle with.
I don't think that it's a good thing -- as I wrote on MNH's talk page,
he isn't helping the encyclopedia one bit -- but I understand why.
Ironically, it's in your signature every day:

>"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]

With comments like ?If you ban me, then I'll come back on other IPs.?
and ?I am a Nazi.?, I'd say that MNH knows he is wicked, wouldn't you?

Which reminds me (to everybody):
Has anybody with that power checked the IP logs for MNH's edits
to see if this might be somebody that we've met before?
He was quick to point to the weaknesses of our banning procedures
and seemed to understand the political wisdom of focusing on RK.

-- Toby


subject: [WikiEN-l] Let's not attack each other

body:
Ed Poor wrote in part:

>You could say the same thing, albeit more gently, if you write:

>* I think the complaints about MNH are exaggerated. He's not that bad,
>because of blah, blah, blah.

>Or

>* I worry that opposition to MNH is rooted is bias against the /points/
>he is making.

Just for the record, I actually /don't/ want to make either of those claims.

-- Toby


subject: [WikiEN-l] Let's not attack each other

body:
Ed Poor wrote:

>I just don't want a to see a situation like the following:

>"Yes, we admit we all ganged up on him, but the way he defended himself
>against our attack was worse than anything we did to him; so, he should
>be punished, and we should all get away scott free!"

>I would tread VERY CAREFULLY before advocating any 'princples' that
>smack of this, especially in the hearing of any Jewish men or women who
>have strong feelings about the Holocaust.

Incredible.

Given the context of this post,
it would appear that Ed thinks that people are ganging up on RK,
and then we're trying to excuse this because RK reacted badly.

In fact, it /more nearly/ (not perfectly, but more nearly)
fits what happened to MNH!  I wouldn't have been surprised
if I saw Eclecticology use those very words in his defence.

BTW, I'm not sure what the Holocaust has to do with this,
since the Warszawa uprising was /not/ worse than the Nazis' acts.
Applying such a principle would not in fact justify the Holocaust.

-- Toby


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [WikiEN-l] Mr-Natural-Health

body:
Pedro Fortuny wrote:

>Sorry to meddle, but we may be forgetting that what *people* expect
>from a doctor is not *science* ''stricto sense'' but healing...
>
>But this may start a hotter debate?
>
>My 2c.
>
You're right.  There's even one country country which I am not naming
where they take doctors to court for millions when they aren't healed. :-)

Ec


from_name: Jimmy Wales

subject: OFFLIST Re: [Wikipedia-l] Forget dmoz, viva "Wikirectory"!

body:
Mark, Bomis is preparing a major announcement in this area January
1st.  I intend to have Wikimedia Foundation as a direct financial
beneficiary, and for all the content to be released under a free
license.

--Jimbo

Mark Krueger wrote:

> OK. What I have learnt about an editor-type responsibility model was that
> dmoz and WP both stand on war feet. Fine. I can understand the reasons. But
> then, why do not create a kind of "Wikirectory". The advantage: We get rid
> of dmoz, and, we can link WP entries to directory (sub)categories which will
> complete the contemporary understanding of the world how it is represented
> in the WWW. (This is what I originally had in mind). Pls. think about it.
>
> Mark
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


subject: Er, ONLIST Re: [Wikipedia-l] Forget dmoz, viva "Wikirectory"!

body:
Jimmy Wales wrote:

> Mark, Bomis is preparing a major announcement in this area January
> 1st.  I intend to have Wikimedia Foundation as a direct financial
> beneficiary, and for all the content to be released under a free
> license.
>
> --Jimbo
>
>
>
> Mark Krueger wrote:
>
> > OK. What I have learnt about an editor-type responsibility model was that
> > dmoz and WP both stand on war feet. Fine. I can understand the reasons. But
> > then, why do not create a kind of "Wikirectory". The advantage: We get rid
> > of dmoz, and, we can link WP entries to directory (sub)categories which will
> > complete the contemporary understanding of the world how it is represented
> > in the WWW. (This is what I originally had in mind). Pls. think about it.
> >
> > Mark
> >
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> >
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] Request for Arbitration

body:
Lir (A [name omitted for privacy reasons]) wrote:

>Wik keeps removing "Halloween" from [[October 2003]]; in my part of the
>world, Halloween was front page news for a week -- there was a great deal of
>discussion about the decline of Halloween in Europe. Please arbitrate this
>issue.

Mediate, not arbitrate.

But in this case, it might help to start at [[Talk:October 2003]] --
currently empty of any discussion of this point by either you or Wik.

We shouldn't burden the Mediation Committee with disputes
that people haven't tried to resolve on their own.

(Although in this case, I recognise that there is more to mediate
between Lir and Wik than just this one article.)

-- Toby


subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia hierarchy

body:
[Sent both the wikiEN-L and directly to sannse.]

sannse wrote:

>Toby Bartels wrote:

>>For one thing, your solution destroys the edit history.
>>Also, only admins can even view the text that they want to copy and paste
>>(although that point is not relevant to current issue,
>>since it is only about relative numbers of administrators).

>>In short, undeleting by your method is not as good as undeleting by software.
>>That is one reason why undeleting shouldn't be unduly restricted.

>If undeletion were made unrestricted then I think we would also have to
>allow everyone to view the text of deleted articles.  Otherwise we would
>have people undeleting in order to view the text and (unless deletion was
>also unrestricted) being unable to delete again once they had done so.

>I can also see a big increase in "deletion wars" if the ability to undelete
>is general.

>I'm not saying that I think the ability to undelete /shouldn't/ be opened
>up, just seeing a few problems that should be looked at first.

I think that you may be interpreting my remark out of context.
The "undue" restriction on undeletion that I'm arguing against
is to increase the requirement from 1 administrator to 2,
''while at the same time'' keeping deletion at only 1 admin.

I'm ''not'' suggesting that undeletion be ''completely'' unrestricted,
while keeping deletion restricted.  Although in another post,
I mentioned the ideal of making ''both'' of the operation unrestricted,
I do believe that this would require some software changes.
At the moment, neither deletion and undeletion is handled very smoothly.

-- Toby


from_name: Alex T.

subject: [WikiEN-l] How and When is Arbitration Invoked?

body:
From: "Delirium" <delirium at rufus.d2g.com>
> sannse wrote:
>
> >>I think mediation has already been tried. Both Ed Poor
> >>and I have e-mailed him and many users have tried
> >>communicating with him on his talk page, but he now
> >>seems to make no contributions other than comments on
> >>talk pages criticising and provoking RK.
> >>

> I think this is definitely a good idea.  Especially if you can convey to
> the person that the role of the mediation committee is explicitly to try
> to resolve disputes to the mutual satisfaction of all, and *not* as a
> "first cut" vetting candidates for the arbitration committee to ban.

I agree with this approach. The whole point of mediation is to get people
to talk, listen, try to think things through logically and reasonable
(emphasis
on reason) so that some compromises can be reached to everyone's
satisfaction.

> People naturally get very defensive when things like potential bans come
> up, so I think it'll work better if they understand that being involved
> in mediation is not really a first step towards banning, but instead an
> honest attempt to resolve the problem.  They need to understand that any
> concerns they have will be given a fair hearing.

Here, here (or is that Hear, hear!?) That approach will give the mediation
committee, however it decides to operate more legitimacy and usefulness
in the long run.

> Not being on the mediation committee myself I'll leave it you who are to
> decide how to best organize things, but I think having some sort of
> central information repository might be a good idea, where each person
> on the committee can check up on disputes and see who has done what,
> like "[x] emailed MNH, got a friendly response'" or "[[blah]]: dispute
> between polish and german nationalists; [y] is currently trying to find
> a compromise on the talk page".

This is a good idea as far as giving it some transparancy, but there should
also be a way to make the communications private at some point so that
people don't think it is a public fight. Also, by posting it on the talk
page
it will become part of the public record, and even though the arbitrators
will be told to ignore all mediation attempts it might be hard to ignore
something
that is said when the record of it is imbedded in the Wikipedia database.
And truly if it is about dialogue sometimes it is better said privately, no?

Alex R. (en:user:alex756)


subject: [WikiEN-l] rampant scientism

body:
On 12/07/03  at 04:12 PM, Robert <rkscience100 at yahoo.com> said:

> Indeed; they are the gold standard in all forms of science. Asians,
> Hispanics, Arabs, Jews, Blacks, and Whites all use this method to verify
> claims. These peer-reviewed methods
> are used in Eastern, near-Eastern and in Western countries. In fact,
> there is nothing "western" about so-called
> "western" medicine at all.

First, please, Robert, use your intelligence: "western" as I used it here
isn't a geographical designation; it is abstraction synonymous with
"modern". One could also say  "modern medicine" or "conventional
medicine", but these terms also have their disadvantages. In political
economy, when people use the term "the North" instead of "the First
World", they are not talking about Greenland!

Second, a traditional Chinese doctor would laugh at your ignorance and
your presumption. Acupuncture goes back four thousand years; the first
books on acupuncture appeared in BC 2500. You think these people were
doing double-blind tests and publishing in the BJM  all these years? You
really think the you guys have a monopoly on the knowledge of human
physiology just because you have been doing so for the last seventy-five
years?

Third, western scientific protocols, as elegant as they may be in theory,
are implemented in the *real world*; all your double-blind, peer-reviewed
studies are only as good as the data and the scientists who perform and
review them. If you look at the real history of modern medicine, you see
that the system has not exactly been infallible, most notoriously with
regard to side effects. Amalgam fillings (already known in the 1920s to be
toxic but still used by dentists up to the 1970s), thalamide, X-ray,
hormone replacement therapy, birth control pills, antidepressants,
thimerosa, which was added to vaccines and recently
determined to have caused widespread autism in children, -- all these have
various side effects which you noble scientists have taken an awful long
time see. And what about the grotesque practices of the mid 20th century?
Lobotomy, electroshock, plutonium poisoning? Primum non nocere? Ok, these
aberrations are hardly representative of the work of many decent people in
the health sciences but show how far the system is capable of going.

And indeed precisely one of the attractions of alternative medicine is
that absence of such pernicious side-effects. Maybe St Johnswort won't
cure your depression, but at least you won't jump out of a window. Perhaps
valerian root won't cure your insomnia but it isn't addictive. But please
note: I am not trying to convert you to homeopathy; I am not "promoting"
anything. All I would like to see is decent coverage of alternative
medicine in Wikipedia as befits any serious human endeavor. I am trying to
demonstrate to you and the other technocrats here your ideological
blinders with the hope that you will show slightly more humility with
regard to the limits of Western science and slightly more openness to
non-Western medical experience. Mr Natural Health was a problematic user
when he first appeared, and you could have helped us incorporate his
material in a constructive way, but your hostility and rabid scientism
only aggravated the situation. The ultimate victim is the encyclopedia.

V.


body:
John Stracke wrote:

>Evan Prodromou wrote:

>>What I wonder is whether a Wiki format might not work better for
>>collaboration than CVS. CVS requires setting up user permissions for
>>lots of people, and it can be a hassle. Wikis lower the bar for
>>participation considerably.

>But doesn't it also lower the bar for pranks and such--say, person A
>adds a piece of clipart that person B doesn't like, so B modifies it
>surreptitiously? CVS would log things like that.

And RecentChanges logs things like that on a wiki.

However, the MediaWiki software, IIRC, had some failings in this respect
when it comes to images -- people were able to overwrite uploaded files
(which is how MediaWiki treats images) in a way that destroyed information.
Has that all been fixed?

-- Toby


subject: [WikiEN-l] Oh, I give up

body:
Ed Poor wrote:

>Toby wrote:

>>Given the context of this post, it would appear
>>that Ed thinks that people are ganging up on RK,
>>and then we're trying to excuse this because RK
>>reacted badly.

>No, Toby, you got the cart before the horse.

I see from below that you're discussing what happened
the ''last'' time that there was a bunch of RK talk on the list.
Not about what's happening today.  OK, I understand now!

>Rather, I think what happened the last time is that:
>(1) People ganged up on RK (or it seemed that way to him)
>(2) He defended himself (in a way people thought was inexcusably bad)
>(3) They used his 'defensiveness' as an excuse to ban him

>I am not saying that people used (2) to defend (1), but that they used
>(2) to defend (3).

Well, that's probably valid.  Or it might be, depending on specifics.
(2) could never justify (1), but it might justify (3), in some cases.
Especially if (1) only ''seemed'' that way.

But in general, I would be wary of using (2) to justify (3),
since it might encourage people to try (1) in order to rile people up.
I would rather limit bans to cases with, as Jimbo says, a "clean paper trail".
That means no (1), or at least no (1) that is more than just seeming.

-- Toby


from_name: Brion Vibber

body:
On Dec 8, 2003, at 16:25, Toby Bartels wrote:
>> Evan Prodromou wrote:
>>> What I wonder is whether a Wiki format might not work better for
>>> collaboration than CVS.
>
> However, the MediaWiki software, IIRC, had some failings in this
> respect
> when it comes to images -- people were able to overwrite uploaded files
> (which is how MediaWiki treats images) in a way that destroyed
> information.
> Has that all been fixed?

In MediaWiki when you upload a new file with the same name as an
existing file, the old version is archived and remains accessible. It
can be viewed, saved locally and reuploaded with a new name, or
reverted in-place. _Deleting_ an image revision would do so
permanently, but this is now a restricted admin action.

SVG is an interesting case though; being XML-based it would be possible
to provide SVG files in human-readable -- and even human-editable --
source form. That's something we don't currently provide for, but it
would be possible to provide for a file upload form that stores data
into a wiki page.

OddMuse's file upload feature works like this, I believe.
(http://www.oddmuse.org/)

Also hypothetically a plugin- or java-based editor app could be
launched directly from the page, but that's outside the scope of this
stuff...

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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body:
Alex R.wroteL

> From: "sannse"

>
> > Do we have a page set up yet explaining the role of the mediation
> committee?
> > I'll set one up at [[Wikipedia:Mediation committee]], it can be deleted
if
> >I missed one elsewhere.
>
> There were some pages sent up previously that tried to explain the general
> overview of mediation and arbitration [[Wikipedia:Mediation Committee]]
> [[Wikipedia:Arbitration Commitee]] and [[Wikipedia:Mediation and
Arbitration
> (proposal)]].
>
> Since you guys are now a duly constituted committee it would seen that
> you and Jimbo should decide what kind of structure is best for your mutual
> operations. Just remember that it is supposed to be consensual, i.e. the
> mediators are trying to reach an agreement between the parties concerned,
> and you should also be flexible to do it any way (individually, as a
group,
> etc.)
> as the situation demands.

Thanks Alex,  [[Wikipedia:Mediation committee]] is now a redirect to
[[Wikipedia:Mediation Committee]] .

Regards

sannse