body:
Having succombed to the urgings of both Mav and Toby to join the
WikiEN-l list, despite my protestations about having yet more e-mails to
thwart my constructive participation in Wikipedia, and having dutifully
ploughed through the mass of messages that have accumulated therein in a
very short period of time, I am now prepared to move back in the stack
to those substantive matters that are a part of the mailing list.  I
dream that some day I may be able to escape the stack and rejoin
Wikipedia's Mainframe.

Toby Bartels wrote:

>Mav wrote:
>
>>Toby Bartels wrote:
>>
>>>NPOV, of course, has nothing to do with this (despite what Lir says).
>>>As you know, NPOV doesn't mean the majority point of view.
>>>It means presenting every point of view in a manner fair to it.
>>>
>>Key words "in a manner fair to it". In my world view what is most "fair" in
>>terms of NPOV is to express majority opinions as majority opinions and
>>minority ones as minority.
>>
I find it hard to see how NPOV is a serious part of this debate.  Sure
there are POV titles; I've raised that point in connection with
"Pseudo-science".  This debate is about a convention.  Establishing a
convention is about choosing between equally functional positions.
 Accident rates in Britain and Japan have not been significantly
affected by their choice to drive on the wrong side of the road in
defiance of Pope Boniface VIII's edict for the year 1300.

>>This also affects the amount of text we give to
>>any particular opinion in an article. So majority opinions get majority time.
>>Therefore if something is known by a particular name by the great majority of
>>English speakers we should reflect this fact in our choice of what to name
>>the article. So yes, NPOV does most certainly apply.
>>
Greater amount of text?  With the title "M?nchen" the article adds "It
is called Munich in English."  With the title "Munich" the article adds
"It is called M?nchen in German."  Where the length difference.

>...we must also indicate minority opinions where applicable.
>It is applicable in article titles -- but we can't do so there,
>because (as you say, and this is *central* to my argument,
>not contradictory to it), such discussion goes into the article itself,
>not into the title, which must present only one thing.
>We must make a decision in the title, we can't be NPOV there,
>(and we don't have to in order to be a neutral encyclop?dia
>since everything is explained immediately beneath said title).
>
It's not just that we "must" present only one thing in the title; it's
that we "can" present only one thing.  There are still some instances
where NPOV becomes a problem in selecting article titles.  One example
is in choosing between Oder River (from the German name) or Odra River
(from the Polish name).  Wikipedia should not be put in the position of
having to choose sides in that dispute.

>>>Under the current plan we also have to delve into linguistic usage
>>>(not *wars* that I can see, but I don't anticipate those in any case),
>>>to decide which usage is most common.  That's an issue of linguistic usage.
>>>
>>Eh? Finding out what most English speakers actually use is much easier than
>>having to research what the residents of where the term is derived use it.
>>
This could work either way, and although what most English speakers use
is easy to determine for some of the better known entities, there is a
lot more uncertainty as the subject becomes more obscure.  Disputes have
already arisen over what name to use for Charlemagne, or, more broadly
various European monarchs named Charles, Henry, William or Peter.

>Not at all.  There are a lot fewer residents of M?nchen
>than English speakers.  No, Google does *not* do the job;
>Google isn't anywhere *close* to a reprsentative sample of English speakers.
>The fact that a Google measurement is *easy* to do
>doesn't change the fact that it's highly biased and thus almost meaningless.
>
I would avoid an unhealthy addiction to Google.  It is clearly the most
popular search engine now, but Yahoo and Lycos have been there in the
past, A new engine could appear at any time and change that fact.  I do
look at Google statistics, and take that into account as only one of
several possible influences.

>>Their language evolves too, just like ours. Should we use what they call the
>>term now, back when the term was coined or some arbitrary date inbetween?
>>
>
>Well, if our language evolves, then what *English* term should we use,
>what English said back then, or what English says now?
>Actually, I know the answer to my question: what English says now.
>Similarly, we can come up with an answer to your question.
>I suggest referring to a place by the name used by the current residents
>(or the residents at the time for articles focussing on a historic period)
>and referring to a person by the name that they used for themself.
>That seems pretty natural to me.
>
That makes sense.

>>There will also be different spellings and different use of diacriticals to
>>deal with, not to mention competing terms. How in the world can an
>>English-only speaker sort this out?
>>
>The same way that such a speaker currently
>sorts out what's most commonly used in English:
>by making the best guess that they can
>using the resources easily available to them
>and then being corrected by later editors.
>Such corrections happen now under the current policy, too.
>
Yes, even under an original language regime the first author of an
article can use the English name to get the matter going.  Perhaps his
only information source is something like the 1911 Encyclopedia.  If
that does not fit with our naming policy somebody else can and probably
will change it..  We'll appreciate both efforts.

>>>I don't know about Lir, but I don't propose such a thing,
>>>because "mammal" is a common noun, not a proper noun.
>>>I certainly don't want to change all of our article titles
>>>back to Proto-Indo-European ^_^!
>>>
>The new policy is proposed for *proper*nouns* only,
>and refers to historical forms *only* in historical contexts.
>It's not about retracing the origins of English etymology *at*all*.
>
It is primarily about proper nouns, though I still support the principle
that the primary entry for life forms should be by the unambiguous Latin
binomial.  On the other hand, I still very much disagree with Tarquin's
idiosyncratic predilection for using the french form "d?partement" (with
the extra "e") instead of "department" when referring the the political
sub-divisions of France.

>>Already there is a
>>continuum of opinion on how such a convention would work; Lir on the extreme
>>"all anglicization is bad" end, you in the middle and Ec on the more liberal
>>and IMO sane side.
>>
This is frightening!  I'm being accused of sanity.

>Yes, there's a continuum, going from Lir to me to Eclecticology to you.
>Why does it follow that you must then be right?  Why not Lir?
>>From her perspective, there's a continuum of opinion about
>how words derived from proper names should sometimes be anglicised;
>you on the extreme "any anglicization done by most anglophones is good" end,
>Ec in the middle and me on the more liberal and IHO sane side.
>It's not like there's some wide gulf between you and Eclecticology
>that doesn't exist between me and Lir.
>
I don't know how I feel about having the centre-right position in such a
political spectrum, even as Lir's uncertain credibility makes me more of
a centrist.  (Ed Poor eat your heart out!)

>>There is also the fact that the proposed change absolutely requires the use
>>of a technological fix to work (namely redirects). How is it less complicated
>>when redirects are absolutely required? Not to mention the fact that the
>>current display of redirects is rather ugly after following them. To fix this
>>would require yet another technological fix.
>>
Redirects are one of the earliest techniques that new Wikipedians learn.
 They are so common that I hardly consider them as technological fixes.
 IIRC when I suggested deleting some such entries a few months back
because they were useless, it was Mav who objected because Google could
use them for a search, or somebody might have them bookmarked; this
could mean the loss of potential new Wikipedians.  He further argued
that redirects didn't take up a lot of space in the system anyway.  Now
he has elevated redirects to the status of technological fixes.

>>Google's language tools can be used as an objective measure of widest usage
>>whereas the proposed plan depends on subjective choices between different
>>more native transliterations and language sets.
>>
It is only one measure.  Why wouldn't it also work for original language
frequencies?

>>4) What about the audience: How is it more useful for them to use words they
>>can't pronounce, spell or are familiar with?
>>
>It's more useful for them to have the name used by the person in question
>or in the place in question up front and direct in their minds.
>We use pronunciation guides for weird words like "Kong-fu-zi" (/koN 'fu dz/)
>and "Confucius" (/k at n 'fju S at s/), which as you can see in this example,
>include both native and common English forms in most cases.
>
Using SAMPA makes it even less pronounceable.  I find "Kong-fu-zi" more
pronounceable than its SAMPA counterpart, but then I would also advocate
IPA for pronunciation guides.  (But that's an entirely different issue
that I'll save for another day.)  Strangely enough, the present issue is
not about pronunciation, but about the visual representation of names.
 A Chinese ideograph is more closely connected to its meaning than its
pronunciation.  At the risk of seeming to go out on a limb, I believe
that there is a linkage between a culture and the way it writes things.
 K?ln does not communicate the same picture as Cologne even though they
refer to the same city.  This is perhaps the saddest result of
anglocentric expressions of these names:  that somehow a cultural
subtlety is not communicated, and the Dresden before and after the
bombing remains the same pile of bricks and mortar.

>>What about the writers: How is it more useful for them to have articles
>>that they can't link to directly (or at all when redirects are not made)?
>>
If all the redirects are not made, we need to do more housework.  Direct
linkage is not a necessity as long as they can get there.

>>Also, most English speakers do not know how to make the more elaborate
>>diacrtic marks with their keyboard. So they will have to copy and paste to
>>make direct links. How is that at all user-friendly?
>>
Present ignorance is no excuse for future ignorance.  Making the
characters in ISO 8859-1 is not difficult, just a little inconvenient.
 The evedent difficulty will be with languages using the roman alphabet
with characters outside if 8859-1, which even I will admit may need to
wait for a better solution.  In languages requiring transliteration or
romanization there may not even be a problem since the transliterations
mostly use 8859-1.

Eclecticology


list: wikien-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [WikiEN-l] Criteria for banning

body:
Toby Bartels wrote:

>>For ip addresses, anonymous contributions, we should continue our
>>policy of banning them for simple vandalism at the slightest
>>provocation.
>>
>
>At the slightest provocation?
>Note that according to [[en:Wikipedia:Vandalism in progress]],
>an isolated instance of text deletion, for instance, is not vandalism.
>So the slightest provocation that qualifies as vandalism,
>but not the slightest provocation that might be so interpreted
>if the interpretation as vandalism is incorrect by our policy.
>
A single simple deletion can often be a newbie that's trying to figure
out how to do it, and accidentally spilled his seed outside the hole. :-)

Eclecticology


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] Table types and locking

body:
A few days back someone suggested that we could switch the tables from
MyISAM to InnoDB to help avoid slowdowns where the whole system is
waiting on a table lock to be released, without having to rewrite as
much of our code as we would to change to a different dbms such as
postgres. But, the fulltext indexing we use to drive the search engine
only works on MyISAM tables.

However... with MySQL not all tables in a database have to be of the
same type. There are already separate columns for the fulltext index
thanks to the need to strip out markup; why not move them out to a
separate table, keyed to the cur_id, and make it MyISAM while the other
tables move to InnoDB?

It'd only be written to on page edit and deletion, and only read on
search and mispeelings, so there'd be less contention on it than there
is on the much-abused cur table. And for extra bonus points, the current
revisions download dump wouldn't be weighted down by the stripped copy
of every article's text.

We may have to recompile MySQL to enable InnoDB, but relatively little
of our code should have to change to take advantage of it.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


from_name: Larry Sanger

subject: [WikiEN-l] A concept from Buckminster Fuller

body:
On Fri, 22 Nov 2002, Jimmy Wales wrote:

> I would agree with this completely.  I fully support that we should
> ask people, kindly (of course!), if their priorities are straight in
> coming to the website.  And that we should exert careful social
> pressure on people who are being problematic.
>
> This doesn't mean yelling at them or shaming them, since those are the
> techniques of Usenet, appropriate (perhaps) to that medium, but less
> than helpful in a medium of collaboration.

Yelling, certainly, doesn't help.  Shaming, in an atmosphere where there
is strong general support for certain principles that are *egregiously*
violated, *can* help and *has* helped upon occasion.

It is *precisely* in a medium of collaboration where shaming can help!

I'm not going to stop doing it, myself, and I continue to advocate its
tasteful, usually tongue-in-cheek, winking, use.  Treating others with
respect is important as well; but I wouldn't attempt to shame someone that
I didn't have at least enough respect to think that they'd react
appropriately.

What's good for the goose is good for the gander, of course.  I expect
that, if I do something egregiously wrong, I'll be shamed; and lord knows
that on this list, people do their level best to do just that (albeit with
uneven success).

Now, don't get me wrong.  I really do wish we all were a *lot* nicer to
each other than we have been.  I *don't* actually relish taking people to
task for their violations of protocol.  If I can do it in a gentle way,
I'll can.  But where gentleness is met with no result, shaming can help.

Sometimes, violations are *so* egregious, *so* outrageous, and
*consciously so* (rubbing our nose in it as it were), that shaming the
violators is the polite way of saying, "You've really gone over the line
this time, buddy."

If someone is actually shamed *for shaming* someone in such a situation,
that's an indication that the community doesn't take its "lines" seriously
enough.  In such situations, again, shaming can be useful, and should at
the very least be tolerated.

> I wish I knew an easy answer to these questions.  But I think there is
> none.  We can only be thoughtful and tolerant for awhile, and apply
> pressure for awhile, and then eventually and *with the feeling that
> we've failed*, we should ban as a last resort.  And even then, the
> door to redemption should almost always remain open.

I agree with this personally, but I'd like us to discuss it in a little
more depth and with a little more precision if we can.  Maybe not *right
now*, but eventually.

> > I believe that: 1) It should not be necessary to tell people to leave.
> >  The community expectation should be so great that we are here to
> > build an encyclopedia that trolls and vandals are immediately and
> > thoroughly discouraged.  2)I'd rather not feel compelled to tell
> > people to leave because they're interfering.  Most people realize it,
> > and so most people don't dabble where they don't belong.  3) If
> > someone proves a stubborn & insistent impediment, we should tell him
> > or her to leave.  4) When we do tell someone to leave, we should be
> > able to enforce it if necessary.
>
> I think that's all basically correct.

So do I, well said.

Larry
--
"We have now sunk to a depth at which the re-statement of the obvious is
the first duty of intelligent men." --George Orwell


list: wikipedia-l

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Edit conlfict screen (was: A concept from
	Buckminster Fuller)

body:
On Fri, 2002-11-22 at 15:09, Poor, Edmund W wrote:
> Brion,
>
> I've been confused by the "edit conflict" screen so many times that I seriously think the page should be redesigned. Other contributors also have frequently commented on talk pages that they lost what they just typed, due to edit conflicts.

Agreed, it's hideous and evil.

> I'd like to have the columnwise, side by side "revision of" display show up at the top of the page, where I can't possible miss it!!

As with the preview, it's to easy to miss if you don't know it's there.
I like the symmetry of putting it in the middle, but putting it at the
top is probably better for usability.

> Below that, I'm not sure what needs to come next, but:
> * we need to make it VERY EASY for users to recover from the edit conflict

Occasionally during 'extreme editing' conditions, such as on a very
contentious talk page where one of the other contributors revises their
edits every three seconds, I find I have to go through several conflict
cycles just to get a chunk of text inserted that doesn't itself touch
parts of the text that the other people are editing. I only have to
cut-n-paste and click "save", but it gets tedious.

It should be possible for the software to attempt to merge edits
together, then ask for confirmation on what it can do and fixes for what
it can't -- in the best case, you would just have to click 'confirm'; in
the worst case, manual editing like now. (If 'patch' can do this on
source code, we should be able to do it on text.) Someone more familiar
with this kind of text processing should mess with it rather than me...

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Treason (Was: stupid anglicization)

body:
Poor, Edmund W wrote:

>Eclecticology opined:
>
>>Larry's definition of fact seems way off base.
>>If we strictly follow his definition of fact
>>then it is fact to say that Saddam Hussein is
>>a popular president.
>>
>You seem to be attempeting an argument ad absurdum, but I don't see how you get "Saddam Hussein is a popular president" from anything Larry said.
>
>I say this without prejudice to whatever point you were trying to make. By the way, what point *were* you trying to make?
>
Larry stated "By "fact," on the one hand, we mean "a piece of
information about which there is no serious dispute."  Saddam Hussein
won 100% of the vote in a recent Iraqi election.  At that rate there is
no serious dispute. Therfore it is a fact that Saddam Hussein is a
popular president. :-P

Ec


from_name: Poor, Edmund W

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: [WikiEN-l] A concept from Buckminster Fuller

body:
Thank you, kq, for saying it even better than Larry:

> We are a community of people trying to
> build a free online encyclopedia.  To
> this regard, it seems to me that we
> should not hesitate to show people the
> door when they prove not to share our goal.

I agree wholeheartedly with this, as well as your entire post.

Clearly the days of optional rules and options like "ignore all rules" are over. We can only inch toward tyranny or lapse into obliteration, unless we clarify our principles and find a way to live by them together.

I suggest a thorough overhaul of the Wikipedia namespace, with re-codification (and condensation where needed). Please work with me on this.

I'm stretched too thin, which is one reason I kept "quitting" this month. I can't orient newcomers, adjudicate POV battles, research new articles, run my spellchecker and tune the database to relieve the lag problem all at once. Oh, and I also wish I had time just to browse through the 'pedia and actually read some articles!

Ed Poor


from_name: Chuck Smith

subject: [Wikitech-l] edit limit

body:
> >A limit of 1 per minute would be much too strict,
> in my opinion. One should
> >really not go further than 2 edits per minute, and
> even that might be enough
> >to have some people get irritated and decide not to
> do 'trivial tasks' such
> >as going through the 'regular misspellings' or
> disambiguating pages.

We also have the problem of users who have to pay per
minute for Internet and who write many articles
offline and then just go online and put them all in at
once and then sign off.  Why can't we just revert all
changes from one user in case something like this
happens?  Also, are there still plans for the
Wikipedia Client?

Thanks,
Chuck

=====
I'm in Slovenia!  Mi estas en Slovenio!  Ich bin in Slowenien!
=========================================
Travel Plans: http://eo.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chuck_SMITH
  My Webpage: http://amuzulo.babil.komputilo.com/
Enciklopedio: http://eo.wikipedia.org/

__________________________________________________________________

Gesendet von Yahoo! Mail - http://mail.yahoo.de
M?chten Sie mit einem Gru? antworten? http://grusskarten.yahoo.de


from_name: Pierre Abbat

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Blank page with only an interlanguage link

body:
[[Rotenburg]] on the English Wikipedia consists only of a link to the German.
It is linked to from [[Rotenburg (district)]]. What should be done with such
a page?

phma


subject:
[WikiEN-l] Clean up our mess! (was: A concept from Buckminster
 Fuller)

body:
On Fri, 22 Nov 2002, tarquin wrote:

> This gives me a thought: maybe we should all of us spend a week or so
> cleaning up ALL talk pages that have arguments, particularly the
> long-resolved stuff.
> Maybe these play a significant part in *not* conveying the impression
> that we play nicely here.

We could begin here:

http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:The_Cunctator/How_to_destroy_Wikipedia
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_commentary/Responses_to_How_to_Destroy_Wikipedia%2C_Screw_with_the_GFDL

I don't believe those pages have been refactored and I'm sure some people
would object if they were.  In fact, if we're *really* interested in
cleaning up divisive pages that convey the impression that we don't play
nicely, what would we do with this page?

http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:The_Cunctator/Bias_Talk

A number of listmembers will find quotations from themselves on that page.
Perhaps Cunc wants it known that people don't play nicely with him; but he
never has explained why he has such a page, when no one else does.  He
also fails to supply the context that explains why he has elicited the
reactions that he has, which isn't exactly nice itself.

(What if *I* were to put up such a page of quotations critical of me?
How would you react?  What if we *all*, each one of us, maintained a page
listing all quotations that were critical of us?  That doesn't sound like
it would be a civilizing influence.)

If we were *really* serious about making Wikipedia more civil, we would
demonstrate that we have the maturity and courage to talk about such
problems openly and seriously--and then finally committing ourselves to
burying the hatchet.

Cunc's pages aren't particularly important, of course.  They're just an
example of a festering issue that is easily glossed over in calls for
civility and kindness.  There are usually legitimate if not fully
exculpating reasons for nastiness of all sorts on the website, and mere
calls to cooperate will not solve them.  Actually talking about them
openly, however, might.  Hopefully, such conversation could itself be done
with civility.

I really would look forward to an atmosphere in which participants
*actually did* show respect for each other.  That might actually might
persuade *me* to participate more again!

Larry
--
"We have now sunk to a depth at which the re-statement of the obvious is
the first duty of intelligent men." --George Orwell


body:
>
>
>--- Jimmy Wales <jwales at bomis.com> wrote:
>
>>(I confess: I don't understand what should go to
>>wikien-l and what should go to wikipedia-l.)
>>
Neither do I.  I just assume that the other guy whose posts I'm
answering knows what he's doing.  That way when I hit reply, I know that
my answer is going to the right place. ;-)   There's been an awful lot
of posts lately, and I'm cynical enough not to believe that adding a new
mailbox will ease the mail management problem.

Eclecticology


subject: [WikiEN-l] Criteria for banning

body:
Pierre Abbat wrote:

>On Friday 22 November 2002 18:07, Ray Saintonge wrote:
>
>>A single simple deletion can often be a newbie that's trying to figure
>>out how to do it, and accidentally spilled his seed outside the hole. :-)
>>
>
>So how many times does someone have to spill his seed outside the hole before
>we accuse him of levirate buyout?
>
This depends on whether his brother is still alive.

Eclecticology


subject: [WikiEN-l] Clean up our mess! (was: A concept from Buckminster Fuller)

body:
tarquin wrote:

> Jimmy Wales wrote:
>
>> I think that's all basically correct.  It's hard to strike the right
>> balance, but one thing that I do think we can do a better job of is in
>> educating/indoctrinating newcomers that we play nicely here, that we
>> aren't here to fight and argue, but to produce.
>
> This gives me a thought: maybe we should all of us spend a week or so
> cleaning up ALL talk pages that have arguments, particularly the
> long-resolved stuff.
> Maybe these play a significant part in *not* conveying the impression
> that we play nicely here.
>
> Maybe we should be more Wiki-like in refactoring discussions as we work.

The principle is good, but it runs contrary to the lazy element in human
nature.  I've tried a little refactoring, and it's tough work.  The
practice seems to be that when arguments get too long so that the page
loads too slowly we prefer to stuff the old files into an archive and
start the whole same argument all over again.

For those of us who also believe that respect is a positive quality,
there's a natural apprehension about deleting other contributors' comments.

But your right, and I should consider doing my share.

Eclecticology


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Edit conlfict screen (was: A concept from Buckminster Fuller)

body:
Brion,

I've been confused by the "edit conflict" screen so many times that I seriously think the page should be redesigned. Other contributors also have frequently commented on talk pages that they lost what they just typed, due to edit conflicts.

I'd like to have the columnwise, side by side "revision of" display show up at the top of the page, where I can't possible miss it!!

Below that, I'm not sure what needs to come next, but:
* we need to make it VERY EASY for users to recover from the edit conflict
* users should NEVER feel they have to lose what they just typed

I'm not looking for a quick fix on this, but I bet dozens of users have the same issue kq and I have.

Ed Poor


subject: [WikiEN-l] Criteria for banning

body:
On Friday 22 November 2002 18:07, Ray Saintonge wrote:
> A single simple deletion can often be a newbie that's trying to figure
> out how to do it, and accidentally spilled his seed outside the hole. :-)

So how many times does someone have to spill his seed outside the hole before
we accuse him of levirate buyout?

phma


body:
On Friday 22 November 2002 18:09, Poor, Edmund W wrote:
> Brion,
>
> I've been confused by the "edit conflict" screen so many times that I
> seriously think the page should be redesigned. Other contributors also have
> frequently commented on talk pages that they lost what they just typed, due
> to edit conflicts.
>
> I'd like to have the columnwise, side by side "revision of" display show up
> at the top of the page, where I can't possible miss it!!
>
> Below that, I'm not sure what needs to come next, but:
> * we need to make it VERY EASY for users to recover from the edit conflict
> * users should NEVER feel they have to lose what they just typed
>
> I'm not looking for a quick fix on this, but I bet dozens of users have the
> same issue kq and I have.

It is particularly annoying when I add some mispeelings, making scattered
edits to the page, and someone else does the same thing.

How about this solution to the problem:
Given a text A, Jeeg edits it to B and Talen edits it to C. Apply Talen's
edits to B, getting D1, and Jeeg's edits to C, getting D2. If D1=D2, set D to
D1 and display it. If D1<>D2, set D to some string that includes both, with
markup to indicate where conflicts occur.

phma


subject: [Wikitech-l] Table types and locking

body:
I like the idea of moving the fulltext column to a separate table, keyed to the cur_id. That's the kind of normalization that can't hurt, and is likely to help.

Ed Poor


body:
I agree with tarquin about cleaning up talk pages and refactoring. Some other wikis place the article text at the top of the page, with discussion following. And every once in a while someone will refactor EVEN THE TALK PART.

Of course, on Ward's Wiki there is or was a preponderance of programmers into XP which uses refactoring like Americans use ketchup!

Refactoring is a lot of work, but like archiving old talk it's usually appreciated.

Ed Poor


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Edit conlfict screen

body:
I don't know if software can be made smart enough to resolve the conflicts, but if all I want to do is APPEND, that should be easy enough. My favorite idea (though I don't know how to code it) would be to let the user SELECT a place in the text where they want to insert.

But maybe this is overkill. I find that if 2 other users are editing the talk page, I better stop and read what they're saying.

Ed Poor


from_name: Magnus Manske

subject: [Wikitech-l] (no subject)

body:
Poor, Edmund W wrote:

>I used to be a Network Administrator for a company with 300 seats, plus as a software developer I had admin rights to all the company's MS SQL Server databases. Unclogging the network and resolving database gridlock were 2 areas I excelled in there.
>
>If you'd like to give me developer access, I could take a look around and try to see what keeps slowing us down. I guess it's a lot of different things, many of which Brion has already identified.
>
Done. For the site, that is. You'll need Jimbo to give you ssh access to
the server.

Magnus


subject: [WikiEN-l] Clean up our mess!

body:
Larry, why so bitter? Haven't I always shown you respect and spoken to you with civility? And people like kq and April and Zoe and elian and Brion and many, many more are so unfailing polite and courteous and helpful, too.

I have more hope than ever for the success of Wikipedia.

Your sifter idea is a great adjunct, by the way. (Magnus said he's going to make me an admin on that project, after the nice things I said about his 0.01 and 0.02 versions of the software.) Everyone will by trying like the dickens to get the coveted "Larry Award" -- the encyclopedic equivalent of a Pulitzer Prize!!

A little refactoring, a little civility -- why, I think we can even get Julie to come back!

Take some time off, smell the flowers, and then jump in again: the water's fine!!!

Ed Poor


subject: [Wikitech-l] FW: Queries and the "lag" problem

body:
As we discussed over the phone, my SELECT query should have had a LIMIT 99 clause on it.

I will put a LIMIT clause on all future queries, for safety's sake.

I don't want the shame of causing a 52-minute lag again!

Ed Poor

-----Original Message-----
From: Poor, Edmund W.
Sent: Friday, November 22, 2002 8:19 PM
To: 'Brion VIBBER'
Subject: Queries and the "lag" problem

Brion,

A few minutes ago, I submitted a SELECT query.

But, thinking it might be too long (since I had neglected to put "limit 99" on it) I tried to abort the query by hitting the Stop button on my browser.

Well, since then, wikipedia has been completely unresponsive. Which leads me to 2 thoughts:

* Bad Ed! Don't submit unbounded queries like that (I should be more careful)

but perhaps more generally,

* Could the slowness of the server feed on itself? If users hit stop or just close their page, does the server wait and wait for a long time trying to give them the page they just said they no longer want? And then does this long wait make others give up and leave, which only makes the server wait for them too?

Or maybe it's just a coincidence. I'd love to know what the logs show in this case tonight. It happened some time between 8:00 P.M. and 8:15 P.M., US East Coast time.

Ed Poor


from_name: Alexander Stephen Bradbury

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Questions concerning copyright and fair use

body:
I was wondering whther you have any answers on some copyright
issue-related questions I have. Such as, in [[The Matrix]] article, can I
legally add a screen capture from my DVD copy?, how about a small scan of
the box cover? I can include a FULL cast list can't I? And what about
computer games, or applications. Can I post screenshots of them? Can I
reproduce copies of pictures of famous actors and post them under fair use
(or maybe show a picture of them starring in a movie). Do we have answers
to any of these questions?

Thanks,
ASB [[User:Smelialichu]]
--
<signature>
There are only 10 types of people in this world;
Those that know binary...and those that don't
</signature>


subject: [WikiEN-l] Clean up our mess!

body:
On Fri, 22 Nov 2002, Poor, Edmund W wrote:

> Larry, why so bitter? Haven't I always shown you respect and spoken to
> you with civility? And people like kq and April and Zoe and elian and
> Brion and many, many more are so unfailing polite and courteous and
> helpful, too.

Oh, believe me Ed, I certainly wasn't complaining about everyone.
Certainly *not* about you and the people you mention.

I think I know why I'm bitter (and you're right--I am--I won't accuse you
of asking a complex question ;-) ).  I have a tendency to be embroiled in
difficult controversies because those are precisely the controversies that
I pick, and, sometimes, create.  As a result, I wind up getting slammed
more than people who perhaps wisely choose to avoid such battles, or who
(like you) state their positions in a gentler, less pointed fashion.

This is a damn shame, really, because if I were simply to work quietly on
philosophy and other subjects I know about, people wouldn't pay me any
mind at all.  :-)

I guess I can look forward to doing that after a break.

> I have more hope than ever for the success of Wikipedia.

I tend to agree now--my faith is renewed, though given Jimbo's remarks it
seems it needn't have been shaken in the first place.

> Your sifter idea is a great adjunct, by the way. (Magnus said he's
> going to make me an admin on that project, after the nice things I
> said about his 0.01 and 0.02 versions of the software.) Everyone will
> by trying like the dickens to get the coveted "Larry Award" -- the
> encyclopedic equivalent of a Pulitzer Prize!!

Puhleez...

> A little refactoring, a little civility -- why, I think we can even
> get Julie to come back!

Maybe!

> Take some time off, smell the flowers, and then jump in again: the
> water's fine!!!

Yes, I'm looking forward to a break.

Larry
--
"We have now sunk to a depth at which the re-statement of the obvious is
the first duty of intelligent men." --George Orwell


from_name: koyaanisqatsi at nupedia.com

subject: [WikiEN-l] Clean up our mess! (was: A concept from Buckminster

body:
Larry (writing about cleaning up uncivil talk, etc.)
>http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:The_Cunctator/Bias_Talk

yowza.  "what a sports nut, huh?"

That page really doesn't seem conducive to civility either, though,
really?  Cunctator gets knocked around quite a bit.  Decide for
yourself if you think he deserves it--and Larry, you don't have to
tell me what you think; but really he does.  Which hatchet needs
burying?  Oh, there are two?

kq


from_name: Krzysztof P. Jasiutowicz

subject: [Wikitech-l] Special links

body:
Hello all,

Polish Wikipedia is testing the newly installed server and
we wonder if this is a bug :
[[m:Main Page]] works --> http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page
and [[w:Lithium]] does not --> empty

Regards,
Kpjas.


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Re: Re: [WikiEN-l] Clean up our mess! (was: A concept from Buckminster

body:
I wrote:
>yowza.  "what a sports nut, huh?"

etc.

I should not have done that--especially if I want to talk about the
need for diplomacy & civility.  Something about glass houses, I don't
know....

kq

http://www.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=History_of_Mauritania&diff=440111&oldid=440109
http://www.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Politics_of_Mauritania&diff=0&oldid=0
(cut and paste jobs, but contributions nonetheless)


body:
I wrote:
>yowza.  "what a sports nut, huh?"

etc.

I should not have done that--especially if I want to talk about the
need for diplomacy & civility.  Something about glass houses, I don't
know....

kq

http://www.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=History_of_Mauritania&diff=440111&oldid=440109
http://www.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Politics_of_Mauritania&diff=0&oldid=0
(cut and paste jobs, but contributions nonetheless)

(ARGH, this crossposting is killing me.  what list are people on?)


from_name: tarquin

body:
Jimmy Wales wrote:

>There are lessons to be learned here.  In the design of proper traffic
>systems, it's important to not fight against human nature.  Rather
>than expecting and hoping people to behave properly at huge
>intersections, it's safer to build overpasses and ramps.
>

Interestingly, in the Netherlands they've recently experimented with
*removing* traffic lights from accident blackspot junctions -- the
results are that everyone drives *very* carefully and accidents are far
fewer.
... though how that relates to wikipedia I have no idea ... :)

(ponders...)
the no-traffic-light approach is Ward's original Wiki concept, I
suppose: no rules so people have to tread carefully.
CommunityMayNotScale, though.

>
>
>


body:
Jimmy Wales wrote:

>I think that's all basically correct.  It's hard to strike the right
>balance, but one thing that I do think we can do a better job of is in
>educating/indoctrinating newcomers that we play nicely here, that we
>aren't here to fight and argue, but to produce.
>

This gives me a thought: maybe we should all of us spend a week or so
cleaning up ALL talk pages that have arguments, particularly the
long-resolved stuff.
Maybe these play a significant part in *not* conveying the impression
that we play nicely here.

Maybe we should be more Wiki-like in refactoring discussions as we work.

>
>
>
>


from_name: Anthere

body:
--- Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com> wrote:
> On Fri, 2002-11-22 at 13:42, Pierre Abbat wrote:
> > [[Rotenburg]] on the English Wikipedia consists
> only of a link to the German.
> > It is linked to from [[Rotenburg (district)]].
> What should be done with such
> > a page?
>
> To summarize:
> [[en:Rotenburg (district)]] modest article on the
> district
> -> links [[en:Rotenburg]] (a town in the district);
> page empty but...
> -> interlinks [[de:Rotenburg (W?1/4mmer)]] page
> doesn't exist, but...
> <- linked by [[de:Rotenburg]] (disambiguation page)
>
> I put a one-line stub into [[en:Rotenburg]], it
> could do with
> information from someone who's heard of it or knows
> where to find
> details.
>
> I personally tend to frown on interlanguage links to
> pages that don't
> exist at present, since it's not very helpful --
> there's no indication
> on the link that you're going to a nonexistent page,
> and you just get
> "there is no text in this page" instead of something
> helpful. But I
> wouldn't bother removing them; better for someone to
> write the linked
> articles and solve the problem. ;)
>
> -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

Is it possible that the interlanguage links be of a
different color when leading to a non-existant page
(born in 1969 ;-)) ?

__________________________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Mail Plus ? Powerful. Affordable. Sign up now.
http://mailplus.yahoo.com


subject: [Wikipedia-l] vandalism spree

body:
--- Toby Bartels <toby+wikipedia at math.ucr.edu> wrote:
> Anthere wrote in part:
> >I support system that could automatically detect a
> >potential problem.
> >It is very likely that
> >- one user/ip saving every minute for more than 10
> mn
> >is a potential problem
> >- any edit replacing more than xxxx characters by x
> >characters (except redirect...) is a potential
> problem
> >- any edit replacing more than xxxx characters by
> an
> >image that was downloaded less than tt minutes
> before
> >is a potential problem
>
> >But, then, what good would it do, if an automatic
> >system detect a potential problem but has no human
> to
> >warn ?
>
> OK, here's an idea:
> We should develop (on [[m:]]) a Bayesian vandal
> detector.
> We'll implement this detector (or versions of it) on
> every wiki,
> and set up a mailing list of militia members to be
> warned
> when the detector suspects vandalism.
> The catch is, the mailing list is international.
> So if there's vandalism on [[fr:]],
> then I can learn about it and respond to it
> during the time that I'm online,
> even if none of the French speakers are online then.
> (Of course, I need to know a little French to do
> this,
> so I can list the languages that I know a little of
> when I sign up for the mailing list,
> lest I get warnings about vandalism on [[zh:]]
> that I can't safely do anything about.)

This seems like all good ideas to me. Now, the tough
point is how to detect mostly vandalism, but not
confuse good users with vandals...

Mav said
>Seems like a good set of ideas to me. Under a
multilanguage >Phase IV,

Very likely yes

>however, wouldn't it be a good idea to have sysops be
>sysops >for all languages?
>If this were the case I would pop into several
different >languages periodically to check for obvious
vandalism.
>En.wiki has sysops watching it 20-24 hours a day so
if en.wiki >sysops popped in to check various other
languages periodically >(esp. during the no, or slow
edit times you talk about) then >that should provide
better coverage against the most blatant >goat sex
type vandalism and vandal bots.

That's a tough point really.
Theoretically, it sounds natural that somebody trusted
for one wiki should be trusted on another (though, to
be honest...I am not convinced myself).
Practically, that's could be a problem unfortunately.
The english wiki process while deciding who should be
a sysop or not is done through peer review (general
behavior, respect to the community standards...). But,
communities don't have the same standards, and what is
ok on one could be hardly tolerable on another. And
the tobe-sysop being not known, how would it be ok to
accept somebody you don't know (say would you blindly
accept Shaihulud as a sysop ?), while you reject
somebody you know, just on the behalf he is refusing
to change his name ?

I know you Mav, so I would say "yes, please, come and
help us", and I thank you very much for your
proposition. But why would other french agree for
somebody they don't know to have more admin "power"
than they have ?

Btw, didnot tmc changed his name as the community was
'kindly' asking him ?

__________________________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Mail Plus ? Powerful. Affordable. Sign up now.
http://mailplus.yahoo.com


from_name: Paul Ebermann

subject: [Wikitech-l] X-System and Unicode

body:
"Chuck Smith" skribis en wikitech-l:
> Brion Vibber:
>
> > Currently you must manually switch this on in your
> > preferences, and you get both X edit and X display
> > or neither; I haven't had a chance yet to hack in
> > the big, friendly button at the top of the screen.
>
> Yes, but the problem is that I think the majority of
> users would like to edit in the x-system and view in
> unicode.  Currently, it is not possible to do this.
> For example, in most internet cafes (where I do some
> of my editing), I want to view the text in unicode,
> but there's no way to type in unicode.  In this old
> system it did not matter if people typed in x-system
> or unicode, it always works.  Could we carry this
> functionality over to the new software?  I know
> Unukorno also wants this functionality.

[eo]
Mi pensas, ke tiu estas la celo ...
Se tiu ne eblas tre rapide: Cxu eblas aldoni
tria opcion: redaktu ikse, vidu unikode?

Aux ni simple uzu du (maldependaj)
sxaltilojn:

[ ] vidu ikse
[X] redakti ikse

(Frenezuloj eble volus redakti unikode
 kaj vidi ikse ...)

[en]
I think, this is the goal.
If this is not able quickly, what about a third
option: view in unicode, edits completely in the
X-system?

Or simple use two (independant) switches:
[ ] see X-coded
[X] edit X-coded

Pauxlo, kiu ne scipovas PHP-on, kaj ne havas
        tempon, kaj tial ne povas kunhelpi nun.


subject: [Wikitech-l] Search now working on Unicode Wikipedias

body:
I hacked up the fulltext search/index code a bit to work on UTF-8
despite MySQL's lack of direct support: a Language::stripForSearch()
function is called to do any necessary mangling of character sets before
we store the indexable version of the text.

For Esperanto, Polish, Russian, Czech and Korean I set it to just fold
the text to lowercase (so search is case insensitive) and then convert
all UTF-8 sequences into hex strings which MySQL won't mistreat.

For Chinese and Japanese, things are a bit more complicated, as there is
no word spacing in the original text but the fulltext search works on
words. For Chinese I just set it to put spaces around every character;
it needs a lot of tweaking, but it sort of works. If you search a single
character it works great, but multi-character sequences don't behave as
expected.

For Japanese, I have it divide up the text at boundaries around chunks
of the same type of character (hiragana, katakana, or kanji), which does
a pretty good first approximation of dividing at the right place. It
could probably use some more work as well. When searching a word/short
phrase that divides across character types (ie, 'furansugo' which mixes
katakana and kanji) results may not be as expected.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


from_name: Daniel Alston

subject: [Wikipedia-l] A Wikitionary.

body:
An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Url: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-l/attachments/20021123/b3450a33/attachment.diff


body:
On Sat, 2002-11-23 at 01:04, Anthere wrote:
> Is it possible that the interlanguage links be of a
> different color when leading to a non-existant page
> (born in 1969 ;-)) ?

At the moment this would be tricky, since each language is in a separate
database and they can't talk to each other easily to find out which
pages exist.

It definitely will happen in the misty future phase iv all-in-one wiki,
but we're not even going to seriously think about that until our present
performance problems are thoroughly stamped out. We won't load all the
eggs in one basket until the basket's quite thoroughly padded and
insured. ;)

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


from_name: Digital Addictions Software

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Wikipedia-l digest, Vol 1 #882 - 15 msgs

body:
> But no reason for either one of them to clutter up the Recent Changes
> page with minor edits.  If I am looking at the last 200 changes, every
> chess move subtracts one possibly interesting change from my list.  I
> think it is bad manners.

I didn't think playing chess would be such a big deal!  In reality I probably
only make at *most* 10 minor edits per *day* playing chess.  That is nothing.
One person who is save happy will make that in 1 minute.  I don't mind ceasing
such activities if people so desire, but I don't enjoy being a scapegoat.
	Ram-Man

__________________________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Mail Plus ? Powerful. Affordable. Sign up now.
http://mailplus.yahoo.com


subject: [WikiEN-l] Shouldn't we change BC->BCE?

body:
--- Alexander Stephen Bradbury
<bradba at bishop-perowne.worcs.sch.uk> wrote:
> Shouldn't the English Wikipedia chaqnge the BC
> dates, to BCE. As I'm sure
> you all know, BC==Before Christ and BCE=Before
> Common Era. Now, surely BCE
> is a better term, as it doesn't force anyone to
> conform to this christian
> naming convention. Maybe you've already considered
> tihs, are there any
> reasons not to make the change?
>
> ASB [[User:Smelialichu]]

among others, see
http://www.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2002-October/thread.html

and

http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Centuries

cheers

__________________________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Mail Plus ? Powerful. Affordable. Sign up now.
http://mailplus.yahoo.com


body:
On Saturday 23 November 2002 07:22, Brion Vibber wrote:
> For Japanese, I have it divide up the text at boundaries around chunks
> of the same type of character (hiragana, katakana, or kanji), which does
> a pretty good first approximation of dividing at the right place. It
> could probably use some more work as well. When searching a word/short
> phrase that divides across character types (ie, 'furansugo' which mixes
> katakana and kanji) results may not be as expected.

AFAIK (which isn't much, I know hardly any Japanese), Japanese desinences are
written in hiragana and the rest of the word is written in kanji (if Chinese
or Japanese) or katakana (if anything else). So how about splitting wherever
a hiragana is followed by a katakana or kanji? But when a word written in
kanji is followed by another word written in kanji, neither algorithm will
know where to split it.

phma


from_name: Toby Bartels

subject: [Wikitech-l] Special links

body:
Brion Vibber wrote:

>Krzysztof P. Jasiutowicz wrote:

>>Polish Wikipedia is testing the newly installed server and
>>we wonder if this is a bug :
>>[[m:Main Page]] works --> http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page
>>and [[w:Lithium]] does not --> empty

>[[w:]] is behaving as an alias to [[en:]], a language link that moves to
>the list at the top of the screen instead of inline.

It's been suggested to allow [[:en:Lithium]] if we want it inline,
or even to make inline the default on talk pages
(which is presumably where such an inline link would be wanted).

-- Toby


subject: [Wikipedia-l] (no subject)

body:
Eclectiology wrote:
>> Scientific method is asymptotic to truth, and I would also extend that
assertion to NPOV.  That a particular view is held by a significant
majority (either of the general public or of experts) does not magically
convert that opinion into fact.  Scientific method very fairly allows
for the possibility that eccentric views may ultimately be found valid;
nevertheless, these allowances only represent distant hopes.  Poker
players are not dealt royal flushes very frequently. <<

Just a short response to one point here: that majority opinion is fact
simply isn't the policy.  I think the current policy makes this clear.
"Fact" can be given the perfectly innocuous definition, "what everyone
believes" (note, "everyone" does not mean "a significant majority")
leaving "opinion" to stand for "a position on an issue about which there
is significant disagreement."

Yes, there's vagueness here: when is a disagreement "significant"?  What
if *one person* still believes the world is flat?  But I think we can work
out problem cases like these on an individual basis and use our judgment;
the upshot of policy has proven to be clear enough to be quite useful, I
think.

Larry
--
"We have now sunk to a depth at which the re-statement of the obvious is
the first duty of intelligent men." --George Orwell


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Educating newcomers

body:
>> I'd rather start with how "neutral point of view" is defined on
Wikipedia proper: as presenting conflicting extremes. The lengthy article
there repeated presents neutral or unbiased writing in terms of
conflicting viewpoints. Framing knowledge in terms of conflict is not the
best way to do it. It can be a helpful starting point, but a more complete
synthesis is desired (and should be possible). <<

This objection is very obscure.  Neutrality is defined "as presenting
conflicting extremes"?  No, that's not how it's defined.  Certainly, if
there *are* conflicting *extremes* on an issue, then they're presented,
yes.  Is the objection instead that neutrality shouldn't be defined in
terms of conflict *at all*?  In that case I'd say the whole reason for the
neutrality policy is that people will naturally fall into conflict over
what positions are true (or--of course, this isn't the same thing--have
adequate "evidentiary support").  The neutrality policy specifies what we
should do in such cases.  If there's concern about stating what is
supported by evidence, we must acknowledge that there are different views
on that in any significant controversy.

"A more complete synthesis" might be desired by you, but it is not the
place of an *encyclopedia* to proffer such a thing.  Individuals and
interested groups do that.

>> And statements like this: "according to our understanding, when one
writes neutrally, one is very careful not to state (or imply or insinuate
or carefully but subtly massage the reader into believing) that any
particular view at all is correct" are just wrong. <<

And why are they "just wrong"?  Who, besides you, thinks they are "just
wrong"?  In fact, that particular point is not only correct about what
Wikipedia policy is, it should be placed in neon lights and shouted from
the hilltops and brandished in the face of people who use Wikipdia to
further their agenda.

>> And the distinction between "facts" and "opinions", as written, is just
not helpful. "Mars is a planet", where "planet" is a "massive object that
orbits the Sun" has only been a "fact" for a few hundred years. "God
exists" has been a "fact" for much longer than that. <<

What's "unhelpful" about it?  I find unexplained and unfair criticisms
unhelpful.  Suppose the text said instead, as you say here, "Mars is a
massive object that orbits the Sun." That's something that virtually
everyone now agrees upon; therefore, according to the definition in the
text it is a "fact" (something that we would all acknowledge to be fact,
rather than opinion).  What difference does it make that it was not a
"fact," in this sense, five hundred years ago?  The text explicitly
acknowledges that "facts" can actually be falsehoods and "opinions" can be
true, and that "facts" can change.  Is there something *wrong* with that
state of affairs, and do you think there's anything we can do about it?

It has never been and certainly is not a *fact*, by the definition given
on the page, that God exists.  The text actually explicitly uses that
proposition as a prime example of an opinion.

>> The whole page could be greatly improved and shortened by stating that
the NPOV relies on evidentiary criteria. That is to say, all statements
are assertions which rely on some form of evidence and definition, both of
which should be explicated somewhere, preferably within Wikipedia itself
(though primary sources should simply be referenced). <<

This would hardly be an improvement: it would entail completely undoing
the neutrality policy so that it does not concern neutrality.  The issue
of providing support and definitions, while certainly important, is
strictly speaking *orthogonal* to the issue of the bias of a text or lack
thereof.  To be sure, a fair presentation of all views will, in perhaps
most cases, require definitions and support (i.e., the support offered by
the proponents of the respective views).  But any neutrality or lack of
bias worthy of the name *requires* stating competing views fairly and not
taking sides.  That's simply what neutrality, in presenting controversial
issues, *is*.  "Providing evidence and definitions" is a good thing, but
it isn't what neutrality is, even if neutrality in many cases requires it.

If the suggestion is instead (and it's made none too clearly if so) that
we can simply do away with the practice of presenting alternative views
fairly, and instead present as correct the view that has the best
evidence--good luck with making your case.  That's precisely what we're
trying to avoid *arguing about* with this policy.

By the way, certainly, we can admit that the page *might* need to be
changed.  That the page in fact does need to be changed in any particular
way receives not the least support from the above.

Larry
--
"We have now sunk to a depth at which the re-statement of the obvious is
the first duty of intelligent men." --George Orwell


from_name: Tom Parmenter

in_reply_to:
<20021123144534.68724.qmail@web21303.mail.yahoo.com> (message
	from Digital Addictions Software on Sat, 23 Nov 2002 06:45:34 -0800
	(PST))

body:
|From: Digital Addictions Software <digitaladdictions at yahoo.com>
|Sender: wikipedia-l-admin at wikipedia.org
|Reply-To: wikipedia-l at wikipedia.org
|Date: Sat, 23 Nov 2002 06:45:34 -0800 (PST)
|
|> But no reason for either one of them to clutter up the Recent Changes
|> page with minor edits.  If I am looking at the last 200 changes, every
|> chess move subtracts one possibly interesting change from my list.  I
|> think it is bad manners.
|
|I didn't think playing chess would be such a big deal!  In reality I probably
|only make at *most* 10 minor edits per *day* playing chess.  That is nothing.
|One person who is save happy will make that in 1 minute.  I don't mind ceasing
|such activities if people so desire, but I don't enjoy being a scapegoat.
|	Ram-Man
|
|

Just make them minor edits and I'll have ten more chances to see
something interesting (like say a reference to something going on in
some small town that I could add to its entry).  Then I'll go complain
to the save-happy person.

Tom


subject: [WikiEN-l] Shouldn't we change BC->BCE?

body:
|From: "Alexander Stephen Bradbury" <bradba at bishop-perowne.worcs.sch.uk>
|X-Priority: 3
|Importance: Normal
|X-MSMail-Priority: Normal
|Sender: wikien-l-admin at wikipedia.org
|Reply-To: wikien-l at wikipedia.org
|Date: Sat, 23 Nov 2002 15:36:14 -0000 (GMT)
|
|Shouldn't the English Wikipedia chaqnge the BC dates, to BCE. As I'm sure
|you all know, BC==Before Christ and BCE=Before Common Era. Now, surely BCE
|is a better term, as it doesn't force anyone to conform to this christian
|naming convention. Maybe you've already considered tihs, are there any
|reasons not to make the change?
|
|ASB [[User:Smelialichu]]
|

The acronyms may expand differently, but they don't mean anything
different.  Both date from the birth of Christ, the beginning of the
"common era", a watershed in history that affected everyone, Christian
or not.

Tom Parmenter
Ortolan88


subject: [Wikipedia-l] wikipedia evangelism: mail article

body:
I'm resurrecting this feature request from [[Wikipedia:Village pump]]
where it is discussed under "Wikipedia Evangelism".

The point raised was the desirability of an easy way to ask a friend
to comment on the accuracy of an article, or simply to point out an
interesting article to someone.

How about doing what a lot of news pages do?   Add a box at the bottom
of each article

[] Send this article to a friend

along with a java mailer to fire the message off and a text box to add
a note.  Having a linked mailer would eliminate the necessity of
firing up a mail program.


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Educating newcomers

body:
On Sat, 23 Nov 2002, tarquin wrote:

> I think you have a philosophic way of looking at this that other
> wikipedians may not share.
> I would be inclined to say "Mars is a planet" has *always* been a fact
> -- though at one time it was not *known*.

Oh, I agree with you!  In the [[NPOV]] article, "fact" and "opinion" are
actually given glosses that (I think) more closely match the distinction
that is made in ordinary language than any distinction made by
philosophers.  I mean, I'm not sure about this, but I think most
philosophers would agree with you that it has always been a fact that Mars
is a planet.  The distinction between facts and *opinions* isn't one
that philosophers per se are ordinarily inclined to make; it's more of
an ordinary language distinction.

The distinction is useful nonetheless, if for no other reason than that it
allows us to sum up and conceptualize, in a simple way, a relatively
complex policy.  We could say, "Articles are to consist of claims that
virtually everyone believes (or would believe, if apprised of the relevant
texts, experiences, experiments, etc.); where there are different views
about a given proposition, those views are to attributed to their owners."
But that's quite a mouthful.  It can sometimes, at least, help to say,
"Articles should state facts, including facts about what some opinions on
a controversial subject are; but they shouldn't state, i.e., assert as
true, the opinions themselves."  Or even simply, "State facts, not
opinions (modulo the discussion given in [[NPOV]])."

> If next year we discover that Mars is made of green cheese, then that
> too will have always been a fact -- and things that we currently hold as
> facts about Mars will be shown to be wrong.

Yes, I agree, again.  I am the world's biggest opponent of relativism,
actually.

> (though that's the mathematician side of me -- things are still true
> even when you're not looking at them ;-) -- I do see Larry's point, just
> trying to highlight possible communication problems.

And, I appreciate that and thanks for it.

> I think NPOV is sometimes abused, when articles on controversial topics
> degenerate into a list of every single possible opinion, with things
> like "Christian views on X" spiralling off.

Well, certainly the NPOV policy shouldn't be construed so as to recommend
simply *listing* various views on a subject.

OK, enough for now, really!

Larry
--
"We have now sunk to a depth at which the re-statement of the obvious is
the first duty of intelligent men." --George Orwell


from_name: Julie Hofmann Kemp

subject: [Wikipedia-l] This whole Lir and Americanization thing

body:
Hi all --

First, I'm not actually back -- just jumping in.  I've been popping in
every couple of weeks to lurk, but even if I were inclined to rejoin the
fray on a permanent basis, I've got four courses this quarter, one
totally new, and I'm somewhat swamped.

Second, I've been watching this whole Lir thing develop, and finally
feel I should throw in my $.04.

Regarding banning Lir or not.  If Lir can't be bothered to speak with
Jimbo, stop behaving childishly (name-calling, whinging, and making
guerilla edits that result in non-NPOV articles), and work in a
cooperative, collegial, manner, then a ban is in order.  The community
has certain standards, and from what I've seen, Lir is as guilty as
Helga ever was of flouting them.  By the way, Helga is back, adding in
stuff about the genocide of the Heimatvertriebene, but somewhat more
neutrally.

Regarding Americanization being genocide.  First, Lir's belief in this
(more to that later) is his choice.  The argument has, however,
unfortunately gone off on a tangent and not addressed the real point --
Lir's belief is very POV.  Articles he renames or redirects in
furtherance of that belief are therefore infected with that non-neutral
POV.    Second, Lir, what is your point?  I mean this in a historical
sense.  Although I personally agree that the McDonaldsization of the
world is a tragedy, and that the ubiquity of American culture may (and
probably is) damaging to other cultures, the process is not itself
unnatural or new.  As an historian, I can't honestly name one culture
that had not been dramatically changed once it came in contact with
another, especially in cases of technology.  Moreover, without the
fusion of different cultures (for example, barbarian and Roman), many of
the things that make up distinctive European cultures would not exist --
in fact, there's a good chance we'd all be Muslims now.

As to correct language and the evils of americanization -- bullshit,
pure and simple.  The idea that using English-language norms in and
English-language encyclopedia is in anyway related to forcing
English-speaking culture on other cultures is simply ridiculous.  While
it is deplorable that most English speakers are not bilingual, that fact
does not make it in any way sensible to change place-names, etc., to
their "original" form.  By the way, I'm not even sure what that means --
is it Strassburg, Strasbourg, or, as it was called before there was a
clear definition between French and German, Straziburgensis?  London, or
Londinium? Should Paris have a note in the title that says "pronounced
Paree, you morons"?

Some while back, those of us most interested and most  learned in these
things worked together to come up with a nomenclature policy.  We agreed
that it made the most sense to use the most common English-language
version of a name (different forms of English notwithstanding) for the
title BUT, because we all felt it very important to let people know that
other cultures and language-speakers had different names for the same
thing, so we listed alternate names in the article itself.   This means
that English-speakers, arguably the largest audience, could search for
articles in the way most natural to them, but the articles would still
appear in searches by speakers of other languages searching in those
languages.  I can't see that Lir's political beliefs are valid reasons
to change this policy.

That's all I can think of for now.  Hope lir talks to Jimmy and gets a
clue.  Otherwise, it seems to me that normally productive members of the
community should be allowed to get on with the project and stop having
to deal with this type of nonsense.

Cheers, all!

Regards,

Julie Hofmann Kemp

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-l/attachments/20021123/01d3c5c4/attachment.htm


body:
Thanks for your answers. I knew this was something of a grey area for now.
But,  for now I will assume I CAN add screen-captures from movies, and box
art. One thing I was wondering though, can I just take a picture of the
box from amazon or somewhere, or a screen capture from a review site? It
would certainly make things easier, as the box scans on online stores tend
to be of a pretty good file size, with just about perfect properties for a
good size->quality ratio. I'm glad to hear we're speaking to some top
people about this though.

Thanks,
ASB [[User:Smelialichu]]

--
<signature>
There are only 10 types of people in this world;
Those that know binary...and those that don't
</signature>


subject: [WikiEN-l] Shouldn't we change BC->BCE?

body:
Shouldn't the English Wikipedia chaqnge the BC dates, to BCE. As I'm sure
you all know, BC==Before Christ and BCE=Before Common Era. Now, surely BCE
is a better term, as it doesn't force anyone to conform to this christian
naming convention. Maybe you've already considered tihs, are there any
reasons not to make the change?

ASB [[User:Smelialichu]]

--
<signature>
There are only 10 types of people in this world;
Those that know binary...and those that don't
</signature>


from_name: Daniel Mayer

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: This whole Lir and Americanization thing

body:
On Saturday 23 November 2002 12:39 pm, Julie Hofmann Kemp wrote:
>....
> Some while back, those of us most interested and most  learned in these
> things worked together to come up with a nomenclature policy.  We agreed
> that it made the most sense to use the most common English-language
> version of a name (different forms of English notwithstanding) for the
> title BUT, because we all felt it very important to let people know that
> other cultures and language-speakers had different names for the same
> thing, so we listed alternate names in the article itself.   This means
> that English-speakers, arguably the largest audience, could search for
> articles in the way most natural to them, but the articles would still
> appear in searches by speakers of other languages searching in those
> languages.  I can't see that Lir's political beliefs are valid reasons
> to change this policy
>....

I is wonderful to hear from you again Julie. :-) I also most wholeheartedly
agree with your entire message, especially the above text about our central
naming convention. What is most commonly known and used by English speakers
is the foundation for all our naming conventions and the current attack
against Anglicization would seriously undermine that foundation and lead to
confusion and more work.

In fact Anglicization is really a red herring and not at all needed when we
already have "what is most commonly used by English speakers." I suggest we
merge Anglicization with common English useage because the name of the
convention itself may give the incorrect impression that we /prefer/
Anglicization and translation even in cases where the native form is more
widely used by modern English speakers than an Anglicized or translated
version. But we should also be careful to not make-up our own Anglicized
terms for subjects that are not widely known and used by English speakers and
don't have widely recognized English language forms. This is where our
central naming convention breaks down and we are left with the confusing
choice of alternate native transliterations.

So long as Mein Kampf, Les Miserables, Charlemagne etc are used and recognized
by a majority of English speakers then by all means lets use them so long as
POV or naming conflicts don't get in the way (We can't use Charles the Great
because that is a POV title). What is most widely known and used by English
speakers is all that really matters. Secondary spellings, translations,
transliterations, native forms or Anglicizations should be redirected (at
least eventually) to what most English speakers would recognize and expect.
The article itself should eventually explain just when and where the other
forms are used (but Wikipedia is not a usage guide or dictionary, so these
explanations need to be brief in most cases).

If we don't stick with most common usage by English speakers then our naming
conventions would be confusing mess that will lead to needlessly complex and
foreign names. That isn't at all useful to either readers or writers.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re:  wikipedia evangelism: mail article

body:
On Saturday 23 November 2002 12:39 pm,  Tom Parmenter wrote:
> I'm resurrecting this feature request from [[Wikipedia:Village pump]]
> where it is discussed under "Wikipedia Evangelism".
>
> The point raised was the desirability of an easy way to ask a friend
> to comment on the accuracy of an article, or simply to point out an
> interesting article to someone.
>
> How about doing what a lot of news pages do?   Add a box at the bottom
> of each article
>
> [] Send this article to a friend
>
> along with a java mailer to fire the message off and a text box to add
> a note.  Having a linked mailer would eliminate the necessity of
> firing up a mail program.

This would be a most cool feature. Of course, it would only be available to
logged-in users that have valid email addresses set-up in their preferences.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)

Opps! I forgot to add a diff to a list response to JHK to wikiEN-L. Here are a
couple of substantial edits to pay for this mailing list post and the JHK
one;
http://www.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Niobium/Temp&diff=0&oldid=440062
http://www.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Jimmy_Doolittle&diff=0&oldid=440290


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re:  wikipedia evangelism: mail article


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [WikiEN-l] Shouldn't we change BC->BCE?

body:
Alexander Stephen Bradbury wrote:

>Shouldn't the English Wikipedia chaqnge the BC dates, to BCE. As I'm sure
>you all know, BC==Before Christ and BCE=Before Common Era. Now, surely BCE
>is a better term, as it doesn't force anyone to conform to this christian
>naming convention. Maybe you've already considered tihs, are there any
>reasons not to make the change?
>
>ASB [[User:Smelialichu]]
>
I prefer BC because it's shorter than BCE.

As much as I know the origins of "BC" and its relationship to the life
of Jesus, my atheistic sensitivities are not offended by its use.  "BCE"
has always struck me as affectatiously hyper-correct.

Nevertheless, if the author of an article wants to use "BCE" or "CE" in
his own article, I would be inclined to treat it as an option in the
same way that we deal with American/British spellings.  Where a person
does use "AD", however, I would treat it as wrong to put it after the
year number.

The system could have been designed to use "AC" for both before and
after ... Ante-Christ and Anti-Christ :-)

Eclecticology


subject: [WikiEN-l] Shouldn't we change BC->BCE?

body:
Anthere wrote:

>among others, see
>http://www.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2002-October/thread.html
>
>and
>
>http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Centuries
>
>
>
snip from that page:

 > Using the terms BCE and CE are not obfuscatory nor are they fads.
More and more scientific and scholarly works rely on this nomenclature,
because they manage to accept convention (e.g. non-Christians and
Christians alike use the same calendar) without privileging Christ or
the belief in the divinity of Jesus. <

I would probably be in favour of "BCE", but I am not an historian, so
I'm not in a position to assess how much "BCE" is used by academics
compared to "BC" -- but that should probably be our guide.

- t


subject: [WikiEN-l] Shouldn't we change BC->BCE?

in_reply_to:
<3DDFB3BC.20101@planetunreal.com> (message from tarquin on Sat,
	23 Nov 2002 16:58:36 +0000)

body:
It's interesting that the really presumptuous one is AD, Anno Domini,
"Year of Our Lord".  After all, BC is pretty NPOV in comparison, so
many years before an established date.  If AD had been AC ...


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Chess

body:
Tom Parmenter wrote:

>|From: Digital Addictions Software <digitaladdictions at yahoo.com>
>|Sender: wikipedia-l-admin at wikipedia.org
>|Reply-To: wikipedia-l at wikipedia.org
>|Date: Sat, 23 Nov 2002 06:45:34 -0800 (PST)
>|
>|> But no reason for either one of them to clutter up the Recent Changes
>|> page with minor edits.  If I am looking at the last 200 changes, every
>|> chess move subtracts one possibly interesting change from my list.  I
>|> think it is bad manners.
>|
>|I didn't think playing chess would be such a big deal!  In reality I probably
>|only make at *most* 10 minor edits per *day* playing chess.  That is nothing.
>|One person who is save happy will make that in 1 minute.  I don't mind ceasing
>|such activities if people so desire, but I don't enjoy being a scapegoat.
>|	Ram-Man
>|
>|
>
>Just make them minor edits and I'll have ten more chances to see
>something interesting (like say a reference to something going on in
>some small town that I could add to its entry).  Then I'll go complain
>to the save-happy person.
>
>Tom
>
>
Even better, play on Meta. (WikipediaWeeders have minor edits set to
display!)

>
>


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Educating newcomers

body:
Larry Sanger wrote:

>What's "unhelpful" about it?  I find unexplained and unfair criticisms
>unhelpful.  Suppose the text said instead, as you say here, "Mars is a
>massive object that orbits the Sun." That's something that virtually
>everyone now agrees upon; therefore, according to the definition in the
>text it is a "fact" (something that we would all acknowledge to be fact,
>rather than opinion).  What difference does it make that it was not a
>"fact," in this sense, five hundred years ago?  The text explicitly
>acknowledges that "facts" can actually be falsehoods and "opinions" can be
>true, and that "facts" can change.  Is there something *wrong* with that
>state of affairs, and do you think there's anything we can do about it?
>
>It has never been and certainly is not a *fact*, by the definition given
>on the page, that God exists.  The text actually explicitly uses that
>proposition as a prime example of an opinion.
>
I think you have a philosophic way of looking at this that other
wikipedians may not share.
I would be inclined to say "Mars is a planet" has *always* been a fact
-- though at one time it was not *known*.
If next year we discover that Mars is made of green cheese, then that
too will have always been a fact -- and things that we currently hold as
facts about Mars will be shown to be wrong.

(though that's the mathematician side of me -- things are still true
even when you're not looking at them ;-) -- I do see Larry's point, just
trying to highlight possible communication problems.

I think NPOV is sometimes abused, when articles on controversial topics
degenerate into a list of every single possible opinion, with things
like "Christian views on X" spiralling off.

>
>
>


from_name: Larry Sanger

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: [Wikipedia-l] Orthographe québécoise

body:
On Sat, 23 Nov 2002, James Zitzmann wrote:

> [snip profanity]

What is this, the third or is it the fourth time James Zitzmann has posted
absolutely pointless profanity on the list?

Larry


from_name: James Zitzmann

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Orthographe qu�b�coise

body:
fuck, fuck, fuck matt malkemus. fuck, fuck, fuck matt malkemus.

---
Earn free ringtones - go to:
http://www.earnfreeringtones.com/?src=jzcool
James's Domain - Your source for Nintendo, Sega, Playstation, Anime, Manga, and more! http://www.jzcool.net

On Sat, 23 Nov 2002 22:29:14
 Matt M. wrote:
>Je me demande s'il existe une politique sur le Wiki fran?ais par rapport aux
>orthographes r?gionales de m?me qu'existe sur le Wiki anglais. Je suis
>actuellement en d?bat avec Meszigues sur l'article [[Montr?al]] qui fait
>r?f?rence au "Village gai", aux "Jeux gais", et aux "gais et lesbiennes". Il
>pr?f?rerait de voir ces mots ?crits comme "gay" ou "gays".
>
>Je me tiens, premi?rement, ? ce que "Village gai" et "Jeux gais" restent
>absolument, puisque ceux-ci sont l'orthographe officielle selon 1) la Ville
>de Montr?al, 2) la Comit? de Candidature Montr?al 2006. Il serait tout
>simplement ?rron?, dis-je, d'utiliser une orthographe que les instances
>comp?tentes n'utilisent pas, quoi que ce soit.
>
>Quant ? l'usage ordinaire, "gai" est l'orthographe courante et usuelle de ce
>mot dans les journaux, les revues, et les livres qu?b?cois. De plus, c'est
>dans le Petit Robert. Je l'utilise comme qu?b?cois et je la consid?re plus
>appropri?e pour un article traitant d'un sujet qu?b?cois. On a des
>politiques pour faire de m?me sur le Wiki anglais (pas de parti pris sur les
>orthographes britanniques et am?ricaines, sauf que c'est plus appropri?
>d'utiliser l'orthographe britannique pour un sujet britannique et
>vice-versa). Nous faut-il esprimer un tel politique explicitement pour le
>Wiki fran?ais?
>
>Matt (Montr?alais)
>Montr?al, Qu?bec
>
>
>_______________________________________________
>Wikipedia-l mailing list
>Wikipedia-l at wikipedia.org
>http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

_____________________________________________________________
Get 25MB, POP3, Spam Filtering with LYCOS MAIL PLUS for $19.95/year.
http://login.mail.lycos.com/brandPage.shtml?pageId=plus&ref=lmtplus


from_name: Matt M.

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Orthographe québécoise

body:
Je me demande s'il existe une politique sur le Wiki fran?ais par rapport aux
orthographes r?gionales de m?me qu'existe sur le Wiki anglais. Je suis
actuellement en d?bat avec Meszigues sur l'article [[Montr?al]] qui fait
r?f?rence au "Village gai", aux "Jeux gais", et aux "gais et lesbiennes". Il
pr?f?rerait de voir ces mots ?crits comme "gay" ou "gays".

Je me tiens, premi?rement, ? ce que "Village gai" et "Jeux gais" restent
absolument, puisque ceux-ci sont l'orthographe officielle selon 1) la Ville
de Montr?al, 2) la Comit? de Candidature Montr?al 2006. Il serait tout
simplement ?rron?, dis-je, d'utiliser une orthographe que les instances
comp?tentes n'utilisent pas, quoi que ce soit.

Quant ? l'usage ordinaire, "gai" est l'orthographe courante et usuelle de ce
mot dans les journaux, les revues, et les livres qu?b?cois. De plus, c'est
dans le Petit Robert. Je l'utilise comme qu?b?cois et je la consid?re plus
appropri?e pour un article traitant d'un sujet qu?b?cois. On a des
politiques pour faire de m?me sur le Wiki anglais (pas de parti pris sur les
orthographes britanniques et am?ricaines, sauf que c'est plus appropri?
d'utiliser l'orthographe britannique pour un sujet britannique et
vice-versa). Nous faut-il esprimer un tel politique explicitement pour le
Wiki fran?ais?

Matt (Montr?alais)
Montr?al, Qu?bec


from_name: Lars Aronsson

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: [WikiEN-l] A concept from Buckminster Fuller

body:
Brion Vibber wrote:
> You didn't forget to scroll down below the edit box, right?

My opinion, for the case that anybody would be interested, is that the
order of elements on the page should be:

  - preview of article (if this is a preview)
  - edit box
  - preview button
  - license agreement clause (if there is one)
  - save button

That is my natural work flow, and it does help to have that as the
scroll flow.  I know this from my experience of another wiki.

--
  Lars Aronsson (lars at aronsson.se)
  tel +46-70-7891609
  http://aronsson.se/ http://elektrosmog.nu/ http://susning.nu/


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Orthographe_qu�b�coise

body:
--- "Matt M." <matt_mcl at sympatico.ca> wrote:
> Je me demande s'il existe une politique sur le Wiki
> fran?ais par rapport aux
> orthographes r?gionales de m?me qu'existe sur le
> Wiki anglais.

Bonjour Matt.

Non, malheureusement, il n'existe aucune politique ?
ce sujet, car la majorit? des wikip?diens sont
fran?ais ou belges (?ventuellement expatri?s), donc ce
probl?me n'a jamais ?t? rencontr?;

C'est un peu l'ambuiguit? Fran?ais (population)
fran?ais (language) que j'ai d?j? relev?e...

Je suis
> actuellement en d?bat avec Meszigues sur l'article
> [[Montr?al]] qui fait
> r?f?rence au "Village gai", aux "Jeux gais", et aux
> "gais et lesbiennes". Il
> pr?f?rerait de voir ces mots ?crits comme "gay" ou
> "gays".

Pour information, je n'avais jamais vu l'orthographe
gai pour parler des homosexuels. Ce qui me fait penser
qu'il serait int?ressant de faire un article sur *gai*
(ou du moins sur homosexuel en mettant un redirect) de
fa?on ? ?voquer cette orthographe que certains
francophones ne connaissent pas.

> Je me tiens, premi?rement, ? ce que "Village gai" et
> "Jeux gais" restent
> absolument, puisque ceux-ci sont l'orthographe
> officielle selon 1) la Ville
> de Montr?al, 2) la Comit? de Candidature Montr?al
> 2006. Il serait tout
> simplement ?rron?, dis-je, d'utiliser une
> orthographe que les instances
> comp?tentes n'utilisent pas, quoi que ce soit.

Absolumment d'accord.

> Quant ? l'usage ordinaire, "gai" est l'orthographe
> courante et usuelle de ce
> mot dans les journaux, les revues, et les livres
> qu?b?cois. De plus, c'est
> dans le Petit Robert. Je l'utilise comme qu?b?cois
> et je la consid?re plus
> appropri?e pour un article traitant d'un sujet
> qu?b?cois. On a des
> politiques pour faire de m?me sur le Wiki anglais
> (pas de parti pris sur les
> orthographes britanniques et am?ricaines, sauf que
> c'est plus appropri?
> d'utiliser l'orthographe britannique pour un sujet
> britannique et
> vice-versa). Nous faut-il esprimer un tel politique
> explicitement pour le
> Wiki fran?ais?

J'ai eu l'impression que les anglais et les am?ricains
?taient bcp plus conscients de l'existence d'autres
orthographes pour les mots a ortho alternatives. Je ne
sais pas si c est le cas pour les canadiens, mais les
fran?ais ignorent le plus souvent qu'une orthographe
diff?rente puisse exister au canada. J ai l impression
que l ?cart entre nos deux langues est plus important
qu'entre l'anglais et l'am?ricain ou l'australien.

D'ou notre tendance, en voyant un mot que nous ne
connaissons pas, ? nous demander si il y a une erreur
de "traduction". Confer ma question sur le mot "h?t?"
dans la meme page de discussion.

Oui, il va *clairement* falloir exprimer qu'il ne doit
pas y avoir de parti pris.

__________________________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Mail Plus ? Powerful. Affordable. Sign up now.
http://mailplus.yahoo.com


from_name: Jonathan Walther

subject: Oliver is Lir (Re: [Wikipedia-l] This whole Lir and Americanization thing)

body:
As long as "Oliver" tries to stick to the collegial spirit of mutual
respect, that is fine.  But I find it odd his user account appears right
after Lir is banned, and then he jumps in and makes edits in a fashion
that indicates he is anything but a newbie.  Not to mention him joining
the list and "defending" himself. Lir is fast and loose with his online
identity.  So far he has just been using this as a role-playing
"playground"... seeing what kind of personas he can get us to believe
are really him.  This is fun, and I don't deny anyone the right to go
through this phase of their lives, but it can lead to difficulties on
the Wikipedia when that is a persons main reason for being there.

If he can play nice, I'm happy about that.  But if he acts up, as
this post from Oliver seems to indicate he wants to do later on, I
hope that we won't take as long to act this time around.

Who knows, maybe "Oliver" is a real person and not yet another alter-ego,
and he is now ready to be accountable and deal with us on equal terms.
That is a definate positive step forward.

Cheers!

Jonathan

On Sun, Nov 24, 2002 at 05:51:00AM +0000, Oliver Pereira wrote:
>I must protest!
>
>I know that I'm just a newbie here, and you're a terribly important sysop
>person, but Lir doesn't seem to be around right now, and I'm not going to
>let that attack go undefended...
>
>> Regarding banning Lir or not.  If Lir can't be bothered to speak with
>> Jimbo, stop behaving childishly (name-calling, whinging, and making
>> guerilla edits that result in non-NPOV articles), and work in a
>> cooperative, collegial, manner, then a ban is in order.  The community
>> has certain standards, and from what I've seen, Lir is as guilty as
>> Helga ever was of flouting them.
>
>Judging by what I've seen, Lir is an intelligent person with much to
>contribute. Childish, of course, but then I've seen just as childish
>behaviour from some of the regulars and even (perhaps more so) from the
>sysops. It seems that Lir is just more vociferous about it. There seem to
>be a lot more complaints about Lir's attitude and over-the-top
>pronouncements than about any actual edits, which surely should be what we
>are most interested in here. If Lir's actions are to be the subject of
>public debate, could we establish details of specific bad edits, rather
>than just ranting?
>
>> Lir's belief is very POV.  Articles he renames or redirects in
>> furtherance of that belief are therefore infected with that non-neutral
>> POV.
>
>This is just plain nonsense. *Everyone's* political beliefs are POV:
>that's the whole point of them! But an editor's renaming an article to
>give it a different version of its name doesn't somehow magically invest
>that article with the editor's point of view. Of course, one *can* insert
>a point of view into an article title, by inserting a qualifying adjective
>such as "Excellent" or "Rubbish" into it, but as far as I'm aware we're
>only talking about exchanging one version of a name (used by one set of
>people) with another (used by another set of people). This has no effect
>on the point of view whatsoever.
>
>> As to correct language and the evils of americanization -- bullshit,
>> pure and simple.
>
>Now, now, let's not descend into that sort of language. Lir has a point. I
>personally would be quite offended if English-speaking people were to
>rename *me* "Oliver Peartree", simply to make it more "English". I would
>consider it to be arrogance: who are they to decide my name? This was my
>name at birth, and always will be, no matter what anyone else decides to
>call me! Of course, I am exaggerating to make my point: no-one is trying
>to call *me* by any other name. We are mostly talking about inanimate
>locations and dead people, who are in no position to object. But the
>principle is the same. I think it smacks of arrogance to rename other
>people and places without the consent of the people and inhabitants of the
>places, even if the people and places are distant in time or space, and
>even if their renaming has now become widespread. And I am offended on
>their behalf, even if they're not. :)
>
>But all this talk of emotions is just a side issue. The main point is not
>about what offends whom, or anything like that. This is an encyclopaedia.
>We're after facts. And the fact of the matter is that anglicisations of
>names are simply distortions (or replacements) of foreign names. Calling
>Jo~ao "John" is just an *approximation* to the truth in the same way that
>calling a Jean Claude van Damme "French" is. It's sort of *nearly* right,
>but not quite. The job of an encyclopaedia should be to correct these
>sorts of approximations!
>
>> While it is deplorable that most English speakers are not bilingual,
>> that fact does not make it in any way sensible to change place-names,
>> etc., to their "original" form.  By the way, I'm not even sure what that
>> means -- is it Strassburg, Strasbourg, or, as it was called before there
>> was a clear definition between French and German, Straziburgensis?
>> London, or Londinium?
>
>I don't think anyone was arguing for *original* names of places, so you
>are attacking a straw man here. In the case of a place which still exists,
>I would argue that it makes most sense to call it whatever the people who
>live there do. It is, in a sense, *theirs*, after all. If there are
>several official versions of the placename locally, one could simply use
>the one that the largest number of locals use. We should aim to be most
>familiar with whatever is on the signposts, so that we don't get lost when
>we get there. ;)
>
>> Should Paris have a note in the title that says "pronounced Paree, you
>> morons"?
>
>I'd quite like to see that, actually. :)
>
>> We agreed that it made the most sense to use the most common
>> English-language version of a name (different forms of English
>> notwithstanding) for the title BUT, because we all felt it very
>> important to let people know that other cultures and language-speakers
>> had different names for the same thing, so we listed alternate names in
>> the article itself.  This means that English-speakers, arguably the
>> largest audience, could search for articles in the way most natural to
>> them, but the articles would still appear in searches by speakers of
>> other languages searching in those languages.
>
>Eminently sensible, of course. Which is why nobody is proposing the
>removal of any of these alternative names. As I understand it, the
>argument is simply about swapping one name round with another. Both names
>would still be there, but just in different places.
>
>> I can't see that Lir's political beliefs are valid reasons to change
>> this policy.
>
>It's not about political beliefs; it's about giving articles (arguably)
>more accurate titles. I hope I've laid out some of the arguments clearly
>enough. I probably haven't, but it'll do for now. Oh, and I should add
>that the language thing applies to all languages equally; I'm just using
>anglicisation as the example I'm most familiar with. Just thought I'd add
>that so that I'm not told to post this on the English language mailing
>list (which I haven't quite got round to subscribing to yet)...
>
>Phew. That's enough of that for one day. I think I really *will* go to bed
>now... :)

--
                     Geek House Productions, Ltd.

  Providing Unix & Internet Contracting and Consulting,
  QA Testing, Technical Documentation, Systems Design & Implementation,
  General Programming, E-commerce, Web & Mail Services since 1998

Phone:   604-435-1205
Email:   djw at reactor-core.org
Webpage: http://reactor-core.org
Address: 2459 E 41st Ave, Vancouver, BC  V5R2W2
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 307 bytes
Desc: not available
Url : http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-l/attachments/20021124/df8019a8/attachment.pgp