body:
     This is rather long.  I may post it later as a personal essay.
     Consequently, I don't expect anyone to actually read it.  It felt
     good to say, at least ...

As a general rule, policy in an environment like Wikipedia is a Good
Thing.  It means people get to know what to expect, those comparatively
few users with power over other users are kept accountable, and a bunch
of other fine things.  Thanks to policy, users can comfortably
contribute to the encyclopaedia knowing that they are protected by
English law, as is their birthright[0].

Wikipedia has a few basic, overarching, dreadfully important policies:
* we are an encyclopaedia
* we write from a neutral point-of-view
* we don't abuse Wikipedia to publish our own theories
* we treat each other with civility and respect and do our very best to
   assume good faith and not behave like dicks and disrupt the project
* anything that is not on this list is negotiable

Somehow, however, this is not sufficient.  People start to look at our
principles as a game of Nomic: "Wikipedia could be really cool, if only
it weren't an encyclopaedia."; "This article is about X, so *of course*
it's going to be written from X's point-of-view.  Anything else is
crazy!"; "Why should I need good sources?  You're just trying to censor
THE TRUTH!"; "I didn't know edit warring was wrong."; "We should get rid
of Ignore All Rules, it just encourages anarchy".  How many of these
statements are fictitious?  They look awfully familiar, don't they?

Now, we can't rely on our basic principles for day-to-day dealings.
There's too much potential for abuse: sure, NPOV, but *how* NPOV?  What
*does* NOR mean, anyway?  Why should admins be allowed to decide who is
and isn't being disruptive?  So we have to define, and define, and
define, over and over again, in a never-ending bid to create the Grand
Unified Policy of Everything.  If we don't have an exact definition,
people won't know what to expect ... and that's tyranny!  But there are
no perfect definitions, and there are always gaps in policy.  Admins who
fall back on basic common sense to deal with stuff that falls into such
a gap are rounded on by policy wonks and wikilawyers: "can you point to
the policy that forbids <insert dickish behaviour here/>?  Then why
should I not be allowed to do it?  The First Amendment says I can!"

Whenever we run into an unexpected situation, the first cry heard is
always "we need a policy to deal with this!"  As the amount of policy
increases, the feeling that we need to strictly adhere to policy also
increases ... until we cannot do anything unless there's a policy to
back it up.  Which, in turn, makes the gaps in policy gape all the more
broadly ... which leads to yet more cries: "we need a policy to deal
with this!"  Seal that gap!  What does one put into a policy-shaped hole
except policy?  Every gap in policy proves that we need more rules ...

If "don't be a dick!" is insufficiently enlightening as to what is and
is not acceptable in a collaborative environment, then there's probably
no hope for you in mountains of policies guiding social interactions
either.  And our reaction to anyone who triumphantly proclaims the
discovery of a loophole in our policy should not be to say "oh, no!
He's right!  We can't touch him!", but rather to reply with something
like "well done!  You're still banned, though."

It seems we can't trust ourselves to do the right thing, to use common
sense, to work within broad guidelines.  Why on Earth not?  Are we
afraid of making mistakes?  Doing the Wrong Thing, with policy support,
can never be considered a mistake: we were just following the
community's orders, Jimbo!  And if we need a Byzantine collection of
poorly-understood, constantly-shifting commands and definitions to cite
as authority for any argument, then so be it.  At least we can't be
blamed for anything!

Come *on*, people!  Do the Right Thing, and accept the plaudits if you
get it right, and apologise if you don't!  So long as you're
level-headed and honest with yourself, you can't go wrong.  Mistakes can
be forgiven, and their effects will not last long; the same cannot be as
easily said about process fetishism.  Remember when people discussed
what was best for the project, rather than what was most likely to fit
in with policy?

[0] Go on, guess the reference.

--
Mark Gallagher
"What?  I can't hear you, I've got a banana on my head!"
- Danger Mouse

--
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Checked by AVG Free Edition.
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list: wikien-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Philip Welch

subject: [WikiEN-l] We need a policy against vote-stacking

body:
On May 5, 2006, at 7:22 PM, Mark Gallagher wrote:

>>>> Article RFCs and mediation actually are dispute resolution, but
>>>> user
>>>> conduct regulation is called "dispute resolution" even though
>>>> it  isn't.
>>>
>>> You must admit, going before ArbCom tends to resolve disputes,
>>> one way
>>> or another.
>>
>> Well, it resolves disputes frequently by eliminating one of the
>> disputants. I still maintain that it's a user conduct process and
>> not  a
>> dispute resolution process.
>
> ... yes, that was the joke.
>
> Gah.  I'm 0 for 2 so far.

Sorry. On this list it's hard to tell the jokes, when people often
spout absurdities with such seriousness.

--
Philip L. Welch
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Philwelch


from_name: Steve Bennett

subject: [WikiEN-l] WikiEN-l Digest, Vol 34, Issue 49

body:
On 5/5/06, julieharding1 at charter.net <julieharding1 at charter.net> wrote:

> I'll have to consider that now after the full head on attack I received last night.  Is this your guys' way of testing someone to find out if they have enough proxy to be on your team of editors?  Because if your team of editors work together every night accusing each other of being on crack or being insane, then I don't want anthing to do with it.  There is a whole world wide web out there that can appreciate my intelligence and time more than you all did last night.  Yet if you want to be my friend, and you will respect me for what I can help you with, then tell me where to go and maybe I'll see you there in a couple of days.  God Bless

We don't have any tests or requirements for editors besides basic
civility and willingness to work towards Wikipedia's goals. Being so
decentralised, there's no single set of criteria which will please
everyone either.

Steve


subject: [WikiEN-l] We need to recognize that advocating is a basic right

body:
On 5/5/06, Philip Welch <wikipedia at philwelch.net> wrote:
> Incidentally, why don't we have free-content paparazzi tracking down
> celebrities to take pictures for Wikipedia articles?

Because, from the little I know about it, being a paparazzo is a hell
of a lot harder and takes more skill than one generally thinks.

Steve


body:
On 5/5/06, Philip Welch <wikipedia at philwelch.net> wrote:
> We *delete* things that don't belong here. Deal with it.

Nah.

Steve


body:
On 5/5/06, Philip Welch <wikipedia at philwelch.net> wrote:
> Undue weight. It's absurd for Pokemon to have 10,000 times more
> coverage within Wikipedia as, for instance, 19th century philosophy.

Yes, but that's not "undue weight", which afaik, only applies to
coverage of topics within a single article. Excessive coverage of one
topic wrt another is simply {{sofixit}}...

Steve


body:
On 5/5/06, Mark Wagner <carnildo at gmail.com> wrote:
> You probably need to find a better example.  According
> [[User:Carnildo/The 100]] and [[User:Carnildo/The 100 Biography]], we
> don't have any articles on either.  On the other hand, we've got 4,535
> articles on Digimon characters, 40,814 Rambot-created stubs, 4,535
> biographies of saints, 15,872 articles on schools, 2,267 articles on
> episodes of television series, and 2,267 copyvios on [[The Elf Queen
> of Shannara]].
>
> This abuse of statistics has been brought to you by the letters ? and
> ?, and by the number e.

Seriously, where did those figures come from?  4,535 articles on
digimon characters? huh?

Steve


body:
On 5/6/06, Ben McIlwain <cydeweys at gmail.com> wrote:
> I really don't understand why people have so many problems with Pok?mon
> articles.  If you're not interested, you don't have to read it.  I'm not
> interested in the thousands of articles about random small towns, but
> I'm not saying they should be deleted.  There's a bar for notability
> that Pok?mon presumably meets.  Each individual Pok?mon is certainly
> verifiable from any number of sources.  I agree with the other Phil ...
> don't let the Pok?mon piss you off, just ignore it and focus on writing
> articles on other stuff you think is more important.

This approach I don't agree with. Everytime we cite the fact that
Wikipedia has 1,000,000 articles, we ascribe value to each of those
articles. Every time we allow crud that we would be ashamed to speak
of to remain in the article, we diminish the value of those articles.

For exactly the same reason I think it is very poor for us to have
900,000 (or more?) inactive user accounts. They don't harm us directly
- but they do vastly misrepresent the actual state of the project.

Speaking for myself, the existence of Pokemon is not directly a
problem. But Wikipedia would certainly be better off if somehow all
the effort that was expended on Pokemon articles was somehow invested
in other ways.

Steve


body:
On 5/6/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> Every free internet forum has the same issue.

Yes...but not very relevant. The number of contributors to Wikipedia
is quite interesting and relevant to many people, but no reliable
figure is readily available.

>
> > Speaking for myself, the existence of Pokemon is not directly a
> > problem. But Wikipedia would certainly be better off if somehow all
> > the effort that was expended on Pokemon articles was somehow invested
> > in other ways.
> >
> > Steve
>
> Pokemon are massive. How many pokemon can you name? How many uk canals
> (my area) can you name?

Zero. Now, if all the people who had put 20 hours into Pokemon
articles had instead put 5 hours into Pokemon articles, and 15 hours
into cleanup of random articles, don't you think Wikipedia would be
better off?

Steve


from_name: geni

body:
On 5/6/06, Cheney Shill <halliburton_shill at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Mark Wagner <carnildo at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>     On 5/5/06, Steve Bennett wrote:
>     > Seriously, where did those figures come from? 4,535 articles on
>     > digimon characters? huh?
>
>     The two article surveys cited include 493 still-existent articles. At
>     the time I started mangling statistics, Wikipedia had 1,117,850
>     articles. So, it was simply a matter of multiplying the article
>     counts in the surveys by 2,267.44 and rounding to the nearest integer.
>
> Using google, excluding pages that have the word "talk", "user", or "archive", Digimon still gets about 18,500 en.wikipedia results.  Pokemon gets about 30,100.  About 643 for the category "american porn stars".  If we can get porn stars more coverage, they are MASSIVE after all, I might compromise on splitting pop culture into a separate pedia.~~~~Pro-Lick
>

Most of our porn star articles contain copyvios.

--
geni


list: foundation-l

from_name: Daniel Arnold

subject:
[Foundation-l] The status of smaller languages on the Wikimedia
	Commons

body:
Am Freitag, 05. Mai 2006 20:52 schrieb Gerard Meijssen:
> It does not. At this moment there is nothing stopping people from taking
> content from Commons. People do. We are not responsible for this, as it
> is. The best we can do is what we do. Mind you InstantCommons is NOT to
> be used for Wikimedia projects. From a performance point of view,
> currently many installations use the pictures of Commons on a real time
> basis. This has an impact on our responsiveness.

It is completely different if we officially have InstantCommons. If people
reuse Commons content now they know that they have nothing to say and thus do
not complain inside Commons but if we have an InstantCommons they will
complain like local Wikimedia wikis are doing right now an people like me
somehow need to handle that huge amount of different wishes.

Don't get me wrong I want InstantCommons but please give us the time
stabilizing the current Commons previous.

> The consequence of what you are saying is that our pictures are not Free
> to use.

Commons would be really free to reuse from a technical perspective if we would
have an image dump file. So currently Commons is locked into one place
ragardless of the license thing. A regular image dump is what we and our
"customers" need for various tasks. But I don't complain. I know that there
are technical issues that need to be solved previous so I am patient and do
not demand things from developers that have currently a low priority on their
agenda.

> Remember, Google is our friend :) We can even build in some functionality
> that helps the remote administrator to check Commons for issues.

A short site notice. *All* search engines (Google, Yahoo, MSN...) do not index
the images of *any* MediaWiki installation. They only index the thumbnails
used in Wikipedia articles (generally namespace 0) but not the pages in the
image namespace. Thus Commons is *completely hidden* from the internet for
average users. For details see:

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Village_pump#Googling_Images_revisited

So it would be very nice if the foundation could make this a high priority on
their agenda and notify some important people that their robots do not index
a huge amount of media files that are very important for their search engine
quality.

> You do not get my point. When policies are to be changed, when the way
> things work are to be changed, this is when you should inform the
> communities in advance.

Well we didn't change our policies up to now. We also don't want to become a
second en.wikipedia full of policies and thus want to keep the policy number
as low as possible.

> Some careful marketing communication is what is
> needed. Marketeers call it customer relations. And you /need /to inform
> your customers; when you do, you talk to all your customers when you
> don't you have to deal with them one at a time and you may find that
> customers do no longer give you their custom. Given how busy you are,
> you would not even notice.

Well one part of main current refactoring work is that wikipedians do not
percieve Commons as a huge chaos and thus make everything wrong at uplaod (so
pure customer relations). They should just see themselves afterwards how to
do what without larger explanations. If my Commons reorganisation work
doesn't explain itself I haven't done it right. The other one is quite
simple: I am my own customer. I am doing the stuff for myself. I originally
wanted to merge back the large number of image improvements of my WikiPress
book about the solar system but realized that it is better enabeling at first
others to do things perfect from the start and not running after them.

> Given your preference to limit your deliberations to your
> intimi, I am afraid this will not instil trust in the very people who
> refuse to use Commons.

We Wikimedia Commoners did invent several key software features reducing the
frustration of outsiders (CheckUsage, UserGallery, CatScan,  interface tweaks
like checker background for transparency detection and direct tool
integration and so forth) and do improve many pages and the interface a lot.
Often a small but deliberatly change like
http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=5716 can improve our project by
an order of magnitude.

So unhappy wikipedians should start acknowleding that we can't build Rome in
one day but do a lot in order to make them happy.

Regards,
Daniel Arnold / Arnomane


list: wikimedia-l


from_name: maru dubshinki

subject: [WikiEN-l] We need a pedia split

body:
On 5/6/06, Cheney Shill <halliburton_shill at yahoo.com> wrote:
Nor are we in a position according to you to determine what crap is.
After all, what we believe is crap today may very well to turn out to
be bio-fuel or natural gas tomorrow.  I'm simply setting forth one
principle for determining what crap is.  Besides, the real point of my
recommendation in this context regarding pop-culture items (Pokemon,
pop-stars, etc.) is to give them a holding place outside the
encyclopedia itself that is still part of Wiki until we have better
knowledge about where on the crap continuum they belong.  I'm not
recommending a flush, simply a split, and anything can be moved back
to the encyclopedia and is of course still accessible and editable
like any other Wiki content.~~~~Pro-Lick

Not at all. We are currently in a position to judge well old stuff- I
can't remember the last time someone complained about "Ancient
Greek-cruft" or "Renaissance-cruft", so while we certainly are still
missing notable stuff from those areas, we don't seem to have a
problem keeping out the non-notable crap stuff from that area.  My
argument was that we should try to filter out the lower levels of
horrible speedyable obvious crap that it is really unlikely anyone
will ever want, and leave the non-horrible crap that isn't harming
anything for later time periods to judge the finer borderline cases.
There's a practice in writing which is to bang out something and get
it nice, and then just leave it alone, coming back much later with a
fresh mind.

~maru


body:
Am Freitag, 05. Mai 2006 23:26 schrieb GerardM:
> In the past we have had issues the .svg being a notorious one. The
> consequence has been that many people I know off do not post to
> Commons anymore. A proposal on one project I know of to post only on
> Commons was defeated because of the resulting sentiments. Indeed it is
> your project, you do good work but your challenge is to do great work.

Well the reason is simple: I simply don't have the time running after the
flags and I am personally not interested working on flags. There is

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:CommonsProject_Insignia

maybe people that are really interested in flags should just start there
working together and not against each other? This page has been heavily
advertised and I even volunteered in assisting people but well I can do
nothing else if people refuse to work collaborative and refuse to share their
knowledge.

Regards,
Daniel Arnold / Arnomane


from_name: Erik Moeller

body:
On 5/6/06, Daniel Arnold <arnomane at gmx.de> wrote:

> It is completely different if we officially have InstantCommons. If people
> reuse Commons content now they know that they have nothing to say and thus do
> not complain inside Commons but if we have an InstantCommons they will
> complain like local Wikimedia wikis are doing right now an people like me
> somehow need to handle that huge amount of different wishes.

When I first showed the External Editor MediaWiki feature to Angela,
she said that it would probably increase the amount of image
vandalism. Of course it hasn't. The reason: In order to use it, you
have to install an obscure Perl script and set it up in your browser.
A vandal who can do that could also quickly hack together their own
vandalbot and do much more damage.

InstantCommons will not be that difficult, but in order to use it on a
wiki which has the feature enabled, you will initially have to search
for a filename on Commons to embed. I think this process of looking up
media on a separate wiki will lead to gradual adoption, rather than a
rapid increase of external usage.

Only over time, we hope to build better media search features for
Commons, and then even embed these in other wikis.

Furthermore, files will be locally cached, and it will be very clear
that Commons has no responsibility, legal or otherwise, for the
content. It is essentially little more than an easier way to copy
images and description pages from Commons to another wiki. Site admins
will get a maintenance script to delete images which have been deleted
from Commons (selecting the ones they want to purge using checkboxes).

If you have further concerns about the project, feel free to let me
know by private mail.

Erik


body:
Am Samstag, 06. Mai 2006 02:59 schrieb Erik Moeller:
> InstantCommons will not be that difficult, but in order to use it on a
> wiki which has the feature enabled, you will initially have to search
> for a filename on Commons to embed. I think this process of looking up
> media on a separate wiki will lead to gradual adoption, rather than a
> rapid increase of external usage.
>
> Only over time, we hope to build better media search features for
> Commons, and then even embed these in other wikis.

By the way I played a little bit with the the interface in order to improve
the media search in Commons. Have a look at:

http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Search&uselang=en

I just did make some bold use of [[MediaWiki:Searchresulttext]]. Maybe other
projects find this small idea useful can adapt it for their own needs.

Daniel Arnold / Arnomane


body:
On 5/5/06, BJ?rn Lindqvist <bjourne at gmail.com> wrote:

> The more decentralized, the less people involved, the more easy it is
> to form consensuses. So if there is a consensus among the group of
> Wikipedians working on Star Trek articles that "Tribble Rebellion of
> 2280" should be kept, then that is what should be done. I think it is
> perfectly clear that those who work in the topic area knows best what
> articles belong in it.

Following this principle, probably all content on Memory Alpha, a Star
Trek wiki edited by Star Trek experts, would be acceptable on
Wikipedia. This is, however, currently not the case. For instance,
Memory Alpha has individual articles about Star Trek DVDs which would
probably be merged or deleted on WP.

My belief is simply that Star Trek experts are often Star Trek fans,
and Star Trek fans will not like to delete content that is verifiable
and sourced only because it is not "notable" enough. Essentially, the
criterion of notability strikes me as difficult to sustain under such
conditions -- _unless_, instead of talking about Star Trek experts,
we're talking about television experts, or entertainment experts. Then
you have more diversity (and a certain healthy amount of animosity).

Splitting AfD into _broad_ topical categories might be a viable
approach to achieve consensus more frequently without significantly
altering the balance of inclusion vs. deletion. Then again, if we
could do Boolean category intersections, we could simply offer
diferent views on AfD. I think there's a toolserver tool for that
already, isn't there?

No matter how we organize, I am of course opposed to excluding people
from any AfD page because they are not "experts". Any reorganization
should merely be aimed at improving the "social flow".

Erik


subject:
[Foundation-l] A Wikisource Definition (was: RfC: A Free
	Content and Expression Definition)

body:
On 5/4/06, amgine at saewyc.net <amgine at saewyc.net> wrote:

> The Foundation should (and did) describe the projects goals and missions,
> and approve any modifications of these.

Wikisource ("Project Sourceberg") was created before the Foundation
even had a Board. This was during the time when new projects were
essentially set up when something had to be dumped from Wikipedia.
People were adding texts like national constitutions to Wikipedia
verbatim. Hence, the only mission statement I've seen for Wikisource
is on [[m:Wikisource]]:

"Mission: Allow people to handle primary sources better than
currently, so that no one gets upset. Maybe that means provide a
repository for primary sources; maybe that means figure out how to
improve the Wikipedia interface for linking to outside repositories."

People get flamed nowadays for even submitting project proposals like
this. You say I want to "dictate terms". But in actual fact, I want to
be clear about what the project should _allow_, not so much about what
it should _prohibit_. I do _not_ want a small group of a handful of
people to retroactively create a definition that has never been
written when it should have been. But that is exactly what will happen
if you leave, for example, the question of whether to allow
translations to the small, existing community of de.wikisource.org.

There are different scales of community involvement that are
appropriate for different purposes. Even for an individual page, you
may see cases where a group of editors is annoyed because someone else
suddenly opens up a discussion without ever having worked on the page
or having read past discussions.

However, nobody would argue that the people who have worked on a
single Wikipedia article have some special "right" to make up their
own policies -- because Wikipedia follows a particular philosophy,
which, to a certain extent, is even shared across languages. Nobody, I
hope, would seriously make the case that each language edition of
Wikipedia should have a different logo symbol (as opposed to the
subtitle). So these decisions are made on a project-wide level.

And in addition to the project level, there is the Wikimedia level.
This includes involvement from the entire Wikimedia community, whether
they have worked on a specific project or not. This is where we decide
whether to launch a new projects. And in the case of old projects that
did not go through this process, I think this is where the scope will
have to be, gently and through a largely consultative process that of
course involves the existing community, gradually defined or refined.

This has nothing to do with "dictating terms". Some see Wikimedia as a
group of largely disparate tribes, others see it as a single
community. It is, however, both. Some decisions are best made locally,
some globally.

The ability to make global decisions, to arrive at a single definition
for a project scope, to consistently enforce free content principles
and NPOV, and so forth, is one of the reasons to have an organization
like Wikimedia in the first place. The other key reason I can see is
to build an ever larger community that is given ever more
opportunities to do good. Both are negatively affected by excessive
tribalism.

What else do we need Wikimedia for? Fundraising? The projects would
probably be more effective in this regard if they could work
independently, and besides, none is even remotely on the same scale as
Wikipedia. Wikimedia without a Wikimedia community identity is a
pointless entity.

I hope "Wikisourcerors" see themselves also as members of the larger
Wikimedia community. I hope everyone who works on a Wikimedia project
does.

Erik


body:
On 5/6/06, Matt Brown <morven at gmail.com> wrote:
> I don't think we tend to boast about our numbers of user accounts, do
> we?  User accounts unused for <x> months and with no undeleted
> contributions should be pruned though, I think, simply from a
> manageability point of view.
>

Why? I can show you accounts that could fit your description that
should not be deleted (most of the first page of [[special:listuser]]
for a start)

--
geni


body:
On 5/6/06, amgine at saewyc.net <amgine at saewyc.net> wrote:

> That's an awfully long way to say we should ignore the last half of my
> sentence - "and approve modifications of these" - and instead have a
> top-down approach where changes come from outside and not from the inside.

Changes need to come from the outside _and_ from the inside.

Erik


from_name: John Tex

subject: [WikiEN-l] Reply to Tony - advocacy is a fact of life

body:
Hi Tony,

I'm sorry if I jumped to the wrong conclusion.  Perhaps "right" was not the
best word choice.  I'll change my statement to "advocacy is a fact of life".

Johntex

> Message: 2
> Date: Fri, 5 May 2006 16:50:37 +0100
> From: "Tony Sidaway" <f.crdfa at gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Reply to Tony on advocacy - resend with new
>         title
> To: "English Wikipedia" <wikien-l at wikipedia.org>
> Message-ID:
>         <605709b90605050850i76d79eb3x269a52ada0e33c66 at mail.gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed
>
> On 5/5/06, John Tex <johntexster at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > I thought it was a bit rude of you to essentially invite me to leave the
> > project with your "You're on the wrong project, mate."
>
>
> I think you're being somewhat disingenuous by implying that I invited
> you to leave.  Stay by all means, but don't describe advocacy as a
> right.
>
>
>
>


from_name: Cheney Shill

body:
Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:

    On 5/6/06, Peter Ansell wrote:
    > In general, I would also like to see some sort of guideline and
    > enforcement for notifying major contributors to an article in advance
    > of nomination, not just letting them see the banner on the page, or
    > notifying them after the start of the process.

    Could be done automatically if everyone who has the article in their
    watchlist received a talk page message. Having the article in your
    watchlist demonstrates you care a bit - but doesn't confirm that you
    will actually see the AfD.

I like this idea too, whether it happens via watchlist, a bot going through the article's history, or both.~~~~Pro-Lick

---------------------------------
How low will we go? Check out Yahoo! Messenger?s low  PC-to-Phone call rates.


from_name: Mark Gallagher

body:
G'day Phil W,

> On May 5, 2006, at 1:14 PM, geni wrote:
>>Not true. Article RFCs can resolve dissputes. I don't know about
>>medation.
>
> Article RFCs and mediation actually are dispute resolution, but user
> conduct regulation is called "dispute resolution" even though it isn't.

You must admit, going before ArbCom tends to resolve disputes, one way
or another.

--
Mark Gallagher
"What?  I can't hear you, I've got a banana on my head!"
- Danger Mouse

--
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body:
charles matthews <charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com> wrote:

    "Cheney Shill" wrote

    >I like this idea too, whether it happens via watchlist, a bot going through
    >the article's history, or both.~~~~Pro-Lick

    Oh great. Either others get to find out what pages I watch (traditionally
    confidential); or I get spam from times I corrected a typo.

I can understand the privacy issue and have no problem dropping watchlists as a potential source.  The "spam", however, is 1) not spam, 2) simply notifying you the article is up for deletion.  I don't think it's too much to ask for contributors to take a second to read the article title and decide if they care whether or not it's deleted.  The section title could say something like "Article Pokemon Porn is under deletion review" and the content could simply be a link to the deletion page.  If the bot is set to automatically ignore IPs and minor edits, there's even a way for you to avoid the notification by marking the typo fixes as minor.~~~~Pro-Lick

---------------------------------
New Yahoo! Messenger with Voice. Call regular phones from your PC and save big.


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject:
[Foundation-l] A Wikisource Definition (was: RfC: A Free
 Content and Expression Definition)

body:
amgine at saewyc.net wrote:

>This is all well and good to present your ideas of what this project is
>and should do. I tend to give weight to the people who are actually doing.
>The Foundation should (and did) describe the projects goals and missions,
>and approve any modifications of these. But changes from outside that
>process from people not involved in it?
>
The project goals and mission were pretty well set by the people who
were among the earliest involved in the project.  This is not to say
that these can't be changed at all based on subsequent information.  In
retrospect it is easy to see that the series of software snippets should
not have been in there at all.

>Wikisource doesn't have some of the things I see as part of their mission
>- Galleries of artwork (they are the proper repository for such), original
>research (transcriptions of oral histories, for example), or a legal
>library (collections of court decisions, to be used as references for a
>Wikibooks curriculum of law textbooks) to name just a few - but from
>outside the project and unwilling (-able?) to put in the work to add this
>content I have little or no basis to try to dictate to them.
>
Galleries of artwork have never been seen as belonging to Wikisource,
unless, of course, they are illustrations to books that are already
added.  Most of them belong in the Commons.  The others should indeed go
there.  But just like anybody can edit Wikipedia, so too can anybody add
this material to Wikisource.

Ec


from_name: Fred Bauder

subject: [WikiEN-l] Criticism sections on bios of living people

body:
On May 5, 2006, at 11:06 PM, A wrote:

> 1. Is a "____sucks.com" blog a notable or reliable source?

I would say it depends on its content and readership. It might be,
but you have to take a look at it. In this case there seems to be
substantial readership and contents could probably be used in the
context. "Hostile critics, writing on ...sucks point out blah blah."
In some cases sites like this may engage in serious research which
can lead you to reliable verifiable material. (For example Xenu.net,
an anti-Scientology site).

> 2. If an editor is engaging in vicious personal attacks offsite, then
> coming here and demanding civility, is that a violation of the letter
> and/or spirit of the project?

All users are entitled to the assumption of good faith and to
courtesy regardless of off-site activity.

> 3. Are "criticism" sections valid in general, or do they just become a
> repository for quibbles and an amplifier of relatively insignificant
> hatecruft about a person?

In general they are valid, however in cases where there is political
or social struggle in progress, criticism can transgress bounds of
verifiability, rationality and good taste, sometimes simply being
mean or spiteful, sometimes reflecting personal grievances.

> 4. If they are valid, do blogs count as notable or reliable sources?
> What if they are anonymous? Are there criteria in place for
> determining this?

Generally not for facts; they are a source regarding their own
contents. The criteria in place is our requirement that for material
to be included in Wikipedia it must have been published in a reliable
source.

> 5. Should we formulate a guideline regarding living persons and this
> kind of criticism in their biographies?

We have a guideline Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons which
includes a section on Malicious editing and another on Opinions of
critics, opponents, and detractors. This guideline could be further
refined. Your experience somewhat qualities you to at least begin
discussions on the talk page.

I hope these responses are a start on some answers.

Fred


body:
We are not as kind and helpful as we could be. If we all try to do
better, will you adopt a more modest stance and try some simple
editing (on Wikipedia itself) and see how it turns out? It is kind of
up to you to decide whether editing Wikipedia is fun or worth while.

Fred

On May 5, 2006, at 5:10 PM, <julieharding1 at charter.net>
<julieharding1 at charter.net> wrote:

>  I'm spending two thirds of my time trying to get troublemakers to
> leave me alone.  Then, very rarely, a serious posting reaches me
> and I can respond.  This is rediculous!  Last night I got accused
> of being on crack, I was accused of being insane, and today I was
> referred to as a "Boob."  Yet obviously my opinion must count for
> something because my e-box is full.
> -Julie


from_name: Guettarda

subject: [WikiEN-l] Copyright question

body:
If you have unpublished photographs taken by a deceased relative which you
wish to use on Wikipedia, how would you license them?  Assuming that you
have survivor rights or permission from other heirs of the photographer,
would it be possible to release them under the GFDL or cc by sa?  If they
were taken by, say, your grandfather, and there is nothing in his will
dealing with "other stuff", would you have to get permission from all of his
surviving children, or their heirs (if the children are deceased)?  I'm
assuming here that the photographs are otherwise unpublished, and were taken
recently enough/the person was alive recently enough that they would still
be covered by copyright.

Ian


body:
On 5/6/06, Matt Brown <morven at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hmm.  I'd doubt many people in the world believe we've reached a
> million articles without handling a lot of trivia.  Do you really
> think that anyone would be surprised by the fact that a good portion
> of that million are on such subjects?

Well, of course, but at the same time, we're totally missing articles
on some actual genuinely interesting and notable subjects. I was
shocked to find that there are some Ch?teaux in the Loire Valley that
don't have an article.

> I don't think we tend to boast about our numbers of user accounts, do
> we?  User accounts unused for <x> months and with no undeleted
> contributions should be pruned though, I think, simply from a
> manageability point of view.

I seem to recall having seen a few references to our user count in
newspaper articles. Wildly differing figures of course.

> I've noticed people mentioning our active user count and our admin
> count more often than the total.

Probably true. Not that our "admin count" is particularly meaningful
either, of course.

Steve


from_name: A

body:
Thanks for the comments so far regarding a criticism section on the
[[Xeni Jardin]] article. While I of course agree that people who are
controversial should have that covered in their bios (like what I
wrote in the [[Paul Barresi]] article I mentioned above), I'm not sure
it's encyclopedic to include a litany of complaints from non-notable
bloggers and readers who basically don't like someone or their work.
Jardin doesn't seem that controversial. And just because she is a
blogger (on a high traffic award-winning blog) does not make all blogs
fair game for inclusion in the article. I argued that if some blog as
notable as Boing Boing had some criticisms of Jardin, that should be
included, but that's not the case here. There are questions being
raised regarding the interpretation of existing policies as they apply
to blogs. Muddling this a bit is that the xenisucks.com site was
mentioned by Jardin on Boing Boing and that was subsequently mentioned
in a tech column in the NYT. I'm not sure that qualifies as
notability, but there are strong opinions by xenisucks.com supporters
that the site is notable based on that.

At any rate, another editor opened a RfC, so anyone interested can
stop by and examine the evidence. It would be great if some
experienced editors and administrators would take a look and comment.
Thanks!

Jokestress


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Platonides

subject: [Wikitech-l] Problem with references when transcluding

body:
"Steve Bennett"
> On 03/05/06, Adrian Buehlmann wrote:
>> Is there a workaround?
Have you tried to <noinclude> the <references>, so they don't appear on the
global page? Then you only need to add a <references> on the bottom of the
includer page.


from_name: Bryce Roney

subject: [Foundation-l] Wikistats

body:
On 5/5/06, Lars Aronsson <lars at aronsson.se> wrote:
>
> Bryce Roney wrote:
>
> > I have just proposed a new project, you can find more info here:
> > http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikistats_proposal . Please comment :)
>
> No, you have not.  You've written ten lines that say absolutely
> nothing about your chances to bring this to successful completion.
> It's like you're begging for a fast deletion.  It's like you think
> people will thank you for spawning unrealistic ideas. Think again.
>
> I'm not speaking for the foundation.
>
>
> --
>   Lars Aronsson (lars at aronsson.se)
>   Aronsson Datateknik - http://aronsson.se

I am not begging for deletion, nor begging for thanks. I was simply putting
foward an idea to see what the reaction would be.  I do not know what kind
of information the wider public  would want to see in this project. That's
why I am inviting them to suggest data and information.


subject: [Foundation-l] Wikistats


subject: [WikiEN-l] [Mediawiki-l]  Upload by default toCommons?

body:
"Filip Maljkovic" wrote:
> Rob Church wrote:
>> [snip]
>> Now for the relevant bit. It's been discussed before, a little, and I
>> touched upon it in a recent discussion sparked off from the newbie's
>> questions...but it could be feasible for us to replace our
>> Special:Upload pages with something a bit more intelligent. Making use
>> of the licencing dropdowns, we could, I think, redirect free images to
>> Commons in a seamless fashion (after checking existence and providing
>> a courteous note to the user, of course).

If we already had the unique login system, it would only be a fact of <form
action changing at the user level.


subject:
[Wikitech-l] [Mediawiki-l] [WikiEN-l] Upload by default
	toCommons?


from_name: amgine at saewyc.net

subject:
[Foundation-l] The status of smaller languages on the Wikimedia
 Commons

body:
On Sat, 2006-06-05 at 18:13 +0200, folengo at netcourrier.com wrote:

> I think "notafish"'s idea(3) of "launching a massive
>  translation rally"is a good idea. I am ready to go to every village
>  pump of every concerned Wikipedia, use babelfish or Google
>  language tool when I can, or leave a message in French or English
>  when I can't, and recruit a voluntary translator for the Main Page
>  in each language. It is also possible to use all our connections to
>  people who know someone, who know someone... who knows a
>  given language, as Brianna (4) who says she knows someone who
>  speaks arabic. It is also possible to use the History of the pages in
>  the various languages to find the names of the people who wrote
>  them. I think this is a workable alternative to Arnomane's threats,
>  but I am fearful of implementing it in conditions that would enable
>  Arnomane to think that his threats are showing positive results,
> and of going to these village pumps as a message bearer of a
>  threat.
>
>
> Links
> 1) http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Template_talk:Lang-mp
> 2) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Road_to_Serfdom
> 3) http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2006-May/006988.html
> 4) http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2006-May/006995.html
>
> http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Teofilo

Teofilo, please let others help with this effort!

The internal communications subcommittee is working on compiling a list of
water coolers/village pumps/beer parlours/caf?s/etc. You can see some of
their work at
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Communications_committee/Internal/Distribution_list

The promotion and translation subcommittee is very interested in helping
with translation tasks. Their page is at
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Communications_subcommittees/PT but they
may be contacted via the Communications Committee mailing list at
wmfcc-l at mail.wikimedia.org (this list is moderated to reduce spam.)

The Communications Committee holds weekly meetings to be available to the
community. You can see the schedule and agenda for meetings on the
Committee's page on Meta:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Communications_committee

Amgine


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject:
[Wikitech-l] [Mediawiki-l] [WikiEN-l] Upload by
	default	toCommons?

body:
Rob Church wrote:
> No. The idea is to handle the upload from the home wiki, so to speak;
> the user shouldn't ever need to be directed somewhere on Commons.

Consider that we have four wikis hosted on a separate cluster and may expand
this as time goes on. They'd need some way to copy the file back up to the
central cluster etc. Doable, but it's not just a matter of slipping a few
entries into a second database.

Personally, I'd prefer bouncing them to Commons, and having it bounce them back
when they're done.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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from_name: Philip Welch

subject: [WikiEN-l] Ha Ha Ha you are so funny Jimbo!!

body:
On May 6, 2006, at 9:18 AM, Thommandel at aol.com wrote:

> Have you ever given even a thought to those of us who read your
> encyclopedia?  How come I never once heard the word "reader"?
> Could  it be because the
> thousand or so hits a day are from editors only?

Doubtful, we're among the top 20 websites on the Internet. If you
never hear us talk about the readers, you aren't paying attention.

> I "stumbled" across Wikipedia looking for information on Plasma
> cosmology
> via Google. I was astounded at your so-called neutrality. Not only
> did the
> article define plasma incorrectly, the POV was obviously biased
> against plasma
> cosmology. Not to mention the very poor writing. So I really
> thought that one
> could make the necessary corrections but guess what? After spending
> an evening
> posting the corrections, they were simply reverted.

I don't know anything about cosmology. I do know something about
bias--since you are biased towards plasma cosmology, perhaps
neutrality is perceived by you as a negative bias? I know that
Wikipedia tends to avoid giving undue weight to non-standard theories.

> So did you research my complaint? Or did you just assume that
> because I
> complained I had to be in the wrong?

The following complains are almost never taken seriously because most
of the people who offer them are kooks:

1. The admins are abusing their power, and I'm really a good editor.
2. My fringe scientific theory isn't fairly represented in Wikipedia.

You're offering complaint #2. I'll be square with you: we tend to be
dismissive of people who offer complaint #2 because most of them are
kooks. Proving you're not a kook requires calmness, civility, and
refraining from being as much of a prick as you're being right now.

> I confined my subsequent efforts to the talk pages, never fell for the
> revert trick, and when they started to remove stuff I wrote on the
> talk page,  and
> I suggested that if they did that in the real world they would be
> taken to
> court, they blocked me.  Twice.

Because such remarks are completely useless and counterproductive and
only contribute to the perception of you as a kook. You're digging
your own grave here, brother.

> Does Wikipedia have any notion of what ethical behavior is?

Yes.

> So you are a private company, and you can do as you damn well
> please.   (Why
> the .org?)

Because we're a non-profit private company.

> Your encyclopedia is not "free" it is run by the powers to be, You
> joke
> about the "cabel" but what do you do about it?

We joke about the cabal because it doesn't exist, despite numerous
accusations from crazy people and repeat trolls that it does.

> You support each other as if an admin can do no wrong.

We have some damn good admins. If we're weighing who we trust more,
an admin, or some guy off the street who seems to be a physics kook,
we trust the admin. So far you haven't been calm and rational enough
to overcome that bias.

> You have no control of the admins, and they  don't  expect any.

We've desysopped several admins in the past for abusing their
privileges.

> You have no ethics program in place.  There is no such  thing as
> ethics in Wikipedia.  Ethics is a joke.

We don't think in terms of ethics because the problems facing
Wikipedia are pragmatic, not ethical. Ethically speaking, the only
concerns are (a) civility, (b) the right to fork, and (c) the right
to leave. As long as we respect those three things, it would be
perfectly ethical of us to, say, remove all mention of fringe
scientific theories. It's not pragmatic of us to do so, but it's
perfectly ethical.

Hell, it's perfectly ethical for Jimbo to just block everyone he
doesn't like.

> In the real world, the police are not above the law. They have to
> stop at
> red lights just like the rest of us. They cannot steal just like
> the rest of us.
>  They are expected to set examples, their standards of conduct are
> actually
> higher than the rest of us.  And they are accountable to the rest
> of  us.  But
> in Wikipedia, the police are accountable to no one. They can and
> do form
> groups which support each other.

Admins aren't police. Admins are people who can block people from
editing a website and delete articles. To even compare admins to
police is lunacy.

--
Philip L. Welch
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Philwelch


from_name: Thommandel at aol.com

body:
In a message dated 5/5/2006 9:32:37 P.M. Central Daylight Time,
m.g.gallagher at student.canberra.edu.au writes:

Do you  ... actually *contribute* to Wikipedia?  The image you present
here  is of someone who stumbled across Wikipedia, started editing
articles in a  manner that conflicted with our neutrality policy without
really knowing  what on Earth you were doing, got pissed off (still
without learning what  was going on), showed up on the mailing list
repeatedly asking the same  ignorant question (and, when it was answered,
repeatedly, still failed to  understand anything), and has since just
hung around like a bad smell,  occasionally sallying forth to spray mucus
onto the list and pretend it  has any value.

Please, mate, *try* editing Wikipedia.  *Try*  getting along with other
people.  *Try* working out how our core  policies interact and how we
work to write the encyclopaedia.  You  might just find, if you're willing
to put in the effort, that you actually  like it.  And if you don't ...
well, what are you doing  here?

Have you ever given even a thought to those of us who read your
encyclopedia?  How come I never once heard the word "reader"?  Could  it be because the
thousand or so hits a day are from editors only?

I have been on the Internet since Win 1.0, I have two websites of my own,
and was the creator and webmaster for seven years of an international systems
website. I was editor in chief of a University newspaper, editor of my own
newsletter, created two of my own journals and have a paper "Operating principle
of the Universe" in press at a peer reviewed science journal.  I happen to
love science and spend my spare time researching.

I "stumbled" across Wikipedia looking for information on Plasma cosmology
via Google. I was astounded at your so-called neutrality. Not only did the
article define plasma incorrectly, the POV was obviously biased against plasma
cosmology. Not to mention the very poor writing. So I really thought that one
could make the necessary corrections but guess what? After spending an evening
posting the corrections, they were simply reverted.

So did you research my complaint? Or did you just assume that because I
complained I had to be in the wrong? Why would I conform to your system? To
conform to your system is to present a POV that is NOT neutral  but is  slanted
toward the perspective of those who have nothing better to do than edit
articles.

Well, it turns out ladies and gentlemen, that the plasma cosmology article
is dominated by the big bang advocates.  I found it impossible to post
anything which would suggest that there is a controversy about cosmology.  Indeed,
along with me was a plasma cosmologist who wrote the book "The Big  Bang Never
Happened" but he too was reverted until he finally went away. The  lone plasma
cosmology advocate was threatened and demeaned and he too is now  quiet.

I have been insulted repeatedly,  for which BTW, I never returned  fire.
(Knowing full well what happens when one does that)  This group of  big bang
advocates have essentially cleaned all the related articles about  cosmology  of
any evidence that suggests that there is a controversy.   Removal of critical
evidence in some cases is a crime, in most cases it is not  ethical. In all
cases it is deceptive. According to them most cosmologists have  discredited
alternative cosmologies.  Yet if one really does examine the  evidence,  it is the
big bang theory that has been discredited.  Interesting, because Plasma itself
is not a theory, it makes up 99% of the  Universe and is as real as
electricity.  Which, incidentally, is how they  defined plasma to begin with.

I confined my subsequent efforts to the talk pages, never fell for the
revert trick, and when they started to remove stuff I wrote on the talk page,  and
I suggested that if they did that in the real world they would be  taken to
court, they blocked me.  Twice.

When I came to this list, and stated my problem, the first reply was "A  good
Wikipedian can do what he damn well pleases."  What in the hell is  that? And
the subsequent replies were yes and yes and yes. The only rational  reply
came from a newbie who suggested that when an opponent edits the opposing
article, a negative edit is not ethical.  But that was the end of that.

Does Wikipedia have any notion of what ethical behavior is?  When a  campaign
manager tried to edit the opponent's  page he ended up  resigning. That's the
real world guys.

So you are a private company, and you can do as you damn well please.   (Why
the .org?) Tell Enron that. But some day it is going to come back and bite
you big time. There may well be  newspapers who have planted "editors"  with
selected (correct) information  and are compiling the actions of  your admins as
we speak.  You should do that too.

Your encyclopedia is not "free" it is run by the powers to be, You joke
about the "cabel" but what do you do about it? You support each other as if an
admin can do no wrong.   You have no control of the admins, and they  don't
expect any. You have no ethics program in place.  There is no such  thing as
ethics in Wikipedia.  Ethics is a joke.

Your whole private system is becoming a joke. Serious researchers do not  use
Wikipedia, but the children do. And it is the children that will suffer. Our
future is at stake and you all think it is a joke.

In the real world, the police are not above the law. They have to stop at
red lights just like the rest of us. They cannot steal just like the rest of us.
 They are expected to set examples, their standards of conduct are actually
higher than the rest of us.  And they are accountable to the rest of  us.  But
in Wikipedia, the police are accountable to no one. They can and  do form
groups which support each other.

They can insult, intimidate, and "do as they damn well please."   Wikipedia
is not honest.  And it is not "mature."  The kind of writing  I read here would
not last a single day in the real editorial world.

So you can call me incompetent and pathological and disruptive and ignorant
all you want, and you can delete my rantings too, but actually you are
projecting your faults onto me and the likes of me.  Oh, you have no  faults, sorry.
 I see, the "stench" you smell is coming from me.   Well, there is a cancer
in your private business, and unless you cut it out, it  will continue to grow
until one day you will die.  And, no, that is not a  legal threat. I have no
interest in taking you to court.  But I will spend  a lot of time telling the
truth.

I am not saying that everyone is corrupt.  Nor am I suggesting that most are
corrupt. But my experience with Wikipedia has been corrupted by only a  small
number,& and judging from the communications on this list, for  example,
nothing is or will be done about it.   No wonder someone  suggested that real names
never be used. I regret that I have stated mine.

No, I am not pissed off, I am scared shitless...

Tommy Mandel

PS.  Just in case someone is interested in the problem, I have  included
below a transcript of part of the problem.  The problem is that it  is often said
(elsewhere) that Hubble proved the expansion of the Universe  hence,
extrapolating backwards, the Big Bang theory. But in fact Hubble DID NOT  prove
expansion, he opposed the idea. Expansion comes from the assumption that  redshift is
Doppler caused an assumption that he did not agree with until his  dying day.
 So when I tried to insert the following, it was deleted  out.  This is my
serious attempt to work with Wikipedia -

"The Doppler interpretation of the observed redshift is not without
controversy. Non-standard cosmological theories dispute the Doppler assumption  of the
redshift, claiming instead, that the redshift is caused by intrinsic
properties of interactions of light with matter. Supporting this conjecture,
observations by W. Tifft show that the redshift has a periodic or quantized  aspect
which is not consistent with
expansion.<ref>ttp://public.lanl.gov/alp/plasma/downloads/Tifft.pdf  </ref> Previously, it has also been reported in the
Journal of the Royal  Astronomical Society of Canada, by A Sandage as his Centennial
Celebration of  Hubble's birth, that Hubble himself did not consider redshift
as an indicator of  expansion, Sandage wrote: "Hubble concluded that his
observed log N(m)  distribution showed a large departure from Euclidean geometry,
provided that the  effect of redshifts on the apparent magnitudes was
calculated as if the  redshifts were due to a real expansion. A different correction
is required if no  motion exists, the redshifts then being due to an unknown
cause. Hubble believed  that his count data gave a more reasonable result
concerning spatial curvature  if the redshift correction was made assuming no
recession. "
<ref>http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/diamond_jubilee/1996/sandage_hubble.html</ref>  The controversy remains to be resolved. "

Then they deleted it out, from the big bang page, from the alternative
cosmology page and from the plasma cosmology page. This is how it went on the  talk
page.
Hubble's opinion
What is the point of including in the article Hubble's opinion of the origin
of the Hubble relation? An interesting bit of historical color? Argument from
 authority? Considering the progress in observational and theoretical
cosmology  in the last 70 years, it can hardly be considered relevant for the
scientific  argument, particularly since his objections appear to be philosophical,
not  observational, i.e. he just didn't like the idea of a finite-age universe.
--_Art Carlson_ (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Art_Carlson)  14:34, 21
April 2006 (UTC)
I agree with that, and would not object to its removal based on that
argument. --_Iantresman_ (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Iantresman)  15:02, 21
April 2006 (UTC)

The point is that it has been stated in many places that "Hubble proved  the
Universe is expanding" when in fact Hubble did not believe that. And  what you
call historical color is also called prior research. And what you  call
argument from authority is called verifiable research. And he did not  base his
opinion on philosophical grounds. So all your arguments are  misleading and
baseless and very suspicious as to motives _Tommy  Mandel_
(http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Tommysun&action=edit)  13:04, 1 May 2006 (UTC)

To start, Doppler redshift is not an observation, it is an assumption. Hubble
 did not agree with the standard assumption. Second, many cosmologists do not
 agree with the standard view that the redshift indicates expansion. While
early  attempts to account for the redshift were fruitless, recent research such
as the  CREIL effect can account for redshift. Thirdly, mentioned or not by
other  cosmologists, Tifft's findings are observations that are not consistent
with  expansion. Therefore, it is likely that redshift does not have a
significant  Doppler component. If this turns out to be the case, then Hubble's
thinking is  on the mark and thus relevant to the upcoming change in thinking.
Especially  when it is being claimed by many that "Hubble proved expansion."
Lastly, if you  read Sandage's account, philosophy does not enter into it. _Tommy
Mandel_ (http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Tommysun&action=edit)
05:40, 22 April 2006 (UTC)

None of this has anything to do with Plasma cosmology. Revert.
--_ScienceApologist_ (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:ScienceApologist)   06:02, 22 April
2006 (UTC)

Are you certain about that, Joshua? There is an established body of knowledge
 which is essentially saying that the redshift is not caused by the assumed
Doppler effect. Of course, as a big bang supporter, you realize that if this
is  true, then the big bang theory is no longer a viable theory. And then
Plasma  cosmology would rise to the occasion and become the theory of choice.
Recall  that Doppler redshift was not observed, it was added to Hubble's original
equation by including "c" the velocity of light. This is what Hubble couldn't
agree with, that by doing so a relationship between distance and expansion
was  established.
I would also like to remind you, that intrinsic redshift is indeed a property
 of plasma. Essentially the evidence is indicating that the redshift is
caused by  interaction with plasma, although most cosmologists prefer to use the
generic  term "matter." Certainly you are aware that when matter is heated, by
the center  of a galaxy for instance, it becomes ionized, i.e., plasma?
At any rate, Hubble's opinions belongs to "prior research" which all of
science is committed to. _Tommy  Mandel_
(http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Tommysun&action=edit)  16:33, 22 April 2006 (UTC)
I would like to add, that in the real world, it is being stated over and over
 that "Hubble proved" the universe is expanding. This belief that Hubble
"proved"  expansion is not true. The relationship was assumed, not observed. As
evidence,  I submitted Hubble's true beliefs, which you then discarded. One
would expect an  encyclopedia to be informative about such situations. However, a
serious  researcher probably would not depend on Wikiinfo, nevertheless,
students find it  convenient, and there will be a price to pay if this encyclopedia
promotes a  theory which in the future will be shown to be false. I am not
sure of the legal  implications. Much depends on "intent to deceive" as well as
the actual act of  deception. The promotion of a theory which in the end is
false, is indeed  deceptive to start with. If it was purposely done, then the
intent to deceive is  also present. It is possible then, for Wikipedia to be
sued by some party who  can show she or he was injured by the deception. And in
the case of the big bang  theory, there are plenty of those.
_Tommy  Mandel_
(http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Tommysun&action=edit)  16:46, 22 April 2006 (UTC)

Hmm. If that isn't a legal threat, it's dancing on the edge. _Art LaPella_
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Art_LaPella)  17:20, 22  April 2006 (UTC)

Pointing out that if Wikipedia knowingly publishes false information and
thus can be sued by those who are injured by that false information, even if
Wikipedia is a third party, is not a threat, it is a warning. I would, if I  were
you, be very careful

_Tommy  Mandel_
(http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Tommysun&action=edit)  18:18, 22 April 2006 (UTC)

This is definitely a legal threat. You were warned before. I have  notified
the administrator who blocked you before for such behavior and  we'll see what
he says. --_ScienceApologist_
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:ScienceApologist)   18:36, 22 April 2006 (UTC)

It is also spurious one, and a complete waste of everyone's time.

(Then I was blocked for a week.  The first time was because  they removed my
evidence from the talk page that they are big bang  supporters, leaving only
the links, which incidentally do not lead to  the actual quotes)

While you had me blocked for warning you, a campaign manager  resigned
because he edited the opponents Wikipage. _Tommy  Mandel_
(http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Tommysun&action=edit)  13:04, 1 May 2006 (UTC)

"Life is more dangerous, but it is not the fault of all those  persons who
are malignant (by nature), as it is the outcome of the many more who  remain
quiet waiting to see what will happen" Albert Einstein


body:
G'day Phil W,

> On May 5, 2006, at 1:23 PM, Mark Gallagher wrote:
>
>>> Article RFCs and mediation actually are dispute resolution, but user
>>> conduct regulation is called "dispute resolution" even though it  isn't.
>>
>> You must admit, going before ArbCom tends to resolve disputes, one way
>> or another.
>
> Well, it resolves disputes frequently by eliminating one of the
> disputants. I still maintain that it's a user conduct process and not  a
> dispute resolution process.

... yes, that was the joke.

Gah.  I'm 0 for 2 so far.

--
Mark Gallagher
"What?  I can't hear you, I've got a banana on my head!"
- Danger Mouse

--
No virus found in this outgoing message.
Checked by AVG Free Edition.
Version: 7.1.392 / Virus Database: 268.5.5/333 - Release Date: 5/05/2006


body:
G'day Thom,

<snip/>
> Oh, now I get it, HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA I'm so sorry, it's just that I
> have been out of school for so long I guess...
>   s-e-t-t-i-n-g  e-x-a-m-p-l-e     m-a-t-u-r-i-t-y
>
> Opps, you are a private company and "can do as you damn well please..."

Do you ... actually *contribute* to Wikipedia?  The image you present
here is of someone who stumbled across Wikipedia, started editing
articles in a manner that conflicted with our neutrality policy without
really knowing what on Earth you were doing, got pissed off (still
without learning what was going on), showed up on the mailing list
repeatedly asking the same ignorant question (and, when it was answered,
repeatedly, still failed to understand anything), and has since just
hung around like a bad smell, occasionally sallying forth to spray mucus
onto the list and pretend it has any value.

Please, mate, *try* editing Wikipedia.  *Try* getting along with other
people.  *Try* working out how our core policies interact and how we
work to write the encyclopaedia.  You might just find, if you're willing
to put in the effort, that you actually like it.  And if you don't ...
well, what are you doing here?

--
Mark Gallagher
"What?  I can't hear you, I've got a banana on my head!"
- Danger Mouse

--
No virus found in this outgoing message.
Checked by AVG Free Edition.
Version: 7.1.392 / Virus Database: 268.5.5/333 - Release Date: 5/05/2006


from_name: charles matthews

subject: [WikiEN-l] We need a pedia split

body:
"Cheney Shill" wrote

> Besides, the real point of my recommendation in this context regarding
> pop-culture items (Pokemon, pop-stars, etc.) is to give them a holding
> place outside the encyclopedia itself that is still part of Wiki until we
> have better knowledge about where on the crap continuum they belong.

I don't know that there is much to say on this topic, that has not already
been said often before.

What we know works is to look at

- articles that contain reference infomation, in the sense that some class
of people are going to want to refer to it
- and which can be categorised clearly
- and which meet some minimum standards of writing.

We have never succeeded in defining encyclopedic knowledge more directly:
notability is just a minefield, and everyone knows examples from popular
culture where the stuff that has the high profile is the trash and the
neglected or 'cult' is going to be what lasts.  Everyone is entitled to the
mental shift that designates Star Wars backstory pages as off-wiki as far as
they are concerned.  Why should we believe that finally drawing the line on
inclusion is going to be possible?  It's a theoretical issue for academics,
really.

Charles


from_name: Kirill Lokshin

subject: [WikiEN-l] We need a pedia split

body:
On 5/6/06, maru dubshinki <marudubshinki at gmail.com> wrote:
> Not at all. We are currently in a position to judge well old stuff- I
> can't remember the last time someone complained about "Ancient
> Greek-cruft" or "Renaissance-cruft", so while we certainly are still
> missing notable stuff from those areas, we don't seem to have a
> problem keeping out the non-notable crap stuff from that area.

I can't recall the names of the articles, but there was a series of
16th-century samurai bios up for deletion recently on the grounds that
they were "non-notable retainers" ;-)

Kirill Lokshin


from_name: Stephen Bain

subject: [WikiEN-l] NPOV majorities/minorities

body:
On 5/5/06, Cheney Shill <halliburton_shill at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> I agree about the 10 fringe vs. 2 authorities.  But that has nothing to do with this scenario, in which the sources are of equal authority.  In fact, the very fact that you turned a non-ambiguous scenario into an ambiguous scenario is evidence that the process itself is far too ambiguous.  It's not just you; I have not gotten 1 straight answer on this.  Are we not supposed to be judging and reporting on the facts as they are, not as we think they should be?~~~~Pro-Lick

NPOV is not a process, that's the problem with your line of thinking.
If it were, someone could write a nice script, and people would input
a list of sources and encyclopaedia articles would come out the other
end.

NPOV is an editorial skill, one of the more difficult editorial skills
to learn. Trying to reduce it to a formula will not work, because
there is no perfect scenario like you outline. Sources will always
need evaluating, that is the role of editors.

--
Stephen Bain
stephen.bain at gmail.com


from_name: Guy Chapman aka JzG

body:
On Fri, 5 May 2006 18:40:09 EDT, you wrote:

>Opps, you are a private company and "can do as you damn well please..."

Correct.  Well done.  Lesson 2: Wikipedia is an encyclopaedia.
Regardez, ecoutez et r?p?tez...

Guy (JzG)
--
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG


subject:
[WikiEN-l] Wikiparazzi (was Re: We need to recognize that
	advocating is a basic right)

body:
On Fri, 05 May 2006 16:53:27 -0700, you wrote:

>We apparently have many slacker editors - not only do they not
>bestir themselves to photograph celebrities at local shopping mall
>appearances, but they would rather upload a copyvio image of their
>*own* *school* while *sitting* *inside* it, rather than get out
>of their chairs, go outside, and take a picture with their *own*
>*cellphone* *cameras*. Now that's lazy!

Especially since the mere mention of the word school ensures that the
images can never be deleted, thereby immortalising their work :o)

Guy (JzG)
--
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG


from_name: maru dubshinki

subject: [WikiEN-l] We need a pedia split

body:
On 5/6/06, Kirill Lokshin <kirill.lokshin at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 5/6/06, maru dubshinki <marudubshinki at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Not at all. We are currently in a position to judge well old stuff- I
> > can't remember the last time someone complained about "Ancient
> > Greek-cruft" or "Renaissance-cruft", so while we certainly are still
> > missing notable stuff from those areas, we don't seem to have a
> > problem keeping out the non-notable crap stuff from that area.
>
> I can't recall the names of the articles, but there was a series of
> 16th-century samurai bios up for deletion recently on the grounds that
> they were "non-notable retainers" ;-)
>
> Kirill Lokshin

Whoa. Just goes to show that making generalizations in a place as big
as Wikipedia is a perilous business.

~maru


from_name: SJ

body:
On 5/6/06, folengo at netcourrier.com <folengo at netcourrier.com> wrote:
>
>  when I can't, and recruit a voluntary translator for the Main Page
>  in each language. It is also possible to use all our connections to

What parts of the main page are you trying to translate?  What are the
standards of 'being updated' that are of concern?  Many of the small
language portals which were removed are, if not direct translations of
the 'main' English portal, perfectly useful.

>  people who know someone, who know someone... who knows a
>  given language, as Brianna (4) who says she knows someone who
>  speaks arabic. It is also possible to use the History of the pages in
>  the various languages to find the names of the people who wrote them.

Sure.  I don't believe this is about threats; just about answering
'what information needs to be on a good Commons portal, which
languages don't have this, and how can find people who know the
appropriate language who can fix that?'

> 1) http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Template_talk:Lang-mp

I find the discussion of "uselang=" the most interesting on that page.
 This would be a crude first step towards giving anonymous readers
more of a say in how they browse the site.  Perhaps uselang choices
could also be pulled from browser settings, and potentially set as a
cookie independent of them logging in (for those who never create /
don't want accounts).

SJ


from_name: Steve Bennett

references:
<f1c3529e0605030601o1b77dbccg73ca468da98aa226@mail.gmail.com>
	<e3ab2t$p1m$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<f1c3529e0605030704h249cfaf1mbab10bd2b6ebd0b7@mail.gmail.com>
	<e3hr23$ucq$1@sea.gmane.org>

body:
On 5/6/06, Platonides <Platonides at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> "Steve Bennett"
> > On 03/05/06, Adrian Buehlmann wrote:
> >> Is there a workaround?
> Have you tried to <noinclude> the <references>, so they don't appear on the
> global page? Then you only need to add a <references> on the bottom of the
> includer page.

Interesting...yeah that probably would work as a workaround. It's not
ideal, as I really don't want to modify the original articles if I can
avoid it, but that should in theory work.

Thanks!

Steve


body:
On 5/6/06, Peter Ansell <ansell.peter at gmail.com> wrote:
> I was once told by an admin when I inquired that it was up to the
> previous voters to be persuaded to change their votes, after other
> opinions had been entered. I would like to see some sort of guideline
> that recognises the progression of arguments, and gives the initial
> delete contributors less weight unless they find arguments to rebutt
> later keep votes.

Why not just scrap the concept of a vote entirely, and make it more
like a judge deciding a case. Everyone can present an argument. If
there is a *compelling* argument for keeping, it's kept. If there's a
reasonable case for deletion, it's deleted.

So there would be no point adding "delete as per nom". You would only
add a comment if it was different to what other people had said, or
you wanted to point to sources that proved notability or whatever. As
it is, lots of people can vote without having any idea of actual
notability guidelines or whatever.

> In general, I would also like to see some sort of guideline and
> enforcement for notifying major contributors to an article in advance
> of nomination, not just letting them see the banner on the page, or
> notifying them after the start of the process.

Could be done automatically if everyone who has the article in their
watchlist received a talk page message. Having the article in your
watchlist demonstrates you care a bit - but doesn't confirm that you
will actually see the AfD.

Steve


from_name: John Lyden

body:
Thommandel at aol.com wrote:

> Have you ever given even a thought to those of us who read your
> encyclopedia?  How come I never once heard the word "reader"?  Could  > it be because the thousand or so hits a day are from editors only?
>
> I have been on the Internet since Win 1.0, I have two websites of my
> own,
*snip*
>Your whole private system is becoming a joke. Serious researchers
> do not  use Wikipedia, but the children do. And it is the children that
> will suffer. Our future is at stake and you all think it is a joke.

PLEASE WILL SOMEONE NOT THINK OF THE CHILDREN?

I mean, seriously.

While we're at it, nuke MySpace from orbit, it's the only way to be sure.

Sheeeeesh.

Sorry for this having to be my first reply to the mailing list.

-Ras

--
John Lyden - rasputinaxp at gmail.com
"The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to
live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same
time..." -Kerouac


from_name: Fastfission

subject: [WikiEN-l] We need a pedia split

body:
Easier to just ignore it (if it meets our liberal criteria for
notability) than to try and sort it out. Purging it would take more
energy, and create more problems, than just letting it coexist.
There's no workable way to do it, and the benefits of doing so seem
dubious at best.

FF

On 5/6/06, Cheney Shill <halliburton_shill at yahoo.com> wrote:
> maru dubshinki <marudubshinki at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>     To wax less prolix, we aren't in a very good position to determine
>     what the future will find notable or not; all we can hope to do is
>     filter out a decent portion of the crap.
>
> Nor are we in a position according to you to determine what crap is.  After all, what we believe is crap today may very well to turn out to be bio-fuel or natural gas tomorrow.  I'm simply setting forth one principle for determining what crap is.  Besides, the real point of my recommendation in this context regarding pop-culture items (Pokemon, pop-stars, etc.) is to give them a holding place outside the encyclopedia itself that is still part of Wiki until we have better knowledge about where on the crap continuum they belong.  I'm not recommending a flush, simply a split, and anything can be moved back to the encyclopedia and is of course still accessible and editable like any other Wiki content.~~~~Pro-Lick
>
>
>
>
> ---------------------------------
> Love cheap thrills? Enjoy PC-to-Phone  calls to 30+ countries for just 2?/min with Yahoo! Messenger with Voice.
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


body:
"John Tex" wrote

>  I'll change my statement to "advocacy is a fact of life".

So are advertising, flame wars, spam, and party politics, to name a few more
things WP can get by fine without.

Charles


subject: [WikiEN-l] Julie

body:
First off, I'd like to start by apologizing for my indulgence here,
and asking anyone on the list who wants serious discussion to please
pass over this email. I'm also replying to multiple Julie messages in
one email for your skipping convenience.

Julie, I'm sending this to you separately just in case you've already
unsubscribed from the list.

On May 5, 2006, at 3:45 PM, <julieharding1 at charter.net>
<julieharding1 at charter.net> wrote:

> You guys are hilarious!  Did you know that all of the emails that
> have been coming to me today, I've been editing?

Should be, "Did you know that I've been editing all of the emails
that have been coming to me today?"

> All of you intelligent men spell like you're in the third grade.
> If there are other women in here, don't tolerate thier behavior!

"Their".

> Putting up with boobs?  Many of you men are probably so fat from
> sitting around that you have your own boobs to contend with, so
> leave ours alone.  And I'm here to testify that a man's crotch is a
> lot like a nuclear reactor.  Bump it up against anything, and it's
> ready to go!

Actually, bumping a nuclear reactor doesn't really do much. Also, I
think you missed the double meaning: "boob" also means "a foolish or
stupid person".

> Now calm down boys.  Without titties in the world, you wouldn't be
> here.
> -Julie

I don't think you need to worry about men not appreciating breasts.

On May 5, 2006, at 12:31 PM, <julieharding1 at charter.net>
<julieharding1 at charter.net> wrote:

> Hello Steve,
> I'll have to consider that now after the full head on attack I
> received last night.  Is this your guys' way of testing someone to
> find out if they have enough proxy to be on your team of editors?

Um, I don't think that's what "proxy" means.

> Because if your team of editors work together every night accusing
> each other of being on crack or being insane, then I don't want
> anthing to do with it.

"Anything".

> There is a whole world wide web out there that can appreciate my
> intelligence and time more than you all did last night.  Yet if you
> want to be my friend, and you will respect me for what I can help
> you with, then tell me where to go and maybe I'll see you there in
> a couple of days.  God Bless
>
> -Julie

On May 5, 2006, at 8:39 PM, <julieharding1 at charter.net>
<julieharding1 at charter.net> wrote:
>  I just spent all day editing a whole section for you Guy.  Your
> system would not save it for me.  It had to have been at least six
> hours.  God, I'm tired.  Why did I do it?  My love for English and
> writing and boy were there a lot of mistakes!  Yet, se la vi.

"C'est la vie".

> Snowspinner apologized, so I don't have to report him for cyber-
> abuse.  Your cite is filled with it though.  Today, I was referred
> to as: "Boobs."  You are going to lose a lot of very talented
> people at the rate you're going.
>  P.S. The attachment is just a Goodbye picture of me.  Maybe if you
> try, you can find and save the whole section I edited today.

On May 5, 2006, at 3:56 PM, <julieharding1 at charter.net>
<julieharding1 at charter.net> wrote:
> You are kidding aren't you?  You are using Pokemon as a metaphor
> right?  Please tell me that Pokemon is not a subject in Wikipedia.
> No Phil, you're just being a jerk and screwing with my head again.
> Knock it off.  And if Pokemon really is in there, then it's your
> idiocy.
> -Boobs

Yeah, we do cover pop culture. Clever move signing your email
"Boobs", though.

On May 5, 2006, at 4:10 PM, <julieharding1 at charter.net>
<julieharding1 at charter.net> wrote:
> Geni,
> How can we convince Guy that it is necessary to visually recognize
> the troublemakers and then block them from Wikipedia?  Dispute
> resolution?  I'm spending two thirds of my time trying to get
> troublemakers to leave me alone.  Then, very rarely, a serious
> posting reaches me and I can respond.  This is rediculous!

"Ridiculous".

> Last night I got accused of being on crack, I was accused of being
> insane, and today I was referred to as a "Boob."  Yet obviously my
> opinion must count for something because my e-box is full.
> -Julie

--
Philip L. Welch
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Philwelch


subject: [WikiEN-l] Julie Harding

body:
On May 6, 2006, at 10:41 AM, Steve Bennett wrote:

>> I have just approved several emails from Julie and rejected a
>> number of
>> others. Most of those rejected were unnecessarily incivil, but I
>> think I
>> let a slightly more innocuous one through. It seems Julie has since
>> unsubscribed from the list. I was considering letting WikiEn-l
>> know, but
>> I think they'll figure out all this on their own. :p
>>
>> (Just letting the other admins know, in case I should have just
>> discarded the lot.)
>
> I dunno, I rejected a couple earlier, which had vague threats and
> other nonsense. I don't think she was worth losing too much sleep
> over...
>
> On the other hand, there were a couple of messages from someone else
> on moderation, so I took him off mod, but I don't remember who :/
> Daniel someone?

I personally found her emails quite entertaining and am sorry to have
missed some of them in moderation.

--
Philip L. Welch
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Philwelch


from_name: Atlantis Marketing

subject: [WikiEN-l] Blocked IP address

body:
I was blocked by an overly aggressive person who did not approve of
my edits.  My edits were corrections to bad information that did not
show the other side of the stories contained and also related links
to content mentioned in the description of the term.  I am aware of
the policy of wikipedia and will make sure to delete any promotional
content or content that may be viewed as promotional in the future.
I just do not know why they did not delete the promotional links that
weere there before I made the edits.  Also being new to wikipedia I
did not receive and proper warning before being blocked so I could
discuss this with whoever is the person blocking people from editing.]

 From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Jump to: navigation, search
I think I've got all the pages you've been spamming watchlisted, so
that you can't use them for advertising any longer. If you persist,
we can have you blocked from editing Wikipedia. WP is not a link
farm, nor is it free advertising. Zora 18:29, 6 May 2006 (UTC)

You have been temporarily blocked for persistent addition of spam to
Wikipedia despite having been warned not to. Do not add purely
promotional content to Wikipedia in the future. JDoorjam Talk 18:51,
6 May 2006 (UTC)
I am not adding promotional content. Just the web pages that link to
the content related in the page itself. Such as corporate site info
if the description mentions the corporation involeved. Also links to
anything contained within the document. I was going by what was in
the pages previously and cleaning it up. I will be careful not to
include links if it is not related to the content in the page in the
future.

67.60.69.69.


body:
"Cheney Shill" wrote

>I like this idea too, whether it happens via watchlist, a bot going through
>the article's history, or both.~~~~Pro-Lick

Oh great.  Either others get to find out what pages I watch (traditionally
confidential); or I get spam from times I corrected a typo.

Charles


from_name: MacGyverMagic/Mgm

subject: [WikiEN-l] We need a pedia split

body:
The point of Wikipedia is being an encyclopedia and stuff that's popular
today should be covered. I personally don't care for Star Wars and Pokemon,
but others obviously do. None of us are in the position to determine what
people will care for in 100 years. For all we know Pokemon will remembered
as the rage of the early 21st century. We simply can't know yet. And take a
look at Doctor Who. It first aired in the 1960s which means the whole thing
is nearly 50 years old. Well on its way to the 100 year guideline.

My point. Just because it's a piece of pop culture you don't care about
doesn't mean it should be shunned from Wikipedia. We should try to be
concise and make things into summary articles, instead of scores of stubs,
but moving stuff off-wiki or deleting it altogether isn't an option.

Mgm

On 5/6/06, charles matthews <charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com> wrote:
>
> "Cheney Shill" wrote
>
> > Besides, the real point of my recommendation in this context regarding
> > pop-culture items (Pokemon, pop-stars, etc.) is to give them a holding
> > place outside the encyclopedia itself that is still part of Wiki until
> we
> > have better knowledge about where on the crap continuum they belong.
>
> I don't know that there is much to say on this topic, that has not already
> been said often before.
>
> What we know works is to look at
>
> - articles that contain reference infomation, in the sense that some class
> of people are going to want to refer to it
> - and which can be categorised clearly
> - and which meet some minimum standards of writing.
>
> We have never succeeded in defining encyclopedic knowledge more directly:
> notability is just a minefield, and everyone knows examples from popular
> culture where the stuff that has the high profile is the trash and the
> neglected or 'cult' is going to be what lasts.  Everyone is entitled to
> the
> mental shift that designates Star Wars backstory pages as off-wiki as far
> as
> they are concerned.  Why should we believe that finally drawing the line
> on
> inclusion is going to be possible?  It's a theoretical issue for
> academics,
> really.
>
> Charles
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] We need a pedia split

body:
On Sat, 6 May 2006 14:13:06 +0200, you wrote:

>The point of Wikipedia is being an encyclopedia and stuff that's popular
>today should be covered. I personally don't care for Star Wars and Pokemon,
>but others obviously do. None of us are in the position to determine what
>people will care for in 100 years.

This is true.  So we should have an article on Pokemon.  But there are
articles on, for example, online games, which add pretty much nothing
at all to the FAQ from the game site itself, and there are articles on
Pokemon related subjects which are of no conceivable interest to
anyone who is not already into Pokemon.  Is that good or bad?  I don't
know.  It does seem that there is a tendency for fans to use Wikipedia
as a sort of Myspace, building vast temples to their small gods.

Guy (JzG)
--
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG


body:
"A" wrote

<snip>
> So, this brings up several interesting issues:
>
> 1. Is a "____sucks.com" blog a notable or reliable source?

The onus is on those who say a blog _is_ a reliable source, to back that up.

> 2. If an editor is engaging in vicious personal attacks offsite, then
> coming here and demanding civility, is that a violation of the letter
> and/or spirit of the project?

Everyone can expect civility on Wikipedia.

> 3. Are "criticism" sections valid in general, or do they just become a
> repository for quibbles and an amplifier of relatively insignificant
> hatecruft about a person?

They are a way of dealing with controversy, and not letting it colour the
whole piece.  They are subject to NPOV and sourcing policies.  Also a 'de
minimis', I'd say.  No reason for WP to get into kicking a dog once.

> 4. If they are valid, do blogs count as notable or reliable sources?
> What if they are anonymous? Are there criteria in place for
> determining this?

See 1: the default is 'no'.  If blogs are sourced, the sources are better
taken directly.

> 5. Should we formulate a guideline regarding living persons and this
> kind of criticism in their biographies?

There is a living persons biog guideline.  In short it says we err on the
side of understatement.

Charles


from_name: Cheney Shill

body:
Steve Block <steve.block at myrealbox.com> wrote:

    Phil Boswell wrote:
    >
    >> On 5/4/06, Jimmy Wales wrote:
    >>> THEN, some admin comes along and says, gee, the vote is 27-3 to delete,
    >>> but frankly, this bridge guy knows what he is talking about, so I am
    >>> going to close it with a keep.

    > Please provide links to AfD discussions which contain reasonable arguments
    > like those suggested which are not then countered by piled-on "nn, delete"
    > entries; even better would be a "nn, delete" replaced with a "keep" as a
    > result of listening to reason. I would like to sooth my tortured soul with

    It's old now, but I'm proud of
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Votes_for_deletion/Shooting_Fish

First, it doesn't surprise me that finding a case is so difficult.  This case, however, doesn't really fit here as an example:
1. They changed the content significantly, essentially an article about a different subject now with only some loose ties.
2. The admin decision was still based on the majority vote.

I'd be interested in a case where the content didn't have to undergo any extreme changes and the admins action was opposite of the majority.  It doesn't have to be 27-3, but a 15-5 would still be an odd case.~~~~Pro-Lick

---------------------------------
How low will we go? Check out Yahoo! Messenger?s low  PC-to-Phone call rates.


from_name: Alphax (Wikipedia email)

body:
Steve Bennett wrote:
> On 5/5/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
<snip>
>> The "ize" risks starting spelling wars. The first four letters of
>> dearticlify risk breaking [[WP:TOE]]. Vaporize has a nice 1984 ring to
>> it.
>
> Terminate :)
>

EXTERMINATE!

--
Alphax - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax
Contributor to Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia
"We make the internet not suck" - Jimbo Wales
Public key: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax/OpenPGP

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body:
On 5/6/06, charles matthews <charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com> wrote:
> Oh great.  Either others get to find out what pages I watch (traditionally
> confidential); or I get spam from times I corrected a typo.

It's true that the concept of a watch list is a bit overloaded at the
moment, and I see your privacy concerns.

Is there any way that the watchlist page could be hacked to detect if
any of the pages on it were up for AfD? Could be useful to show other
kinds of info like protection, semi protection, RfC, merge requests
etc...probably require changes to MediaWiki though, no?

Steve


from_name: Dan Rosenthal

subject: [WikiEN-l] Apology

body:
Mark Ryan: You fail to answer the key question: was she hot?
-Swatjester

On 5/6/06, Michael Bimmler <mbimmler at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 5/6/06, julieharding1 at charter.net <julieharding1 at charter.net> wrote:
> > ---- Philip Sandifer <snowspinner at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > I would like to apologize for suggesting that Julie Harding is on
> > > crack. The term was an unfortunate choice of metaphors to express my
> > > concern that Ms. Harding's posts were incoherent and nonsensical. I
> > > have no reason to believe that Ms. Harding is currently or has ever
> > > been using crack, any other form of cocaine, or any other drug that
> > > was not prescribed by a licensed medical professional. My sincere
> > > apologies if my previous e-mail led anyone to think otherwise.
> > >
> > > Best,
> > > Phil Sandifer
> > > _______________________________________________
> > > WikiEN-l mailing list
> > > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> > > To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> > > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
> >
> > Thank you for your formal apology.  I am to assume that someone spoke to
> you about your behavior.  Right now I am enraged.  I just spent over six
> hours editing the front page issues for you guys and for some reason, your
> program wouldn't take it from me.  Wikipedia is supposed to be the
> encyclopedia that anyone can edit?  Well, I just edited a whole section for
> you!  Goodnight
>
> Assuming that you wanted (and failed) to edit Wikipedia's Main Page:
> This is not possible for non-sysops for vandalism prevention reasons
> (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Protection_policy)
> Regards
> Michael
>
> > ----redhawk1972
> > _______________________________________________
> > WikiEN-l mailing list
> > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> > To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
> >
>
>
> --
> Regards
> Michael Bimmler
>
> Wikimedia CH - Verein zur F?rderung Freien Wissens
> www.wikimedia.ch
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Rob Church

body:
On 06/05/06, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:
> On Fri, 5 May 2006 18:40:09 EDT, you wrote:
>
> >Opps, you are a private company and "can do as you damn well please..."
>
> Correct.  Well done.  Lesson 2: Wikipedia is an encyclopaedia.
> Regardez, ecoutez et r?p?tez...

Hm. When I was younger, if we made a spelling mistake, the teacher
would stop, drag us up to the board and make us copy out the correct
spelling three times.

Perhaps ArbCom could begin adopting this as a remedy?

"I will observe that Wikipedia is an encyclopaedia..."

Rob Church


from_name: Michael Snow

body:
Erik Moeller wrote:

> On 5/6/06, A <jokestress at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> 3. Are "criticism" sections valid in general, or do they just become a
>> repository for quibbles and an amplifier of relatively insignificant
>> hatecruft about a person?
>
> They are not only valid, in many cases they are necessary.

I beg to differ. In many cases they are not at all necessary. In fact,
they are often symptoms of the shoddy research, writing, and
organization that has gone into so many of our most problematic biographies.

> Wikipedia is not Wikinfo, writing from a "sympathetic point of view".
> I hope
> that nobody would argue that we should have an article about [[Ann
> Coulter]], [[Michael Moore]], [[Uri Geller]], or [[Alexander
> Lukashenko]] that does not include criticism.

I'm not at all saying that criticisms should be omitted, or a neutral
point of view abandoned. But their consolidation into separate
"Criticisms" sections is generally undesirable, I would say.

> Important public and
> political figures in particular may affect, through their action or
> inaction, an entire society. To not describe the reaction in
> encyclopedic terms, or worse, to only describe one side of the
> reaction, completely undermines the purpose of an encyclopedia.

Yes, but the reaction should really be put in context, not put in a
"Criticisms" section. Doing the latter causes a number of problems:

1. If you put the action (or inaction) under a Criticisms section in
order to address the reaction to it, it implies that the action (or
inaction) is deserving of criticism. This is not a neutral presentation.
2. If you simply talk about the criticisms without first discussing what
gave rise to them, you're almost certainly not giving the person's
accomplishments enough credit.
3. For people who have been involved in a significant amount of
controversy, putting all of this material in a criticisms section makes
the article unbalanced. It may also generate disproportionate attention
to the criticisms. Again, this is a failure to create a neutral article.
4. Discussing actions and discussing criticisms in separate sections
typically creates a lot of redundancy. This exacerbates the bloat
problem that emerges on many of our controversial topics when they get
heavy editor attention.
5. Having a separate Criticisms section encourages people to dump
anything they can find in there (much like a Trivia section encourages
similar random additions). As a result, they fail to integrate their
material into the article and often add stuff that isn't particularly
suited for an encyclopedia anyway.

> The existing guidelines strike me as sufficient to deal with the issue
> on a case by case basis.

The guidelines are perhaps adequate, because this is partly a cultural
issue. But it's been clear for a while that we have serious systemic and
cultural issues on articles dealing with living people.

--Michael Snow