subject: [WikiEN-l] Abusive editors

body:
--- "steven l. rubenstein" <rubenste at ohiou.edu> wrote:
> ...2) what appears to be a personal attack on the part of Adam Carr
> is simply an example of how members of the community, acting in their
> anarchic, unregulated way, try to protect the quality of articles
> after reasonable, polite efforts have failed.
      (..merging two posts...)
> If an editor is obstructing improvement of the article, or is damaging the
> article, we need an effective mechanism to deal with that problem, directly.

Would none of the measures in [[Wikipedia:Resolving disputes]] have been
appropriate in this instance? For example, quantifying consensus via a vote,
requesting sanctions against a user who flouts consensus...etc. I'm not
convinced Adam Carr was placed in a situation where he had no other choice but
to be rude in order to maintain the quality of the article.

In any case, becoming abusive is a completely ineffectual tactic in these
situations -- it's only likely to exacerbate the situation. Moreover, for third
parties, it muddies the waters about who is in the "right" in a dispute: at
first glance, it's very tempting to favour the side of whoever sounds calm,
measured and rational, regardless of the substance of the debate itself.

--Matt

[[User:Matt Crypto]]

Send instant messages to your online friends http://uk.messenger.yahoo.com


list: foundation-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Erik Moeller

subject: [Foundation-l] German law and wikiquote

body:
The legal study ordered by the German Wikimedia e.V. is mostly a summary
of the current German law. While that has value in itself, those who
have followed the relevant discussions will not find much new
information in it. A more interesting study would be one of loopholes
and ways to do an end run around copyright and trademark law:

- How to cheat museums which try to steal public domain content by
forbidding photographs.
- How to get coat of arms images under a free or semi-free license.
- How to phrase Wikiquote pages so that they fall under the fair use
equivalent of German law.
- How to use the fact that Wikimedia servers are in the United States to
our advantage.

In short, instead of asking "What does the law say?", we should ask "How
can we do what we want to do?". If the answer is "We can't", then we
should actively work to change the laws to our advantage. If we want to
survive, we need to be creative in the way we deal with the law,
especially in Germany, where, tolerated by the government, a substantial
subset of lawyers are criminals who terrorize grandmothers and
15-year-old webmasters with illegal demands for money (google "Abmahnung").

If your perception is that, legally speaking, you are standing on a
small island, then you will not even notice as the protections that the
law grants you are eroded away by the ocean around you. We have to
actively claim the ground that rightfully belongs to us, and not let
lobbyists and corrupt governments get away with making information ever
more proprietary.

Erik


list: wikimedia-l

subject: [Foundation-l] German law and wikiquote


list: wikien-l

from_name: sannse

subject: [WikiEN-l] Abusive editors

body:
David Gerard wrote:

> [[Wikipedia:Blocking policy/Personal attacks (old)]] has the vote. The vote
> came out 36 for, 26 against, 5 neutral - simple majority, but not enough of
> one to indicate consensus. As far as I can tell, the objections are that
> it's too subjective.
>
> The instructive recent case of Skyring versus Adam Carr (a coupla messages
> ago) shows one obvious hole: Skyring belittling or ignoring all attempts at
> reason until the editor attempting to reason with him blows his top at the
> intransigent POV-pusher.

I have seen editors respond to "I think you are wrong here" with
allegations of a "virulent and aggressive personal attack".  At it's
most extreme, it's obviously ignored.  But, in a couple of cases, I've
seen sensible, good editors fall into this sort of misinterpretation.
Considering how subjective a straightforward rule like the 3RR turned
out to be, I'm a bit dubious about this one actually /reducing/ the
amount of conflict around.

--sannse


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Sj

subject: [Wikipedia-l] IBM "history flow" study and Wikipedia

body:
On Wed, 9 Mar 2005 12:35:08 +0100, Andre Engels <andreengels at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Wed, 9 Mar 2005 12:32:59 +0100, Angela <beesley at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On Wed,  9 Mar 2005 12:25:53 +0100, Nicolas Weeger
> > <nicolas.weeger at laposte.net> wrote:
> > > I think there was a research paper (from the MIT?), some months/years ago, that analysed how a specific article on Wikipedia was modified, showing the slow modifications over time and a few big changes.
> >
> > This was the " history flow" study, and can be seen at
> > http://researchweb.watson.ibm.com/history/
>
> Has there been contact with IBM about the possibility to use their
> work? For example, I think it would be interesting to create these
> diagrams for a large number of Wikipedia pages, and make those
> available.

Yes.  Two weeks ago, I visited the group that did the history flow
study, and spent a couple of hours talking to Martin Wattenberg about
their interest in wikis and some of their ongoing projects.

I'll write more about this later tonight, but they are thinking about
this -- one of them suggested the idea of running history flow on an
article once a week and producing a  little thumbnail that could
appear next to the article title -- and working on providing the tool
for others to use.

Jack Lutz wrote:
> I emailed  Martin Wattenberg  about using an image in their paper and did
> not receive a response.

Which image was it?

--
+sj+


from_name: Skyring

subject: [WikiEN-l] Abusive editors

body:
I've just copped the latest in a long line of personal attacks from
one particular editor who stands out for his attitude in a community
where tolerance and restraint is generally the norm. I don't think his
comments are justified, but even if they were, I would still take
exception to the language:

"Well I'm upset (really pissed off actually) by your deliberate
obfuscation and timewasting, your dishonesty, your malicious
misrepresentation of other people arguments, your rampant vanity and
egotism and your general obnoxious fuckwittedness, so get used to it."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Government_of_Australia#The_real_issue

To my mind this is no way to conduct any sort of productive debate,
and as a rather new editor I wonder just how much this sort of thing
is tolerated.

--
Peter in Canberra


from_name: dpbsmith at verizon.net

subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia running nicely today, at least for me...

body:
Just for the record, and fully aware of the jinx factor...

Today Wikipedia seemed to be operating like a sleek, well-oiled
machine, with histories, diffs, watchlists, edits, and the Votes for
Deletion page loading promptly and smoothly. Comparable to Slashdot, or
Yahoo mail, to name a couple of consistently good-performing sites.

My thanks to those responsible.

--
Daniel P. B. Smith, dpbsmith at verizon.net
"Elinor Goulding Smith's Great Big Messy Book" is now back in print!
Sample chapter at http://world.std.com/~dpbsmith/messy.html
Buy it at http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1403314063/


from_name: actionforum at comcast.net

subject: [WikiEN-l] Abusive editors

body:
-------------- Original message --------------
> >In practice, the no original research clause, does not allow paraphrases,
> >new words, or reason.
>
> This is plain wrong. Paraphrasing is not "research" so it cannot be
> "original research." There is nothing in the NOR policy that requires this
> position, and I am pretty confident that most editors do not consider
> paraphrasing to violate NOR policy.

People paraphrase  for a reason, the paraphrase most likely has some difference in meaning or more likely emphasis.  I agree with your solution of presenting both sides below.   But I have seen people insist that such nuances, compromises, disputes and caveats are not appropriate for introductions, which is probably the real estate most of the fights are over.    I do not agree with you that because one has taken a position it is not NPOV.  In the case at hand, it would be interesting to see which side in the dispute can best present the case for both sides and demonstrate that the position they take is an informed one.   I bet the text itself, would be a good compromise.
                              -- Silverback

> Either you really misunderstand the NOR policy, or you have some agenda for
> misrepresenting it. I am not judging your motives because whatever they
> are, I cannot understand them. But whatever your motives, this statement
> is false, unnecessary, and unhelpful.
>
> This claim is also wrong:
> >Probably both sides are quite right as long as they keep their own
> >definitions in mind, and they know this for a fact, so why should they
> >give an inch, because it becomes a matter of principle. Austrailia is a
> >"republic", to the extent that American overtones of republic have some
> >validity in Austrailia, and is NOT a republic in the predominate (but not
> >exclusive) non-technical sense in which it is used in Austrailia
>
> Here you actually do violate NOR as well as NPOV. Articles are simply not
> the place for advocating our own views. So it doesn't matter how the two
> sides personally, subjectively, define their terms, and it is not for us to
> invent an argument for why Australia is or is not a republic. Period. The
> only way to handle this is to say something like this (consider this a
> model, not a real proposal):
> Australian nationals, politicians, and political theorists are divided over
> the nature of the Australian state.
> The dominant view, held by a, b, and c, is that Australia is an "X,"
> defining X as ...
> A major competing view, held by d, e, and f, is that Australia is a "Y,"
> defining Y as ...
> Some (such as g and h) argue that Australia is an "X" but they define X as ...
> Some (such as i and j) argue that Australia is a "Y," but define Y as ...
> And of course have verifiable sources for each claim ("Australia is X" and
> "X is ...")
>
> Steve
>
>
> Steve
>
>
>
>
> Steven L. Rubenstein
> Associate Professor
> Department of Sociology and Anthropology
> Bentley Annex
> Ohio University
> Athens, Ohio 45701
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l


subject: [WikiEN-l] Abusive editors

body:
-------------- Original message --------------
> >In practice, the no original research clause, does not allow paraphrases,
> >new words, or reason.
>
> Why do you think so? I see nothing in the policy which indicates that.

I agree, I said  "in practice".   Look how many disputes are over single words or phrases.   If  you use exacly the same words, then it isn't a paraphrase, if you use different words, it is a paraphrase, but it is banned by NOR, unless a cite can be provided where someone else has used those very same words in subject at hand.

            -- Silverback


from_name: Stephen Forrest

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Queen Elizabeth II

body:
Could you please leave this incredibly tedious discussion on the
technical interpretation of Australia's constitution to the
appropriate talk page?  Anyone who cares enough one way or the other
can be trusted to go there.

I know I've been guilty of posting to this thread, simply because I
didn't consider the issue controversial.  But for whatever reason, it
continues to go on.  It shouldn't, not here.

Steve


from_name: Charles Matthews

subject: [WikiEN-l] Abusive editors

body:
Tom Haws wrote

> > Charles Matthews wrote:
> >
> >> Indeed.  Why dice with death and take the moral low ground in revert
> >> wars,
> >> when there is the more satisfying approach of the uber-troll: get
> >> yourself
> >> personally-attacked on the Talk page, and get your opponent (if
briefly)
> >> thrown off the wiki?

> Charles, as humor this is fine.  But the serious sentiment behind it
> troubles me.  Our unambiguous position at Wikipedia is that personal
> violence against trolls is unacceptable.

Off Wikipedia too, I hope.   That was presumably intended as 'personal
abuse'.

> If editors choose to see this
> as an unfair advantage for the trolls, that is their choice.  If they
> choose to let it spur them toward greater creativity and diplomacy, that
> is a better choice.

The underlying point is that editors have to take the long term into
account.  Reverting and being a loudmouth are a kind of territorial
behaviour; what we need are people who see clearly that they have to
outlast, rather than simply see off, the detrimentals.

Charles


from_name: David Gerard

subject: [WikiEN-l] Abusive editors

body:
actionforum at comcast.net wrote:

>>>In practice, the no original research clause, does not allow paraphrases,
>>>new words, or reason.

>>Why do you think so? I see nothing in the policy which indicates that.

> I agree, I said  "in practice".   Look how many disputes are over single words or phrases.   If  you use exacly the same words, then it isn't a paraphrase, if you use different words, it is a paraphrase, but it is banned by NOR, unless a cite can be provided where someone else has used those very same words in subject at hand.

In practice, this is sorted out with editorial judgement, which ultimately
we have to apply. Are you thinking of cases you've been involved in?

- d.


from_name: Phil Sandifer

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Abusive editors

body:
I think it's important to note that baiting users into making personal
attacks is even worse than the personal attacks that ensue, however.

-Snowspinner

On Mar 9, 2005, at 7:47 PM, csherlock at ljh.com.au wrote:

> Tom Haws wrote:
>> Tony Sidaway wrote:
>>> Some people have lower boiling points than
>>> others and can easily be provoked.
>>>
>> This is not to my knowledge a terminal condition or a good excuse.
>> We can all learn to boil slowly and gently.  The message of the
>> policy is clear.  "Take responsibility for your own temper."
>> Tom Haws
>
> 100% agreed. I don't want someone who thinks I'm a troll making a
> discussion devolve into a personal attack when I argue a point
> forcefully. We get nowhere when this happens.
>
> TBSDY
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Stirling Newberry

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia is an encyclopedia

body:
On Mar 9, 2005, at 7:52 PM, Mark Williamson wrote:

> What about people who speak Hopi as their first language and would
> like to read about Milwaukee?

What about the vast majority of our readers who have needs that are
being ignored while certain individuals ride their private hobby
horses? The major challenge of wikipedia is to make sure that the
community's activities push towards the best possible knowledge source
while restricting the ability of organized groups of users to slant the
pedia. After hundreds of posts on the arguments over hypothetical
wikis, I am going to invoke the NPOV requirement that points of view be
represented in proportion to their importance. Overwhelmingly our
readers are in major languages, and the challenges facing these large
wikipedias should be occupying far more of the discussion than is
currently the case.


from_name: Tony Sidaway

subject: [WikiEN-l] Abusive editors

body:
Skyring said:
> On Wed, 9 Mar 2005 17:22:08 -0000 (GMT), Tony Sidaway
> <minorityreport at bluebottle.com> wrote:
>> Tom Haws said:
>> > Tony Sidaway wrote:
>> >
>> >>Some people have lower boiling points than
>> >>others and can easily be provoked.
>> >>
>> > This is not to my knowledge a terminal condition or a good excuse.
>> > We can all learn to boil slowly and gently.  The message of the
>> > policy is clear.  "Take responsibility for your own temper."
>> >
>>
>> Absolutely. I completely agree with this.
>>
>> However I was pointing out that an undesired side-effect of enforcing
>> "no personal attacks" with blocking could be, paradoxically, to give
>> some people an incentive to provoke _more_ personal attacks.
>
> You are completely correct, but may I state (again) that this was not
> my intention.

Absolutely.  I want to dissociate myself from any implication that I could
be commenting on a concrete instance.  I'm just talking about the social
dynamics that I think should be taken into consideration in any proposal
to enforce "No personal attacks" by blocking.


from_name: Mark Williamson

body:
On Wed, 9 Mar 2005 21:03:39 -0500, Stirling Newberry
<stirling.newberry at xigenics.net> wrote:
>
> On Mar 9, 2005, at 7:52 PM, Mark Williamson wrote:
>
> > What about people who speak Hopi as their first language and would
> > like to read about Milwaukee?
>
> What about the vast majority of our readers who have needs that are
> being ignored while certain individuals ride their private hobby
> horses?

"Private hobby horses"? We're talking about languages that are spoken
by real people, not just hobbies.

It is not my responsibility or anybody's for that matter to make sure
any one person's needs are being met. I am more concerned about the
needs of minority language speakers. I think that an English-speaker's
needs are being met by the project much better currently than a
Sinhala speaker (national language of Srilanka) or a Hopi speaker.

If you are concerned about the "vast majority of our readers", then
you can go ahead and take care of their needs if you are so interested
in doing that and feel it's not already being done.

If you want to start a thread about some sort of need of the "vast
majority of our readers", you are quite welcome to. There are no
restrictions on this list about "Thou shalt post exclusively regarding
the Vast Majority of Thy Readers" or "Thou shalt post exclusively
regarding the Minority Languages".

So quit whinging about these needs that we are supposedly not
discussing or taking care of enough and start a thread on these
"shortcomings".

> The major challenge of wikipedia is to make sure that the
> community's activities push towards the best possible knowledge source
> while restricting the ability of organized groups of users to slant the
> pedia.

I'm going to have to say to this, "Duh." Stating the painfully obvious.

> After hundreds of posts on the arguments over hypothetical
> wikis, I am going to invoke the NPOV requirement that points of view be
> represented in proportion to their importance.

"Importance" cannot be objectively measured. Any definition of
"importance" that ties it down to any one measurable trait will
obviously be hotly disputed.

> Overwhelmingly our
> readers are in major languages, and the challenges facing these large
> wikipedias should be occupying far more of the discussion than is
> currently the case.

That's your POV. If you want more discussions on "major languages"'
Wikipedias, go ahead and initiate some. Quit whinging about how we
talk too much about minority languages and too little about majority
languages, and start some discussions.

I don't see how NPOV applies to majority vs. minority languages.

Our goal is to provide an open-content encyclopaedia usable by every
single person on earth, gratis. Quite a while ago, Jimbo added to this
goal the additional goal of neutrality (and as has been shown, not
everybody even agrees on what is neutral)

If it is to be usable by everybody, this means we cannot simply ignore
minority languages. I don't have the statistics right here, but a very
significant percentage of human beings speak languages with less than
1 million speakers as their native language. This is largely in
Africa, Central America, Indonesia, New Guinea, India, and other
undeveloped areas, but even developed areas have their fair share of
minority languages, mostly with less than 1m speakers but sometimes
with more (Catalan, Galician, Sardinian, &c).

Now, if you want to propose that we delete all minority language
Wikipedias, you are welcome to do so but you will definitely not have
much support because some of our largest Wikipedias are in minority
languages - Catalan, Kurdish, Tatar, Basque, Welsh...

Mark


from_name: Anthere

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Searching (MIT?) research paper about Wikipedia

body:
by the way, given the number of times we asked for this information,
store it somewhere, perhaps in the talk page of the press page on fr...

ant

Nicolas Weeger a ?crit:
> Many thanks Angela for the quick reply :)
>
> That's why i so love Wikip?dia: so many people that you always find someone having the information you search *g*
>
> Nicolas
> Acc?dez au courrier ?lectronique de La Poste : www.laposte.net ;
> 3615 LAPOSTENET (0,34?/mn) ; t?l : 08 92 68 13 50 (0,34?/mn)
>


from_name: Rick

subject: [WikiEN-l] Abusive editors

body:
--- Matt R <matt_crypto at yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
> --- "steven l. rubenstein" <rubenste at ohiou.edu>
> wrote:
> > ...2) what appears to be a personal attack on the
> part of Adam Carr
> > is simply an example of how members of the
> community, acting in their
> > anarchic, unregulated way, try to protect the
> quality of articles
> > after reasonable, polite efforts have failed.
>       (..merging two posts...)
> > If an editor is obstructing improvement of the
> article, or is damaging the
> > article, we need an effective mechanism to deal
> with that problem, directly.
>
> Would none of the measures in [[Wikipedia:Resolving
> disputes]] have been
> appropriate in this instance? For example,
> quantifying consensus via a vote,
> requesting sanctions against a user who flouts
> consensus...etc.

I think we've discussed ad nauseum how people are
afraid to request sanctions against other users
because of the perceived (and real) threat that the
arbcom will turn it against the person bringing the
case.

RickK

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Small Business - Try our new resources site!
http://smallbusiness.yahoo.com/resources/


from_name: Jack Lutz

body:
The requested image was:
    http://researchweb.watson.ibm.com/history/images/capitalism_group.gif
Perhaps his spam filter caught it; the email was sent 15 February 2005
titled "Image permission request for Wikipedia".


from_name: The Cunctator

subject: [WikiEN-l] Abusive editors

body:
On 3/9/05 2:46 PM, "Ray Saintonge" <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> If I were to judge Ed solely by many of the substantive positions that
> he takes, we should be bitter enemies. :'( Ed does indeed shoot from the
> hip, but with one big difference.  When he realizes that he has made a
> mistake he is quicker than most to admit it.  Yes, Ed was out of line,
> but so what?  I do not support making policy on the hoof, there is
> already far too much of that.  Ed did not do that; he enforced what he
> believed to be policy, and did his best to undo the damage when he found
> his mistake.  His actions are perfectly understandable when you see the
> unending parade of shifting policies.  Nobody but policy geeks can keep
> up with it, and policy geeks are notorious for losing sight of project
> goals.
>
> I don't see any need for further action on this.  Ed's repentance tells
> me all I need to know.  Unless we take a forgiving attitude towards this
> kind of error how can we expect to be forgiven ourselves when the tables
> are turned.
>
My problem with this response is that Ed has done this repeatedly.

1. He screws up royally by abusing the privileges he's been given
2. He professes that he had no idea that he screwed up
3. After numerous people explain carefully how he screwed up, he apologizes.
Contritely. And professes earnestly his deep, abiding good faith and his
intention never to screw up again.
4. People cheer Ed's contrition and praise his good works. He is not
punished and his privileges are not removed.
5. After a few weeks have passed, Ed has forgotten any mistakes he's ever
made and is happy to announce that he's always been successful in any
actions he's taken to help Wikipedia.

Rinse, wash, repeat.


from_name: Thomas Haws

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Abusive editors

body:
>> I think it's important to note that baiting users into making personal
>> attacks is even worse than the personal attacks that ensue, however.
>>
>> -Snowspinner
>
>Abusers often blame the victim.  Sadly, sometimes the victims believe them.
>
>       -- Silverback

In other words, baiting is most definitely not worse than abusing.  True that both are bad, but pointing fingers merely is a tactic for deflecting blame.  Thou shalt not escalate.

- Tom Haws


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Angela

subject: [Wikitech-l] Google search and textbox

body:
On Wed, 09 Mar 2005 17:03:15 +0000, Alison Russell
<alisonrussellireland at hotmail.com> wrote:
> I want to add a Google search to my Wiki system, similar to the Google link
> displayed by http://creatures.wikicities.com/wiki/Main_Page
> What code do I need to do this?

The code used on the Creatures Wikicity is:

<?php $this->msg('search') ?>

	    <form name="searchform" action="<?php $this->text('searchaction')
?>" id="searchform">

	      <input id="searchInput" name="search" type="text"
	        <?php if($this->haveMsg('accesskey-search')) {
 	          ?>accesskey="<?php $this->msg('accesskey-search') ?>"<?php }
 	        if( isset( $this->data['search'] ) ) {
 	          ?> value="<?php $this->text('search') ?>"<?php } ?> />
 	      <input type='submit' name="go" class="searchButton" id="searchGoButton"
	        value="<?php $this->msg('go') ?>"
	        /> <input type='submit' name="fulltext"
	        class="searchButton"
	        value="<?php $this->msg('search') ?>" />
	    </form>

<form method="get" action="http://www.google.com/custom" target="_top"
class="searchform">

<input type="text" name="q" size="16" maxlength="255" value=""></input>
<input type="submit" name="sa" value="Search" class="searchButton"></input>
<input type="hidden" name="client" value="pub-123"></input>
<input type="hidden" name="forid" value="1"></input>
<input type="hidden" name="ie" value="UTF-8"></input>
<input type="hidden" name="oe" value="UTF-8"></input>
<input type="hidden" name="cof" value="GALT:#008000;123:1;"></input>
<input type="hidden" name="hl" value="en"></input>
</form>

--
Angela Beesley
Wikicities.com


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [WikiEN-l] Abusive editors

body:
actionforum at comcast.net wrote:

>-------------- Original message --------------
>Steven I. Rubinstein wrote:
>
>
>>Michael Snow suggested (at this point) that Adam Carr is giving a
>>reasonable paraphrase of the constitution; Skyring repeats that the
>>Australian constitution does not say what Adam Carr says it says. So there
>>are two ways to understand Skyring's position: either evidence does not
>>matter, or paraphrasing is impermissible. I believe that either one of
>>these positions does damage to the quality of Wikipedia articles. Skyring
>>won't budge, though.
>>
>>
>
>In practice, the no original research clause, does not allow paraphrases, new words, or reason.  Yes, we have a lot of these on wikipedia, but it required a community that was tolerant.  I am currently in a dispute with an editor, who wants to include a quite logical (and I think arguably correct) refutation of a statement that an outside authority has made.  I don't think it belongs in there because it refutes a minor peripheral point, so it is making more of a credibility attack upon the outside source, than contributing to the substance of the article.   Frankly, I think I can easily "win" this editing conflict, by insisting on the NOR standards, but I have not pressed this point, because that is not my actual objection to text.
>
If the alleged original research policy allows no paraphrase, and
copyright policy does not allow the actual material, and the cite your
sources policy requires that we must say where things come from there's
not much left that we can say. If we believe you we're not even allowed
to reason.  That madness strongly suggests that some aspects of policy
need serious rethinking.  Even intimating that you can "win" an argument
by invoking questionable standards leads one to conclude that winning is
more important to you than achieving NPOV, but I'm afraid that you may
question my argument because it involves the application of reason.

>In the case at hand, there is no excuse for the personal attacks.  However, the source of their problem is that they have not agreed to a definition of terms and then applied them to the situation.  A possible reason for that, is that the NOR clause would preclude them from applying their agreed upon definitions and including them in the article.  Probably both sides are quite right as long as they keep their own definitions in mind, and they know this for a fact, so why should they give an inch, because it becomes a matter of principle.  Austrailia is a "republic", to the extent that American overtones of republic have some validity in Austrailia, and is NOT a republic in the predominate (but not exclusive) non-technical sense in which it is used in Austrailia.  Of course in an encyclopedia, where one is trying to be precise, it is natural to prefer the more technical sense, because words are being chosen for the information or distinctions they provide.
>
This is the Alice in Wonderland argument where the words mean exactly
what you intend them to mean - nothing more, nothing less.  This has
nothing to do with the fact that others use words to communicate.  So
now that it is clear that your proposition that Australia is a republic
was meant to be a joke I would do just as well to continue laughing
about it like everyone else.

Ec


subject: [WikiEN-l] Abusive editors

body:
-------------- Original message --------------
Steven L. Rubenstein:
>
> Silverback wrote:
>
> >but it is banned by NOR, unless a cite can be provided where someone else
> >has used those very same words in subject at hand.
>
> This is still completely wrong. There is no requirement that someone else
> has used the very same words. To follow this understanding of NOR would
> mean that editors can't write anything, but can only edit together collages
> of quotes -- this makes a mockery of the NOR policy. Paraphrasing does not
> violate NOR. Period. Your position here will have only one consequence:
> to make it harder to write good articles. Why would you want to do that?

I agree if you are referring to the intent of NOR.   But in practice people can be very pickyune.  BTW, it is not my position, quite the opposite, I oppose the position, it is just my observation of practice.  Note that poor skyring, has not been allowed to use the word "republic" himself, but had to find a quote in order to use the word.

Unfortunately a local consensus can take owership of a word, select a less common definition of the word, label it POV, and deny its usage.   A good example is the word "regime" on the Iraq pages, if you are familiar with that dispute.
                -- Silverback


from_name: Sj

subject: [WikiEN-l] Pulling even with NYT, breaking 100

body:
On Wed, 9 Mar 2005 11:17:28 +0000, Theresa Knott <theresaknott at gmail.com> wrote:
> Most of these are handled using termplates. We could unprotect
> [[Template:In the news]] for example and keep the main page protected.
> This would stop the main page being moved but still allow non admins
> to make edits. Can templates be moved? it's only page moves that are
> too difficult to deal with by reverting.

As Slowking Man noted, the recent protection of those templates
followed a 15-minute-long goatsification of the main page.

> > We should find ways to distract and ward off immature kids that do not
> > restrict everyone else -- and we will!
>
> Practical suggestions please!

Sure thing.  My thought at the time was, that we could use some of the
following bits of code:

* an 'emergency mode' that redirects all visitors to a static
read-only snapshot of the site taken once a day
** or a text-only mode that only produces text

* a one-click or option for removing images. [Maybe 2 clicks, with
some kind of pop-up confirmation (javascript widget?) that doesn't
require rendering another whole WP-page].   That way, even when the
site is very slow, evil images can be deleted in under 15 minutes

Or, more generally,  Code + Image Policy:

++ Add an IMAGE REVIEW step that imposes a time delay (or requires
user approval) before any image can be displayed live on a page.
Until the delay is over, the image would simply be linked to.

http://mail.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2005-February/018903.html

--
+sj+


from_name: Aphaia

subject: [Foundation-l] German law and wikiquote

body:
On Wed, 09 Mar 2005 14:51:05 +0100, Magnus Manske <magnus.manske at web.de> wrote:

> Just FYI :-)

Vielen Dank fuer deine Informationen, Magnus.

> The German Verein has just received a legal opinion they ordered some
> time ago, concerning various legal issues for wikipedia and German law.
>
> It turns out that, according to the legal opinion, German law prohibits
> the collection of quotes, or quotes as such, if they are not used in a
> context.

Japanese Wikiquote has a similar restriction. We have no legal
consultant but there have been a similar sentence and it made us
decide to have a very strict policy toward submissions.

According to the Japanese law, any quotation should be under two
restriction. 1) Any quotation should be used in a context 2) quotation
should be subsidiary from the view of quantities, that is, the amount
of quotation should be less than the text which gives the context.

> That would mean the German wikiquote project's legal status is shaky at
> best. (IANAL)

We accept only submission from PD texts. So there are no quote from TV
and movies, nor contemporary writers. Some politicians have their
pages because their words and addresses in some occasion (at the diet,
e.g.) are PD.  We should have given up some pages like "Albert
Einstein" .

                    It is a bit shabby but still now we have a bunch
of good classics. I hope it could be your consolation.

--
Aphaea@*.wikipedia.org
email: Aphaia @ gmail (dot) com


subject: [Foundation-l] German law and wikiquote


subject: [WikiEN-l] Rules, expertise, and encyclopedic standards

body:
Delirium wrote:

> Ray Saintonge wrote:
>
>> Now you open up the question, "What is novel?"  I absolutely agree
>> that we are ill-equipped to judge novel thinking, Too many look at
>> this from the distorted extremist lenses.  If the dozens of sources
>> that I use for a historical argument are all "peer reviewed" sources
>> my argument is no longer novel.  If we follow the severely
>> restrictive approach to "original research" that some people are
>> proposing our encyclopedia would be full of nothing but dumbed-down pap.
>
> I suppose I'd define "novel" as "making a substantial claim that
> hasn't been made before", which is obviously subjective, but I don't
> think it's possible to make a clear-cut definition.
>
> For example, one of the culinary articles (which I forget at the
> moment) had a section on the etymology of a word that was essentially
> a reconstruction of the word's history personally done by a
> Wikipedian, through a combination of primary and secondary sources.
> That, to me, is original etymological research and not appropriate for
> first publication in Wikipedia.  We instead should cite only published
> etymologies, such as "the OED claims this, but some other guy in his
> book _Blah_ claims this other thing."

On Wiktionary if someone were to present such etymological research I
would be inclined to say, "Well done!"  I would usually not consider it
as "original" but as a synthesis of existing sources.  The OED is a
well-respected source, but it's not the only one that I use.  More often
than not the difference between the OED and other etymologies is a
matter of detail and degree, and not of completely contradictory views.
I also regard the secondary sources as published etymologies.  As yet, I
know of no rule that confines us to a set of select orthodox
etymologies.  I read the term "published etymology" as any published
work that deals in whole or in part with etymology no matter when it was
published.

Ec


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia: wakeful, with invisible hands

body:
James Governor writes poetically about Wikipedia's magic, referencing
the ongoing Wikipedia debate (don't tell me you had forgotten the
continuing "Wikipedia Debate" echoing through the halls of academia) :

Governor: http://www.redmonk.com/jgovernor/archives/000536.html
Shirky: http://tinyurl.com/6l5bx
Boyd: http://www.corante.com/many/archives/2005/03/06/situating_wikipedia.php

(Andrew Lih and Jamesday get in some good comments on the Corante pieces)

--SJ

PS. While on the subject of good articles about Wikipedia, I should
also mention Simon Waldman's incisive acclaim for Wikinews (in
contrast with bloggers)
     http://www.editorsweblog.org/2005/02/wikinews_vs_blo.html
and the related interview that site did with Jimbo the week previous
     http://www.editorsweblog.org/2005/02/jimmy_wales_to_.html
.


from_name: Boris Lohnzweiger

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Creating premium encyclopedias and/or promoting and
	preserving languages

body:
Building an online encyclopedia at least as good as the Encyclopaedia Britannia is a very respectable aim I can fully identify with. Promoting and preserving minority (or less widespread) languages is another one that I endorse just as much. In many cases they might complement each other very well. If that is the case we'll have Wikipedias with "added value".

However, my conviction is that the these two separate goals do not necessarily always go hand in hand. Cases in which a language has too few speakers or is used as a language of first choice too infrequently to bring about an encyclopedia "Britannica or better" certainly do exist. This is an evaluation I think we all can agree on. And it's a fact that we'll simply have to realize now that no longer every new Wikipedia becomes an immediate success (like it was broadly the case in the early years) and sadly quite a few plainly fail to become what they are supposed to be (a comprehensive and reliable source of information).

What we need to do now is to clearly distinguish between the creation of premium encyclopedias and the advancement of languages. And we need to keep in focus what comes first, just like Jimbo pointed out. Being pessimistic about the prospects of a proposed Wikipedia for a language of, say, 5,000 speakers (who might all be at least as fluent in a more widespread language) should no longer be mistaken for being against that language or the promotion thereof.

Contrary to what has been written by others I fear that generously granting new editions for smaller languages can very well harm the project as a whole. The first time I heard about Wikipedia was on a German TV program. All I thought was: "Everyone can change it and write whatever they wants? It's another one of those anarchistic web projects and it I'm sure it will never amount to anything good. (Especially as there were some acceptable encyclopedias staffed with professional editors on the internet already)" But of course I was curious, too and checked it out one of the next days. And, surprisingly enough, I actually found the piece of information I was looking for. In the following time I came back now and then because the first impression had been a good one. Some day I actually tried and wrote a couple of sentences myself. Later I registered and even later I suscribed to this list and so forth. Not out idealism or the like. Just because I had gotten the impression that!
  Wikipedia is a project which is running well and which I can benefit from. Now please imagine this first encounter would have been with the Nauru or Muscogee edition. I just would not have found anything useful for me and I would never have come back to Wikipedia at all. Of course, every edition of Wikipedia must go through it's early stages. But our problem now is that many of them have been stuck there for ages and I fear quite a number will perhaps never leave that stage. And it is my conviction that a 100+ practically inactive Wikipedias certainly do not raise the project's reputation.

The only useful encyclopedia (I'm repeating myself here) is an encyclopedia were you find the article you need. To assure that you it takes literally tens of thousands of articles. An encyclopedia were most inqueries fail or produce unsuffincient, unreliable information is outright useless even if it is a nice community project. Again, it taken tens of thousands of articles. Let us face the fact that currently for probably most of the world's languages we can't generate them in an online project totally depending on unpaid volunteers.

I would therefore recommend that:

1. Whenever we evaluate new language proposals we should assess if they have the potential to yield a 5-digit number of articles.

2. We should require every new language proposal to be supported by at least two or three native speakers in order to assure there is some demand within that language community (instead of first setting up a new Wikipedia and then trying to convince native speakers).

3. We should require people interested in setting up a new Wikipedia to provide 20 basic encyclopedia articles before we establish that edition in order to have some start-up basis and to avoid "zero" article Wikipedias.

4. New constructed and extinct languages should not be allowed except proponents provide sufficient arguments that their language has a special potential for an extensive high quality online encyclopedia.

5. We should discuss new avenues for the advancement of small languages (minority, extinct, constructed) within Wikimedia, apart from Wikipedia.

Boris

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from_name: Kardos Andris

subject: [Wikipedia-l] WikiIndex (idea)

body:
An idea. I'll try to be short.

Wikipedia has a lot of information, and it is heavily crosslinked. But it's
not indexed. I mean an index of people, and index of places and an index of
things. And events. And countries. And lakes. And whatever. Each index is a
table (in database terms), with a few required fields. You could the add a
page (or a part of it) to an index (or more indexes) by specifying theese
required fields of an
index (probably in the wiki source).

Using this you could look up things/people that happened, borned, died
or whatever on a given day. Or things that happened in Tokyo. Or list
books or movies that have wiki pages about them. Possibilities are
quite broad. Look up pages that are in multiple indexes, "events" and
"presidents of the world" for example.

"indexers" would be wikipedians who index things. Make and index, like
"countries" or "operating systems" or "mysteries". And then collect things
into that index. And specify the attributes of that index. There are pages
like this, I know, for database systems for example, but you see this is a
different level. You could create an index of abbreviations for example...

(I don't have much time to discuss it, but if anyone finds it worth working
on, please let me know. Later I might join in. Have a nice day.)


subject: [WikiEN-l] Abusive editors

body:
Skyring wrote:

><slimvirgin at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>>You have accused Adam of
>>misrepresenting the constitution, when he was paraphrasing it very
>>precisely. (Your subsequent claim that "shall be" and "is" have
>>different meanings in this context is false, and you have offered no
>>reason for your view.)
>>
>>
>Again, this is simply not true. Several times I have pointed out the
>similar wording in s101 where "shall be" cannot be equated to "is". By
>saying that the Constitution says that the Governor-General is the
>representative of the Queen Adam is downplaying the historical aspect
>of the text, and my point, expressed several times, is that we have
>moved on. The Governor-General is no longer quite the representative
>of the Queen and her government that he was at Federation. The role in
>this respect has diminished and his role as representative of the
>people rather than the government has increased.
>
The principle that the law is always speaking would allow for some
degree of interchangeability between the present and future tense.

Ec


subject: [WikiEN-l] Abusive editors

body:
The Cunctator wrote:

>On 3/9/05 2:46 PM, "Ray Saintonge" <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
>
>
>>If I were to judge Ed solely by many of the substantive positions that
>>he takes, we should be bitter enemies. :'( Ed does indeed shoot from the
>>hip, but with one big difference.  When he realizes that he has made a
>>mistake he is quicker than most to admit it.  Yes, Ed was out of line,
>>but so what?  I do not support making policy on the hoof, there is
>>already far too much of that.  Ed did not do that; he enforced what he
>>believed to be policy, and did his best to undo the damage when he found
>>his mistake.  His actions are perfectly understandable when you see the
>>unending parade of shifting policies.  Nobody but policy geeks can keep
>>up with it, and policy geeks are notorious for losing sight of project
>>goals.
>>
>>I don't see any need for further action on this.  Ed's repentance tells
>>me all I need to know.  Unless we take a forgiving attitude towards this
>>kind of error how can we expect to be forgiven ourselves when the tables
>>are turned.
>>
>>
>>
>My problem with this response is that Ed has done this repeatedly.
>
>1. He screws up royally by abusing the privileges he's been given
>2. He professes that he had no idea that he screwed up
>3. After numerous people explain carefully how he screwed up, he apologizes.
>Contritely. And professes earnestly his deep, abiding good faith and his
>intention never to screw up again.
>4. People cheer Ed's contrition and praise his good works. He is not
>punished and his privileges are not removed.
>5. After a few weeks have passed, Ed has forgotten any mistakes he's ever
>made and is happy to announce that he's always been successful in any
>actions he's taken to help Wikipedia.
>
>Rinse, wash, repeat.
>
>
Yeah, that's Ed alright!  He's a known quantity, and he's been like that
for the entire three years that I've been here.  The funny thing is that
there are others toward whom I do not feel as tolerant.

Ec


from_name: Thomas Gries

subject:
[Wikitech-l] email notification (for changed pages and user_talk
 pages) for mediawiki 1.3.11

body:
I just wanted to renew the information, that my patch is ready since
some weeks.
http://bugzilla.wikipedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=454 and
http://meta.wikipedia.org/Enotif describe, where it can be downloaded,
how it works.
There are also some screenshots flying around.

Please report problems directly to me by mail;I also assist you should
there be problems.
Tom


from_name: fubar

subject:
[Wikitech-l] email notification (for changed pages and user_talk
	pages) for mediawiki 1.3.11

body:
Thomas Gries schrieb:
> I just wanted to renew the information, that my patch is ready since
> some weeks.
> http://bugzilla.wikipedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=454 and
> http://meta.wikipedia.org/Enotif describe, where it can be downloaded,
> how it works.

http://meta.wikipedia.org/Enotif shows only a 404 not found...
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Enotif is the correct one.

> There are also some screenshots flying around.
>
> Please report problems directly to me by mail;I also assist you should
> there be problems.

looks nice!
... I'm still reading...


from_name: Skyring

subject: [WikiEN-l] Abusive editors

body:
On Wed, 09 Mar 2005 07:30:48 -0700, Fred Bauder <fredbaud at ctelco.net> wrote:

> So there is some thought that you might be a very bad editor pushing an
> eccentric point of view unsupported by reliable authority. This approach is
> not recommended and can easily result in you being banned from articles
> which relate to Australian politics. However, our policy remains No personal
> attacks.

Yeah, that's what I thought. As for editing, I make sure I have
checkable sources, hence my stress on constitutional scholars. Adam
tends to fade away when asked to provide sources, or else he finds
some partisan site and quotes large chunks of manifesto.

--
Peter in Canberra


from_name: David Gerard

subject:
[Wikitech-l] [Fwd: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia running nicely today,
	at least for me...]

body:
See, it's not *all* jonesing editors desperate for their fix and angry at
you for not giving it to them quickly enough ;-)

- d.


from_name: actionforum at comcast.net

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Queen Elizabeth II

body:
------------- Original message --------------

> Sorry... I'm totally confused. We have a constitution, we elect our
> government (the populace elects them), in fact we MUST elect our
> government as this is compulsory and we have equality before the law and
> due process under the rule of law! So in what way are we *not* a democracy?
>
> Is there some weird American definition of democracy I'm not aware of?
> May I suggest looking at
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy#.22Democracy.22_versus_.22republic.22
> and if necessary update it?

Sorry, I was under the impression that you did not consider Austrailia a republic, and that republic meant "democracy" in Austrailian english.  It was the discussions on [[Austrailia]] and the far more substantial article on [[republicanism]] that gave me this impression.  The short blurb you point to on in the Democracy article, says the head of state must be elected.  This appears at odds with the republicanism article which states only that he must serve a limited term, but also talks about many other issues, including the sovereignty lying with the people.

Now I have heard people argue that a representative democracy is not a democracy, but I don't take that position.

                        -- Silverback


from_name: Ronald Chmara

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: WikiIndex (idea)

body:
On Mar 10, 2005, at 1:56 AM, Magnus Manske wrote:
> So, do we need another kind of *indexing*, or just a new way of
> cross-reading existing categories?
> Magnus
> Kardos Andr?s schrieb:
>> Yes, a *primitive* form of an index.
>> Alfio Puglisi <puglisi at ...> writes:
>>> Aren't categories a primitive form of index?
>>> Alfio

I think I understand some of the original intent behind this idea, so
let me expand upon what I thought the idea was.

Let's take an existing article, which already has some categories:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anne_Frank

It has a fairly small set of current indexed categories:
Categories: 1929 births | 1945 deaths | Diarists | Dutch writers |
Murdered writers | Holocaust | Dutch World War II people | People with
asteroids named after them

It does *not* have the following possibly relevant, hypothetical(?),
categories attached:
People born on June 12 | Famous Jewish People | Famous Young Authors |
People who hid during the holocaust |  Authors whose work has been
disputed | Authors whose work was redacted by their family | People who
died in Bergen-Belsen | Authors whose work had been converted to
theater | Authors whose work became opera | Authors who were born in
Frankfurt am Main | Authors born in Germany | Famous Reform Jews |
Famous Montessori Students | Famous Aachen residents | Events of July
8th | Events of October 28th | Authors who told biographical account
using pseudonyms | People published in Het Parool | Plays by Goodrich
and Hackett | Pulitzer Prize winning Dramas | .... (the list goes on
and on)

As you see, the currently existing categories can scratch the surface,
but can also miss many connections (as currently implemented).

As I understand the idea, it is about either:
a) Much more human indexing categories being applied
b) Automated systems so that the "what links here" kinds of information
are added in some way to existing indexes, or categories, or utilized
in an obvious way to display existing connections....

-Bop


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Abusive editors

body:
-------------- Original message --------------
> I think it's important to note that baiting users into making personal
> attacks is even worse than the personal attacks that ensue, however.
>
> -Snowspinner

Abusers often blame the victim.  Sadly, sometimes the victims believe them.

       -- Silverback


subject: [WikiEN-l] Abusive editors

body:
On Wed, 9 Mar 2005 07:48:45 -0800 (PST), Daniel Mayer
<maveric149 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> --- Matt R <matt_crypto at yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
> > As far as I know, we don't have any policy to justify blocking over personal
> > attacks. I would suggest unblocking Adam Carr, even though his abusive
> > remarks in this instance are uncalled for and inconsistent with his
> reputation as a
> > fine editor. I guess everyone blows a fuse now and again.
>
> All polices are enforceable. Just because a certain one does not specify a
> specific punishment for violating it, does not mean it is not enforceable. The
> ArbCom has banned a bunch of users for regularly violating the no personal
> attacks policy. ASAIK, admins can and should enforce this policy when they see
> it violated after a warning is given.

I'm kind of new here, but my feeling is that Adam will just take this
as more evidence of animosity. I don't want to have him stop editing,
because he IS a good editor, but I don't want him making personal
attacks on me (or anyone else). It gets in the way of constructive
discussion, quite apart from it being annoying.

--
Peter in Canberra


subject: [WikiEN-l] POV featured articles?

body:
I noticed that an article I considered POV just became a featured article:

   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_history_of_the_Soviet_Union

I've marked it NPOV, and have made several improvements, including a couple I made before it achieved featured article status.

How do articles become featured articles?  I've read Wikipedia:Featured articles,
and it talks about standards but not how the actual decision about the status is
made.  I looked at the nomination page, and there were only 5 supporting votes,
and zero opposing votes, before mine which I have just added after the fact.

I am not criticising those reviewers, they may not be sensitive to some of the
selection biases that can occur within articles or may have been unfamiliar
with the subject.

I am however surprised that an article can become featured without far wider
review that hopefully would catch incompleteness or biases such as this.  I had
seen contributions to featured articles cited as feathers in ones cap, so I thought
the review must have been high.  Is there a minimum number of supporting
votes that are required?
                -- Silverback


from_name: Fred Bauder

body:
The discussion was hardly a waste of time. We have explored a number of
questions and obtained feedback. But not enough to change the policy
regarding personal attacks or to back off from the principle that putting
one's eccentric views into an article is unacceptable.

We have also explored the possibility that the community wishes to give
"good" editors license to abuse "bad editors"; that anyone who disciplines
or complains about such a "good" editor will be responsible for "driving
them away" and that someone who complains about a "good" editor is probably
a "bad" editor.

Fred

> From: "Arno M" <redgum46 at lycos.com>
> Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Date: Thu, 10 Mar 2005 12:20:44 +0600
> To: "Thomas Haws" <hawstom at sprintmail.com>, "English Wikipedia"
> <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Subject: [WikiEN-l] This republic nonsense has got to stop.
>
> This is really gone out of control.
>
> What seems to have very much happened that the wikien-l
> has become a tool for pushing a false view about Australia
> and in persecuting a long-time contributor who lost his temper
> at a person who persistantly pursued that view in defiance
> of all objective evidence to the contrary (eg quotes from the
> Australian Constitution). Other tactics seem to include the
> vexatious use of the no personal attacks rule, and general
> donning and brandishing of a martyr's cloak that its user was
> certainly not entitled to wear.
>
> This is meant to be an encyclopedia, one that is frequently copied
> across to other sites. Its facts need to be reliable and objective
> at all times.
>
> This principle has become dormant in this whole affair. What he went
> through was disgraceful, and if Dr Carr leaves this site in protest,
> I can hardly blame him.
>
> If there is a disagreement on this matter , clearly sources have to be
> quoted and discussed objectively. This has not happened in this matter.
>
> I stand reminded of a certain user named Plautus Satire who would not stop
> arguing
> that everything was made of plasma or that the space shuttle was shot down by
> a laser, regardless of a lack of evidence to back these views. A similar
> insanity
> occurred here.
>
> Its time it came to an end. Its certainly wasted enough space on wikien-l.
>
>
>
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Thomas Haws" <hawstom at sprintmail.com>
> To: "English Wikipedia" <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Re: Abusive editors
> Date: Wed, 9 Mar 2005 22:34:04 -0700 (GMT-07:00)
>
>>
>>>> I think it's important to note that baiting users into making
>>>> personal attacks is even worse than the personal attacks that
>>>> ensue, however. -Snowspinner
>>>
>>> Abusers often blame the victim.  Sadly, sometimes the victims believe them.
>>>
>>> -- Silverback
>>
>> In other words, baiting is most definitely not worse than abusing.
>> True that both are bad, but pointing fingers merely is a tactic for
>> deflecting blame.  Thou shalt not escalate.
>>
>> - Tom Haws
>> _______________________________________________
>> WikiEN-l mailing list
>> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
>> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>
> --
> _______________________________________________
> NEW! Lycos Dating Search. The only place to search multiple dating sites at
> once.
> http://datingsearch.lycos.com
>
> _______________________________________________
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from_name: Daniel Mayer

subject: [WikiEN-l] Abusive editors

body:
--- Rick <giantsrick13 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> I think we've discussed ad nauseum how people are
> afraid to request sanctions against other users
> because of the perceived (and real) threat that the
> arbcom will turn it against the person bringing the
> case.

Name a case where that happened.

-- mav

__________________________________________________
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subject: [WikiEN-l] Abusive editors

body:
--- Daniel Mayer <maveric149 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> --- Rick <giantsrick13 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> > I think we've discussed ad nauseum how people are
> > afraid to request sanctions against other users
> > because of the perceived (and real) threat that the
> > arbcom will turn it against the person bringing the
> > case.
>
> Name a case where that happened.

I should have added, name a case where that happened where the person bringing
the case was in fact innocent and then wrongfully sanctioned. It would be
absurd to only look at the accused and not the accuser. That would encourage
bad actors to request frivolous arbitrations.

-- mav

__________________________________________________
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Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
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from_name: Phil Sandifer

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Abusive editors

body:
I think you're misrepresenting how this goes. Let's take, say, Adam
Carr and Skyring. Or Slrubenstein and Xed. Here is generally how it
goes.

User 1: Forcefully stated idea
User 2: Polite disagreement
User 1: Hostility at disagreement
User 2: Continued efforts at disagreement
User 1: Increasing hostility. Some abuse.
User 2: Bewildered suggestion of a compromise
User 1: Rejection of compromise. Hostility. Claim to being willing to
compromise. (We're about a month into the cycle now)
User 3: Protection of article.

Next month, on a new article...
User 1: Forcefully stated idea
User 2: Wincing, disagreement.
User 1: Accusation that User 2 is biased and shouldn't edit this
article. Other abuse.
User 2: Stubbornness, some reluctance to discuss this again.
User 1: Repeated statement to be willing to compromise, coupled with
complete lack of compromise offered and streams of abuse.
User 2: Requests for page to be protected.
User 3: Protects page.

Next month, on yet another article
User 1: Forcefully stated idea
User 2: Pointing out that to date, nobody has agreed with User 1.
User 1: Accusation of a cabal.
User 2: Mild personal attack.
User 1: Arbcoms User 2.

User 1 should be run out of Wikipedia. User 2 should be slapped on the
wrist and solemnly told "Don't do that again." Then privately thanked
for opposing the stupid.

-Snowspinner

On Mar 10, 2005, at 5:03 AM, actionforum at comcast.net wrote:

> -------------- Original message --------------
>> actionforum at comcast.net wrote:
>>> -------------- Original message --------------
>>>
>>>> I think it's important to note that baiting users into making
>>>> personal
>>>> attacks is even worse than the personal attacks that ensue, however.
>>>>
>>>> -Snowspinner
>>>
>>>
>>> Abusers often blame the victim. Sadly, sometimes the victims believe
>>> them.
>>>
>>> -- Silverback
>>
>> Sorry, I'm a little dense today. Please spell out the point you are
>> trying to make.
>
> The idea of name callers blaming the victim for "baiting" them is
> analogous to spousal abusers who claim the spouse "egged them on",
> "was asking for it" or committed some other stupid oversight or
> offense.  The spousal abuse victim, often will defend the abuser
> claiming it was their fault, they weren't perfect in some way.
>
> Of course, namecallers think their victims deserved it, egged them on,
> baited them, or was being unreasonable, or refused to acknowledge that
> the namecaller was right.
>
> Somehow, just as a lot of people manage to avoid abusing their
> spouses, a lot of people refrain from namecalling.    The difference
> is more in the abuser or namecaller than in the victim or provocature.
>                   -- Silverback
>                   -- Silverback
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


body:
The problem is that you are arguing over a generalization, not over
particulars, one can cite authority for a number of propositions and that is
good but insisting on an overarching generalization is a violation of
Wikipedia policy. There is also a problem of obsession involved here.

With respect to generalizations: it is inappropriate to try to insert into
the George W. Bush article that he is a "fool" or that he is "courageous".
One can cite a number of things he did or said which might support one
conclusion or another but the overarching generalization that gathers all
the threads of a complex life up and sums up his character are inappropriate
in an encyclopedia.

Likewise, characterizing Australia as a republic when its title is
Commonwealth or the Soviet Union as a dictatorship when its title is
republic is problematic. Both characterizations seek to cut through the
verbiage and express the essence of the matter, the truth. However they
cannot take the place of the proper sort of NPOV information which explores
the different ways the situation is looked at and described.

As to obsession, we recently had a case of obsession with Ashley Simpson;
other editors have fallen into the same sort of pattern. Like Ashley Simpson
whether Australia is fairly characterized as a republic and the debate over
the matter in Australia are significant, but not properly a matter of great
concern. Constant churning over of the matter eventually becomes a
disruption of Wikipedia and a violation of policy.

Fred

> From: Skyring <skyring at gmail.com>
> Reply-To: Skyring <skyring at gmail.com>, English Wikipedia
> <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Date: Thu, 10 Mar 2005 19:46:45 +1100
> To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at wikipedia.org>
> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] This republic nonsense has got to stop.
>
> On Thu, 10 Mar 2005 12:20:44 +0600, Arno M <redgum46 at lycos.com> wrote:
>>
>> If there is a disagreement on this matter , clearly sources have to be
>> quoted and discussed objectively. This has not happened in this matter.
>
> Hear, hear! I have presented bucketloads of reputable, verifiable
> sources, and yet Adam Carr relies almost entirely on his own opinion.
>
> On 14 Feb 2005 I stated in [[Talk:Government of Australi]] "I intend
> to remove all references to head of state until someone can come up
> with a definitive source, that isn't clearly opinion."
>
> Since then, Adam has provided a total of two sources apart from himself:
>
> One newspaper article written by Allison Henry who is the National
> Director of the Australian Republican Movement, a partisan
> organisation.
> [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Government_of_Australia&diff=p
> rev&oldid=10713451]
>
> One link to a paper issed by the Parliamentary Research Office. This
> paper was described by another editor and Adam found the link. The
> paper gives opinions for the Queen as head of state and the
> Governor-General as head of state. It does not favour one or the
> other.
> [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Government_of_Australia&diff=p
> rev&oldid=10665087]
>
> Adam's argument is not based on checkable sources. It is based on
> abuse, threats and personal opinion, as anybody may see for themselves
> by following the chain of edits on the discussion page for the
> article, beginning at
> [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Government_of_Australia&diff=n
> ext&oldid=10232643]
>
> Along the way, the number and quality of my own sources may be noted:
> Link to ACM website, disproving Adam's statement of their definition
> of republic.
> [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Government_of_Australia&diff=n
> ext&oldid=10611555]
>
> Link to Australian National Opinion Poll site showing poor level of
> community awareness on constitutional matters.
> http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Government_of_Australia&diff=ne
> xt&oldid=10614518
>
> Quote from Federation-era constitutional scholars Quick and Garran
> showing their opinion that the brand new Constitution places
> sovereignty in the hands of the Australian people.
>
> Quote from Macquarie Dictionary showing that definition of republic
> includes Australia. Both at
> [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Government_of_Australia&diff=n
> ext&oldid=10629502]
>
> Link to ARM article quoting Professor Brian Galligan stating that
> Australia is a republic.
> Link to Australian Politics site quoting Prime Minister John Howard
> describing the Governor-General as "effectively Australia's head of
> state".
> Link to Melbourne University site quoting former Governor Sir Richard
> McGarvie stating that the Governor-General performs the functions of
> the head of state.
> Link to ARM article quoting Professor George Winterton stating that
> Australia has two heads of state. I point out that the ARM material
> comprises quotes from Galligan's book and a copy of Winterton's
> article published in Quadrant, a scholarly magazine. All at
> [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Government_of_Australia&diff=n
> ext&oldid=10749531]
>
> Link to ACM site rebutting TBSDY's allegation that ACM and ARM have
> the same opinion on who is the head of state.
> [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Government_of_Australia&diff=n
> ext&oldid=10908870]
>
> Links to constitutions of Japan and Sweden.
> [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Government_of_Australia&diff=n
> ext&oldid=10933565]
>
> Four links to statements by constitutional authorities using the term
> "crowned republic"
> [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Government_of_Australia&diff=p
> rev&oldid=10938280]
>
> Link to John Howard as Prime Minister using the term "crowned
> republic".
> [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Government_of_Australia&diff=n
> ext&oldid=10942836]
>
> I don't mind criticism, bu when it is so far off the mark, I really
> must protest!
> --
> Peter in Canberra
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l


subject: [WikiEN-l] POV featured articles?

body:
I think this occurs because the bias in the article is subtle and not
readily apparent to a casual reader. It looks good on its face and very
detailed.

Fred

> From: actionforum at comcast.net
> Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Date: Thu, 10 Mar 2005 03:13:28 +0000
> To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Subject: [WikiEN-l] POV featured articles?
>
> I noticed that an article I considered POV just became a featured article:
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_history_of_the_Soviet_Union
>
> I've marked it NPOV, and have made several improvements, including a couple I
> made before it achieved featured article status.
>
> How do articles become featured articles?  I've read Wikipedia:Featured
> articles,
> and it talks about standards but not how the actual decision about the status
> is
> made.  I looked at the nomination page, and there were only 5 supporting
> votes,
> and zero opposing votes, before mine which I have just added after the fact.
>
> I am not criticising those reviewers, they may not be sensitive to some of the
> selection biases that can occur within articles or may have been unfamiliar
> with the subject.
>
> I am however surprised that an article can become featured without far wider
> review that hopefully would catch incompleteness or biases such as this.  I
> had
> seen contributions to featured articles cited as feathers in ones cap, so I
> thought
> the review must have been high.  Is there a minimum number of supporting
> votes that are required?
> -- Silverback
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l


from_name: Stirling Newberry

body:
On Mar 10, 2005, at 5:33 AM, David Gerard wrote:

> Stirling Newberry wrote:
>> On Mar 9, 2005, at 7:52 PM, Mark Williamson wrote:
>
>>> What about people who speak Hopi as their first language and would
>>> like to read about Milwaukee?
>
>> What about the vast majority of our readers who have needs that are
>> being ignored while certain individuals ride their private hobby
>> horses? The major challenge of wikipedia is to make sure that the
>> community's activities push towards the best possible knowledge
>> source while restricting the ability of organized groups of users to
>> slant the pedia. After hundreds of posts on the arguments over
>> hypothetical wikis, I am going to invoke the NPOV requirement that
>> points of view be represented in proportion to their importance.
>> Overwhelmingly our readers are in major languages, and the challenges
>> facing these large wikipedias should be occupying far more of the
>> discussion than is currently the case.
>
>
> That assumes it's zero-sum - that someone paying attention to a Hopi or
> Cantonese Wikipedia is automatically subtracted from the attention paid
> to the English or Mandarin Wikipedia - which you haven't demonstrated
> at
> all is the case, and which I really think isn't the case.
>
>
> - d.
>

No, I'm pointing out that the discussion here has lopsidedly been
involved with issues that are of interest to small groups of readers,
rather than the large group of readers. And there is a limited amount
of discussion bandwidth, therefore a zero sum situation is in effect.
The question "what if someone wants to read in Hopi" is much less of a
problem then "what if someone wants to read comprehensive and unbiased
articles."

If the wikiprocess is working, then there will be writers for where
there are readers, that is, in fact, one of the things wikipedia
offers: readers for writers.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Abusive editors

body:
On Wed, 09 Mar 2005 11:29:21 -0500, steven l. rubenstein
<rubenste at ohiou.edu> wrote:

> Skyring's response is, in my opinion, bizarre:

Yikes! It appears that way, doesn't it?

If you were to go back through the history of that particular talk
page, you would see that Adam at one stage misquoted a line of the
Constitution, substituting "is" for "shall be", at the same time using
boldface to emphasise his opinion that it was a fact that the
Constitution said it.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Government_of_Australia&diff=next&oldid=10919875]

I corrected him and there was some discussion, Adam quoting the
correct text and apparently unable to detect the misquotation I'd
pointed out. He then began a new section, divorcing his argument from
the misquotation I'd complained about:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Government_of_Australia&diff=next&oldid=10942255]

There was some more discussion, and then Adam deleted most of the
discussion page. I presume he added it to the existing archive though
I have not checked. This edit made his original misquotation vanish
from ready gaze:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Government_of_Australia&diff=next&oldid=10949293]

I responded, and then Adam made the comments to which I earlier objected:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Government_of_Australia&diff=next&oldid=10950314]

In between Adam's generally distracting contributions, it is a
pleasure to see the discussion from other editors proceed smoothly
towards consensus, where we agreed that stating baldly that Australia
is a republic is not going to fly, but that using sourced quotes from
the Prime Minister that he considers Australia to be "a crowned
republic" is appropriate.

--
Peter in Canberra


subject: [WikiEN-l] Abusive editors

body:
On Wed, 9 Mar 2005 17:22:08 -0000 (GMT), Tony Sidaway
<minorityreport at bluebottle.com> wrote:
> Tom Haws said:
> > Tony Sidaway wrote:
> >
> >>Some people have lower boiling points than
> >>others and can easily be provoked.
> >>
> > This is not to my knowledge a terminal condition or a good excuse.  We
> > can all learn to boil slowly and gently.  The message of the policy is
> > clear.  "Take responsibility for your own temper."
> >
>
> Absolutely. I completely agree with this.
>
> However I was pointing out that an undesired side-effect of enforcing "no
> personal attacks" with blocking could be, paradoxically, to give some
> people an incentive to provoke _more_ personal attacks.

You are completely correct, but may I state (again) that this was not
my intention. Adam is a good and well-respected editor, and I did not
think that he would be blocked. I merely want to be able to explore
opposing views without being subjected to personal attacks which are
upsetting and distracting. I guess I want him to be aware of the
community view on such things, as my own requests for him to moderate
his behaviour seem only to enrage him further.

I find that Adam was unblocked a few minutes later, and I support
this, though I also note that blocks on Adam don't seem to last long
in any case.

--
Peter in Canberra


subject: [WikiEN-l] Abusive editors

body:
On Wed, 09 Mar 2005 15:03:01 -0500, JAY JG <jayjg at hotmail.com> wrote:
> >Sliverback wrote:
> >
> >People paraphrase  for a reason, the paraphrase most likely has some
> >difference in meaning or more likely emphasis.
>
> People paraphrase for purposes of concision (at least when doing it
> properly), not to change meaning or emphasis.

In this case Adam changed "shall be" to "is". That changes the meaning
and saves only a few letters. Nor did he use any commonly-used form of
words to indicate a paraphrase. He used boldface to indicate that he
thought it was a factual statement.

--
Peter in Canberra


from_name: Anthere

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Wikipedia is an encyclopedia

body:
Felix Wan a ?crit:
> I am very disappointed.
>
> Can someone tell me what is the proper way to have this issue discussed
> by more people?  What is the proper procedure to open a project page in
> Meta?  Should I just open a page and hope that it will survive VfD?
>
> Long time Wikimedians, do not know how frustrating it is for new comers
> to know how we should do things?  We were encourage to be bold, but not
> told of the real community taboos, not warned that we must respond to
> messages, or someone may put us on RfC, say that we are incooperative
> and ban us forever.  I spent a lot of time to help one user out of that.
>
> Can the community be more friendly to new comers who may not understand
> the tricks and have not contributed much yet?
>
> Felix Wan

I can only be sympathetic to your point of view Felix.
I have the feeling as well that the wikipedia is less opened than it was
before. Some do not open their arms as they would have  opened them 2
years ago. There is a resistance much stronger than before. It does not
help either that the community is so much bigger, as there is no way
that one can keep informed about everything. I think it is much more
difficult to keep a common goal all together.

Example :
There were no discussions about whether to start a new language or not
before. I am reading all the current discussions with interest, and
wonder if I should really try to go about african languages. For a
single reason, some african languages are not spoken by a lot, or some
african languages are spoken by a lot, but very little written, as many
people just do not know how to write.

Last comments indicated that making the encyclopedia in many languages
was not our goal, but only making the encyclopedia that most people
could read. If such was our goal, I think it would be enough to focus on
english only, and not care for the few people who do not manage for
english (making a rough point here). I am absolutely not supportive of
this point of vew. I present the project as one trying to propose
information in a language people understand well. The best being the
mother language. To my opinion, this is also part of our goal. To make
information available as much as possible in people mother language.

Where does it meet your problem ?

Well, because the bigger we become, the more people insist on quality.
What was acceptable before, is not acceptable anymore today. When you
could work on a 2 000 stubby french wikipedia before, now a 2 000 stubby
african language will be questionned. There is resistance to new
projects languages, not because it is more bureaucratic, but a lot
because people feel they have more to protect. A sort of image of
quality carried by the bigger languages, which does not appreciate the
stubs in lesser developped languages.

I do not know what to recommand for you to do. You meet the resistance
of the new stubby language, you meet the fear of "possible doubts on
language duplication", you meet the resistance born from Node
insistance. Add the stronger and stronger resistance of a community
trying to protect what has already been done. Not easy. I hope there is
more friendlyness in the future.


from_name: Charles Matthews

subject: [WikiEN-l] Abusive editors

body:
The Cunctator wrote

> Rinse, wash, repeat.

Basically I agree.  Unless there is some connection of which I am unaware
between the double-oh in Ed Poor and that in James Bond 007, Ed is not
licensed to do drive-by bannings.  He persists.

Charles


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: wikibreak

body:
I guess that a wikibreak is just not an option, unless I cut my personal
phone cord and DSL cord to the computer. I will consequently only try to
  strictly respect 6-7 hours of sleep everyday. If any of you meet me
after midnight on irc, I am fair game.

I will have to present Wikipedia in april in Stockholm and Helsinky, so
will focus in the next few days to prepare something in english. I hope
I can meet some wikipedians in Helsinky, but am not sure I will have the
time to do so for Stockholm.

On a similar note, I will probably spend a few days in Agadir early may.
Are they some wikipedians from over there ?

Otherwise, I am trying to improve the foundation current event with
Britty, so that the site becomes more informative. See
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/User:Anthere/test for now.

I was thinking to include in the main page a collection of news, but
rather than to have it just a line, make it more a good solid paragraph,
and have it signed by its main author. With links to other sources of
information eventually. Typical information could be
* informing on the recent break down of servers
* informing on a hosting decision
* information on a chapter creation
* informing on a major meeting

etc...

All things in relation to the Foundation of course. Till now, current
events have not been followed up much on the site, so I would like that
this is now more supported, to give more life to the site. My two
suggestions are 1) information a bit more sustantial than just one line
and 2) authorship mentionned. This is meant to decrease the risk of
announcement thought of being the board while they are not. In this
case, most authors would be people from the french, german, and wmf
board, plus official representatives such as Mav, plus techs report such
as from James day or Brion or Kate or....

Greetings

Ant


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: wikibreak


from_name: Nicolas Weeger

subject: [Foundation-l] Re: wikibreak

body:
> I guess that a wikibreak is just not an option, unless I cut my personal

Anthere, if you think you need to do that, then just do that - no one'll blame you :)

> Otherwise, I am trying to improve the foundation current event with
> Britty, so that the site becomes more informative. See
> http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/User:Anthere/test for now.

Sounds like a really good idea. Thanks for having it :)

> Ant

Thanks for all the good work

Ryo

Acc?dez au courrier ?lectronique de La Poste : www.laposte.net ;
3615 LAPOSTENET (0,34?/mn) ; t?l : 08 92 68 13 50 (0,34?/mn)


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: wikibreak


body:
--- Stirling Newberry <stirling.newberry at xigenics.net> wrote:
>
> On Mar 9, 2005, at 7:52 PM, Mark Williamson wrote:
>
> > What about people who speak Hopi as their first language and would
> > like to read about Milwaukee?
>
> What about the vast majority of our readers who have needs that are
> being ignored while certain individuals ride their private hobby
> horses?

Er, that is what I do already by writing about the things I find to be
interesting. That is the hobby horse I ride. Why is this wrong?

-- mav

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Small Business - Try our new resources site!
http://smallbusiness.yahoo.com/resources/


from_name: Kardos András

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: WikiIndex (idea)

body:
Yes, a *primitive* form of an index.

Alfio Puglisi <puglisi at ...> writes:

>
> Aren't categories a primitive form of index?
>
> Alfio
>


from_name: Alfio Puglisi

subject: [Wikipedia-l] WikiIndex (idea)

body:
Aren't categories a primitive form of index?

Alfio

On Thu, 10 Mar 2005, Kardos Andris wrote:

>An idea. I'll try to be short.
>
>Wikipedia has a lot of information, and it is heavily crosslinked. But it's
>not indexed. I mean an index of people, and index of places and an index of
>things. And events. And countries. And lakes. And whatever. Each index is a
>table (in database terms), with a few required fields. You could the add a
>page (or a part of it) to an index (or more indexes) by specifying theese
>required fields of an
>index (probably in the wiki source).
>
>Using this you could look up things/people that happened, borned, died
>or whatever on a given day. Or things that happened in Tokyo. Or list
>books or movies that have wiki pages about them. Possibilities are
>quite broad. Look up pages that are in multiple indexes, "events" and
>"presidents of the world" for example.

>....


from_name: Sabine Cretella

body:
Hi, I'd like to take part in this discussion, but I am just overloaded
with work and some minor projects for the Italian wiktionary etc.

I am writing between the lines.

>> Long time Wikimedians, do not know how frustrating it is for new comers
>> to know how we should do things?  We were encourage to be bold, but not
>> told of the real community taboos, not warned that we must respond to
>> messages, or someone may put us on RfC, say that we are incooperative
>> and ban us forever.  I spent a lot of time to help one user out of that.
>>
>> Can the community be more friendly to new comers who may not understand
>> the tricks and have not contributed much yet?
>
When I first found wikipedia and wiktionary as a place where I could
contribute I noted that I was not made for wikipedia - I like to read,
but not to write encyclopedic articles.

Wiktionary then was "my home" - on one hand as it allows me to do as
much as I can - one edit can be done in a minute - and if there's plenty
of time you can indeed do much more.

Lately I discovered other projects that interest me (the proverbs,
wikijunior, recipes) - so it is not said that wikipedia is the best
place to contribute for a newby - sometimes it would be easier to start
contributing anywhere else, and then step by step walk into "wikipedia"
wich is more difficult to approach (at least for me).

So yes, encouraging is great, but we should also try to understand the
person, the hobbies and maybe address them to projects they could really
be fond of and where they can give the best. This is even more difficult
then just explaining the how to's, but it brings more to all of us.

Friendlyness: sometimes it is very hard to comunicate with people you
don't know and friendlyness can be very subjective - it even depends
where the person you talk to comes from. And often people are just to
impatient. Anyway: new contributors instead of being rudely stopped in
what they are doing (this happens) should be contacted directly and one
should say: "Thank you for contributing - it is great to have you here
with us - see: after so many time of wikipedia/wiktionary we set up
certain rules as the more people are contributing the more rules are
needed. Your article is interesting, but does not meet these rules - so
I'd like to explain you step by step how to create .....  - and then
really explain step by step using mails including also descriptive text
you already prepared before.

We should try to write how to's that are not only published on
wikipedia/wiktionary etc. I noted that people read things on other
portals as well. This could help a lot - often people just don't find
where things are written or they don't read every single line. People
are lazy (we all are in some way) - how often do you really read a
instruction manual for a fridge or somthing else you buy? And how often
do you read things that are not as important, but that come from mailing
lists?

Examples:
I have a small portal for translators that has not many visits a day -
approx 30 - 50 from anywhere in the world.
In a forum about wikimedia (manly wiktionary) projects I posted some
topics in Italian only - and people read this:
- How to add a translation to an existing words: 64 reads
- Is it possible to download wiktionary contents: 101 reads
- How to register on wiktionary: 73 reads

>>
>
> Example :
> There were no discussions about whether to start a new language or not
> before. I am reading all the current discussions with interest, and
> wonder if I should really try to go about african languages. For a
> single reason, some african languages are not spoken by a lot, or some
> african languages are spoken by a lot, but very little written, as
> many people just do not know how to write.

This is the case for many minor languages that need to be protected.

>
> Last comments indicated that making the encyclopedia in many languages
> was not our goal, but only making the encyclopedia that most people
> could read. If such was our goal, I think it would be enough to focus
> on english only, and not care for the few people who do not manage for
> english (making a rough point here). I am absolutely not supportive of
> this point of vew. I present the project as one trying to propose
> information in a language people understand well. The best being the
> mother language. To my opinion, this is also part of our goal. To make
> information available as much as possible in people mother language.

Indeed this should be one of the main goals, as maybe even more people
would learn to read ... and hopefully also to write.

>
> Where does it meet your problem ?
>
> Well, because the bigger we become, the more people insist on quality.
> What was acceptable before, is not acceptable anymore today. When you
> could work on a 2 000 stubby french wikipedia before, now a 2 000
> stubby african language will be questionned. There is resistance to
> new projects languages, not because it is more bureaucratic, but a lot
> because people feel they have more to protect. A sort of image of
> quality carried by the bigger languages, which does not appreciate the
> stubs in lesser developped languages.

Indeed - but: every wikipedia is seen as an own project, every wikipedia
develops in another way - so these minor languages must be created to
give them the chance to survive. Not giving this chance means to
estinguish not only the language, but also the culture of the people.
Diversity is important and understanding it is even more important. So
when a new wikipedia in a minor language is started I would suggest to
use a special introduction text - not just the one used for the "big
languages", but to add that this wikipedia not only has the aim to
create encyclopedic content, but also to enable a culture to survive, a
language to survive and that contents for sure are going to develop not
too fast and that people are needed to contribute to make as perfect
articles as possible.

These Wikipedias should be more seen as a project to protect these
languages that in a second stage develop as perfect encyclopedias. For
sure they will take more time, but if it is there and people are working
on it: instead of making the perfectionists we should be proud about the
fact that it is indeed possible to create this very particular Wikipedia
(and maybe wiktionary as well in a second stage).

At this point I'd like to repeat one thing: if someone needs wordlists
out of txt doc etc. files to be created: I have a software that does
this easily. So I can help you with this.

>
> I do not know what to recommand for you to do. You meet the resistance
> of the new stubby language, you meet the fear of "possible doubts on
> language duplication", you meet the resistance born from Node
> insistance. Add the stronger and stronger resistance of a community
> trying to protect what has already been done. Not easy. I hope there
> is more friendlyness in the future.
>
>
Again: please see the creatin of a wikipedia in a specific minor
language from all points of view - not only from the perfectionist one.

Ciao - and we finally have fine weather on the Amalfi Coast :-)

Sabine

--

Sabine Cretella
Translations s.cretella at wordsandmore.it
Meetingplace for translators
http://www.wesolveitnet.com
*****
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Invia un'e-mail vuota a:
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from_name: JAY JG

body:
>From: dpbsmith at verizon.net
>Just for the record, and fully aware of the jinx factor...
>
>Today Wikipedia seemed to be operating like a sleek, well-oiled machine,
>with histories, diffs, watchlists, edits, and the Votes for Deletion page
>loading promptly and smoothly. Comparable to Slashdot, or Yahoo mail, to
>name a couple of consistently good-performing sites.

Yes it did, and your e-mail appears to have jinxed it already. :-(

Jay.


from_name: Alphax

subject: [WikiEN-l] Abusive editors

body:
Skyring wrote:

>A paraphrase of a significant document such as the Constitution should
>be labelled as such using one of the conventional forms. Stating it is
>a fact that it says something it actually does not is misleading, to
>be charitable.
>
What's the copyright on the Constitution? Is it on the Wiki anywhere?

[[en:User:Alphax]]


from_name: steven l. rubenstein

subject: [WikiEN-l] Abusive editors

body:
I am glad that Silverback and I are in agreement as to
principles.  However, Skyring and Silverback are still either
misrepresenting or misunderstanding the issues in this particular case.

Skyring wrote:
>In this case Adam changed "shall be" to "is". That changes the meaning
>and saves only a few letters. Nor did he use any commonly-used form of
>words to indicate a paraphrase. He used boldface to indicate that he
>thought it was a factual statement.

First, your claim that changing "shall be" to "is" is a change in meaning
is absurd.  The Constitution is using the subjunctive because guess what,
constitutions are written before they are instituted.  But once the
constitution is instituted, events actually come to pass, and the
subjunctive should not be used for ongoing or actual events.  Adam Carr's
change in grammar, from the subjunctive to the present tense, is completely
appropriate.  The basic meaning is unchanged -- what you call a change is a
trivial function of the passage of time.  In fact, to say that the Governor
"shall be" when there actually is a governor would be incorrect and
inaccurate.  You say that Adam's use of the word "is"  in boldface signals
that he thought that he is making an factual statement -- but that is
because he really is making a factual statement.

Second, you say that he did not do anything to signal he was
paraphrasing.  Well, this is again proper usage of English.  We are not
supposed do to anything to signal we are paraphrasing.  On the contrary, it
is when we are not paraphrasing that we must do something extra.  In
writing, you should know that in the English language, we use these things
called "quotation marks" to signal that something is not a paraphrase but
rather the precise words originally used (in speech, you have to use a
phrase like ", and I quote," to signal that you aren't paraphrasing.

Again, Skyring is being disingenuous, manipulative, and obstructionist --
but I observe that he is not making any personal attacks.  As a community,
we really have to come up with reliable procedures for dealing with
this.  The old strategy -- just keep rewriting to undo the damage -- just
does not work in some cases, because the person damaging the article, or at
least obstructing any improvement to the article, does not just go
away.  As Skyring's posting to the list-serve proves, he will simply go on
making silly arguments and wasting people's time.  Even if we don't condone
Adam's temper-tantrum, surely every good editor here can appreciate his
high level of frustration in having to deal with this stuff.

and Silverback wrote:
>BTW, it is not my position, quite the opposite, I oppose the position, it
>is just my observation of practice.  Note that poor skyring, has not been
>allowed to use the word "republic" himself, but had to find a quote in
>order to use the word.

As I said, I am glad we are in general agreement.  However, the observation
Silverback makes here is another misrepresentation of the situation.  Adam
Carr does not need to provide a quote that uses the word "is" because he is
accurately paraphrasing a cited text.  "Poor" Skyring does have to find a
quote in order to use the word "republic" because he is not paraphrasing,
but rather making a substantive claim.  These two instances are not
comparable.  Period.

Steve

Steven L. Rubenstein
Associate Professor
Department of Sociology and Anthropology
Bentley Annex
Ohio University
Athens, Ohio 45701


body:
Stirling Newberry wrote:
> On Mar 9, 2005, at 7:52 PM, Mark Williamson wrote:

>> What about people who speak Hopi as their first language and would
>> like to read about Milwaukee?

> What about the vast majority of our readers who have needs that are
> being ignored while certain individuals ride their private hobby horses?
> The major challenge of wikipedia is to make sure that the community's
> activities push towards the best possible knowledge source while
> restricting the ability of organized groups of users to slant the pedia.
> After hundreds of posts on the arguments over hypothetical wikis, I am
> going to invoke the NPOV requirement that points of view be represented
> in proportion to their importance. Overwhelmingly our readers are in
> major languages, and the challenges facing these large wikipedias should
> be occupying far more of the discussion than is currently the case.

That assumes it's zero-sum - that someone paying attention to a Hopi or
Cantonese Wikipedia is automatically subtracted from the attention paid
to the English or Mandarin Wikipedia - which you haven't demonstrated at
all is the case, and which I really think isn't the case.

- d.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Queen Elizabeth II

body:
>From: "csherlock at ljh.com.au" <csherlock at ljh.com.au>
>JAY JG wrote:
>>>From: "csherlock at ljh.com.au" <csherlock at ljh.com.au>
>>>
>>>The controversy has come about because Skyring insists that our head of
>>>state is not the monarchy, therefore we fall inside the definition of
>>>what is a republic. This is ORIGINAL RESEARCH. I have read some of his
>>>sources, and none of them state what he thinks they say.
>>
>>
>>Nah, it's just "simple deductive reasoning".  I can't believe you're using
>>your POV and extremist interpretation of the No original research rule to
>>try to disallow simple deductive reasoning from Wikipedia articles; you
>>might as well be issuing the commandement "Thou shalt not think."
>>
>>Jay.
>
>Er... my sarcasm detection mechanism must be on the blink today... is this
>a serious comment?

No, it was sarcasm.

Jay.


from_name: Skyring

subject: [WikiEN-l] Abusive editors

body:
On Wed, 09 Mar 2005 15:57:40 -0500, steven l. rubenstein
<rubenste at ohiou.edu> wrote:
>
> Silverback wrote:
>
> >but it is banned by NOR, unless a cite can be provided where someone else
> >has used those very same words in subject at hand.
>
> This is still completely wrong.  There is no requirement that someone else
> has used the very same words.  To follow this understanding of NOR would
> mean that editors can't write anything, but can only edit together collages
> of quotes -- this makes a mockery of the NOR policy.  Paraphrasing does not
> violate NOR.  Period.  Your position here will have only one consequence:
> to make it harder to write good articles.  Why would you want to do that?

A paraphrase of a significant document such as the Constitution should
be labelled as such using one of the conventional forms. Stating it is
a fact that it says something it actually does not is misleading, to
be charitable.

--
Peter in Canberra