from_name: Anthere

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: WikiEN-l NPOV

body:
Cher Edmond, je vous recommande de lire
http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_neutralit%C3%A9_de_point_de_vue
comme exercice pr?paratoire et entrainement au
fran?ais :-)

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Exclusive Video Premiere - Britney Spears
http://launch.yahoo.com/promos/britneyspears/


list: wikien-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Eileen

subject: [WikiEN-l] Major Correction

body:
As per a suggestion by Jimmy Wales <jwales at bomis.com>  I wish to bring this
matter to your attention.

I did try a correction earlier in the 'edit this entry' function but I
believe the edit I am suggesting is a little more than it can handle.

TIA Eileen

RE:
http:/en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Intact_dilation_and_extraction

I am unsure of the procedure for making the type of changes that this page
requires in order to make it accurate.  This is obviously a subject which has
been subjected to a great deal of controversy and dare I say propaganda and
this has led to a great deal of erroneous information disseminated as fact.

There are a number of major errors in the Wikipedia entry describing the D&X
abortion procedure.  The most glaring error is the statement that this sis a
late term abortion.  While it might be described as a late abortion,
performed around the middle of the pregnancy, it is certainly almost never performed
"Late Term" which is the last third of the pregnancy or to be technically
correctly after 26.6 weeks.  This procedure would usually be impossible to
perform that late in the pregnancy.

I also note the use of "birth canal" to describe the vagina as if a woman
had an exit chute on her baby factory; and the use of "womb" in place of
'uterus'. Both these terms, and the misstatement of the time the procedure is
performed, lead me to believe the article was mainly written by somebody opposed
to abortion who was more interested in getting a subtle message out then
actually providing honest information.  Since we are describing a medical
procedure appropriate medical/biological terminology which is well understood by the
general population is the appropriate vocabulary.

May I suggest reading this article before using the term "PBA" as loosely as
it is used in your current entry.
http://womensenews.org/article.cfm/dyn/aid/499/

I have linked Dr. Haskell's paper on my web site.  To the best of my
knowledge since this was presented at a public forum and also was presented into
evidence at a Senate hearing it would be considered "public domain' so there
really is no reason you may not add it to your papers if you so desire.

I have redone your page and would be happy to discuss any corrections you
see needed.  You have my full permission to use the page as I have amended it
since much of the work on its creation had already been done by you.

Thank you for your consideration in this matter and I look forward to
hearing from you.  I would prefer to retain my anonymity, since I have been
subjected to threats in the past, but would suggest that if you are interested in
confirming the facts as I presented them Dr. Haskell would probably be your
best source,

Eileen E
EileenE at GMX.Net

Cada ni?o un ni?o querido.
Chaque enfant un enfant voulu.
Jedes Kind ein gew?nschtes Kind.
Cada crian?a uma crian?a querida
Ogni bambino un bambino desiderato.
Every child a wanted child.

http://www.eileene.cjb.net

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Intact dilation and
extraction

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Find out how you can help support Wikipedia's phenomenal growth.

Table of contents

1 Definition

2 Circumstances in which the procedure is performed

3 Legal and political situation in the United States

3.1 About the
terminology

3.2 Efforts to ban
the procedure

4 Legal and political situation in the United Kingdom

Definition

Intact dilation and extraction is a mid-term or second
trimester abortion technique in
which the patient's cervix which is the
muscle ring that controls entry to the   uterus
 is dilated and the fetus
extracted in substantially one piece.  The term "dilation and extraction"
or "D&X" was coined in 1992 by Dr. Martin Haskell to describe a
variation on the more common Dilation and Evacuation (D&E - see below).  At the
same time roughly Dr. James McMahon, since deceased, developed a similar but
substantially different procedure procedure which could be used later in the
pregnancy and he used the term "intact dilation and evacuation" to
identify it. Dr Haskell's procedure eventually became known by the term
"intact D&X" which was the name he used to describe it when he presented a  paper
 on the procedure to his peers in 1992.

Circumstances in which the procedure is performed

Intact D&X procedures are performed by only a small number of abortion
providers currently and for this reason they are much less common than the D&E
procedure which is the preferred second trimester method in the USA.  They are
most frequently used in the second trimester between weeks 18 and 21 of
pregnancy.  Only about 0.01% of abortions are performed after this point so this
makes the D&X even more rare after week 21.  They may be performed during the
third trimester of pregnancy
if they are possible and one of the requirements would be that the fetus be
small for gestational age (SGA). This is because the head, the largest part of
the fetus, must be made small enough to permit it to be extracted through the
minimally dilated cervix.  After the second trimester the head is normally
too large for such a procedure and further dilation of the cervix might damage
the cervix and compromise future pregnancies for the woman.

This procedure is chosen when the physician performing the abortion has the
skills needed and may be the procedure of choice when:

The fetus is dead.

The fetus is alive, but continued pregnancy would place the woman's
life in severe danger.

The fetus is alive, but continued pregnancy would grievously damage
the woman's health and/or disable her.

The fetus is so malformed that it can never gain consciousness and
will die shortly after birth.

The fetus is alive, but the woman wishes to end her pregnancy for
non-medical/psychological reasons.

The woman has for reasons of her own requested that her pregnancy
be terminated before the fetus is viable in states where this is legal. Most
states do not legally permit abortions past the point of viability, usually
considered to be 23/24 weeks today.

One of the fetal defects which fall into this category is hydrocephalus which physicians refer to
as a neuralk tube defect. Approximately 1 in 2,000 fetuses develop
hydrocephalus while in the uterus; this is about 5,000 a year in the United States. The defect is not
usually discovered until late in the second trimester of pregnancy.

If a fetus develops hydrocephalus, the head may expand to a size of up to 250% of the radius of a newborn skull, making it impossible for it to perform
a removal through the  vagina. In
such a case, the physician may
elect to perform an intact D&X procedure by draining off the fluid from the
brain area, which permits the fetal
skull to collapse and the bones in the skull to slide over each other, then
withdrawing the dead fetus through the partly dilated cervix. You might think
of this as rtrying to remove an inflated baloon through a small hole in a
paper bag without tearing the bag.  Once the baloon is deflated the removal is
easy. A type of caesarian section delivery, called a hysterotomy, may allow the
delivery of a hydrocephalic fetus although such major surgery, with its
inherent dangers, is not always in the best interest of the woman.  Furthermore
the hysterotomy may leave a scar that is easily ruptured in future
pregnancies.

In the 2 to 3 day procedure, the cervix is dilated. The fetus is delivered feet-first, facing toward the
woman's spine. The surgeon inserts a
sharp object into the soft opening at the bottom of the fetal head just above
the neck, and then inserts a vacuum tube through which the brains and its
fluids are extracted. The head of the fetus contracts at this point and allows
the fetus to be more easily removed from the womb. The fetus can then be removed with less damage to the woman.
The technique was pioneered by Dr. Martin Haskell in 1992.

Intact D&X procedures are not performed during the first trimester, because
there are better ways to perform abortions. There is no need to follow such a
procedure because the fetus' head is quite small at this stage of gestation
and can be quite easily removed from the woman's uterus.

Legal and
political situation in the United States

About the terminology

This procedure is often referred to as "partial-birth abortion" among the media
and among pro-life groups although there has never been a medical
description of this "partial birth abortion" procedure and such descriptions as have
been written into legislation have been continually found unconstitutional
because they can describe a number of different abortion procedures. In the
medical field intact dilation and extraction is sometimes referred to as a D&X
procedure (not to be confused with the much more common variation
D&E procedure (dilation and
evacuation.)

Efforts to ban the
procedure

Since 1995, led by Congressional Republicans, the U.S. House of
Representatives and U.S. Senate have moved several times to pass measures banning the
procedure.  After several long and emotional debates on the issue, such measures
passed twice by wide margins, but President Bill Clinton vetoed
those bills in April 1996 and October 1997 on the grounds that they did not
include health exceptions.  Subsequent Congressional attempts at overriding the
veto were unsuccessful.

On October 2, 2003, with a vote of 281-142, the House again approved a measure banning the procedure. Through this
legislation, a doctor could face up to two years in prison and face civil
lawsuits for performing such an abortion. A woman who undergoes the procedure
cannot be prosecuted under the measure. On October 21, 2003, the United States
Senate passed the same bill by a vote of 64-34.  The measure does not
contain health exemptions, just the same as previous ones considered by the US
Supreme Court.  It remains to be seen whether the Supreme Court will also find
the language in the bill (Called S3 in the Senate) too broad to actually
describe an identifiable medical procedure so that physicians who perform
abortions will know exactly what is being banned and what they may and may not do
when performing such surgery. Either or both grounds, health exception and
vague terminology, would permit an appeal to the Supreme Court eventually and if
found valid would render the legislation unconstitutional.

The American Civil Liberties Union and the National Abortion Federation planned to file a
lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the October 2, S3, bill. Courts
have struck down several similar state statutes.

Legal and
political situation in the United Kingdom

Questioned about UK government policy on the issue in Parliament, ministers of the British government have stated (for example, on May 12, 2003) that although this method of abortion would be legal if judged
appropriate, "We are not aware of the procedure referred to as 'partial-birth
abortion' being used in Great Britain."

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list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Wouter Vanden Hove

subject: [Wikipedia-l] High resolution image Logo?

body:
Are there high(er) resolution images available of the new Wikipedia
Logo?

Wouter Vanden Hove
www.open-education.org

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from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Mother Teresa article

body:
Andre Engels wrote:

>"Jimmy Wales" <jwales at bomis.com> schrieb:
>
>>Louis Kyu Won Ryu wrote:
>>
>>>Root causes of the "current upset" have everything to do with Wikipedia
>>>policies and customs, in particular, the absence of some sort of means
>>>for dealing with article disputes that cannot be solved within the Wiki
>>>consensus editing model.
>>>
>>Is there any evidence that this is the case in the current
>>controversy?  What I mean is that the article already seems much
>>improved over the past several weeks.  So in what way is it really
>>true that the problem can't be solved within the Wiki consensus
>>editing model?
>>
>
>It is not working in that the consensus editing model can make POV
>lines and paragraphs NPOV, can correct factual errors and so forth,
>but the issue with the page is that a number of people (me included)
>are of the opinion that large amount of texts should be either
>removed from the page or severely shortened, and others (in
>particular Ec) will never get in consensus with such a change.
>
Huh??  I've not been involved with the article.  I agree that it can be
trimmed down.  Much of what is said about Keating should be removed as
irrelevant.  You must be thinking of someone else.

Ec


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Pedram Messri

subject: [Wikitech-l] Errors in PHP

body:
I just recently installed the wikimedia software by downloading the
tarball listed on the site, and following the install steps.
Which were to cp Localsettings.sample and Adminsettings.sample to the
same name with a .php extension and editing
The information, I had the database dump downloaded also (cur) and had
the appropriate users put in. Once I ran the
Install.php script it installed it in the proper directory. And once I
went to my browser and loaded wiki.phtml I get the following
Errors:

[Tue Oct 28 02:57:03 2003] [error] PHP Notice:  Undefined index:
HTTP_ACCEPT_CHARSET in /dir/path/wiki/OutputPage.php on line 402
[Tue Oct 28 02:57:04 2003] [error] PHP Fatal error:  Allowed memory size
of 9437224 bytes exhausted at (null):0 (tried to allocate 51 bytes) in
/dir/path/wiki/Language.php on line 1315
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from_name: Matthew Brown

subject: [WikiEN-l] Mother Teresa article

body:
> But what do you do plan to do if everything is vetoed by someone?

Indeed; the problem with running on 100% consensus is that while it
tolerates disagreement, it requires rational individuals capable of
flexibility and dealing with not getting their way.

When you have one fanatic joining the argument, then only one outcome can
possibly give 100% consensus; the fanatic gets what they want.

When two fanatics who disagree with each other join the argument, then
consensus (as-defined-above) is impossible.

One can then suggest a concept of 'rough consensus' which is how this place
generally works.  Things get done if a very small number of people contest,
IF the majority thinks that their objections are unreasonable.  This
overcomes the 'solitary fanatics' problem, but introduces the problem that
the community gets to decide whose opinion doesn't count.  The good thing
about 'rough consensus' is that only a very small proportion of involved
parties can be so excluded, or it becomes obvious that this is no longer
'rough consensus' but 'majority rule'.

-Matt  (User:Morven)


from_name: Jimmy Wales

subject: [Wikitech-l] Looxix for developer

body:
Looxix has been nominated for developer!  Unless someone wants to send
me any objections pretty soon, I authorize that Brion or whoever make
it so...


subject:
[WikiEN-l] Re: Resolving content disputes (was: Mother Teresa
	article)

references:
<E506B3FF6BC1254C9AC1B948C380BC280F4508@sm-nyny-xm05.nena.wdpr.disney.com>
	<01ab01c39cd6$e05fb950$74001c12@reflection>
	<bnk82o$u39$1@sea.gmane.org>

body:
Louis Kyu Won Ryu wrote:
> I'm going out on a limb somewhat here, but I believe that NPOV is
> difficult to apply in the MT dispute because there is disagreement over
> the amount and prominence of critical material that should be included
> in the article.

I agree that this is a common difficulty that does not admit of the
easier solutions.  But I don't think it is in any way insurmountable,
nor do I think that we need to appeal to some non-NPOV decision rules.

We're all by now quite good at such techniques as "going meta", i.e.
rather than making some claim, we just cite that some important group
or person makes such a claim.  Usually, though not always, this
resolves the issue to everyone's satisfaction.

But we're less sure about how to find a neutral ground, by which we
mean a ground of mutual agreement between opposing editors, when the
issue involves questions of prominence.

I think that the best resolution here is to lean towards
"completionism" rather than "deletionism".  If an article is
one-sided, then grow it.  And then after it grows too big, it will
often be much easier to see how to break parts off into sub-articles.

Here's an example from the current dispute.

"Mother Theresa is just about to be elevated to Sainthood.  Here's 20
paragraphs about why, her good works, why she is beloved by so many
and so forth.  And here's one sentence of criticism consisting mainly
of a link to a separate page."

OR

"Mother Theresa is just about to be elevated to Sainthood.  Here's 2
sentences saying way, followed by 20 paragraphs of criticism of her
and her order."

I would say that in *either* case, the right solution is *seldom* to
'balance' the article by *removing* valid material that is otherwise
NPOV.  More likely, what is needed is *more material*.  And then
hopefully, in that process, we can find that both parties are
satisfied to have some of the material moved out as necessary to
auxiliary articles.

We've also seen this recently in a Danny/RK edit war over
'Anti-Semitism'.  Danny wanted to (and actually did win out,
eventually, I think, at least at last viewing) simply remove one huge
section of the article that he didn't like.  I don't think that was
the right move at all.  (Of course, RK responded badly, which he and I
have talked about.)

I think that deletionism forgets that Wiki Is Not Paper, and that
completionism is likely to lead us to a better final article.

--Jimbo


subject:
[WikiEN-l] [iris.steineck@aon.at: donation to ferdinand porsche?
	article is not available under the terms of the GNU Free
	Documentation License.]

body:
I don't think this person's subject line makes any sense, but his
content claims are surely worth an investigation.

It looks from the history as though there's an ongoing edit war, and
so probably more eyeballs would be helpful.

----- Forwarded message from "Dr. Iris Steineck" <iris.steineck at aon.at> -----

From: "Dr. Iris Steineck" <iris.steineck at aon.at>
Date: Tue, 28 Oct 2003 08:43:11 +0100
To: <jwales at bomis.com>
Subject: donation to ferdinand porsche? article is not available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License.

Dear Mr. Wales,

My grandfather Erwin Komenda designed the VW-beetle and Porsche sport car
type 356.

I wrote this fact more than one times in the Wikipedia Ferdinand Porsche
Article.

([[pl:Ferdinand Porsche]]
'''Ferdinand Porsche''' ([[September 3]], [[1875]] - [[January 30]],
[[1951]]) was a [[Ethnic German|German]] automotive engineer born in
[[Vratislavice]], [[Austria-Hungary]] (now in the [[Czech Republic]]), who
developed the original [[Volkswagen]] and a prototype of the [[Panzer VI]]
[[tank]], which he nicknamed "''Tiger''".

In [[1928]], Dr. Porsche developed the first workable [[hybrid electric]]
car, proving it to be a workable concept.  Despite efforts by hobbyists,
this technology lay virtually unused by automotive companies until the
[[21st century]].

Dr. Porsche's son was [[Ferry Porsche]], the developer of the [[Porsche]]
automobile, which was based on the Volkswagen design. Both, the Volkswagen
and the first Porsche sport car, the Porsche type 356, were designed by
Porsche's longstanding chief designer [[Erwin Komenda]].

.[[Erwin Komenda]], the longstanding Porsche chief designer, developed the
car body
for the famous VW-beetle and Porsche 356.

External Link:
[http://www.komenda.at Erwin Komenda Porsche Designer]

But every time I  wrote this facts in the wikipedia article - the new
written text is cancelled immediately. I can?t accept this fact. Because on
the one hand Erwin Komenda developed the design of the famous cars and on
the other this is no more a free encyclopaedia. So I wonder how this is
possible. Have you got any donations for the Ferdinand Porsche article from
Porsche or the Volkswagen-enterprise, what is wrong with that site?

Best regards Iris Steineck

----- End forwarded message -----


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Mother Teresa article

references:
<8weWeIpSpVB@erik_moeller>
	<012c01c39c5a$4ff6a620$74001c12@reflection>
	<bnjj7r$cei$1@sea.gmane.org> <20031027171843.GA9264@joey.bomis.com>
	<bnjue7$fcf$1@sea.gmane.org>

body:
Louis Kyu Won Ryu wrote:
> James and Erik became frustrated to the point where they each were
> trying to line up support and get you involved.  I consider that a
> failure of the "Wiki consensus editing model," and the collateral
> damage (that is, Erik and James' frustration and anger, and that of
> others who tried to help) isn't worth it, even if the article is better
> in the end;

Well, it certainly wasn't a good thing, but other than some heated
words and then some apologies, it didn't really amount to much, did
it?

> also, it does not scale so when we have ten times the
> active participation we do today, the process, such as it is, breaks
> down.

Well, when we had 1/10th the active participation that we do now,
people said that it wouldn't scale.  And yet, so far, it has.

Consider this: Erik and James are both longtime contributors, highly
valued, and who have worked together and supported each other on many
various times in the past.  Both are strong personalities, and strong
personalities sometimes clash.

Humans being human beings, the occassional unkind remark and hostile
response is not something that we can design a system to completely
avoid.

My point is: no system other than a mutual commitment by all of us to
be kind, quiet, thoughtful, caring, loving, task-focussed, etc., is
going to magically turn us all into perfect people.

> Perhaps there are two separate things.  Most disruptive and
> counter-productive behavior by longstanding users has its roots in
> disputes over content.  Provide a fair, effective means of resolving
> the content disputes, and >poof<, the cases of disruption requiring
> bans become rare.

My point, I suppose, is that while there are certainly many ways that
we can improve things, we already have a revolutionary new tool for
effectively resolving content disputes, one which works far better
than anything which ever existed before, and we use it daily to very
good effect.  What tool is that?  NPOV policy tied to wiki technology.

The 'mutually assured destruction' and 'radical equality' of wiki
editing *is* the fair, effective means of resolving content disputes.
Abandon that and yes, we could have more peace and quiet -- like
Nupedia.  Keep it, and we're going to have to put up with a certain
amount of noise and ruckus.

> arbitration, well, if we are going to have an arbitration committee,
> there isn't going to be much for them to do if they aren't going to
> hear article disputes :-).

Well, actually, yes, there will be a lot to do.  The key is that
arbitration and potentially even banning have always ended up being
about behavioral problems, not content problems.  Yes, there is
overlap between the two.  And yes, a philosopher might imagine a
situation where a firm position on the content is necessary to resolve
the behavioral dispute.

But by and large, banning should boil down to a situation where
someone refuses to try to accomodate reasonable alternative
presentations, refuses to get along with others.

> Ideally, we would find some way to bring about a culture change to
> encourage more supportive and facilitative work on the part of
> Wikipedians in general.  Had their been a greater amount of this in the
> Mother Teresa article, I think the dispute would have been contained
> and resolved.  Instead, Wikipedians reviewed the article and made their
> own edits; though the article may have improved, that didn't help the
> dispute much.

Yes, I'm very much in favor of refining and extended our culture to be
"more supportive and facilitative".

Toward this end, I wish people would be a LOT less quick to talk about
banning others.  I wish people would be a LOT less quick to just
delete stuff that they don't like, rather than editing it or adding to
it.

But remember, I'm a veteran of Usenet flame wars in the old days.
Compared to other environments, our culture is really astounding, even
when we have our bad days.

--Jimbo


subject: [WikiEN-l] Mother Teresa article

body:
Toby Bartels wrote:
> In the meantime, have Ed and mav accepted my nominations for mediator?
> (Is mav even reading this list right now???)

Just to clarify, I have a bunch of saved emails in a folder of people
who have volunteered for mediation or arbitration, and I'm slowly
working my way through the huge backlog of emails from last week and
the week before on the topic, refining my ideas of how this should
work.

It'll be a bit longer, but then I'm going to make a more or less
formal proposal for how the committees should organize themselves and
what the parameters of their function should be.  This will likely be
'enacted' immediately, but with the understanding that we're going to
all struggle carefully and slowly and thoughtfully to a more "organic"
set of operating procedures for the committees.

And I'm going to also propose that the initial appointments will be
for staggered terms, with votes set in the future.  And I'll be
retaining a right of 'executive clemency', i.e. the ability to pardon
people who the arbitration committee has seen fit to ban, although I
doubt I will use it unless in my opinion the entire process has gone
completely off the rails.

--Jimbo


subject: [Wikitech-l] 10.000 queries per day from MetaGer?

body:
We should do everything we can to accomodate this.  I'd much prefer to
see this switch set 'on' by default if they're up for that, and I can
dig deep if necessary to accomodate this kind of opportunity.

When you say 'queries' does that mean searches in our search engine?
One possibility here is that I could setup a fastcgi on a different
machine to return results just for them from a daily dump of the
German database.  200,000 queries a day would not be that hard to
handle, and if it isn't hitting our main machines, it wouldn't pose
any problems for the site as a whole *except* of course that if we
return search results 200,000 times, we'll probably see 20,000-50,000
additional page views per day on de.wikipedia.org.

Kurt Jansson wrote:

> The biggest German meta-search engine MetaGer
> (http://meta.rrzn.uni-hannover.de) would like to have us integrated.
> There would be a switch which is set on *off* per default, so we'll get
> about 10.000 queries per day. (If it's set *on* per default we'll get
> about 200.000 queries per day.)
>
> I think atm neither is possible, but when the new server is up and
> running will we be able to handle the traffic?
>
>
> Kurt
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>


from_name: Andre Engels

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Mother Teresa article

body:
"Jimmy Wales" <jwales at bomis.com> schrieb:
> Louis Kyu Won Ryu wrote:
> > Root causes of the "current upset" have everything to do with Wikipedia
> > policies and customs, in particular, the absence of some sort of means
> > for dealing with article disputes that cannot be solved within the Wiki
> > consensus editing model.
>
> Is there any evidence that this is the case in the current
> controversy?  What I mean is that the article already seems much
> improved over the past several weeks.  So in what way is it really
> true that the problem can't be solved within the Wiki consensus
> editing model?

It is not working in that the consensus editing model can make POV
lines and paragraphs NPOV, can correct factual errors and so forth,
but the issue with the page is that a number of people (me included)
are of the opinion that large amount of texts should be either
removed from the page or severely shortened, and others (in
particular Ec) will never get in consensus with such a change.

Andre Engels


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Mailing lists

body:
Peter Gervai wrote:

>No, I cannot imagine any possible multilingual discussion. English is the
>common language here, I expect it to be used when global matters are
>discussed. Local messages to be directed to local lists. If someone's brave
>enough, s/he could translate/summarize back and forth...
>
If translations were to be a part of daily Wikipedian life then it would
still be useless to translate everything.  The thought of translating
into every other language the interminable debates about whether this
article is NPOV or that person should be banned is absolutely
mind-numbing.  How many Hungarians would care to read about that stuff
in their own language?

Ec

>


from_name: Poor, Edmund W

subject: [Wikitech-l] Looxix for developer

body:
The great Jimbo Wales intoned:

> Looxix has been nominated for developer!
> Unless someone wants to send me any objections
> pretty soon, I authorize that Brion or whoever
> make it so...

No objections from me...

Ed Poor


from_name: J. Noel Chiappa

subject:
[WikiEN-l] [iris.steineck@aon.at: donation to ferdinand
	porsche? ...]

body:
     > From: Jimmy Wales <jwales at bomis.com>

     > It looks from the history as though there's an ongoing edit war, and so
     > probably more eyeballs would be helpful.

Your wish is our command!

     >> From: "Dr. Iris Steineck" <iris.steineck at aon.at>

     >> My grandfather Erwin Komenda designed the VW-beetle and Porsche sport
     >> car type 356.
     >> ...
     >> Both, the Volkswagen and the first Porsche sport car, the Porsche type
     >> 356, were designed by Porsche's longstanding chief designer [[Erwin
     >> Komenda]].
     >> [[Erwin Komenda]], the longstanding Porsche chief designer, developed
     >> the car body for the famous VW-beetle and Porsche 356.

I have checked in the "definitive" Porsche reference book:

     Karl Ludvigsen, "Porsche: Excellence Was Expected"

and Erwin Franz Komenda was indeed Porsche's chief body stylist up until the
1960's. He joined up with Porsche in 1931, so it's quite credible that he
designed the bodies for the Beetle and 356.

I suspect that part of the problem is in the wording = Komenda wasn't really
the "chief designer" (as that term would normally be construed in English),
but rather the "chief body stylist"; also, he didn't "design ... both the
[Beetle] and [356}" (which implies he had overall responsibility for the whole
thing) - the latter wording "developed the car body" is probably fairly
accurate.

Someone (with more time than me :-) should research this in more detail...

         Noel


subject: [WikiEN-l] Mother Teresa article (veto)

body:
 From: engelsAG at t-online.de (Andre Engels)
> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Mother Teresa article
> To: "English Wikipedia" <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
 Everyone should make
> effort
> > to be consensual, but veto should be a "right" to
> me.
>
> But what do you do plan to do if everything is
> vetoed by someone?
>
> Andre Engels

That is a good question Andr?. My belief voting is bad
does not insure that not voting if perfect
unfortunately. None of these options is perfect. I
just think one is better than the other. That is just
my opinion.

I think it unlikely that everything is vetoed by
someone, because everyone is aware of the risk
inherent to blocking. That should be an extrem choice,
not one to choose easily.

So, what might be done in case of a veto ?

I think the first option in case of a veto is
precisely what Jimbo said "The wiki process!  Editing,
re-editing, striving to accomodate others, loving care
for the facts, respect for others, editing some more,
re-editing some more, arguing, talking on the talk
page, complaining on the mailing list about article
contents, etc.". Just discussing over and over and
over, till the tip of fingers are raw skin :-) (I talk
less when I cut a bit of a finger while taking care of
carrots in my kitchen :-)). I think that then, perhaps
instead of taking time to vote, people should take
time to go to the vetoer (if that term exists), and
try to see whatever option they could agree on with
him. May take time.

If that does not work, another option is just to drop
the entire matter. Just leave it be. Even if you think
it is pov. It is not the end of the world. I do not
think an article can ever be perfectly neutral. Is it
so important that there is a little bit biais in it
after all ? Why not waiting for a bit, until everyone
cool down, a few weeks perhaps, because sometimes
someone says veto in the heat of a discussion, and
later reconsider quietly.
Or wait for another editor to come one day, perhaps 6
months later, and miraculously, to find the "good"
satisfying solution.
Is there so much hurry for reaching perfection ? May
we not choose to just approach it ?

Another option is to get rid of the vetoer opinion.
That is a way as well. One may say the opinion is
irrelevant as a minor one. Set a vote, pick up the
majority.

Another way is to despair the vetoer so much he will
give up. Some use insults, personal attacks, to the
point the vetoer feels he is not welcome. And goes
away.

A last option is the get rid of the vetoer, by
declaring him unfit to participate reasonably.

And after all, if the only way of a project to go on
properly is to be made by people willing to cooperate
together, it is possible to say that one using veto
too often is blocking situations too often, and as
such having behavior detrimental to the community good
progress.

I choose options 1 and 2. And I keep both Erik and JT
:-)))

Do you think that if all the decisions on the talk
page are 40% 60%, picking up the solution with 60%
will be ok ?

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Exclusive Video Premiere - Britney Spears
http://launch.yahoo.com/promos/britneyspears/


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: WikiEN-l NPOV (Charles)

body:
  From: "Anthere"
>
>
> > Cher Edmond, je vous recommande de lire
> >
>
http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_neutralit%C3%A9_de_point_de_vue
> > comme exercice pr?paratoire et entrainement au
> > fran?ais :-)
>
> Enfin, de la clart?: f?licitations!
>
> Charles

Euh...cela veut dire que je suis claire pour une fois
ou que le contenu de ce lien est clair ? :-)

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Exclusive Video Premiere - Britney Spears
http://launch.yahoo.com/promos/britneyspears/


subject:
[WikiEN-l] Re: Resolving content disputes (was: Mother
	Teresa	article)

body:
Andre Engels wrote:
> We are to state that there is criticism, and what the criticism
> consists of. But there is no need to get into detail to prove those
> criticisms or spend two paragraphs per criticism to give examples. I
> don't see what the value is of spending eight paragraphs giving
> examples and evidence of insufficient care in Mother Theresa's
> homes. One paragraph specifying the criticism, and one with some
> examples would in my opinion be enough to give the relevant
> information in NPOV. Wikipedia is to state what criticism exists,
> and why. It's not our task to provide the necessary information for
> everybody to make decisions on the issue.

Why should we not give complete information?  Wiki Is Not Paper, after
all, and we have no particular space constraints.  If the article gets
too long, then we can break it down topically in some sensible
fashion.

> I disagree. An article that basically is arguing both sides of an
> issues extensively is NOT how I see the ideal, NPOV article.

Well, I do not think articles should "basically argue both sides of an
issue".  It should not be arguing for or against anything.

But omitting details -- why?  There's plenty of room on the hard
drive.

--Jimbo


body:
Do they speak English?

Kurt Jansson wrote:

> Jimmy Wales schrieb:
>
> >When you say 'queries' does that mean searches in our search engine?
>
> That's how I understood their mail.
>
>
> >One possibility here is that I could setup a fastcgi on a different
> >machine to return results just for them from a daily dump of the
> >German database.
>
> I think this would be great!
>
> It seems they want to set the Wikipedia-switch on off per default now
> and turn it on later if everything works fine.
>
>
> Kurt
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>


from_name: Evan Prodromou

subject: [Wikitech-l] Daylight Savings Time

body:
Daylight Savings Time ended in most of North America and Europe over
this last weekend (Early in the morning on Sunday Oct 26, to be
exact).

It's worth noting that the Mediawiki software is not aware of daylight
savings changes. I live in Montreal, and my offset was stuck at -4
until I went to Special:Preferences and did a "Fill in from Browser"
to make it -5.

I thought this would be worth noting. I wonder if using symbolic
timezones (Eastern Time, Western European Time, etc.) would make this
less of a problem.

I also figure it's probably worthwhile to make a note somewhere on
Mediawiki sites telling registered users to reset their offsets.

~ESP

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


subject: [WikiEN-l] Major Correction

body:
Eileen wrote (in part)

> Both these terms, and the misstatement of
> the time the procedure is performed, lead
> me to believe the article was mainly written
> by somebody opposed to abortion who was
> more interested in getting a subtle message
> out than actually providing honest information.

Thank you for spotting this error. I hope to make all Wikipedia articles
on abortion "neutral", in the sense of NOT getting out subtle messages
promoting or opposing any point of view.

Since I myself have no position whatsoever on abortion, I might be able
to work with you on these articles.

I'd like to see some clarification on:
* just what happens (medically speaking) during various types of
abortion
* what the law is (or soon will be) on 'partial-birth abortion'
** and what the Wikipedia should call this procedure
* the precise philosophical, ethical, moral, religious, etc. reasons why
people take the positions they do regarding abortion (pro-choice,
pro-life, etc.)

That's a whole lot, so just pick the part you're interested in...

Ed Poor
Advocate of NPOV


from_name: Louis Kyu Won Ryu

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: DC&X

body:
The informed, capable public opinion campaigns by activists on both
sides of the abortion debate have, over the course of more than thirty
years, loaded the language to the point where it is difficult to select
neutral terms.

In a medical or scientific context, the medical terms (cervix, uterus,
vagina) are more appropriate since these are the terms used by the
medical and scientific community.  They are also better defined inasmuch
as terms like "birth canal" may mean "vagina" to one person and have a
broader definition to another.  However, some abortion foes may argue
that the scientific terms are an attempt to sanitize the discussion and
hide the real meaning.

"Womb," particularly, is used in religious writings and for most readers
has connotations of motherliness that the more scientific terms lack.
Abortion foes know this and utilize "womb" in their communications.

All of this is just a warmup for trying to get people to agree on
whether to use "baby" or "fetus."

Louis
who has seen way too much to have any opinion on abortion


subject:
[WikiEN-l] [iris.steineck@aon.at: donation to ferdinand
	porsche?	article is not available under the terms of the GNU
	Free	Documentation License.]

body:
I've just looked at the [[Ferdinand Porsche]] article, and would offer
the following opinions
    1.    Dr. Steineck would help her cause tremendously if she were a
registered user.  Despite our ideals there is often a tendency to
presume that anonymous users are wrong.
    2.     Dr. Steineck is an Austrian who's native language is
presumably not English:  She has used "donation" where the rest of us
would tend to use "contribution".  That's a perfectly understandable error.
    3.    The reference to GNU-FDL appears to be a red herring.  Nothing
in the discussion seems to be about this.
    4.    The Ferdinand Porsche article is probably not the place to
dispute Komenda's claims; the claims are against Ferdinand's son [[Ferry
Porsche]] and it would be more appropriate in the article about the son.
    5.    Although it is appropriate to make a familial link between the
father and son, making a disputed claim as part of the link invites
problems in that it opens the disputed claim to discussion in a place
where it doesn't belong.  This has been a big part of the problem in the
recent [[Mother Teresa]] dispute.

I hope this helps
    Ec

Jimmy Wales wrote:

>I don't think this person's subject line makes any sense, but his
>content claims are surely worth an investigation.
>
>It looks from the history as though there's an ongoing edit war, and
>so probably more eyeballs would be helpful.
>
>----- Forwarded message from "Dr. Iris Steineck" <iris.steineck at aon.at> -----
>
>From: "Dr. Iris Steineck" <iris.steineck at aon.at>
>
>Subject: donation to ferdinand porsche? article is not available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License.
>
>Dear Mr. Wales,
>
>My grandfather Erwin Komenda designed the VW-beetle and Porsche sport car
>type 356.
>
>I wrote this fact more than one times in the Wikipedia Ferdinand Porsche
>Article.
>
>	[[Ferdinand Porsche]]
>
>But every time I  wrote this facts in the wikipedia article - the new
>written text is cancelled immediately. I cant accept this fact. Because on
>the one hand Erwin Komenda developed the design of the famous cars and on
>the other this is no more a free encyclopaedia. So I wonder how this is
>possible. Have you got any donations for the Ferdinand Porsche article from
>Porsche or the Volkswagen-enterprise, what is wrong with that site?
>
>Best regards Iris Steineck
>
>----- End forwarded message -----
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] Mother Teresa article

body:
"A Anthere" <anthere8 at yahoo.com> schrieb:

> 1) When people vote, they inherently think
> "democracy". They set percentage for acceptance or
> reject. That implies we tolerate to set aside the view
> of minorities.
> Supposingly, we should work per consensus. I already
> said my opinion about what consensus was a while ago.
> As for me, it is not per majority, 51 % 75% 90%. I
> consider consensus is 100%, given that in the 100%,
> some do not care at all, some are not happy but can
> live the decision, and some are satisfied. A 90%
> satisfaction, leaving in utter madness and despair the
> leftover minority of 10 miserable % is a bad choice
> for and is not consensus. Everyone should make effort
> to be consensual, but veto should be a "right" to me.

But what do you do plan to do if everything is vetoed by someone?

Andre Engels


from_name: Charles Matthews

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: WikiEN-l NPOV

body:
 From: "Anthere"

> Cher Edmond, je vous recommande de lire
> http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_neutralit%C3%A9_de_point_de_vue
> comme exercice pr?paratoire et entrainement au
> fran?ais :-)

Enfin, de la clart?: f?licitations!

Charles

http://www.speakingasaparent.com/


subject: [WikiEN-l] Can't tell the players without a scorecard

body:
Let's try to distinguish between three one-syllable male names:

Ec (Eclecticology) = Ray Saintonge
Ed (Uncle Ed) = Ed Poor
El (Eloquence) = Erik Moeller

Ray is the one with eclectic interests. Ed Poor is the maven of NPOV (or
"poor brainwashed cult victim" - ya pays yer money, and ya takes yer
choice). Erik is the eloquent writer.

Uncle Ed


from_name: Delirium

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Resolving content disputes

body:
Jimmy Wales wrote:

>I think that deletionism forgets that Wiki Is Not Paper, and that
>completionism is likely to lead us to a better final article.
>
>
The problem with this approach is that while Wiki is Not Paper, readers'
attention spans are limited.  If I want to read an overview of Mother
Theresa's life, I most certainly do not want it to be 20 pages long.
I'd much prefer a more summarized (dare I say, "encyclopedia-style")
biography.  If the rest of the information must be in Wikipedia, it'd be
nice if it were factored out into separate articles (maybe "Criticism of
Mother Theresa" and "Reasons for Mother Theresa's Beatification" or
something similar).  Generally if a Wikipedia article is so ridiculously
long that nobody not doing a thesis on the topic would want to read it,
it becomes much less useful to the general public.

-Mark


from_name: Matt M.

subject: [WikiEN-l] DC&X

body:
> I also note the use of "birth canal" to describe the vagina as if a woman
> had an exit chute on her baby factory;

I think "birth canal" is a reasonable and common usage designating the
entire passage (cervix, vagina, vulva) through which the baby passes during
birth. I'm not sure of the context of the article, but it is probably not
appropriate at other times (we don't usually speak of menstrual blood or
contraceptive devices passing through the birth canal).

> and the use of "womb" in place of 'uterus'.

I think "womb" is a common usage, and a word I happen to like, and I don't
see how this vitiates the NPOV of the article any more than it would to use
"afterbirth" instead of "placenta;" but I agree that "uterus" is synonymous,
and I won't defend "womb" to the death - just long enough to say that our
articles are directed at a general audience, and I don't see how the word
"womb" is any more unscientific than "heart" or "eye."

However, I fully support you in changing factual errors that exist in the
article, about whose topic I am essentially uninformed. The article's "talk"
section will reach the widest audience for discussing the changes you make,
should you feel the need to do so in more detail than you can in the
"reasons for edit" box.

Welcome to the Pedia.
Matt (Montrealais)


subject: [WikiEN-l] Major Correction

body:
Eileen wrote:

>I also note the use of "birth canal" to describe the vagina as if a woman
>had an exit chute on her baby factory; and the use of "womb" in place of
>'uterus'. Both these terms, and the misstatement of the time the procedure is
>performed, lead me to believe the article was mainly written by somebody opposed
>to abortion who was more interested in getting a subtle message out then
>actually providing honest information.  Since we are describing a medical
>procedure appropriate medical/biological terminology which is well understood by the
>general population is the appropriate vocabulary.
>
>May I suggest reading this article before using the term "PBA" as loosely as
>it is used in your current entry.
>http://womensenews.org/article.cfm/dyn/aid/499/
>
>
>
In both these cases, the problem is that there is no entirely neutral
terminology.  Using strictly medical terms is considered biased by the
anti-abortion community, as they see it as an attempt to cast a moral
issue as a strictly sanitized medical issue; using non-medical terms is
seen as similarly biased by the pro-abortion community.  My preferred
solution would be to use both sets of terms interchangeably--both "womb"
and "uterus" and both "birth canal" and "vagina/cervix/vulva").  In
particular I don't really see anything wrong with "birth canal", and
have seen it used in pro-abortion literature as well as anti-abortion
literature.

As for the term "Partial Birth Abortion" itself, there's no good
solution to that either that I can see.  Certainly there some be some
discussion about the controversy over terminology, but simply adopting
an alternate term would be biased as well.  The only other term in
reasonably widespread use is "late term abortion", but as you pointed
out some of these procedures do not actually occur in the last
trimester, so can't really fall under that heading.  So I'd say keeping
the term PBA with the qualification that some abortion supporters object
to the term is the best solution.

>I have linked Dr. Haskell's paper on my web site.  To the best of my
>knowledge since this was presented at a public forum and also was presented into
>evidence at a Senate hearing it would be considered "public domain' so there
>really is no reason you may not add it to your papers if you so desire.
>
>
I don't think this particular claim is true.  Plenty of copyright papers
are presented at public fora and remain copyrighted (Martin Luther
King's "I Have A Dream" speech is probably the most well-known).  I
don't think things entered into evidence at Senate hearings are
automatically stripped of copyright either, but someone more familiar
with copyright law would have to comment on that.

As a general comment, while I think it is a good thing to make medical
articles more precise, Wikipedia is also not a medical encyclopedia, so
articles should be written in a general context and for a general
audience.  Taking a strictly clinical view of some of these
controversial issues would itself be adopting a point of view, and we
don't wish to endorse any particular point of view.  I'll also note that
there's a ton of propaganda on both sides of the issue here:
anti-abortionists try to make their descriptions of "PBA" as gruesome as
possible, while abortion supporters try to make their descriptions of
"PBA" sound as much like a "normal" surgical procedure as possible, to
emphasize the "move along, nothing to see here" POV (or, alternately, so
jargon-filled and obtuse as to be incomprehensible to a general
audience).  I don't think either is a good solution, which is why I
object somewhat to your suggestion that we should adopt more clinical
terminology in the article (I'd similarly object to suggestions from the
other side that we adopt particularly gruesome terminology).  You do
seem aware that there is propaganda surrounding this issue, but you seem
much more aware of propaganda on one side of the issue than on the other
side.

-Mark


from_name: Ramesh Hotmail

subject:
[Wikitech-l] Fw: Human Audio System Response to Modulated M
	Wavepulses SIMILAR to Thattes Brain As Information
	Transmitter an EST Phenomena.Communication Topic

body:
28 th Oct 2003

From-.
MR.RAMESH PANDURANG THATTE
B E ELECT-PUNE-1964 / M.TECH-ELECT-IIT BOMBAY-1968
SEC-B INSTITUTION OF ENGINEERS(INDIA) IN [MECH-CHEM-INDUSTRIAL]
EX IAF PILOT OFFICER ( TECH/SIGS - 11230 )
" THATTE CONSULTING ENGINEERS "
SNEHSADAN NEAR CHAMBHARLI BUS STOP PO-MOHOPADA
TAL-KHALAPUR DIST-RAIGAD.MAHARASHTRA.INDIA.PIN-410222.
TEL NO-91-02192-250004/254471
Contact 1  rpthatte at sancharnet.in  OR  arthatte at sancharnet.in
Mr THATTE'S EST phenomenon www.thatte.net  OR  http://mumbai.sancharnet.in/rpthatte
Mr Thattes [M Tech ]Identificatioin thr  http://www.alumni.iitb.ac.in/details.asp?scn=2032
Weblinks Human Auditory System Response to Modulated Micro Wave Pulses http://mumbai.sancharnet.in/rpthatte/weblinks1
Few Important weblinks Human Auditory System Response to Modulated Micro Wave Pulses.
 1.  http://members.aol.com/phikent/orbit/new174.htm  by Cain, CA and WJ Rissman
 2.   http://www.raven1.net/frey.htm    3. http://www.raven1.net/synthtel.htm
 4.  http://www.raven1.net/stocklin.htm Patent  5.  http://www.raven1.net/ravindex.htm

To-Mr Ibrahim Afghani
      Wikipedia
  Scientists, Engineers, Medicos, Political Leaders, Social Workers,Well wishers.
         SUB-Human Audio System Response to Modulated Microwave Pulses SIMILAR to Mr Thattes Brain As Information
                 Transmitter ie EST Phenomena.
  Sir,        I request help of Patrakar Sangh for publishing it.
               I am presenting My EST Phenomena almost SIMILAR to Above audio phenomena explained by Mr Alen Frey & Other Scientists from 1962 onwards.The weblinks file about Human auditory phenomenon & My EST file are attached to this e mail. I
 request help/guidence for measurement of EST phenomena.
              I request help/guidance for SENSING & RECORDING of my EST/BRAIN Waves.
              I can send some of the related files about Human Audio system Response to Modulated M wave Pulses thr e mail if requested for.
            Thanks
  By Mr Ramesh P Thatte
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body:
Delirium wrote:
> The problem with this approach is that while Wiki is Not Paper,
> readers' attention spans are limited.  If I want to read an overview of
> Mother Theresa's life, I most certainly do not want it to be 20 pages
> long.  I'd much prefer a more summarized (dare I say,
> "encyclopedia-style") biography.

Well, if the page gets too long, we can break it down conceptually
somehow.  This is what we do all the time, right?

> articles (maybe "Criticism of Mother Theresa" and "Reasons for Mother
> Theresa's Beatification" or something similar).

Yes.  In some cases that's the right thing to do.  In other cases, it
would make more sense to break it down chronologically or by some
other conceptual schema, right?  There are some downsides to putting
"pro" and "con" in different articles.  (And upsides, too, esp. if it
keeps the peace around here!)

As it stands, I think that the article needs a major rewrite, and that
it is, in fact, unbalanced in its current form.

Notice that we have a section (3) "Campaign on abortion and
contraceptives" and a subsection (5.7) containing on criticisms of
what is presented in (3).  That strikes me as stylistically poor, and
I think this also lends to the unbalanced 'feel' of the article.

(1) is Life and Work, which is symmetrical with (4) about her
death.

I can envision that a future revision of the article might combine (1)
(2) and (4) into a general biographical section, and then there could
be links to more detailed articles on her specific work -- and these
articles would of course be written in such a way that both a
supporter of Mother Theresa and a detractor would consider to be fair.

I can only assume that somewhere easily accessible, when we get around
to it, there are the facts we'd expect to find, like "Mother Theresa
provided care for 100,000 poor, and got a law passed to prevent
thus-and-so, and found 347 clinics in villages that had never had
anything of the sort, and blah blah blah."

Presumably, those facts are needed to give a well-rounded picture
here.

--Jimbo


from_name: Peter Gervai

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Mailing lists

body:
On Mon, Oct 27, 2003 at 12:26:44PM -0800, Toby Bartels wrote:
> Peter Gervai wrote:
>
> >Well I hope it's okay then if I expect everyone to resolve issues in
> >Hungarian language, since I only understand English and Hungarian?
>
> You're certainly permitted to post to wikipedia-L in Hungarian.
> But as a practical matter, of course, it may not do much good.
> However, if you post in both English /and/ Hungarian,
> then some other person that knows Hungarian better than English
> would be better off.  So if such a person might exist,
> then certainly do both!

Logical result would be that we need lists for every languages, and persons
who translate every message from one to another. What if I want to talk to
someone speaking French, but I know only Hungarian? I write Hungarian,
naturally, someone translates it to English, some other one translates it to
Esperanto (because he refuses to accept any other possible target langauge)
and some last one translates Esperanto to French. Then comes a reply, which
is translated to ....

*scream*

No, I cannot imagine any possible multilingual discussion. English is the
common language here, I expect it to be used when global matters are
discussed. Local messages to be directed to local lists. If someone's brave
enough, s/he could translate/summarize back and forth...

> >Akkor ezennel javaslom, hogy Wikip?dia editor csak v?rszerz?d?ssel lehessen
> >valaki, teliholdn?l egy fekete kakast ?ldozva. Ha valaki nem ?rt egyet, azt
> >jelezze. Ha mindenkinek j?, akkor egy h?t m?lva bevezethetj?k. :-)
>
> This I don't understand, of course, since I don't know Hungarian.

Well go, and try to find a translation. I wonder how i18l speaking advocates
going to get the meaning and reply it. ;->

> But if, hypothetically, you also know French, and posted both,
> then I would understand you much better, even without the English.

Reality is that I speak Hungarian and English. I get some German words, but
close to nil. No French, no Esperanto, Lojban, Volap?k or whatever imaginary
language exists out there... (but hey, let's make lojban the official
language. I'm sure the traffic would become manageable! :-))

> I post only in English not because I think that English is the best,
> but because English is the only language that I can write in
> without taking an inconveniently long time to look things up.

Same here. I don't care if someone writes a french translation in their
email as long as they maintain its english translation. I hate to watch
esperanto or french discussions (or they may be even recipes, who knows?)
without any clue what's it all about. But it's not a big problem right now,
I bear with deleting 2-4 mails a day.

> Even Esperanto, terrible language that it is. ^_^

I think it doesn't really matter if someone can use it to communicate. (I
personally liked the idea of lojban, even I don't seem to grasp it, but
people use it to communicate, so it's okay.)

grin


from_name: Alex R.

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Re: Resolving content disputes (was:
	Mother	Teresaarticle)

body:
 From: "Andre Engels" <engelsAG at t-online.de>

>I disagree. We are to state that there is criticism, and what the criticism
>consists of. But there is no need to get into detail to prove those
>criticisms or spend two paragraphs per criticism to give examples.

This is related to the point I was trying to make on textbook-l discussion
http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/textbook-l/2003-October/000522.html
regarding the development of historiography and the varying POVs
of historians that are considered valid but not conclusory by other
historians of differing methodological approaches to social science
research. If one is going to include all these different perspectives
in a textbook that is only going to be used by one of these approaches
the book will fail in its purpose of being a textbook of a particular type
of history. The arguments are very similar, you cannot include every
point of view, but just reference it. In an encyclopedia that is
unproblematic,
as I agree, you are not writing to include every point of view but reference
it, an encyclopedia is not just a collection of texts, it is a synthesis of
knowledge. A textbook is more of a collection of knowledge, and
many knowledge theorists acknowledge that knowledge may have
a point of view and still be useful.

Alex756


from_name: Magnus Manske

subject: [Wikitech-l] EN offline browser

body:
I just uploaded the stand-alone en.wikipedia (no images) to
  http://download.wikipedia.org/wikipedia-standalone_en_20031022.tar.bz2
Only 150 MB, thanks to Bzip2!

Magnus


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [WikiEN-l] NPOV disputes in Polish-German articles

body:
On Tuesday, Oct 28, 2003, at 13:34 US/Pacific, Mirko Thiessen wrote:
> ... but from my angle Wikipedia is not
> the same place anymore.

No, that's the same old Wikipedia; the Polish/German nonsense has been
going on since before I got here. Let them fight it out in peace, or
convince them all to take a break for a while.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


from_name: Alex Rosen

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Resolving content disputes (was: Mother Teresa article)

body:
>> I disagree. An article that basically is arguing both sides of an
>> issues extensively is NOT how I see the ideal, NPOV article.
>
>Well, I do not think articles should "basically argue both sides of
an
>issue".  It should not be arguing for or against anything.
>
>But omitting details -- why?  There's plenty of room on the hard
>drive.

For me it's not about drive space, it's about writing encyclopedia
articles instead of debate summaries. The end result just has the
completely wrong tone. This is exactly what I was talking about recently
on the Pump:

So many articles consist of person one saying: Some people believe <my
POV>. Then person two adds: Other people, however, believe that <my
POV>. What a mess. An article filled with this kind of
POV-in-NPOV-clothing reads like a debate, not an encyclopedia article.
Axlrosen 13:53, 24 Oct 2003 (UTC)

* How else do you present alternative points-of-view? Some people
believe that Mother Teresa is a saint, others that she is a witch.
Perhaps you would prefer only one author per article? Actually, Adam
Carr -- a single author -- wrote an alternative version of the MT
article with exactly that structure. And it reads like a ''real''
encyclopedia article. -- Viajero 14:10, 24 Oct 2003 (UTC)

** I guess my point is that a ''real'' encyclopedia article would spend
90% of its time on the facts of her life, her work, etc., and 10% of its
time on the controversy surrounding her. On Wikipedia this often gets
reversed, because everyone has to make sure that their own POV is
represented (prefixed of course by "some people say..."). If you try to
trim down the excessive debate in an article, then people accuse you of
surpressing opinions that make you uncomfortable or whatever. (I'm not
talking about the MT article specifically because I haven't been
following that debate, but about WP in general. For example this is what
happened on PETA recently.) Axlrosen 18:07, 24 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Alex


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: [WikiEN-l] NPOV disputes in Polish-German articles

body:
Oh my, well, is the dispute over place names?  Or more substantive
issues than that?

If the dispute is over place names, then subject to the advice of
Germans I know, I am willing to decree what strikes me as the
obviously correct solution: things are to be named in the German
wikipedia what the majority of Germans call them, and things are to be
named in the Polish wikipedia what the majority of Poles call them.

Also, is there any suspicion that a banned user (HJ) has returned?
She was always stirring that topic up.

--Jimbo


subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikiquette "committee"

body:
Geoff Burling wrote:
> IANAL, & this is a US-centric view, but I'd go further & say that
> the possibility that a court would even hear a case like this is
> unrealistic.  As I understand what we are talking about concerns
> simple banning -- whether or not someone could contribute to
> Wikipedia for a definite or indefinite period of time. And I doubt
> that as long as Wikipedia is a volunteer activity -- where no one is
> making any money from contributing -- any court would find merit in
> hearing the case.

I think that's totally right.  Anyhow, editing the website is always a
privilege generously extended, but no one has a right to edit the
website, period.  At my whim, I could start banning people for the
most random and idiotic of reasons, and there would be no legal way to
stop me.  The GNU FDL protects the right to fork, of cousre, but if I
wanted to do something stupid to run the project into the ground, I
could.

"Arbitration" has to be understand in light of that, it can not create
new legal rights for random users that they don't already have.

If someone ever did decide to appeal an arbitration or banning
decision of any kind to a court, then, they'd basically be wasting
their time.

--Jimbo


subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikiquette "committee"

body:
Alex T. wrote:
> What the court would do is overturn the ban, yes, then Wikipedia
> would have to reinstate the user. That is what we are talking about,
> not a court awarding damages, but reviewing the arbitration
> proceeding and saying "you guys did it wrong, you think you can do
> whatever you want, well, you cannot, there are some basic principles
> that must be followed in a democratic society and you did not follow
> them."

A basic principle is that the Wikimedia Foundation owns the servers,
is a private organization creating a private publication, accepting no
goverment funds and with no other contractural encumberances of the
sort, and can therefore admit or reject editors and authors more or
less at whim.  I can't really see any valid grounds for any claim to
the contrary.

That is, I can't conceive of any real circumstances where we should be
concerned that a court will force us to publish the writings of
someone we don't want to publish.

> If you want to create an arbitration scheme
> why not do it along the well recognized legal principles that exist
> so that you do not have your decisions overturned by people you
> do not even know (i.e. judges who have jurisdiction if Wikipedia
> does not play fair with contributors). Is that so unreasonable?

It's not unreasonable, but I find this particular argument for it
unpersuasive.

My concern here is that people will be so intimidated by the notion
that if we don't do arbitration just right, according to some complex
legal rules, a judge is likely to overturn it and require us to
reinstate someone.  It's pretty easy to make sure that doesn't happen.

We have the legal right to be as stupid and arbitrary and unfair with
our procedures as we like.  (Of course we shouldn't do that!)

--Jimbo


from_name: Alex T.

subject:
[WikiEN-l] [iris.steineck@aon.at: donation to
	ferdinand	porsche?article is not available under the terms of
	the GNU	Free	Documentation License.]

body:
From: "Ray Saintonge" <saintonge at telus.net>
>     3.    The reference to GNU-FDL appears to be a red herring.  Nothing
> in the discussion seems to be about this.

I think that the reference to the GNU-FDL is something that has been
metioned, namely if someone makes a contribution to a GNU-FDL text
and becomes a coauthor with others there is at least an implicit obligation
(perhaps even explicit) that as a contributor one's text cannot be
completely
removed if it contributes in a useful way to an FDL text. Removing it is at
least against the spirit of what a collaobrative contribution stands for,
and
the statement "your text will be mercilessly edited and redistributed at
will"
does not imply that your contribution can be unlaterally removed because
someone disagrees with your contribution, only that it will be mercilessly
"edited". There is a distinction there, no? One of the reasons there have
been suggestions about changing the edit page text by mav and yours truly.

Alex756 (not Rosen)

> Jimmy Wales wrote:
>
> >I don't think this person's subject line makes any sense, but his
> >content claims are surely worth an investigation.
> >
> >It looks from the history as though there's an ongoing edit war, and
> >so probably more eyeballs would be helpful.
> >
> >----- Forwarded message from "Dr. Iris Steineck"
<iris.steineck at aon.at> -----
> >
> >From: "Dr. Iris Steineck" <iris.steineck at aon.at>
> >
> >Subject: donation to ferdinand porsche? article is not available under
the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License.
> >
> >Dear Mr. Wales,
> >
> >My grandfather Erwin Komenda designed the VW-beetle and Porsche sport car
> >type 356.
> >
> >I wrote this fact more than one times in the Wikipedia Ferdinand Porsche
> >Article.
> >
> > [[Ferdinand Porsche]]
> >
> >But every time I  wrote this facts in the wikipedia article - the new
> >written text is cancelled immediately. I cant accept this fact. Because
on
> >the one hand Erwin Komenda developed the design of the famous cars and on
> >the other this is no more a free encyclopaedia. So I wonder how this is
> >possible. Have you got any donations for the Ferdinand Porsche article
from
> >Porsche or the Volkswagen-enterprise, what is wrong with that site?
> >
> >Best regards Iris Steineck
> >
> >----- End forwarded message -----


body:
Mirko Thiessen wrote:

>NPOV in the articles concerning all events and locations along the
>German-Polish border has always been difficult to attain. I don't know
>what the trigger was, but for almost two weeks now many articles are
>in the permanent state of edit war. Wikipedians interested in
>anything, but not in neutral articles, are reverting and re-reverting,
>insulting each other and ignoring the basic Wikiquette. Take Silesia
>or Gdansk as some examples.
>
>
To be fair to those working on the Polish-German articles, this is
quickly becoming a major problem with all articles relating to ethnic
disputes on Wikipedia.  Some I remember:

* [[Macedonia]], [[Aegean Macedonia]], and [[Republic of Macedonia]] --
There is a country that calls itself the Republic of Macedonia, and a
Slavic ethnic group who call themselves Macedonians, while Greeks
consider both of these misnomers, claiming that the term "Macedonian"
refers to a subset of Greek people, much like "Peloponnesians",
"Athenians", or "Spartans", and so referring to Slavs as "Macedonians"
is just plain wrong.

* [[History of Bosnia and Herzegovina]] and related articles -- Some
people want the article to be about the historic region of Bosnia;
others want it to cover more topics; there's disagreement over what
exactly to cover and how.  Lots of Serb vs. Croat vs. Muslim nationalism.

And of course [[Israel]] and related articles are in a perpetual state
of dispute.

The best solution I can see to these is to have some people who are
relatively neutral take input from the various sides, try to research
the facts independently a bit, and then mediate the dispute.  I've tried
this a bit with the Polish articles (not being Polish or German), but
since it's not my area of expertise I've invariably made a few mistakes
and antagonized some people in the process.

I think one of the major issues is what names to use for places that
historically had different names than they currently do.  My personal
preference would be to use the name at the time of the event being
documented, with a parenthetical note of the current name.  To pick a
relevant example, "Arthur Schopenhauer was born in Danzig (modern-day
Gdansk)".  If the ethnicity of a particular person is reliably known,
I'd defer a bit to their names as well: a German born in that city in
the 18th century should probably be said to have been "born in Danzig",
while a Polish person born in that city at the same time period should
probably be said to have been "born in Gdansk."

I'd also tend to use only the contextual names in most articles where it
makes sense: for example, an article on the 13th century Byzantine
Empire can just talk about Constantinople: it doesn't need to keep
saying "Constantinople (present-day Istanbul)".  Perhaps since it's such
a well-known city that one hasn't been a major issue, but there have
been some others that are issues (for example, using Slavic names in
articles on the Macedonian Empire, despite the fact that those names
hadn't even been invented at the time; or using the old Arabic names
when discussing modern-day Israeli cities).

But as for solving the conflicts themselves -- ethnic conflicts are much
older than Wikipedia, so I doubt we're going to come up with a magic
bullet.  But we can keep on top of things hopefully, with the NPOV
dispute page and non-aligned mediators.

-Mark


subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Re: [WikiEN-l] NPOV disputes in Polish-German
	articles

body:
Jimmy Wales wrote:

>Oh my, well, is the dispute over place names?  Or more substantive
>issues than that?
>
>If the dispute is over place names, then subject to the advice of
>Germans I know, I am willing to decree what strikes me as the
>obviously correct solution: things are to be named in the German
>wikipedia what the majority of Germans call them, and things are to be
>named in the Polish wikipedia what the majority of Poles call them.
>
>
I think that the major dispute isn't over the German and Polish
Wikipedias, but over place names in the English Wikipedia: when and how
prominently to use the historic German names versus the modern Polish
names (for example, Danzig vs. Gdansk).  This comes up occasionally with
other former-German areas as well, such as Koenigsberg (modern-day
Kaliningrad in Russia).  The non-German supporters generally object to
over-use of names that are no longer the official names of the cities,
while the German supporters object to what some see as an attempt to
rewrite history (for example, by saying that things in the 17th century
happened in "Kaliningrad," when no city by that name existed then).  The
current resolution seems to depend largely on how many partisans each
side has: there are few Russian partisans on the English Wikipedia
currently, so [[Kaliningrad]] uses the name "Koenigsberg" fairly
prominently up until discussing the period it came under Russian rule,
while there are more Polish partisans, so the [[Gdansk]] article
retroactively applies the name Gdansk to the city's entire history.

-Mark


from_name: Matthew Brown

subject:
[WikiEN-l] [iris.steineck@aon.at: donation to ferdinand
	porsche?article is not available under the terms of the GNU
	FreeDocumentation License.]

body:
I have been one of several people who has removed some contributions on
Erwin Komenda.

My issues have been not that I disagree with the assertion that Erwin
Komenda was more responsible for the designs from Ferdinand Porsche's
engineering consultancy pre-1945, and the Porsche car company post-1945,
than he has generally been credited for.  There's certainly a reasonable
case to be made there.

My problems with this have been:

* There is no need for this information to be posted scattershot on every
page associated with Porsche
* There has been no attempt to fit the text in with the articles - instead
it's the same cut and paste text placed in each one
* The net effect has been to make Wikipedia's articles on the subjects read
as if we're pushing an agenda instead of documenting encyclopedically
* Attempts to engage this user in discussion have been utterly and
completely ignored.  Possibly out of simply not understanding Wikipedia all
that well.
* Some of the edits have had the effect of (in my opinion) overstating the
importance of Komenda and denying the input of others

One might note that I spent a fair amount of effort making Erwin Komenda's
article better, improving the wording and grammar.

I must confess a little bit of bias against a user who doesn't create a
username and doesn't engage in discussion.  In the spirit of Assume Good
Faith, I will presume that these have been due to lack of knowledge of the
way Wikipedia works.

I am certainly not anti her point; I am against some of the ways she is
presenting her case, and would like to work with her to make the articles as
fair and accurate as we can.

Should I email her directly, do you think?

-Matt (User:Morven)


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Mother Teresa article

body:
"Ray Saintonge" <saintonge at telus.net> schrieb:

> Huh??  I've not been involved with the article.  I agree that it can be
> trimmed down.  Much of what is said about Keating should be removed as
> irrelevant.  You must be thinking of someone else.

Sorry, I meant Eloquence.

Andre Engels


body:
"Jimmy Wales" <jwales at bomis.com> schrieb:

> I think that the best resolution here is to lean towards
> "completionism" rather than "deletionism".  If an article is
> one-sided, then grow it.  And then after it grows too big, it will
> often be much easier to see how to break parts off into sub-articles.

I partly agree, but for a large part also disagree.

> Here's an example from the current dispute.
>
> "Mother Theresa is just about to be elevated to Sainthood.  Here's 20
> paragraphs about why, her good works, why she is beloved by so many
> and so forth.  And here's one sentence of criticism consisting mainly
> of a link to a separate page."
>
> OR
>
> "Mother Theresa is just about to be elevated to Sainthood.  Here's 2
> sentences saying way, followed by 20 paragraphs of criticism of her
> and her order."
>
> I would say that in *either* case, the right solution is *seldom* to
> 'balance' the article by *removing* valid material that is otherwise
> NPOV.  More likely, what is needed is *more material*.  And then
> hopefully, in that process, we can find that both parties are
> satisfied to have some of the material moved out as necessary to
> auxiliary articles.

I disagree. We are to state that there is criticism, and what the criticism
consists of. But there is no need to get into detail to prove those
criticisms or spend two paragraphs per criticism to give examples. I don't
see what the value is of spending eight paragraphs giving examples and
evidence of insufficient care in Mother Theresa's homes. One paragraph
specifying the criticism, and one with some examples would in my opinion
be enough to give the relevant information in NPOV. Wikipedia is to state
what criticism exists, and why. It's not our task to provide the
necessary information for everybody to make decisions on the issue.

> I think that deletionism forgets that Wiki Is Not Paper, and that
> completionism is likely to lead us to a better final article.

I disagree. An article that basically is arguing both sides of an
issues extensively is NOT how I see the ideal, NPOV article. Rather,
I would like the article to mention that there is argument, give the
arguments of both sides, and then be ready with it. Wikipedia does
not exist to build up an argument - also not if it is dressed up in
NPOV language.

Andre Engels


from_name: Kurt Jansson

body:
The biggest German meta-search engine MetaGer
(http://meta.rrzn.uni-hannover.de) would like to have us integrated.
There would be a switch which is set on *off* per default, so we'll get
about 10.000 queries per day. (If it's set *on* per default we'll get
about 200.000 queries per day.)

I think atm neither is possible, but when the new server is up and
running will we be able to handle the traffic?

Kurt


body:
Jimmy Wales schrieb:

> When you say 'queries' does that mean searches in our search engine?

That's how I understood their mail.

> One possibility here is that I could setup a fastcgi on a different
> machine to return results just for them from a daily dump of the
> German database.

I think this would be great!

It seems they want to set the Wikipedia-switch on off per default now
and turn it on later if everything works fine.

Kurt


subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikiquette "committee"

body:
 From: "Jimmy Wales" <jwales at bomis.com>
To: "Alex T." <alex756 at nyc.rr.com>; "English Wikipedia"
<wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>

> A basic principle is that the Wikimedia Foundation owns the servers,
> is a private organization creating a private publication, accepting no
> goverment funds and with no other contractural encumberances of the
> sort, and can therefore admit or reject editors and authors more or
> less at whim.  I can't really see any valid grounds for any claim to
> the contrary.

Yes, but once you admit people and create all kinds of policies then
those individuals have reasonable expectations. Arbitrary power is
frowned upon but courts.  If you want to keep it arbitrary, then make
sure that it is all kept private by taking away the right to go to the
courts and let people know that it is such a private organization
so that they cannot get confused and run to the courts when they
should have resolved their differences within the Wikimedia realm.

> That is, I can't conceive of any real circumstances where we should be
> concerned that a court will force us to publish the writings of
> someone we don't want to publish.

But isn't this inconsistent with the NPOV principle? that would be
the opening that someone might use to go for the courts. A legal
decision reviewing what NPOV would be fascinating reading, but
do we really need this? Arbitration would be a much easiier safer
way to resolve such disputes without open the door to litigation.

> My concern here is that people will be so intimidated by the notion
> that if we don't do arbitration just right, according to some complex
> legal rules, a judge is likely to overturn it and require us to
> reinstate someone.  It's pretty easy to make sure that doesn't happen.

Doing it right is really pretty simple (but beleive me clients can screw
up even  the simple rules that are associated with making arbitration
binding and unappealable). If one agrees to an arbitration plan (remember
it is a contract) it is to keep matters out of the courts. Only if the
arbitration
scheme is violated, in some very fundamental way that allows one to
appeal to the courts. What is the violation of an arbitration scheme?
It is not easy in most jurisdictions to violate an arbitration clause.
However sometimes it is possible by being totally unfair, unresponsive
and unwiling to listen to some one put forward their perspective.

In most cases (probably 95%) just listening will not change anything,
but it says to the courts, hey, we believe in due process, we are not
just crazy pirates who want to control the world (but we are crazy
corporate pirates who have figured out how to control the world).

Does this mean complex rules of procedure? No. Does it mean doing
anything more than having three more or less impartial individuals
review all the submissions of the person who is being removed?
No, not really. It is a way to protect Wikipedia, not to expose it to
more problems. This is why arbritration is often adopted by savvy
corporations that operate across international boundaries. It is a less
expensive and expeditious way to resolve issues rather than have
them drag through the courts for a long period of time with no
resolution and hey, you can even do it in house without appeal
to some outside arbitration board (as long as the arbitrators are
somewhat impartial going into the decision making process).
Most courts do not want to overturn arbitration decisions they
want to confirm them and clear the court docket.

> We have the legal right to be as stupid and arbitrary and unfair with
> our procedures as we like.  (Of course we shouldn't do that!)

Who is the we? If Wikimedia Foundation is a membership organization
then no, that is not true. Even if it is not a membership organization
the Attorney General of any state where Wikimedia solicits will have
some jurisdiction to deal with user complaints. Unfortunately Not for
profit corporations are subject to the jurisdictions of the courts regarding
their decision making processes so I cannot agree with the above
statement. Having said that one can take steps to limit the outside
interference that someone may try to impute to the organization by
being clear how limited such rights might be.

However,  it does not say that anywhere (I have been trying to get an
approach adopted, but everyone seems to think that it is just an
inordinate amount of legalism). The reality is that you have to protect
your rights as when you let people collaborate they all own the
intellectual property in common, why does the guy (or org.) that
owns the server have any more right to decide what goes on the
computer than anyone else once the floodgates have been opened?
The argument is that short of shutting down the server there
is some expectation of fairness in the matrix of obligations that
is created through various Wikipedia policies. Wikipedia is
not a tabla rasa anymore.

Having an ironclad arbitration scheme and an licencing scheme
that deals with issues that are not covered by the GFDL will
protect Wikipedia more, not less. Leaving it to the hope that
some judge will just say, "you can do whatever you want" rather
than getting people to acknowledge that from the moment they
log on does not seem like a really swift way to solve the issue.
Everyone, generally speaking, is subjected to the jurisdiction
of the courts unless they opt out of it through some arbitration
scheme (generally called a contract). After all the GFDL is just
a free copyright/left  license, it does not deal with all the implied
wiki issues that are unique to a collaborative wiki project. These
are contractual and association contract matters that will either
be figured out later by a judge or by the drafting of an solid
user submission standards or terms and conditions now.

Unffortunately we live in a country where there are rules and
procedures even if they are not accurately articulated by
an organization. That is why so many organizations create
policies, manuals and other documents that they apply in
a more or less reasonably fair handed manner to everyone
in the organization.

Alex756


from_name: Brian Corr

subject:
Voting and/or Consensus (was Re: [WikiEN-l] Mother Teresa
  article)

body:
Voting at Wikipedia  good, bad, neutral, necessary evil, unnecessary evil?
This came up yesterday, but I know it's not the first time.

I'm not proposing an answer -- but I do have some general thoughts on the
matter. I'm involved in a number of nonprofit organizations and they
operate in different manners -- and I use that experience as a basis for my
thoughts on this. Here are 3 basic ways they work:

A) Seek Consensus, But Vote: For example, most of the organizations have a
board of director that votes and uses majorities when necessary, but most
hesitate to accept a vote if it is close, and they prefer to achieve
something approaching consensus, but will accept a decision if there is a
large majority (this seems similar to Wikipedia).

B) Simply Vote: A few organizations use pure majority rule -- but this is
not very common in the organizations I'm involved in.

C) True Consensus: One organization I work with -- the American Friends
Service Committee (AFSC) is based on Quaker beliefs even though many of the
people involved are not Quakers  -- and there we work completely on
consensus. Sometimes that means that it takes months or years to make a
decision, but that is OK at AFSC.

I definitely believe as a matter of principle that consensus is the best
way to operate, even if it can be slower. And I want to mention that with
Quakers and at AFSC, people are completely committed to consensus -- and
that means that people also know that it is a very big thing to block
consensus. So for someone to block consensus, they must believe that it is
extremely important -- for example, something that is opposed to the
overall purpose of the organization (at AFSC) or to the spirit of the
meeting (among Quakers  and "meeting" can be read as "congregation"). It is
very unusual for someone to block consensus, because people realize that
the process is as important as the decision in many ways -- both for the
specific issue at hand and for the organization or the meeting in general.
So it might not be too easy with so many Wikipedians who like to argue
about *everything* ;-)

So I am still ruminating about what I think is the best way for Wikipedia
to function, because it is difficult to pin down *only one way* -- or even
two or three  that Wikipedia approaches decisions and conflicts, and
therefore come to a conclusion about the best way to decide things. It
seems that people prefer to have rules -- or at least to have guidelines --
to decide what is acceptable and unacceptable (I do as well). However, this
is a positive feedback loop for those people (who will make more and more
rules), and but will also drive away people with other focuses or
personality types in a negative feedback loop (see
<http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twelve_leverage_points/>). But as the
project continues to increase in size and scope, and as more types of
people join, it is not as clear what is the best way to proceed.

Primarily, I think that we need to think about the concept of voting and
how it affects group processes. Wikipedia is an unusual hybrid of Wiki,
NPOV, *and* altruistic self-interest (i.e., we all get some satisfaction
from what we do here, but we also do it for the good of the
project/community/world). I also think we need to look at how our
decision-making processes affect how much we are open or closed -- we can
be "open" to everybody, but if only one type of person can handle being a
contributor or editor, what does that really mean for us.

Anyway, I have been reflecting a little bit about what I should focus my
energy on -- and it seems like I should be writing articles and *not*
checking Votes for deletion fifteen times each day. But I also feel that it
is important to pay attention to the housekeeping work also, and that often
takes me back to VfD and to Recent Changes. But I do think that we can
bring something positive to articles and be NPOV -- but I find it hard to
decide the balance between *contributing* and *housekeeping*.

And here's one more good link to check out:
<http://www.usemod.com/cgi-bin/mb.pl?WikiLifeCycle>. I think we might be
somewhere near 17 (Wiki:DeclineOfCivility -- there are more strangers than
friends, and AssumeGoodFaith fails as reputation is fleeting) and 18
(arrival of the PoliceForces)

Anyway, that what I'm thinking today -- but tomorrow it may all change ;+)>

Brian

At 27 Oct 2003 17:50:32 -0800 (PST), Anthere wrote:
>Someone wrote me offline, to ask me what I thought of
>voting, because he noticed I rather rarely did, in
>particular very rarely on vfd. He pointed out that
>mail from Ec and TC to me.


from_name: Andre Engels

subject: [WikiEN-l] Mother Teresa article (veto)

body:
"Anthere" <anthere8 at yahoo.com> schrieb:

> Do you think that if all the decisions on the talk
> page are 40% 60%, picking up the solution with 60%
> will be ok ?

No, but it does beat picking the solution whose proponents
have the longest breath, or the solution that happens to be
on the page at the time the fight started. There IS no ok
solution. Voting might well be the least bad solution in
some cases.

I don't know whether this is such a case. I'm not sure.
What I am sure of, is that there's an article, which I think
is badly POV, but do not dare touch. As you say, it's not
the end of the world. It is not the first article that I
will choose to just not look at because I don't like it.
But I do regret that such is the solution in some cases.
I guess it cannot be avoided, but still it's sad.

Andre Engels


body:
On Tuesday, Oct 28, 2003, at 08:12 US/Pacific, Kurt Jansson wrote:
> Jimmy Wales schrieb:
>> When you say 'queries' does that mean searches in our search engine?
>
> That's how I understood their mail.

Well, just keep in mind that we don't have a working search engine at
the moment.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


from_name: Jimmy Wales

subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikiquette "committee"

body:
Alex R. wrote:
> > That is, I can't conceive of any real circumstances where we should be
> > concerned that a court will force us to publish the writings of
> > someone we don't want to publish.
>
> But isn't this inconsistent with the NPOV principle? that would be
> the opening that someone might use to go for the courts.

I can't imagine that they'd get very far with that argument.  NPOV is
not a legal requirement for us, it's just something we do.  If we
wanted to abandon it tomorrow, we could.  Whether or not a particular
ban conflicts with NPOV is an interesting one, but it strikes me as
highly difficult for someone to come up with an argument that isn't
risible that we have any obligations at all in that area.

Wikimedia Foundation has a strong first amendment right to publish
whatever it sees fit, NPOV or no.  The fact that we strive for NPOV is
not different from Fox News striving to be conservative, or the NYT
striving to be liberal, or Hustler striving to be pornographic.  Each
organization retains the sole right to determine the content of it's
own publication, and to change policy about that at will.

> If one agrees to an arbitration plan (remember it is a contract)

Why is it a contract?  I say that it is not a contract any more than
me reflecting for weeks on end about whether or not to ban someone is
a contract.  The person banned at the end of the arbitration (if
that's what happens) is just banned, whether they agreed to it or not.

> It is not easy in most jurisdictions to violate an arbitration clause.
> However sometimes it is possible by being totally unfair, unresponsive
> and unwiling to listen to some one put forward their perspective.

What bothers me about the thrust of what you're saying is that it
sounds like you believe that by instituting more formal procedures for
deciding this sort of thing, we are thereby changing things so that
people could at least conceivably have standing to complain that the
process is arbitrary, i.e. we are somehow allowing outselves to
foolishly give people some sort of legal right not to be treated
arbitrarily.

I'd like to avoid that, obviously!

> Does this mean complex rules of procedure? No. Does it mean doing
> anything more than having three more or less impartial individuals
> review all the submissions of the person who is being removed?
> No, not really. It is a way to protect Wikipedia, not to expose it to
> more problems. This is why arbritration is often adopted by savvy
> corporations that operate across international boundaries. It is a less
> expensive and expeditious way to resolve issues rather than have
> them drag through the courts for a long period of time with no
> resolution and hey, you can even do it in house without appeal
> to some outside arbitration board (as long as the arbitrators are
> somewhat impartial going into the decision making process).
> Most courts do not want to overturn arbitration decisions they
> want to confirm them and clear the court docket.

I guess the problem I'm having with all of this is that we are not
talking about entering into formal arbitration agreements with people
like EofT.  That's just asking for trouble, if you ask me.

Perhaps we should drop the name 'arbitration' if that's what it
implies.  If we want arbitration with someone to avoid a lawsuit,
that's a WHOLE OTHER THING.

This is not about avoiding lawsuits.  This just about finding a way to
ban people from editing Wikipedia in a way that respects our internal
culture.

> > We have the legal right to be as stupid and arbitrary and unfair with
> > our procedures as we like.  (Of course we shouldn't do that!)
>
> Who is the we? If Wikimedia Foundation is a membership organization
> then no, that is not true. Even if it is not a membership organization
> the Attorney General of any state where Wikimedia solicits will have
> some jurisdiction to deal with user complaints. Unfortunately Not for
> profit corporations are subject to the jurisdictions of the courts regarding
> their decision making processes so I cannot agree with the above
> statement. Having said that one can take steps to limit the outside
> interference that someone may try to impute to the organization by
> being clear how limited such rights might be.

But I can't conceive of any sensible grounds for user complaints of
any kind.  We absolutely should make very clear that users have the
absolute minimum legal rights against the Wikimedia Foundation as
possible!

> However,  it does not say that anywhere (I have been trying to get an
> approach adopted, but everyone seems to think that it is just an
> inordinate amount of legalism). The reality is that you have to protect
> your rights as when you let people collaborate they all own the
> intellectual property in common, why does the guy (or org.) that
> owns the server have any more right to decide what goes on the
> computer than anyone else once the floodgates have been opened?

Can you really imagine a court buying this argument?  I can't.  I
can't really conceive of a case like this getting very far at all.

> Having an ironclad arbitration scheme and an licencing scheme
> that deals with issues that are not covered by the GFDL will
> protect Wikipedia more, not less.

Well, I agree with that!  I think we should do whatever we need to do,
with legalistic formalism and all the bells and whistles to make sure
that if some crank does try to take us to court to get us to let them
edit the site willy-nilly that we can just point to Exhibit A
(whatever that might be) and the Judge will say "Oh, o.k., well this
whole thing is frivolous, good day!"

> Leaving it to the hope that
> some judge will just say, "you can do whatever you want" rather
> than getting people to acknowledge that from the moment they
> log on does not seem like a really swift way to solve the issue.

Well, I totally agree with that.

--Jmibo