subject: [Wikipedia-l] Page deletion policy

body:
Toby Bartels wrote:
>
> Fredbauder wrote regarding:
>

<snip preliminaries and background>

>(or whatever the title is, I can't access Wikipedia right now).
>   I argue that deletion is better than a lousy stub like
>   "A large city in southern [[Arizona]].".
>   A ''good'' stub is better still than deletion,
>   but that takes some work, stub though it may be,
>   and people not willing to do work for their stubs
>   shouldn't write them, IMO.

This may be a primary point for discussion.

IMO We should be grateful for the smallest quantum
of information a contributor provides and create
easy opportunities to provide it.

Why?  Because small quantums lead to repeat quantums
which lead to steady streams of quantums.  If a
stream of quantums exist then there exists a finite
time in which a significant packet by any measure
will accumulate.  Further, if it can be shown that
steady accumulation of quantums and packets leads
to exponential growth in the number of quantum
providers, the rate at which they contribution, or
the summed total product; then there exists a growth rate
at which our goal of deep, broad, and reliable can be achieved
within human lifetimes absent any limiting scaling
factors which leads to loss of useful participation as
fast or faster than it grows.

A leading online free Encyclopedia which has depth,
breadth, and reliable content will require massive
effort to create.

Consider 200 million people currently connected to the internet.

Most of them fairly well educated and over half of them
literate in English.  If one million wander by in
2004 four or five times to look at Wikipedia material
and one percent of them leave a link, correct an error,
or write a sentence on 20 percent of their visits then we
will have collected aproximately:

1 percent of 1 million = 10K

(10K)*(.33)*(1 applicable link)

- (10K)*(.33)*(1 error)

+ (10K)*(.33)*(100 byte sentence)

= + 3,000 links - 3,000 errors + 300K content

This twikification is apparently a minor influence
compared to regular contributors.  Unless we find
in 2005 that of 1.5 million visitors, 500K are now repeat
visitors and 2 percent of these are likely to create
a paragraph, insert 5 best links of a google search,
edit an article for readibility, insert crosslinks between
specialized areas of personal interest, or research
and write one stub to fill in a blank area of intense
personal interest.

Now we have in addition to the above for the first
million, something like this for the 500K:

(2 percent) * (1/5 probability of contribution) * 500K = 2K/category

+ (2K) * (500bytes/paragraph)  or 1Mb
+ (5 best links) * (2K)        or 10,000 links
+ (2K) * (1 reability improvement) or 2,000 articles improved
+ (2K) * (5 cross links)       or 10,000 new crosslinks
+ (2K) * (researched stubs)    or 2,000 stubs

Still fairly minor compared to the 100K plus articles
we should easily have by 2005.  But consider 2006

Assuming approximately the same 500K vistor growth to
2 million.
One million of whom are new casual dropins same
as above.
500K are repeat visitors of whom 2 percent become
contributors same as above.

250K of whom 1 percent are repeat significant contributors
who do at least one of the following:

1.) adopt a couple of articles of interest
     (weekly error correction, augmentation and fast response to
questions on talk page)
2.) write a couple of draft stubs
     (5 plus paragraphs, 2 external ref., 2 links)
3.) research and improve a stub significantly
     (5 plus more paragraphs, minus 2 errors, plus 2 ext. ref, 2 open
questions
      and 1 paragraph of brilliant prose)
4.) edit several articles for readability
     (minus 5 comma splices, minus 2 errors, minus 2 typos, plus some
formatting)
5.) contest or question several facts for checking
     (figure 25% are quickly answered, 25% stimulate discussion, 50%
erased)
6.) present a significant (say over 1%) minority view for inclusion
     (Priceless! New content by definition! .... under 1% are run off as
cranks)
7.) read a cluster of specialized articles of interest and crosslink
them
     (100 cross links, 50 percent inappropriate or errors, 50 useful)
8.) insert an index list of detailed subtopics within a subject
     (??? attractive to students or specialists???)
9.) add some highly specialized detail to a topic of professional
interest
     (say ten pages of highly technical gobblety gook ... ala Alex 8) )
10.) refactor a lengthy article into a summary article with links to new
subarticles

1 percent (250K) times .10 equals 250 contributors in each of ten
categories:

1.  (250) * 2 adopted articles   or 500 newly adopted articles
2.   + (250) * 2 stubs           or 500 draft stubs  or 250K content
3.   + (250) * (5para)(500bytes) - 250(2 errors) + 250(2 ext.ref.) + (2
open queries)
4.

laziness sets in.

The point is that contributing volunteers grow into
contributing in their own way from the initial starting point
of a single edit or contribution through whatever path they
choose of a myriad of potential ways to contribute.

A few poor stubs lying around to help new readers become
contributors should pay off handsomely in the long run, if
poor stubs help entice an initial contribution.  What could
be less threatening than an almost empty page with one
sentence describing your home town or a city you have driven
through?  Later when we have thousands of regular contributors
the poor stub contribution will fall off because poor stubs
are hard to find.   Right now with less than 200 regular
contributors and less than a thousand repeat contributors,
any growth in the number of contributors is very significant.

People discouraged from useful participation by the incomplete work
in progress can be impressed in the future after the contributing
community has grown sufficiently to grow the content easily accessible
to the main page to the high quality necessary to impress
non contributing consumers.

>
> # What should we do with a page that has a useless stub?
>   I mean a page that gives only a definition and a WWW link, or less.
>   This may give some information to some people, to be sure,
>   but I think that it does more harm than good not to be linked with "?".

Your argument here seems to be that the incomplete material
is hard to find.   This may be true for a dedicated writer looking
for new empty titles to write under.

I assure you that many attempting to use the reference material
specific to the topic in question will encounter the incomplete
material.  Murphy's law applies here.  Since you wish to augment the
material, it is hard to find; since they wish to use the incomplete
material
it manifests quickly via a seach or excellent branch index link
routing.
Hopefully someone will choose to edit, to at least
add a quantum of information.

>   An example was [[Pluto (god)]], which I voted for deletion
>   about a week ago.  (The page is now perfectly fine.)
>   This was purely for the sake of being provocative,
>   and I don't intend to start deleting such things now.
>   I'm undecided about what we should do in these cases;
>   perhapse it's sufficient to make sure that they're
>   listed on [[Wikipedia:Find and fix a stub]]?

Perhaps the policy (recommendations for voluntary participation
methods) could/should be to add at least one of
the following:

1. one sentence
2. one external link
3. one internal link
4. other easy or tiny quantities of information

It seems to me that this is within an order of magnitude
of the effort required to request deletion.

With several hundred Wikipedians browsing around following
this policy the stubs should start growing even if no one
chooses to do detailed and extensive research or real work
in augmenting it.

>   I'd listen to people that use that page; I don't.
>   The only thing that I'm certain about is that they shouldn't be ''started''.
>   Every stub writer should read [[Wikipedia:How to write the perfect stub]]
>   (or whatever it is); writing good stubs is not the ''easy'' way out.
>   And "A large city in southern [[Arizona]]." is not "work".

So why should Wikipedia contribution be work?  Contributors
will either enjoy contributing or leave.  What are you going
to do in a few years when new stubs to initiate with a high
quality new draft are scarce and take serious work to find?
If Wikipedia becomes successful as a deep, broad, reliable
resource then contributions beyond wikification are going to
become increasingly difficult to make.

For example:  I recently became interested in neural nets and
started reading up a bit on neuron organization in the human
brain.   Somebody has done a pretty good job in this area
already on the Wikipedia, at least to a layman's summary and
fundamentals level.   The best contribution I could easily and
reliably make to the "neuron" article after a few hours of
technical reading was a question on the talk page regarding
the precise nature of synapse connections between adjacent
neurons.  I may answer this in the near future or a neurologist,
physiologist, or biologist may wander by and answer with an
appropriate edit. Alternatively another none specialist may
research it extensively and decide that they can answer the
question definatively or at least clarify it reliably.

Does the fact that a specialist could spot and rephrase this
sentence (that I find ambiguous) more accurately with trivial effort
make it an insignificant contribution?   I do not think so.  It
effects how I model my "neuron" class/object in a potential
future neural network I may write to toy around with.  This
makes it highly significant to me.  It is also of significance
to every future reader, whether it is in error or merely unclear,
until it is corrected. A single quantum of information, yet a
highly significant contribution waiting to happen.

Coquille is a small town in Oregon.   Is this a trivial stub
which should be deleted?   Not if a fellow Coquille H.S.
graduate shows up, adds a description of the annual "Gay 90s"
parade, and sticks around to help fill details on the Coquille
River valley and watershed.  Particularly if a third Coquille
H.S. graduate shows up, adds the years Coquille took the OR state
football and track championships (to the new stub on OR state
championships and Coquille's article), notes that a graduate
competed in the Olympic trials but did not make the cut, adds
some non classified detail on the stealth bombers he flies and
drops some chit chat on my talk page.  If I let him know the
other person has an account and that he should drop a message,
suddenly we have an asynchronous 3-way social event.  It is more
likely that all participants will be repeat users and contributors
and very possibly could attract further attention from other
Coquille residents or graduates or current friends and
acquaintenances.

Coquille is a town of 5,000 and I know many people that
could add useful detail to the Wikipedia.  Tucson is a
city of how many people with how many H.S. graduates?
I think we can live with a stub until somebody from Tucson
shows up to expand it and correct errors.  Likewise a
network of detailed technical stubs related to neurons ....
over 50 neurotransmitters! .... this impending list could act
as an attractor for neurology students who could answer
my question in a timely manner.  I can hear it now:
"Wikipedia is not a technical almanac, leave this to the
human genome or proteanome project."  Perhaps if it
was, at some appropriate level appropriately accessed
a dictionary or almanac, it would have correct unambiguous
explanation of how neurons intercommunicate.  Surely a
neurology student looking up neurotransmitters for some
obscure reason would have fixed the layman's overview
by now?  Perhaps if each neurotransmitter had a few links
to online technical papers it would attract some attention
of neurology students stranded away from technical libraries
over Christmas break?

In conclusion/confusion, let us quickly reexamine that "lousy" stub:

I presume a good title such as:
Tucson, Arizona or whatever the current style is

"A large city in southern [[Arizona]]."

What is precise population?  Census data is available
online and via public signs at the city boundary. A
resident or former resident could likely add a lower
boundary accurate to within a few thousand.

large - qualitative subjective description.  There is room
for improvement but it has significant meaning.
Large for Arizona or for New York?  For the Western US or
Eastern Seaboard.  Largest in Arizona or merely fifth largest
in the state?

city - not a town, county, or a military base.
Are there any military bases nearby?  Is it in the
fallout patterns for nuclear tests conducted in the
50s and 60s?  Any historically significant cattle
trails, military confrontations, events?  Where did
the name Tucson come from?  Was the city built on
top of ancient ruins or located near a river or
oasis also used by ancient peoples?

southern - bottom half
Is it on the Mexican border?
Is it affected by weather patterns off the Gulf of Mexico?
Any famous flash floods or other disasters?
Does it still have an artificial lake with a wave machine?

Arizona -  one of fifty states, a link to further information
What other links are appropriate?  Sister cities, trade
partners, famous monuments or nearby national parks, etc.?

It (the "lousy" stud) seems like a fine starting point to me for
anyone wishing to add a quantum or few of information in whatever
applicable units, directions, or subjects they prefer.  Each quantum
they add can presumably be linked in some way to multiple other
quantums.  Leading to grand unified quantum entanglement
theory or something similarly silly sounding (related to
probability of spontaneous source apparition and retention
or repeat emission capture) yet critical to nurturing exponential
growth in the size of the contributing community.

Well, I have enjoyed chattering with you immensely about
this qualitatively significant issue but I think I shall go
fool around elsewhere a while.  Ta ta.

Seriously!  Small changes in exponential growth curves
are tremendously significant.  Sign changes are even
more dramatic.  If the stubs are not significantly
damaging your productivity, I think we should leave them,
they should expand fairly quickly if they have good
high quality article titles for linking from elsewhere.
If they prompt a new user to contribute something while
waiting for expansion to serious draft or high quality
stub/article status, then they will have served a pivotal purpose
in leveraging our community participation growth curve up a bit.

A second contribution is much less scary than the first one.

regards,
Mike Irwin


list: wikipedia-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Daniel Mayer

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Deletion of /pages/ with No Content

body:
On Monday 26 August 2002 12:20 pm, The Cunctator wrote:
> And the doubt here shouldn't be an individual's doubt, but on
> the doubt of everyone. And in the case of stubs, there will always be
> doubt, because the determination of "useless" is not objective.

Sorry but I must wholeheartedly disagree. A page that is blank or whose only
content is "Put your text for the new page here. alkjfl;asdkj;lkj" "or "this
is gay" IS objectively useless (worse than useless since it shows up as an
active link). This is also true for pages whose only content is the title of
the page and arguably for pages whose only content is an external link.

There is a very good reason why WikiWiki has different links for actual pages
and for non-pages -- one is assumed to have content, the other doesn't. If we
have too many contentless pages then this most central feature of our
software becomes more and more useless.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Helga

body:
On Monday 26 August 2002 02:30 pm, you wrote:
> I didn't realize people were so upset with Helga. I may have made a mistake
> in encouraging "H. Jonat" to stay in the first place. But she hasn't
> threatened anyone with physical violence, and she is answering Jimbo's
> e-mails. I say, teach her the norms of the community rather than exile her.
>
> Ed Poor

We've been doing exactly what you suggest for about a year now and the only
result has been major user fatigue (not to mention that our tolerance of
Helga is one of the reasons why Michael Tinkler left -- maybe others as
well). But if you wish you can try this yourself (but please don't leave the
project in frustration over this as others have).

Here is a link to her "contributions" (I can't remember the last time she
logged in):

http://www.wikipedia.com/w/wiki.phtml?title=Special:Contributions&target=66.47.62.78&days=30&limit=1000

NOTE: the above is set to bring back the last thousand edits by IP
66.47.62.78 in the last 30 days. You can edit the above URL to track any IP
with any day or edit number values by the way.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Off topic on cultural differences

body:
On Monday 26 August 2002 02:30 pm, you wrote:
> I had no idea that a person could be sued anywhere in the world for
> calling someone an asshole. ?Americans are litigious enough already,
> god forbid if we could sue people for _that_! ?:-)
>
> --Jimbo

Good lord! I would have been thrown in prison or sued into poverty many yarns
ago if the US had such a law (along with a majority of the adult male
population in the US -- in some circles this and similar insults is how you
say hello to friends).

God bless the USA!

OK that is enough - back to wiki business...

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)


from_name: Michael R. Irwin

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Helga Jonat on [[Berlin]]

body:
Jimmy Wales wrote:
>
> Jens Frank wrote:
> > Oh, I didn't want to suggest to denounce her, I just don't want
> > Jimbo to be arrested when occasionally entering Germany ...
>
> *grin* That's a very very good thing.

Is it possible for the German government to arrest a U.S.
citizen for supporting free speech on a server located
in the USA?  It would seem out of their jurisdiction.

>
> I'm talking via email with Helga.  It is not going very well.  I feel
> that I will not be able to change her mind directly.  I have told her
> not to post anything further about WWII, Poland, Germany, Judaism, or
> related topics until we get this straightened out.
>
> I am not inclined, as everyone knows, towards bans.  But if someone has
> an agenda and is completely uncooperative, well, I'm just not sure how
> much we can stand.

Clearly there are limits.  The following essay is intended to
be a general discussion of a pattern of problems.  If things
with Helga are beyond repair, or become so, then I feel that
is unfortunate.   The following is not intended as a statement
regarding any specific action(s) taken in the past or to be
taken in the future but rather as a discussion of the ramifications,
consequences, and potential benefits of reducing future problems via
pattern or process modification by the "community" if possible
and desirable.

It seems we have a recurring pattern of minorities (actually
individuals, they typically seem to get run off before additional
"party" members show up and become factions) with agendas
and/or material that we are not integrating well into our
"neutral" culture and resulting NPOV Wikipedia presentation.

I wonder if we are failing to branch the draft material effectively
such that minority views can be developed effectively and fairly and
then linked to appropriately from more mainstream overview articles.

Granted that if individuals/factions with an agenda, poor evidence,
low credibility, etc. want/insist on mainstream billing as fact or
"the truth" then this not easily reconcilable.  Is it possible that
we are not branching quickly enough to represent minority views
or weaker cases in arguments that are inherently fuzzy?

For example:  There is, in my perception, currently an undercurrent
circulating in the U.S. that U.S. oil related policies are in
large part responsible for the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade
Center.  Add to this the fact that Israeli airlines have had locks
on the cockpit doors for decades to help prevent highjacking.
The rush to obliterate the Taliban and Al Queda starts to look
suspiciously like a diversion of public attention from domestic
culpability, negligence, and stupidity.

I think a substantial minority view could be written up that the
U.S. would be better off fixing stupid U.S. policies leading to this
type of attack rather than invading and attempting to control portions
of the Middle East via puppet or "friendly" governments after the
inevitable (policies have consequences or else they are ineffectual
and insignificant to real world events) attacks occur.

No doubt if I firmly believed this and insisted on front page
billing it as "the truth", right thinking "patriotic" Americans
would quickly get irritated.  Clearly this could escalate to
the point I was no longer welcome at Wikipedia, at least for
the duration of the war efforts, or I got grumpy and disappeared.

Good riddance!  Less wasted time all around among the mainstream
adherents.  Who then is going to write the minority position?
A paragraph sop to the minority position written by a majority
view adherent which includes a couple of links to incoherent or
poor material available elsewhere on the web hardly seems like a
rigorous NPOV approach to summarizing the available knowledge
deeply, broadly, and reliably for future reader's use.

Obviously this case could be put in its own article appropriately
NPOV'd at the top with some context.  In my view, the case could
then be made from its own viewpoint.  Preferably by someone
sympathetic, enthusiastic, or attached to this viewpoint and
critiqued appropriately by others.  External links could also
provide some context prior to linking to the minority view or
"propaganda" or revisionism.  Would this be more acceptable to
radical or angry minorities than an enforced brief paragraph
"weighted" according to its perception of importance by the
mainstream?

Could controversy be diluted and managed more effectively by
branching multiple views early in a maze of interconnected
articles reached primarily from an NPOV summary?

IOW would we, the Wikipedia community, tend to lose less angry,
grumpy, rude individuals perceiving their views as arbitrarily
discounted without full presentation?  Censored by a tyrannical
majority view.  Very unpalatable.  Is an opportunity to develop
a complete view by adherents of that view contextualized to NPOV
via a paragraph at the top including back links to the prevailing
majority views more palatable to at least some of the minority
factions or radicals that we are currently running off?

The current prevailing majority view in the U.S. is clearly that we
were justified in attacking the de facto government of Afghanistan.
In my opinion, other views should be articulated and preserved as well.
Notice how the justification for citizens of Japanese descent
internment in World War II is now viewed at the same time we are
imprisoning hundreds of Arabs without releasing their names and
providing no recourse to courts.

The public's views of Vietnam has also shifted treacherously
from the mandated or publicised views of the involved U.S.
Administrations
to the point that MacNamara now claims he knew his Vietnam policies
were ineffectual and idiotic.  Why then has he not been prosecuted
for treason or dereliction of duty?  The fifth? Statute of limitations?
There was a lot of rude discussion on both sides of this issue during
the 60s, 70s, and 80s.  It did not invalidate their data or opinions
but it did make it difficult to reach an agreement regarding reality.

Another more local example:

"Art" has not returned to "Infanticide" since Ed and I invited
him to collaborate with us in finding more evidence and improving
the article.  He seemed to be relying exclusively on one "scholar"
who skirted with making some very strong claims and stated strong
opinions without providing sufficient evidence or analysis to
back them up conclusively.

Clearly the main article has to be clear that insufficient evidence
exists to make strong claims that infanticide was a widespread
and frequent practice.  The evidence supports that it occurred
widely in all ancient civilizations but provides no real proof
of quantitative frequency.  That it occurred at least occasionally
in most/all ancient civilizations is clear and acknowledged by the
mainstream view.

Would "Art" have stuck around (remained calmer and integrated into the
contributing "community" better) if encouraged to help write up a
separate
draft article making the best case possible for his clear, firm belief
(that infanticide was very common in the past) which could be linked to
from
the main article with the context that insufficient evidence existed to
state this conclusively as fact; in the view of most scholars?  Art,
I (and possibly Ed) could make the best case possible for Art's beliefs
or views citing and quoting DeMause and other supporting sources, while
the current talk page analysis of DeMause could be refactored as
discussion
of why the evidence is too weak to support the strong view.  All of this
would be off the mainstream summary page of infanticide which seems
to have stablized for the moment, primarily because Art is apparently
gone, not because of any acknowledged consensus that all the material
and pertinent views had been presented fairly for future readers
assessment.

I understand that Helga's views are considered incorrect,
offensive, and even worse, revisionist propaganda, by some
or many of us.

It seems to me that if they are common to a substantial number
of former Soviet citizens, or German Nazis, that they belong
somewhere in an NPOV Wikipedia.  Likewise Nazi views of what
they thought they were doing with the death camps.  Was the
genocide truly viewed as beneficial to the anticipated German
empire?  Was this an opportunistic ploy by cynical politicians,
or merely a personal crusade by Hitler sanctioned by his underlings
despite the large impact on the war effort.   Similar genocides
are documented in the Bible and in accounts of the American West.
Accounts and justifications vary widely between the involved factions.

The tribes obliterated by Jewish refugees from Egypt are not well
documented in history other than by biblical reference.  Did
they really exist?   Did they agree that they were evil and
that the tribes of Israel could make more appropriate use of
their land because Jewish prophets were in contact with the
almighty?  Should their misery be ignored in the English Wikipedia
because much of the English speaking world is dominated by Christians
and it is politically incorrect this decade to dislike Jews or large
U.S. subsidies for Israel's defense courtesy of the lobbying of the
Jewish
Defense League?  Should their fate be ignored for lack of evidence
while the bible is cited as a reputable source elsewhere?

How many views of the Crusades will crop up?  Were they justified?
Is there any disagreement about which factions were slaughtering
or converting Arabs, Jews, natives, natural resources, land, etc.
Is there any agreement regarding beliefs, motives, methods, routes,
numbers, etc.  How should the conflicting evidence be developed
and presented.

Did Drake beat the Spanish Armada through sheer genius or did
their deficiencies in logistics doom a very large rag tag fleet
from the start?  I have seen it presented both ways in documentaries.

McCarthy was firmly discredited for his methods in his communist
hunt but decades later Soviet records claim some of his victims
were truly agents.   KGB propaganda?  Coincidence that of thousands
of victims persectuted some of the famous ones were actually guilty?
How should future Americans understand the paranoid cold war era
without exposure to his faction's views that there were communists
under every rock in Hollywood?  Some of the opposing factions seemed
to view McCarthy merely as a self serving politician, not a patriot.
Would not multiple views and presentation of the evidence for and
against belong in a deep, broad, reliable resource discussing the
Cold War?  Anything less is merely presenting the writer's opinion
instead of providing material for the reader to form their own
assessment and conclusions.

Perhaps our methodology can be improved by branching the draft
material early and often.   Controversial material can thus
be relegated away from the "mainstream" or core articles and
linked to with proper caveats.  Caucuses of ideologues could
focus on developing their various views while the calmest and
politest members negotiate the wording of the context for the
mainstream summaries that point to the minority views.  People
willing to discuss controversial issues at length and detail
could assist with augmenting and improving the controversial
view sub articles while others with less patience, time,
or interest could watch the NPOV top level summaries.

If this occurred before heated edit wars got started, or shortly
thereafter as routine development of various views, it might
be beneficial in expanding our diversity by retaining some
of our grumpier, ruder, radicals.  Perhaps they might even
calm down and get a little more polite or effective in presenting
their evidence instead of their opinions.

I take strong exception to the seemingly prevailing
view that "Wikipedia is not a discussion forum."  I do not
believe it is possible to achieve a deep, broad, reliable
Wikipedia presentation of available human knowledge without
extensive (hopefully polite) discussion regarding the source
material and how to best present it.  Controversy is inevitable
and we need to learn how to better deal with it to preserve
our diversity.  Certainly people who wish to stick to known
"provable" facts, cite the source of evidence and move on should
be able to.  People who wish to present, critique, discuss
in more detail at length should also be empowered.

I agree that it is not a forum for attempting to convert others
to a particular view.   I think it should also not be a forum to
censor or run off other views.  If this is agreed in principle
then some effort is appropriate for the community to learn how
to communicate effectively with angry minorities that polite
interaction is appropriate.  Assurance that their views will not
be arbitrarily dismissed (or worse, distorted and unsubstantiated
in a small paragraph) without due process would be a good start.

Many have taken the implicit stance that it is each
individual's responsibility to be polite and civil and learn how
to get along with the "community".  We, the existing "community",
do not need people who cannot learn quickly how to get along with
us.  I think this ignores the diverse background and previous
internet environments that new contributors bring with them.
Concluding that newcomer's who disagree with a regular and then
get defensive, impolite, and rhetorically ineffective when
reinforcements show up (after threats and warnings) to help delete
or edit "inappropriate" content are better rejected
(or ultimately banned) rather than shown effectively how the local
processes can work well begs several questions:

1.  How are we going to get their unpopular views and alleged
information contributed if they do not provide it?

2.  Who is going to do all this remaining work?  It is not
a small undertaking to write a deep, broad, reliable summary
of human knowledge.  37 sys ops, 200 regular contributors,
1000 repeat contributors, and 4,000 registered accounts
is an excellent start but there is a long ways to go.  The
more complete it gets and the more used, the more maintenance
effort it will require.

3.  When regulars disagree and fail to agree to disagree
politely, how shall we decide which faction to run off?

4.  When factions run off or fork why are we interested
in inviting them to return to the main project?

Learning how to better orientate and accustom newcomers
to our "culture"  may take a substantial investment of time.
It could have a large payoff from improved diversity in interests,
viewpoints, sources of draft content; reduced maintenance effort;
and increased available volunteer effort.  The trick, in my view,
is in getting processes set up such that the investment in time
can be made by appropriately interested people rather than on a
crisis demand basis by exasperated adversaries as each new radical
is discovered or made angry in the stacks.

regards,
Mike Irwin


from_name: Fred Bauder

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Helga Jonat on [[Berlin]]

body:
At 06:02 AM 8/26/02 -0700, you wrote:
>
>
>Jimmy Wales wrote:
>>
>> Jens Frank wrote:
>> > Oh, I didn't want to suggest to denounce her, I just don't want
>> > Jimbo to be arrested when occasionally entering Germany ...
>>
>> *grin* That's a very very good thing.
>
>Is it possible for the German government to arrest a U.S.
>citizen for supporting free speech on a server located
>in the USA?  It would seem out of their jurisdiction.

Ok, the effort in Germany to suppress Nazi organizing is not about getting
people like Jimmy Wales. But active Nazi supporters in the United States
have been arrested upon arriving in Germany. It this necessary? The German
government thinks so and I happen to agree with them, but the threat of a
resurgence of Nazism is at least a remote possibility there. In the US we
have our own homegrown nonsense.

Our article on Nazism would probably be objectionable to the German
government giving rather complete voice to Nazi theories. I've edited on
that article but haven't really attacked the matter and remain unsure just
how to edit it. I don't think we have any obligation to provide a forum for
a full sympathetic rendition of this theory, but not setting such a thing
forth is doing a disservice to our readers.

As to Helga, I find her pathetic and embarassing, although my family is
long gone from Germany. I'm prepared to extend some sympathy, but my
experience with such folks offers little hope that she will do anything but
continue her pattern of disruptive behavior. I haven't really tangled with
her since I probably know more about [[Casper, Wyoming]] than about
[[Prussia]].  Casper is BTW my latest pathetic stub.

Fred


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [Wikitech-l] Internationalization issues

body:
Jaap van Ganswijk wrote:

> Perhaps the Wikipedia software could try to translate ae and
> such to the appropriate HTML abreviations like ä but
> that would be risky, because it would have to know in what
> language each word was written. In Dutch we have the 'oe'
> as a valid combination which is not equal to 'ö', so
> if Dutch and German were mixed in an article it would cause
> problems.
>
To do this the system also needs to distinguish between an umlaut and a
diaresis.  The famous painter Raphael is often spelled with a diaresis
as "Rapha?l".  It wouldn't do do have him automagically turned into
"Raph?l".  The important thing to me is not in having the machines put
in umlauts or other accents, but having the search engine regard
spellings with or without accents as equivalent.  This would be a great
help for the searcher who doesn't know if a word has an accent or
exactly what accent it has.  No non-french speaking person should be
required to know about how some verbs change their accent patterns, or
the subtleties about an acute or grave accent on a final "e" in Catalan.
The uniquely German treatment of umlauted vowels can then probably be
treated with redirects.

Someone also made a comment an anglo-centric comment about foreign users
using foreign keyboards.  What does this mean if I write in more than
one language?  Maybe I should connect a separate keyboard for each
language.  The computer should be smart enough to know that it does
things differntly when I'm on my Russian or Turkish or Devanagiri
keyboard. [;-)] .

Eclecticology

PS: At first I thought that I was replying to the list but apparently it
only went to Jaap.  I suppose I'll should use the reply all when
answering to the list. -Ec


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Deletion of Articles with No Content

body:
Fred Bauder wrote:

>At 10:08 PM 8/25/02 -0400, Vicki Rosenzweig wrote:
>
>>Actually, I'd favor deleting some of Fredbauder's stubs, since I
>>think entries like "a large city in southern Arizona" as the entire article
>>reduce the chance of anyone seeing the gap and writing a good article
>>on the subject.
>>
>My thought is that a short stub does no harm, expecially with a link to
>local attractions. And looking at the article, it seems there is some work,
>but still not a substantial article; in fact now it would seem hard to
>justify deleting it. Looking at history User O seems to have picked it up
>off recent changes and put in a few facts. I would say that the ball is
>rolling, if slowly.
>
My compliments to User 0 who did his work on June 16.  Now only
Flagstaff is simply a city in northern Arizona and nothing more.  The
fact that I'm enterring Flagstaff into the debate may very well lead to
something being written about it, but that's only one article.  How many
more useless stubs are there which appear in links as written?  They
just promote a false sense of confidence that they do have content.  I
agree with Vicki on this.  No article is often better than a useless
article.

Eclecticology


from_name: lcrocker at nupedia.com

subject: [Wikipedia-l] German anti-free speech law and Helga

body:
> The law considers denying of the holocaust as an insultation
> of the dead. Insulting someone is not protected by the right
> of free speech, AFAIK that's the same in the US.

No, it's not.  Insults are speech too, and often hig art.
We protect them too, and rightly so.  As our supreme court
said said, "If freedom means anything at all, it means
freedom for the thought we hate."


from_name: The Cunctator

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Slashcode

body:
"Jimmy Wales" <jwales at bomis.com> wrote:
> I have experience with slashcode -- it's sort of a big ugly bear.
> Also, mailing lists have (like wiki) a lower "threshold of success"
> than a slashcode site.  I can explain further if that doesn't mean
> something to everyone.
>
> Still, I'm not opposed to the idea of a wikipedia slash or similar, if
> there's a general clamor for it and it sounds like we have a good idea
> of what it's for.

Instead of a wikipedia slash, what we need to implement is something more
like the Yahoo! Groups, where the mailing list has a straightforward
bulletin board interface, which should be hooked into the Wikipedia user
database.Then we'd start getting somewhere.


from_name: Jan Hidders

in_reply_to: <001301c24b90$d7c9dde0$6a7f58d9@maximilian>; from jansson@gmx.net on Sat, Aug 24, 2002 at 07:08:16PM +0200

body:
On Sat, Aug 24, 2002 at 07:08:16PM +0200, Kurt Jansson wrote:
>
> Whould it be easier to make a script that converts every ß to ?,
> ö to ?, ü to ? and ä to ? and the same for ?, ?, ? in the
> German database?
> I could then call it by hand if you tell me how.

I assume you want to do this on a regular basis? In that case the script has
to behave as a normal user, i.e., the change should look as any other
regular minor update. I suppose I could write a script in PHP that you could
run and that simply interacts with the site as a normal user. It would do a
search (simply by getting the corresonding URL) for "ouml", "uuml" et
cetera, and do a minor edit that changes them. But note that this is also
pretty easily done by hand.

-- Jan Hidders


body:
Karl Juhnke wrote:

>--- "Michael R. Irwin" <mri_icboise at surfbest.net> wrote:
>
>>I think that having the Wikipedia Guard or Militia
>>routinely deleting empty good titled articles may
>>only slow down the growth in bread and depth of
>>the Wikipedia.   Some people may like organizing
>>the link structures and establishing good initial titles
>>and interconnections.   Why should this contribution
>>be routinely deleted?   How much subsequent work is
>>then lost from contributors who while browsing may
>>choose to add an easy paragraph but who will not
>>undertake an entire stub and the effort required
>>to link it appropriately into an entire encyclopedia?
>>
It is not enough to say that "sombody" should fix the stub.  Every
Wikipediholic has pet subject areas that already require more of his
time than he has.  We don't mind going into an article to make minor
spelling corrections, but there's always the risk that wandering away
from that task will land us in a new edit war.  If your not going to be
that "somebody" there's no need to complain when a useless stub is deleted.

>It is interesting that the debate about article deletion turns on the
>contributing habits of other people, not ourselves.
>
Saying that "somebody" should ...  is certainly about other people's
habits.

>Therefore article deletion seems to be less a matter of encyclopdia
>building, and more a matter of public relations.  How does the
>established community interact with newbies?
>
The difficulty about newbie work is that it's so variable.  Nevertheless
the responsible ones are soon recognized.

>Far and away the most important impression for new contributors is
>whether or not they are part of a vibrant, ongoing interaction.  I
>still remember the huge rush it was for me to write my first short
>article, and discover a few hours later that someone had corrected my
>spelling and added a link.  From that instant I was sold on the
>concept, and began preaching to everyone who would listen that
>Wikipedia was the Next Big Thing (TM).
>
That they changed the spelling was proof that somebody had read what you
had written.

>By the same token, the worst possible impression newbies can get is
>that nobody cares.  I am still smarting from having a change of mine
>reversed with no more than a terse comment and no effort at dialogue.
>And I remember the disappointment of waiting for days and days to see
>what would be done with another contribution of mine, only to slowly
>conclude that nobody was going to work on it with me.  Each case was a
>different side of being ignored.  (Of course, by now I realize the
>efficiencies of discussing by editing rather than talking about
>editing, and realize too that even the most obscure article comes
>around for editing eventually, but I didn't have that perspective at
>first.)
>
>With this in mind, I think that the timing of a delete is critical.  If
>someone created an empty article a month ago and nothing has happened
>to it since, we need have no fear of deleting it.  Whoever made it is
>long gone.  They don't care about it, or they wouldn't have left it.
>They won't feel that we are undoing their hard work; they aren't coming
>back every week to admire their miniscule efforts.
>
>On the other extreme, if a useless article has been created by a newbie
>in the last twenty-four hours, they would likely be extremely gratified
>at any attempt at communication, if only appending to their article
>"Would you like to expand this a little?  See
>link-to-writing-a-good-stub."
>
Good point,  This doesn't argue against deleting useless articles, only
against doing so hastily.

>I know from my father's reaction to Wikipedia (i.e.
>complete dismissal) how damaging it is to have poor articles, and how
>much preferable it would be to have nothing at all rather than garbage
>or a pathetic stub.  On the other hand, now that I am a contributor
>myself, I can see how counterproductive it would be to try to remove
>everything that "lowers the average".
>
This is very interesting.  Now how do you convince your father to
contribute?!  Perhaps if you could show him occasional printed copies of
articles in his fields of interest that require "small" improvements,
and ask him for his opinion about these; You would then, dutiful son
that you are, add the improvements to the Wikipedia article, print it,
and ask him if it now properly reflects his views and if it properly
"raises the average".  Your father is likely the product of an
educational philosophy that promoted the passive consumption of
knowledge.  What was then written in the texbooks was undisputable truth
that you only questioned at your own peril.  The knowledge explosion, of
which the internet is a big part, has put that notion on its ear.

>The best solution I can think of is to make it more obvious that poor
>articles are obviously under construction.
>
There is a distinction to be made between a poor article, where you are
right, and a useless article that doesn't add to people's knowledge.
 It's the latter that are better deleted.

>


from_name: Julie Hofmann Kemp

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Helga Jonat on [[Berlin]]

body:
Regarding Mirwin's essay --

I generally agree with what you've said, mike.  Just thought you should
know that this has been going on for close to a year now.  Wikipedians
have left partially because they were too fed up with their time being
wasted by Helga.  In almost every case, one of us (often me) has broken
down her work, explained where the problems are, and asked for sources
and/or clarification of very specific points.  We've also offered to
help turn what she comes up with into effective English.  Sometimes,
we've put together essays on sources and use of documents that have made
it into different articles.  Other times, we've gone out and looked at
her sources ourselves (they are often from highly biased minority
opinion sites or books that are hard to find because they are incredibly
outdated local histories in German), and found that either there was a
fair body of criticism or that she'd quoted out of context.

You are absolutely right about minority opinions -- as long as they are
valid ones.  Helga's views on the Heimatvertriebene are generally quite
valid and need to be expressed (I would say it's analogous to the fight
by Roma and gay activists have placed on their inclusion as victims of
the Holocaust -- its only recently that any real research has been done
on the topic, but as it comes to light, it is included in the
mainstream).  HOWEVER, she does nothing to help create a collegial
atmosphere where we can add PROVABLE claims in a neutral POV.  IMO, her
irredentist views are pretty much insupportable -- not because they are
not accepted by the mainstream, but because she is just wrong.  Taken to
an extreme, Helga's arguments could be used to prove that Iberia belongs
to the Irish (choose a group of Celts) -- although she'd probably stop
at the Visigoths, since they're Germans.

Plus, she's accused other wikipedians of drinking too much (Michael
Tinkler) and insulted me on many occasions, to which my fovourtite
response is still from the much-missed Paul Drye "Pot. Kettle. Black."

Jules

Regards,

Julie Hofmann Kemp
253-638-1944
206-310-3461

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-l/attachments/20020826/b988d423/attachment.htm


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Fwd: Re: Server down?

body:
----------  Forwarded Message  ----------

Subject: Re: Server down?
Date: Mon, 26 Aug 2002 22:10:54 -0700
From: lcrocker at nupedia.com
To: Daniel Mayer <maveric149 at yahoo.com>

> Is the server down for some reason? I can't access it.

Well, maybe encouraging people to learn SQL wasn't such a
great idea :-)  The SQL server was bogged down on something,
so I just killed and restarted it.  Tim, if you were trying
to run a query, let me know what it was and I'll see if I
can come up with a faster equivalent.

-------------------------------------------------------


from_name: Jason Richey

subject: [Wikipedia-l] new mailing list for the Dutch Wikipedia

body:
I am just writing to announce that a new mailing list has been created
for the use of the Dutch Wikipedia.  You can subscribe to it by going
to this URL:

http://www.nupedia.com/mailman/listinfo/wikinl-l

I hope that this list turns out to be useful...

--
"Jason C. Richey" <jasonr at bomis.com>


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Movie naming convention: proposed tweak for simplicity

body:
As it is, our movie naming convention (which has been around since before
January) reads:

"Oftentimes movies share the same name as other movies, books or terms. When
disambiguating a movie from something else use (movie) in the title when only
one movie had that name and (YEAR movie) in the title when there are more
than one movies by that name (example: Titanic (1997 movie))."

One user has for some time now been creating many movie titles in the form
[[{movie name} (YEAR)]] (example [[Scareface (1932)]]. However I moved that
page to the convention compliant [[Scareface (1932 movie)]]. After the move I
compared the two and quickly realized that the word "movie" is not at all
needed for disambiguation because "Scareface" is already disambiguated by
year (there wasn't anything else released that year named "Scareface" that I
know of). What's more is the fact that Scareface (1932) actually has a chance
of being linked simply as [[Scareface (1932)]] instead of [[Scareface
(1932)|Scareface]] (not that it matters too much with Lee's neat pipe trick).

So this is my proposed new wording of the convention (and I will assume
acceptance of this as is if there are no objections):

"Oftentimes movies share the same name as other movies, books or terms. When
disambiguating a movie from something else use (movie) in the title when only
one movie had that name and (YEAR) in the title when there are more than one
movies by that name (example: [[Titanic (1997)]])."

We could add in the detailed movie convention page that if and when there
/is/ more than one thing with the same name that is released in the same
year, then the format of [[{name of movie} (YEAR movie)]] can be used.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re:  Re: note to the militia

body:
Daniel Mayer wrote:

>What would be most useful is a listing of new users that can be accessed from
>http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Listusers. That way this job would be
>much easier.
>
At one time thes were in order of joining (which can be useless in its
own way).  Can some kind of a sort function be applied.

>BTW we really /do not/ have 3498 real users -- a good many of these "users"
>logged in only to abuse our upload utility or for other nefarious or
>non-contributing reasons (I don't greet any user who hasn't contributed at
>all). Is there a way to get rid of many of these no-longer used user accounts
>Lee (just the ones that have been inactive for months and whose user pages
>are still edit links)?
>
Can there be a "Wikepedia reserve army" list where anybody that hasn't
been seen in 90 days is listed.  To get back on the main list, one
simple log-in would do the trick.  I would not object to seeing a lot of
"accidental" registrations cancelled completely; many of these people
have probably even forgotten that Wikipedia exists.  They can always
re-register if they want.

Eclecticology


from_name: Tom Parmenter

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Helga Jonat on [[Berlin]]

body:
<removed Mike Irwin's interesting essay on unpopular points of view
and wikipedia, which I urge everyone to read>

The fact is, everyone has bent over backwards with Helga and given her
every opportunity to collaborate, explain, discuss, proffer evidence.
People have given her questions to answer, opportunities to give
sources, suggestions on NPOV, ideas about how to enter controversial
points of view, and none of it has worked.  All has been met with what
I would call truculent ignorance.  She is more interested in "proving"
that Copernicus was "German" and that this fine "German" reformed the
coinage of some long-lost province of the Holy Roman Empire than she
is in whether the sun revolves around the earth or the other way
around.  She translated dubious material from German and cannot
understand that translation doesn't remove the copyright.  She thinks
one speech in 1946 by James Eastland trumps the entire history of the
20th century.  That one anti-Hitler article in a Jewish newspaper in
1934 (!) justifies the Holocaust.

The history seems similar to the notorious "24", whom I missed by
coming in late on all this.  It is not the controversial point of view
that makes these people wrong for Wikipedia, it is the refusal to
engage in any dialogue to improve their contributions, a refusal that
amounts to trolling in my view.  Poor old 24 was bound and determined
to prove that there was censorship in the wikipedia and he finally
managed it at the cost of never getting anything he wanted heard into
the work in any form.  I'd say Helga is on the same path.  The Ark guy
too.

In contrast, Mike Irwin (and Ed Poor and several others, maybe even
me, not to single anyone out) are willing to soldier along, bringing
up sticky points, discusssing them, defending themselves, attacking
other views, apologizing on occasion, giving in from time to time,
sticking to their guns on other occasions, enlivening the talk pages,
and generally engaging in synthesis that assures that most of what
they (we) want to say makes it into the Encyclopedia, however cloaked
in NPOV it may turn out to be in the end.

Tom Parmenter
Ortolan88


body:
>> The law considers denying of the holocaust as an insultation
>> of the dead. Insulting someone is not protected by the right
>> of free speech, AFAIK that's the same in the US.
>
>No, it's not.  Insults are speech too, and often hig art.
>We protect them too, and rightly so.  As our supreme court
>said said, "If freedom means anything at all, it means
>freedom for the thought we hate."

That's why it's a "high art." Avoiding libel and slander is not easly. Most
of our public victims in the US are public figures, covered by an
exception. In Colorado speaking ill is the dead is in the criminal code as
the crime of slander. Never enforced, perhaps unconstitutional, but there.

Fred


body:
Daniel Mayer wrote:

>>Apart from this being utter nonsense (see e.g.
>>http://www.nizkor.org/features/qar/qar11.html for a discussion of these
>>arguments), this most probably violates
>>German Law (Paragraph 130(3) of our penal code, denial of genocide
>>performed by the nazis).
>>
>>JeLuF
>>
>As a red blooded American I think that law is well intentioned but just ranks
>with anti-free speech totalitarian newspeak and probably does more to
>encourage Neo-Nazis and their ilk than to discourage them (punishing people
>just because they have certain views tends to make other people with similar
>views get the "us vs. them" mentality; which just strengthens their resolve
>and encourages ideas about "conspiracies" to "get them" that "must be
>stopped" = the law inadvertently creates a class of people actively opposed
>to the government when there were only various unrelated people with similar
>ideas before). We should therefore /not/ even begin to consider banning
>anyone just because they are breaking such a law.
>
>BTW, people should be able to say whatever they want in everyday life or
>their personal websites but if any of that is to be in a neutral and
>fact-based encyclopedia then it must be backed-up with evidence or highly
>qualified ("such and such says this, but others say that and yet others say
>the first two are wrong because...").
>
>>Oh, I didn't want to suggest to denounce her, I just don't want
>>Jimbo to be arrested when occasionally entering Germany ...
>>
That German law is just plain silly.  The Holocaust as an event is a
question of fact not of law, and no amount of legislation is going to
change the truth (or untruth) of its events.  People should be entitled
to their illusions and delusions.  When the massive power of the state
is applied against these folk, they are granted a credibility greater
than they could ever have imagined.  Germany's law in this regard is
probably mild compared to those countries that would ban any kind of
outside influences available through the Internet.  Obviously, if Helga
lives in Germany, she proceeds at her own risk.  No ISP should need to
worry about a bewildering array of foreign laws; it's quite enough for
him to be mindful of the laws of his own country.

The United States is perhaps the worst offender when it comes to the
extraterritorial application of its laws, and refusing to conform with
international conventions.  Witness the situation of the Russian who had
developed a device to crack copy protection.  He did none of his work in
the US  but was still arrested when he visited.

Eclecticology


from_name: Brion VIBBER

body:
Ray Saintonge wrote:
> Someone also made a comment an anglo-centric comment about foreign users
> using foreign keyboards.  What does this mean if I write in more than
> one language?  Maybe I should connect a separate keyboard for each
> language.  The computer should be smart enough to know that it does
> things differntly when I'm on my Russian or Turkish or Devanagiri
> keyboard. [;-)] .

That's why modern computers have software-switchable keyboard maps...

bl? bl? bl?
b?a b?a b?a
??? ??? ???
???? ???? ????
???????????

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


from_name: Jimmy Wales

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Slashcode

body:
The Cunctator wrote:
> Instead of a wikipedia slash, what we need to implement is something more
> like the Yahoo! Groups, where the mailing list has a straightforward
> bulletin board interface, which should be hooked into the Wikipedia user
> database.Then we'd start getting somewhere.

That sounds nice.  But it's a lot of work.


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Helga Jonat on [[Berlin]]

body:
Karen AKA Kajikit wrote:

>I haven't tried to 'fix' her articles because I know bugger all about
>German history,
>
That hasn't stopped Helga from buggering it up

>She is not a useful contributor - she's a kook.
>
Kooks thrive on the attention.
.


from_name: wojtek pobratyn

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Helga Jonat on [[Berlin]]

body:
<snip>

Karen AKA Kajikit wrote thusly:

| I haven't tried to 'fix' her articles because I know bugger all about
| German history, but I'd say that everyone has had their patience tried
| long enough. She is not a useful contributor - she's a kook who wants to
| use the wikipedia to push her private bandwagon, which just so happens
| to have no relationship to the facts. I'm the first to admit to having
| my own little wagon that I'm pushing on the wikipedia, but most of us
| pay SOME attention to the NPOV philosophy and make sure that what we are
| contributing is based on fact, not some loonytunes supposition.
|
| I would vote to ban her just for the sake of everyone else's sanity.
| When you've tried reasoning and you've tried persuading and you've tried
| asking nicely it's time for a little old-fashioned force.
|
| --
|
| Karen AKA Kajikit
|
<snip>

I totally agree with Karen - HJ's contributions are far from useful and
even further from being NPOV. Her failling to join this list and argue
her POV makes this sort of discussion plus editing her artciles
a waste of everybody's resources. I'm all for a temporary ban.

regards,
WojPob


subject: [Wikipedia-l] A general note about info pages

body:
Many of the feature requests on this list and in the formal
tracker are for pages showing information about the database.
For example, lists of pages meeting certain criteria, lists
of users by signup date, etc.

While some of these may have recurring use, many are probably
little more than occasional ad-hoc queries for a specific
purpose that may or may not be an ongoing need.

I'd like to point out that every sysop here (and that's over
15% of active users, as someone pointed out) can make SELECT
queries to the database, which is all that's necessary for
getting any kind of information you need.  I'd like to
encourage more users to learn how to do this, and encourage
those who already do know how to help them.

My time is better spent, I think, working on critical functions
of the software like "recent changes", re-thinking wiki markup,
better features for article creation and user interaction, etc.

Of course, if one of these queries ends up being used regularly,
adding a page for it is not difficult; but I'd like to see a
proven need for such things first before I clutter the code with
100 special pages that rarely get used.


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Helga Jonat on [[Berlin]]

in_reply_to: <200208261503.LAA18443@TheWorld.com>; from tompar@world.std.com on Mon, Aug 26, 2002 at 11:03:26AM -0400

body:
Tom Parmenter wrote:
> The history seems similar to the notorious "24", whom I missed by
> coming in late on all this.  It is not the controversial point of view
> that makes these people wrong for Wikipedia, it is the refusal to
> engage in any dialogue to improve their contributions, a refusal that
> amounts to trolling in my view.

I would agree that this _is_ the essential problem.

> In contrast, Mike Irwin (and Ed Poor and several others, maybe even
> me, not to single anyone out) are willing to soldier along, bringing
> up sticky points, discusssing them, defending themselves, attacking
> other views, apologizing on occasion, giving in from time to time,
> sticking to their guns on other occasions, enlivening the talk pages,
> and generally engaging in synthesis that assures that most of what
> they (we) want to say makes it into the Encyclopedia, however cloaked
> in NPOV it may turn out to be in the end.

Yes!

Extremely diverse intellectual perspectives are no obstacle to
cooperation through the mechanism of NPOV, within a very broad range.

But I suspect that there are limits.  Some views are so minority,
so at odds with the mainstream, that it will be difficult to integrate
them with the whole.  I'm not talking about "major" points of view
like Marxism or Libertarianism or Christianity or Bhuddism.  I'm
talking about very small and quirky points of view shared by almost
no one.

--Jimbo


body:
Jens Frank wrote:
> So I might say "You are an asshole" and you couldn't sue
> me for it in the US?

That's right.

> Than our legal system has quite other
> priorities than yours. The German constitution begins
> with the words:
>
> 	Die Wuerde des Menschen ist unantastbar.
>
> Meaning something like:
>
> 	The dignity of man is inviolable.

The American view would be that restrictions on insulting speech, or
hateful speech, are a violation of human dignity.

> There was a very interesting process
> some years ago between a soldier and a pacifist
> who has said "Soldiers are murderers". The
> decision of the court was: If you say it as a
> general statement targeting more to "war" than
> to a specific man, it's protected by the right
> of free speech. If you say it to the face of
> an soldier, meaning him personally, than it's
> an insultation and violating the soldiers
> dignity. The pacifist won the case since it
> was a sticker on his car and therefor not
> intended to a specific soldier.
>
> (I think we're becomming off topic, but it's
> an interesting difference between the US and
> Germany I wasn't aware of)

Yes, this is off topic.  And it is interesting.

I had no idea that a person could be sued anywhere in the world for
calling someone an asshole.  Americans are litigious enough already,
god forbid if we could sue people for _that_!  :-)

--Jimbo


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Gesell

body:
Kurt Jansson wrote:

>>I'm more worried about someone who's been writing articles about Silvio
>>Gesell's theories about "Freiwirtschaft", "Freigeld", etc. (I don't know
>>the English expressions). It seems we don't have anybody with enough
>>experience in economic theories on board, so in my opinion there has
>>been too little critical dispute about it.
>>
I never heard of him before, but seems like an interesting person who
influenced John Maynard Keynes, whom many people do respect as an
economist.  His ideas of free land and free money are described in his
principal work, "The Natural Economic Order", which is available on-line
in English at http://ccdev.lets.net/neo/neo2.htm Perhaps somebody could
translate the articles from the German Wikipedia


body:
Fred Bauder wrote:

>>>The law considers denying of the holocaust as an insultation
>>>of the dead. Insulting someone is not protected by the right
>>>of free speech, AFAIK that's the same in the US.
>>>
>>No, it's not.  Insults are speech too, and often hig art.
>>We protect them too, and rightly so.  As our supreme court
>>said said, "If freedom means anything at all, it means
>>freedom for the thought we hate."
>>
>
>That's why it's a "high art." Avoiding libel and slander is not easly. Most
>of our public victims in the US are public figures, covered by an
>exception. In Colorado speaking ill is the dead is in the criminal code as
>the crime of slander. Never enforced, perhaps unconstitutional, but there.
>
The art of innuendo!

Some of the state legislatures have passed some weird things.  Often it
was one legislator pushing something through as a test to see if his
colleages were awake.  They weren't.  I believe that it was the
"Saturday Evening Post" that used to have a regular column about some of
these strange laws.  Things could get really strange when somebody took
them seriously and tried to enforce them.

Eclecticology


from_name: Jens Frank

body:
On Sun, Aug 25, 2002 at 12:19:17PM -0700, Daniel Mayer wrote:
> On Sunday 25 August 2002 05:33 pm, you wrote:
> > Apart from this being utter nonsense (see e.g.
> > http://www.nizkor.org/features/qar/qar11.html for a discussion of these
> > arguments), this most probably violates
> > German Law (Paragraph 130(3) of our penal code, denial of genocide
> > performed by the nazis).
> >
> > It's time to stop her.
> >
> >
> > JeLuF
>
> As a red blooded American I think that law is well intentioned but just ranks
> with anti-free speech totalitarian newspeak and probably does more to
> encourage Neo-Nazis and their ilk than to discourage them (punishing people
> just because they have certain views tends to make other people with similar
> views get the "us vs. them" mentality; which just strengthens their resolve
> and encourages ideas about "conspiracies" to "get them" that "must be
> stopped" = the law inadvertently creates a class of people actively opposed
> to the government when there were only various unrelated people with similar
> ideas before). We should therefore /not/ even begin to consider banning
> anyone just because they are breaking such a law.

The law considers denying of the holocaust as an insultation of the dead.
Insulting someone is not protected by the right of free speech, AFAIK that's
the same in the US.

> However, we are trying to build a fact-based and neutral encyclopedia, so if
> we do /temporarily/ block Helga then the /only/ reason why is because she is
> a major drain on contributor resources and she is therefore harming the goals
> and progress of the project.

Agreed.

> BTW, people should be able to say whatever they want in everyday life or
> their personal websites but if any of that is to be in a neutral and

DMCA. Your political system decided that telling someone the way how to
remove copyright protection is against the law and not free speech. My
political system decided that sowing hatred between people is against
the law. Hatred is much more dangerous than someone hearing songs of
Britney Spears without paying for them, in my opinion.

> > Oh, I didn't want to suggest to denounce her, I just don't want
> > Jimbo to be arrested when occasionally entering Germany ...
> >
> > ????????Regards,
> >
> > ????????????????JeLuF
>
> Well intentioned reasoning -- the last thing we need is Jimbo behind bars ;).
> Is this at all a possibility in German law? In the US Jimbo is protected by
> the fact that he is technically the ISP of wikipedia and therefore has
> limited liability on what users of his ISP do (not to mention 1st Amendment
> protections that protect both him and users of his ISP).

It's a little bit unclear. He is probably not responsible for the things Helga
writes as long as he is not knowing about it. Knowing about her denial of the
holocaust and not doing anything against it might void the protection he has
as technical provider.

> There is also the
> German Wikipedia to consider -- I somehow get the feeling that the German
> Wikipedia is just filled with her nonsense propaganda (smaller project =
> fewer contributors who can successfully confront and debunk her "work" =
> Helga has much more power to get her way).

She is not that active on the German wiki as far as I can tell, but I don't
know how to check for "User contributions" like it's possible in the English
wiki. At least, there are no articles on "Gdansk/Danzig" yet in the German
wiki. This might change as soon as Helga is banned, of course.

Best regards,

JeLuF


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Helga Jonat on [[Berlin]]

body:
Julie Hofmann Kemp wrote

> Taken to an extreme, Helga's arguments could be used to prove that
> Iberia belongs to the Irish (choose a group of Celts) -- although
> she'd probably stop at the Visigoths, since they're Germans.
>
Now there's an idea!!  I believe that the Galicians were originaly a
Celtic people.  But there are also Galicians in Poland, so maybe Iberia
should be Polish. ... That or Ireland should be Polish.  :-D
Eclecticology


from_name: koyaanisqatsi at nupedia.com

body:
I'm willing to learn, but I need specific and unambiguous instructions because I've never done it before, and I'd rather not crash the server (or even slow it down substantially).

Any ideas for good places to go to start learning?  Or anyone willing to explain to a newbie?

kq

>I'd like to point out that every sysop here (and that's over
>15% of active users, as someone pointed out) can make SELECT
>queries to the database, which is all that's necessary for
>getting any kind of information you need.  I'd like to
>encourage more users to learn how to do this, and encourage
>those who already do know how to help them.


body:
----- Original Message -----
From: "Ray Saintonge" <saintonge at telus.net>
> My compliments to User 0 who did his work on June 16.  Now only
> Flagstaff is simply a city in northern Arizona and nothing more.  The
> fact that I'm enterring Flagstaff into the debate may very well lead to
> something being written about it, but that's only one article.  How many
> more useless stubs are there which appear in links as written?  They
> just promote a false sense of confidence that they do have content.  I
> agree with Vicki on this.  No article is often better than a useless
> article.

I agree to the point where I dissuade people from creating stubs. I disagree
when
it comes to the question of deleting stubs. I fall firmly on the "when in
doubt,
don't delete". And the doubt here shouldn't be an individual's doubt, but on
the doubt of everyone. And in the case of stubs, there will always be doubt,
because the determination of "useless" is not objective.


from_name: Pierre Abbat

body:
On Monday 26 August 2002 11:13, Ray Saintonge wrote:
> To do this the system also needs to distinguish between an umlaut and a
> diaresis.  The famous painter Raphael is often spelled with a diaresis
> as "Rapha?l".  It wouldn't do do have him automagically turned into
> "Raph?l".  The important thing to me is not in having the machines put
> in umlauts or other accents, but having the search engine regard
> spellings with or without accents as equivalent.  This would be a great
> help for the searcher who doesn't know if a word has an accent or
> exactly what accent it has.  No non-french speaking person should be
> required to know about how some verbs change their accent patterns, or
> the subtleties about an acute or grave accent on a final "e" in Catalan.
> The uniquely German treatment of umlauted vowels can then probably be
> treated with redirects.

There are also a few German words in which "ue" is *not* equivalent to "?":
"Tuer" means "doer", the actor form of "tun", and is different from "T?r"
meaning "door", and "Guericke", the Magdeburger who made the vacuum pump, is
written sometimes "Gericke" but never "G?ricke".

phma


body:
>> No, it's not.  Insults are speech too, and often high art.
>> We protect them too, and rightly so.  As our supreme court
>> has said, "If freedom means anything at all, it means
>> freedom for the thought we hate."
>
>So I might say "You are an asshole" and you couldn't sue
>me for it in the US? Than our legal system has quite other
>priorities than yours. The German constitution begins
>with the words:
>
>	Die Wuerde des Menschen ist unantastbar.
>Meaning something like:
>	The dignity of man is inviolable.
>...
>There was a very interesting process
>some years ago between a soldier and a pacifist
>who has said "Soldiers are murderers". The
>decision of the court was: If you say it as a
>general statement targeting more to "war" than
>to a specific man, it's protected by the right
>of free speech. If you say it to the face of
>an soldier, meaning him personally, than it's
>an insultation and violating the soldiers
>dignity. The pacifist won the case since it
>was a sticker on his car and therefor not
>intended to a specific soldier.

That's definitely a difference in US and German views
of things.  "Slander" in the US has to meet a /very/
difficult burden of proof: the speech has to be (1)
false, (2) deliberately maclicious, (3) cause actual
harm, and (4) credible, and presented as fact.  Case 1
means that truth is an absolute defense (i.e., you can't
be sued for slander for saying someone is cheating on
his wife if he is, in fact, cheating on his wife).
Condition 2 is often the hardest to meet: you have to
prove that the person making the slanderous statements
did so intentionally to cause harm, i.e., with "malice
aforethought".  Thirdly, you have to be able to demonstate
that you were actually harmed in some way.  Merely being
insulted does not harm you--the "dignity of man" should
be able to take a punch without crumbling. But if the
speech really did cause harm, such as costing you business,
or losing friends, etc., then you must demonstrate that.
Finally, the speech must be in a form that appears to be
statements of fact, credibly expressed.  Opinion, humor,
parody, and such are categorically immune.  "I think Bill
is an asshole" is an immune opinion.  But "I saw Bill hire
a hooker", reported as fact, might be slanderous if it
causes Bill's wife to leave him or something.

For a good flavor of the American point of view, I recommend
watching the movie "People vs. Larry Flynt".  Mr. Flynt
published a magazine with a parody that included Jerry Falwell
describing a sexual encounter with his mother.  "Slander" wasn't
even an issue--since it was humor, it was immune, so no court
would even hear that.  But Falwell sued under a different cause
of action, "Intentional infliction of emotional distress".
That too was eventually thrown out.  Public figures simply have
to expect people to make fun of them and learn to deal with it.

As I've expressed it before, tolerance is more an obligation
of listeners than it is of speakers.


from_name: Kurt Jansson

body:
> > There is also the
> > German Wikipedia to consider -- I somehow get the feeling that the
German
> > Wikipedia is just filled with her nonsense propaganda (smaller
project =
> > fewer contributors who can successfully confront and debunk her
"work" =
> > Helga has much more power to get her way).
>
> She is not that active on the German wiki as far as I can tell, but I
don't
> know how to check for "User contributions" like it's possible in the
English
> wiki.

You can take a look at the testsite:
http://makeashorterlink.com/?Y2BC21C91

Unfortunately many old revisions have been deleted by the software, so
there will be missing some (or many?) of her edits. But it's true that
she's not very active on the German WP.

I'm more worried about someone who's been writing articles about Silvio
Gesell's theories about "Freiwirtschaft", "Freigeld", etc. (I don't know
the English expressions). It seems we don't have anybody with enough
experience in economic theories on board, so in my opinion there has
been too little critical dispute about it.

> At least, there are no articles on "Gdansk/Danzig" yet in the German
> wiki. This might change as soon as Helga is banned, of course.

:-(

Kurt


from_name: Krzysztof P. Jasiutowicz

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Helga Jonat on [[Berlin]]

body:
On 26-08-2002, wojtek pobratyn wrote thusly :
> Karen AKA Kajikit wrote thusly:
> | I haven't tried to 'fix' her articles because I know bugger all about
> | German history, but I'd say that everyone has had their patience tried
> | long enough. She is not a useful contributor - she's a kook who wants to
> | use the wikipedia to push her private bandwagon, which just so happens
> | to have no relationship to the facts. I'm the first to admit to having
> | my own little wagon that I'm pushing on the wikipedia, but most of us
> | pay SOME attention to the NPOV philosophy and make sure that what we are
> | contributing is based on fact, not some loonytunes supposition.
> | I would vote to ban her just for the sake of everyone else's sanity.
> | When you've tried reasoning and you've tried persuading and you've tried
> | asking nicely it's time for a little old-fashioned force.
Wojtek :
> I totally agree with Karen - HJ's contributions are far from useful and
> even further from being NPOV. Her failling to join this list and argue
> her POV makes this sort of discussion plus editing her artciles
> a waste of everybody's resources. I'm all for a temporary ban.
I think we should give her the last warning. If it fails there's no other
way that to ban her for some time.
I think that I know her motives but because she is in fact a
hindrance to the Wikipedia's progress and her writing undermines
the basic rules of Wikipedia banning her seems to be the sad
necessity.

Regards,
kpjas.


body:
>"Slander" in the US has to meet a /very/
>>difficult burden of proof: the speech has to be (1)
>>false, (2) deliberately maclicious, (3) cause actual
>>harm, and (4) credible, and presented as fact.
>
> Not quite. There is libel and slander. Different rules for each.
> There is criminal slander as in the Colorado law. And civil
> slander. Truth is not always a defense.

Yes, yes, I'm simplifying for the benefit of a foreign audience
to give the gist of the subject.  There's also different rules
for different media (newspapers can get away with more than
magazines, for instance).  But the general rules are as I outlined.
"Truth" /is/ always a defense to both slander and libel, but it
is an "affirmative" defense (meaning the burden of proof is on
the defendant), and it may not be a defense to those other torts
like intentional infliction of emotional distress, and it may not
be an "absolute" defense (i.e., the judge may rule that all the
other factors combined outweigh it)--but that's a /very/ rare thing,
and very likely to be overturned on appeal.

Like everything in the US, state law also complicates the matter,
but in general, state laws more restrictive than outlined above
are routinely overturned. Texas's "veggie libel" law, for example.
I'm sure the Colorado law you mentioned would suffer a similar
fate if it ever got as far as a US district court.


body:
 "Slander" in the US has to meet a /very/
>difficult burden of proof: the speech has to be (1)
>false, (2) deliberately maclicious, (3) cause actual
>harm, and (4) credible, and presented as fact.

Not quite. There is libel and slander. Different rules for each. There is
criminal slander as in the Colorado law. And civil slander. Truth is not
always a defense.

Fred


from_name: Poor, Edmund W

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Helga

body:
We should not "stop" her; rather, we should neutralize her writings. Write things like:

	Some advocates blame the Daily Express article for starting the war, although most historians agree that...

I'm not sure what goes in the ellipsis, but my point is, there is nothing wrong with Helga's views that attribution can't fix.

Look what I've done with the Arab-Israeli Conflict articles: Palestine, Palestinian, Palestinian homeland, etc. There hasn't been an outbreak of edit war in nearly 2 weeks, which is epochal in terms of internet time.

I bet if I start following Helga around, I can neutralize anything she says faster than she can say it; I can type 80 words a minute, and my English is superb. I am offering up to 5 hours per week to this end.

All I need is the ability to track "all articles written by a single IP", so that when she forgets to log in I can still see her contributions. Or maybe Jimbo can give her a parole condition: if she agrees to contribute only while logged in, we won't ban her.

I didn't realize people were so upset with Helga. I may have made a mistake in encouraging "H. Jonat" to stay in the first place. But she hasn't threatened anyone with physical violence, and she is answering Jimbo's e-mails. I say, teach her the norms of the community rather than exile her.

Ed Poor


from_name: Karl Juhnke

body:
--- Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> Karl Juhnke wrote:
>> I know from my father's reaction to Wikipedia (i.e. complete
>> dismissal) how damaging it is to have poor articles, and how
>> much preferable it would be to have nothing at all rather than
>> garbage or a pathetic stub.  On the other hand, now that I am a
>> contributor myself, I can see how counterproductive it would be
>> to try to remove everything that "lowers the average".
>
> This is very interesting.  Now how do you convince your father to
> contribute?!

Believe me, I am trying to get him on board!  (I will hook him before
Wikipedia is mainstream, i.e. he won't be last to join.)  He is a
historian, and was a college professor for over thirty years before
retiring this past May.  He would be the perfect Wikipedia contributor,
as he has both expertise and plenty of time he can choose to dispose of
as he sees fit.

> Your father is likely the product of an educational philosophy that
> promoted the passive consumption of knowledge.  What was then written
> in the texbooks was undisputable truth that you only questioned at
> your own peril.

On the contrary, he is a revisionist, you might say a subversive even.
He believes in Truth, but also in disputation.  He's a genuine scholar.

I am getting off topic, but I will share what happened when I tried to
enlist him.  Because he is a Mennonite (although not specifically an
expert on Mennonite history) he went quickly to the pages on
Anabaptists and Mennonites.  To impress upon him how easy it is for
anyone to contribute, I persuaded him to fill in a hole (Leader of
Amish = Jakob Amman).  But that was as much as he would do.

He declined to contribute further on grounds that the articles didn't
need little fixes and additions, they were fundamentally flawed needed
to be rewritten from the ground up.   "Anyone who traces Anabaptists to
the Zwickau prophets might as well be writing in 1930, and obviously
hasn't read any modern research," he said.  He then took me in hand and
showed me how the article on Anabaptists in our old Collier's
Encyclopedia (Written in the 1960's.  On paper.  Positively
antediluvian.) was in every way superior scholarship.  His conclusion:
"Editorial accretion will never make a good article."

He is wrong, of course.  Eventually the Wikipedia article will be
superior to the one in our ancient Colliers.  He hasn't seen articles
improving, so he doesn't know the mechanics.  But I think in general
people who don't grok Wikipedia will judge it by comparing it to more
static sources of information.  The more expertise they have, the
higher the quality of existing information Wikipedia will need to have
to excite thier interest and participation.

Someday there will be a half-dozen historians contributing to Wikipedia
who are interested in exactly the same topics my father is interested
in.  At that point he will want to be part of the conversation.  But
for now he has no inclination to cast his pearls before swine.  "Why
would I want to collaborate with someone who can't be bothered to look
up Jakob Amman's name?" he says, and I can't blame him.

Peace,
-Karl

P.S. Please understand that I am not casting aspersions on Wesley for
his work on Anabaptists.  I couldn't do as well myself.  I'm just
picking on that article to make a general point that most
non-Wikipedians judge us based on our current content, not our process.
 Relating this back to stub articles, there's no way around the fact
that people unfamiliar with the process will be turned off by stubs.
To repeat a point from my previous article, we have to make every
effort to _immediately_ re-edit and respond to anything a newbie does
in order to initiate them into the joy.  There is no way to adequately
explain it; a contributor has to viscerally experience what it means to
be involved in collaborative editing.

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Finance - Get real-time stock quotes
http://finance.yahoo.com


from_name: Vicki Rosenzweig

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Helga

body:
At 03:59 PM 8/26/02 -0400, you wrote:
>We should not "stop" her; rather, we should neutralize her writings. Write
>things like:
>
>         Some advocates blame the Daily Express article for starting the
> war, although most historians agree that...

It still gives it too much credence: "some people" believe that the earth
is flat, but that
doesn't mean we give them equal time in the article on Magellan.

>I'm not sure what goes in the ellipsis, but my point is, there is nothing
>wrong with Helga's views that attribution can't fix.
>
>Look what I've done with the Arab-Israeli Conflict articles: Palestine,
>Palestinian, Palestinian homeland, etc. There hasn't been an outbreak of
>edit war in nearly 2 weeks, which is epochal in terms of internet time.
>
>I bet if I start following Helga around, I can neutralize anything she
>says faster than she can say it; I can type 80 words a minute, and my
>English is superb. I am offering up to 5 hours per week to this end.
>
>All I need is the ability to track "all articles written by a single IP",
>so that when she forgets to log in I can still see her contributions. Or
>maybe Jimbo can give her a parole condition: if she agrees to contribute
>only while logged in, we won't ban her.
>
>I didn't realize people were so upset with Helga. I may have made a
>mistake in encouraging "H. Jonat" to stay in the first place. But she
>hasn't threatened anyone with physical violence, and she is answering
>Jimbo's e-mails. I say, teach her the norms of the community rather than
>exile her.

We've been trying to teach her the norms of the community for a very long
time. She
isn't interested in learning them.
--
Vicki Rosenzweig
vr at redbird.org
http://www.redbird.org


from_name: Stephen Gilbert

body:
--- "Michael R. Irwin" <mri_icboise at surfbest.net>
wrote:

> It seems like silly makework to me.
>
> The article will be recreated again anytime anyone
> clicks on one of the links leading to it.
>
> If it is a good title then it is an invitation
> for anyone who encounters it to add to it.

Here's the situation. Pretend Wikipedia had not
article on, say, the Protestant Reformation. Someone
follows a link to the empty article, edits the page
and types "sadlhfhg". Now, when someone is reading
another article with a link to the Protestant
Reformation, it looks like we have an article. If they
don't visit the page, they won't know that there's
actually no article. If, however, the Protestant
Reformation page was deleted, people will see empty
links and think, "Hmmm... we should really have
something on that topic."

Also, having existing but empty articles breaks the
functionality of pages like "Most Wanted".

Stephen G.

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Finance - Get real-time stock quotes
http://finance.yahoo.com


body:
--- Fred Bauder <fredbaud at ctelco.net> wrote:
> At 10:08 PM 8/25/02 -0400, Vicki Rosenzweig wrote:
> >Actually, I'd favor deleting some of Fredbauder's
> stubs, since I
> >think entries like "a large city in southern
> Arizona" as the entire article
> >reduce the chance of anyone seeing the gap and
> writing a good article
> >on the subject.
>
> So no misunderstanding at all.

Vicki is voicing an opinion that is not directly
related to Toby's proposed change to the deletion
policy.

Stephen G.

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Finance - Get real-time stock quotes
http://finance.yahoo.com


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Slashcode

body:
I'm not in favour of replacing the mailing list with
Slashcode or another type of weblog. If people think
the general list is getting too clogged, we could just
spin off particular topics onto their own lists.

Stephen G.

--- Jimmy Wales <jwales at bomis.com> wrote:
> Daniel Mayer wrote:
> > PS - I'm also beggining to loose track of all the
> questions and
> > answers of the various strings on this mailing
> list. A Slashcode
> > implementation may be better for the mailing list
> real soon.
>
> I have experience with slashcode -- it's sort of a
> big ugly bear.
> Also, mailing lists have (like wiki) a lower
> "threshold of success"
> than a slashcode site.  I can explain further if
> that doesn't mean
> something to everyone.
>
> Still, I'm not opposed to the idea of a wikipedia
> slash or similar, if
> there's a general clamor for it and it sounds like
> we have a good idea
> of what it's for.
>
> --Jimbo
>
>
> [Wikipedia-l]
> To manage your subscription to this list, please go
> here:
> http://www.nupedia.com/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Finance - Get real-time stock quotes
http://finance.yahoo.com


from_name: Michael R. Irwin

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Slashcode

body:
Jens Frank wrote:
>
> On Mon, Aug 26, 2002 at 01:27:56AM -0700, Daniel Mayer wrote:
> > On Monday 26 August 2002 12:20 pm, The Cunctator wrote:
> > > Instead of a wikipedia slash, what we need to implement is something more
> > > like the Yahoo! Groups, where the mailing list has a straightforward
> > > bulletin board interface, which should be hooked into the Wikipedia user
> > > database.Then we'd start getting somewhere.
> >
> > With so many posts to this list I think either your idea or mine would be
> > better than the current situation. Each should be reviewed for their pros and
> > cons (a big pro for Slashcode is that it is GPL and almost ready to go out of
> > the box -- or so I've heard).
>
> I oppose moving to a web based application. Those are so limited compared
> to a good mail reader with thread support, a kill file for "uninteresting"
> threads and an easy way to discover new articles. (No, Netscape Communicator
> does not qualify as a good mail user agent). All web based bulletin boards
> I've seen up to now can't provide the convenience of a good mail reader.
>
> If I'm overruled and we are going to do it web based, than we should
> probably integrate it tightly into the wiki markup, making it possible to
> link to articles and to use bold and italic and the other things we are used
> to. But we should have a separate "Recent Changes" from the main one!
>
> We already learned from using sourceforge's bug tracking tool that we should
> stick to one consistent user interface for everything.

Perhaps we should attempt to use meta to consolidate lengthy or
persistent threads or topics.

We may need to learn some standard patterns for laying
controversial topics in ways that present the top level
consensus overviews and mainstream information while
preserving the radical fringes ability to evolve their
views anyway.

regards,
Mike Irwin


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Slashcode

body:
--- The Cunctator <cunctator at kband.com> wrote:
> > Still, I'm not opposed to the idea of a wikipedia
> slash or similar, if
> > there's a general clamor for it and it sounds like
> we have a good idea
> > of what it's for.
>
> Instead of a wikipedia slash, what we need to
> implement is something more
> like the Yahoo! Groups, where the mailing list has a
> straightforward
> bulletin board interface, which should be hooked
> into the Wikipedia user
> database.Then we'd start getting somewhere.

Now you're talking! A while ago I was looking for some
open source software that provided Yahoo! Groups
functionality. Any suggestions?

Stephen G.

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Finance - Get real-time stock quotes
http://finance.yahoo.com


from_name: Karen AKA Kajikit

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Helga Jonat on [[Berlin]]

body:
Jimmy Wales wrote:
>
> Jens Frank wrote:
> > Oh, I didn't want to suggest to denounce her, I just don't want
> > Jimbo to be arrested when occasionally entering Germany ...
>
> *grin* That's a very very good thing.
>
> I'm talking via email with Helga.  It is not going very well.  I feel
> that I will not be able to change her mind directly.  I have told her
> not to post anything further about WWII, Poland, Germany, Judaism, or
> related topics until we get this straightened out.
>
> I am not inclined, as everyone knows, towards bans.  But if someone has
> an agenda and is completely uncooperative, well, I'm just not sure how
> much we can stand.

I haven't tried to 'fix' her articles because I know bugger all about
German history, but I'd say that everyone has had their patience tried
long enough. She is not a useful contributor - she's a kook who wants to
use the wikipedia to push her private bandwagon, which just so happens
to have no relationship to the facts. I'm the first to admit to having
my own little wagon that I'm pushing on the wikipedia, but most of us
pay SOME attention to the NPOV philosophy and make sure that what we are
contributing is based on fact, not some loonytunes supposition.

I would vote to ban her just for the sake of everyone else's sanity.
When you've tried reasoning and you've tried persuading and you've tried
asking nicely it's time for a little old-fashioned force.

--

Karen AKA Kajikit

And on the seventh day, God said 'What my world needs is a creature that
will truly appreciate it in all its facets' -
and so He made the kitten.

Come and visit my part of the web:
Kajikit's Corner: http://Kajikit.netfirms.com/
Aussie Support Mailing List: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/AussieSupport
Allergyfree Eating Recipe Swap:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Allergyfree_Eating
Ample Aussies Mailing List: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ampleaussies/

Love and huggles to all!


body:
|From: lcrocker at nupedia.com
|Date: Mon, 26 Aug 2002 14:29:53 -0700
|
|>> No, it's not.  Insults are speech too, and often high art.
|>> We protect them too, and rightly so.  As our supreme court
|>> has said, "If freedom means anything at all, it means
|>> freedom for the thought we hate."
|>
|>So I might say "You are an asshole" and you couldn't sue
|>me for it in the US? Than our legal system has quite other
|>priorities than yours. The German constitution begins
|>with the words:
|>
|>	Die Wuerde des Menschen ist unantastbar.
|>Meaning something like:
|>	The dignity of man is inviolable.
|>...
|>There was a very interesting process
|>some years ago between a soldier and a pacifist
|>who has said "Soldiers are murderers". The
|>decision of the court was: If you say it as a
|>general statement targeting more to "war" than
|>to a specific man, it's protected by the right
|>of free speech. If you say it to the face of
|>an soldier, meaning him personally, than it's
|>an insultation and violating the soldiers
|>dignity. The pacifist won the case since it
|>was a sticker on his car and therefor not
|>intended to a specific soldier.
|
|That's definitely a difference in US and German views
|of things.  "Slander" in the US has to meet a /very/
|difficult burden of proof: the speech has to be (1)
|false, (2) deliberately maclicious, (3) cause actual
|harm, and (4) credible, and presented as fact.  Case 1
|means that truth is an absolute defense (i.e., you can't
|be sued for slander for saying someone is cheating on
|his wife if he is, in fact, cheating on his wife).
|Condition 2 is often the hardest to meet: you have to
|prove that the person making the slanderous statements
|did so intentionally to cause harm, i.e., with "malice
|aforethought".  Thirdly, you have to be able to demonstate
|that you were actually harmed in some way.  Merely being
|insulted does not harm you--the "dignity of man" should
|be able to take a punch without crumbling. But if the
|speech really did cause harm, such as costing you business,
|or losing friends, etc., then you must demonstrate that.
|Finally, the speech must be in a form that appears to be
|statements of fact, credibly expressed.  Opinion, humor,
|parody, and such are categorically immune.  "I think Bill
|is an asshole" is an immune opinion.  But "I saw Bill hire
|a hooker", reported as fact, might be slanderous if it
|causes Bill's wife to leave him or something.
|
|For a good flavor of the American point of view, I recommend
|watching the movie "People vs. Larry Flynt".  Mr. Flynt
|published a magazine with a parody that included Jerry Falwell
|describing a sexual encounter with his mother.  "Slander" wasn't
|even an issue--since it was humor, it was immune, so no court
|would even hear that.  But Falwell sued under a different cause
|of action, "Intentional infliction of emotional distress".
|That too was eventually thrown out.  Public figures simply have
|to expect people to make fun of them and learn to deal with it.
|
|As I've expressed it before, tolerance is more an obligation
|of listeners than it is of speakers.
|

Just for the record, "People vs. Larry Flynt" was a misnomer.  That's
the name that would go on a criminal prosecution, which this was not,
it was Falwell vs. Flynt in a civil case.  Criminal prosecutions for
speech are very rare, and very hard for the government to win, as the
free naked dancers and flag-burners of America can attest.

See this book:

Rodney A. Smolla, Jerry Falwell v. Larry Flynt: The First
Amendment on Trial (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press,
1988).

Quite wonderful.  It will raise your opinion of both Jerry Falwell and
Larry Flynt and your opinion of the First Amendment and the courts as
well.

Tom Parmenter
Ortolan88


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Meta upload

body:
Daniel Mayer wrote:
> Could somebody with the power to do so delete some obviously inappropriate
> material from Meta's upload? Look for yourself at:
> http://meta.wikipedia.com/wiki.phtml?title=special:Upload

I don't know who, if anyone, is a sysadmin on meta; but you can
overwrite any uploaded file by uploading a file of the same name. Eg,
make a 0-byte empty text file, rename it to match whatever you think
should go, and upload it. Rename, upload, rename, upload...

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)