subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Educating newcomers

body:
Christopher Mahan wrote:

>--- Jason Williams <jason at jasonandali.org.uk> wrote:
>
>
>Unfortunately that is not the case if Wikipedia still clings to the
>notion that it would cover human knowledge. The only requirement for
>that is to be humans. Tigers and whales can set up their "Tigers and
>Whales" encyclopedia.
>
Try putting some emphasis on *knowledge* as well...

>To deny access to wikipedia who do not conform to 20th century
>western academic standards would deny, oh, roughly, 90% of the human
>race from participating. In which case, it would not be an
>encyclopedia of the human knowledge, but rather a wanna-be
>encyclopedia with only 10% of human knowledge.
>
"The earth is flat" is not human knowledge. "Some people believe the
earth is flat" is.
If 90% of the human race don't know the diameter of earth, it will
suffice to write down that knowledge of the 10% remaining. It could also
be mentioned that most people don't know the diameter of earth, but
their not-knowing (or assuming something wrong) is *not* knowledge in
itself, and can therefore not be counted.

>It's sort of like saying: all persons have inalieanble rights yet
>only citizens have access to lawyers free of charge. Pretty silly
>huh?
>
Your comparison, yes.

Magnus


list: wikipedia-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Matthew Woodcraft

subject: [Wikipedia-l] vandalism spree

in_reply_to: <20021119071234.GA4431@math-lw-n01.ucr.edu>; from toby+wikipedia@math.ucr.edu on Mon, Nov 18, 2002 at 11:12:34PM -0800

body:
On Mon, Nov 18, 2002 at 11:12:34PM -0800, Toby Bartels wrote:

[On Saturday]

> While I was sleeping (around 12:00 UCT), a vandal arrived,
> using bots (apparently) to splatter goatse across Wikipedia.

I'm not sure it really was using a bot, despite its claims. If it had
been, it could have vandalised many more pages.

> The problem, of course, is that we're blocking an innocent user
> when it's not at all clear that we're even blocking the vandal.
>
> * Block more intelligently:
>
> ** Let admins see the IP of signed in users.
>    Then we can at least know for sure who to block.
>
> ** Let admins whitelist a user name known to use a dynamic IP.
>    (This can always be undone later if abused.)
>
> ** Allow admins to see all contributions from a given IP,
>    whether or not they were made anonymously.
>    This will allow us to check for multiple users
>    and give us the opportunity to create the above whitelist
>    at the same time that we block the vandal.

These are surely good plans. Note that if we're willing to do the work
to classify IPs, we can ban on the 'Client-ip' and 'X-forwarded-for'
headers instead of the real IPs, for known shared proxies. This doesn't
help the case where an innocent user ends up reusing the actual client
IP address of a vandal (either because the address was reallocated, or
just because they used the same public computer), but it would do
something to mitigate problems with shared proxies.

But in the long run, nothing based on ip-banning would be able to stop
a sufficiently determined vandal. Neither would relying on registered
accounts. At present, stealing someone else's account would be quite
easy. This doesn't matter, as there's little currently little incentive
to do so. If we relied more strongly on authenticated accounts, that
could change.

I think techniques for automatically slowing down bots would be the
most valuable place to concentrate our efforts.

-M-


list: wikien-l

from_name: Toby Bartels

subject: [WikiEN-l] anglicization is stupid

body:
Mav wrote:

>Toby wrote:

>>Whether we use The Original Name or What's Most Common In English Today,
>>we'll still have to decide *what* these things are.
>>If the former is more difficult to figure out than the latter
>>(since the latter can be found by Google -- but does that really work?),
>>then that's not an argument against the former,
>>because if we choose the "wrong" version, it'll still work out.
>>That is, the question for [[Confucius]] is not <Wade-Giles or Pinyin?>,
>>it's <Chinese or Latin?>.  *If* we decide for Chinese,
>>then either Wade-Giles or Pinyin will be better than Latin;
>>whereas if we continue with Latin (on the grounds that it's most common
>>in English text), then Wade-Giles vs Pinyin will of course be a nonissue.

>Boy you make it sound even more complicated than I even thought.

Really?  You thought that it would be complicated to decide
what the correct transliteration of Kong-fu-zi's Chinese name is,
but you thought that it would be less complicated than
<Wade-Giles or Pinyin?>?  How does a decision get less complicated
than a choice between 2 possibilities, and remain a decision?

>Under the current system all we need
>to determine is what the majority of English speakers would recognize.
>Searching only webpages that are in English via Google is a very important
>tool that can give a statistically significant objective measure (of at least
>Internet usage - but netcitizens are our main audience anyway).

We can do the same with transliterations.
But I don't think that this is a very accurate measure,
since the Internet has such a small portion of human text.
I'd rather know the name most commonly used
by all the philosphers, historians, and Sinologists
that currently write about Kong-fu-zi in English
(if that's what we continue to hold relevant)
than the name most commonly found on the 'Net.

>Mind you this
>isn't the only thing that should be used to settle naming arguments but it is
>an objective measure nontheless.

Choosing to take objective numerical measures ("metrics") when one can,
over more relevant material that's unfortunately harder to find,
is one of the infamous hallmarks of a broken bureaucracy.
Let's stick to whether Google tells us anything *useful*,
not whether it tells us something *objective*.

>Under the proposed plan everything would be
>subjective and requires a good deal of knowledge by the author.

It wouldn't require any particular knowledge
of any particular editor; that's the beauty of the wiki!

Somebody starts an article at [[Confucius]], with the opening paragraph:

'''Confucius''' was an ancient [[China|Chinese]] [[philosophy|philosopher]].

Then someone comes along and adds some knowledge, say some dates:

'''Confucius''' ([[551 BC]] - [[479 BC]]) was a [[China|Chinese]]
[[philosophy|philospher]].

Then somebody puts in more information, a Chinese transliteration:

'''Confucius''' ([[551 BC]] - [[479 BC]]), called "Kung-fu-tze"
in the original [[Chinese language|Chinese]], was a [[China|Chinese]]
[[philosophy|philosopher]].

The somebody remembers that back in 2002 we adopted a new policy
of titling articles about people at their original nonAnglicised names,
moves the article to [[Kung-fu-tze]], and rewrites the introduction:

'''Kung-fu-tze''' ([[551 BC]] - [[479 BC]]), often called '''Confucius''',
was a [[China|Chinese]] [[philosophy|philospher]].

Then someone else sees that we adopted (say) a policy of preferring Pinyin,
looks that up, and moves the page to [[Kong-fu-zi]], writing:

'''Kong-fu-zi''' ([[551 BC]] - [[479 BC]]), also transliterated
'''Kung-fu-tze''' and often called '''Confucius''', was a [[China|Chinese]]
[[philosophy|philosopher]].

Then a new person remembers that "Confucius" is itself
just an old Latin transliteration:

'''Kong-fu-zi''' ([[551 BC]] - [[479 BC]]), also transliterated
'''Kung-fu-tze''' and '''Confucius''', was a [[China|Chinese]]
[[philosphy|philospher]].

Finally, somebody looks up the Chinese characters and incorporates them:

'''???''' ([[551 BC]] - [[479 BC]]); transliterated '''Kong-fu-zi''',
'''Kung-fu-tze''', and traditionally '''Confucius'''; was a [[China|Chinese]]
[[philosophy|philosopher]].

(This change doesn't accompany moving the article,
since page titles must be in Latin-1 on [[en:]].)

Complicated?  In one sense, yes.  Just look at all of the edits!
But in this sense, the wiki process itself is inherently complicated.
We improve slowly, step by step, building long history logs.
In another sense, however, this isn't complicated at all.
Each individual edit is the addition of a single fact.
One person comes along, with one piece of knowledge,
and updates the article appropriately.  Nothing could be simpler!

(There is one complication in that whoever makes the move
from [[Kung-fu-tze]] to [[Kong-fu-zi]] will have to
go back to [[Confucius]] and fix the redirect.
We can avoid even this by fixing redirects to redirects
automatically when moving a page -- a feature request
that we'd be wise to implement in any case.)

>This would be
>fine if we were all experts in the subject's field and were writing for other
>experts but we ain't on both counts. "Know your audience and write for that
>audience" is a basic maxim of good writing style.

I've explained (I hope to your satisfaction)
why the writers' expertise isn't necessary at any stage.
How about the readers'?  I don't see how the above paragraph
requires any expertise to be read -- everything is explained.
(Another paragraph further down in the article
can also go over the origin of the name "Confucius" itself,
and yet another one can explain how "Kong-fu-zi" means "Master Kong".)

>Under the proposed system redirects are absolutely
>necessary to make it work. Under the current system only a few links will be
>missed if there are no redirects (which is the case for the great majority of
>articles).

OK, now that's a good point, one that hadn't been made before.
(Actually, it had, but reading in digest messes with chronology ^_^.)
Any policy that I support will demand redirects from other common names --
this goes beyond the current debate and should be our convention anyway.
Sometimes a writer won't *know* about other common names,
but the current convention is no help in that case either.
Sometimes a writer won't know our conventions or won't follow them,
but the current convention is no help in that case either either.
So I think that we can manage this if the naming convention is clear
that redirects from other common names are a standard requirement.

BTW, If we change the convention and you spot some user going around
creating articles at obscure but (under the new convention) correct titles
without creating these redirects, then you'd certainly be justified
in dropping me a note and telling me to go clean it up,
since it's all my fault that they're doing this.
(Hey, I already create new redirects all the damn time ^_^.)

>>Belittle their intelligence???  How?

>By forcing a pedantic and foreign title down their throats that they probably
>have never seen before and probably won't ever be able to pronounce - no
>matter how many times they see it.

I've already dealt with the pedantry charge in another post.
But who's forcing things down anybody's throat?
Are you forcing incorrect and Anglicised titles down my throat?
No, we have to choose one thing or the other,
and that happens to be the current policy
(not that I characterised it very kindly just now -_^).
The other options are listed there at the beginning.
The same situation will persist if the policy is changed.

>There is no reason we should start off an
>article by talking down to our readers from an ivory tower.

Agreed.  But I just can't see how this is doing that.
Heck, I never knew that Luna was called "Lunik" in Russian,
but I'm glad to learn that and will call it "Lunik" myself now,
rejoicing in my increased knowledge.

>Of course the
>native form and alternate transliteration should be bold on the first line
>and the article with those titles redirected to the most widely used form.

Right, we agree on the most important point:
All reasonable forms should appear in bold on the first line
and appear as redirects to whatever form is chosen by our conventions.
Whatever happens as a result of this debate today,
we should strengthen our preference for creating redirects.
Would anybody object if I put in such a point on
[[Wikipedia:Naming conventions]]?

>A
>good article would also explain just how and when the non-English forms have
>been used. This is information best suited for explanation in the article -
>no reason to have it in the title.

Indeed, no reason for such an explanation even in the first paragraph.
That paragraph will just list the possibilities,
as seen in my [[Confucius]] example above.
And we should also explain just how and when the *most* common form is used.

>>"Confucius", of course, is not English.  It's a Latin form of a Chinese
>>name, which happens to be the form of that name most commonly (but not
>>exclusively) used in English text.

>Yes it is English because that is what is most widely used by English
>speakers. English picks-up and modifies non-English terms all the time in the
>process of Anglicization. If and when those terms are used by a good majority
>of English speakers then they have entered the English language and we should
>therefore use that term to title articles. This is especially true for proper
>nouns of people, places and things.

Proper names like "Confucius" and "Toby" and "Daniel" aren't English, IMO.
But this may be an argument over semantics -- what counts as English,
and what counts as the inclusion in English text of something else?
I can accept for the sake of argument that any name
that appears in ordinary English text is itself English.
What I can't accept is that only the plurality form is English.
Is "favor" not English because it's outvoted by "favour"?
If it is English, then why is "Kong-fu-zi" not English
because it's outvoted by "Confucius"?  Both do appear in English text.

>It could also have a general chilling effect on the whole project:
>People would feel that it is required to properly research what the "true"
>name of an article should be before they create it instead of just relying on
>the name they know (which may be wrong, but is very often correct per our
>current system).

This is part of a much bigger problem that affects all of Wikipedia.
Wikipedia is a work in progress, and we need to stress to people
that they can write what they know and don't need to be perfect.
Any change that we subsequently make to somebody's writing is chilling --
I remember how disconcerting it was when my work was first corrected --
but that's fundamental to how Wikipedia works.
We all just do the best we can, and it keeps improving.

>Otherwise somebody will come by later and move the article
>and probably chide the original author for their Anglo-centric based
>ignorance. Burr

Well, Lir might chide them, but that's because she's mean.
Eclecticology and I certainly won't, we'll just move it
(if the convention is in fact changed).
Just like you wouldn't chide somebody for a poor title now.

-- Toby


subject: [WikiEN-l] What we need

body:
Magnus Manske wrote:

>IMHO we shoule have a page "wikipedia:Jimbo's Golden Wikipedia Rules"
>;-) and have it protected, because it won't be open to debate. This
>would not do any harm, as we already enforce NPOV etc., but it would
>help a lot if we could point newcomers there.

How about [[User:Jimbo Wales/Statement of principles]]?

(We still need to implement the final paragraph of #2.)

-- Toby


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: [Wikipedia-l] anglicization is stupid

body:
Eclecticology wrote:

>Toby Bartels wrote (to Lir):

>>Have you signed up for the new English mailing list <wikiEN-l>?
>>You can go to <http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l>
>>if you want to subscribe to it; else you might miss some responses.

>Another mailing list!!!!!!!  I'm already getting 100 e-mails a day.
>Should I want more?

Except for some crossposting while we make the transition,
I don't think that you'll get more email, just email with
a different little blurb in the bracket at the front of the Subject.
>From a purely practical POV, if you're not reading <wikiEN-l>,
then you're not participating fully in the Anglicisation debate.

-- Toby


subject: [Wikipedia-l] anglicization is stupid

body:
Eclecticology wrote:

>Toby Bartels wrote (to Lir):

>>Have you signed up for the new English mailing list <wikiEN-l>?
>>You can go to <http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l>
>>if you want to subscribe to it; else you might miss some responses.

>Another mailing list!!!!!!!  I'm already getting 100 e-mails a day.
>Should I want more?

Except for some crossposting while we make the transition,
I don't think that you'll get more email, just email with
a different little blurb in the bracket at the front of the Subject.


from_name: Axel Boldt

subject: [WikiEN-l] A New Rule

body:
It is my impression that too many intelligent people spend way too
much energy on this list arguing in circles. This energy would be
better spent improving Wikipedia articles, hence the New Rule.

   The New Rule
   ============

   1. For every posting on one of Wikipedia's mailing lists, a
      substantial edit to a Wikipedia article has to be made.

   2. Any substantial edit can only be used for one mailing list
      message.

   3. The substantial edit has to have occurred within 24 hours
      of the posting of the mailing list message.

   4. Proof of the substantial edit is to be attached to the posting,
      as link to the corresponding diff.

   Notes
   =====

   * The New Rule is fully enforced policy and goes into
     effect immediately.
   * There will be no discussion, and no voting.
   * As always, everybody is free to ignore the New Rule.
   * I do not have a definition of "substantial edit".
   * No action by Jimbo is required at this time.

Axel

P.S. http://www.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Hilbert%27s_Nullstellensatz&diff=436524&oldid=436508

__________________________________________________
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from_name: Bridget

from_email: Bridget

subject: [Wikipedia-l] anglicization

body:
First off, in regards to whether anglicization (or rather americinization) is dumbing down...why yes it is. As we all know, the biggest argument against using more foreign names for foreign objects is, "Oh, but its soooooo confusing".

As for me apoligizing for my past actions and changing my behavior before I am banned, I would like to state that I am guilty of heresy and I did not vote for the rules or the king and I think every person should have free will, choice, and speech. I also am opposed to racism and genocide and I believe wikipedia should strive to be very very very unamerican culture friendly, especially in this era of militant anti-americanism.

I demand that the authoritarians recognize the value of other cultures and languages and that while a german katze is most certainly a cat, Dumkopfmeyerstrasse is never Dumbheadmeyerstreet, no matter how many americans say otherwise, unless the local inhabitants decide that the americans are right and go and change the street signs.

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list: wikitech-l

from_name: Erik Moeller

subject: [Wikitech-l] "Watch this article" and "View article" are not correct

body:
Hi Daniel,

I already replied to your previous request to change "View subject page".
Why are
you ignoring my reply? "View subject page" is unnecessarily ambiguous --
what is a "subject" page? Imagine you're a new user and you're on a user talk
page and then try to get to the user page. Where would you expect that link --
"subject page"? This is not user-friendly. It is not a term people are
familiar with. It annoyed me from day one.

If you can think of a better general terminology, I'm for it, otherwise I've
put changing the text depending on the context in my to do list. I think
that's important for user pages; I consider it fair to call a Wikipedia: page
"article" even though it doesn't meet the strict definition -- we're not trying
to get a Certificate of Semantics. But if you can think of a nice naming for
"View Wikipedia: page", I can add that, too.

As for "Watch this article"->"Watch this page", I have no problem with that.
I'll change it.

Regards,

Erik

--
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from_name: Anthere

subject: [Wikipedia-l] anglicization is stupid

body:
--- Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> Anthere wrote:
>
> >--- Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:

> The Heinlein novel has been published in French as
> "En terre ??trang??re",
> but that's wimpy, does not seem to do it justice,
> and could be
> translated back as "In a Foreign Land".  It's
> certainly different from
> "En pays ??trange" :-)   I could have fantastic
> mischief with your example.

Yup. En terre ?trang?re, bah.
I don't know Eclecticology, if you read some of
Heinlein french translated books. He is the perfect
example of an author who should be read only in
english (or maybe hebrew ?). None of the translations
are at the level of the original books. Which is
probably why he is very little known in France.

> Here in English Canada we have a very popular comedy
> group, "The Royal
> Canadian Air Farce" that at times do skits based on
> mistranslations.
>  Some of these have been hilarious and have depended
> on really twisted
> translations of speeches by politicians.  If I can
> find an audio clip,
> I'd be glad to pass it on.
>
> Eclecticology

I would appreciate; Thanks ;-)

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subject: [Wikipedia-l] vandalism spree

body:
> > But in the long run, nothing based on ip-banning would be able to stop
> > a sufficiently determined vandal. Neither would relying on registered
> > accounts. At present, stealing someone else's account would be quite
> > easy.

On Wed, Nov 20, 2002 at 10:38:22PM +0100, Erik Moeller wrote:
> How so? Brute force password attacks? We can catch these by limiting the
> attempts. What else?

Stealing the cookie. Non-brute-force password guessing. Compromising a
public machine. Compromising a private machine.

-M-


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Wikipedia-l digest, Vol 1 #881 - 9 msgs

body:
Lir wrote:

>There should be an option to make recent changes not show user page changes.

This has been suggested before, and I think that it's a fair idea.
You should still mark your chess games as minor however,
it's only nice ^_^.

-- Toby


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [WikiEN-l] TMC account renamed

body:
Zoe wrote:
> Brion, why is your message dated September 20?

Either I've been in a coma for two months, or I accidentally bumped the
month when I synched up my computer's clock to standard time last night.
I'm hoping for the second option; otherwise I've missed some exams. ;)

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Ångström

body:
Lir wrote:

>Angstrom, being a word not in common usage at all, should be written ?ngstr?m,
>in honor of Anders Jonas ?ngstr?m, who was smarter than many of you and thus
>knew how to spell his own name.

Maybe the word *should* be spelled "?ngstr?m", but it's not.
I agree with you that Anders Jonas' name shouldn't be Anglicised
(which in this case would involve dropping the diacritics),
but the unit of measurement has been called "angstrom"
since it was invented (I believe after Ander Jonas' death).
Maybe the people in charge of units of measurement
(le Bureau International des Poids et Mesures)
shouldn't drop the diacritics, but they do.
This is a common noun, and isn't analogous to "Lunik"
(where I believe that you are right).

-- Toby

PS:  Most of this discussion is now happening on <wikiEN-l>.
     You're missing out!  Without you, I'm one side of the debate,
     but with you, I'm the voice of reason and compromise ^_^.


from_name: Brion VIBBER

subject:
[Wikitech-l] RE: "Watch this article" and "View article" are
 not correct

body:
mav wrote:
>>But context-based wording is even better: "View user page", "View
>>Wikipedia
>>page", "View image page". If I remember, an early version of Phase II had
>>context-based wording for these links (green links that stated "User",
>>"Wikipedia" etc)

I was never a fan of the green coloring in the namespace: links in the
sidebar. It was confusing in that it didn't behave like other links;
some people reported this as a bug.

Erik Moeller wrote:
> OK, I'll try to do that. Is there anything else the old version of the
> software had that the current lacks?

Off the top of my head:
* 'view changes since <time list was generated>' link on Recentchanges

* http://foo/bar.html. etc didn't add the final punctuation to the link,
since 99% of the time it's just punctuation, not intended as part of the
link.

* I had the Esperanto X-system editing stuff working fine on phase II.
Sigh. Have to finish hacking that back in the right way...

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject: [Wikipedia-l] vandalism spree

body:
[Moving to <wikitech-l>, since we're now discussing programming, not policy.]

Matthew Woodcraft wrote:

>Toby Bartels wrote:

[plans]

>These are surely good plans.

Thanks!

>Note that if we're willing to do the work
>to classify IPs, we can ban on the 'Client-ip' and 'X-forwarded-for'
>headers instead of the real IPs, for known shared proxies.

I don't know what this means.  But I hope that it works!  ^_^

>But in the long run, nothing based on ip-banning would be able to stop
>a sufficiently determined vandal. Neither would relying on registered
>accounts. At present, stealing someone else's account would be quite
>easy.

Right, the passwords and cookies are sent over the Net unencrypted.
They just need to sniff our packets (how rude!).

>I think techniques for automatically slowing down bots would be the
>most valuable place to concentrate our efforts.

This sounds promising to me too.
What's the fastest rate of saving that a legitimate user is likely to use?
What's the fastest rate of saving that we can expect to keep up with
if used by a bot?  I'm going make a 0th approximation of 1 minute for each.
Too slow? too fast?

-- Toby


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: [Wikipedia-l] vandalism spree


body:
Ortolan88 wrote:

>Stranger in a Strange Land, is, of course, from the Book of Exodus in
>the Old Testament, and should only be rendered in ancient Hebrew.

I'll pretend that you're serious for a moment to make a point.

If we have an article about the phrase from Exodus,
which discusses the uses that this phrase has been put to
over the millennia (in any language, variously translated),
then it should have a Hebrew title.

If we have an article about the phrase in the King James Bible,
which discusses the uses that this phrasing has been put to
over the centuries (in English, using King James' words),
then it should be at [[Stranger in a strange land]].

But our article about Heinlein's book should be at
[[Stranger in a Strange Land]], the title that he originally gave it.

All of these examples follow the same sort of logic,
once you get used to it.

-- Toby


subject: [Wikipedia-l] anglicization is stupid


subject: [Wikipedia-l] vandalism spree

body:
> But in the long run, nothing based on ip-banning would be able to stop
> a sufficiently determined vandal. Neither would relying on registered
> accounts. At present, stealing someone else's account would be quite
> easy.

How so? Brute force password attacks? We can catch these by limiting the
attempts. What else?

Regards,

Erik

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subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: anglicization is stupid

body:
Mav wrote in small part:

>Eclecticology wrote:

>>The biggest fallacy with this is what we mean by "most widely used".
>>Some are fairly obvious.  No-one would reasonably that an article in
>>English about Rome, Italy should appear under "Roma".

Yes, some of us would.  I guess that you're a moderate if you wouldn't;
you might just get your way completely, in that case -_^.

>>Still, the entire
>>set of these obvious cases is only a small subset of the entire body of
>>articles that could have this problem.

>Then lets use the obvious cases without argument and focus on the less than
>obvious cases.

Much as we would do if we adopted an original language policy
and had trouble deciding which transliteration to use
or what really was the form used by the person
(or is the form used by the residents, in the case of places).
We'd use the obvious cases without argument
and focus on figuring out the less obvious cases.

-- Toby


subject: [WikiEN-l] transliteration is stupider

body:
Mav wrote:

>Toby Bartels wrote:

>>I don't think that this is analogous.
>>"mammal" is an English common noun (as is "angstrom"),
>>while "Munich" is an Anglicisation of a German proper name
>>(as "M?nchen" is the German proper name in question).
>>I would treat these different situations differently.
>>But it's not like there's no analogy whatsoever,

>But Munich /is/ also a common English noun since usage, not a centralized
>committee, decides just what is and is not an English noun.

You misunderstand me, I said "English common noun", not "common English noun".
Here I'm using "common noun" in its technical grammatical sense.
(If that's not enough to jog your memory, then see [[Noun]]).

>The origin or a
>word is just that, the origin. Anglicization just happens to be a common way
>new words enter the English language. The reason why words are Anglicized is
>due to the fact that over time foreign words mutate to be easier for English
>speakers to pronounce and spell and also to make them look similar to other
>English words. This is part of the evolution of the English language. Now
>instead of inserting our POV that this is wrong, how about we report widest
>usage by using what most English speakers use?

NPOV, of course, has nothing to do with this (despite what Lir says).
As you know, NPOV doesn't mean the majority point of view.
It means presenting every point of view in a manner fair to it.
A truly NPOV title would be [[The city known to its residents as
"M?nchen" but commonly called "Munich" in English,
and which some people argue that we should talk about
in an article entitled "M?nchen" becuase <blah blah blah>
but which others argue that we should talk about
in an article entitled "Munich" because <yada yada yada>]].
But we can't do this, so we pick one or the other.
Either is an equally POV choice (since the majority POV
is as much a POV as going to the original name is),
which is why we use naming *conventions* instead.

>Under the proposed plan we
>would have to delve into linguistic usage wars. How is this useful at all?

Under the current plan we also have to delve into linguistic usage
(not *wars* that I can see, but I don't anticipate those in any case),
to decide which usage is most common.  That's an issue of linguistic usage.

>BTW, mammal comes from the Latin mammalis (which in turn probably comes from
>other languages). Back in the Middle Ages this was mutated via an early form
>of Anglicization to mammal. Therefore it is only logical to use mammalis
>under the proposed plan.

I don't know about Lir, but I don't propose such a thing,
because "mammal" is a common noun, not a proper noun.
I certainly don't want to change all of our article titles
back to Proto-Indo-European ^_^!

>Or is there some cut-off date past which
>Anglicization of a term is bad and should not be accepted? You still haven't
>addressed my point that the proposed plan is needlessly complicated since it
>absolutely requires redirects.

That's because I hadn't read that point when I wrote this post.
But I've addressed it now in another post.

>Perhaps 'technical writing' part of the organism analogy wasn't the greatest
>but is was my understanding that this convention would also effect those
>pages (and probably would since many people may not get your distinction).

["those pages" meaning pages like [[Mammal]]/[[Mammalia]]]
As you now see, I wouldn't want to change those,
and we can include a link to [[Proper noun]] in the convention write up
if you think that any confusion is likely.

>Wait a minute, this does touch on an important point: What if an animal has
>an English name but exists in a non-English country? Should we use the
>Swahili for Thompson's Gazelle?

"Thomson's gazelle" (note the lowercase Ge) is a common noun.
So, no.  I'd even go so far as to Anglicise "Thomson"
if it was exclusively Anglicised in the name of the gazelle.
We're getting at the gazelle here, not at Thomson himself.

>There is also
>article rankings by Google to take into consideration: Articles that have the
>searched-for name in the title are ranked higher. Why should we purposely
>reduce article rankings and therefore reduce the reach of our content?

This is definitely the best point that I've seen so far.
You can tell, because I don't have any response to it ^_^!
I'll have to think about that.

>>>pedantic
>>>     adj : marked by a narrow focus on or display of learning
>>>           especially its trivial aspects

>>I don't see how this applies.
>>It's not like everybody agrees that "M?nchen" is correct,
>>but some people want to be lax and use the more common "Munich"
>>while others are pedantic and insist on "M?nchen".
>>The disagreement is more basic; you're claiming that
>>"M?nchen" is *not* correct but "Munich" is.
>>So both sides are striving for correctness.

>No, I am claiming that in /English/ we use Munich and this the /most/ correct.

That's what I said, you're claiming that "Munich" is correct.
My comments are all in the context of the English Wikipedia, of course.
Or is the problem that I left out "most"? fine, stick that in.
We're arguing about what is, in fact, most correct;
we're not arguing about what degree of correctness to insist on.
So it's not about pedantry; it's more fundamental than that.

>I see you didn't bother to answer several of my points that relate to what is
>most useful for readers and users.

I've now responded to everything that you listed in this paragraph.
Please rememeber that, like you, I read this list in digest mode,
so my reply to any given post naturally won't address points
that were made in later posts, even if the reply itself
is written after those later posts.

-- Toby


from_name: The Cunctator

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Educating newcomers

body:
On Wed, 2002-11-20 at 22:57, Toby Bartels wrote:
> Christopher Mahan wrote:
>
> >By definition, if it includes all human knowledge, it will be NPOV,
> >and if it does not, it will be POV.
>
> This is not what the neutral point of view is.
>
> In fact, anything that includes *all* of human knowledge must be POV.

Yup. I would much rather the official Wikipedia definition of neutral
point of view actually gibe with the meaning of "neutral point of view"
(see [[m:NPOV is an ideal]]) than the convoluted redefinition that
stands now.

In other words, I'm with Mr. Mahan here.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: [Wikipedia-l] Diên Biên Phû

body:
Lir wrote:

>?i?n Bi?n Ph? was a battle between the French and the Vietnamese and a name
>which is not in common usage. It is a disgrace for the Americans to think they
>can rewrite this otherwise. This name must be rendered in either French or
>Vietnamese, being a Vietnamese sympathizer I vote for Vietnamese, but I am
>willing to compromise, however this was certainly not an American battle.

It's not about sympathy; it's a Vietnamese town, not a French town.

And we currently normally include diacriticals on foreign proper nouns
that can be written in Latin-1, as in [[Poincar? conjecture]].
Or is the idea to be consistent within Vietnamese
and drop all diacriticals in that language
since it also includes some non-Latin-1 diacriticals?
We could still agree to mark the letters but not the tones
(as is the case in "?i?n Bi?n Ph?", in fact,
which has some tonese too that aren't marked here).
It seems to me that it should be [[?i?n Bi?n Ph?]] under *current* rules.

-- Toby

PS:  Lir, this is going to <wikiEN-l>!  Go there too!
     <http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l>!


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Diên Biên Phû


subject: [Wikipedia-l] minor changes default

body:
Lir wrote:

>how about an option to have the minor changes box checked on default?

Almost everybody makes primarily major changes,
so I don't think that adding this option
would be a wise use of the developers' time.
But maybe I'm wrong; if other people would use this option,
then let them speak up!

-- Toby


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Educating newcomers

body:
The Cunctator wrote:

>Toby Bartels wrote:

>>In fact, anything that includes *all* of human knowledge must be POV.

>Yup. I would much rather the official Wikipedia definition of neutral
>point of view actually gibe with the meaning of "neutral point of view"
>(see [[m:NPOV is an ideal]]) than the convoluted redefinition that
>stands now.

Hum, I pretty much agree with that Meta-Wikipedia article,
but I don't see how the *definition* of NPOV is at fault.
No article will ever perfectly satisfy the current definition,
which is therefore an ideal, and I don't see any proposal
for replacing that definition.

Surely you don't want Wikipedia to state as fact
that George W. Bush is an awful US President!
But if it doesn't, then it won't contain that piece of knowledge;
it will at best only contain the knowledge that
certain people hold that view for certain reasons.
(Well, it might contain that piece of knowledge for a little while,
but that would surely be quickly replaced by a more NPOV version,
as we strive ever more for the elusive NPOV ideal.)

-- Toby


from_name: tarquin

subject: [Wikipedia-l] vandalism spree

body:
Magnus Manske wrote:

>>
> How about a link on the user contributions, for sysops only probably,
> to undo all "top" contributions of this user?
>
Good idea.
 it would certainly mean we no longer feel we're drowning in vandal edits.

I think an alert to a user that appears above all their edit boxes could
be useful -- there could be a flag that says "you have been identified
by user X as making vandal edits / breaching copyright / etc. Please use
the Sandbox to test wiki markup."
-- something to let them know a) we're onto them and b) where they can
respond if there has been a misunderstanding


subject: [WikiEN-l] TMC account renamed

body:
Pierre Abbat wrote:
> On Thursday 21 November 2002 01:20, Brion Vibber wrote:
>
>>Zoe wrote:
>>
>>>Brion, why is your message dated September 20?
>>
>>Either I've been in a coma for two months, or I accidentally bumped the
>>month when I synched up my computer's clock to standard time last night.
>>I'm hoping for the second option; otherwise I've missed some exams. ;)
>
> Synched the computer's clock to standard time? Computers stay on UTC all the
> time and convert to the local time zone when you read the clock.

I went the budget route when I bought my computer; I left out the atomic
clock that would make it keep perfect time. (Besides, I'm not even sure
where to get the cesium isotope refills!)

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Indoctrinating (was Educating) newcomers

body:
Poor, Edmund W wrote:

>Erik,
>
>The reason the debate is not over, is that we old-timers have a responsibility to educate newcomers.
>
>I have "adopted" Lir as a mentee, because I believe she really wants to contribute. Please join me in gently (or firmly) coaching her about Wikipedia standards such as naming convention, NPOV, etc.
>
There's no need to be so damned paternalistic!  You make it sound as
though the only thing you need to do is to insure that Lir does
everything "our" way, and that newcomers should not be re-opening
debates because we settled that a year ago before these newcomers came
aboard.  I fully expect that some of these debates will repeat
themselves, and will go on for years before there is a consensus.  This
will be especially true for naming conventions.  There is a broad
appreciation that NPOV is a good thing, but there is great diversity in
just what that term means.

If Lir or any newcomer comes along and questions one of our conventions,
that opinion deserves respect just as much as the opinions of
long-standing contributors.

Eclecticology


subject: [Wikipedia-l] stupid anglicization

body:
Christopher Mahan wrote:

>>I would also like to point out that we most certainly do not have
>>to worry about the reader finding the correct name (despite their
>>anglo-brainwashing), as Zoe and others have argued, because we have
>>#REDIRECT
>>
>Instead of a redirect, I would see a short article that explains that
>word "x" is the anglicised, or Americanized version of word "y", and
>to please see word "y" for more information on the subject, or look
>at the "x versus y" article that goes into the finer grain.
>
>If someone uses Peking as the capital of China, should it just
>rediect to Beijing (a different approximation), or rather explain
>that Peking was named such after the work of such and such scholar
>but was later acknowledged... so on and so forth.
>
This is certainly a reasonable alternative to redirects, but this
explanation would rarely be more than a stub, so often (but not always)
it would fit just as well in the first paragraph of the substantive article.

Eclecticology


subject: [WikiEN-l] What we need

body:
Larry Sanger wrote:

>Toby Bartels wrote:

>>That's right, we know that you're talking about us,
>>so don't think that we're not going to take your insults personally.
>>"offensive political posturing" my eye!
>>I care about this project as much as you do,
>>whether you can believe it or not.

>You're trying to *change* the project, Toby.

I'm trying to *change* the project???
Let's see, there's a discussion on a naming convention
where I'm in favour of the change,
but that's hardly central to the project.
OTOH, I'm defending the NPOV, a very central point, to newbies.
When you came on with ideas about how we were dying
and you wanted to make us more acceptable to "experts",
I was part of the chorus of scepticism
that led you to take your ideas to the sifter project
(where I think that they can do some good)
and leave Wikipedia itself unaltered.
Now I'm opposed both to the voting movement
and to the idea of banning more people
(even though these are coming from opposite groups),
although at the same time I support continuing to ban vandals.
I'm trying to *change* the project???

>>Larry Sanger wrote:

>>>I think I'd be speaking for
>>>Julie Hoffman Kemp and Michael Tinkler, who are long gone, as well as Isis
>>>and many others who had less patience than they had.

>>You have their email addresses, right?  Then you don't have to guess.
>>Probably they'll agree with you, to some extent,
>>but if you want us to count them as your supporters,
>>not just your reasons, then ask them.

>I am not guessing.  I know them; I know they agree with this.

So you're still in touch with them about this.  OK, that's fine.

>>>* We will not tolerate biased content.  The neutral point of view is not
>>>open to vote; it's decided.  If you don't like it, go somewhere else.

>>Other than TMC, we irresponsible anarchists agree.

>Except that it seems that at least some of you don't want it to be
>declared as *set policy*.  That was my point, Toby.

Sure, I'd want to keep NPOV as a set policy.
It's a core value, which I'd like to see on mav's proposed
terms of conditions page.  Perhaps I'm to the right
of the other "anarchists" on this, but even Cunc supports NPOV,
even if he has his whole [[m:NPOV is an ideal]] thing.
>From some perspective, once Jimbo's last minute dictatorial powers
pass into the hands of a democratically elected board of trustees,
then even the NPOV might conceivably be changed --
heck, it might *conceivably* be changed *now*
if Jimbo went mad and declared it no longer operational --
but then I would leave, like you, and join the inevitable fork.

>>Apologise in the sense of justifying the policy?  Certainly.

>Certainly *not*.  We should not *constantly* have to defend long-standing
>policies against the objections of new people who happen not to like them.

Then how do you expect the new people to learn about them?

>>For example, Lir has no business moving [[Christopher Columbus]]
>>to [[Crist?bal Col?n]] *now*, but it's her business as a Wikipedian
>>to discuss changing the policy on the list.

>It seems to me she's wasting everyone's time.  If she had asked "Gee, why
>is this the policy?" she might have learned something.

Not if everybody refused to defend it to her.
Luckily mav is defending it well right now.
As for wasting everybody's time, this seems unlikely
when several people, including some old hands,
have come out in agreement with her.
We'll probably lose, and that's OK,
but the idea that discussion is over is absurd.
(She could certainly be more diplomatic, however!)

>>Gee, even KQ (the potential loss of whom is
>>the immediate motivation of this post)
>>doesn't want to ban anybody himself anymore.
>>AFAICT, this is because of the practical problems with our methods,
>>not because of some ideological desire to never ban anybody.

>Let him speak for himself.

Like you let Julie, Michael, and Isis speak for themselves?
I don't want to attribute anything to him that he hasn't said,
which is why you see a disclaimer there with the "AFAICT".
But he *has* told me that he doesn't want to ban anybody
under the current system.

But he's subscribed to this list, so I hope that he'll clarify.
I also help that he'll clarify whether is reasons for leaving
include what you suggested: weariness at having to deal with
us anarchists.

>>>* To whatever extent we are or are not, or should be, a democracy, the
>>>following is also true.  We are a benevolent monarchy ruled by a
>>>"constitution" or, anyway, a developing body of common law that is not
>>>open to interpretation, but not vote.  This has been the case from the
>>>beginning, and we aren't going to change that.

>>Wait, you mean that the proposers of *voting* are the *anarchists*?
>>Do you still think that Erik is an anarchist or some such thing?
>>Get a clue, man!

>Uh, no, Toby, that isn't what I meant.

OK, then what do you mean?  I thought that your opponents were
anarchists, newbies, and trolls.  Which of these is Erik?
Actually, anarchist theory has a strong presumption
that voting is a suspect and corruptible method of democracy
(although certainly better than anything undemocratic to begin with).

>>IOW, let's decide before the discussion that we will change policy,
>>and only leave the discussion open to *how*.
>>I support a discussion about policy for banning what you call "trolls"
>>(not that Helga, much less Lir, is *actually* a troll),
>>but let's not a priori rule out the views of a sizable group.

>Yes, I'm asking Jimbo to take a controversial stand that might offend a
>group of anarchists.  What amazing gall I have.

I don't think that it requires gall to ask him to take such a stand.
I *do* think that it requires gall to suggest that
we make a change in policy that isn't widely agreed upon,
and move to discussion only about *how* to make that change.

>>You just assume that Jimbo will agree with you about everything.
>>Well, we'll see.

>No, I certainly do not, Toby.  In fact, I'm very worried that he might
>disagree on some point that I personally regard as key.

OK, good, I misinterpreted your suggestion that
"these things shouldn't need saying".
You only said that he *might* think that,
and then that he "might not want to say all of them".
My apologies.

>>>I'm just saying that,
>>>IMO, Wikipedia is really suffering, and even losing people.

>>We're losing people and gaining people, and I don't just mean gaining Lir.
>>If you think that nobody will or should ever leave Wikipedia
>>(except people that you don't like and so banned, of course),
>>then you're terribly na?ve.

>Toby, please--I founded this project and have watched it from the
>beginning.  I know that people leave all the time.  You obviously did not
>understand my point in your desire to poke holes in whatever I had to say.

I obviously didn't understand your point,
but it wasn't through any desire to poke holes in whatever you say.
My only desire is to do what's best for Wikipedia.
I'm sorry that you and I don't agree on what that is,
but both of our hearts are in the right place.

>The point is that there are a lot of people who just will not work in an
>environment when trolls can wander around and wreak havoc with no public
>repercussions.

By "trolls", you mean people like TMC and Lir?
While they both (damnedly) enjoy upsetting people,
that's not why they're here; they're both trying to contribute.
As Wikipedia grows, we'll get more annoying but well-meaning users,
and unless we become a police state (in an appropriate metaphorical sense),
we won't be able to get by with only users with thin skins.
Luckily, we don't have to; trolls or no trolls,
we still get more and more users all the time.

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

>>Ah, the voice of arrogance.  I mean, isn't Larry always *obviously* right?
>>Anybody that disagrees with him is either an ideologue or an idiot,
>>and that's how it'll always be.

>Boy, have a look in the mirror, dude.

Well, let's see.  I don't merely insist that my opinions are obvious
when they're challenged, and I don't accuse those that disagree with me
of being blinded by ideology or being idiots.
If you want to return my insults with insults,
then I'm sure that you can find some that actually fit.

But it wasn't fair to bring your sig into the discussion.
I'm letting my personal feelings slip in here again.
My apologies.

-- Toby


subject: [WikiEN-l] A New Rule

body:
 Axel Boldt <axelboldt at yahoo.com> wrote:
It is my impression that too many intelligent people spend way too
much energy on this list arguing in circles. This energy would be
better spent improving Wikipedia articles, hence the New Rule.

The New Rule
============

1. For every posting on one of Wikipedia's mailing lists, a
substantial edit to a Wikipedia article has to be made.

2. Any substantial edit can only be used for one mailing list
message.

3. The substantial edit has to have occurred within 24 hours
of the posting of the mailing list message.

4. Proof of the substantial edit is to be attached to the posting,
as link to the corresponding diff.

Notes
=====

* The New Rule is fully enforced policy and goes into
effect immediately.
* There will be no discussion, and no voting.
* As always, everybody is free to ignore the New Rule.
* I do not have a definition of "substantial edit".
* No action by Jimbo is required at this time.

Axel

P.S. http://www.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Hilbert%27s_Nullstellensatz&diff=436524&oldid=436508

__________________________________________________

That's amha, a *great* idea !

Okay. Yesterday I began a http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nom_binomial (Pierre, what do you think ?)

I did improve a lot the http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gu%E9pard (cheetah) article, more comprehensive, and more neutral (yes, even on a cheetah article). I think it better than the english one btw.

I finally settled the http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ortolan (Ortolan) article (very french oriented right now). I did it without looking at the english article, so I will now have the pleasure to improve it with the additional view.

This said, I did it as a tribute to User:Ortolan. The english article needs to be updated for it is not true *at all* we put napkins over our heads to prevent grease splashing.

One might find in the french article the way ortolans are traditionnally prepared and eaten in Provence (from my grand-father and an old traditionnal provencal cook book).

I also added the "modern" way that some of you seem to find so outrageous/decadent (the one with the napkin).

For some who might be interested (christmas forecasting), we have a recipe for preparation of http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/foie_gras. I would be very happy if somebody could provide the recipe for the real british christmas cake pudding.

I have 3 mails worth on the en.list today

cheers

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from_name: Pierre Abbat

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: [Wikipedia-l] Somebody please block 63.229.80.161

body:
On Wednesday 20 November 2002 23:49, Zoe wrote:
> 63.229.80.161 has vandalized [[Timeline of medicine and medical
> technology]] four times now.  I've reverted him four times, but how long am
> I supposed to keep doing it?

Blocked.

phma


subject: [Wikipedia-l] americanization

body:
genocide involves the destorying of culture. americinization is a form of genocide. stop saying that i should be banned for opposing King Jimbo Wales, whoever that is, he probably would rather see the correct name of things, than the same ol americanized crap.

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from_name: Jonathan Walther

subject: [Wikipedia-l] stupid anglicization

body:
On Tue, Nov 19, 2002 at 11:56:06AM -0800, Bridget [name omitted for privacy reasons] wrote:
>   Yes, I agree there should be some agreement about what is done on
>   wikipedia. This is why I, and others, keep advocating that wikipedia start
>   becoming a democracy and voting on stuff. Atm, wikipedia is pretty

Democracy and voting suck.  Anarchist direct action is where it's at,
baby.  If you still want to vote, vote with your feet.

There is an English alphabet for the English language, and it does NOT
include diacritical remarks.  Wikipedia is a multilingual project; stop
trying to make the English part of it be an amalgam of every language
under the sun.

When a foreign word gets adopted into the English language, all English
speakers get to say how it is used, and so far those who insist on using
diacritics are a vast minority.

Why are you trying to destroy the Wikipedia?

I think Groliers Encyclopedia is paying you minimum wage to sabotage our
effort here.  You have no idea of the sorts of things that normally go
into an Encyclopedia, and the things that don't.  By your own admission
you see the Wikipedia as "an information dump" with no more value than
the same information scattered all over the web.

Why are you here Lir?  Because you saw a nice community here, and you
wish to prove you can be a member here after your initial rejection?  I
wish your motive instead was to build the greatest Encyclopedia in the
world, and that the community aspect came after.  The Encyclopedia
doesn't exist to support the community; the community exists to support
the Encyclopedia.

>   Sadly, one of wikipedias basic premises amounts to, "And we should always
>   strive for a anglo-americanized naming schema because this is america and
>   if you want foreign names then maybe you should leave the country cuz this
>   is america and this is the american wikipedia and we are gonna use
>   american names here and thats the end of the discussion"

The Wikipedia is no place to push a political platform.  You claim to be
from Iowa; speaking ill of your country, in the way that you do, is
treason.  Criticize the government; criticize trends and tendencies;
but cease to lump all your compatriats together in your negative rantings.

I am Canadian.  I wish to see proper ENGLISH spellings of things used.
It is disengenous and intellectually dishonest of you to label such
wishes as "pro-Americanizing" when the vast majority of the English
speaking world shares them.  But this shows your own American bias; you
think all the English speaking world is in the USA.  Get over it.

Jonathan

--
                     Geek House Productions, Ltd.

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

Phone:   604-435-1205
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Webpage: http://reactor-core.org
Address: 2459 E 41st Ave, Vancouver, BC  V5R2W2
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subject: [Wikipedia-l] Minor changes

body:
Toby Bartels wrote:

>OTOH, what the writer does is to *mark* minor edits.
>I always mark punctuation, spelling, and linking changes
>in this way (regardless of whether I'm interested in publicity).
>Nobody will see my apostrophes and spelling corrections
>if they, as readers, hide minor edits in their user preferences.
>(There are exceptions where I forget, but these are simply mistakes.)
>
I too have chosen not to hide minor edits, and it often happens that
some changes that are marked as minor aren't that minor at all.  It can
be an effective tool for sneaking in a point of view.

>>Some thoughtless people (readers of this list, I believe) are even
>>putting moves from a private chess game into Recent Changes for
>>reasons unfathomable to polite people.
>>
I've seen this, but it is going back and forth on their user talk pages
where there is some latitude.  Quaint but harmless.  I generally don't
look at all the material on user talk-pages unless I'm involved in a
current conversation with them.

Some years age I knew a person who played long distance telephone chess.
 All the calls were made collect from a fictitious person, and the call
was refused.  The fictitious person's name was a coded chess move.

Eclecticology


subject: [Wikipedia-l] americanization

body:
On Thu, Nov 21, 2002 at 01:01:31AM -0800, Bridget [name omitted for privacy reasons] wrote:
>   genocide involves the destorying of culture. americinization is a form of
>   genocide. stop saying that i should be banned for opposing King Jimbo
>   Wales, whoever that is, he probably would rather see the correct name of
>   things, than the same ol americanized crap.

Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.  If you want
Americans to stop destroying other cultures, you won't accomplish it be
trying to destroy American culture. Americans have as much right to
their culture as anyone else has to theirs.

Jonathan

--
                     Geek House Productions, Ltd.

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

Phone:   604-435-1205
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Webpage: http://reactor-core.org
Address: 2459 E 41st Ave, Vancouver, BC  V5R2W2
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subject: [Wikipedia-l] Minor changes

body:
>
>
>Yes, it does.  Another issue is of course--why are people playing
>chess on wikipedia when there are so many other places to play it?
>Yes, I agree that people should have some latitude in regards to what
>they put on their own userpages, but that borders on the ridiculous.
>
It is an awfully tedious way of playing chess.  I predict that unless
people start making a big issue of this, they'll get bored and quit
after very few games!

Eclecticology


subject: [WikiEN-l] TMC account renamed

body:
On Thursday 21 November 2002 01:20, Brion Vibber wrote:
> Zoe wrote:
> > Brion, why is your message dated September 20?
>
> Either I've been in a coma for two months, or I accidentally bumped the
> month when I synched up my computer's clock to standard time last night.
> I'm hoping for the second option; otherwise I've missed some exams. ;)

Synched the computer's clock to standard time? Computers stay on UTC all the
time and convert to the local time zone when you read the clock.

phma


from_name: elian

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Diên Biên Phû

body:
Bridget [name omitted for privacy reasons] <lapollutionestsimauvaise at yahoo.com> writes:

> Di?n Bi?n Ph? was a battle between the French and the Vietnamese and a
> name which is not in common usage. It is a disgrace for the Americans to
> think they can rewrite this otherwise. This name must be rendered in
> either French or Vietnamese, being a Vietnamese sympathizer I vote for
> Vietnamese, but I am willing to compromise, however this was certainly
> not an American battle.

Would you please stop this nonsense? There is no "must" in Wikipedia
except for NPOV and Copyright. Stop dictating other people what they
"must" do. I doubt if your capabilities regarding Vietnamese are any
greater than your transcription efforts of Hebrew words.

For the records: the article on Osama bin Laden is also totally wrongly
named, but even as an arabist I don't fuzz about it because I don't derive
pleasure from insisting on "political or otherwise correct spelling" and
keeping people from doing more important work.

greetings,
elian, who gets really annoyed by this ridiculous behaviour

PS:reply to wikien-l please.


subject: [Wikipedia-l] americanization

body:
 Jonathan Walther <krooger at debian.org> wrote:
On Thu, Nov 21, 2002 at 01:01:31AM -0800, Bridget [name omitted for privacy reasons] wrote:
> genocide involves the destorying of culture. americinization is a form of
> genocide. stop saying that i should be banned for opposing King Jimbo
> Wales, whoever that is, he probably would rather see the correct name of
> things, than the same ol americanized crap.

Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. If you want
Americans to stop destroying other cultures, you won't accomplish it be
trying to destroy American culture. Americans have as much right to
their culture as anyone else has to theirs.

Jonathan

It might be best not to answer to that kind of message, maybe. See how Lir is trying to irritate each of us in turns. Wikipedians in americans and others. British and others. French and vietnamese. Promoting similar reactions, such as european and americans (hey, Eclecticology, aren't you canadian ?).
Bugging people and antagonizing them is just one way some follow to express themselves. They can do so. You can choose not to answer.

I'll be glad if people could agree that - HERE at least - we are more wikipedians than french, american, german or whatever. Let's stick together for godsake ! Learning from each others and recognising our differences will help more for the preservation of each cultural identity than throwing into faces painful assumptions and worn-out statements.

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subject: [Wikipedia-l] blocked huh?

body:
Well i was writing about anglicization but apparently I was blocked. I find it strange that I would be blocked when I havent been vandalising anything or harrasing anybody.

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subject: [Wikipedia-l] sumer and wealth of nations

body:
It has been said I am blocked for my work on sumer and wealth of nations. Nobody has directed a complaint regarding this to me before. I see no reason why you wouldn't be willing to discuss things.

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subject: [Wikipedia-l] minor changes default

body:
> its interesting how upset people have gotten over this minor changes issue
> without really making any effort to explain it to me

> how about an option to have the minor changes box checked on default?

Good idea, I'll try to implement this.

Regards,

Erik


subject: [Wikitech-l] RE: "Watch this article" and "View article" are not correct

body:
> But context-based wording is even better: "View user page", "View
> Wikipedia
> page", "View image page". If I remember, an early version of Phase II had
> context-based wording for these links (green links that stated "User",
> "Wikipedia" etc)

OK, I'll try to do that. Is there anything else the old version of the
software had that the current lacks?

Regards,

Erik

--
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NEU: Mit GMX ins Internet. Rund um die Uhr f?r 1 ct/ Min. surfen!


subject: [Wikipedia-l] minor changes default

body:
>
> its interesting how upset people have gotten over this minor changes issue
> without really making any effort to explain it to me
>
> how about an option to have the minor changes box checked on default?

Good idea for copyeditors, and reasonably simple to do, if nobody else wants
to do it, I can implement it.

Also, free of charge, here's a guide for stopping people from getting upset
about what you do:
1) Stop being confrontational and silly. We don't need to take ourselves too
seriously, but the project itself is not a playground.
2) Apologize to the list for your past behavior of category 1). Apologies
are something only mature people are capable of, and therefore always a good
demonstration.
3) Try to communicate your ideas in a reasonable fashion, arguing logically
and not emotionally. Be willing to compromise. Be willing to learn.

People currently don't trust you at all and thus tend to overreact a little
-- if you want them to trust you, you need to prove yourself worthy of trust.
Otherwise I'm afraid you will be banned again eventually, and although I do
not like the current way bans are decided, I can see that there's a line that
needs to be drawn.

Regards,

Erik

--
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NEU: Mit GMX ins Internet. Rund um die Uhr f?r 1 ct/ Min. surfen!


subject: [Wikitech-l] "Mark all edits minor by default"

body:
On Thu, Nov 21, 2002 at 11:52:58AM +0100, Erik Moeller wrote:
>There's a new preference in CVS now to have edits minor by default, as
>per someone's request on wikipedia-l. This may be helpful for
>copyeditors. I haven't added it to the other Language* files (except for
>German) yet.

How many people actually find this distinction between major/minor edits
useful?  Most of us leave minor edits enabled anyway, so we can see
potential vandals try to sneak by.  Shouldn't that be part of the social
contract?  For the benefit you receive from the Wikipedia, you need to
be in a position where you can see the litter if you decide to be an
editor?  And if you can see the litter, it's up to you if you want to
leave it, or clean it up...  I am in favor of abolishing the distinction
entirely.

Jonathan

--
                     Geek House Productions, Ltd.

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

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from_name: Jimmy Wales

subject: [Wikipedia-l] O.k., let's ban Lir

body:
As usual, she can write to me to discuss it.

--Jimbo


subject: [Wikipedia-l] O.k., let's ban Lir

body:
On Thu, Nov 21, 2002 at 03:40:23AM -0800, Jimmy Wales wrote:
>As usual, she can write to me to discuss it.

It has my vote.  But I request it only be for a week.  If she still
isn't interested in modifying her behavior, I suggest a month... a
year...  Unfortunately this could be like playing whack-a-mole.
Maybe require her to provide some real life contact information before
coming back?

"As usual"... Lir has been banned before?  I suspect Lir and Helga are
one and the same.

Jonathan

--
                     Geek House Productions, Ltd.

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

Phone:   604-435-1205
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Webpage: http://reactor-core.org
Address: 2459 E 41st Ave, Vancouver, BC  V5R2W2
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subject:
[Wikitech-l] RE: "Watch this article" and "View article"
	are	not correct

body:
On Thu, 2002-11-21 at 01:49, Erik Moeller wrote:
> On Don, 2002-11-21 at 07:28, Brion VIBBER wrote:
> > Off the top of my head:
> > * 'view changes since <time list was generated>' link on Recentchanges
>
> Sounds like a good idea. Do we want this as a separate link from Recent
> Changes in the sidebar, so you would click "New Changes" to get only new
> ones? Or just as an option in RC, or as the default view? If we
> implement this, it should be in a way where it actually saves us
> bandwidth.

I hacked it back in, more or less replicating the old behavior. (I only
put in translations for English and Esperanto.) Enjoy!

Note: it won't show more than your default number of changes to show,
nor will it cover a period of time longer than the default time cutoff.

> Magnus suggested summarizing changes, this also would be helpful, but
> I'm still wondering what the most user-friendly way to build this would
> be. My personal preference would be something based on JavaScript, but
> I'd probably run into fierce opposition there.

Actually, that might be kinda fun. Code something up and see how it
goes!

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: What we need

body:
O.k., I hereby proclaim the following:
> * We will not tolerate biased content.  The neutral point of view is not
> open to vote; it's decided.  If you don't like it, go somewhere else.
>
> * There are certain other policies as well that basically define us as a
> community.  We have arrived at them by broad consensus, and they should be
> respected.  Wikipedians working in good faith should feel empowered to
> enforce those policies.  They shouldn't have to apologize for doing so!
>
> * We will not stop banning vandals.  We should seek out the best ways we
> know how to make sure that non-vandals are not lumped in with the vandals,
> but please stop talking as if we'll just stop banning them, because it
> ain't gonna happen.
>
> * We try to help newcomers who want to contribute but don't quite
> understand the body of good habits (and rules) we've built up.  But we
> should not and *will* not tolerate forever people who are essentially
> attempting to undermine the system.  See below.
>
> * To whatever extent we are or are not, or should be, a democracy, the
> following is also true.  We are a benevolent monarchy ruled by a
> "constitution" or, anyway, a developing body of common law that is not
> open to interpretation, but not vote.  This has been the case from the
> beginning, and we aren't going to change that.

None of this is new.

> In addition to this, it would help a LOT for you to solicit draft
> statements of policy regarding clear circumstances in which people can be
> banned for being really egregiously difficult.  There has to be a
> *reasonably* clear line drawn that distinguishes difficult but
> on-the-whole useful contributors, on the one hand, from contributors so
> egregiously difficult that the project suffers from their continued
> presence.  The policy should codify, for example, the reasons why we did
> ban 24 and Helga, and the reasons why we might ban Lir.  Let's have a
> discussion about this, bearing in mind that one option that is *not* on
> the table is that we might decide *not* to ban people for their trollish
> behavior at all.  We definitely will, so let's make the policy clearer.
> You could start the discussion and make it clear that at some point soon,
> we *will* determine a policy.
>
> I don't mean to put words in your mouth of course.  I'm just saying that,
> IMO, Wikipedia is really suffering, and even losing people.  You're in a
> position to help embolden the most productive members of the project, who
> it seems to me are, in at least some cases, getting very discouraged.

I agree with all of this, except with your diagnosis of the current
situation.  Can you show me examples of "anarchists" who are arguing
that we "we might decide *not* to ban people for their trollish
behavior at all"?

--Jimbo


subject: [WikiEN-l] Criteria for banning

body:
(As a warning to others, wikien-l at nupedia.com goes into a black hole.  The
old lists work at both @nupedia.com and @wikipedia.org.  Jason, can you
fix this?)

Ultimately, I would say that it is perfectly o.k. to ban people if,
after a reasonable period of time, they appear to be unwilling or
unable to work together with others in a collegial spirit of mutual
respect.

Wikipedia is not Usenet.  It is not the right place for people to
attempt to put forward particular ideological positions.  It is
important for all ideological positions to be put forward in a fair
manner, and it is therefore valid for people with a particular
ideology to work on Wikipedia to ensure that their viewpoint is fairly
represented.  But the essential here is that people from all
viewpoints should be working towards NPOV.  To fail to do so is to
fail to work together with others in a collegial spirit of mutual
respect.

Wikipedia is not a joke book.  User names like Throbbing Monster Cock
are inappropriate.  TMC's contributions have been perfectly o.k., as
far as I know, but his name is clearly chosen in an attempt to be
funny or (likely) to deliberately annoy people.  TMC has argued that
changing his name is tantamount to the use of force against him.  This
argument is stupid, because he has no property interest in his
username, but if he wishes to press it, he should write to me
personally about it, as this was my decision.

We should take great care to ensure a diversity of contributors.  We
should take great care that people are not banned for making policy
proposals that are annoying to us.  We should take great care that
people are not banned too soon, even for breaking the rules.

For ip addresses, anonymous contributions, we should continue our
policy of banning them for simple vandalism at the slightest
provocation.

For usernames, we should be more forgiving, but only because the fact
that someone has taken the effort to login suggests that there is some
hope of sincerity.  Even so, simple vandlism is ample grounds for a
ban.

The more difficult cases are cases like Lir, or TMC.  TMC has
committed only one violation -- the selection of a deliberately
annoying username.  His contributions are, apparently and to date, not
bad.  Lir, on the other hand, has been uncollegial and rude to others
on multiple occassions, and has received ample warning.

--Jimbo


subject: [Wikipedia-l] O.k., let's ban Lir

body:
Jonathan Walther wrote:
> "As usual"... Lir has been banned before?  I suspect Lir and Helga are
> one and the same.

In the case of both '24' and Helga, I specifically offered them the
opportunity to discuss things with me privately to regain access.

What I would be seeking in such a case would be a sign of
understanding on their part about what behaviors are unacceptable, and
a pledge to change those behaviors.

--Jimbo


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: What we need

body:
On Thu, Nov 21, 2002 at 03:57:08AM -0800, Jimmy Wales wrote:
>> I don't mean to put words in your mouth of course.  I'm just saying that,
>> IMO, Wikipedia is really suffering, and even losing people.  You're in a
>> position to help embolden the most productive members of the project, who
>> it seems to me are, in at least some cases, getting very discouraged.
>
>I agree with all of this, except with your diagnosis of the current
>situation.  Can you show me examples of "anarchists" who are arguing
>that we "we might decide *not* to ban people for their trollish
>behavior at all"?

The Cunctator springs to mind.  As an anarchist myself, I can't say I
agree with him though.

I don't know about Wikipedia "really suffering and losing people", but I
am clear that Lirs efforts create vastly more work than the rest of us
can keep up with in "fixing" her edits.

I mean, her edit to the article on Sir Isaac Newton to include
"prisms"... maybe it might be appropriate to mention prisms in the
article, but the way she did it was like she was just trying to fill
someones shoes with wet sloppy diarrhea.

Jonathan

--
                     Geek House Productions, Ltd.

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

Phone:   604-435-1205
Email:   djw at reactor-core.org
Webpage: http://reactor-core.org
Address: 2459 E 41st Ave, Vancouver, BC  V5R2W2
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subject: [Wikipedia-l] O.k., let's ban Lir

body:
On Thu, Nov 21, 2002 at 04:04:56AM -0800, Jimmy Wales wrote:
>In the case of both '24' and Helga, I specifically offered them the
>opportunity to discuss things with me privately to regain access.
>
>What I would be seeking in such a case would be a sign of
>understanding on their part about what behaviors are unacceptable, and
>a pledge to change those behaviors.

Hearing that makes me very happy.  Lir has a lot she could contribute,
if she is willing to work in the spirit of collegial respect and
fellowship.

Jonathan

--
                     Geek House Productions, Ltd.

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

Phone:   604-435-1205
Email:   djw at reactor-core.org
Webpage: http://reactor-core.org
Address: 2459 E 41st Ave, Vancouver, BC  V5R2W2
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subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: What we need

body:
Jonathan Walther wrote:
> >I agree with all of this, except with your diagnosis of the current
> >situation.  Can you show me examples of "anarchists" who are arguing
> >that we "we might decide *not* to ban people for their trollish
> >behavior at all"?
>
> The Cunctator springs to mind.  As an anarchist myself, I can't say I
> agree with him though.

I'm reasonably well-acquainted with the Cunc's views, and I am under
the distinct impression that he supports temporary ip-based bans for
raw vandalism.  He prefers it when we have soft security rather than
hard security.  He prefers to try to reform people than to ban them,
and so on.

I imagine that he would support not banning people at all, _only if_
viable and superior alternatives can be found.  (And I imagine he
supports the search for those viable and superior alternatives.)

So I don't count him as an "anarchist" in the relevant sense.

> I don't know about Wikipedia "really suffering and losing people", but I
> am clear that Lirs efforts create vastly more work than the rest of us
> can keep up with in "fixing" her edits.
>
> I mean, her edit to the article on Sir Isaac Newton to include
> "prisms"... maybe it might be appropriate to mention prisms in the
> article, but the way she did it was like she was just trying to fill
> someones shoes with wet sloppy diarrhea.

In what sense do you refer to yourself as an "anarchist"?  I think
it's important to get beyond the political meaning of the term, which
some people have some affinity for, and recognize that Larry means it
in a specific sense.

Basically, I think that Larry's concerns are way overstated.  All of
the things he said we needed were already in place.

--Jimbo


subject: [Wikipedia-l] O.k., let's ban Lir

body:
Jonathan Walther wrote:
> Hearing that makes me very happy.  Lir has a lot she could contribute,
> if she is willing to work in the spirit of collegial respect and
> fellowship.

Yes.  One of the great things about wikipedia is how much positive
good people of wildly different viewpoints can do, if they commit to
this sense of "collegial respect and fellowship".

--Jimbo


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: What we need

body:
On Thu, Nov 21, 2002 at 04:20:29AM -0800, Jimmy Wales wrote:
>In what sense do you refer to yourself as an "anarchist"?  I think
>it's important to get beyond the political meaning of the term, which
>some people have some affinity for, and recognize that Larry means it
>in a specific sense.

In the sense that I have read the standard works by Berkman, Proudhon,
and similar, and am in agreement with them.  Not in the other sense of
nihilist "I can do whatever I want, let's go blow some stuff up, yay!"
I read Ayn Rand and Adam Smith before reading any anarchist writings, so
I don't think I was uninformed or deluded when making up my mind as to
which philosophy I sympathized with.

>Basically, I think that Larry's concerns are way overstated.  All of
>the things he said we needed were already in place.

As long as you are here to enforce the banning policy you just posted, I
am happy with the status quo as it is.  It really can take a while
sometimes to figure out if someone is sincerely trying to work with us,
or just yanking our chain.

Thank you for your time and patience working on the Wikipedia, Jimmy.

Jonathan

--
                     Geek House Productions, Ltd.

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

Phone:   604-435-1205
Email:   djw at reactor-core.org
Webpage: http://reactor-core.org
Address: 2459 E 41st Ave, Vancouver, BC  V5R2W2
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subject: [Wikipedia-l] why have i been banned?

body:
Why am I being banned for adding an article on Wilhelm Wien? What the hell :<

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subject: [Wikipedia-l] why am I banned? :<

body:
I do not understand why I have been banned. I do not understand why nobody has bothered to specifically address anything I have done wrong, with the exception of those who reverted various changes I have made after which I have moved on to other topics and in many cases one should note that my changes have, at the very least, been partially accepted.

Anyone examing my user contributions will see that I have been doing nothing but working on topics such as blackbody, wilhelm wien, electromagnetic radiation, etc., while being harrased by Clutch who repeatedly vandalized my page and insulted everything I did, without explanation of what he did not like.

Why am I being banned and why has no attempt been made to explain what it is I have done that is so offensive? What am I supposed to do for the next week? I have nothing to do ever. My whole life I just sit around wishing I had something productive to do and now you ban me for trying to correct the numerous errors I found in your naming schema?

i think ill go kill myself

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subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: What we need

body:
Jonathan Walther wrote:
> In the sense that I have read the standard works by Berkman, Proudhon,
> and similar, and am in agreement with them.

Right, well, I don't think that's the sense in which Larry intended the
term.  (Nor did he intend it in the sense of "anarchocapitalism".)

> Not in the other sense of nihilist "I can do whatever I want, let's
> go blow some stuff up, yay!"

I think this is more or less the sense he intended.  I think a good
way to put it would be "I'm opposed to all standards!  Isn't random
crap just as informative as so-called thoughtful articles anyway?"

> As long as you are here to enforce the banning policy you just posted, I
> am happy with the status quo as it is.  It really can take a while
> sometimes to figure out if someone is sincerely trying to work with us,
> or just yanking our chain.

I'm going to continue to be guilty of waiting a bit too long.

> Thank you for your time and patience working on the Wikipedia, Jimmy.

Oh, I don't do nearly as much as most of the regulars.  My job is to
sit here and reflect on what people are saying, and then to repeat it
in such a way that it seems like I thought of it.  ;-)

As Linus Torvalds likes to say "I'm basically a very lazy person who
likes to get credit for things other people actually do."

:-)

--Jimbo


subject: [Wikipedia-l] why am I banned? :<

in_reply_to: <20021121123651.5289.qmail@web40711.mail.yahoo.com>; from lapollutionestsimauvaise@yahoo.com on Thu, Nov 21, 2002 at 04:36:51AM -0800

body:
I'll handle this offlist.  I think having a flame war here would be
counter-productive.  (But the list is unmoderated, so if people feel a
compelling need, go ahead.)

Bridget [name omitted for privacy reasons] wrote:

>
> I do not understand why I have been banned. I do not understand why nobody has bothered to specifically address anything I have done wrong, with the exception of those who reverted various changes I have made after which I have moved on to other topics and in many cases one should note that my changes have, at the very least, been partially accepted.
>
> Anyone examing my user contributions will see that I have been doing nothing but working on topics such as blackbody, wilhelm wien, electromagnetic radiation, etc., while being harrased by Clutch who repeatedly vandalized my page and insulted everything I did, without explanation of what he did not like.
>
> Why am I being banned and why has no attempt been made to explain what it is I have done that is so offensive? What am I supposed to do for the next week? I have nothing to do ever. My whole life I just sit around wishing I had something productive to do and now you ban me for trying to correct the numerous errors I found in your naming schema?
>
> i think ill go kill myself
>
>
>
> ---------------------------------
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> Yahoo! Mail Plus - Powerful. Affordable. Sign up now


subject: [Wikipedia-l] i think u are racist but its no reason to ban me

body:
If you didnt want me talking on wikipedia-l then all you had to do was say, "Dont talk here" I didnt want to talk on the stupid thing-I only was there cuz people told me to!
I think its racist to not make more of an effort to use foreign words. Im sorry that has upset all of you so much. I don't see why I should be banned for it.

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subject: [Wikipedia-l] plz let me play chess :<

body:
plz let me play chess with ram-man i have nobody else to play :<

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subject: [Wikitech-l] Wikipedia slowdown

body:
Just 20 minutes ago there was a dramatic slowdown in the Wikipedia.  Now
I can't access the pages at all.  Is Lir doing something nasty in the
way of big queries?  Is there a regularly scheduled cron job doing this?
My attempts to access various pages on the 'pedia are just timing out.

Jonathan

--
                     Geek House Productions, Ltd.

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

Phone:   604-435-1205
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subject: [Wikitech-l] ok, I can get through now

body:
Sorry about calling the alarm too quickly.

Jonathan

--
                     Geek House Productions, Ltd.

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

Phone:   604-435-1205
Email:   djw at reactor-core.org
Webpage: http://reactor-core.org
Address: 2459 E 41st Ave, Vancouver, BC  V5R2W2
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list: sifter-l

source: wayback-mbox

from_name: Magnus Manske

subject: Re: [Sifter-l] CareBears

body:
Tucci wrote:

>I don't know if I missed it in the flood of posts, but
>has anybody discussed how groups will form?
>
The current proposal does not include organized groups. It works like this:
1. You apply to become a reviewer.
2. You are made a reviewer by a sysop (or another reviewer; these
details need work)
3. You approve wikipedia articles. We trust you that you only approve
articles that you know are correct, well-written, and cover the whole
range of points worth mentioning (that's the theory...)
4. Your approval imports the wikipedia article into the stable repository.

That's it, AFAIK.

Magnus

P.S.: Someone please fix that reply-adress


from_name: Poor, Edmund W

subject: [Wikitech-l] Bots vs. humans (was: vandalism spree)

body:
To defend against a bot, we must first distinguish between bots and legitimate users.

Maveric, being (1) a signed-in user (2) with sysop priviliges, is easily distinguishable from a bot. Don't get all insulted, mav, I mean that a computer program can easily distinguish you from a bot on the basis of the numbered points above.

Perhaps the edits-per-minute criterion could be applied to anonymous users.

Ed Poor


body:
Brion VIBBER wrote:

>> OK, I'll try to do that. Is there anything else the old version of the
>> software had that the current lacks?
>
>
> Off the top of my head:
> * 'view changes since <time list was generated>' link on Recentchanges

Recent changes also had "(X changes)" summaries.

Oh, the sentimental value alone... ;-)

Magnus


subject: [Wikipedia-l] anglicization is stupid

body:
Toby Bartels wrote:

>Zoe wrote (sarcastically):
>
>>Oh, good, I like that.  Let's change all the rules intermittantly, thus
>>requiring someone to go back to all of the articles that were created under
>>the old rules and have to change all of them.  That makes a lot of sense.
>>
>I'd propose that those that were the primary supporters of such a change
>be the ones required to go over and change things.  That's only fair.
>
I have no objection to that, either in this issue or any other that can
have an impact on a large number of articles.  In practical terms, the
important thing becomes maintaining compatibility during transition..  I
wouldn't expect that the people who might object to such a change would
be too keen to work at it.

Eclecticology


subject: [Wikipedia-l] americanization

body:
Well most names like "Munich" were anglicized long before the USA existed.
Nowadays we anglicize less - we tend to leave the names of people as
they are; if  Spanish actor became an international star today, we might
call him Christobal Colon; but as it is we're left with past anglicization.

Do you think the French wikipedia should write "london" instead of
"londres"?

Bridget [name omitted for privacy reasons] wrote:

> genocide involves the destorying of culture. americinization is a form
> of genocide. stop saying that i should be banned for opposing King
> Jimbo Wales, whoever that is, he probably would rather see the correct
> name of things, than the same ol americanized crap.
>
>
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