subject: [Wikipedia-l] Ban warning to GrahamN

body:
Whoa there, Ed. I don't recall anyone being banned for
giving opinions on the Talk pages. This "warning"
sounds like a threat.

Stephen Gilbert

--- "Poor, Edmund W" <Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com> wrote:
> I placed the following notice on GrahamN's user
> page:
> ----
> Please refrain from giving your opinion in the Talk
> pages. Personal opinions of contributors are welcome
> in the MetaWikipedia (where, by the way, April is
> hosting a debate) -- as well as on your own User
> page.
>
> Article talk pages are for discussion of how to
> improve the article. If there is a point of view
> (POV) that you happen to agree with, which you think
> ought to be represented in the article, then please
> focus on how to describe that POV. Avoid arguing for
> or against any POV. Instead, help your
> co-contributors to learn which proponents advocate
> the POV, and what reasons those advocates give.
>
> For example, Joe Camel might say, "I hate Jews
> because they smell like lox." We need not debate how
> often an odor of lox is detectable in the vicinity
> of Jews (my Mom, who is Jewish, made me an excellent
> lox sandwich over Labor Day, by the way). We need
> not debate whether smelling like lox is a "good"
> reason to hate someone. All that matters is whether
> or not to mention Joe Camel's POV in some Wikipedia
> article. And if some contributor decides to describe
> that POV, we might debate the best choice of words
> to describe it.
>
> This is a warning: any more personal or provocative
> remarks, and I will will ban you for a day. --Ed
> Poor, sysop
> ----
>
> Ed Poor
> [Wikipedia-l]
> To manage your subscription to this list, please go
> here:
> http://www.nupedia.com/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l

__________________________________________________
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list: wikipedia-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Vicki Rosenzweig

subject: [Wikipedia-l] ban attempt

body:
At 03:10 PM 9/5/02 -0400, Ed Poor wrote:

>Okay, the "ban" is lifted. Gimme a break, okay?
>
>I just wanted to re-focus the talk constructively, but then Lee is like,
>let the kids bicker and pull hair, as long as they don't damage the furniture.

Threatening to ban people, unilaterally, is a poor way to refocus talk
constructively.

--
Vicki Rosenzweig
vr at redbird.org
http://www.redbird.org


from_name: Stephen Gilbert

subject: [Wikipedia-l] ban attempt

body:
Banning is always a last resort, and having sysop
status does not give anyone any special authority to
resolve disputes.

I know you meant well, but threats like that will make
people leave the project in droves.

Stephen Gilbert

--- "Poor, Edmund W" <Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com> wrote:
>
> Okay, the "ban" is lifted. Gimme a break, okay?
>
> I just wanted to re-focus the talk constructively,
> but then Lee is like, let the kids bicker and pull
> hair, as long as they don't damage the furniture.
>
> Ed
> [Wikipedia-l]
> To manage your subscription to this list, please go
> here:
> http://www.nupedia.com/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l

__________________________________________________
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subject: [Wikipedia-l] Hi there!

body:
Hi Adam, welcome to the list! I was filtering anything
about HTML tables to the trash for a while. ;-) As on
Wikipedia, please only pay attention to what you're
interested in.

Stephen Gilbert

--- Adam Williamson <aw280 at cam.ac.uk> wrote:
> Well, since I seem to have spent most of the last
> few days posting
> wikipedia stuff, thought i'd pop my head up and say
> hi to the mailing
> list. I was wondering where i'd find the tedious,
> long and
> counter-productive arguments, and it looks like I
> hit paydirt! :). (No
> offence intended to anyone - just an observation
> that long, tedious and
> counter-productive arguments are entirely inevitably
> in any internet
> system of a given complexity...) Have already
> redirected anything
> involving the words "Helga", "jewish" or "holocaust"
> directly to trash.
> ;). Anyway, not much to say, except Hi!, and I hope
> the stuff i've
> contributed has been useful and appreciated.
> Wikipedia seems like a
> great project, and I hope it succeeds even more than
> it is at present.
> Thanks everyone, bye!
>
> (I'm user AdamWill. Just in case that's not close
> enough for my name for
> everyone to twig. =>)
> --
> adamw
>
> [Wikipedia-l]
> To manage your subscription to this list, please go
> here:
> http://www.nupedia.com/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l

__________________________________________________
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from_name: daniwo59 at aol.com

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Message 10  Wed 4 Sep 2002 06:30 by Dany..and other Interne...

body:
In a message dated 9/5/2002 4:15:37 PM Eastern Standard Time,
helgah at email.com writes:

> I am only bringing all this up, because of Dany's bad choice of a website
> title: Helga and other Internet cooks. I also want to substanciate my talk
> to Dany, that there are a lot more facts , that the general public is not
> aware of. I also stated that I do not want to get anyone hurt and that I
> have a great concern for people wanting to make war, war war... It was also
> before I found out that Dany works in the Holocaust memorial, which some
> writers
> including Jewish writers, might call the Holocaust industry.

She wrote a lot else, but I think I answered for myself adequately on the
relevant Talk page (Neturei Karta), which she quoted extensively.

Helga, yes I do work in the Museum of Jewish Heritage. However, any statement
I make here represents me and me alone.

I find your snub about the Holocaust industry offensive, however, I have come
to expect that of you. I am the first to admit that I have attitudes and
opinions regarding the Holocaust, anti-Semitism, and Zionism, all
controversial subjects here. On the other hand, you will also find that the
vast majority of my contributions to Wikipedia have not focused on these
issues, not because I do not know the subject matter well, but because I do
know it well and I wanted to avoid involving myself in debates and
discussions where I may be tempted to violate the principles of NPOV. My one
Holocaust contribution was on Mordechai Anielewicz, and that was made before
I began working at the museum (which was rather recently). I did write about
a variety of other topics reflecting my other interests, as my personal page
shows. How Billie Holiday relates to the Holocaust is beyond me. How the
tables I created for each president relate to the Holocaust is beyond me too.
How the Banawa of Brazil or the Chaco War or the film "Chang" relate to the
Holocaust is anybody's guess. My one great debate on Jewish matters was
actually with RK, who focuses on Jewish subjects. Though it got heated at
times, the result (Ultra-Orthodox Judaism) is, I think, a good article.

What are you suggesting regarding the Neturei Karta? Is it that the fact that
I have read about them, written about them, studied them, lived among them,
and worked on a documentary film about them somehow grounds for excluding me
from writing about them here? Or is it that your single source, two
interrelated websites, trumps any serious research? If anything, I wrote the
article as a defense of them. You want to turn it into an attack on others.

You also keep quoting these elusive "facts" that you happen to be aware of,
even if no one else is. The Internet is full of conspiracy theories. There
are books written about them too. That does not make them facts. It is
unfortunate that you do not know how to distinguish fact from theory from
flight of fancy. Perhaps if you did, your articles would be more acceptable.

Finally, I just want to note that you still do not know what my attitudes and
opinions regarding the Holocaust, anti-Semitism, and Zionism are.

Danny
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list: wikitech-l

from_name: Magnus Manske

subject: [Wikitech-l] Can we use 'media' as a namespace in Polish Wikipedia?

body:
lcrocker at nupedia.com wrote:

>>Don't forget to make a table (or even a new database?)
>>for the "real" language links, while you're at it. This
>>will be needed for automatic language link building.
>>Magnus
>>
>>
>
>I don't know what this means.  Please explain.
>
>
Sorry. For the "This article in ..." links. If I insert a link from
[[xyz]] on www.wikipedia.org that links to [[de:xyz]], the de: page
should automatically link back to [[en:xyz]]. IMHO these links should be
stored separately from the "normal" links, as they connect between
different databases.Thus, I was suggesting a new database for these.
But, maybe I'm wrong.

See also the recent "Back-links" mails on intlwiki-l.

Magnus


from_name: Axel Boldt

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Server logs

body:
>>What Web server logs?  I don't have access to the logs.

>I think only Lee, Brion Vibber, and Jimmy have access to the logs.

Maybe we could write a cron script which regularly publishes the
server logs on the ftp server. If people are concerned about privacy,
we could blank out the last three digits of the IP numbers.

Axel


from_name: Tom Parmenter

subject: [Wikipedia-l] ban attempt

body:
|From: "Poor, Edmund W" <Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com>
|Date: Thu, 5 Sep 2002 15:10:20 -0400
|
|
|Okay, the "ban" is lifted. Gimme a break, okay?
|
|I just wanted to re-focus the talk constructively, but then Lee is like, let the kids bicker and pull hair, as long as they don't damage the furniture.
|
|Ed

How about, instead of stopping *people*, we froze *articles*, including
talk pages, for a day, week, or month, until everyone calmed down?

That is, when it starts getting thick and hot, rather than coming down
on someone, we simply shut off access to the opportunity to snipe,
edit-war, insult, and so forth.

There is *plenty* of time to get an article organized, whether on
anti-semitism, or Copernicus's little-appreciated contribution to the
Prussian coinage, or even the law, but if people are firing back and
forth in the article and on the talk page with only minutes between
salvos, we may never get the articles we need.  We can wait even a
month or longer, but people in heat can't stay in heat a month, no
matter how much they might want to.

In the worst cases, an admin or other responsible individual could
look over the entire subject, refactor or rewrite the article, and
then open the floodgates again after the fuss had had a chance to die
down.

As it is, after months of good contributions by Julie, we lose her in
two weeks to some hit-and-run artists who might actually have
something to contribute if they weren't so keen on scoring points.
Remove the opportunity for scoring points, remove the dread of logging
in to Wikipedia when this kind of thing is happening, and take a crack
at making an encyclopedia.

Tom Parmenter
Ortolan88

PS - I speak from personal experience at firing off half cocked.

Tom


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Ban warning to GrahamN

body:
>This is a warning: any more personal or provocative remarks, and I
>will will ban you for a day. --Ed Poor, sysop

...and the ban will be undone immediately of course. Ed, please
refrain from using your sysop status as if it were a position of
power.

Axel


from_name: koyaanisqatsi at nupedia.com

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Hi there!

body:
Karen wrote:
>Yep, every group has somewhere to argue and this appears to be it!
>Thanks for the idea of making an extra filter for my inbox to remove
>conversations I'm not the slightest bit interested int... I hadn't
>thought of it.

I get this treat when I try it:

Warning: Supplied argument is not a valid File-Handle resource in /home/nupstable/work-http/newsystem/phpwebmail/viewruleset.phtml on line 20

Warning: Supplied argument is not a valid File-Handle resource in /home/nupstable/work-http/newsystem/phpwebmail/viewruleset.phtml on line 21

Warning: Supplied argument is not a valid File-Handle resource in /home/nupstable/work-http/newsystem/phpwebmail/viewruleset.phtml on line 20

Warning: Supplied argument is not a valid File-Handle resource in /home/nupstable/work-http/newsystem/phpwebmail/viewruleset.phtml on line 21

ad infinitum.

No, I won't say what I intended to filter.  :-)

kq


from_name: Tim Marklew

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Re: Ban warning to GrahamN

body:
Jimbo Wrote:
>Not having reviewed the incident in question, I would tend to agree
>with Axel here.  Banning ips is supposed to be for vandalism of the
>most obvious sort, like inserting random 'farts' in pages, or
>uploading inappropriate pictures, etc.
>
>What did the guy say, anyway?

For those who haven't been following this - GrahamN had posted a bad
tempered message on Anti-Semitism/Talk in which he referred to the
'Zionist's desire to dominate all other ethnic groups in [Israel]' and
similar.  It was originally in response to a change to the page by
SLRubenstein.  I understand that Graham and SLR have since come to a
civilised mutual understanding.

There then followed a very lengthly, bad mannered and inappropriate
exchange, mainly between GrahamN and another user, RK.  Each was accusing
Zionists or Non-Zionists of racism and bigotry in broadly equal measure
(with RK liberally making allegations of anti-semitism, directed at April
among others).

Ed, I appreciate your attempts to stop this inappropriate argument on the
talk page.  However, using your sysop status to threaten banning people just
isn't appropriate. In a situation like this it could be perceived that you
were taking sides in an argument on behalf of Wikipedia, which is not what
sysop status is for.

In this case we were dealing with two known Wikipedia contributors, both of
whom have made good contributions in the past.  Reasoning with them is the
approach to use here and a ban, or threat of one, totally inappropriate.

I would also ask that sysops should not generally sign contributions as
sysops (i.e. writing "Ed Poor - Sysop").  It could be give the misleading
impression that sysops are acting officially on behalf of Wikipedia, rather
than acting as an individual contributor.

Tim (Enchanter)

>Axel Boldt wrote:
>
> > >This is a warning: any more personal or provocative remarks, and I
> > >will will ban you for a day. --Ed Poor, sysop
> >
> > ...and the ban will be undone immediately of course. Ed, please
> > refrain from using your sysop status as if it were a position of
> > power.
> >
> > Axel

_________________________________________________________________
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from_name: Michael R. Irwin

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia:Top 10 Google hits

body:
Brion VIBBER wrote:
>
<snip>

> This Fox News column links our article on [[Geosynchronous orbit]]:
>    http://foxnews.com/story/0,2933,62200,00.html

Cool!  The author (Rand Simburg, retired Boeing
aerospace engineer) is a guy I used to
debate with extensively at sci.space.policy.   I should
go visiting and inquire whether he found Wikipedia from
checking out the announcement I put there a while back
or from a search engine. Basically the announcement stated
that Wikipedia was a potentially useful technology for
"open engineering" efforts.

Either way it is rather amusing that I apparently
originated the stub and an anonymous address did
a lot of fixing.   I wonder if the fixing was Rand
or some other sci.space.policy regular checking
my work.  8)

Maybe I should ask him why he did not use this
link for an ion thruster source.  The first two
hits provide instant credibility that ion thrusters
are a current proven technology.  One has to know
where to look in space propulsion to find anything
outland or far futuristic.

http://www.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?search=ion+propulsion

lol,  Since he is now a paid professional writer he may
not wish to admit he used to volunteer some efforts.

I should also remind him he can edit anonymously; if
he wishes to create the reference material that
he needs online to keep the technical detail down
in the article, while providing easy access to it.

Regards,
Mike Irwin


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Helga again

body:
Vicki Rosenzweig wrote:
>
> At 03:31 PM 9/4/02 -0700, you wrote:
>
> >Vicki Rosenzweig wrote:
> > >
> > > At 04:29 AM 9/4/02 -0700, Jimmy Wales wrote:
> > > >Michael R. Irwin wrote:
> > > > >  The totality of the material
> > > > > presented should not be selected to support the frame or view that
> > > > > the Holocaust was undeserved.
> > > >
> > > >But, the Holocaust was undeserved.  That's as uncontroversial a fact as
> > > >"The Earth goes around the Sun".
> > >
> > > Exactly. Otherwise we'd need to carefully avoid suggesting--on each of the
> > > September 11 pages--that the victims were innocent. Either is absurd and
> > > offensive.
> >
> >Absurd and offensive to who?  The prevailing mainstream
> >Arab view seem pretty supportive of the attacks.
>
> As far as I know, nobody--even the mainstream Arab press--is saying that the
> individuals killed in the September 11 attacks were personally guilty of
> anything:
> the argument by defenders of the attack is that this was an act of war, not
> that
> people who happened to work at Windows on the World or Cantor Fitzgerald or
> the NY Fire Department specifically deserved to die.

Some of the rhetoric reported (in U.S. papers and
magazines, I do not speak Arabic) over the last year has
seemed to imply that Americans in general deserve some
negative consequences, in the view of many Arabs.

Most of the people working in the World Trade Center
were presumably Americans as were the responding
emergency workers.

I can only judge the mainstream Arab press reports
(I assume the "mainstream" is written in Arabic for
primarily domestic consumption.) from what I see reported
in various U.S. sources and media.

There are plenty of U.S. Military targets in the U.S.
and World Wide.  I can only assume that Al Quaeda
felt they were targeting an appropriate target.

Cheering in the streets and funding from Arab
governments would seem fairly supportive.  Foot
dragging on use of military bases in the area for
invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq (who we seem to
think also involved and a future threat) presumably
indicates some opposition to U.S. interests from
somewhere.  Either from factions within the general
population or in the governments.

Still, reviewing my original statement, your argument,
and my reactions to your argument. It seems
clear to me that my original statement:

"The prevailing mainstream Arab view seem pretty
supportive of the attacks."

Could be better stated to more accurately reflect
my own views as something like:

"Significant numbers of Arabs hostile to the
U.S. seem pretty supportive of the attacks."

Regards,
Mike Irwin


subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia article on : Honr. B. Carroll Reece,
 Tennessee

body:
Helga Hecht wrote:
>
> I know several of us worked for a while on an article
> about B. Carroll Reece. I do not find it in wikipedia now. I know I just read a mention of him in one the list messages. Can anyone who worked on it give me an idea as to what happened to the article ? Thanks a lot.
> H. Jonat

Helga, I did not work on the article but a search
turned up these articles:

Article text matches

1.German expulsion after World War II (2280 bytes)
2.List of poets (15391 bytes)

Perhaps it was merged into one of these.

There has also been some extensive discussion on
the list recently about deleting small or poor
stubs to improve our readers initial impressions
of our content quality.

The emerging consensus on the list seemed split
about fifty/fifty so it is possible that a random
editor has deleted this as being too small and
stubby.

I hope this was helpful.

Regards,
Mike Irwin


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia article on : Honr. B. Carroll Reece,  Tennessee

body:
Michael R. Irwin wrote:

>
>Helga Hecht wrote:
>
>>I know several of us worked for a while on an article
>>about B. Carroll Reece. I do not find it in wikipedia now. I know I just read a mention of him in one the list messages. Can anyone who worked on it give me an idea as to what happened to the article ? Thanks a lot.
>>H. Jonat
>>
>
>Helga, I did not work on the article but a search
>turned up these articles:
>
>Article text matches
>
>1.German expulsion after World War II (2280 bytes)
>2.List of poets (15391 bytes)
>

The poet in question is Byron H. Reece -- not relevant


from_name: Adam Williamson

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Hi there!

body:
Well, since I seem to have spent most of the last few days posting
wikipedia stuff, thought i'd pop my head up and say hi to the mailing
list. I was wondering where i'd find the tedious, long and
counter-productive arguments, and it looks like I hit paydirt! :). (No
offence intended to anyone - just an observation that long, tedious and
counter-productive arguments are entirely inevitably in any internet
system of a given complexity...) Have already redirected anything
involving the words "Helga", "jewish" or "holocaust" directly to trash.
;). Anyway, not much to say, except Hi!, and I hope the stuff i've
contributed has been useful and appreciated. Wikipedia seems like a
great project, and I hope it succeeds even more than it is at present.
Thanks everyone, bye!

(I'm user AdamWill. Just in case that's not close enough for my name for
everyone to twig. =>)
--
adamw


from_name: Jimmy Wales

in_reply_to: <F260pTyaGWpWrZ3YAbe00001935@hotmail.com>; from tmarklew@hotmail.com on Thu, Sep 05, 2002 at 08:43:02PM +0000

body:
Tim Marklew wrote:
> I would also ask that sysops should not generally sign contributions as
> sysops (i.e. writing "Ed Poor - Sysop").  It could be give the misleading
> impression that sysops are acting officially on behalf of Wikipedia, rather
> than acting as an individual contributor.

Yes, I think that should be socially unacceptable.  Anyone can be a
sysop just by asking, so it's really nothing.  We only reluctantly
have sysop status in the first place, to deal with some specific
technical problems.

In essence -- there are some commands (delete, remove) that have some
ramifications that people need to understand before using them, so
we'd prefer that people have been here for a little bit before using
those powers.  And there are true vandals, people who post random
crapola just to be funny or whatever.  We want sysops to be able to
ban those people, but we don't want people to get into ban wars, etc.,
so we restrict that ban power to sysops.

And then there are the problem cases, people like '24' and possibly
Helga -- these people aren't simple vandals, but neither are they
getting with the program in a constructive way.  I reserve the right
of final banning on those cases to myself, although of course I'm
probably too patient in seeking general consensus first.

--Jimbo


from_name: Helga Hecht

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Message 10  Wed 4 Sep 2002 06:30 by Dany..and other Internet kooks

body:
When you get bach to that message by daniwo59 at aol.com
you will find , that [[Dany]] titled his message:
Helga and other Internet kooks.
I am glag to see that no one has answered him on that (yet).
I, for one, object to Dany's namecalling. It is inappropriate and namecalling should not be a wikipedia function.
I will post the /talk, that took place here:
Aloha? had posted 50.000, Danny changed it to 5.000 . What is the number?
The next part was also taken out, which should be shown, especially in light of todays goings on and the previous talk, which seems to try to make them into a hate group, which they specifically reject.

Though they number just some 50000, their vociferous attacks against Zionism and Israel as a secular state have earned them considerable attention. They instead argue that the true Israel can only be reestablished with the coming of the Messiah. The Neturei Karta website shows Israeli police clobbering the Torah-True Neturei Karta. They stand for the rights of the Palestinians and have good relations with the PLO and other Palestinian and Muslim organizations. Nowhere on their website does it state, that they hate Jews or anyone else. They state that they are against the (militant) Zionists violence, against them supressing Palestinians and against the Zionists wars including the 1933 war-declaration then and the possibility of all-out war now.

Their website seems to say something to the effect of 100.000 followers?

H. Jonat

Helga, as the person who wrote the first draft of this article I do know a little about the subject. In fact, I did not look at the website when writing the article--I based it on my own independent research on the phenomenon of Neturei Karta, my close personal interactions with members of the community, and my readings and interpretations of their own texts and the texts of sociologists and anthropologists who studied them.

To clarify some of the points you bring up: a website is hardly an informative account of a group. Anybody can put up a website and say whatever they want about anything, including themselves. It is an interesting source of information, no doubt, but the Internet per se is not always a reliable source. As regards Neturei Karta, I have a lot of problems with the website. For one, it is based in America, when the overwhelming majority of genuine Neturei Karta members live in Jerusalem. Then, of course, the vast majority of members of Neturei Karta would not own a computer, since this would bring them into contact with the outside world, and that is something they shun. The numbers are based on statistics from the Municipality of Jerusalem to which I have had formal access over the past few years. There are other groups which identify with Neturei Karta, but they are not Neturei Karta (Karta is an Aramaic term for "the city", meaning Jerusalem). Other anti-Zionist ultra-Orthodox groups such as Satmar are not Neturei Karta.

I removed the section beginning with "The Neturei Karta website shows ... " Yes it does. Do you know why they were "clobbered"? Because they were throwing rocks and bottles at cars driving on a highway in Jerusalem on the Sabbath. They wanted the highway to be closed for the Sabbath. An ambulance carrying a heart attack victim was hit with one of their rocks. How do I know this? I was there. Despite what the website implies, they were not "clobbered" because they are anti-Zionist. For the most part, the Israeli government leaves them alone. They barely even collect taxes from them. As for hating Jews, if you will look in the record of this discussion, I actually rejected the notion that they were anti-Semitic. I wrote this article to offer a fair presentation of their views, even though personally I may not share them.

As for the "Zionist declaration of war," I have spoken with many Neturei Karta about many issues, including their attitudes toward Zionists, the Holocaust, and Nazism. Not one Neturei Karta member will tell you that the Jews or the Zionists initiated or sparked World War II. They do not even say that on their website. They do claim that Zionist actions made things worse for the Jews, and they do claim that the Holocaust was Divine retribution for the secular lifestyles of the Zionists. I will not get into a debate here about the way God works (if at all). I would like to examine their claim, which you seem to support. Looking at their website, which you cite, they give examples of how the Zionists made things worse. Hitler wanted to deport all the Jews from Europe to Mauritius (sounds like ethnic cleansing to me). The Zionists opposed it and they should have said yes, because in Neturei Karta's philosophy, Jews should be subservient to Gentiles until the coming of the Messiah. Now lets plug the statement into your assertion here and in the mailing list that the Holocaust was largely caused because some Jews (the Zionists) refused to be ethnically cleansed. Sorry, but that is anti-Semitic, and I do not use that term lightly. If I were to say that the German residents of Prussia were justly killed after World War II because they did not want to be expelled from Prussia, you could rightfully call me racist. How is the case of Jews in Europe any different.

An interesting anecdote is that Ruth Blau, the widow of the late leader of Neturei Karta, Rabbi Amram Blau, is a French Catholic convert to Judaism. She met her husband when she part of the French underground, helping to smuggle Jews out of Europe during the Nazi reign of terror. She would never tell you that the Jews were responsible for the Holocaust, even if she would say that the Holocaust was God's retribution for the sins of some Jews, including the Zionists.

Finally, Helga, like everyone has already said: Examine your sources, examine your citations. Not every website is historically accurate. Not every historical claim has basis. I've avoided getting into this debate until now, but Helga, please realize that there are other people out there whose professional and academic fields do encompass your own interests. We also know our stuff, so if you don't want to get into vociferous arguments, please make sure your facts and interpretations are valid. Danny

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Danny I appreciate all your information. Believe me, I did/do not want to get into this either. I do know that there are a lot more Jewish people opposed to the radical violence perpetuated by the current situation. I do know that a Lady Ambassador (name?) came from Israel was on an emergency trip and on Ted Koppel's Night Line. She warned about the militant brutal force and worse put upon by a rivaling faction against other Jews. There are ladies or grandmothers in grey (or black),opposing , with Israeli soldiers attending. There is a lot more going on, than what the official version wants you to believe. I do not wish harm on any one or any one group. Therefore I have this feeling, that getting previous happenings out in the open, can somehow make a difference. Now everyone wants to make this 1933 Declaration of War out to be a 'minor little none-issue', not worse mentioning. But when you read the wiki or any other article that says, "the Nazi's forbade Germans to buy from Jewish stores", then it makes a lot more sense to say 'why', and the 'why' is the Decleration of War. Another factor not readily mentioned, is the Deal between Germany and Jewish people (Zionists), who since before 1900 already moved to Palestine and who continued to do so under the Nazi dictatorship. They took a lot of money out of Germany and started building the Jewish State, (some program named Havala? or something like this). I would not argue about any of the loud arguments, because I do not know enough details on this. Therefore I ask questions. Which brings me to the question on the numbers again. I guess until we know, we should just leave the numbers off alltogether? H. Jonat

Helga, your ramblings here show that you have know idea what you are talking about, and I am being very polite in saying that. Personally, I find it insulting that you insinuate that I am a victim of some "official version" and not "the truth." Unlike you, I actually do know something about the topics mentioned here. For your information, we were talking about Neturei Karta, a reactionary group of a few thousand followers that opposes the state of Israel on principle, believing that Jews should be subservient to Gentiles until the Messiah comes. That is not some interpretation. That is what they say in their internal texts. I have read those texts. Women in Black is a grassroots organization of Israeli women opposed to the occupation of the West Bank. Yes, many Israelis are disturbed by the violence in Israeli society. I am also deeply concerned about the violence in Israeli society. This has little to do with Neturei Karta. It has to do with the Occupation. Period. Hitler and the Nazis did not forbid Germans to buy from Jews because of the so-called "Declaration of War." That is asinine. Are you ignoring Mein Kampf? Are you ignoring the Nazi campaign platform prior to Hitler coming to power? Are you ignoring Hitler's speeches and writings. We have records of all of them. We even have the records of Hitler's first public appearance at the German Worker's Party. (I have a copy in my office, if you'd like.) It was an anti-Semitic diatribe, plain and simple. It was also before any Nazi was elected to the Reichstag. Jews did not have any deal with the German government to move to Palestine. They fled Germany because of rampant anti-Semitism. As for your dates, political Zionism was founded in 1896. Herzl, the founder of the movement, negotiated unsuccessfully with the Kaiser to get a German protectorate in the region so that Jews could settle there. Until the 1930s, Jewish immigrants to Palestine came from Russia, not Germany. As for taking money out of Germany, they were fleeing for their lives. Some managed to take money out. Most did not. Most could not. It was illegal. Many spent all their money paying bribes to officials to get their children to England. It was called the Kindertransport. I am glad you admit you don't know much about this topic. It so happens that I do. As for the number of Neturei Karta members, at least you admit that you do not know it. Once again, I have studied this issue. I do have reasons for the numbers I give, and not just some stupid website. If you don't know the subject matter, don't writre about it. Better to be thought a fool than to open your mouth and prove it beyond a doubt. A very irate Danny
------------------
To this [[Neturei Karta]]/Talk beteen Dany and myself I want to add, that 1. The number is still not substanciated.
2. Not only the Neturei Karta, but also the http://www.jewsnotzionist.org/ and the Woman in Black (or Women for Peace) http://adot.com/green/wib.html are demonstrating against Israeli violence etc. Contrary to Dany's denial of the there are people , who claim to have information, that in fact the Havaara undertaking was handled by later Israeli prime ministers incl Ben Gurion, Moshe Sharret(or Shertok), Golda Meir, Levi Eshkol http://www.codoh.com/zionweb/zionmythgar.2.html
google.com : Havaara , or Google.com Women in Balck, gives a number of websites.
I am only bringing all this up, because of Dany's bad choice of a website title: Helga and other Internet cooks. I also want to substanciate my talk to Dany, that there are a lot more facts , that the general public is not aware of. I also stated that I do not want to get anyone hurt and that I have a great concern for people wanting to make war, war war... It was also before I found out that Dany works in the Holocaust memorial, which some writers
including Jewish writers, might call the Holocaust industry.

This is all I want to say about this.

H. Jonat

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subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia article on : Honr. B. Carroll Reece, Tennessee

body:
I have added a stub at [[B Carroll Reece]].

Fred Bauder wrote:

> At 02:04 PM 9/6/02 +0800, you wrote:
> >I know several of us worked for a while on an article
> >about B. Carroll Reece. I do not find it in wikipedia now. I know I just
> read a mention of him in one the list messages. Can anyone who worked on it
> give me an idea as to what happened to the article ? Thanks a lot.
> >H. Jonat
>
> It appears to have been deleted; although no one is coming forth to say
> exactly why. The only thing of significance he appears to have done is to
> characterize ethnic cleansing of Germans in Poland as genocide in 1957.
> That is included in the wikipedia article on German removal after World War
> II.
>
> As far as it being removed as a stub, it seems have been a rightous stub in
> that although he had a life, and was a member of congress and has a museum
> in eastern Tennessee named after him, a reasonable article is going to be
> pretty short.
>
> Fred
>
> [Wikipedia-l]
> To manage your subscription to this list, please go here:
> http://www.nupedia.com/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Message 10 Wed 4 Sep 2002 06:30 by Dany..and other Internet kooks

body:
In my previous message objecting to Danny's message: Helga and other internet kooks , I submitted three websites.
Two of the websites have mistakes
They should be: http://www.newsnotzionists.org/
and http://www.codoh.com/zionweb/zionmythgar2.html
The 3rd one: http://adot.com/green/wib.html
is correct
H. Jonat
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from_name: Fred Bauder

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia article on : Honr. B. Carroll
  Reece, Tennessee

body:
At 02:04 PM 9/6/02 +0800, you wrote:
>I know several of us worked for a while on an article
>about B. Carroll Reece. I do not find it in wikipedia now. I know I just
read a mention of him in one the list messages. Can anyone who worked on it
give me an idea as to what happened to the article ? Thanks a lot.
>H. Jonat

It appears to have been deleted; although no one is coming forth to say
exactly why. The only thing of significance he appears to have done is to
characterize ethnic cleansing of Germans in Poland as genocide in 1957.
That is included in the wikipedia article on German removal after World War
II.

As far as it being removed as a stub, it seems have been a rightous stub in
that although he had a life, and was a member of congress and has a museum
in eastern Tennessee named after him, a reasonable article is going to be
pretty short.

Fred


from_name: Poor, Edmund W

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Apology

body:
I am sorry I over-reached my bounds with my unilateral threat to ban GrahamN. I will not do such a thing again.

Thanks to Tim Enchanter, Vicki, KQ, LDC and others who pointed out my error.

Contritely,

Ed Poor


from_name: Karen AKA Kajikit

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Hi there!

body:
Adam Williamson wrote:
>
> Well, since I seem to have spent most of the last few days posting
> wikipedia stuff, thought i'd pop my head up and say hi to the mailing
> list. I was wondering where i'd find the tedious, long and
> counter-productive arguments, and it looks like I hit paydirt! :). (No
> offence intended to anyone - just an observation that long, tedious and
> counter-productive arguments are entirely inevitably in any internet
> system of a given complexity...) Have already redirected anything
> involving the words "Helga", "jewish" or "holocaust" directly to trash.
> ;). Anyway, not much to say, except Hi!, and I hope the stuff i've
> contributed has been useful and appreciated. Wikipedia seems like a
> great project, and I hope it succeeds even more than it is at present.
> Thanks everyone, bye!

Hi, welcome...

Yep, every group has somewhere to argue and this appears to be it!
Thanks for the idea of making an extra filter for my inbox to remove
conversations I'm not the slightest bit interested int... I hadn't
thought of it.

--

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!


from_name: Imran Ghory

subject: [Wikipedia-l] OffTopic: Looking for lots of XML (docbook) documents

body:
On 2 Sep 2002, at 19:11, Stephen Gilbert wrote:

> You might try the Linux Documentation Project
> (http://www.tldp.org/). I believe they use a
> simplified  version of Docbook called LinuxDoc.

Actually they use variety including both Docbook and Linuxdoc,
last time I checked there were about 200 in Linuxdoc and about
150 in Docbook.

Imran


from_name: lcrocker at nupedia.com

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Ban warning to GrahamN

body:
> I've been thinking about this all day, and now I fear
> that I may have caused more trouble than I bargained for.
> The cure is worse than the disease.

I don't think that's related to your actions specifically,
just to the fact that you brought the issue to the attention
of more people, and more of us told the hotheads to cool off
for a while.  I don't think that's a bad result at all.
The article pages on which they were fighting (e.g., "Anti-
semitism") are actually pretty good articles at the moment,
so there's no immediate need for revision.  And I've noticed
Graham at least making useful edits to non-controversial
pages in the last day or two. I think that's a fine result.

I'm also sympathetic to the possibility that maybe one way to
attract and keep more experts is to be less tolerant of nonsense
and more liberal with blocks and other "official" sanctions.


body:
I know several of us worked for a while on an article
about B. Carroll Reece. I do not find it in wikipedia now. I know I just read a mention of him in one the list messages. Can anyone who worked on it give me an idea as to what happened to the article ? Thanks a lot.
H. Jonat
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subject: [Wikipedia-l] Misc. messages

body:
I am looking at all the messages and there are too many for me to all answer individually. Therefore I am sending a short condensed note:

Michael R. Irwin, I agree with your approach on including information. It is a very good way of handling difficult situations and I hope that your recomendations will be followed.

Ed Poor, you are really handling the 'budding heads' situations very well, by stepping in as a mediator.

I agree with Vicki Rosenzweig..to let someone else write it.

Mav, I like the filter idea, thanks.

Fred Bauder (?), I never believe just one site or one source and I always  try to check as many sources as possible.

Jimbo Wales, the 'How to list' is fine, except one point says something to the effect, that I supposedly accused someone of trying to hide things.
I wrote something in general, not specifically wikipedians. But then again, why are there articles disappearing in wikipedia ?

To all of you, who wrote a welcome note, after my first message, thanks again to all of you.
H. Jonat

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from_name: Bryan Derksen

body:
At 01:48 PM 06/09/02 -0700, lcrocker at nupedia.com wrote:
>I'm also sympathetic to the possibility that maybe one way to
>attract and keep more experts is to be less tolerant of nonsense
>and more liberal with blocks and other "official" sanctions.

I've been thinking along these lines myself, but didn't want to be the
first to say it. :)

Putting up with disruptive participants is noble and useful up to a point,
especially if these participants are also providing some positive input
along with the nonsense. But past that point it starts to drive away lots
of other participants who don't want to put up with them any more, and one
has to decide whether it's worth it.

Banning someone for being disruptive is not necessarily the top of a
"slippery slope" towards censorship, as long as we're careful about doing
it and keep a watchful eye on ourselves. On the other hand, letting
disruptive yahoos get away with everything will eventually mean that only
the disruptive yahoos stick around.


body:
I've been thinking about this all day, and now I fear that I may have caused more trouble than I bargained for. The cure is worse than the disease.

My "threat to ban" seems to have resulted in near-unanimous disapproval from Axel, Jimbo and every other contributor I admire and respect.

All that remains is a ghostly, eerie silence on the Arab-Israeli article pages.

Not only was I wrong, but I got the wrong result. (I'm not sure which is worse.)

Free speech (as LDC might say) and no vandalism -- that's all we hope for, but by monkeying around with the "Ed Poor, sysop" thing I've thrown a monkey-wrench in the works.

It may be some weeks before I live this down. :-(

More contritely than ever,

Ed Poor


from_name: Daniel Mayer

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Kooks and trolls: Rant about losing great contributors

body:
>And then there are the problem cases,
>people like '24' and possibly Helga --
>these people aren't simple vandals, but
>neither are they getting with the program
>in a constructive way.  I reserve the right
of final banning on those cases to myself,
>although of course I'm probably too patient
>in seeking general consensus first.
>
>--Jimbo

I mean no disrespect whatsoever, but some of this
patience you and others (including me) have had could
very well have resulted in JHK's, Michael Tinkler's
and unknown other's leaving the project in disgust.

Our current lax enforcement of our etiquette policies
along with our tolerance of kooks and trolls seem
hostile to experts and many others -- no wonder we
keep driving them away.

I say we should be a bit more diligent in enforcing
our Wikipetiquette policy and in informing those who
would be kooks and trolls that their kooking (is that
a word?) and trolling is not welcome here. See
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipetiquette

I'm sick and tired of loosing good, no great,
contributors because of our lax attitude in these
matters.

This is just my opinion - take it or leave it. I'm
/not/ speaking as a sysop; I'm speaking as a greatly
annoyed Wikipedian who already misses working with
Jules (and who also worries about our history articles
being over-run by kooks now that JHK is gone).

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)

__________________________________________________
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subject: [Wikipedia-l] Apology

body:
"Poor, Edmund W" wrote:
>
> I am sorry I over-reached my bounds with my unilateral threat to ban GrahamN. I will not do such a thing again.
>
> Thanks to Tim Enchanter, Vicki, KQ, LDC and others who pointed out my error.
>
> Contritely,
>
> Ed Poor

Thanks for acknowledging the error and committing
to improvement for the future.

Respectfully,
Mike Irwin


from_name: The Cunctator

body:
On Fri, 2002-09-06 at 16:48, lcrocker at nupedia.com wrote:
>
> I'm also sympathetic to the possibility that maybe one way to
> attract and keep more experts is to be less tolerant of nonsense
> and more liberal with blocks and other "official" sanctions.

And I'm entirely unsympathetic to that.

In fact, I think we should ban LDC for making that kind of comment.


body:
On Fri, 2002-09-06 at 17:35, Bryan Derksen wrote:

> Banning someone for being disruptive is not necessarily the top of a
> "slippery slope" towards censorship, as long as we're careful about doing
> it and keep a watchful eye on ourselves. On the other hand, letting
> disruptive yahoos get away with everything will eventually mean that only
> the disruptive yahoos stick around.

This would be a valid argument if the only way to prevent
"disruptive yahoos" from "get[ting] away with everything" is to ban
them.

But it isn't. Rather, merciless editing and ignoring personality has
worked every time so far.

We already have sufficient policies in place for banning people. The
harm in expanding them would outweigh the benefits.


from_name: Brion VIBBER

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Honr. B. Carroll Reece, Tennessee

body:
Helga Hecht wrote:
> The coincidence is such, that not only the B. Carroll Reece article disappeared
 > without a trace (?) , but my stubs or articles in progress about
Communists in
 > America also seem to be gone.

Maveric moved your [[American Communists]] stub to the meta wiki, you
can find it here:
http://meta.wikipedia.com/wiki.phtml?title=American_Communists

> Does wiki have a file for deleated topics, or is it just gone, once it is deleated?

Depends on when it was deleted; the current version of the database has
periodic backups back to July 30 (the Reece article doesn't appear in
any of them), and for relatively recent deletions there's also an
archive table in the database which stores deleted articles (but doesn't
contain the Reece article).

Oddly enough, Reece also doesn't appear in the phase II deletion log[1]
(February 28 through  July 19) or the phase III deletion logs[2].

So, who _did_ delete it, and when?

[1] http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Old_deletion_log
[2] http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Deletion_log
     (see history for prior to August 15)

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject: [Wikitech-l] Time zone discrepancy

body:
Pierre Abbat wrote:
> Why is the German Wiki on Pacific, when the English one is on UTC? How is
> someone in Brazil or Australia supposed to answer the question, since
> southern DST is out of phase with northern?

Because Lee forgot to change the German message file to say UTC. :) I'll
fix it.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


from_name: Mark Christensen

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Experts, software, and community

body:
I've given some thought to what Larry, Lee, Jimbo, Karl, and others have
said about the need for experts in the free encyclopedia movement, and
I'd like to try to synthesize some of that info, and throw in a couple
of thoughts of my own.

It seems to me that there is some disagreement about a number of issues.

First, the need for experts. IT seems to me that Larry's statement that
we need more expert input in the "free encyclopedia movement" elicited
three responses.

1) The kind of expertise needed to write good encyclopedia articles on
the subject of economics is different than the kind of expertise needed
to get a PhD in economics.
2) Motivated and reasonably well educated armatures can become "experts"
at writing encyclopedia articles.
3) It would be easy to drive away motivated armatures by courting
"experts" in the wrong way.

I don't know whether or not Larry agrees with these three caveats.  But
I suppose it doesn't matter as he's left the decision making process in
our hands.  I certainly think the above three points are all true, and
it seems like we have some consensus on this.  That said, I also agree
with Larry that we should work hard to gather subject matter experts
into the "free encyclopedia movement," as long as we take the above the
above caveats into consideration.

To that end I think we really should consider some ways to help make the
free encyclopedia movement expert friendly.  Larry's suggestion that we
work hard at reviving an Nupedia like project, which would be open to
experts only, so the experts can be protected from the trials and
tribulations of the wikipedia process -- is only one proposal and I
think we should explore a wider variety of options.

Basically, what I'm saying here is that if Larry's basic thesis is, "We
need to DO SOMETHING to attract experts," we're stuck debating side
issues.  The real question (and I do think it is an open question) is:
"Do we need to do something to attract experts?"  As I said earlier, I
tend to think the answer is: "Yes, but we need to be careful not to do
the wrong thing."

I'd suggest that we start out with some very basic things: inviting
experts to get involved, intentionally looking for experts who do get
involved and working hard to make their entrance into the wikipedia
community enjoyable, cultivating an atmosphere of congeniality and
respect for experts and motivated amateurs alike.

Perhaps just doing that regularly for a couple of years will be enough,
but perhaps not...

-- Mark Christensen


subject: [Wikitech-l] Time zone discrepancy

body:
> Why is the German Wiki on Pacific, when the English one is on UTC?
> How is someone in Brazil or Australia supposed to answer the
> question, since southern DST is out of phase with northern?

There's only one server, and it's now on UTC.  The /text/ of the
German wiki is incorrect, and just hasn't been updated (I think it's
correct in CVS, but since I'm not a German speaker I'll have to
rely on Magnus to confirm that).


body:
At 05:42 PM 06/09/02 -0400, The Cunctator wrote:
>On Fri, 2002-09-06 at 17:35, Bryan Derksen wrote:
>
> > Banning someone for being disruptive is not necessarily the top of a
> > "slippery slope" towards censorship, as long as we're careful about doing
> > it and keep a watchful eye on ourselves. On the other hand, letting
> > disruptive yahoos get away with everything will eventually mean that only
> > the disruptive yahoos stick around.
>
>This would be a valid argument if the only way to prevent
>"disruptive yahoos" from "get[ting] away with everything" is to ban
>them.

Odd bit of logic there, not sure if I can untangle it. Of course banning
people isn't the _only_ way to stop disruptive people from disrupting,
there are other gentler strategies to try beforehand. But what I'm
objecting to is a reluctance to use banning _after_ those other strategies
have failed, which means that disruptive people who are immune to those
other strategies (the merciless editing and ignoring you mention below)
_do_ "get away with everything" because there's nothing else we can do to
stop them.

>But it isn't. Rather, merciless editing and ignoring personality has
>worked every time so far.

It's also resulted in the loss of a number of excellent contributors. I
believe that relying on merciless editing and ignoring doesn't work _well_,
and that being more willing to ban disruptive people will result in a
higher quality of Wikipedia overall.

Maybe we should try it and see.


subject: [Wikitech-l] Time zone discrepancy

body:
lcrocker at nupedia.com wrote:
>>Why is the German Wiki on Pacific, when the English one is on UTC?
>>How is someone in Brazil or Australia supposed to answer the
>>question, since southern DST is out of phase with northern?
>
> There's only one server, and it's now on UTC.  The /text/ of the
> German wiki is incorrect, and just hasn't been updated (I think it's
> correct in CVS, but since I'm not a German speaker I'll have to
> rely on Magnus to confirm that).

I updated the live server to the CVS version on the assumption that it's
more correct than it was previously. Also, I changed the server's time
zone config from UCT to UTC, so it spits out the more usual acronym in
the time for signatures, etc.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


body:
On Friday 06 September 2002 06:16 pm,  The Cunctator wrote:
> But it isn't. Rather, merciless editing and ignoring personality has
> worked every time so far.

If you consider the fact that Michael Tinkler and JHK leaving the project due
to kook fatigue as "working" then I would have to agree with you.

> We already have sufficient policies in place for banning people. The
> harm in expanding them would outweigh the benefits.

I don't think anybody is talking about expanding any current polices. What is
needed is some enforcement of policies that we already have.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)


body:
At 08:14 AM 9/7/02 +0800, you wrote:
>
>While I looked Reece up on google, I came across information about the
committee he worked on and text of an article 'Tax Exempt Subversion'
>http://www.biblebelievers.org.au/reeceart.htm
>
>This mentions the problems with the Communists infiltrating America and I
would like to have someone read this and tell me, if any of this should be
mentioned in wiki.
>
>[M}y stubs or articles in progress about Communists in America also seem
to be gone.
>
>H. Jonat

Deleted too. A little different dynamic operating here though. The source
you mention comes from the McCarthy era and seemingly, so does your level
of understanding. The communist movement did infiltrate labor unions,
churches, the boy scouts, and probably foundations, and created front
organizations. However, it does not do to simply buy into McCarthyite
charges and hysteria and incorporate them into a wiki article.

Information on this topic requires genuine expertise or using information
from reliable sources. And there are many. Many people became disillusioned
with the Communist party and many of them wrote memoirs and there is now
information from the archives of the KGB available. You are going to have
to get a whole lot better at using this information before you are going to
be able to work in this area here without causing more heat than light.

What I saw of your work was not well done, (something about communists
infiltrating the Truman administration). My thought at the time is that you
know very little about America and are very poorly qualified to try to deal
with a subtle and difficult area of American history such as this.

Just your phrasing of the topic, "Communists infiltrating America", betrays
that. American Communism is pretty much a home grown product.

Fred Bauder


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Protected pages

body:
Tom Parmenter wrote:
> Why isn't freezing the topic and the talk page worth discussing?
> Banning is personal.  Freezing the discussion for a day, week, or
> month is impersonal.

Freezing articles is the very height of anti-wiki -- not only can't the
warring parties contribute, *no one* can contribute to the article in
question except the sysop "cabal". (And what if one party to the dispute
*is* a sysop, as seems to happen not infrequently?)

The only reason the main page is frozen is to discourage petty vandalism
on our front door. (And the main page, I will point out, is not an
encyclopedia article.)

Which reminds me... here's my periodic sweep of all the articles
currently frozen:

[[Main_Page]]
   See above.

[[Seneca]]
   There's no justification for this in its very light edit history. No
talk page. I assume some sysop hit the "protect" link by mistake...?
I've unprotected it.

[[Titulus_Regius]]
   Isis protected it, giving as justification in the talk page that it
contains a source text. I've unprotected it, as it is ultimately an
_article_, large citation or no large citation. There are better ways to
create and reference an uneditable document if you want to, and none of
them include blocking out edit access to encyclopedia articles.

[[Wikipedia:Upload_log]]
[[Wikipedia:Deletion_log]]
[[Wikipedia:Blocked_IPs]]
   Auto-maintained log pages that should not be manually edited.

[[Wikipedia:Text_of_the_GNU_Free_Documentation_License]]
   We need to have a copy of the license in the work, and that
definitely shouldn't be editable! Note that this is *not* an
encyclopedia article, unlike [[Titulus Regius]]. The article *about* the
GFDL is freely editable.

[[Wikipedia:What_Wikipedia_is_not]]
[[Wikipedia:Neutral_point_of_view]]
[[Wikipedia:Copyrights]]
[[Wikipedia:Policies_and_guidelines]]
[[Wikipedia:IP_probation_watchlist]]
[[Wikipedia:Most_common_Wikipedia_faux_pas]]
[[Wikipedia:Policy_on_permanent_deletion_of_pages]]
[[Wikipedia:Naming_conventions]]
[[Wikipedia:Administrators]]
[[Wikipedia:Policy]]
[[Wikipedia:Database_queries]]
   Various policy and help pages. I'm a lot more leery of these being
protected, but again they're not encyclopedia articles so it's not
_completely_ anti-the-whole-point-of-the-exercise.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


body:
At 10:45 AM 9/7/02 +1000, you wrote:
>
>On Sat, 07 Sep 2002 09:22:07 Mark Christensen wrote:
>> I'd suggest that we start out with some very basic things: inviting
>> experts to get involved, intentionally looking for experts who do get
>> involved and working hard to make their entrance into the wikipedia
>> community enjoyable, cultivating an atmosphere of congeniality and
>> respect for experts and motivated amateurs alike.
>>
>
>This poses the question: how do we invite experts to get involved?
>I've often thought of approaching, say, Barry Jones (former Australian
>politician, quiz champion, author of several reference works, and
>general smarty-pants) to contribute, but how to pose the invitation
>in such a way as to make it sufficiently inviting?
>
>My current thoughts are thus:
>
>1)	Make sure we have completed short articles on all the
>Australian Prime Ministers, for example.
>2)	Write him a note (and send it to him by snail-mail, because a)
>it's probably easier to find a snail-mail address than email, and b)
>the effort expended might demonstrate that we're serious,
>inviting him to review those articles
>and comment - and point out that if he wishes, he can simply
>edit them online.
>3)	Watch and see what happens.
>
>The key points are:
>a)	That there is something already there I can point him
>to, so he can see that contributing would be useful.
>b)	Get the idea that he can contribute directly, with no
>extra effort, in sideways.
>
>Barry Jones I've picked on as a likely case because he was
>writing books about a free public network as an information
>repository back in 1980, but I'm sure there are plenty of others.
>
>What do you think?

I think it's a good idea. After I wrote the page on Jeffrey Moussaieff
Masson I was looking at his web page and dropped him a note about Wikipedia.

No answer, and I don't suppose he even logged on, but never hurts to try.

Fred


body:
On Friday 06 September 2002 06:16 pm, you wrote:
> It may be some weeks before I live this down. :-(
>
> More contritely than ever,
>
> Ed Poor

If it makes you feel any better I almost lost my sysophood by stopping an
edit war by protecting an article and trying to reach some consensus on what
should go into the article. I'm still a little bitter about this but I've
moved on. You will too.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)

PS I'm sorry if the time on this post is a year off -- I've been having BIOS
issues.


from_name: Pierre Abbat

subject: [Wikitech-l] Time zone discrepancy

body:
I just created an account on the German Wikipedia and am setting my
preferences. I see the following notice:

Geben Sie die Anzahl der Stunden ein, die zwischen Ihrer Zeitzone und
U.S.-Westk?stenzeit liegen. F?r Deutschland "9" eintragen.

But on the English Wikipedia it says:

Enter number of hours your local time differs from server time (UTC).

Why is the German Wiki on Pacific, when the English one is on UTC? How is
someone in Brazil or Australia supposed to answer the question, since
southern DST is out of phase with northern?

phma


from_name: koyaanisqatsi at nupedia.com

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Protected pages

body:
Brion Wrote:
>Tom Parmenter wrote:
>> Why isn't freezing the topic and the talk page worth discussing?
>> Banning is personal.  Freezing the discussion for a day, week, or
>> month is impersonal.
>
>Freezing articles is the very height of anti-wiki -- not only can't the
>warring parties contribute, *no one* can contribute to the article in
>question except the sysop "cabal". (And what if one party to the dispute
>*is* a sysop, as seems to happen not infrequently?)

Bigger problems than that--we'd need a new class of protection on articles, because sysops can still protect "protected" articles.  So the result would be to let sysops edit the article and not anyone else.  Wikipedia would face a firestorm of criticism, and for good reason.  (Some clueless sysop who looks a lot like me would probably go in and clean up typos or something, completely ignorant of the surrounding controversy.)

kq


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Protected pages

body:
So I write this below and send it to myself instead of wikipedia-l.  Maybe I should be unsysop'd merely by virtue of my comical absent-mindedness.

You Wrote:
>I wrote:
>>Bigger problems than that--we'd need a new class of protection on articles, because sysops can still protect "protected" articles.
>
>I mean, /edit/ protected articles....
>
>kq


from_name: Tom Parmenter

body:
|From: lcrocker at nupedia.com
|Cc:
|Sender: wikipedia-l-admin at nupedia.com
|X-BeenThere: wikipedia-l at nupedia.com
|X-Mailman-Version: 2.0.4
|Precedence: bulk
|Reply-To: wikipedia-l at nupedia.com
|List-Help: <mailto:wikipedia-l-request at nupedia.com?subject=help>
|List-Post: <mailto:wikipedia-l at nupedia.com>
|List-Subscribe: <http://www.nupedia.com/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l>,
|	<mailto:wikipedia-l-request at nupedia.com?subject=subscribe>
|List-Id: An unmoderated discussion of all things Wikipedia <wikipedia-l.nupedia.com>
|List-Unsubscribe: <http://www.nupedia.com/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l>,
|	<mailto:wikipedia-l-request at nupedia.com?subject=unsubscribe>
|List-Archive: <http://www.nupedia.com/pipermail/wikipedia-l/>
|Date: Fri, 6 Sep 2002 13:48:04 -0700
|
|> I've been thinking about this all day, and now I fear
|> that I may have caused more trouble than I bargained for.
|> The cure is worse than the disease.
|
|I don't think that's related to your actions specifically,
|just to the fact that you brought the issue to the attention
|of more people, and more of us told the hotheads to cool off
|for a while.  I don't think that's a bad result at all.
|The article pages on which they were fighting (e.g., "Anti-
|semitism") are actually pretty good articles at the moment,
|so there's no immediate need for revision.  And I've noticed
|Graham at least making useful edits to non-controversial
|pages in the last day or two. I think that's a fine result.
|
|I'm also sympathetic to the possibility that maybe one way to
|attract and keep more experts is to be less tolerant of nonsense
|and more liberal with blocks and other "official" sanctions.
|

I have moderated two mailing lists and it is very common for quiet to
descend following even the mildest reproofs from the moderator.  Both
my lists were kind of sensitive, one was for addicts and alcoholics,
of which I was not either, and the other was for my company where I
had to let free speech reign without letting the list get too
offensive.  That is, in both cases I had to censor, but with the
lightest possible hand.  I usually let things run their course until
actual insults, cussing, accusations appeared, but whenever I finally
stepped in to a dispute or flying insults it worked and no one ever
accused me of being a fascist.  And it was always quiet for a couple
of weeks.

It's easy to tell when pages are getting out of hand from watching
recent changes, so if no one likes my idea of freezing pages (I guess
not, no response anyway), then some of you folks with authority ought
to be prepared to do what Ed did (with a slightly lighter hand) and
sort of jump in quietly and  tell everyone to cool it a bit.

Tom Parmenter
Ortolan88


body:
|X-Sender: bderksen at pop.srv.ualberta.ca
|From: Bryan Derksen <bryan.derksen at ualberta.ca>
|Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed
|Sender: wikipedia-l-admin at nupedia.com
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|List-Subscribe: <http://www.nupedia.com/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l>,
|	<mailto:wikipedia-l-request at nupedia.com?subject=subscribe>
|List-Id: An unmoderated discussion of all things Wikipedia <wikipedia-l.nupedia.com>
|List-Unsubscribe: <http://www.nupedia.com/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l>,
|	<mailto:wikipedia-l-request at nupedia.com?subject=unsubscribe>
|List-Archive: <http://www.nupedia.com/pipermail/wikipedia-l/>
|Date: Fri, 06 Sep 2002 20:12:25 -0600
|
|At 05:42 PM 06/09/02 -0400, The Cunctator wrote:
|>On Fri, 2002-09-06 at 17:35, Bryan Derksen wrote:
|>
|> > Banning someone for being disruptive is not necessarily the top of a
|> > "slippery slope" towards censorship, as long as we're careful about doing
|> > it and keep a watchful eye on ourselves. On the other hand, letting
|> > disruptive yahoos get away with everything will eventually mean that only
|> > the disruptive yahoos stick around.
|>
|>This would be a valid argument if the only way to prevent
|>"disruptive yahoos" from "get[ting] away with everything" is to ban
|>them.
|
|Odd bit of logic there, not sure if I can untangle it. Of course banning
|people isn't the _only_ way to stop disruptive people from disrupting,
|there are other gentler strategies to try beforehand. But what I'm
|objecting to is a reluctance to use banning _after_ those other strategies
|have failed, which means that disruptive people who are immune to those
|other strategies (the merciless editing and ignoring you mention below)
|_do_ "get away with everything" because there's nothing else we can do to
|stop them.
|
|>But it isn't. Rather, merciless editing and ignoring personality has
|>worked every time so far.
|
|It's also resulted in the loss of a number of excellent contributors. I
|believe that relying on merciless editing and ignoring doesn't work _well_,
|and that being more willing to ban disruptive people will result in a
|higher quality of Wikipedia overall.
|
|Maybe we should try it and see.
|

Why isn't freezing the topic and the talk page worth discussing?
Banning is personal.  Freezing the discussion for a day, week, or
month is impersonal.

Tom Parmenter
Ortolan 88


from_name: Ray Saintonge

body:
Daniel Mayer wrote:

>On Friday 06 September 2002 10:01 pm, you wrote:
>
>>Why isn't freezing the topic and the talk page worth discussing?
>>Banning is personal.  Freezing the discussion for a day, week, or
>>month is impersonal.
>>
>>Tom Parmenter
>>Ortolan 88
>>
>
>Good question - I tried just that I almost lost my sysop status.
>
I consider myself to be more on the laissez faire end of the the
spectrum when it comes to these issues.  I have already complained when
I have considered someone to be acting heavy-handedly.  Nevertheless I
think that some discussion on Tom's proposal is warranted.

I agree that freezing  is a far less drastic step than banning, but some
guidelines would need to be worked out first, among which:   it should
not be used by an active participant in an edit war.  It should be for a
definite period, with that fact being clearly shown on the face of the
article.  Freezing the subject page does not mean the related talk page
is frozen.
Ec


body:
On Fri, 2002-09-06 at 22:30, Tom Parmenter wrote:

>
> Why isn't freezing the topic and the talk page worth discussing?
> Banning is personal.  Freezing the discussion for a day, week, or
> month is impersonal.

Freezing discussion shouldn't really be necessary...freezing articles
is a reasonable concept.


body:
On Friday 06 September 2002 10:01 pm, you wrote:
> Why isn't freezing the topic and the talk page worth discussing?
> Banning is personal. ?Freezing the discussion for a day, week, or
> month is impersonal. ?
>
> Tom Parmenter
> Ortolan 88

Good question - I tried just that I almost lost my sysop status.

--- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)


body:
Fred Bauder wrote:

>A little different dynamic operating here though. The source
>you mention comes from the McCarthy era and seemingly, so does your level
>of understanding. The communist movement did infiltrate labor unions,
>churches, the boy scouts, and probably foundations, and created front
>organizations. However, it does not do to simply buy into McCarthyite
>charges and hysteria and incorporate them into a wiki article.
>
>Information on this topic requires genuine expertise or using information
>from reliable sources. And there are many. Many people became disillusioned
>with the Communist party and many of them wrote memoirs and there is now
>information from the archives of the KGB available. You are going to have
>to get a whole lot better at using this information before you are going to
>be able to work in this area here without causing more heat than light.
>
>What I saw of your work was not well done, (something about communists
>infiltrating the Truman administration). My thought at the time is that you
>know very little about America and are very poorly qualified to try to deal
>with a subtle and difficult area of American history such as this.
>
>Just your phrasing of the topic, "Communists infiltrating America", betrays
>that. American Communism is pretty much a home grown product.
>
>Fred Bauder
>
Some of your comments to Helga may be a little over the top, even if
they all turn out to be true.  In the last couple days I have seen her
come on these pages and make an effort to communicate.  That's certainly
progress from where we were on this two weeks ago, and that merits praise.

I agree that the story of American anti-communism  is a complex one that
wont depend on kooky stories about infiltrating boy scouts, or in KGB
files.  The story of communism in America goes back at least to the post
civil war reconstruction era.

Ec


body:
On Fri, 2002-09-06 at 22:12, Bryan Derksen wrote:
> It's also resulted in the loss of a number of excellent contributors. I
> believe that relying on merciless editing and ignoring doesn't work _well_,
> and that being more willing to ban disruptive people will result in a
> higher quality of Wikipedia overall.

Which excellent contributors? What's the particular story?

You have to understand, I'm by nature skeptical of arguments that call
for increased levels of hard security. There's usually a better way. I'm
also skeptical of arguments that would be used against me.

On a side note, it may not be healthy for people to be contributors
(espcially in a manage-the-Wikipedia way) ad infinitum; just as
representative political systems work best with a constant flux of
members, I suspect Wikipedia will too.


from_name: Stephen Gilbert

body:
--- The Cunctator <cunctator at kband.com> wrote:
> On Fri, 2002-09-06 at 22:12, Bryan Derksen wrote:
> > It's also resulted in the loss of a number of
> excellent contributors. I
> > believe that relying on merciless editing and
> ignoring doesn't work _well_,
> > and that being more willing to ban disruptive
> people will result in a
> > higher quality of Wikipedia overall.
>
> Which excellent contributors? What's the particular
> story?

Michael Tinkler and Julie Hoffman Kemp are two off the
top of my head. Note that they are both historians,
and many of our less than cooperative contributors
operate on history articles.

> You have to understand, I'm by nature skeptical of
> arguments that call
> for increased levels of hard security. There's
> usually a better way. I'm
> also skeptical of arguments that would be used
> against me.

I am as well. I believe that soft security is often
the best way to go. But not always.

Stephen G.

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


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Protected pages

body:
On Friday 06 September 2002 10:01 pm, Brion VIBBER wrote:
> Freezing articles is the very height of anti-wiki -- not only can't the
> warring parties contribute, *no one* can contribute to the article in
> question except the sysop "cabal".

The whole point is to stop edit wars by forcing a truce. Edit wars in my
opinion /are/ a form of highly directed vandalism and need to be stopped
(they sap user resources in a similar way as bold-faced systemic vandalism).

The only other 'meta' function we have is to block an individual (usually a
kook who is fighting with several sane-minded Wikipedians) -- which in my
world is /a lot/ more morally repugnant than temporarily protecting a page
(we are also talking about ways to lower kook fatigue aren't we?).

Nobody is proposing that the articles be protected forever - just temporarily
so that the parties can cool down (and hopefully the kook go away -- they
often feed on attention and controversy in the same way trolls do).

I've said enough about this already (and with the new wording on the Main
Page we would be lying if any /articles/ were actually protected --- without
another caveat, of course).

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Protected pages

body:
--- Brion VIBBER <brion at pobox.com> wrote:
> [[Wikipedia:What_Wikipedia_is_not]]
> [[Wikipedia:Neutral_point_of_view]]
> [[Wikipedia:Copyrights]]
> [[Wikipedia:Policies_and_guidelines]]
> [[Wikipedia:IP_probation_watchlist]]
> [[Wikipedia:Most_common_Wikipedia_faux_pas]]
> [[Wikipedia:Policy_on_permanent_deletion_of_pages]]
> [[Wikipedia:Naming_conventions]]
> [[Wikipedia:Administrators]]
> [[Wikipedia:Policy]]
> [[Wikipedia:Database_queries]]
>    Various policy and help pages. I'm a lot more
> leery of these being
> protected, but again they're not encyclopedia
> articles so it's not
> _completely_ anti-the-whole-point-of-the-exercise.

I didn't know that certain policy pages were frozen.
What was the reasoning behind it?

Stephen Gilbert

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


body:
>> Why isn't freezing the topic and the talk page worth discussing?
>> Banning is personal.  Freezing the discussion for a day, week, or
>> month is impersonal.
>>
>> Tom Parmenter
>> Ortolan 88

>Good question - I tried just that I almost lost my sysop status.

For what it's worth, I'm with Tom and Mav that freezing an
article really isn't that drastic an action, and might be a
good thing now and then.  After all, it's trivially reversible,
and it allows the affected parties to still engage in discussion
on talk pages.  Yes, uneditable pages are very anti-wiki, but
as long as it's understood that a particular lock is a temporary
"cooling off" measure, I think it may serve the cause.  And we
should periodically review the locked pages and unlock many of
them if there's no specific reason not to.


from_name: Adam Williamson

body:
On Sat, 2002-09-07 at 01:14, Helga Hecht wrote:

> While I looked Reece up on google, I came across information about the committee he worked on and text of an article 'Tax Exempt Subversion'
> http://www.biblebelievers.org.au/reeceart.htm
>
> This mentions the problems with the Communists infiltrating America and I would like to have someone read this and tell me, if any of this should be mentioned in wiki.

As a student of modern American history, i'd say this is an *extremely*
biased and unreliable source so far as American communism goes. Note
that the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee was one of the principal
organs of government responsible for the policy trend known as
"McCarthyism". The information on this page should not be considered
reliable and impartial in terms of writing about communism in America.
It would be somewhat valuable in terms of an article about Reece
himself, however.
--
adamw


from_name: Steve Callaway

body:
I am a consulting project manager for a number of UK blue chip companies and
I have dispassionately asked myself the following simple question:

Which would I rather have working on a project to ensure its accurate and
timely execution: Julie Kemp or  Helga Hechts?

The answer I think is patently apparent. The amount of rework that Helga
causes seems more than  sufficient justification for me to advocate her
permanent removal. If we are not careful and persistent "Helgas" are not
either a) educated into the program or b) politely but requested to desist,
the damage to the project will be considerable. The amount of patience we
have demonstrated so far is disproportionate to the amount of damage and
disruption she has caused. It is time for her to go.

I would dread to think the amount of work which has been damaged and wasted
as a consequence of the intransigent behaviour of this alleged contributor
and I strongly feel that we either as a community wise up to her inherently
destructive behaviour or we do something about it. If it's a straight swap
and we can persuade Julie to come back by removing HH sine die, then that
would be a total win-win situation from my perspective (and no doubt those
others who contribute in the history areas). I would take that decision
unilaterally if I could, but this is a community thing. If we let Helga
stay, we lose Julie (maybe have already lost Julie for good). How many more
contributors of this calibre can we afford to alienate?

I am deeply upset about Julie's decision to pack it in but I can understand
her reasons and truth to tell I can't say I blame her. It is about time we
as a community show some backbone by showing Helga (very firmly) the door.

Steve Callaway

----- Original Message -----
From: "Daniel Mayer" <maveric149 at yahoo.com>
To: <wikipedia-l at nupedia.com>
Cc: "Julie Hofmann Kemp" <juleskemp at yahoo.com>
Sent: Saturday, September 07, 2002 12:39 AM
Subject: [Wikipedia-l] Kooks and trolls: Rant about losing great
contributors

> >And then there are the problem cases,
> >people like '24' and possibly Helga --
> >these people aren't simple vandals, but
> >neither are they getting with the program
> >in a constructive way.  I reserve the right
> of final banning on those cases to myself,
> >although of course I'm probably too patient
> >in seeking general consensus first.
> >
> >--Jimbo
>
> I mean no disrespect whatsoever, but some of this
> patience you and others (including me) have had could
> very well have resulted in JHK's, Michael Tinkler's
> and unknown other's leaving the project in disgust.
>
> Our current lax enforcement of our etiquette policies
> along with our tolerance of kooks and trolls seem
> hostile to experts and many others -- no wonder we
> keep driving them away.
>
> I say we should be a bit more diligent in enforcing
> our Wikipetiquette policy and in informing those who
> would be kooks and trolls that their kooking (is that
> a word?) and trolling is not welcome here. See
> http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipetiquette
>
> I'm sick and tired of loosing good, no great,
> contributors because of our lax attitude in these
> matters.
>
> This is just my opinion - take it or leave it. I'm
> /not/ speaking as a sysop; I'm speaking as a greatly
> annoyed Wikipedian who already misses working with
> Jules (and who also worries about our history articles
> being over-run by kooks now that JHK is gone).
>
> -- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)
>
> __________________________________________________
> Do You Yahoo!?
> Yahoo! Finance - Get real-time stock quotes
> http://finance.yahoo.com
> [Wikipedia-l]
> To manage your subscription to this list, please go here:
> http://www.nupedia.com/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


from_name: Helga Hecht

body:
Michael Irwin, Ray Saintonge and Fred Bauder, thank you for checking this out. I came across the missing article, when I added him to the article on German expulsion after World War II. It was not only a stub, but a far size article, at least when I last saw it. This was quite a while ago.

Thank you ,Jimmmy Wales, for writing a new article.

While I looked Reece up on google, I came across information about the committee he worked on and text of an article 'Tax Exempt Subversion'
http://www.biblebelievers.org.au/reeceart.htm

This mentions the problems with the Communists infiltrating America and I would like to have someone read this and tell me, if any of this should be mentioned in wiki.

The coincidence is such, that not only the B. Carroll Reece article disappeared without a trace (?) , but my stubs or articles in progress about Communists in America also seem to be gone.

Does wiki have a file for deleated topics, or is it just gone, once it is deleated?

H. Jonat

--
__________________________________________________________
Sign-up for your own FREE Personalized E-mail at Mail.com
http://www.mail.com/?sr=signup


body:
I tried posting this to the list yesterday and it was sent to the moderation black hole because I replied from an e-mail not subscribed to the list.

> This would be a valid argument if the only
> way to prevent "disruptive yahoos" from
> "get[ting] away with everything" is to ban them.
>
> But it isn't. Rather, merciless
> editing and ignoring personality has
> worked every time so far.

First, from where I stand, the above statment is just not true. 24 did not quit causing problems because we ignored him, he left because we banned him.

And even if it were true it -- by itself -- is not a valid argument against a slightly more liberal banning policy, since it is very easy for one disruptive person to take up a few dozen hours of several people's time.

If our goal is to create an encyclopedia, then we ought consider Lee's suggestion seriously.

I doubt that you agree, but I think that is because you see the experiment in online community as just as important as the goal of creating a free encyclopedia.  However, I would argue that our stated goal has always been to create a free encyclopedia, and the members of our community joined primarily because they thought that was a mission worthy of their efforts.  That's why I'm convinced that unless building a quality free encyclopedia remains our central mission our community will loose its center and slowly dissolve.

As far as I'm concerned it is still an open question of how much a ban would help us to attract experts. Nor am I certain that such a policy would really make our current core of contributors that much more productive.  However, I am certain that these pragmatic concerns ought not be trumped by a prior commitment to an particular philosophical opposition to rules in general.  In other words, I'm open to arguments that Lee's proposal would be counterproductive, but not particularly receptive to an assertion that his suggestion is "just plain wrong on the face of it."  Or to put it yet another way, I think we've set about performing a noble task, and there's nothing wrong with excluding a few people with different agendas from working on our project, if that's what is required to get the job done.

At the same time, I agree with you that we need to be cautious: in order to protect what we've built so far, and because productive communities like ours are both valuable and fragile.  So, I say let's take a good look at the practical details of Lee's suggestion, and its possible consequences, before we decide for or against changing our policies.

-- Mark Christensen

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body:
|From: The Cunctator <cunctator at kband.com>
|Date: 06 Sep 2002 23:06:19 -0400
|
|On Fri, 2002-09-06 at 22:30, Tom Parmenter wrote:
|
|>
|> Why isn't freezing the topic and the talk page worth discussing?
|> Banning is personal.  Freezing the discussion for a day, week, or
|> month is impersonal.
|
|Freezing discussion shouldn't really be necessary...freezing articles
|is a reasonable concept.
|

The edit wars take place on the article pages, but the pain is dealt
out on the talk pages.  Freeze both.


from_name: Julie Hofmann Kemp

subject: [Wikipedia-l] FW: If I were having second thoughts...

body:
I sent this yesterday, but it hasn't made it on the list, so I've
resubscribed and sent it again.  BTW -- I did two google searches on
Pepin the short vs. pippin the short.  One came out hugely in favor of
Pepin (but was jam-packed with genealogical sites), the other came out
in favor of pippin.  I had a look round at the types of sites, and
pippin was frequently found on university pages.  Go figure.  I don't
think googling is a great option, because it can be manipulated and
again, you have to know enough to check your source material.  J

>  -----Original Message-----
> From: 	Julie Hofmann Kemp [mailto:juleskemp at yahoo.com]
> Sent:	Friday, September 06, 2002 1:33 PM
> To:	'wikipedia-l at nupedia.com'
> Subject:	If I were having second thoughts...
>
>
> Elliott's last comment at Talk:Henry I of France has pretty much made
> me sure that my decision is the right one.  As some of you know, after
> Lee jumped in, I began to question my own motives a bit on the
> ridiculous Pepin-Pippin thing, partially because I'd been somewhat
> inconsistent myself in their use.   Yes, I probably made the changes
> in reaction to what seemed a concerted effort by a faction of French
> irredentists who were attacking my reputation and sources without
> providing evidence of their own or defense of the sources I questioned
> (like the ones not written by historians).
>
> The thing is, I can in good conscience stand by my decision, and would
> have made the changes at some point, albeit more diplomatically.
> Here's why:
>  I looked at Elliott's comment, which quoted Lee's (more or less)
> 	"The convention here, which is shown on the naming conventions
> page, and worked out among our users by consensus, is to use whatever
> form of the name appears most commonly in other English-language texts
> which the reader is likely to encounter in scholarly research. "
> Strangely enough, I'm pretty familiar with that convention -- I helped
> write it.  And it isn't consistent.  Why?  Because my so-called "new"
> usage of the name Pippin (which is basically closer to how it is
> written in all the records -- Pippinus) isn't new at all.  After all,
> Steinbeck was aware of it.  So were the authors of "Pippin!"  And
> strangely enough, as I pointed out, it is the name more and more
> likely to be found in "Scholarly research" -- which is, in fact, what
> I do.  For some reason, there seems to be a confusion between what's
> most commonly found in non-specialized texts and websites, and
> "scholarly."   So, while Pippin is not as often found in basic texts,
> I stand by my assertion that it is a growing trend among
> English-language Carolingian specialists -- which is all I ever said.
> Unfortunately, the naming convention seems to be a bit contradictory
> in some people's minds.
>
> Anyway, I only bring this up because I'm still somewhat addicted and
> couldn't let Eliott's nasty comment pass, but am sticking to my guns
> and trying to wean myself off the wikipedia.  What concerns me is that
> a relative newbie who (among DW, Suzanne L, Constance A et al.) has
> not yet proven himself as a contributor or as someone who can work
> within the community be allowed to come in and judge people who have.
> I'm not the only one who has dealt with this, and doubt I'll be the
> last.  Good luck.
>
> Jules
>
>
>
>
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from_name: Matthew Woodcraft

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Freezing articles

body:
On Fri, Sep 06, 2002 at 11:06:19PM -0400, The Cunctator wrote:
> Freezing discussion shouldn't really be necessary...freezing articles
> is a reasonable concept.

The trouble with freezing articles in an edit war is that the frozen
article will be in one state or the other - that is, someone will have
'won' the editing war.

So far, sysops have not been reluctant to intervene in arguments in
which they have been involved themselves.

-M-


from_name: Robert Graham Merkel

in_reply_to: <1031348560.10676.14.camel@mercury.mit.edu>; from cunctator@kband.com on Sat, Sep 07, 2002 at 07:42:40 +1000

body:
On Sat, 07 Sep 2002 07:42:40 The Cunctator wrote:
> On Fri, 2002-09-06 at 17:35, Bryan Derksen wrote:
>
> > Banning someone for being disruptive is not necessarily the top of a
> > "slippery slope" towards censorship, as long as we're careful about
> doing
> > it and keep a watchful eye on ourselves. On the other hand, letting
> > disruptive yahoos get away with everything will eventually mean that
> only
> > the disruptive yahoos stick around.
>
> This would be a valid argument if the only way to prevent
> "disruptive yahoos" from "get[ting] away with everything" is to ban
> them.
>
> But it isn't. Rather, merciless editing and ignoring personality has
> worked every time so far.
>
> We already have sufficient policies in place for banning people. The
> harm in expanding them would outweigh the benefits.
>

That policy has worked, after a fashion, but it bears substantial costs -
like creating an environment that some people just can't cope with,
where we constantly have to argue with kooks, nutters, and other
assorted people who just don't understand when they're either a)
totally wrong, or b) that they're going to have to accept that
there are other opinions besides theirs which, often, are far more
widely held, and c) don't know how to have a civilized discussion
about it without ad hominem attacks, and d) can't be taught.

If people can't debate issues sensibly for whatever reason
(and that includes not
resorting to accusations of "this person is an anti-foobar or
a burglephobe and thus should be banned" at the drop of a hat)
then they need to be told to behave.  If they can't do that, they
are getting in the road of the goal and should be dealt with
so the rest of us can get back to work.

--
------------------------------------------------------------
Robert Merkel	                           rgmerk at mira.net

Node FLY on Melbourne Wireless : http://www.wireless.org.au
------------------------------------------------------------


body:
On Sat, 07 Sep 2002 09:39:17 Daniel Mayer wrote:
> >And then there are the problem cases,
> >people like '24' and possibly Helga --
> >these people aren't simple vandals, but
> >neither are they getting with the program
> >in a constructive way.  I reserve the right
> of final banning on those cases to myself,
> >although of course I'm probably too patient
> >in seeking general consensus first.
> >
> >--Jimbo
>
> I mean no disrespect whatsoever, but some of this
> patience you and others (including me) have had could
> very well have resulted in JHK's, Michael Tinkler's
> and unknown other's leaving the project in disgust.
>
> Our current lax enforcement of our etiquette policies
> along with our tolerance of kooks and trolls seem
> hostile to experts and many others -- no wonder we
> keep driving them away.
>
> I say we should be a bit more diligent in enforcing
> our Wikipetiquette policy and in informing those who
> would be kooks and trolls that their kooking (is that
> a word?) and trolling is not welcome here. See
> http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipetiquette
>
> I'm sick and tired of loosing good, no great,
> contributors because of our lax attitude in these
> matters.
>
> This is just my opinion - take it or leave it. I'm
> /not/ speaking as a sysop; I'm speaking as a greatly
> annoyed Wikipedian who already misses working with
> Jules (and who also worries about our history articles
> being over-run by kooks now that JHK is gone).
>

I tend to agree.  See my related mail.

--
------------------------------------------------------------
Robert Merkel	                           rgmerk at mira.net

Node FLY on Melbourne Wireless : http://www.wireless.org.au
------------------------------------------------------------


in_reply_to: <E7D2180E8A2AC349A4BA75E8B8406B19013E1E@grizzly.humantech.com>; from mchristensen@humantech.com on Sat, Sep 07, 2002 at 09:22:07 +1000

body:
On Sat, 07 Sep 2002 09:22:07 Mark Christensen wrote:
> I'd suggest that we start out with some very basic things: inviting
> experts to get involved, intentionally looking for experts who do get
> involved and working hard to make their entrance into the wikipedia
> community enjoyable, cultivating an atmosphere of congeniality and
> respect for experts and motivated amateurs alike.
>

This poses the question: how do we invite experts to get involved?
I've often thought of approaching, say, Barry Jones (former Australian
politician, quiz champion, author of several reference works, and
general smarty-pants) to contribute, but how to pose the invitation
in such a way as to make it sufficiently inviting?

My current thoughts are thus:

1)	Make sure we have completed short articles on all the
Australian Prime Ministers, for example.
2)	Write him a note (and send it to him by snail-mail, because a)
it's probably easier to find a snail-mail address than email, and b)
the effort expended might demonstrate that we're serious,
inviting him to review those articles
and comment - and point out that if he wishes, he can simply
edit them online.
3)	Watch and see what happens.

The key points are:
a)	That there is something already there I can point him
to, so he can see that contributing would be useful.
b)	Get the idea that he can contribute directly, with no
extra effort, in sideways.

Barry Jones I've picked on as a likely case because he was
writing books about a free public network as an information
repository back in 1980, but I'm sure there are plenty of others.

What do you think?

--
------------------------------------------------------------
Robert Merkel	                           rgmerk at mira.net

Node FLY on Melbourne Wireless : http://www.wireless.org.au
------------------------------------------------------------


from_name: lcrocker at nupedia.com

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Database schema?

body:
> I went looking for a complete listing of the various tables
> for Wikipedia today, intent on creating some new database queries,
> and couldn't find one in Wikipedia. Is there one online somewhere
> else, or does one have to delve into the PHP code or download the
> full 55MB database dump?

You can just browse the code and docs is CVS at
http://wikipedia.sourceforge.net .
The schema doc specifically is
http://cvs.sourceforge.net/cgi-bin/viewcvs.cgi/wikipedia/phpwiki/newcodebase/docs/schema.doc


from_name: Hr. Daniel Mikkelsen

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Imposing rules.

body:
Hi.

I just want to add one point to this debate. Wikipedia has escaped massive and
targeted vandalism because it has avoided making any real enemies. In my
opinion (and experience) _manually_ imposing policy on a self-policed community
will result in bitter souls abusing the inherent _systematic_ freedom (that is,
that anyone can edit any article).

But haven't we already dealt with such people?

* We've only had to deal with very few of them, so we haven't hit anyone with
the skills necessary to damage Wikipedia.

* We've let the ones we've dealt with have their say for a long time first,
probably making them spend their frustration, and become mostly bored.

* The IP banning is more a signal than an actual enforcement, and we've been
lucky that these people seem to have accepted that signal.

Believe me, IP bans will only last so long. The "wiki miracle" could easily
collapse - just looke at some of the IRC networks.

I can't make up my mind either way in the discussion in general here, but I
think this is an important point that should not be missed.

-- Daniel


from_name: Bryan Derksen

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Database schema?

body:
I went looking for a complete listing of the various tables for Wikipedia
today, intent on creating some new database queries, and couldn't find one
in Wikipedia. Is there one online somewhere else, or does one have to delve
into the PHP code or download the full 55MB database dump?


body:
Gareth wrote:
>
>No, it hasn't.  The load of merciless editing has already driven away the
>valued and reasonable Julie Hoffman Kemp, and yet many of the German and
>French history pages she looked to save are still full of petty nationalists.
>Kooks 1, Wikipedia 0.

And Michael Tinkler.  Kooks 2, Wikipedia 0.

kq