from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [WikiEN-l] Radical redefinition of OR

body:
Conrad Dunkerson wrote:

>* Jimmy Wales wrote:
>
>
>>I think the point about privacy is that (as far as I know) there is a
>>general consensus that someone sysematically going through court records
>>to write articles about people who were convicted of drunk driving, or
>>who were involved in a lawsuit, is a bad idea.  We need to have some
>>kind of independent verification (i.e. WP:NOR) that the incident or
>>lawsuit is notable and worthy of inclusion in an article, and that in
>>the case of people of very minor notability, there is no very good
>>reason to include it.
>>
>>
>I cringe when I see people equating 'primary sources' with 'original
>research'. What they are really talking about is a concept of 'notability
>of facts'... if a scientific theory is notable/relevant then it logically
>will have been judged so by neutral third-parties. If (to address THIS
>instance) a court case is notable/relevant then it would presumably be
>reported on by the media.
>
>It is (I hope obviously) a bad idea for Wikipedia to promote information
>more widely/prominently than any other source has done. We are not
>disseminators (and thereby perforce arbiters) of 'truth' or 'relevance',
>but rather recorders of things which OTHERS have judged to be worthy of
>note. When we place ourselves in the position of saying, 'this information
>is important to make known... even though no one else has done so' we are
>inherently tossing 'neutral point of view' out the window.
>
The difficulty with this comes when we run into the maxim that the wiki
is not paper.  If scientific theories depended on being published in the
mainstream media that part of Wikipedia would be very skimpy indeed.
NOR in science was intended to counteract the influence of crackpot
theories.

I really don't know whether Mega Society v. Langan was ever reported in
neutral media though I suspect it probably was not.  It may still be
there in a service to lawyers.  I certainly have no inclination to spend
a lot of time looking for a needle in a haystack when the needle may not
even be there.  A default judgement is not very exciting, and often goes
by unnoticed.  When the matter comes up for hearing there are no
fireworks.  Even if a journalist is in the courtroom at the time of the
decision he would be disinclined to say anything because he would need
to put a lot of work into figuring out what led to that point.  Most
cases that go through the courts are not reported by the media, and
among those that are there is an overwhelming predominance of criminal
matters or giant damage awards.  Cases in many aspects of law go right
off the radar, so the absence of coverage says nothing about notability.

I think that we need more sophisticated criteria for notability if we
are ever going to consider that as a valid criterion.  They should be
positive ones rather than negative ones that depend on something not
being found implying its non-existence.  As I said before, I don't think
it helps to make this an NPOV issue, because by their nature court
judgements tend to represent the neutral view between two warring
parties.  NPOV allows both parties to have their views expressed in a
dispute.  If one party refuses to express his side of the story that's
as much as we can say about that side; it is not an excuse for
suppressing the other side's views.

Notability of facts in an article needs a context.  We need to ask
whether the point at issue is important to the general picture that we
are painting about the person or other subject.

>However, the long growing trend of seeking to exclude this kind of thing
>as 'original research' is itself extremely damaging. I've seen people
>argue that we have to use ONLY imprecise media accounts of scientific
>discoveries because citing the actual published findings would be
>'original research'. Likewise, people have actually argued that citing a
>book as reference for the CONTENTS of that book is 'original research'...
>you need to get a third party source to say what was in the book. In
>short, it has gotten to the point where many people think 'primary
>sources' are to be avoided at all costs... and that is a travesty.
>
>Wikipedia USED to have a concept that,
>
>"However, research that consists of collecting and organizing information
>from existing primary and/or secondary sources is, of course, strongly
>encouraged. All articles on Wikipedia should be based on information
>collected from published primary and secondary sources. This is not
>"original research"; it is "source-based research", and it is fundamental
>to writing an encyclopedia."
>
>Indeed, that text still appears in our 'No original research' policy.
>However, efforts to stamp out use of 'primary sources' to spread
>information that no other national (or international) 'news' / 'reporting'
>entity has deemed worthy of commenting on have led to a wide-spread view
>that 'primary sources' in general are bad. They aren't. Once something has
>been verified as notable we should often take primary sources OVER
>secondary ones.
>
I very much agree with your second discussion.  At this point I best
express myself on it by saying nothing.

Ec


list: wikien-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Rich Holton

subject: [WikiEN-l] BJAODN

body:
Guy Chapman aka JzG wrote:
> On Fri, 23 Mar 2007 18:29:13 -0700, Stan Shebs
> <stanshebs at earthlink.net> wrote:
>
>> Actually that would the *perfect* addition to the top of BJAODN - a long
>> section describing the addition and deletion rules in great depth,
>> complete with voting and ultimately recourse to the "ArbCom", short for
>> the "Arbitrary Commensalists". Plus make all the wikilinks in the
>> section connect to appropriate Uncyclopedia articles, to help those not
>> getting the hint.
>
> Best idea yet :-)
>
> Guy (JzG)

Hmmm...

Are mailing list threads appropriate content for BJAODN?

-Rich


from_name: Guy Chapman aka JzG

subject: [WikiEN-l] Radical redefinition of OR

body:
On Fri, 23 Mar 2007 20:48:24 -0800, Ray Saintonge
<saintonge at telus.net> wrote:

>The lawsuit here is not a matter of having been so unfortunate as to be
>caught driving drunk pure and simple.  The issues relate to how Langan
>presents himself to the world in relation to those issues and
>organizations which make him encyclopedic and/or notable.  The
>references to the judgements may very well havew come from his opponents
>in the case, but that is not the same as systematically sifting through
>court records to find dirt on the guy

Here is the problem: Langan and his wife have edited Wikipedia
disruptively and have been sanctioned for it by ArbCom, they are also
experienced in forum shopping.  The Mega Society people have also
edited Wikipedia disruptively, and have expended considerable energy
in trying to promote their society.  They have also used Wikipedia to
pursue their vendetta against Langan - and probably vice-versa, though
I have not seen that myself.

That means that every addition and every removal brings at least the
suspicion of outside influence by POV-pushers.  I am very much with
the "plague on both their houses" camp on this one.

The lawsuit appears important only to the two parties, nobody else.
And the presentation here has all the hallmarks of being the work of
the Mega Society guys, so it's very easy to see why it would be
removed.

However... it was not added by them, it was added by FeloniousMonk.
Felonious is one of the good guys and I generally agree with him.  I
think he may have a slight tendency to resist removal of sourced
controversy (and this *was* sourced, as we all know) because he does
not like Wikipedia being used as a publisher of hagiography.  There
was an arbitration case relating to WebEx and Min Zhu where we crossed
swords over this, but in the end his behaviour was so reasonable that
I can't bring myself to criticise him for it :-)

Ultimately, I think we should wait until we have some external sources
*for the importance of the case*.  As it stands, it looks to me as if
only Langan, the Mega Society pushers and a few Wikipedia editors
actually give a damn about it.  And that says "undue weight" to me.

Guy (JzG)
--
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG


subject: [WikiEN-l] BJAODN

body:
On Fri, 23 Mar 2007 18:29:13 -0700, Stan Shebs
<stanshebs at earthlink.net> wrote:

>Actually that would the *perfect* addition to the top of BJAODN - a long
>section describing the addition and deletion rules in great depth,
>complete with voting and ultimately recourse to the "ArbCom", short for
>the "Arbitrary Commensalists". Plus make all the wikilinks in the
>section connect to appropriate Uncyclopedia articles, to help those not
>getting the hint.

Best idea yet :-)

Guy (JzG)
--
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG


from_name: Ken Arromdee

subject: [WikiEN-l] Radical redefinition of OR

body:
On Sat, 24 Mar 2007, Guy Chapman aka JzG wrote:
> Ultimately, I think we should wait until we have some external sources
> *for the importance of the case*.  As it stands, it looks to me as if
> only Langan, the Mega Society pushers and a few Wikipedia editors
> actually give a damn about it.  And that says "undue weight" to me.

Sure, it's undue weight.

Undue weight isn't original research, just like poor notability isn't original
research.  Call it what it is.

This actually matters.  Once we start stretching the definition of original
research to include things that aren't, that stretched definition is going
to stay around, be used in precedents, etc.  It's a very bad idea to
misclassify the reason for deleting something, even if it really does deserve
deletion.


from_name: Matthew Brown

subject: [WikiEN-l] Ref tag usage

body:
On 3/22/07, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> Too many preferences are an intrinsically bad thing. I suspect in this
> case setting a minimum font size in one's browser is actually the
> right answer. (Mozilla browsers allow this, but I don't know if any
> others do. Safari doesn't seem to.)

It's a truism of open-source software that every time there's a
disagreement on interface, a new preference option gets added so that
both sides can be happy.  Unfortunately, this means preference panes
or command-line arguments that grow beyond reason.

-Matt


list: foundation-l

from_name: Robert Horning

subject: [Foundation-l] Domains

body:
Florence Devouard wrote:
> Platonides wrote:
>
>> BTW: Who will take care of the domains now Brad resigns?
>>
>
>
> Reality check guys.
>
>
>
<*snip*>
> anthere
>

Considering that the announcement of Brad's resignation just occured, it
shouldn't be surprising that this is one issue that has just come up.
And while I am not questioning Brad's integrity here, I am pointing out
that a less than honorable person could take advantage of the situation
and move the domains to some other server farm and do all sorts of other
damage.  This is precisely why the "administrative contact" person
should be somebody with absolutely stellar integrity and has the full
faith and trust of not only the board but the entire community, and why
I believe this to be a very valid question.

While in the long run any such usurption of the WMF domains would
eventually come back under the control of the WMF, it would be a very
miserable several months if somebody were to mess things up in this
way.  Considering the way vandals try to mess up our projects, this
would be the ultimate vandalism ploy if this domain registration was
messed up.  It could be far more damaging than a rogue admin or even
steward.

I have no doubt that at the moment the WMF has this issue under control,
and that certainly any formalities that would also involve Brad would be
done as a matter of courtesy as well.

-- Robert Horning.


list: wikimedia-l

subject: [Foundation-l] Domains


from_name: Fred Bauder

body:
You greatly underestimate the efficiency of our deletion procedure and its capacity to adapt. Faced with a plethora of lists, it will kick into gear. Such lists are usually original research anyway. Who publishes such lists?

Fred

>-----Original Message-----
>From: Michael Santora [mailto:bobolozo at yahoo.com]
>Sent: Friday, March 23, 2007 08:20 PM
>To: wikien-l at lists.wikimedia.org
>Subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia - An infinite number of lists
>
>The number of articles which Wikipedia can have is
>limited by the number of at least marginally notable
>and verifiable things which exist.  After every
>notable person, place, movie, scientific topic, and so
>on have their own article, we'll run out of things to
>write about.  Whether this will happen at 2 million, 3
>million, 4 million, it will happen.
>
>On the other hand, the potential number of lists is
>almost infinite, as there are a virtually unlimited
>number of ways of slicing up portions of reality.
>
>For example, one could make a "List of birds native to
>the Chicago area".  If it were nicely wikified and
>contained a reasonable number of items on it, it would
>certainly not be deleted.
>
>However, what you've actually done is create the first
>example of "List of X's native to the Y area", where X
>is any one of dozens or hundreds of types of
>creatures... insects, mammals, amphibians, trees,
>flowers, and so on, while Y is any one of tens of
>thousands of towns, cities, states, counties,
>countries, provinces, geographic areas, and so on.
>
>Multiply 100 X's by 50,000 Y's, and you get 5 million
>lists.
>
>Take the roughly 500,000 of our article topics which
>have been mentioned enough times in popular culture to
>make up a list, and you get 500,000 "X in popular
>culture" articles.
>
>Take every one of the tens of thousands of diseases
>which exist, find evidence of notable people who have
>had the disease, and you get 25,000 "List of people
>who have had disease X" articles.
>
>And so on, and so on, and so on.
>
>Even removing the obvious silly and ridiculous lists,
>like "List of blind left-handed Canadians who have
>worn blue jeans" still leaves us with more reasonable
>sounding lists than any of ever imagined we would
>have.
>
>End result: en.Wikipedia, in the year 2050, will have
>5 million articles, and 500 million lists.
>
>
>
>____________________________________________________________________________________
>No need to miss a message. Get email on-the-go
>with Yahoo! Mail for Mobile. Get started.
>http://mobile.yahoo.com/mail
>
>_______________________________________________
>WikiEN-l mailing list
>WikiEN-l at lists.wikimedia.org
>To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
>http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: SonOfYoungwood at aol.com

subject: [WikiEN-l] NBC's story on Wikipedia

body:
Speaking of which, if Lisa Daniels logs into her username right now, she'll
have a whole new negative story to report: the lack of cohesion among admins.
She has received everything from test warnings (and notifications of how fast
 her edit was reverted), two indef blocks (one unblocked), and so  on.

************************************** AOL now offers free email to everyone.
 Find out more about what's free from AOL at http://www.aol.com.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia - An infinite number of lists

body:
On Sat, 24 Mar 2007 11:30:21 +0000, "Fred Bauder"
<fredbaud at waterwiki.info> wrote:

>You greatly underestimate the efficiency of our deletion procedure and its capacity to adapt. Faced with a plethora of lists, it will kick into gear. Such lists are usually original research anyway. Who publishes such lists?

Indeed.  And if the subject of the list (e.g. birds native to Chicago)
is not itself encyclopaedic - i.e. if we have no article on birds
native to Chicago - then the list itself may well be deleted as
unencyclopaedic, arbitrary, original research or whatever.

Guy (JzG)
--
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG


from_name: Steve Bennett

subject: [WikiEN-l] BJAODN

references:
<3cu703p1rm865ed4p4in1beod2chbrdivl@4ax.com>
	<f72c02ee0703231722i5f4250a5md9c593b398ec18b4@mail.gmail.com>
	<04E9120D-6C39-4BE4-BC9F-3EDEB976AEAF@gmail.com>

body:
On 3/24/07, Phil Sandifer <Snowspinner at gmail.com> wrote:
> But there's no real way to repair this without adding processcruft to
> BJAODN, so I suspect we should just call it a day and worry about
> bigger things.

Can't we just dump the complete archive of BAJODN somewhere that isn't
Wikipedia? Then keep a "best of"? If, in fact, we decide that we don't
want to keep it all there.

Steve


from_name: bobolozo

subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia has no policy on word articles

body:
Wikipedia has no policy on articles about words.  We
have "Wikipedia is not a dictionary", and that's it,
and that only states that we shouldn't have articles
that are merely dictionary definitions.

This still leaves open the possibility of having vast
numbers of articles about words which go beyond a mere
dicdef, but our current vague nonsensical practice
mostly puts a stop to this.

Our current practice is as follows: an article is made
about a word.  If the article can be rewritten into
one on a topic (that is, an article on the word "shoe"
becomes an article on the subject of shoes), we
rewrite it, and it's no longer an article on a word.

If the article cannot be rewritten into an article on
the topic the word represents, and if the article is
SHORT, we transwiki to wiktionary and delete it for
being a dicdef or redirect somewhere.  However, if the
article is LONG, and well written and wikified, we
generally keep it as being "more than just a dicdef",
and if there are no sources we hope some are
eventually found.

This is a bizarre and ridiculous and totally
unintentional way of handling articles on words, but
it is exactly what we do.

Imagine if this were our policy or practice on
astronomy articles.  "If at all possible, rewrite to a
non-astronomical topic.  If none exists under this
title, and if the astronomy article is short, redirect
to a non-astronomical article or delete.  If rewriting
is not possible, but the article is long and
well-written, only then do we keep it".

Obviously we do want some articles about words,
though.  We have "Thou", which is a featured article,
we have "Truthiness", and many other well sourced and
well written articles.  We don't want to delete all of
these, so we must want some articles on words.

But which ones?  There are probably tens of thousands
of english words which have been written about by
etymologists, meaning we have sourced content on them.
 Furthermore, Wikipedia is supposed to be global in
perspective, and has articles on people, places, and
things from non-english speaking countries, so why
would we not have articles on non-english words?

But this could end up with us having hundreds of
thousands of articles on foreign words, do we want
that?

One way or another, some sort of policy would be
better than "Rewrite into a non-word article.  If not
possible, delete if short, keep if long and nice looking".

____________________________________________________________________________________
Get your own web address.
Have a HUGE year through Yahoo! Small Business.
http://smallbusiness.yahoo.com/domains/?p=BESTDEAL


from_name: Anthony

subject: [WikiEN-l] What can you do under a GDFL licence

body:
On 3/23/07, Matthew Brown <morven at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 3/23/07, Daniel R. Tobias <dan at tobias.name> wrote:
> > Sanger has managed to implement editing power over the minds of his
> > contributors?  Neat!  Now we ought to work on creating a similar, but
> > more democratic, capability for *our* site, so it can be "Wikipedia:
> > The Free Encyclopedia whose Editors' Minds Anyone can Change!"
>
> Heh!
>
> The Tinfinger guy has a point, though; it's not good for a project for
> its leader to be so obsessed with comparisons to another project, or
> indeed its contributors to be (if they actually care as much as Larry
> Sanger thinks they do.)
>
> I'm not sure how much Larry Sanger realises how this demeans his
> project by making it look like simply a sour-grapes attempt to show
> Wikipedia, and Jimmy, that he was the one with the right ideas all
> along.
>
I think you're overplaying Larry's obsession with Wikipedia.  While
it's probably a valid criticism that he talks about Wikipedia a bit
too much at times, it seems to me that he's aware of this fact, and
does successfully focus on Citizendium as a separate project most of
the time.

His latest blog entry doesn't seem to me to be any more obsessive than
http://www.everything2.com/index.pl?node=Everything2%20is%20not%20Wikipedia

Anthony


from_name: Sheldon Rampton

subject: [WikiEN-l] Just what *is* Jimbo's role anyway?

body:
Jimbo Wales wrote:

> But the point is, I would never want to have an environment where
> "disagreeing with Jimbo" is a bannable offense.

I disagree. :-)

--Sheldon Rampton


from_name: Marc Riddell

body:
on 3/24/07 5:20 AM, Jimmy Wales at jwales at wikia.com wrote:

> Of course.  People go against me all the time and don't get banned.
> Indeed, some of our worst trolls who have attacked me most viciously
> have survived quite a long time under my personal protection.
>
> If I went bonkers and banned someone who had done absolutely nothing
> wrong other than disagree with me in some way, I hope that the ArbCom
> would quietly and firmly tell me that I am bonkers.  I would listen.
>
> --Jimbo

Thank you for this.

Marc Riddell


subject: [WikiEN-l] Radical redefinition of OR

body:
Ken Arromdee wrote:

>On Sat, 24 Mar 2007, Guy Chapman aka JzG wrote:
>
>
>>Ultimately, I think we should wait until we have some external sources
>>*for the importance of the case*.  As it stands, it looks to me as if
>>only Langan, the Mega Society pushers and a few Wikipedia editors
>>actually give a damn about it.  And that says "undue weight" to me.
>>
>>
>Sure, it's undue weight.
>
>Undue weight isn't original research, just like poor notability isn't original
>research.  Call it what it is.
>
>This actually matters.  Once we start stretching the definition of original
>research to include things that aren't, that stretched definition is going
>to stay around, be used in precedents, etc.  It's a very bad idea to
>misclassify the reason for deleting something, even if it really does deserve
>deletion.
>
That's a very important point.  Too often other criteria are dragged in
to strenghthen somebody's case, or because the original complaint wasn't
working.  If the famous autofellatio picture was a copyvio that should
have been the first argument without getting into arguments about the
morality of the picture.  Deletion criteria should be priorized, and the
ones further down the list should not even be considered when a higher
ranking one will succeed.  Highly subjective criteria should be well
down on the list.

Ec


body:
on 3/24/07 5:21 AM, Jimmy Wales at jwales at wikia.com wrote:

> I would never want to have an environment where
> "disagreeing with Jimbo" is a bannable offense.

Thank you for this, too.

Marc


from_name: K P

body:
On 3/24/07, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:

> On 24/03/07, Steve Summit <scs at eskimo.com> wrote:
>
> > In the fullness of time, Wikipedia or some fork of it will be
> > properly semantic, with a nice query interface that will let you
> > ask questions like "what are all the birds native to the Chicago
> > area?".  In the meantime, people interested in such categorization
> > have little choice but to create these explicit categories and
> > lists, silly and overspecific though they sometimes seem to be.
> > I don't see much harm in this, other than the dreadful waste of
> > time (compared to, say, the time that could be spent implementing
> > a proper semantic scheme once and for all) and the inevitable
> > incompleteness and inaccuracy of the explicit lists.
>
>
> Indeed. Note how a lot of lists were made more or less superfluous by
> the category feature. Lists these days need to be of value by order
> and/or annotation.
>
>
> - d.

You're behind the times, it's categories that are superfluous, according to
the few users in CfD who have decreed it so.

The trend now is to remove categories and replace them with lists.  Right
now on CfD, without prior consultation of the community of Wikipedia editors
who create and edit articles on biota (at least not through their various
community portals) an editor who is against categories by geography has got
together 2 like-minded editors and is ramming through deletion of biota by
geography categories in a trial run to do away with all  of them and replace
them with lists.

I assumed that such a change in overall Wikipedia policy by a few editors
would have been well-thought out and understood and would have been relevant
to the area in which it was being implemented (biota and/or geography), and
asked questions (I have no idea what lists do and categories do, and assumed
that categories were created for a reason, but apparently not).  The
questions were not answered, or answered by editors defending the deletion
who had little knowledge of physical geography (relevant to distributions of
biota) or biota.  For the latter I offer this closing quote: "Indeed,
animals do not mind human borders, so anything found in one country is
likely also found in the next country over."  This essentially means that
there likely nothing endemic to any country, which is purely original
speculation (not OR, as no research was involved in the statement.)
"List of birds native to Chicago area but
not the whole of North America"

Endemic to Chicago is the terminology.

KP


subject: [WikiEN-l] Radical redefinition of OR

body:
On 3/20/07, Stan Shebs <stanshebs at earthlink.net> wrote:
>
> Thomas Dalton wrote:
> >> That article isn't based on primary sources that I can see.
> >>
> >
> > Scientific papers are primary sources.
> >
> According to [[primary source]], the term is specific to historical
> scholarship, which doesn't include science. I don't know of any
> Wikipedian who seriously challenges the validity of published
> peer-reviewed scientific papers as sources for articles.
>
> Stan

Stan, we go through this all the time in botany, that review articles are
preferable to original research in journals, and we can't include the MOBOT
APG classifications because he updates them through original research, that
we can't use APG II directly, or rather alone in an article, that we must
note it when we use it, that if it's seconded by Reveal or someone it's
fine, the whole brya fiasco and removing her APG II direct classifications,
blah blah blah, and that we can't wholesale use Cavalier-Smith, without
including other interpretations, and making clear his attributions.  I think
you're one of the ones agreeing with these viewpoints.

Yes, we use published peer-reviewed journal articles, that are original
research, but what we're often getting from them is their non-original
research, the introductory sections and any broad background used to support
the conclusions, but not the conclusions themselves.

This is a major problem in botany, which is one of the most dynamic fields
in the sciences right now, especially basal taxonomies--it's the equivalent
of the early 20th century genetics revolution.  It's literally killing our
ability to update the botany articles, to some good end, but sometimes it
leaves us crippled, because it's so difficult to tread over the careful way
we have to write the botany articles to comply with NOR, and it's hard for
retention of new editors.  We get these gung-ho algae guys in and I have to
thump the Cavalier-Smith (my hero, by the way, along with Woese), completely
out of them.

We do honor NOR, no primary sources in the botanical sciences, and we do it
rather well most of the time, Stan as well as the rest of us.

KP


body:
--- Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton at gmail.com> wrote:
> There is nothing wrong with an etymology section in
> an article if the
> word has a notable etymology. There aren't many
> words that describe a
> non-notable topic yet have a notable etymology. The
> few exceptions can
> (and often do) have articles. I don't think a
> problem exists with our
> handling of etymologies.

One major problem with what you've said above:
Wikipedia has only one article on a topic, no matter
how many synonyms there are for the major word we use
to entitle the article.

Synonyms for stupid: brainless, dense, doltish, dopey,
dorky, dull, dumb, fatuous, half-witted, mindless,
oafish, obtuse, senseless, simple, slow, thick,
thickheaded, unintelligent, vacuous, weak-minded,
witless.  Related terms: feebleminded, retarded,
simpleminded; foolish, idiotic, imbecilic, moronic.

These terms can't all have their own articles to
contain their etymologies, they would mostly redirect
to "Stupidity" on wikipedia if anyone bothered to make
redirects for them all.  If we determine that the
etymologies are notable, where do they go?  Clearly
none of them would belong in the "Stupidity" article.

____________________________________________________________________________________
Food fight? Enjoy some healthy debate
in the Yahoo! Answers Food & Drink Q&A.
http://answers.yahoo.com/dir/?link=list&sid=396545367


subject: [WikiEN-l] Radical redefinition of OR

body:
On 3/20/07, Stephen Bain <stephen.bain at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 3/21/07, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > > Scientific papers are primary sources.
> > >
> > > Scientific papers are secondary sources. The experimental or
> > > observational data that the papers draw on are the primary sources.
> >
> > The data is usually published in the paper, so the paper is the primary
> source.
>
> If you want to split hairs like that, then yes, insofar as the paper
> merely reproduces the data, then it's a primary source. The analysis
> of the data and the conclusions drawn from the data in the paper are
> secondary material.
>
> --
> Stephen Bain
> stephen.bain at gmail.com

No, don't split hairs here.  The original research is not the data table,
but the conclusions and analysis drawn from the data.  The experimental
results are just results, they're not research without the paper, without
the conclusions, without the analysis.

Data is an ex-situ fossil--iIf I have a fossil and I don't know where it was
found, it's worthless.  Research is not an ex-situ fossil, it's an in-situ
fossil.  It's worth something.

Research is scientific inquiry, it's not random pieces of data out of
context.  Data tables and uninterpreted experimental results are not
research.

KP


from_name: Seth Finkelstein

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Just what *is* Jimbo's role anyway? - personality
	cult

body:
> David Gerard
> It surprises me when our odder critics claim Wikipedia is the
> personality cult of Jimbo Wales. I really can't imagine L. Ron
> Hubbard putting up with the crap Jimbo does ...

	Hey, I resemble that remark! :-)

	More seriously, the problem in your statement above is that
there are different types of personality cults. Apocalyptic cults
which commit mass suicide get a huge amount of publicity. But for
obvious reasons, they tend to be self-limiting. Despite jocular
references to "drinking the Kool-Aid", Wikipedia is NOT a doomsday
type of cult. It's more of "New Age" cult. They're different.

	But being any sort of cult leader is no easy task. You can't
just sit back and expect the followers to come to you. They've got to
be recruited, and that's a tough job. Then the followers need to be
retained, as at least some of them are going to get unhappy with
selling flowers at the airport or working in the fields all day (or
reverting vandals), and want to leave. Cults tend to use both physical
and psychological means of control, though most people just hear about
the lurid physical elements and don't consider the manipulative
psychological elements.

	Wikipedia is really interesting in a way, since it doesn't
have any physical aspect, so it has to rely entirely on psychological
aspects. Which, in fact, means the leader putting up with a lot of crap.

--
Seth Finkelstein  Consulting Programmer  http://sethf.com/
Infothought blog - http://sethf.com/infothought/blog/
Interview: http://sethf.com/essays/major/greplaw-interview.php


from_name: Thomas Dalton

body:
The vast majority of those lists can be merged into a significantly
smaller number of lists. "List of birds to the Chicago area" can be
merged into "List of animals native to North America", for example. If
a list gets too long, it can be split up, but otherwise it's fine as
one list. If such a list needs to be split up, it should be done in
such a way as to reduce redundancy, eg. "List of animals native to the
whole of North America" and "List of birds native to Chicago area but
not the whole of North America" (if someone can come up with a shorter
name, please do).


body:
On 3/24/07, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > "List of birds native to Chicago area but
> > not the whole of North America"
> >
> > Endemic to Chicago is the terminology.
>
> No, that doesn't work. Something can be native to lots of places
> within N. America, while not being native to the whole of it. A bird
> found in Chicago and a neighbouring place should be mentioned in those
> 2 lists, not the main list, otherwise you lose the precision. Creating
> a list for "birds endemic to Chicago and X" would result in lots of
> very short lists for each possible combination of places.

But you didn't request the wording for a species native to Chicago and X,
just one native to Chicago.  And there is a word for that.  IF you have two
small endemic populations, there is generally a reason for that, namely the
species was once more widespread and has been extirpated from elsewhere in
between, in which case its distribution is relictual and it IS properly
called an endemic, just not of Chicago alone, but of the larger area, or it
has been introduced in the second place, in which case it can still be
endemic to the first, or it is actively speciating due to a founder
floundering there, or its endemism is edaphic, or otherwise than
geographically defined.

Endemism is the word.

KP


from_name: Sherool

subject: [WikiEN-l] U.S. Intelligence uses Wikipedia

body:
On Thu, 22 Mar 2007 22:25:24 +0100, George Herbert
<george.herbert at gmail.com> wrote:

> On 3/22/07, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton at gmail.com> wrote:
>> As long as they keep saying "According the Wikipedia" then I guess
>> it's a good thing. If they start stating it as fact then the world is
>> in a lot of trouble... (or, a lot *more* trouble, if you prefer).
>
> Have no fear.  They have whole departments whose job it is to ensure
> that data's source and credibility are properly noted.
>
> Most of the people at intelligence agencies spend far, far more time
> analyzing data than gathering it, and the data source and credibility
> are important.

I think the whole Iraqi WMD fiasco showed that no amount of quality
asurance by the intelligence agencies will prevent politicials from giving
undue weight to the sources that provide information they want to hear,
regardles of the credebility of said source...

--
[[:en:User:Sherool]]


from_name: George Chriss

subject: [Foundation-l] Domains

body:
"Once a replacement for Brad happens..."

Brad is not exactly replaceable ;-)
Let's just hope that we find a skilled lawyer who is as passionate about the WMF as Brad.
-George

On Sat, 24 Mar 2007 09:35:16 -0600  Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List  wrote:

David Gerard wrote:
> On 24/03/07, Platonides <Platonides at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>> BTW: Who will take care of the domains now Brad resigns?
>>
>
>
> Domain names? I thought that was already Brion's job.
>
>
> - d
In the past Jimbo was the "designated agent" for domain names in terms
of who was listed as the primary administrative contact.

Brion is clearly the "technical contact", and he is the one that deals
with the server side in terms of which IP addresses and other issues
about the domains and sub-domains are concerned, but in terms of being
legally responsible for paying the bills and making sure the legal
aspects of keeping and maintaining the domain names (and fighting off
challenges to those who might claim the domains through legal action),
that was clearly Brad's area of expertise.

Currently "wikipedia.org" lists Brad as both the administrative contact
as well as the technical contact.  See
http://who.godaddy.com/WhoIs.aspx?domain=wikipedia.org&prog_id=godaddy
for some details.

Once a replacement for Brad happens, this is something that should be
dealt with.  I think Brion ought to be listed as the technical contact,
(mainly for situations like this), but that is something left to the WMF
board to decide.  The "real" person who owns the domain is the person
listed as the administrative contact.  In theory Brad could really screw
over the foundation here if he wanted, even though I seriously doubt he
is that kind of person to take advantage of this situation, not to
mention it would ruin is reputation as an attorney.

-- Robert Horning

_______________________________________________
foundation-l mailing list
foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org
http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l


subject: [Foundation-l] Domains


from_name: charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com

subject: [WikiEN-l] Radical redefinition of OR

body:
Ray Saintonge wrote

>Inclusion in a secondary source can imply notability, but it
> does not mean that absence from secondary sources implies lack of
> notability.

Absence from a given secondary source implies little. Absence from a whole range of secondary sources is prima facie evidence of a lack of 'notability'. But this is getting somewhat slurred. I have been working in various parts of medieval history. I don't have the original manuscripts on my shelves. Therefore I write entirely from secondary (or more distant sources). I think we can have an article in WP about any figure for whom there are enough surviving sources; and (as far as I'm concerned) not otherwise. And this represents the situation on other 'frontier' parts of the encyclopedia.

Charles

-----------------------------------------
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subject: [WikiEN-l] NBC's story on Wikipedia

body:
"Slim Virgin" wrote

> A rule in journalism is that there comes a point when the story has to
> change; when what was good is made bad, and vice versa. The story
> always has to change.

We are promised, in tomorrow's London Observer, a story 'Theresa Knott, vandal-fighter extraordinaire', by Jenny Kleeman. This may turn on its head the old 'WP has vandals, bad jokes and other nonsense ..' story. But why does this have to be bad press for us?

Charles

-----------------------------------------
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subject: [WikiEN-l] Radical redefinition of OR

body:
On 3/24/07, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Stan, we go through this all the time in botany, that review articles
> are
> > preferable to original research in journals, and we can't include the
> MOBOT
> > APG classifications because he updates them through original research,
> that
> > we can't use APG II directly, or rather alone in an article, that we
> must
> > note it when we use it, that if it's seconded by Reveal or someone it's
> > fine, the whole brya fiasco and removing her APG II direct
> classifications,
> > blah blah blah, and that we can't wholesale use Cavalier-Smith, without
> > including other interpretations, and making clear his attributions.  I
> think
> > you're one of the ones agreeing with these viewpoints.
> >
> > Yes, we use published peer-reviewed journal articles, that are original
> > research, but what we're often getting from them is their non-original
> > research, the introductory sections and any broad background used to
> support
> > the conclusions, but not the conclusions themselves.
> >
> > This is a major problem in botany, which is one of the most dynamic
> fields
> > in the sciences right now, especially basal taxonomies--it's the
> equivalent
> > of the early 20th century genetics revolution.  It's literally killing
> our
> > ability to update the botany articles, to some good end, but sometimes
> it
> > leaves us crippled, because it's so difficult to tread over the careful
> way
> > we have to write the botany articles to comply with NOR, and it's hard
> for
> > retention of new editors.  We get these gung-ho algae guys in and I have
> to
> > thump the Cavalier-Smith (my hero, by the way, along with Woese),
> completely
> > out of them.
> >
> > We do honor NOR, no primary sources in the botanical sciences, and we do
> it
> > rather well most of the time, Stan as well as the rest of us.
>
> You're using "original research" in a different way to WP:OR. WP:OR
> refers to research done originally in Wikipedia, not research done
> originally in a journal. All research is original the first time it is
> done, that's not an issue. The issue is with us doing original
> research, not with us using original research done (and published) by
> someone else.
>
> Your examples have nothing to do with WP:OR, they are simply issues
> with primary sources.

Yup, total newbie and get policies confused all of the time.  Primary
sources, not OR, so I take it all back--not really.  Just one more reason
not for blasting newbies over the head with all of WP:ATT, rather than the
specific policy, discretely directed to the one issue at hand.

Point remains, we don't use primary sources in the plant articles, such as
the original research of a scientist published in a primary resource
otherwise known as a peer-reviewed journal article, but rather we use the
secondary information from the primary source, the primary source's
introductory material or background material used in its conclusions, and
use review articles (which, although this may be changing, not that I've
seen) rather than conclusions originally and solely drawn in primary
sources.

Stan said primary sources, I confused the issue with OR.

KP


body:
On 3/24/07, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > But you didn't request the wording for a species native to Chicago and
> X,
> > just one native to Chicago.  And there is a word for that.  IF you have
> two
> > small endemic populations, there is generally a reason for that, namely
> the
> > species was once more widespread and has been extirpated from elsewhere
> in
> > between, in which case its distribution is relictual and it IS properly
> > called an endemic, just not of Chicago alone, but of the larger area, or
> it
> > has been introduced in the second place, in which case it can still be
> > endemic to the first, or it is actively speciating due to a founder
> > floundering there, or its endemism is edaphic, or otherwise than
> > geographically defined.
> >
> > Endemism is the word.
>
> "Endemic to X" means "native to only X", which is not what I was
> looking for. I was looking for a way to say "Native to X but not all
> of Y" where X is a subregion of Y. The region an animal is endemic to
> is not usually a region that would get a list in the "Animals native
> to X" collection, so it would have to appear on multiple lists, or on
> one more general list (which loses precision).

It's rather difficult to understand what you're asking, because BY
definition, endemic to Chicago means it is native to Chicago, and means it
is NOT native to the rest of the USA.  Do you have an example animal here
that is not endemic to Chicago, but is native to Chicago but not all of the
USA?  "Native to only X but not all of Y," if Y is not a subset of X, and if
X is a subset of Y, is endemism, nothing else.

KP


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [WikiEN-l] Radical redefinition of OR

body:
Guy Chapman aka JzG wrote:

>Ray Saintonge wrote:
>
>
>>The lawsuit here is not a matter of having been so unfortunate as to be
>>caught driving drunk pure and simple.  The issues relate to how Langan
>>presents himself to the world in relation to those issues and
>>organizations which make him encyclopedic and/or notable.  The
>>references to the judgements may very well havew come from his opponents
>>in the case, but that is not the same as systematically sifting through
>>court records to find dirt on the guy
>>
>>
>Here is the problem: Langan and his wife have edited Wikipedia
>disruptively and have been sanctioned for it by ArbCom, they are also
>experienced in forum shopping.  The Mega Society people have also
>edited Wikipedia disruptively, and have expended considerable energy
>in trying to promote their society.  They have also used Wikipedia to
>pursue their vendetta against Langan - and probably vice-versa, though
>I have not seen that myself.
>
>That means that every addition and every removal brings at least the
>suspicion of outside influence by POV-pushers.  I am very much with
>the "plague on both their houses" camp on this one.
>
>The lawsuit appears important only to the two parties, nobody else.
>And the presentation here has all the hallmarks of being the work of
>the Mega Society guys, so it's very easy to see why it would be
>removed.
>
>However... it was not added by them, it was added by FeloniousMonk.
>Felonious is one of the good guys and I generally agree with him.  I
>think he may have a slight tendency to resist removal of sourced
>controversy (and this *was* sourced, as we all know) because he does
>not like Wikipedia being used as a publisher of hagiography.  There
>was an arbitration case relating to WebEx and Min Zhu where we crossed
>swords over this, but in the end his behaviour was so reasonable that
>I can't bring myself to criticise him for it :-)
>
>Ultimately, I think we should wait until we have some external sources
>*for the importance of the case*.  As it stands, it looks to me as if
>only Langan, the Mega Society pushers and a few Wikipedia editors
>actually give a damn about it.  And that says "undue weight" to me.
>
Thank you for the perspective on this.  It would seem then that when
Jimbo gets an earful from one side of such a dispute, he is easily
pushed into an unintentional POV position.  His drive-by editing ends up
tipping the argument in favour of one side rather then letting the
discussion take its natural course.  In situations like this one he
would do better to privately seek out the advice of key trusted users
before taking unilateral action.

The other problem here is that there is no article on Mega Society while
there do appear to be articles on a significant number of other high-IQ
societies as well as the article on Langan.  Viewed together this tends
to weigh the curent POV heavily in favour of Langan.  It would also seem
that the lawsuits would be more notable in a Mega Society article since
it is about the use of their own name.

I probably would never have known about this dispute if it had not come
to this mailing list because of Jimbo's action.  At this stage Langan's
disruption is more evident to me than Mega Society's, but I believe you
when you say they have both done their share.

It is reasonable to call down a plague on both houses.  These disputes
and bickering on the far right tail of the IQ bell curve lend credence
to the premise that the two tails of that curve eventually converge.  :-)

Ec


subject: [Foundation-l] Domains

body:
On 3/24/07, Robert Horning <robert_horning at netzero.net> wrote:
> Considering that the announcement of Brad's resignation just occured, it
> shouldn't be surprising that this is one issue that has just come up.
> And while I am not questioning Brad's integrity here, I am pointing out
> that a less than honorable person could take advantage of the situation
> and move the domains to some other server farm and do all sorts of other
> damage.

I suppose so, but besides such an incident eventually being corrected
(and I suspect it'd be days or hours, not months), whoever did such
destruction would probably spend time in jail as a result (criminal
breach of fiduciary duty).

The owner of the domains, I assume, is the corporation.  The admin
contact has authority to do pretty much anything, but in the case of a
dispute the owner of the domain can override the authority of the
admin contact.

So, I dunno, the level of concern over this matter seems overkill.
I'd personally see no problem with any employee of the WMF or any
board member being the admin contact.  Some kind of joint contact
situation (both people have to turn the key at the same time) would be
preferable, I guess, but AFAIK it's not possible.

Anthony


subject: [Foundation-l] Domains


subject: [WikiEN-l] Radical redefinition of OR

body:
charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com wrote:

>Ray Saintonge wrote
>
>
>>Inclusion in a secondary source can imply notability, but it
>>does not mean that absence from secondary sources implies lack of
>>notability.
>>
>>
>Absence from a given secondary source implies little. Absence from a whole range of secondary sources is prima facie evidence of a lack of 'notability'.
>
Not even that.  We never know whether we will find the key source in the
next place that we look.  Fermat's Last Theorem remained unproven for
three centuries because nobody could find the killer counterexample.  In
law it relates to proving one's innocence when there is no evidence to
connect you with the crime one way oor the other.  This puts the burden
of proof on the one who says that something exists.

>I have been working in various parts of medieval history. I don't have the original manuscripts on my shelves. Therefore I write entirely from secondary (or more distant sources). I think we can have an article in WP about any figure for whom there are enough surviving sources; and (as far as I'm concerned) not otherwise. And this represents the situation on other 'frontier' parts of the encyclopedia.
>
At least in medieval history the individuals that you discuss are not in
a position to threaten a libel suit whenever you say something with
which they disagree. :-)

Until recently the only available sources for writing about the Crusades
were European ones.

Ec


from_name: David Gerard

subject: [Foundation-l] Domains

body:
On 24/03/07, Platonides <Platonides at gmail.com> wrote:

> BTW: Who will take care of the domains now Brad resigns?

Domain names? I thought that was already Brion's job.

- d.


subject: [Foundation-l] Domains


from_name: Platonides

subject: [Foundation-l] Domains

body: BTW: Who will take care of the domains now Brad resigns?


subject: [Foundation-l] Domains


subject: [WikiEN-l] Radical redefinition of OR

body:
Sheldon Rampton wrote:

>There *would* be a problem, however, if Wikipedia were to treat every
>patent application filed and accepted at the U.S. Patent Office as
>sufficient documentation to warrant mention in Wikipedia. All kinds
>of crackpot scientific theories get patented. (They probably have a
>whole wing just for storing blueprints of perpetual motion machines.)
>
>Reasoning back to the lawsuits that we're discussing here, I would
>say that the existence of a lawsuit and court decision is akin to
>issuance of a patent by the U.S. Patent Office. It's an undeniable
>fact that the patent was issued, but until said patent is deemed
>noteworthy enough to be mentioned in a scientific journal, it's not
>significant or noteworthy or credible enough for mention in
>Wikipedia.
>
The Sept. 25, 1920 issue of  "Scientific American" at page 310 included
one paragraph articles for recently patented inventions of

    * A shawl muffler
    * A gun camera
    * An apparatus for measuring ohmic resistance of liquids and solutions
    * An incandescent lamp protecting device
    * A seat for agricultural implements
    * A clod breaking agricultural implement
    * A stepladder
    * A hydrant
    * A sponge rubber article and method of making same
    * A pressure bar mechanism
    * A price marking system
    * A copy holder
    * A grinding tool
    * A combination socket wrench
    * A newspaper vending machine
    * A bearing puller
    * A speed operated circuit closer
    * A cushio9n support for large musical devices
    * A vaporizer
    * An internal combustion engine
    * An automatic gas controller
    * A railway car door
    * A toy book
    * A headlight dimmer
    * A cushion tire
    * A design for a calendar mounting
    * A design for a spool holder
    * A design for a doll

We have a lot of notable patents to write about

Ec


list: commons-l

from_name: will at avery.homelinux.org

subject:
[Commons-l] Getting our content out there
	(openstockphotography.org)

body:
Quoting Brianna Laugher <brianna.laugher at gmail.com>:
<snip>
>
> The BBC religion website mentions us as one of their image sources:
> http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/copyright.shtml , although "Old and
> public-domain images and media" is not exactly the full story...
>
<snip>

Things *are* changing.  They've taken stuff direct from flickr too. But no
mention of CC licences:(.

Will

----------------------------------------------------------------
This message was sent using IMP, the Internet Messaging Program.


body:
On 3/24/07, bobolozo <bobolozo at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Obviously we do want some articles about words,
> though.  We have "Thou", which is a featured article,
> we have "Truthiness", and many other well sourced and
> well written articles.  We don't want to delete all of
> these, so we must want some articles on words.
>
Personally, I've always felt that Wikipedia shouldn't have
encyclopedia articles about words.  In my opinion, if an article about
a word is long, it should still be transwikied to wiktionary.

That said, I think an article could be probably be made about
"truthiness" which was about the concept, not the word.  As for
"Thou", I'd vote for it be transwikied.

> One way or another, some sort of policy would be
> better than "Rewrite into a non-word article.  If not
> possible, delete if short, keep if long and nice looking".
>
I'd say "If it's a noun, transwiki and try to rewrite into a non-word
article (if that fails, delete or redirect).  If not, transwiki and
try to create a redirect (or delete)."

Anthony


body:
On 3/24/07, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton at gmail.com> wrote:
> There is nothing wrong with an etymology section in an article if the
> word has a notable etymology. There aren't many words that describe a
> non-notable topic yet have a notable etymology. The few exceptions can
> (and often do) have articles. I don't think a problem exists with our
> handling of etymologies.
>
I don't think "notability" has anything to do with it.  Is "argue" a
non-notable word?  What about "of" or "notable" or "many" or
"describe"?

The point is, encyclopedias are supposed to be about concepts.
Dictionaries are supposed to be about words.

Anthony


from_name: Brad Patrick

subject: [Foundation-l] Domains

references:
<ecc6a1f0703231026x17a6f32ej5517ba295ef76388@mail.gmail.com>	<46041934.5050701@netzero.net>	<46043AA2.7060200@wikimedia.org>	<eu3bfu$dk5$1@sea.gmane.org>	<eu3kgv$tpi$1@sea.gmane.org>	<46055FE0.70807@netzero.net>
	<eu3uba$ji6$1@sea.gmane.org>

body:
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

As this thread demonstrates, and various poster's comments show, it is
important that *whoever* is in control at a given moment in time does in
fact have control.  A corporation always acts through its officers and
agents.  WMF is no different.

WMF has brilliant technical staff, as you all know.  Additionally,
Delphine (who has some technical knowledge of her own) has taken an
interest in working on these problems and has been for some time.

There is nothing to fear on the part of Foundation's ownership of
domains.  Challenges exist, and a huge some of money could be spent to
buy more, of course.

Florence Devouard wrote:
> Robert Horning wrote:
>> Florence Devouard wrote:
>>> Platonides wrote:
>>>
>>>> BTW: Who will take care of the domains now Brad resigns?
>>>>
>>> Reality check guys.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>> <*snip*>
>>> anthere
>>>
>> Considering that the announcement of Brad's resignation just occured, it
>> shouldn't be surprising that this is one issue that has just come up.
>> And while I am not questioning Brad's integrity here, I am pointing out
>> that a less than honorable person could take advantage of the situation
>> and move the domains to some other server farm and do all sorts of other
>> damage.  This is precisely why the "administrative contact" person
>> should be somebody with absolutely stellar integrity and has the full
>> faith and trust of not only the board but the entire community, and why
>> I believe this to be a very valid question.
>
> Whilst I have no worry at all about Brad integrity on this, my concern
> was rather that for privacy reasons, I felt not confortable with us
> having to read Brad mails to be able to follow up, in particular
> automated systems such as registrations of domain names or trademarks.
> It feels best to sometimes use generic email addresses, so that any
> employee can follow up, and the address can be easily redirected to
> another employee in case of cease of activity, holidays, illness, or
> whatever.
>
> This is also the interest of using a press at wikimedia.org rather than
> sandy email. Better scaling and no pit when the person is not available.
>
> ant
>
>> While in the long run any such usurption of the WMF domains would
>> eventually come back under the control of the WMF, it would be a very
>> miserable several months if somebody were to mess things up in this
>> way.  Considering the way vandals try to mess up our projects, this
>> would be the ultimate vandalism ploy if this domain registration was
>> messed up.  It could be far more damaging than a rogue admin or even
>> steward.
>>
>> I have no doubt that at the moment the WMF has this issue under control,
>> and that certainly any formalities that would also involve Brad would be
>> done as a matter of courtesy as well.
>>
>> -- Robert Horning.
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>
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subject: [Foundation-l] Domains


body:
By 2050 I'm sure we will have figured out how to generate custom lists.
What need would we have for pre-designed lists?

Ec

Fred Bauder wrote:

>You greatly underestimate the efficiency of our deletion procedure and its capacity to adapt. Faced with a plethora of lists, it will kick into gear. Such lists are usually original research anyway. Who publishes such lists?
>
>Fred
>
>
>
>>From: Michael Santora [mailto:bobolozo at yahoo.com]
>>
>>End result: en.Wikipedia, in the year 2050, will have
>>5 million articles, and 500 million lists.
>>


body:
Michael Santora wrote:

>The number of articles which Wikipedia can have is
>limited by the number of at least marginally notable
>and verifiable things which exist.  After every
>notable person, place, movie, scientific topic, and so
>on have their own article, we'll run out of things to
>write about.  Whether this will happen at 2 million, 3
>million, 4 million, it will happen.
>
You are grossly underestimating the number of articles.  There are more
than a million species of insects alone, and each should have an
article. Levelling off is not likely to happen until we exceed 100 million.

Ec


body:
On 3/24/07, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton at gmail.com> wrote:
> > I don't think "notability" has anything to do with it.  Is "argue" a
> > non-notable word?  What about "of" or "notable" or "many" or
> > "describe"?
> >
> > The point is, encyclopedias are supposed to be about concepts.
> > Dictionaries are supposed to be about words.
>
> It's the notability of the word as a concept that is the issue.
> Generally a word is only important because of the concept it
> represents. Occasionally, it is important in its own right. I think
> "thou" is a good example of a notable word, I'm not entirely sure,
> though - I fear its notability stems (partially) from the fact that it
> is no longer used, which isn't really a good measure of notability,
> it's more a measure of interest. Should we be writing articles about
> words simply because they are interesting? Maybe, maybe not...
>
I'm not sure how to respond to this other than to say that I disagree.
 I could point out that none of the other encyclopedias that I checked
have "thou" in them, but you'd just point out (rightfully so) that
Wikipedia is broader than those other encyclopedias.

But, on the other hand, I checked an awful lot of cases, and I
couldn't find any Britannica articles on words.  Try looking up
adjectives or verbs in a mainstream encyclopedia some time.  You'll
almost surely not find any.  Probably won't find any pronouns either
(like "thou").

> A dictionary defines words, and sometimes gives their etymologies. It
> doesn't usually discuss the significance of the word in the culture of
> the people using it, for example. That is more suited to an
> encyclopedia.

I'm certain I've seen dictionaries that have gone into the
significance of a word in culture.  On the other hand, I don't think
I've ever seen an encyclopedia other than Wikipedia which does this.

> For example, the fact that a group of people use the
> same word to refer to two seemingly distinct concepts is something
> that would simply result in two sections to the definition in a
> dictionary, it could spawn several paragraphs of discussion in an
> encyclopedia.

Can you point me to any printed encyclopedias that do this?  I have
seen usage sections in dictionaries which do.

Anthony


subject:
[WikiEN-l] Just what *is* Jimbo's role anyway? -
	personality	cult

body:
on 3/24/07 1:35 PM, Seth Finkelstein at sethf at sethf.com wrote:

> Wikipedia is really interesting in a way, since it doesn't
> have any physical aspect, so it has to rely entirely on psychological
> aspects. Which, in fact, means the leader putting up with a lot of crap.

OK, Seth, I will (predictably) bite :-) - what psychological aspects are you
speaking of?

Marc


subject: [WikiEN-l] Radical redefinition of OR

body:
Ray Saintonge wrote:

> The difficulty with this comes when we run into the maxim that the
> wiki
> is not paper.  If scientific theories depended on being published
> in the
> mainstream media that part of Wikipedia would be very skimpy indeed.
> NOR in science was intended to counteract the influence of crackpot
> theories.

I guess that depends on what you mean by "mainstream media."
Scientists have their own media, namely scientific journals, which do
a better job overall of peer review and fact-checking than the
popular media. I suppose scientific journals are not "mainstream" in
the sense of being read by Joe and Jane Sixpack, but they're very
mainstream in the sense of reflecting the range of scientific views
considered reasonable outside the crackpot community.

I don't believe Wikipedia has a rule about "mainstream media as
acceptable sources" that allows Newsweek and CBS News to be used as
sources but forbids the New England Journal of Medicine or the
Annalen der Physik (where Einstein published his relativity theory).
The problem that Ray imagines is therefore not really a problem.

There *would* be a problem, however, if Wikipedia were to treat every
patent application filed and accepted at the U.S. Patent Office as
sufficient documentation to warrant mention in Wikipedia. All kinds
of crackpot scientific theories get patented. (They probably have a
whole wing just for storing blueprints of perpetual motion machines.)

Reasoning back to the lawsuits that we're discussing here, I would
say that the existence of a lawsuit and court decision is akin to
issuance of a patent by the U.S. Patent Office. It's an undeniable
fact that the patent was issued, but until said patent is deemed
noteworthy enough to be mentioned in a scientific journal, it's not
significant or noteworthy or credible enough for mention in
Wikipedia. Likewise, until a court's legal verdict is considered
noteworthy enough to be reported in SOME publication (be it a
newspaper or a law review), it's probably not appropriate for Wikipedia.

--------------------------------
|  Sheldon Rampton
|  Research director, Center for Media & Democracy (www.prwatch.org)
|  Author of books including:
|     Friends In Deed: The Story of US-Nicaragua Sister Cities
|     Toxic Sludge Is Good For You
|     Mad Cow USA
|     Trust Us, We're Experts
|     Weapons of Mass Deception
|     Banana Republicans
|     The Best War Ever
--------------------------------
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|
|  Donate now to support independent, public interest reporting:
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--------------------------------


from_name: MacGyverMagic/Mgm

body:
When we come to the point Wikipedia becomes complete (which I don't ever
think we will reach) we can start to reconsider the inclusion criteria for
lists and reorganize them. Not have lists of animals, trees per city but by
country or for example by North America. This isn't the time to think about
it yet, though.

Mgm


body:
On 24/03/07, Steve Summit <scs at eskimo.com> wrote:

> In the fullness of time, Wikipedia or some fork of it will be
> properly semantic, with a nice query interface that will let you
> ask questions like "what are all the birds native to the Chicago
> area?".  In the meantime, people interested in such categorization
> have little choice but to create these explicit categories and
> lists, silly and overspecific though they sometimes seem to be.
> I don't see much harm in this, other than the dreadful waste of
> time (compared to, say, the time that could be spent implementing
> a proper semantic scheme once and for all) and the inevitable
> incompleteness and inaccuracy of the explicit lists.

Indeed. Note how a lot of lists were made more or less superfluous by
the category feature. Lists these days need to be of value by order
and/or annotation.

- d.


from_name: William Pietri

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Just what *is* Jimbo's role anyway? - personality
 cult

body:
Seth Finkelstein wrote:
> Look at it this way: Why *does* someone join a cult? And more
> importantly, why do they *stay*, doing free labor? Stark coercion, of
> the sort if-you-leave-we'll-hunt-you-down-and-kill-you, is extraordinarily
> rare. Much of the process is about manipulating a psychological need.
> Transcendent purpose, internal status, external dangers - these are
> all deep human triggers.
>

Interesting notion, and one I hadn't considered.

Measuring Wikipedia against a couple of cult evaluation frameworks, I
don't think Wikipedia scores very highly:

http://www.neopagan.net/ABCDEF.html
http://www.csj.org/infoserv_cult101/checklis.htm

So I'm going to take your notions more as an interesting metaphor than a
serious criticism.

William


body:
On 24/03/07, Marc Riddell <michaeldavid86 at comcast.net> wrote:
> on 3/24/07 5:21 AM, Jimmy Wales at jwales at wikia.com wrote:

> > I would never want to have an environment where
> > "disagreeing with Jimbo" is a bannable offense.

> Thank you for this, too.

An environment where criticism is possible is necessary to us not
sucking. Fortunately, Wikipedia is pretty good at self-examination.

Jimbo's a very smart guy, but with Wikipedia I think he's finally
found a reliable way to meet lots of people who make him feel really
dumb by comparison ;-)

It surprises me when our odder critics claim Wikipedia is the
personality cult of Jimbo Wales. I really can't imagine L. Ron Hubbard
putting up with the crap Jimbo does ...

- d.


body:
On 3/24/07, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton at gmail.com> wrote:
> If the word it notable, then it can have its own article. "Moron" and
> "idiot" both have their own articles, for example, despite their
> current meaning being exactly the same as "stupid".
>
"Moron" and "idiot" are nouns.  They can't possibly have the same
meaning as "stupid", which is an adjective, because they're different
parts of speech.

By the way, what makes a word notable?

Anthony


subject: [WikiEN-l] Radical redefinition of OR

body:
Guy Chapman aka JzG wrote:

>Ray Saintonge wrote:
>
>
>>The other problem here is that there is no article on Mega Society while
>>there do appear to be articles on a significant number of other high-IQ
>>societies as well as the article on Langan.  Viewed together this tends
>>to weigh the curent POV heavily in favour of Langan.  It would also seem
>>that the lawsuits would be more notable in a Mega Society article since
>>it is about the use of their own name.
>>
>>
>Mega society is tiny, of no objectively provable importance and has
>(or at least had last time it was reviewed) no reliable independent
>non-trivial sources, which is why it was deleted and has stayed that
>way despite several attempts by its press officer to re-create it.
>
But then how many of the other High-IQ societies for which we keep
articles are any more notable?

Ec


from_name: Florence Devouard

subject: [Foundation-l] Domains

body:
Platonides wrote:
> BTW: Who will take care of the domains now Brad resigns?

Reality check guys.

Domain names management are not under the responsability of the General
Counsel, but under the responsability of the ED.
So, your question is good, but outdated. Brad stopped being the ED in
january. We are in march. The question should have been asked in
february :-)

Practically speaking, check out this resolution

http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Resolution_Domain_names_workgroup

This resolution was made in november. I am actually not sure what its
current members exactly are, though I can cite Mark Bergsma and Delphine
Menard with certainty.

Unless I am wrong, the person taking care of this on the technical side
is Mark. The person in charge of paying the bills is Carolyn, our COO. I
agree the legal challenges were in Brad's expertise (he recently got
involved in the wikipedia.it issue). Finally, in terms of godaddy
contact, what matters is not the name of the person, but that the
contact is possible. As such, you can check and the email address
provided is not Brad's address, but a generic address
dns-admin at wikimedia.org.

In short, I can not promise everything is already taken care of, but
domain names is taken care of.

anthere


subject: [Foundation-l] Domains


subject: [WikiEN-l] Radical redefinition of OR

body:
Guy Chapman aka JzG wrote:

>On Sat, 24 Mar 2007 10:48:58 -0700 (PDT), Ken Arromdee
><arromdee at rahul.net> wrote:
>
>
>>>Ultimately, I think we should wait until we have some external sources
>>>*for the importance of the case*.  As it stands, it looks to me as if
>>>only Langan, the Mega Society pushers and a few Wikipedia editors
>>>actually give a damn about it.  And that says "undue weight" to me.
>>>
>>>
>>Sure, it's undue weight.
>>Undue weight isn't original research, just like poor notability isn't original
>>research.  Call it what it is.
>>
>>
>Except that it *is* original research, because it's documented only in
>primary sources.
>
So when did the concept of original research migrate from being about
work done by Wikipedians to using published original research done by
others?

Ec


subject: [WikiEN-l] English Wikipedia 0.5 release ready!

body:
http://titoxd.blogspot.com/2007/03/and-for-some-big-news.html

- d.


list: wikipedia-l

subject: [Wikipedia-l] English Wikipedia 0.5 release ready!


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Tim Starling

subject: [Wikitech-l] New SVN committer

body: lrbabe (Louis-R?mi Babe): maintenance of the Quiz extension.


body:
> Marc Riddell
> OK, Seth, I will (predictably) bite :-) - what psychological aspects
> are you speaking of?

	Well, I didn't join this list to be a troll, and I suspect if
I go into detail, many members won't take it kindly. I also don't want
to deal with The Attack Of The Strawmen, where every statement has to
be guarded against being made a strawman because someone will feel
they've scored a big victory by knocking that down.

	Note something like Wikipedia essentially requires someone
high-up to be Chief Crap-Taker, otherwise it'll rip itself apart in
the factionalism that comes from having a lot of worshipful people who
will eventually argue vociferously over the correct way to practice
the faith.

	Look at it this way: Why *does* someone join a cult? And more
importantly, why do they *stay*, doing free labor? Stark coercion, of
the sort if-you-leave-we'll-hunt-you-down-and-kill-you, is extraordinarily
rare. Much of the process is about manipulating a psychological need.
Transcendent purpose, internal status, external dangers - these are
all deep human triggers.

	The "Essjay" story has it all on display, if anyone doubts
the existence of such factors.

--
Seth Finkelstein  Consulting Programmer  http://sethf.com/
Infothought blog - http://sethf.com/infothought/blog/
Interview: http://sethf.com/essays/major/greplaw-interview.php


from_name: Jimmy Wales

body:
ScottL wrote:
>    Is this an honest assessment?  Could a non-admin (or even a single
> admin) go against him and not get banned?  Honestly?  That is not a
> measure of respect or even deference except perhaps by a majority of admins.

Of course.  People go against me all the time and don't get banned.
Indeed, some of our worst trolls who have attacked me most viciously
have survived quite a long time under my personal protection.

If I went bonkers and banned someone who had done absolutely nothing
wrong other than disagree with me in some way, I hope that the ArbCom
would quietly and firmly tell me that I am bonkers.  I would listen.

--Jimbo


body:
geni wrote:
> On 3/23/07, ScottL <scott at mu.org> wrote:
>>    Is this an honest assessment?  Could a non-admin (or even a single
>> admin) go against him and not get banned?  Honestly?
>
> Yup done it.

In a separate email I mentioned something about our worst trolls under
my personal protection.  I just got scared that someone might think I
mean people like geni, who have had plenty of disagreements with me.

NO.  Geni is (in my opinion) often a pain in the neck, but also a very
valued member of the community who needs no protection or support from
me to do very well.

But the point is, I would never want to have an environment where
"disagreeing with Jimbo" is a bannable offense.  That is less likely
now, of course, than ever before, because we have functioning community
institutions which are quite properly growing in power so that I am less
and less needed over time.

--Jimbo


from_name: Slim Virgin

body:
On 3/24/07, Seth Finkelstein <sethf at sethf.com> wrote:
>         Look at it this way: Why *does* someone join a cult? And more
> importantly, why do they *stay*, doing free labor? Stark coercion, of
> the sort if-you-leave-we'll-hunt-you-down-and-kill-you, is extraordinarily
> rare. Much of the process is about manipulating a psychological need.
> Transcendent purpose, internal status, external dangers - these are
> all deep human triggers.
>
The thing about "manipulating psychological need" might simply boil
down to saying "come and write for us" (an honest invitation) and
"your work might help a lot of people" (a real reward). To call it
"manipulation," or to argue that there's a cult-like aspect, is to add
an additional factor, namely that there's something untoward about it.
So what is the untoward thing, in your view?

Sarah


from_name: Emmanuel Engelhart

subject: [WikiEN-l] [Wikipedia-l] English Wikipedia 0.5 release ready!

body:
Hi

That is _almost_ ready.
Please don't forward this news before the official press release.

Best regards

Kelson

2007/3/24, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com>:
> http://titoxd.blogspot.com/2007/03/and-for-some-big-news.html
>
>
> - d.
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


body:
Seth Finkelstein wrote:
>> "Slim Virgin"
>> So what is the untoward thing, in your view?
>>
>
> 	Briefly, the illusion of prestige comparable to an academic.

I have never seen that suggested that is a big benefit. When I click the
edit link, I don't see breathless promises about vast prestige. I see
prosaic warnings that I should write only attributable content, and that
I lose all control over whatever I submit.

When I talk with people about why they edit Wikipedia, the answer I
generally get is that it's already something they use, and when they saw
something that needed fixing, they just fixed it. I've never heard
anybody describe it in terms like yours. Even among the most energetic
participants, the prestige I see being sought is among the Wikipedia
community. Academic prestige is something academics get from society at
large, whereas Wikipedia's prestige is much more akin to the kind of
thing you see on any other hobbyist internet community. WOW players may
be very excited that you've made it to level eleventy-seven, but in the
wider world, nobody cares.

William


body:
There is nothing wrong with an etymology section in an article if the
word has a notable etymology. There aren't many words that describe a
non-notable topic yet have a notable etymology. The few exceptions can
(and often do) have articles. I don't think a problem exists with our
handling of etymologies.


body:
On 3/24/07, Seth Finkelstein <sethf at sethf.com> wrote:
> > "Slim Virgin"
> > So what is the untoward thing, in your view?
>
>         Briefly, the illusion of prestige comparable to an academic.

It's not invariably an illusion, though. Anyone who wants to can pick
a quiet corner of Wikipedia and write extremely good articles using
the best scholarly sources. You can do it using your real name and
cite yourself elsewhere, or at least claim the credit on your r?sum?
or wherever. We're not allowed to publish original work, but most
academics don't do that most of the time anyway.

I don't mean to be dismissive of your argument, which I find very
interesting, but you haven't managed to put your finger on what the
cult-like thing comes from. It can't simply be a group of people
huddled around a charismatic leader, because if you go to any major
corporation, any political party, any monarchy, you'll find courtiers
doing the bidding of (or plotting against) the king, and we don't call
them cults. There's also no element of coercion to stay on Wikpedia.
Quite the reverse: anyone who wants to leave can just turn off the
computer. There may be an addiction, but that's a personal thing
that's not obviously related to the group dynamics.

You can argue that it's irrational for people to want to work without
payment for the benefit of others, and that you wouldn't do it
yourself, and you can be suspicious of anyone who does. But being
irrational isn't enough to brand us a cult either.

To support the cult hypothesis, there would have to be something
illegitimate, untoward, nasty, inappropriate, dishonest, corrupt,
harmful to the individual -- where what we're doing isn't *really*
what we're doing, or something like that -- and it's not clear to me
what that thing would be.

Sarah


body:
> I don't think "notability" has anything to do with it.  Is "argue" a
> non-notable word?  What about "of" or "notable" or "many" or
> "describe"?
>
> The point is, encyclopedias are supposed to be about concepts.
> Dictionaries are supposed to be about words.

It's the notability of the word as a concept that is the issue.
Generally a word is only important because of the concept it
represents. Occasionally, it is important in its own right. I think
"thou" is a good example of a notable word, I'm not entirely sure,
though - I fear its notability stems (partially) from the fact that it
is no longer used, which isn't really a good measure of notability,
it's more a measure of interest. Should we be writing articles about
words simply because they are interesting? Maybe, maybe not...

A dictionary defines words, and sometimes gives their etymologies. It
doesn't usually discuss the significance of the word in the culture of
the people using it, for example. That is more suited to an
encyclopedia. For example, the fact that a group of people use the
same word to refer to two seemingly distinct concepts is something
that would simply result in two sections to the definition in a
dictionary, it could spawn several paragraphs of discussion in an
encyclopedia.


body:
> "List of birds native to Chicago area but
> not the whole of North America"
>
> Endemic to Chicago is the terminology.

No, that doesn't work. Something can be native to lots of places
within N. America, while not being native to the whole of it. A bird
found in Chicago and a neighbouring place should be mentioned in those
2 lists, not the main list, otherwise you lose the precision. Creating
a list for "birds endemic to Chicago and X" would result in lots of
very short lists for each possible combination of places.


from_name: Filip Maljkovic

subject: [Foundation-l] Meeting in Belgrade

body:
Hello,
I'm proud to announce that a regional meeting will be held in Belgrade,
Serbia during the weekend of April 21 and 22. Everyone who has time and
means to come is, of course, welcome, seeing as we'd like some visitors
from other countries as well. Unlike the previous meeting, that was in
December 2006, we plan to talk a about some more serious issues within
Wikimedia projects (e.g. how each community deals with trolls, vandals;
copyrights, policies, etc.) instead of just holding lectures. This event
will be held in the Belgrade Youth Center[1], as a part of a broader
event dubbed "The Days of Belgrade"[2].

If you have any questions, recommendations et al, send them to me
(dungodung at gmail.com).

Thank you,
Filip Maljkovic (dungodung)

[1] http://www.domomladine.org/
[2] http://www.beograd.org.yu/cms/view.php?id=201222

P.S. Please forward this message if (and where) appropriate.


subject: [Foundation-l] Meeting in Belgrade


subject: [Foundation-l] Domains

body:
Robert Horning wrote:
> Florence Devouard wrote:
>> Platonides wrote:
>>
>>> BTW: Who will take care of the domains now Brad resigns?
>>>
>>
>> Reality check guys.
>>
>>
>>
> <*snip*>
>> anthere
>>
>
> Considering that the announcement of Brad's resignation just occured, it
> shouldn't be surprising that this is one issue that has just come up.
> And while I am not questioning Brad's integrity here, I am pointing out
> that a less than honorable person could take advantage of the situation
> and move the domains to some other server farm and do all sorts of other
> damage.  This is precisely why the "administrative contact" person
> should be somebody with absolutely stellar integrity and has the full
> faith and trust of not only the board but the entire community, and why
> I believe this to be a very valid question.

Whilst I have no worry at all about Brad integrity on this, my concern
was rather that for privacy reasons, I felt not confortable with us
having to read Brad mails to be able to follow up, in particular
automated systems such as registrations of domain names or trademarks.
It feels best to sometimes use generic email addresses, so that any
employee can follow up, and the address can be easily redirected to
another employee in case of cease of activity, holidays, illness, or
whatever.

This is also the interest of using a press at wikimedia.org rather than
sandy email. Better scaling and no pit when the person is not available.

ant

> While in the long run any such usurption of the WMF domains would
> eventually come back under the control of the WMF, it would be a very
> miserable several months if somebody were to mess things up in this
> way.  Considering the way vandals try to mess up our projects, this
> would be the ultimate vandalism ploy if this domain registration was
> messed up.  It could be far more damaging than a rogue admin or even
> steward.
>
> I have no doubt that at the moment the WMF has this issue under control,
> and that certainly any formalities that would also involve Brad would be
> done as a matter of courtesy as well.
>
> -- Robert Horning.


subject: [Foundation-l] Domains


from_name: Seth Finkelstein

body:
> "Slim Virgin"
> So what is the untoward thing, in your view?

	Briefly, the illusion of prestige comparable to an academic.

>> Seth Finkelstein
>> I also don't want to deal with The Attack Of The Strawmen
>
> David Gerard
> As I understand from your Guardian piece, your theory is more or less
> (and correct me word by word as needed): Wikipedia is a cult of
>                 ^^^^^^^^^^^^
> Jimbo's personality, where he gets everyone to write stuff for him
> for free, so that he can profit from it using Wikia.

	Sigh. I rest my case :-(.

	David, if you take a swipe that arguably includes me, I think
it's fair to do a "Marshall McLuhan right here" bit, and correct the
ideas. That is, the range of cults encompasses far, far, more than
people who end up in the woods setting themselves on fire. Moreover,
"New Age" groups can be particularly upbeat in certain ways. Cults
typically have love in them as well as hate.

	But I'm sensitive to the fact that it's not really laudable
for an outsider to go to a project list and criticize the ideology of
the project. So I'm trying to walk a line there.

	You're going to declare yourself the winner anyway, so I
might as well not waste any time over it.

--
Seth Finkelstein  Consulting Programmer  http://sethf.com/
Infothought blog - http://sethf.com/infothought/blog/
Interview: http://sethf.com/essays/major/greplaw-interview.php


from_name: Thomas Dalton

body:
> One major problem with what you've said above:
> Wikipedia has only one article on a topic, no matter
> how many synonyms there are for the major word we use
> to entitle the article.
>
> Synonyms for stupid: brainless, dense, doltish, dopey,
> dorky, dull, dumb, fatuous, half-witted, mindless,
> oafish, obtuse, senseless, simple, slow, thick,
> thickheaded, unintelligent, vacuous, weak-minded,
> witless.  Related terms: feebleminded, retarded,
> simpleminded; foolish, idiotic, imbecilic, moronic.
>
> These terms can't all have their own articles to
> contain their etymologies, they would mostly redirect
> to "Stupidity" on wikipedia if anyone bothered to make
> redirects for them all.  If we determine that the
> etymologies are notable, where do they go?  Clearly
> none of them would belong in the "Stupidity" article.

If the word it notable, then it can have its own article. "Moron" and
"idiot" both have their own articles, for example, despite their
current meaning being exactly the same as "stupid".


subject: [WikiEN-l] Radical redefinition of OR

body:
> Stan, we go through this all the time in botany, that review articles are
> preferable to original research in journals, and we can't include the MOBOT
> APG classifications because he updates them through original research, that
> we can't use APG II directly, or rather alone in an article, that we must
> note it when we use it, that if it's seconded by Reveal or someone it's
> fine, the whole brya fiasco and removing her APG II direct classifications,
> blah blah blah, and that we can't wholesale use Cavalier-Smith, without
> including other interpretations, and making clear his attributions.  I think
> you're one of the ones agreeing with these viewpoints.
>
> Yes, we use published peer-reviewed journal articles, that are original
> research, but what we're often getting from them is their non-original
> research, the introductory sections and any broad background used to support
> the conclusions, but not the conclusions themselves.
>
> This is a major problem in botany, which is one of the most dynamic fields
> in the sciences right now, especially basal taxonomies--it's the equivalent
> of the early 20th century genetics revolution.  It's literally killing our
> ability to update the botany articles, to some good end, but sometimes it
> leaves us crippled, because it's so difficult to tread over the careful way
> we have to write the botany articles to comply with NOR, and it's hard for
> retention of new editors.  We get these gung-ho algae guys in and I have to
> thump the Cavalier-Smith (my hero, by the way, along with Woese), completely
> out of them.
>
> We do honor NOR, no primary sources in the botanical sciences, and we do it
> rather well most of the time, Stan as well as the rest of us.

You're using "original research" in a different way to WP:OR. WP:OR
refers to research done originally in Wikipedia, not research done
originally in a journal. All research is original the first time it is
done, that's not an issue. The issue is with us doing original
research, not with us using original research done (and published) by
someone else.

Your examples have nothing to do with WP:OR, they are simply issues
with primary sources.


from_name: Voice of All

subject: [WikiEN-l] Status of stable versions?

body:
I have a working, somewhat finished, version of Joerg Baach's revision
tagging on my test wiki.

Inclusions are time frozen, but images are still changeable.

David Gerard-2 wrote:
>
> On 13/03/07, Erik Moeller <erik at wikimedia.org> wrote:
>> On 3/13/07, Nyenyec N <nyenyec at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> > Where can I get an update on the status of the "Stable versions"
>> feature?
>
>> Technical work is ongoing. An update will be posted soon.
>
>
> :-D We eagerly await news!
>
>
> - d.
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>
>

--
View this message in context: http://www.nabble.com/Status-of-stable-versions--tf3394180.html#a9657104
Sent from the English Wikipedia mailing list archive at Nabble.com.


from_name: K P

subject: [WikiEN-l] Radical redefinition of OR

body:
On 3/24/07, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
>
> Sheldon Rampton wrote:
>
> >There *would* be a problem, however, if Wikipedia were to treat every
> >patent application filed and accepted at the U.S. Patent Office as
> >sufficient documentation to warrant mention in Wikipedia. All kinds
> >of crackpot scientific theories get patented. (They probably have a
> >whole wing just for storing blueprints of perpetual motion machines.)
> >
> >Reasoning back to the lawsuits that we're discussing here, I would
> >say that the existence of a lawsuit and court decision is akin to
> >issuance of a patent by the U.S. Patent Office. It's an undeniable
> >fact that the patent was issued, but until said patent is deemed
> >noteworthy enough to be mentioned in a scientific journal, it's not
> >significant or noteworthy or credible enough for mention in
> >Wikipedia.
> >
> The Sept. 25, 1920 issue of  "Scientific American" at page 310 included
> one paragraph articles for recently patented inventions of
>
>    * A shawl muffler
>    * A gun camera
>    * An apparatus for measuring ohmic resistance of liquids and solutions
>    * An incandescent lamp protecting device
>    * A seat for agricultural implements
>    * A clod breaking agricultural implement
>    * A stepladder
>    * A hydrant
>    * A sponge rubber article and method of making same
>    * A pressure bar mechanism
>    * A price marking system
>    * A copy holder
>    * A grinding tool
>    * A combination socket wrench
>    * A newspaper vending machine
>    * A bearing puller
>    * A speed operated circuit closer
>    * A cushio9n support for large musical devices
>    * A vaporizer
>    * An internal combustion engine
>    * An automatic gas controller
>    * A railway car door
>    * A toy book
>    * A headlight dimmer
>    * A cushion tire
>    * A design for a calendar mounting
>    * A design for a spool holder
>    * A design for a doll
>
> We have a lot of notable patents to write about

They weren't notable when the patents were issued though, but later.  There
are many such patents, too, that fall in such general listings.  Was the
agricultural clod breaking tool the ripper which mechanized and
revolutionized farming in some areas of the Central Valley, or was it some
non-functional, go nowhere version of a plough for limited applications?  I
don't know, and having reviewed patents (for toupee devices for historical
reasons) at least once, there seemed to be to be no way that anyone could
from the context of the patent application alone could tell how successful
any such device became or would become (the latter being speculative
original research, what I call SPOR).

Interesting how important the ripper is to agriculture today, made it
possible to farm some of the premium land of the Central Valley, yet it's
not in Wikipedia.  Is it notable?  Yup.  No tandem offset plow, harrows yes,
but no ripper.  Oh, I see it's called a chisel plow, on the plough page,
which redirects itself to the plough page, and no redirect for ripper, and
it is not listed on its disambiguation page.  Clod breaking tillage
equipment is of major importance to agriculture, but that doesn't mean I can
tell the history of the ripper or chiseler from its patent application or
anything about it that should be in Wikipedia that isn't in secondary
sources.

KP


body:
> But you didn't request the wording for a species native to Chicago and X,
> just one native to Chicago.  And there is a word for that.  IF you have two
> small endemic populations, there is generally a reason for that, namely the
> species was once more widespread and has been extirpated from elsewhere in
> between, in which case its distribution is relictual and it IS properly
> called an endemic, just not of Chicago alone, but of the larger area, or it
> has been introduced in the second place, in which case it can still be
> endemic to the first, or it is actively speciating due to a founder
> floundering there, or its endemism is edaphic, or otherwise than
> geographically defined.
>
> Endemism is the word.

"Endemic to X" means "native to only X", which is not what I was
looking for. I was looking for a way to say "Native to X but not all
of Y" where X is a subregion of Y. The region an animal is endemic to
is not usually a region that would get a list in the "Animals native
to X" collection, so it would have to appear on multiple lists, or on
one more general list (which loses precision).


from_name: Ray Saintonge

body:
Thomas Dalton wrote:

>>I don't think "notability" has anything to do with it.  Is "argue" a
>>non-notable word?  What about "of" or "notable" or "many" or
>>"describe"?
>>
>>The point is, encyclopedias are supposed to be about concepts.
>>Dictionaries are supposed to be about words.
>>
>>
>It's the notability of the word as a concept that is the issue.
>Generally a word is only important because of the concept it
>represents. Occasionally, it is important in its own right. I think
>"thou" is a good example of a notable word, I'm not entirely sure,
>though - I fear its notability stems (partially) from the fact that it
>is no longer used, which isn't really a good measure of notability,
>it's more a measure of interest. Should we be writing articles about
>words simply because they are interesting? Maybe, maybe not...
>
I don't think that notability is the right test here; notability has
become an overused concept in Wikipedia.  The encyclopedic interest
remains in the concept behind the word, while the dictionary interest
has to do with the word itself.  Only after that has been decided should
the dictionary and encyclopedia look at notability, because these will
be based on different criteria.  Where there are synonms the
encyclopedia has no need to repeat the same article for each of these
words; it must choose which best carries the concept.  That's not so
much a notability issue.  A dictionary, however, must include separate
articles for the synonyms, and the notability issue is more likely to
arise when dealing with obscure spelling variants or neologisms.  It is
up to the dictionary to distinguish between the shades of meaning that
differentiate the synonyms.

I think that "thou" is validly included in the encyclopedia, but there
would be no need to include separate articles on its inflected forms,
"thee", "thy", or "thine".  It remains important in the linguistic
development of the English language, and the evolution of the second
person singular in the language.

BTW the use of the second person singular has not completely
disappeared.  It's most familiar modern English use is in the Lord's
Prayer.  It continues to be found in other religious or poetic
circumstances, and in various dialects.

>A dictionary defines words, and sometimes gives their etymologies.
>
Not just sometimes; a good dictionary should include the etymology as a
part of the history which defines the word.

>It doesn't usually discuss the significance of the word in the culture of
>the people using it, for example. That is more suited to an
>encyclopedia. For example, the fact that a group of people use the
>same word to refer to two seemingly distinct concepts is something
>that would simply result in two sections to the definition in a
>dictionary, it could spawn several paragraphs of discussion in an
>encyclopedia.
>
A dictionary is better equipped to deal with the distinctions between
American and British usage  An encyclopedia, when explaining the
underlying concept, would do better to choose a word which avoids such
ambiguities.

Ec


from_name: Steve Summit

subject: [Wikitech-l] strange diff discrepancy?

body:
Take a look at

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia%3AReference_desk%2FScience&diff=117625549&oldid=117623727

It looks like Martinp23 tried to archive two day's worth of content.
But some (not all) of the deleted material still shows in the
revision-as-edited (i.e. in http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?
title=Wikipedia:Reference_desk/Science&oldid=117623727).
What gives?


subject: [Wikitech-l] NEVER MIND: strange diff discrepancy?

body:
I wrote:
> It looks like Martinp23 tried to archive two day's worth of content.
> But some (not all) of the deleted material still shows in the
> revision-as-edited...

Never mind, I overlooked the fact that the archived material went
to a subpage which was then transcluded back onto the page.


from_name: Andrew Gray

subject: [WikiEN-l] Radical redefinition of OR

body:
On 24/03/07, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:

> Not even that.  We never know whether we will find the key source in the
> next place that we look.  Fermat's Last Theorem remained unproven for
> three centuries because nobody could find the killer counterexample.

Um. If they *had* found a counterexample, it'd have been disproven,
not proven. And the main reason it wasn't proven for three centuries
is that (on current evidence) the mathematical understanding needed to
prove it didn't exist before a few decades ago...

I think this may be an unfortunate example to pick on when discussing
the nature of proof.

--
- Andrew Gray
  andrew.gray at dunelm.org.uk