subject: Oliver is Lir II (Re: [Wikipedia-l] This whole Lir and Americanization thing)

body:
Sorry folks, I got paranoid.  I went back in the mailing list, saw
Olivers previous posts, and am not as sure sure as I was, but Olivers
last post seems pretty strong evidence.  Oliver previously seemed to
take the opposite stance to that of Lir on the anglicization issue.
Lir being the role-player that he is, that doesn't necessarily mean anything.
But I much prefer this more intelligent and reasonable Oliver persona to the
Lir persona.

The email I reply to below is like the old Lir come back, expressing his
disregard for community standards in his nihilistic desire to be able to
"do whatever he wants, and screw what anybody else thinks".

Lir stated, ON THE WIKIPEDIA that the Wikipedia is just a dumping ground
for information.  However much a few others may leap to his defense, the
truth his, his ungrammatical edits filled with junk information have caused
more work for other people than was saved by his "contributions".  And that
is entirely aside from the social costs of the people he burned trying to
help him.

My reply below is a blow by blow account of why I think Oliver is Lir.
I also refute the points he thought he raised.

On Sun, Nov 24, 2002 at 05:51:00AM +0000, Oliver Pereira wrote:
>I know that I'm just a newbie here, and you're a terribly important sysop
>person, but Lir doesn't seem to be around right now, and I'm not going to
>let that attack go undefended...

If you are a newbie, how do you know the person you are replying to is a
sysop?

Why do you feel you have to defend Lir, given that you are a newbie and
thus not familiar with the long-running history of this case and all
it's particulars?

If you are really a newbie, then you have no idea of the ones of work
Wikipedians put into trying to help Lir become a productive member of our
community, only to be slapped in the face time and time again, and our
well-meaning advice not only ignored, but denigrated.

>> Regarding banning Lir or not.  If Lir can't be bothered to speak with
>> Jimbo, stop behaving childishly (name-calling, whinging, and making
>> guerilla edits that result in non-NPOV articles), and work in a
>> cooperative, collegial, manner, then a ban is in order.  The community
>> has certain standards, and from what I've seen, Lir is as guilty as
>> Helga ever was of flouting them.
>
>Judging by what I've seen, Lir is an intelligent person with much to
>contribute. Childish, of course, but then I've seen just as childish

You haven't seen much.  That childish behavior vastly outweighs whatever
intelligence Lir has shown.

And your claim of his "intelligence" is overrated.  His edits show him
to have a reckless attitude toward the work of others; they show him to
have no grasp of what properly belongs in an encyclopedia and what does
not; and they appear calculated to frustrate others who wish to make the
Wikipedia, not some random "dumping ground" of information, but a great
encyclopedia!  This hasn't even mentioned his poor grammatical skills.

>behaviour from some of the regulars and even (perhaps more so) from the
>sysops. It seems that Lir is just more vociferous about it. There seem to
>be a lot more complaints about Lir's attitude and over-the-top
>pronouncements than about any actual edits, which surely should be what we
>are most interested in here. If Lir's actions are to be the subject of

Lirs edits, taken together as a body, are bad enough.  It may take us
a year to recover.

>This is just plain nonsense. *Everyone's* political beliefs are POV:

That's why we leave our political beliefs at home when we work on the
Wikipedia.

Lirs edits to Sumer are illustrative; why the hell did he insist that it
was important to mention that "In Sumer, women did the weaving"?  In
many societies at the time, women did weaving.  What was so unique about
that fact that it is justified to be included in an encyclopedia article
on Sumerians?  Lir refused to answer any such question, merely maintaining
that his edits were proper.

Someone took a quick look at the "Wealth of the Nations" article and
pronounced it "fine".  Excuse me.  Go look at any REAL encyclopedia.
None of them have an article on a book that consists of a series of
short quotations from the book in question, and NOTHING ELSE.
Interesting as the quotes were, they were NOT an encyclopedia article,
and illustrate Lirs attitude that the wikipedia isn't a thing of quality,
but a mere dumping ground for information.

Lir is like a magpie of information; he picks up cheap shit information
as well as some real gold sometimes, and inserts it into the wikipedia
on an equal opportunity basis.

>Now, now, let's not descend into that sort of language. Lir has a point. I
>personally would be quite offended if English-speaking people were to
>rename *me* "Oliver Peartree", simply to make it more "English". I would

Go to the Philippines.  Try as you might, you won't be able to stop them
from calling you "Joe".  "Hey Joe!".  Whatcha gonna do about it?  Guess
you'll just have to learn to cope, huh?

You seem to be arguing that one language cannot modify the things it
borrows from other languages to suit it's own needs.  Now THAT is an
arrogant, paternalistic attitude.

>even if their renaming has now become widespread. And I am offended on
>their behalf, even if they're not. :)

With that attitude you'll always be offended; you can find offense
wherever you look, if that is your desire.  But if that is your desire,
I fear you won't be a very good Wikipedia editor.

>names are simply distortions (or replacements) of foreign names. Calling
>Jo~ao "John" is just an *approximation* to the truth in the same way that
>calling a Jean Claude van Damme "French" is. It's sort of *nearly* right,
>but not quite. The job of an encyclopaedia should be to correct these
>sorts of approximations!

Sure, we agree.  Except to succeed in our work, we need to convince
people to listen to us.  Lirs silly anti-Americanism doesn't help the
cause one bit.

>I don't think anyone was arguing for *original* names of places, so you
>are attacking a straw man here. In the case of a place which still exists,

It wasn't a straw man at all.  qv Dien Bien Phu. I think you are trolling.

>> Should Paris have a note in the title that says "pronounced Paree, you
>> morons"?
>
>I'd quite like to see that, actually. :)

And thus I conclude that you are Lir.  You are showing a similar lack of
taste.

>It's not about political beliefs; it's about giving articles (arguably)
>more accurate titles. I hope I've laid out some of the arguments clearly

Don't be a twit.  No matter how much HTML may have advanced, and
browsers now support Unicode, URLS are NOT unicode, they are ascii, and
many browsers break if the urls are anything BUT ascii.  Making the
Wikipedia unusable over some obscure and unsatisfying point is the
height of lunacy.  Not to mention your idea of "accuracy" really is not.

>Phew. That's enough of that for one day. I think I really *will* go to bed
>now... :)

Yes, you do that Lir.  For a few minutes I had started to think you were
prepared to share in the collegial spirit of mutual respect.  Alas...

Jonathan

--
                     Geek House Productions, Ltd.

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

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

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Lars Aronsson

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Edit conlfict screen (was: A concept from Buckminster
 Fuller)

body:
Poor, Edmund W wrote:
> I've been confused by the "edit conflict" screen so many times that
> I seriously think the page should be redesigned.

Speaking of redesigns, I really like the "diff" pages of the phase III
software (both word diff and two columns), but I think the diff
selector (History page) could use some ideas from the newest UseMod
software.  This software hasn't been released, but is apparently in
use for Meatball Wiki.

To see what I mean, go to some page and click "View other revisions",
e.g. http://www.usemod.com/cgi-bin/mb.pl?action=history&id=BeOS

--
  Lars Aronsson (lars at aronsson.se)
  tel +46-70-7891609
  http://aronsson.se/ http://elektrosmog.nu/ http://susning.nu/


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Brion VIBBER

subject: [Wikitech-l] X-System and Unicode

body:
Chuck Smith wrote:
> Yes, but the problem is that I think the majority of
> users would like to edit in the x-system and view in
> unicode.  Currently, it is not possible to do this.
> For example, in most internet cafes (where I do some
> of my editing), I want to view the text in unicode,
> but there's no way to type in unicode.  In this old
> system it did not matter if people typed in x-system
> or unicode, it always works.  Could we carry this
> functionality over to the new software?  I know
> Unukorno also wants this functionality.

Jes ja, sed estas penige farigi al la programo tion fari, do mi
flankenlasis gxin intertempe... mi denove restarigis gxin, eble per ioma
kosto je mia menssaneco. ;)  Bonvolu elprovi gxin.

Ankoaux eblas, ke oni elektu X-an _legadon_ per la preferoj, sed
(denove) ne plu eblas redakti "pure" Unikode: la teksto de la nuna
artikolo konvertigxas X-en en la redaktilo, kaj la Xajxoj konvertigxas
Unikoden kiam konservitaj; ne forgesu do aldoni sekvan Xon kiam vi
tajpas "Linux" aux "Bruxelles" a.s. T.e., plimalpli same je la antauxa
vikiprogramo.

Se oni efektive deziras "pure" Unikodan redaktadon, tion mi ankaux povus
reebligi.

---

Right, but that's a pain to get the software to do so I left it for
later... I've got it stuffed back in now at perhaps some cost to my
mental health. ;)  Bang away at it and see if it breaks.

You can still select X viewing in the user preferences, but there's now
currently no way to do "pure" Unicode editing; the text of the current
article will be converted to X-system in the edit box, and the special X
sequences will be converted on input, so remember to add a second X when
you type "Linux" or "Bruxelles" or whatnot. Ie, pretty much like on the
previous software.

If there's demand for "pure" Unicode editing, I can add that in too.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


from_name: Anthere

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Fran�ais

body:
Au fait, j'ai forward? les messages ?
wikifr-l at wikipedia.org...

--- "Matt M." <matt_mcl at sympatico.ca> wrote:
> > What is this, the third or is it the fourth time
> James Zitzmann has posted
> > absolutely pointless profanity on the list?
>
> And my last name is McLauchlin, not Malkemus.
>
> > Non, malheureusement, il n'existe aucune politique
> ?
> > ce sujet, car la majorit? des wikip?diens sont
> > fran?ais ou belges (?ventuellement expatri?s),
> donc ce
> > probl?me n'a jamais ?t? rencontr?;
> >
> > C'est un peu l'ambuiguit? Fran?ais (population)
> > fran?ais (language) que j'ai d?j? relev?e...
>
> Hm, existe-t-il un ?quivalent ? Wikipedia talk o?
> l'on pourrait discuter de
> cette question? J'aimerais bien voir [[Wikipedia
> discuter:Variation
> r?gionale]] ou quelque chose de semblant, en y
> d?pla?ant peut-?tre la
> discussion de [[Discuter:Montr?al]].
>
> (Et "h?t?" c'est mon erreur.)
>
> Matt (Montr?alais)
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at wikipedia.org
>
http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l

__________________________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Mail Plus ? Powerful. Affordable. Sign up now.
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from_name: Bridget

from_email: Bridget

subject: [Wikipedia-l] poor oliver

body:
The vindicative hate campaign against Oliver shows how much abuse I suffered from various wiki "elites" who, unlike in Oliver's case, had no doubt that I was Lir. I find it absurd that I am to be criticized on the grounds of

"Lir's edits are like magpie droppings" and yet I am the one that is banned.

Jimbo says the official reason I was banned was because I accused certain people of racism and totalitarianism. The truth is, there are racist assholes here on wikipedia, and Im being banned for noting it.

Now, Im not calling Jimbo racist, if he was racist this would be kkkpedia.com. But he is totalitarian, and can't possibly deny that without denying his stance on voting and banning. I hope he realizes that persecution is wrong, no matter how much the evil ones urge him to abuse power in their name.

Remember, I was banned for being a constant annoyance to wikipedians everywhere. That means that all of you who I got along with just fine...all of you are me...and your day will come soon, unless you shut up and never ever state that you disagree wholeheartedly.

---------------------------------
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Yahoo! Mail Plus - Powerful. Affordable. Sign up now
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from_name: Oliver Pereira

subject: [Wikipedia-l] This whole Lir and Americanization thing

body:
I must protest!

I know that I'm just a newbie here, and you're a terribly important sysop
person, but Lir doesn't seem to be around right now, and I'm not going to
let that attack go undefended...

> Regarding banning Lir or not.  If Lir can't be bothered to speak with
> Jimbo, stop behaving childishly (name-calling, whinging, and making
> guerilla edits that result in non-NPOV articles), and work in a
> cooperative, collegial, manner, then a ban is in order.  The community
> has certain standards, and from what I've seen, Lir is as guilty as
> Helga ever was of flouting them.

Judging by what I've seen, Lir is an intelligent person with much to
contribute. Childish, of course, but then I've seen just as childish
behaviour from some of the regulars and even (perhaps more so) from the
sysops. It seems that Lir is just more vociferous about it. There seem to
be a lot more complaints about Lir's attitude and over-the-top
pronouncements than about any actual edits, which surely should be what we
are most interested in here. If Lir's actions are to be the subject of
public debate, could we establish details of specific bad edits, rather
than just ranting?

> Lir's belief is very POV.  Articles he renames or redirects in
> furtherance of that belief are therefore infected with that non-neutral
> POV.

This is just plain nonsense. *Everyone's* political beliefs are POV:
that's the whole point of them! But an editor's renaming an article to
give it a different version of its name doesn't somehow magically invest
that article with the editor's point of view. Of course, one *can* insert
a point of view into an article title, by inserting a qualifying adjective
such as "Excellent" or "Rubbish" into it, but as far as I'm aware we're
only talking about exchanging one version of a name (used by one set of
people) with another (used by another set of people). This has no effect
on the point of view whatsoever.

> As to correct language and the evils of americanization -- bullshit,
> pure and simple.

Now, now, let's not descend into that sort of language. Lir has a point. I
personally would be quite offended if English-speaking people were to
rename *me* "Oliver Peartree", simply to make it more "English". I would
consider it to be arrogance: who are they to decide my name? This was my
name at birth, and always will be, no matter what anyone else decides to
call me! Of course, I am exaggerating to make my point: no-one is trying
to call *me* by any other name. We are mostly talking about inanimate
locations and dead people, who are in no position to object. But the
principle is the same. I think it smacks of arrogance to rename other
people and places without the consent of the people and inhabitants of the
places, even if the people and places are distant in time or space, and
even if their renaming has now become widespread. And I am offended on
their behalf, even if they're not. :)

But all this talk of emotions is just a side issue. The main point is not
about what offends whom, or anything like that. This is an encyclopaedia.
We're after facts. And the fact of the matter is that anglicisations of
names are simply distortions (or replacements) of foreign names. Calling
Jo~ao "John" is just an *approximation* to the truth in the same way that
calling a Jean Claude van Damme "French" is. It's sort of *nearly* right,
but not quite. The job of an encyclopaedia should be to correct these
sorts of approximations!

> While it is deplorable that most English speakers are not bilingual,
> that fact does not make it in any way sensible to change place-names,
> etc., to their "original" form.  By the way, I'm not even sure what that
> means -- is it Strassburg, Strasbourg, or, as it was called before there
> was a clear definition between French and German, Straziburgensis?
> London, or Londinium?

I don't think anyone was arguing for *original* names of places, so you
are attacking a straw man here. In the case of a place which still exists,
I would argue that it makes most sense to call it whatever the people who
live there do. It is, in a sense, *theirs*, after all. If there are
several official versions of the placename locally, one could simply use
the one that the largest number of locals use. We should aim to be most
familiar with whatever is on the signposts, so that we don't get lost when
we get there. ;)

> Should Paris have a note in the title that says "pronounced Paree, you
> morons"?

I'd quite like to see that, actually. :)

> We agreed that it made the most sense to use the most common
> English-language version of a name (different forms of English
> notwithstanding) for the title BUT, because we all felt it very
> important to let people know that other cultures and language-speakers
> had different names for the same thing, so we listed alternate names in
> the article itself.  This means that English-speakers, arguably the
> largest audience, could search for articles in the way most natural to
> them, but the articles would still appear in searches by speakers of
> other languages searching in those languages.

Eminently sensible, of course. Which is why nobody is proposing the
removal of any of these alternative names. As I understand it, the
argument is simply about swapping one name round with another. Both names
would still be there, but just in different places.

> I can't see that Lir's political beliefs are valid reasons to change
> this policy.

It's not about political beliefs; it's about giving articles (arguably)
more accurate titles. I hope I've laid out some of the arguments clearly
enough. I probably haven't, but it'll do for now. Oh, and I should add
that the language thing applies to all languages equally; I'm just using
anglicisation as the example I'm most familiar with. Just thought I'd add
that so that I'm not told to post this on the English language mailing
list (which I haven't quite got round to subscribing to yet)...

Phew. That's enough of that for one day. I think I really *will* go to bed
now... :)

Oliver

+-------------------------------------------+
| Oliver Pereira                            |
| Dept. of Electronics and Computer Science |
| University of Southampton                 |
| omp199 at ecs.soton.ac.uk                    |
+-------------------------------------------+


from_name: Vicki Rosenzweig

subject: [Wikipedia-l] last n--apparent bug, and a typo

body:
When I ask it for the "last 100 in last 3 days" this morning,
I'm only getting about 25 items, because it seems to cut off
anything not dated today.

Also, shouldn't it be "the last 100 entries in the last 3 days"
instead of "in last 3 days"?

(I'm posting this to the international list because I suspect that
the bug is serverwide.)
--
Vicki Rosenzweig
vr at redbird.org
http://www.redbird.org


from_name: Jimmy Wales

body:
Oliver Pereira wrote:
> We're after facts. And the fact of the matter is that anglicisations of
> names are simply distortions (or replacements) of foreign names. Calling
> Jo~ao "John" is just an *approximation* to the truth in the same way that
> calling a Jean Claude van Damme "French" is. It's sort of *nearly* right,
> but not quite. The job of an encyclopaedia should be to correct these
> sorts of approximations!

"Jo~ao" contains characters that do not exist in English.  This is not
materially different from words like "Tokyo" or "Osaka".  They can not
be written in English in the same way that they are written in their
native language, because they use characters that do not exist in
English.

> I would argue that it makes most sense to call it whatever the people who
> live there do. It is, in a sense, *theirs*, after all. If there are
> several official versions of the placename locally, one could simply use
> the one that the largest number of locals use. We should aim to be most
> familiar with whatever is on the signposts, so that we don't get lost when
> we get there. ;)

Until people are willing to give concrete examples, it's very
difficult to imagine what is being advocated.  Japanese people do not
call Japan "Japan".  It's either "Nihon" or "Nippon".  They don't call
Mount Fuji "Mount Fuji", they call it "Fuji-san".

There are perhaps cases in which we should prefer something closer to
the original than what is most common.  In English, the name of
Beijing is now "Beijing" where it was "Peking".  Good.

-------

None of this really gets at the problem with Lir's behavior.  It isn't
so much that Lir was wrong about anglicization, although that's true
too.  It's that Lir was obnoxious about it, calling people who
disagreed "racist".  (And, by the way, Lir/Bridget/Adam continues to
strongly assert that her opponents are racist in our conversations
about possible reinstatement, which grows less likely each day, I'm
afraid.)

It's quite possible for people to disagree on these matters in a
collegial and intellectual way, respecting that other people have
reasons for their opinions, and to work together to formulate a more
sophisticated policy that appeals to all parties.

--Jimbo


subject: [Wikipedia-l] poor oliver

in_reply_to: <20021124135007.49637.qmail@web40712.mail.yahoo.com>; from lapollutionestsimauvaise@yahoo.com on Sun, Nov 24, 2002 at 05:50:07AM -0800

body:
Bridget [name omitted for privacy reasons] wrote:
> Now, Im not calling Jimbo racist, if he was racist this would be
>kkkpedia.com. But he is totalitarian, and can't possibly deny that
>without denying his stance on voting and banning.

My stance on voting is totalitarian?

I am generally opposed to voting precisely because of its inherently
authoritarian nature -- a majority imposes its will on the minority.

One of the problems I foresee with any implementation of a voting
system is that it will lead us to seek solutions that garner majority
support, which is significantly less representative than the "wiki
way" of seeking solutions that garner _nearly unanimous_ support.

The wiki way encourages us all to be creative and tolerant, to look
for ways to mutually benefit each other.  The voting ways encourages
us to seek power blocs, and to stop negotiating for improvement as
soon as a majority is found.

Voting is a cruel kludge which may someday become necessary if
thoughtful, rational, co-operative wiki-style consensus-building
fails.

If that's totalitarian, well...

Having said that, I do think that it would be better if people did not
launch personal attacks on Lir.  It only complicates thing, you see.
What we are trying hard to do is create a culture in which
Usenet-style arguing is not the norm.

--Jimbo


from_name: tarquin

body:
Lars Aronsson wrote:

>Poor, Edmund W wrote:
>
>
>>I've been confused by the "edit conflict" screen so many times that
>>I seriously think the page should be redesigned.
>>
>>
>
>Speaking of redesigns, I really like the "diff" pages of the phase III
>software (both word diff and two columns),
>
yes, this is great! (we copied the idea for Unreal Wiki! :-)

>but I think the diff
>selector (History page) could use some ideas from the newest UseMod
>software.  This software hasn't been released, but is apparently in
>use for Meatball Wiki.
>
>To see what I mean, go to some page and click "View other revisions",
>e.g. http://www.usemod.com/cgi-bin/mb.pl?action=history&id=BeOS
>
>
>
Meatball's inter-revision diff feature is available as a patch for
UseMod here:

http://www.usemod.com/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?WikiPatches/TaviStyleHistory

>
>


from_name: Matthew Woodcraft

subject: Oliver is Lir (Re: [Wikipedia-l] This whole Lir and Americanization thing)

body:
On Sun, Nov 24, 2002 at 12:44:20AM -0800, Jonathan Walther wrote:
> As long as "Oliver" tries to stick to the collegial spirit of mutual
> respect, that is fine.  But I find it odd his user account appears right
> after Lir is banned, and then he jumps in and makes edits in a fashion
> that indicates he is anything but a newbie.

Eh? Oliver's account existed well before Lir was banned. It seems
unlikely that Lir would have acquired an email account at a British
university. If you look at Oliver's list of edits, you'll find they're
perfectly sensible and restrained.

Why on earth would you think he is Lir?

> Not to mention him joining the list and "defending" himself.

I haven't seen him defending Lir (is that what you meant?). He's just
taking the same side which Lir did on the question of anglicised
article names, which is certainly an issue on which reasonable people
can differ.

-M-


list: wikien-l

from_name: Daniel Mayer

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Shouldn't we change BC->BCE?

body:
On Sunday 24 November 2002 04:00 am, Eclecticology wrote:
> I prefer BC because it's shorter than BCE.
>
> As much as I know the origins of "BC" and its relationship to the life
> of Jesus, my atheistic sensitivities are not offended by its use.  "BCE"
> has always struck me as affectatiously hyper-correct.

I agree. I'm also an atheist (or at least a highly skeptical agnostic) and am
more offended by efforts to do away for BC than with the fact that BC stands
for "Before Christ". The whole effort is stupid and silly IMO - it is like
trying to reform a criminal by only changing their name. Rubbish.

What is really needed is a better system that has some meaningful starting
point such as the establishment of the first human agricultural society. But
since we can't possibly pin down an exact year for such a thing I don't think
it is at all possible (and if it were there would invariably be later
research that finds an even earlier society). So that leaves us with the
Christan calendar. IMO pretending it isn't is just pure delusion (that
doesn't mean we should use AD - AD is overtly POV and not needed to
distinguish from BC dates).

> Nevertheless, if the author of an article wants to use "BCE" or "CE" in
> his own article, I would be inclined to treat it as an option in the
> same way that we deal with American/British spellings.  Where a person
> does use "AD", however, I would treat it as wrong to put it after the
> year number.

I haven't seen many cases of the use of BCE or CE in Wikipedia. BC is still
comfortably the dominant usage and since there aren't any pressing POV issues
with it we should stay with it.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)

payment for this post
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Hatchett


from_name: Brion Vibber

body:
> Vicki Rosenzweig wrote:
> > When I ask it for the "last 100 in last 3 days" this morning,
> > I'm only getting about 25 items, because it seems to cut off
> > anything not dated today.

Nothing to do with the date; the "hide minor edits" option is buggy and
shows the wrong number of results. ... Okay, should be fixed now.

> > Also, shouldn't it be "the last 100 entries in the last 3 days"
> > instead of "in last 3 days"?

What? Is no good grammar? You no like?! ;)

On Sun, 2002-11-24 at 07:05, tarquin wrote:
> the days limit is sort of irrelevant now anyway -- I have to get 1000 -
> 1200 to catch all overnight edits.

I've been considering just dumping the date limit entirely. The
interaction between the count limit and the date limit is confusing, and
since the tables are indexed on timestamp, cutting out entries older
than X days shouldn't have any speedup effect when we never get that
far.

I think it would be better just to show X entries; on the more active
wikis this keeps the list from getting too long (if you showed _every_
edit from the last 7 days on the English wikipedia, it would be very
long indeed!) or too short (on some of the less active languages, a
couple weeks might go by with few or no edits).

> BTW, when does the server think a new day starts? I once saw it put the
> new date in the RC list at the 6am point (though that may have been when
> I was on GMT and the server wasn't)

The big date headers are placed based on midnight in your local time (as
set in your preferences, otherwise UTC). Once upon a time they were
placed based on server time and showed up at weird places if you had a
different timezone set, but that was fixed a while ago.

The "in last X days" setting just takes X*24 hours minus the current
time and ignores any changes prior that. So, the date cutoff isn't (or
shouldn't be!) relevant to that setting.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


body:
Matthew Woodcraft wrote:
> On Sun, Nov 24, 2002 at 01:50:25PM -0800, Brion Vibber wrote:
>
>>Nothing to do with the date; the "hide minor edits" option is buggy and
>>shows the wrong number of results. ... Okay, should be fixed now.
>
>
> Does this fix bug 618328?

Yes. (bug report closed)

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


body:
Vicki Rosenzweig wrote:

> When I ask it for the "last 100 in last 3 days" this morning,
> I'm only getting about 25 items, because it seems to cut off
> anything not dated today.
>
> Also, shouldn't it be "the last 100 entries in the last 3 days"
> instead of "in last 3 days"?
>
> (I'm posting this to the international list because I suspect that
> the bug is serverwide.)

the days limit is sort of irrelevant now anyway -- I have to get 1000 -
1200 to catch all overnight edits.

BTW, when does the server think a new day starts? I once saw it put the
new date in the RC list at the 6am point (though that may have been when
I was on GMT and the server wasn't)


from_name: Tom Parmenter

body:
|From: Daniel Mayer <maveric149 at yahoo.com>
|Date: Sun, 24 Nov 2002 12:09:23 -0800
|
|What is really needed is a better system that has some meaningful starting
|point such as the establishment of the first human agricultural society. But
|since we can't possibly pin down an exact year for such a thing I don't think
|it is at all possible (and if it were there would invariably be later
|research that finds an even earlier society). So that leaves us with the
|Christan calendar. IMO pretending it isn't is just pure delusion (that
|doesn't mean we should use AD - AD is overtly POV and not needed to
|distinguish from BC dates).
|

After all, Jesus wasn't even a European (or a Christian), was he?

A less controversial date, not that it will ever happen, would be the
birth of Alexander, the first person to conceive of the world and
humankind as a joint enterprise, and as good a marker as any of the
actual point at which universal history begins, uninterrupted to this
day.  That would make this the year 2358 AA.

Tom Parmenter
Ortolan88


subject: [WikiEN-l] DoB alert

body:
Pierre Abbat wrote:
> Someone with IP addresses in the vicinity of 195.93.32.8 is creating articles
> consisting only of someone's date of birth. I can't block it (it's
> cluelessness, not vandalism, anyway) because it's an AOL proxy and he gets a
> different address each time.

Are they *correct* birth dates?

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


from_name: Matt M.

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Français

body:
> What is this, the third or is it the fourth time James Zitzmann has posted
> absolutely pointless profanity on the list?

And my last name is McLauchlin, not Malkemus.

> Non, malheureusement, il n'existe aucune politique ?
> ce sujet, car la majorit? des wikip?diens sont
> fran?ais ou belges (?ventuellement expatri?s), donc ce
> probl?me n'a jamais ?t? rencontr?;
>
> C'est un peu l'ambuiguit? Fran?ais (population)
> fran?ais (language) que j'ai d?j? relev?e...

Hm, existe-t-il un ?quivalent ? Wikipedia talk o? l'on pourrait discuter de
cette question? J'aimerais bien voir [[Wikipedia discuter:Variation
r?gionale]] ou quelque chose de semblant, en y d?pla?ant peut-?tre la
discussion de [[Discuter:Montr?al]].

(Et "h?t?" c'est mon erreur.)

Matt (Montr?alais)


body:
Oliver wrote
> Oh, perhaps I should point out that my agreement
> with the "pronounced
> Paree, you morons" thing was a joke, of course.

Ah, this is too bad, because, well... I thought it was
an interesting proposition...

Not the reference to morons of course :)

But the idea to indicate the native pronounciation of
a name or of a city could be a good one.

Say...some 20 years ago, we were told not to say (and
write) P?kin any more but to replace it with Beijing
(same with Mao Z?dong, Jiang Jieshi, Changzhou...).

These changes were strongly enforced in France, maybe
because we were under a socialist/communist
government. It seems we are slowly drifting again
toward P?kin :-)

The fact is that change could not really be said to be
to "look" (read) more like the "real" (native) words,
since it is in no way written that way. What really
mattered was not so much we wrote it that way, but we
*learn to pronounce* it a way that sound more like the
native word.

And maybe is that education also to learn how to
pronounce place names and people names properly ?

And maybe an encyclopedia is JUST the perfect place to
acquire that kind of knowledge. Especially in cases
such as these ones where there is also a nice
historical point to develop.

There's a international code for prononciation no ?
And what about sound later ?

-----

Annihilation of opposition through body-unification of
dissenting voices ???

I agree with some of Lir points of views, but likely,
I will not be confused with him/her :-)))

__________________________________________________
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Yahoo! Mail Plus ? Powerful. Affordable. Sign up now.
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subject: [WikiEN-l] *sigh* it's sunday and the nuts are here

body:
tarquin wrote:
>But seriously, I'd like to propose a new "What Wikipedia is not" item:
>
>* a compendium of *all* human knowledge, no matter how trivial
>
>this means we don't have the nine million digits of pi; or the Helsinki
>telephone book, or my shopping list from last week.

This isn't anything new. "Wikipedia is an encyclopedia" is our third most
important policy. That means that we don't include the entire gene sequences
of organisms, source code for entire free-software programs and yes pi to one
billion places (or anything above 40 places for that matter).

These things have and should continue to be deleted right away and without any
apology. I am surprised that the pi to x places entries weren't deleted right
away. There are plenty of other places to mirror this information but
Wikipedia isn't one of them.

Focus people! We are building an encyclopedia. Granted a huge one, but an
encyclopedia nonetheless.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)


from_name: Jonathan Walther

body:
On Sun, Nov 24, 2002 at 11:45:06AM +0000, Matthew Woodcraft wrote:
>On Sun, Nov 24, 2002 at 12:44:20AM -0800, Jonathan Walther wrote:
>> As long as "Oliver" tries to stick to the collegial spirit of mutual
>> respect, that is fine.  But I find it odd his user account appears right
>> after Lir is banned, and then he jumps in and makes edits in a fashion
>> that indicates he is anything but a newbie.
>
>Eh? Oliver's account existed well before Lir was banned. It seems
>unlikely that Lir would have acquired an email account at a British
>university. If you look at Oliver's list of edits, you'll find they're
>perfectly sensible and restrained.

How long before?  When I looked at Olivers "User Contributions" page, it
showed no entries earlier than November 22 of this year.

As I said in my email, "If Oliver continues to play nice, I don't mind"
and "I like his Oliver persona better than the Lir persona".  Those
aren't the words of someone accusing Oliver of being anti-social, in the
style of Lir.

Oliver, in his defense of Lir, has been putting up straw men and
ignoring legitimate problems with Lirs behavior.  That seems at odds
with his previously reasonable personality.

>I haven't seen him defending Lir (is that what you meant?). He's just
>taking the same side which Lir did on the question of anglicised
>article names, which is certainly an issue on which reasonable people
>can differ.

He took Lirs side to "defend" Lir.  Previously, he was taking the
opposite side.  Very usenetish behavior.

Jonathan

--
                     Geek House Productions, Ltd.

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

Phone:   604-435-1205
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Webpage: http://reactor-core.org
Address: 2459 E 41st Ave, Vancouver, BC  V5R2W2
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body:
On Sun, Nov 24, 2002 at 06:34:15PM -0800, Brion VIBBER wrote:
>That's because it only shows the last 50 edits by default. Bump up the
>number to 500 and the days to 30 and you'll see edits back to November
>7/8 (depending on your timezone setting).

Thanks Brion.  Your Wikifu is great! :-)

Jonathan

--
                     Geek House Productions, Ltd.

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

Phone:   604-435-1205
Email:   djw at reactor-core.org
Webpage: http://reactor-core.org
Address: 2459 E 41st Ave, Vancouver, BC  V5R2W2
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subject:
Oliver is Lir (Re: [Wikipedia-l] This whole Lir and Americanization
 thing)

body:
Jonathan Walther wrote:
> On Sun, Nov 24, 2002 at 11:45:06AM +0000, Matthew Woodcraft wrote:
>> Eh? Oliver's account existed well before Lir was banned. It seems
>> unlikely that Lir would have acquired an email account at a British
>> university. If you look at Oliver's list of edits, you'll find they're
>> perfectly sensible and restrained.
>
> How long before?

Two weeks.

 >  When I looked at Olivers "User Contributions" page, it
> showed no entries earlier than November 22 of this year.

That's because it only shows the last 50 edits by default. Bump up the
number to 500 and the days to 30 and you'll see edits back to November
7/8 (depending on your timezone setting).

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject: [Wikipedia-l] User pages

body:
On Mon, Nov 25, 2002 at 02:22:36AM +0000, Oliver Pereira wrote:
>I gather that it the general agreement is that the User pages are for the
>users' own use, and that it is bad manners for other Wikipedians to edit
>them. Would it be sensible to formalise this as a definitive rule - in
>fact, to make the page protected from edits by anyone but the user and the
>sysops? Anyone who wishes to address the user would still be able to on
>the associated Talk page, of course.

Lir is a special case, in that he used his User page to antagonize and
piss off a lot of Wikipedians.  None of the recent edits in any way
attacked Lir personally; they just massaged the material to show how one
does things when one DOESN'T think the Wikipedia is just an information
dump, when one actually cares about what one is writing, and not just
the raw amount of information one dumps.

I have a feeling Lir was trying to get on that list of the top 250 most
prolific Wikipedians... Too bad for him it isn't dynamically generated.

>I don't know how difficult it would be to implement technically, but I
>think it would be a good move to prevent people from vandalising other
>people's User pages, as some are doing.

To call those edits "vandalism" is to use far too strong a word,
especially from an admitted newbie who isn't familiar with the full
history of Lir's actions here.

>And I repeat, if anyone has any problems with my behaviour, please tell me
>on my Talk page, or in a private e-mail.

The only problem so far is your poorly informed defense of Lir.  Apart
from that, it's good to have you on the Wikipedia.

Cheers!

Jonathan

--
                     Geek House Productions, Ltd.

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

Phone:   604-435-1205
Email:   djw at reactor-core.org
Webpage: http://reactor-core.org
Address: 2459 E 41st Ave, Vancouver, BC  V5R2W2
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subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Pronunciation guides (Was Re: Oliver is Lir II
 [...])

body:
Oliver Pereira wrote:
> Indications of native pronunciations would be very useful. Is there
> support for displaying all the standard IPA characters...?

You can use HTML-style character references with the Unicode numbers for
IPA chars, but not everyone will be able to read them. (If someone wants
to put up mini images, it may be worthwhile.)

In some articles, SAMPA is used, which is an ASCIIfied IPA, but this is
somewhat controversial as no one knows how to read it even though it
appears right on everyone's screen. ;)  If you use a SAMPA transcription
in an article, you'll probably want to link [[SAMPA]] for reference.

Pseudo-English pronunciation guides (Paris->"pah-REE", Goethe->"GER-ta")
are generally not recommended, as the results may vary widely for native
English speakers, be useless for non-native English speakers, and often
do a poor job at reproducing the necessary sounds. They remain somewhat
popular largely because native English speakers are often not familiar
with IPA.

 > And I like your
> idea of linked sound files, too. (It would be quite a task, though!)

Yes, by all means make and upload sound files of pronunciations of
names! Please do! (Preferably OGG format at a lower bitrate.)

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


from_name: Pierre Abbat

subject: [WikiEN-l] DoB alert

body:
Someone with IP addresses in the vicinity of 195.93.32.8 is creating articles
consisting only of someone's date of birth. I can't block it (it's
cluelessness, not vandalism, anyway) because it's an AOL proxy and he gets a
different address each time.

phma


subject: [WikiEN-l] DoB alert

body:
On Sunday 24 November 2002 19:14, Brion Vibber wrote:
> Pierre Abbat wrote:
> > Someone with IP addresses in the vicinity of 195.93.32.8 is creating
> > articles consisting only of someone's date of birth. I can't block it
> > (it's cluelessness, not vandalism, anyway) because it's an AOL proxy and
> > he gets a different address each time.
>
> Are they *correct* birth dates?

I have no idea. I've never heard of them.

phma


subject: [Wikitech-l] How to log in as admin

body:
Carl Youngblood wrote:
> I just installed wikipedia on my webserver and can't for the life of me
> figure out how to log in as an admin.  I downloaded the latest version
> from CVS.

First, create a user account through the login page. Then, you'll have
to access the database directly with mysql and give yourself sysop
privileges:

   UPDATE user
     SET user_rights='sysop,developer'
     WHERE user_name='Yourname';

That should do it.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


from_name: Carl Youngblood

subject: [Wikitech-l] How to log in as admin

body:
I just installed wikipedia on my webserver and can't for the life of me
figure out how to log in as an admin.  I downloaded the latest version
from CVS.

Thanks,
Carl Youngblood
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from_name: Julie Hofmann Kemp

body:
Oliver -- I hope I do not understand you correctly in that you think I
was somehow insulting Lir.  I don't know Lir, only what  I've seen of
his work.  Although I certainly used what are generally considered
pejorative terms to refer to Lir's behavior, I think one can only say
that they are pejorative when there is no justification for their use.
That is sadly not the case.    It is honorable for you to stick up for
Lir, and unfortunate that you were mistaken for him.  I suggest that the
response to your post is merely indicative of the unpleasant feelings
that Lir tends to stir up.  If he has been insulted,  I'm sorry, but I
think that my estimation of Lir's behavior is based much more in fact
that Lir's very insulting and groundless accusations towards people who
don't agree with him.  BTW, I also do not in any way blame you for the
Saints' tragic win yesterday ;-)  I did find it interesting that you
knew I was a sysop and had been here a while, when I've been gone for
months -- you can't be that much of a newbie!

Lir -- hyperbole, especially when coupled with unveiled sarcasm,  isn't
really a persuasive form of debate.  It's merely annoying.  I suspect
you know that and don't care.

Other than that, I like Anthere's idea of adding a pronunciation guide.
One drawback is that I think there may not be a universal guide -- I
think Americans use a different system of notation (but am not sure).
Also, I teach east Asian history.  I grew up with Wade-Giles, am
becoming more familiar with Pinyin by the day, and neither comes close
to approximating the correct pronunciations.

Jules


subject: [Wikitech-l] How to log in as admin

body:
Thanks!

-----Original Message-----
From: wikitech-l-admin at wikipedia.org
[mailto:wikitech-l-admin at wikipedia.org] On Behalf Of Brion VIBBER
Sent: Sunday, November 24, 2002 8:28 PM
To: wikitech-l at wikipedia.org
Subject: Re: [Wikitech-l] How to log in as admin

Carl Youngblood wrote:
> I just installed wikipedia on my webserver and can't for the life of
> me
> figure out how to log in as an admin.  I downloaded the latest version

> from CVS.

First, create a user account through the login page. Then, you'll have
to access the database directly with mysql and give yourself sysop
privileges:

   UPDATE user
     SET user_rights='sysop,developer'
     WHERE user_name='Yourname';

That should do it.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

_______________________________________________
Wikitech-l mailing list
Wikitech-l at wikipedia.org
http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Pronunciation guides (Was Re: Oliver is Lir II [...])

body:
The very word diacritic is Anglocentric.

The Spaniards don't put diacritical tildes on some of their N's, they
have two separate letters in their alphabet, one identified with the
same Roman N as our letter N and another (that looks like an N with a
squiggle over it) identified with the Iberian pronunciation of Latin
words with NN in them.

The Norwegians don't have an A and another A with a little diacritical
degree sign on top, an O and another O with a diacritical slash
through it, an A and and E and then an AE diacritically stuck
together, they have three letters in their alphabet that we don't have
in ours.

I mention this only to point out that this whole banal
eliminate-English-from-the-English-encyclopedia movement is doomed due
to the incredible complexity of determining the "right" way as opposed
to the basic simplicity of dealing with the issues using the tools
provided by our own language, combined with a decent respect for the
sensitivities and sensibilities of those who don't speak English.

It was most interesting to see on [[Talk:Dienbienphu]] that there is a
controversy in Viet Nam over which Vietnames orthography should be
used.

Tom Parmenter
Ortolan88


in_reply_to: <1038174627.2467.19.camel@rdaneel.vibber.org>; from brion@pobox.com on Sun, Nov 24, 2002 at 01:50:25PM -0800

body:
On Sun, Nov 24, 2002 at 01:50:25PM -0800, Brion Vibber wrote:
> Nothing to do with the date; the "hide minor edits" option is buggy and
> shows the wrong number of results. ... Okay, should be fixed now.

Does this fix bug 618328?

-M-


subject: [WikiEN-l] lir collateral damage: Stop!  In the name of love

body:
Dear Friends,

Damn, this whole Lir thing is nasty.  Rlee0001 just trashed KQ's user
page while KQ and Clutch were apparently off trashing Lir's user page.

I thoroughly approve of the banning of Lir, a troll's troll, but
dropping "examples of the kind of awful thing Lir would do if Lir were
still here" on Lir's own user pages is piling on.  And so is jumping
all over KQ's user page to do the same back (if, indeed, that is what
KQ and Clutch have been doing, the edit audit and Recent Changes are
such a mess that Solomon couln't sort it out).

As regards Lir and all his/hers/its friends and enemies, in the wise
words of the grand old (copyright) song:

Please Don't Talk About Me When I'm Gone

Words & Music by Clare & Palmer

Please don't talk about me when I'm gone,
Though our friendship ceases from now on.
If you can't say anything that's nice,
Then best don't talk at all is my advice

We'll part and you go your way, I'll go mine,
It's best that we do,
Here's a kiss -- I hope that this
Brings lots of luck to you.

Makes no difference how I carry on,
Please don't talk about me when I'm gone.

Tom Parmenter
Ortolan88


subject: [Wikipedia-l] linking

body:
What should or should not be linked?

---------------------------------
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subject: [Wikipedia-l] please ban Lir's IP?

body:
Lir has been coming back, using his raw IP.  Can it please be blocked
until the ban is lifted off his user account?

Maveric tells me this is his IP: 129.186.80.133

Jonathan

--
                     Geek House Productions, Ltd.

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

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

body:
I'm tired of this debate.  No, what someone calls a place is not what is "theirs".  Every language has certain place names in other countries that are not the same as the way the natives of that place call it.  And again, we run into the situation of whether we call such places as Liege as, well, Liege, or Leuk, or whatever.  The English wikipedia is designed for people for whom English is the native language, by and large.  The people who speak English say Munich, not Muenchen.
Zoe
 Oliver Pereira <omp199 at ecs.soton.ac.uk> wrote:I must protest!

I know that I'm just a newbie here, and you're a terribly important sysop
person, but Lir doesn't seem to be around right now, and I'm not going to
let that attack go undefended...

> Regarding banning Lir or not. If Lir can't be bothered to speak with
> Jimbo, stop behaving childishly (name-calling, whinging, and making
> guerilla edits that result in non-NPOV articles), and work in a
> cooperative, collegial, manner, then a ban is in order. The community
> has certain standards, and from what I've seen, Lir is as guilty as
> Helga ever was of flouting them.

Judging by what I've seen, Lir is an intelligent person with much to
contribute. Childish, of course, but then I've seen just as childish
behaviour from some of the regulars and even (perhaps more so) from the
sysops. It seems that Lir is just more vociferous about it. There seem to
be a lot more complaints about Lir's attitude and over-the-top
pronouncements than about any actual edits, which surely should be what we
are most interested in here. If Lir's actions are to be the subject of
public debate, could we establish details of specific bad edits, rather
than just ranting?

> Lir's belief is very POV. Articles he renames or redirects in
> furtherance of that belief are therefore infected with that non-neutral
> POV.

This is just plain nonsense. *Everyone's* political beliefs are POV:
that's the whole point of them! But an editor's renaming an article to
give it a different version of its name doesn't somehow magically invest
that article with the editor's point of view. Of course, one *can* insert
a point of view into an article title, by inserting a qualifying adjective
such as "Excellent" or "Rubbish" into it, but as far as I'm aware we're
only talking about exchanging one version of a name (used by one set of
people) with another (used by another set of people). This has no effect
on the point of view whatsoever.

> As to correct language and the evils of americanization -- bullshit,
> pure and simple.

Now, now, let's not descend into that sort of language. Lir has a point. I
personally would be quite offended if English-speaking people were to
rename *me* "Oliver Peartree", simply to make it more "English". I would
consider it to be arrogance: who are they to decide my name? This was my
name at birth, and always will be, no matter what anyone else decides to
call me! Of course, I am exaggerating to make my point: no-one is trying
to call *me* by any other name. We are mostly talking about inanimate
locations and dead people, who are in no position to object. But the
principle is the same. I think it smacks of arrogance to rename other
people and places without the consent of the people and inhabitants of the
places, even if the people and places are distant in time or space, and
even if their renaming has now become widespread. And I am offended on
their behalf, even if they're not. :)

But all this talk of emotions is just a side issue. The main point is not
about what offends whom, or anything like that. This is an encyclopaedia.
We're after facts. And the fact of the matter is that anglicisations of
names are simply distortions (or replacements) of foreign names. Calling
Jo~ao "John" is just an *approximation* to the truth in the same way that
calling a Jean Claude van Damme "French" is. It's sort of *nearly* right,
but not quite. The job of an encyclopaedia should be to correct these
sorts of approximations!

> While it is deplorable that most English speakers are not bilingual,
> that fact does not make it in any way sensible to change place-names,
> etc., to their "original" form. By the way, I'm not even sure what that
> means -- is it Strassburg, Strasbourg, or, as it was called before there
> was a clear definition between French and German, Straziburgensis?
> London, or Londinium?

I don't think anyone was arguing for *original* names of places, so you
are attacking a straw man here. In the case of a place which still exists,
I would argue that it makes most sense to call it whatever the people who
live there do. It is, in a sense, *theirs*, after all. If there are
several official versions of the placename locally, one could simply use
the one that the largest number of locals use. We should aim to be most
familiar with whatever is on the signposts, so that we don't get lost when
we get there. ;)

> Should Paris have a note in the title that says "pronounced Paree, you
> morons"?

I'd quite like to see that, actually. :)

> We agreed that it made the most sense to use the most common
> English-language version of a name (different forms of English
> notwithstanding) for the title BUT, because we all felt it very
> important to let people know that other cultures and language-speakers
> had different names for the same thing, so we listed alternate names in
> the article itself. This means that English-speakers, arguably the
> largest audience, could search for articles in the way most natural to
> them, but the articles would still appear in searches by speakers of
> other languages searching in those languages.

Eminently sensible, of course. Which is why nobody is proposing the
removal of any of these alternative names. As I understand it, the
argument is simply about swapping one name round with another. Both names
would still be there, but just in different places.

> I can't see that Lir's political beliefs are valid reasons to change
> this policy.

It's not about political beliefs; it's about giving articles (arguably)
more accurate titles. I hope I've laid out some of the arguments clearly
enough. I probably haven't, but it'll do for now. Oh, and I should add
that the language thing applies to all languages equally; I'm just using
anglicisation as the example I'm most familiar with. Just thought I'd add
that so that I'm not told to post this on the English language mailing
list (which I haven't quite got round to subscribing to yet)...

Phew. That's enough of that for one day. I think I really *will* go to bed
now... :)

Oliver

+-------------------------------------------+
| Oliver Pereira |
| Dept. of Electronics and Computer Science |
| University of Southampton |
| omp199 at ecs.soton.ac.uk |
+-------------------------------------------+

_______________________________________________
Wikipedia-l mailing list
Wikipedia-l at wikipedia.org
http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l

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body:
Sure.  Just convince Lir to quit calling people who disagree with him/her racist.
Zoe
 Oliver Pereira <omp199 at ecs.soton.ac.uk> wrote:(1.) Could we please not use this mailing list for personal attacks on
people, whether they are here to defend themselves or not. I know that
this list is not subject to the NPOV rule, but calling people "twits"
and so on is simply not constructive.

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subject:
Oliver is Lir II (Re: [Wikipedia-l] This whole Lir and
 Americanization thing)

body:
Greetings,

Well, I must admit that I'm quite perplexed! In just one day, I have been
transmogrified from a British student of Computer Science into an Iowan
anarchist! Did my British accent not come across in the message? ;)

Seriously, though, perhaps I did get a bit overheated in my response last
night, for which I apologise. Since Lir did not immediately post a
defence, I guessed that perhaps he had left the mailing list, and I don't
like the idea of attacking people who are not around to defend themselves.
You know, fair play and all that. :) As it turns out, Lir is still on the
list, but even so, I still think he means well (even if he goes about
things the wrong way), and deserves a bit of a defence. I don't like the
idea of writing people off.

Now it seems that in defending Lir and some of his points, I have become a
valid target for abuse. *sigh*

I won't go into a point-by-point defence of my arguments again right now,
as perhaps I didn't express them very well, and it would be better to plan
them in my own time with a cool head. I have no intention of getting into
a flame war. Perhaps I will put some of my points on my user page later,
if that's all right with everyone. For now, I would prefer to concentrate
on doing some university work and doing my bit to improve (hopefully!) the
Wikipedia itself.

In the meantime, if anyone thinks that I may be doing Bad Things to the
Wikipedia, please feel free to check through my user contributions. They
go back to 8th November, which was when I first registered a user name - I
was using the term "newbie" relatively. If anyone has any problems with
any of my edits (and as far as I am aware no-one has made any specific
complaints, apart from one or two minor edit skirmishes), please feel free
to let me know about them, either by e-mail or in my Talk page. Similarly,
I would be interested to know (preferably off-list) where I ever hinted
that I might want to "act up" or that I might not be "prepared to share in
the collegial spirit of mutual respect". You've got me quite baffled
there. Oh yes, and as for my grammatical skills, I'm always happy to hear
how I can improve them. :)

Oh, perhaps I should point out that my agreement with the "pronounced
Paree, you morons" thing was a joke, of course.

Two points to close with:-

(1.) Could we please not use this mailing list for personal attacks on
people, whether they are here to defend themselves or not. I know that
this list is not subject to the NPOV rule, but calling people "twits"
and so on is simply not constructive.

(2.) Could we please not make assumptions about people that are based on
little or no evidence. Such disregard for the need for evidence casts
serious doubt on one's standards of scholarship, and hence on the
reliability of any information one might contribute to an encyclopaedia.

Thanks,

Oliver

+-------------------------------------------+
| Oliver Pereira                            |
| Dept. of Electronics and Computer Science |
| University of Southampton                 |
| omp199 at ecs.soton.ac.uk                    |
+-------------------------------------------+


subject: [WikiEN-l] 129.186.80.133 (aka Lir)

body:
IP 129.186.80.133 popped onto Recent Changes. This IP is almost identical to
the one Lir was using when he was banned (just swap-out the last digit for a
0 and there you have it). Clutch also removed some excessive linking from an
article that this IP was working on and then Lir posted a message to
Wikipedia-L asking for some linking criteria. This IP then asked Clutch about
linking.

IMO this is an obvious attempt by Lir to subvert Jimbo's banning so I warned
this IP on user:Clutch's page but then the person continued to edit. I
therefore blocked the IP. If another sysop thinks this is in error then
please unblock the IP and state your reasoning here.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)

The below edit is a large one and pays for my last message and this one;
http://www.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Niobium&diff=0&oldid=442251


body:
I mean, of course, that I'm shovelling my face with roasted cashews as I
type ;-)

But seriously, I'd like to propose a new "What Wikipedia is not" item:

* a compendium of *all* human knowledge, no matter how trivial

this means we don't have the nine million digits of pi; or the Helsinki
telephone book, or my shopping list from last week.

(some of the current items on that list are specific cases of this
proposed item; but reorganizing might be a bad idea since people often
refer to points on that page by their number)


subject: [Wikipedia-l] User pages

body:
On Mon, Nov 25, 2002 at 02:37:39AM -0500, The Cunctator wrote:
>You, too are a newbie. And "vandalism" is far too strong a word in 95%
>of its usage at Wikipedia. Oliver's use is consistent with the Wikipedia
>norm.
>
>In other words, you sounded a bit high-handed in your response to
>Oliver. I hope that wasn't your intention.

My intention was to get my point across.  Yes, you are right that the
word "vandalism" has been used far too much; I have been a victim of
such accusations frequently when editing articles on religious topics.

Jonathan

--
                     Geek House Productions, Ltd.

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

Phone:   604-435-1205
Email:   djw at reactor-core.org
Webpage: http://reactor-core.org
Address: 2459 E 41st Ave, Vancouver, BC  V5R2W2
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subject: [Wikipedia-l] my user page was offensive?

body:
In the continuing splurge of hate against me as a result of my (continued) insistence that it is a bad idea to use the most common English phrase for a foreign place or person, it has now been declared that my user page is incredibly offensive. I wonder at this, since nobody has ever spoken to me about something being offensive on my user page. I hope wikipedia grows up enough to discuss personal issues rather than engaging in flame warz.

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body:
Oliver wrote:

> > Oh, perhaps I should point out that my agreement with the "pronounced
> > Paree, you morons" thing was a joke, of course.

Anthere wrote:

> Ah, this is too bad, because, well... I thought it was an interesting
> proposition...
>
> Not the reference to morons of course :)

Quite right! I only meant that the bit about morons was a joke. :)
Indications of native pronunciations would be very useful. Is there
support for displaying all the standard IPA characters...? And I like your
idea of linked sound files, too. (It would be quite a task, though!) I
often read about things in works of reference, but find that I have to
guess how to pronounce the words. I might eventually find out how to
pronounce them if they come up in conversation (although the person I'm
talking to might be guessing too) or on the radio or television.

> The fact is that change could not really be said to be to "look" (read)
> more like the "real" (native) words, since it is in no way written that
> way. What really mattered was not so much we wrote it that way, but we
> *learn to pronounce* it a way that sound more like the native word.

I agree. When I was arguing for native words in article headings, I didn't
mean in the original orthography, if the languages don't use the Roman
alphabet. (Those which use the Roman alphabet with diacritics seem to be
contentious, but I'll go into that later...) I'm all for logical and
consistent transliteration systems: these, in conjunction with the
pronunciation guides, would allow the reader to read the words in the
native way. And of course, the original orthography should be included in
the article body - as an image if necessary. It would be good education, I
think.

> Annihilation of opposition through body-unification of dissenting voices
> ???

I know, it's a funny tactic to use, isn't it? I've seen it used a lot on
Internet forums and so on, but fortunately it rarely works, and it only
makes the one who used it look silly! :) Oops, am I ignoring my own advice
about not insulting people? I'm terribly sorry... ;)

Oliver

+-------------------------------------------+
| Oliver Pereira                            |
| Dept. of Electronics and Computer Science |
| University of Southampton                 |
| omp199 at ecs.soton.ac.uk                    |
+-------------------------------------------+


body:
Sorry, just to clarify one point:

In my last message, for "original orthography", read "native orthography".
I'm not trying to claim that *earlier* versions of the writing system are
more correct!

Oliver

+-------------------------------------------+
| Oliver Pereira                            |
| Dept. of Electronics and Computer Science |
| University of Southampton                 |
| omp199 at ecs.soton.ac.uk                    |
+-------------------------------------------+


subject: [WikiEN-l] 129.186.80.133 (aka Lir)

body:
On Mon, Nov 25, 2002 at 10:59:08AM +0100, Erik Moeller wrote:
>> IP 129.186.80.133 popped onto Recent Changes. This IP is almost identical
>> to
>> the one Lir was using when he was banned (just swap-out the last digit for
>> a
>> 0 and there you have it). Clutch also removed some excessive linking from
>> an
>> article that this IP was working on and then Lir posted a message to
>> Wikipedia-L asking for some linking criteria. This IP then asked Clutch
>> about
>> linking.
>
>Don't trust Clutch. He keeps vandalizing the User:Lir page. Take a look at
>its history.

I also encourage everyone to look at the history of the User:Lir page. I
believe it will show the opposite; what was done to that page is not
vandalism, but a service to the Wikipedia community.  To quote the
comment accompanying the last edit done to that page:

    Lir used this page as a means of pissing others off. Leaving it
    intact to fulfill that function is a wrong application of Wikipedias
    rules about not editing others User pages

>The User:Lir page should be protected (in the last revision edited by Lir)
>until Lir, if ever, is unbanned.

I agree with the reason quoted above, and so I request that the User:Lir
NOT be protected, and I request that those who keep reverting the page
to Lirs childish work stop doing so.

>And no, vandalism is not too strong a word for what Clutch has been doing.

I and others agree that it is far too strong a word to describe Clutches
efforts to work in good faith on the Wikipedia.

Jonathan

--
                     Geek House Productions, Ltd.

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

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

body:
Hello again,

I gather that it the general agreement is that the User pages are for the
users' own use, and that it is bad manners for other Wikipedians to edit
them. Would it be sensible to formalise this as a definitive rule - in
fact, to make the page protected from edits by anyone but the user and the
sysops? Anyone who wishes to address the user would still be able to on
the associated Talk page, of course.

I don't know how difficult it would be to implement technically, but I
think it would be a good move to prevent people from vandalising other
people's User pages, as some are doing.

As for my presence on the Wikipedia, my User contributions go back to 8th
November 2002. (I made some anonymous edits earlier than that - back to
4th November 2002, the day on which I discovered the Wikipedia.) If you're
only seeing a partial list, you're probably only looking at the last
fifty, or those in the last few days, or something.

And I repeat, if anyone has any problems with my behaviour, please tell me
on my Talk page, or in a private e-mail.

Thanks,

Oliver

+-------------------------------------------+
| Oliver Pereira                            |
| Dept. of Electronics and Computer Science |
| University of Southampton                 |
| omp199 at ecs.soton.ac.uk                    |
+-------------------------------------------+


from_name: Ray Saintonge

body:
It seems that Jonathan's obsession about Lir has now turned into a
criminal slander of Oliver.

His so-called evidence that they are the same is nothing but speculative
bullshit.  So was his previous accusation that Lir might somehow be
responsible for a slowdown in the entire system.

Jonathan Walther wrote:

> Sorry folks, I got paranoid.  I went back in the mailing list, saw
> Olivers previous posts, and am not as sure sure as I was, but Olivers
> last post seems pretty strong evidence.  Oliver previously seemed to
> take the opposite stance to that of Lir on the anglicization issue.
> Lir being the role-player that he is, that doesn't necessarily mean
> anything.
> But I much prefer this more intelligent and reasonable Oliver persona
> to the
> Lir persona.
>
> The email I reply to below is like the old Lir come back, expressing his
> disregard for community standards in his nihilistic desire to be able to
> "do whatever he wants, and screw what anybody else thinks".
>
> Lir stated, ON THE WIKIPEDIA that the Wikipedia is just a dumping ground
> for information.  However much a few others may leap to his defense, the
> truth his, his ungrammatical edits filled with junk information have
> caused
> more work for other people than was saved by his "contributions".  And
> that
> is entirely aside from the social costs of the people he burned trying to
> help him.
>
> My reply below is a blow by blow account of why I think Oliver is Lir.
> I also refute the points he thought he raised.
>
> On Sun, Nov 24, 2002 at 05:51:00AM +0000, Oliver Pereira wrote:
>
>> I know that I'm just a newbie here, and you're a terribly important
>> sysop
>> person, but Lir doesn't seem to be around right now, and I'm not
>> going to
>> let that attack go undefended...
>
> If you are a newbie, how do you know the person you are replying to is a
> sysop?
>
> Why do you feel you have to defend Lir, given that you are a newbie and
> thus not familiar with the long-running history of this case and all
> it's particulars?
>
> If you are really a newbie, then you have no idea of the ones of work
> Wikipedians put into trying to help Lir become a productive member of our
> community, only to be slapped in the face time and time again, and our
> well-meaning advice not only ignored, but denigrated.

Obviously Oliver felt that an injustice was being done, and saw fit to
speak up.  It is not clear from the quote who the sysop involved was or
if  the person even was a sysop, but that really doesn't matter.  Sysops
are people who have been around for a while longer, and perhaps should
be held to a higher standard of behaviour than the rest of us.  They
should be putting out fires, not exacerbating the arguments.  Sometimes
a newbie is able to bring a fresh perspective on a debate.

>>> Regarding banning Lir or not.  If Lir can't be bothered to speak with
>>> Jimbo, stop behaving childishly (name-calling, whinging, and making
>>> guerilla edits that result in non-NPOV articles), and work in a
>>> cooperative, collegial, manner, then a ban is in order.  The community
>>> has certain standards, and from what I've seen, Lir is as guilty as
>>> Helga ever was of flouting them.
>>
>> Judging by what I've seen, Lir is an intelligent person with much to
>> contribute. Childish, of course, but then I've seen just as childish
>
> You haven't seen much.  That childish behavior vastly outweighs whatever
> intelligence Lir has shown.

I too have expressed concerns about the way Lir has been treated, but
when Jimbo replied that he has been trying to work things out with Lir
that satisfied me.  From that point I was willing to let well enough alone.

>> behaviour from some of the regulars and even (perhaps more so) from the
>> sysops. It seems that Lir is just more vociferous about it. There
>> seem to
>> be a lot more complaints about Lir's attitude and over-the-top
>> pronouncements than about any actual edits, which surely should be
>> what we
>> are most interested in here. If Lir's actions are to be the subject of
>
> Lirs edits, taken together as a body, are bad enough.  It may take us
> a year to recover.

Exaggeration for dramatic effec!

> Lirs edits to Sumer are illustrative; why the hell did he insist that it
> was important to mention that "In Sumer, women did the weaving"?  In
> many societies at the time, women did weaving.  What was so unique about
> that fact that it is justified to be included in an encyclopedia article
> on Sumerians?  Lir refused to answer any such question, merely
> maintaining
> that his edits were proper.

I can't see why the women's role as weavers is such a major issue.  If
you say it happened in many societies anyway, where's the beef?

> Someone took a quick look at the "Wealth of the Nations" article and
> pronounced it "fine".  Excuse me.  Go look at any REAL encyclopedia.
> None of them have an article on a book that consists of a series of
> short quotations from the book in question, and NOTHING ELSE.
> Interesting as the quotes were, they were NOT an encyclopedia article,
> and illustrate Lirs attitude that the wikipedia isn't a thing of quality,
> but a mere dumping ground for information.

If you're so concerned about this article, and it's so important to you
go ahead and fix it instead of whining about Lir's quotes from the book.

> Lir is like a magpie of information; he picks up cheap shit information
> as well as some real gold sometimes, and inserts it into the wikipedia
> on an equal opportunity basis.

Sometimes we all engage in such practices.  Why single out Lir?

>> Now, now, let's not descend into that sort of language. Lir has a
>> point. I
>> personally would be quite offended if English-speaking people were to
>> rename *me* "Oliver Peartree", simply to make it more "English". I would
>
> Go to the Philippines.  Try as you might, you won't be able to stop them
> from calling you "Joe".  "Hey Joe!".  Whatcha gonna do about it?  Guess
> you'll just have to learn to cope, huh?

Nothing in Oliver's post suggests he plans to visit the Philippines.
 The baiting sounds like a little kid saying "You can't make me do it."

> You seem to be arguing that one language cannot modify the things it
> borrows from other languages to suit it's own needs.  Now THAT is an
> arrogant, paternalistic attitude.

What he says and what you interpret that he "seems to be arguing" are
not the same thing.

>>> Should Paris have a note in the title that says "pronounced Paree, you
>>> morons"?
>>
>> I'd quite like to see that, actually. :)
>
> And thus I conclude that you are Lir.  You are showing a similar lack of
> taste.

The conclusion is a non-sequitur.

>> It's not about political beliefs; it's about giving articles (arguably)
>> more accurate titles. I hope I've laid out some of the arguments clearly
>
> Don't be a twit.  No matter how much HTML may have advanced, and
> browsers now support Unicode, URLS are NOT unicode, they are ascii, and
> many browsers break if the urls are anything BUT ascii.  Making the
> Wikipedia unusable over some obscure and unsatisfying point is the
> height of lunacy.  Not to mention your idea of "accuracy" really is not.

The discussion was about article titles.  How do you get from that to URL's

>> Phew. That's enough of that for one day. I think I really *will* go
>> to bed
>> now... :)
>
> Yes, you do that Lir.  For a few minutes I had started to think you were
> prepared to share in the collegial spirit of mutual respect.  Alas...

More unfounded sarcasm.

Eclecticology


from_name: The Cunctator

subject: [Wikipedia-l] User pages

body:
On Sun, 2002-11-24 at 21:35, Jonathan Walther wrote:

> >I don't know how difficult it would be to implement technically, but I
> >think it would be a good move to prevent people from vandalising other
> >people's User pages, as some are doing.
>
> To call those edits "vandalism" is to use far too strong a word,
> especially from an admitted newbie who isn't familiar with the full
> history of Lir's actions here.

You, too are a newbie. And "vandalism" is far too strong a word in 95%
of its usage at Wikipedia. Oliver's use is consistent with the Wikipedia
norm.

In other words, you sounded a bit high-handed in your response to
Oliver. I hope that wasn't your intention.


from_name: koyaanisqatsi at nupedia.com

body:
Ortolan88 Wrote:
>Dear Friends,
>
>Damn, this whole Lir thing is nasty.  Rlee0001 just trashed KQ's user
>page while KQ and Clutch were apparently off trashing Lir's user page.

I wasn't trashing Lir's page; I was reverting it from what I
considered rather disrespectful writing that Clutch had made on it.
Check the revision history.  Also, I was in process of discussing the
page with Clutch on [[user talk:Clutch]].

cheers,

kq


from_name: Lars Aronsson

body:
Tom Parmenter wrote:
> The very word diacritic is Anglocentric.   [...]
> I mention this only to point out that this whole banal
> eliminate-English-from-the-English-encyclopedia movement is doomed due

Maybe we need a simple "the English Wikipedia is in English" page, to
make this point just as natural as the NPOV?

I think the problem is that Lir is young and has more energy to
question authority, than patience to listen before he speaks.  This
makes it hard for him to engage in a dialogue.  He questions his
peers, with whom he should cooperate, instead of knowing his enemies
and where he should direct his energy.  Been there, done that, got the
T-shirt.  I think his homepage indicated he was 21.  I'm 36.  I have
no idea how old or young or energetic or lazy everybody else is.  I'm
lazy enough, not to bother very much in all the detail.  But I know
that after Lir we will still have the same problem with the next of
the same kind. So what is our conclusion, and what tools will we have
prepared for the next time this happens?

--
  Lars Aronsson (lars at aronsson.se)
  Aronsson Datateknik
  Teknikringen 1e, SE-583 30 Linuxk?ping, Sweden
  tel +46-70-7891609
  http://aronsson.se/ http://elektrosmog.nu/ http://susning.nu/


from_name: Anthere

body:
--- Zoe <zoecomnena at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> The English wikipedia is
> designed for people for whom English is the native
> language, by and large.

I hope not.

__________________________________________________
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Yahoo! Mail Plus ? Powerful. Affordable. Sign up now.
http://mailplus.yahoo.com


from_name: Brion VIBBER

subject: [Wikitech-l] database connections

body:
elian wrote:
> While learning PHP I came across the following warning in the php manual
> and remembered one frequent error message in wikipedia (maximum number of
> database connections exceeded...):
>
>  There are a couple of additional caveats to keep in mind when using
>  persistent connections. One is that when using table locking on a
>  persistent connection, if the script for whatever reason cannot release
>  the lock, then subsequent scripts using the same connection will block
>  indefinitely and may require that you either restart the httpd server or
>  the database server.
...
> Do we actually use persistent connections

Yes...

 > and is this problem affecting
> wikipedia?

Mmm, sort of. We don't do any explicit table locking (ie, something like
"LOCK TABLE cur"); tables are locked implicitly during queries, and
locks should be automatically released when the query finishes even if
our PHP script has meanwhile died and gone to process heaven, since
there's no need to run an UNLOCK.

What does bite us sometimes is that a mysql connection can get stuck in
an intermediate state between read calls where we end up being unable to
do anything useful with it (you get "commands out of order" errors). You
can't mysql_close() a persistent connection, and I haven't figured out a
way to get out of the stuck state, so we have to do a new non-persistent
mysql_connect() every time the Apache thread with the broken connection
is reused. It's kinda inefficient, but it doesn't block the whole server.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


body:
Anthere wrote:
> --- Zoe <zoecomnena at yahoo.com> wrote:
>>The English wikipedia is
>>designed for people for whom English is the native
>>language, by and large.
>
> I hope not.

It's for all people who comprehend English well enough that they think
they'll get something useful out of an English-language encyclopedia.
Note that:

a) a large portion of those people will be native English speakers,
living in a country where English is the common language, or working in
a field where high English competency is demanded

b) whatever their origin and language competency, anyone looking up
stuff in one English-language resource is likely to look stuff up in
other English-language resources too, and/or use/discuss their new
knowledge in an English-language context. Using the language as she is
spoke instead of making up conventions ex nihilo ensures that we are
"compatible". To present rarely used terms as if they were standard and
standard terms as if they were errors would be a great disservice to our
readers.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


from_name: Jimmy Wales

subject: [WikiEN-l] A concept from Buckminster Fuller

body:
Larry Sanger wrote:
> The point is that you had agreed that sometimes we gotta ban people.  You
> very kindly (and I *really* appreciate that) articulated principles we
> should follow in banning.  Then in this post you basically said that the
> wise way is another way.
>
> Well, not always.  We need to stress *that* just as well.

I think we agree in principle, but differ in our evaluation of the
prospects in the future for a world without banning.  It strikes me
that you are skeptical that this could ever be the case; I, on the
other hand, am hopeful that banning will remain rare, and will become
moreso.

> That's all I want.  The rest, I agree with.  In fact, I agree that we
> should always be slow and public in banning signed-in users for being
> difficult; we should be lenient and make an attempt to understand
> legitimate beefs.  Those have always been views, and they haven't changed.
>
> The threat of ultimate reprisal *unfortunately* has to be there, though,
> or the community will fall apart.

I think that's right, for now.

--Jimbo


body:
Larry Sanger wrote:
> The dangers involved in the *current* context are highly overrated and
> much too much worried about--since *yer the man* who does the banning in
> these cases!
>
> I can understand of course that you want to openly admit the dangers of a
> slippery slope; this is because you rightly want people to know that it's
> extremely important that the power not be abused.
>
> But as a matter of fact, we--the vast majority of us--do trust you, and
> those of us who do not either don't know you, or wouldn't trust *anyone*
> with the power (most likely on purely ideological grounds).

I think that's all correct.

But one reason I do have the level of trust that I do is that I've
erred too often in the direction of cautiousness and an avoidance of
banning for too long.

What I mean is: I know that my inaction has at times caused pain for
good contributors.  I should have moved more quickly.  However, I
think it is nonetheless likely for reasons of policy *and* personal
inclination, that my being slow to ban and quick to forgive will
continue to be a nagging minor problem.  :-)

--Jimbo


body:
Larry Sanger wrote:
> Now, don't get me wrong.  I really do wish we all were a *lot* nicer to
> each other than we have been.

Me too, although at the same time I'm impressed with how nice everyone
usually is.  As compared to the typical mailing list or Usenet debate,
wikipedia /talk pages are very co-operative (on the whole).

Virtually all discussions start with the base assumption that the
other person wants to get it right as much as we do, and that
differences are cause for careful analysis and tweaking, not for flame
wars.

It doesn't always go that way, of course, and unfortunately, but usually
it does.  Some are masters at it.

--Jimbo


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Oregon City, Oregon

body:
Zoe wrote:
> Bryce Harrington has attached a copyright notice to the [[Oregon
>City, Oregon]] page.  Since the time of the copyright notice,
>Ram-Man's bot went in and added several paragraphs, making the vast
>majority of the article not part of Bryce's copyrighted material.
>There is nothing on the page which indicates which parts are
>copyrighted by Bryce and which are not.

Is there any particular reason, known by anyone, as to why Bryce did
that?  Is he on this mailing list?

I would suggest that, as a matter of policy, we should just delete Bryce's
portion of the article, and not generally allow people to do this.
The danger of having tons of this kind of invariant section is great,
and the benefit is virtually nil.

But Bryce is a good guy, and perhaps he wanted to make a statement.
Maybe he will tell us what the statement is.

--Jimbo


subject: [WikiEN-l] Clean up our mess! (was: A concept from Buckminster Fuller)

body:
Larry Sanger wrote:
> http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:The_Cunctator/How_to_destroy_Wikipedia

This is a User page.  We've never come to definitive policies on what
should be "allowed" on User pages, but we've taken a mostly
laissez-faire attitude so far.

> http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_commentary/Responses_to_How_to_Destroy_Wikipedia%2C_Screw_with_the_GFDL

This should probably be moved to meta, right?  It's not an
encyclopedia article, per se, so it shouldn't be in the main article
namespace in the first place.

> If we were *really* serious about making Wikipedia more civil, we would
> demonstrate that we have the maturity and courage to talk about such
> problems openly and seriously--and then finally committing ourselves to
> burying the hatchet.

I'm all for this.  Perhaps Cunc will exercise some of the "ten noble
virtues" from his "WikipediAhimsa" page and remove whatever pages in
his user space are causing anyone discomfort.  Such a gesture might be
greatly appreciated and help forge a better path forward.

--Jimbo


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Wikipedia-l digest, Vol 1 #882 - 15 msgs

in_reply_to: <20021123144534.68724.qmail@web21303.mail.yahoo.com>; from digitaladdictions@yahoo.com on Sat, Nov 23, 2002 at 06:45:34AM -0800

body:
Digital Addictions Software wrote:
> > But no reason for either one of them to clutter up the Recent Changes
> > page with minor edits.  If I am looking at the last 200 changes, every
> > chess move subtracts one possibly interesting change from my list.  I
> > think it is bad manners.
>
> I didn't think playing chess would be such a big deal!  In reality I probably
> only make at *most* 10 minor edits per *day* playing chess.  That is nothing.
> One person who is save happy will make that in 1 minute.  I don't mind ceasing
> such activities if people so desire, but I don't enjoy being a scapegoat.
> 	Ram-Man

Perhaps it could be moved to meta.wikipedia.org?


body:
Oliver Pereira wrote:
> (1.) Could we please not use this mailing list for personal attacks on
> people, whether they are here to defend themselves or not. I know that
> this list is not subject to the NPOV rule, but calling people "twits"
> and so on is simply not constructive.

I agree completely, and urge others to practice similar restraint.

> (2.) Could we please not make assumptions about people that are based on
> little or no evidence. Such disregard for the need for evidence casts
> serious doubt on one's standards of scholarship, and hence on the
> reliability of any information one might contribute to an encyclopaedia.

Yes!

--Jimbo

p.s.  You should throw in some British slang.  Better yet, some
American slang that Americans *think* is British, whether it is or
not.  Lots of references to tea, old chap.  :-)


body:
Anthere wrote:
> Say...some 20 years ago, we were told not to say (and
> write) P?kin any more but to replace it with Beijing
> (same with Mao Z?dong, Jiang Jieshi, Changzhou...).
>
> These changes were strongly enforced in France, maybe
> because we were under a socialist/communist
> government. It seems we are slowly drifting again
> toward P?kin :-)

Here in the U.S., Beijing became standard some years ago, and Peking
is never heard.  But, as there is no central authority on such things
at all, I'm not sure how this happened.  Perhaps by mutual agreement
by the news networks, or perhaps by virtue of some standard reference
work that news anchors all use.

> And maybe an encyclopedia is JUST the perfect place to
> acquire that kind of knowledge. Especially in cases
> such as these ones where there is also a nice
> historical point to develop.

It is true that the encyclopedia is a great place to learn about these
things.  But I think that the general consensus is that it is not our
role to be activists in pushing changes for obscure terms.

--Jimbo


subject: [Wikipedia-l] User pages

body:
Oliver Pereira wrote:
> I gather that it the general agreement is that the User pages are for the
> users' own use, and that it is bad manners for other Wikipedians to edit
> them. Would it be sensible to formalise this as a definitive rule - in
> fact, to make the page protected from edits by anyone but the user and the
> sysops? Anyone who wishes to address the user would still be able to on
> the associated Talk page, of course.

I think it best if we don't do this.  Having even our own user pages
editable in principle by anyone is good for us as a community.  One of
the important "feelings" to avoid is "ownership of pages"... even user
pages.

--Jimbo


subject: [WikiEN-l] 129.186.80.133 (aka Lir)

in_reply_to: <3DE20641.3010505@planetunreal.com>; from tarquin@planetunreal.com on Mon, Nov 25, 2002 at 11:15:13AM +0000

body:
tarquin wrote:
> There's also the registered user "Return of the Killer Lir
> <http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Return_of_the_Killer_Lir>", causing
> fuss about the Pi digits. I despair, I really do.

If this continues, then obviously the ban will be made permanent, and I will
take whatever steps are necessary to pursue the issue at Lir's University.

--Jimbo


subject: [Wikitech-l] database connections

body:
On Mon, Nov 25, 2002 at 04:59:45AM -0800, Brion VIBBER wrote:
>Mmm, sort of. We don't do any explicit table locking (ie, something like
>"LOCK TABLE cur"); tables are locked implicitly during queries, and

Hm. I thought I saw some LOCK TABLE statements in the source; maybe it
was only when a new database was being created.

Jonathan

--
                     Geek House Productions, Ltd.

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

Phone:   604-435-1205
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Address: 2459 E 41st Ave, Vancouver, BC  V5R2W2
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body:
Ortolan88 wrote:
>Sorry, KQ.  I tried to be careful with that "apparently" and some
>other weasel locutions in the excised part, but as I also said the
>edit history and comments across many user pages were just too hard to
>follow.
>
>They shouldn't have done it to you.
>
>They shouldn't have done it to Lir.
>
>Nonspecific "they" meaning no one should be doing this.
>
>Tom P.
>O88

That's fine, and yes, I agree that it shouldn't be done.

kq


subject: [WikiEN-l] My vacation, dealing with Lir

body:
I will be going with my wife and dauther to visit my parents for the
Thanksgiving holidays.  We will be leaving here (Florida) on Tuesday
morning early, and returning the following Monday.  My parents do have
broadband access, so I will be able to get online some, but I won't be
giving my usual daily attention to the mailing list.

I give a greenlight to sysops and developers to continue and extend
the ban on Lir to new i.p.'s, usernames, and the like, as necessary.
If this person continues to post in violation of the ban, then I'll
see what I can do to prevent this vandalism at the source.  This
includes, if necessary, removing Lir from the mailing list in the
event of more smartass defensive remarks.

Try to avoid mistakes.  :-) And try not to argue about it on the list.

I request that we all just take a little break from fussing about Lir,
Lir's user page, etc.  I just protected Lir's user page, to give a
break from people feeling a need to fight about it.  If Lir decides
not to continue at wikipedia in the future, we can just delete the
page permanently, so it really doesn't matter either way what is done
with it now.


subject: [Wikipedia-l] My vacation, dealing with Lir


subject: [Wikitech-l] My vacation, dealing with Lir