body:
On Wed, Sep 04, 2002 at 02:24:41AM +0200, Lars Aronsson wrote:
> The difference is that they *are* pointing to wiki pages that happen
> to be blank, but where anybody can add contents at the click of a
> link.  I consider it a bug that the links are not displayed as
> ?-links.  I guess this can be fixed in the PHP source code.  Editing
> an English page to add the correct translation of the title should be
> considered a useful contribution.

1.
Databases are independent and (with exception of images) it would be
better if they stayed so (they don't even use the same software).

2.
If not optimized, it might be pretty heavy performance hit.

3.
Structure of Wikipedias is not the same. You can't really know the
structure for sure before articles are there. So these links may end
pointing to blank pages while real content already exists under some
other title. Even in seemingly trivial cases like titles that happen
to be proper names, different middle names, diactrics and
disambiguation policy may lead to many misses.


list: wikipedia-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Jimmy Wales

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Helga again

in_reply_to: <3D757DDC.82B41B21@surfbest.net>; from mri_icboise@surfbest.net on Tue, Sep 03, 2002 at 08:28:28PM -0700

body:
Michael R. Irwin wrote:
>  The totality of the material
> presented should not be selected to support the frame or view that
> the Holocaust was undeserved.

But, the Holocaust was undeserved.  That's as uncontroversial a fact as
"The Earth goes around the Sun".

> Similarly, there were legitimate security concerns that lead to
> U.S. Japanese internment camps. We should present the concerns,
> the evidence, the surrounding context, the allegations which revolve
> around the failure to isolate/intern the large U.S. population of
> German descent, etc. and allow the reader to draw their own conclusions.

Without turning this into an argument about history, I would say that
although *I* think that the U.S. Japanese internment camps were
morally unjustified, that there are _legitimate arguments_ about
security concerns, etc., that make the situation less clear.  The
United States did not exterminate the Japanese in gas ovens.

> Selection, censorship or propaganda?  If Nazi views can be
> summarily dismissed as inappropriate or incorrect then there
> are few modern minorities influential enough to justify NPOV
> presentation.

This is a misrepresentation of what I have said.  Clearly, the
encyclopedia must report on Nazi views.  The ideas of the Nazis are an
important part of history, and the encyclopedia must cover just what
those views are.

Let me see if I can explain this with an example.

Here's an evil idea, held by at least some Nazis: "Jews are vermin."
Now, the fact that those people held that idea is an important
historical fact.  We should report on it.

We are not required, however, to say, in an article on Jews, "Jews are
widely considered great people.  Maybe not, though, since some people
think they are vermin."  This is no longer _reporting on a point of
view_, it is _giving credence to this point of view as a legitimate
minority opinion_.

Similarly, in an article on holocaust deniers, we must report on the
Daily Express article, as an example of the types of things that the
deniers say.  We must _not_, though, suggest in an article on the
holocaust that "maybe" the holocaust was deserved.

--Jimbo


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Helga and other Internet kooks

body:
daniwo59 at aol.com wrote:
> The Internet is full of kooks. Do they all deserve equal time? Do they all
> deserve legitimacy?

I would say: clearly, no, they do not.  NPOV does not require the
inclusion of inanities or evil ideas.  (Though it may require the
_reporting on_ inanities and evil ideas.)

I don't think what we are doing here is bending over backwards to find
a way to include these views.  I think we're engaged in a process of
feeling out the parameters, which is for our benefit, not for the
benefit of the kooks.

Tangentially, we are trying to find out if Helga is willing to change
her posting policies so that I don't permanently ban her.

--Jimbo


list: wikitech-l

subject: [Wikitech-l] [sjc@easynet.co.uk: Sysop]

body:
Is there a way for us to sysop people from the web, or is this a database thing.  If
it's a database thing, could someone grab this for me?

----- Forwarded message from Steve Callaway <sjc at easynet.co.uk> -----

From: "Steve Callaway" <sjc at easynet.co.uk>
Date: Wed, 4 Sep 2002 07:47:32 +0100
To: <jwales at bomis.com>
Subject: Sysop

Jimmy,

I have long been putting off requesting sysop privileges; I am and always have been, to say the least of it, a little unhappy with certain aspects of sysopdom, as you probably have gathered. However, the SQL querying functionality is beginning to become a "must have" for me. It will enable me to identify shortfall areas particularly in my specialist subjects (e.g. mythology, history, topology of SW England) where we need to get some efforts focussed, spot stubby or quasi-stubby articles that need attention, etc. My SQL btw is very very good (I am a full time DBMS designer) so hopefully I will be able to throw up some useful stuff for the other sysops.

I am also (occasionally) probably the only (sane!) person up at certain times, so if there is any vandalism occurring I might be on hand to deal with it. I certainly won't be deleting articles (except perhaps the patently pointless created by vandals) etc. Hope you think I'm safe enough to be let on the loose with 'em!

rgds

Steve Callaway (user:sjc)

----- End forwarded message -----


from_name: Axel Boldt

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Measuring progress

body:
> our progress has not stalled (right?)

If you measure progress based on article numbers, active contributors,
edits per day, software quality etc., it certainly hasn't.

I would argue however that the most relevant measure is average
article quality. And Larry seems to think that on this front, we're
not doing too well:

> But, looking at Wikipedia's contents now and comparing it to what I
> recall from times past, I do have to say that I'm worried. I don't
> think that in terms of quality, overall, it's getting that much
> better.

While it is clear that pretty much every individual article improves
over time, it is still very possible that the average article quality
is stagnating, or even declining.

If I had an afternoon to burn, I'd hit the "Random link" button a
hundred times and would rate the articles on a scale of 0 - 10. Then I
would rate 100 article versions from three months ago (skip if the
article didn't exist then). Then compare the averages. Ideally, this
would be done in a "blind" manner, so that I didn't know whether an
article version is current or old.

Axel


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: The "Casio Effect"

body:
>I should also point out that "attaching an uneditable review" is
>doable right now--all one has to do is put an external link on the
>talk page.

I like the uneditable review idea; it's simple enough so that it could
actually work. I wouldn't put the links on talk though: nobody reads
old talk pages, and the reviews wouldn't be firmly associated with
individual versions of an article.

A review of an article version should show up as a link on the History
page, next to the reviewed version. That link could point either to a
wiki page only editable by the reviewer, or to an external web page,
whatever the reviewer prefers. It would also have a link to the
reviewer's user page, where they could convince us of their
brilliance, and where one would hopefully also find an automatic "this
person's reviews" link. Reviewer status should probably be by
invitation only.

With a bit of luck, some of these reviewers might end up as
Wikipedians in this evil scheme.

Axel


from_name: Fred Bauder

subject: [Wikipedia-l] [Wikipedia-1] Helga again

body:
>or is there some commitment to be truthful?
>
>H. Jonat

Yes, there is. I think where you need to start is with a serious study of
historical revisionism. I feel you have been victimized and misled in this
area. Once you understand you cannot rely on the approaches taken then you
can turn to more reliable sources. A part of the misinformation involved in
historical revisionism is misdirection as to what relevant issues are and
misplaced and distorted emphasis. I know it is hard to sort things out once
you fall into the grip of skilled propagandists, but I think that's your path.

Wikipedia can legitimately set forth truths, what it will not do because of
the editing process is allow gross distortions of the significance of a
fact to distort a greater truth. So it's fine to point out that not all
Jews support Zionism, just don't forget to mention that the vast majority
do. A misplaced emphasis on things is hardly going to go unnoticed and
unchallenged. A thesis that zionism somehow caused the war and the
holocaust (even if advanced by a Jewish group) is simply not in accord with
the facts. One of the historical revisionist websites makes much of fact
that judicial notice was taken of the holocaust at the Nuremberg Trials
saying that no actual proof was presented. Judicial notice is taken only of
facts about which no reasonable person would disagree.

Fred Bauder


from_name: daniwo59 at aol.com

body:
Last year on September 11, a group of radical Muslims declared war on the
United States. It hijacked four planes and rammed three of them in the WTC
and the Pentagon. About 3,000 people died. This would then justify the
American government declaring a boycott of all Arab-American businesses and
even attempting to exterminate all Muslims in America.

Ridiculous? Of course. Offensive? Certainly. Yet this is exactly the position
that Helga is expressing here and in the Talk section of the Neturei Karta
article.

In 1933 a small group of Jews declared war on Germany (in response to the
government's official policies of anti-Semitism). Germany responded with an
official boycott of all Jewish shops and eventually launched an all-out
campaign to murder all the Jews of Europe.

Her position is ridiculous and offensive. It certainly is not acceptable by
any standards. Yet here we are bending over backwards to find ways to include
her inane views in our articles. We have some lovely prolix on the importance
of including all POVs, no matter how minor, no matter how illogical or
unacceptable, in order to attain the ellusive NPOV.

The Internet is full of kooks. Do they all deserve equal time? Do they all
deserve legitimacy?

Danny


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [Wikipedia-l] My approval mechanism ideas

body:
Jeroen Heijmans wrote:

> Even though experts are no guarantee for quality, the credibility of
> Wikipedia will grow as articles have been approved by field experts.

> As for the admittance of experts, I think expert status should not
> just be given to people with lot of titles or the like. Actually, I
> think most of the current frequent editors, or at least the sysops,
> would already qualify as an expert in my view. Having finished a
> higher-level education on a specific subject, or even still studying
> is already some qualification. A proven record of quality edits to
> Wikipedia articles on the subject should be enough to get expert-status.

The issue of identifying experts remains at the root of the issue.  You
are right in recognizing that the ones who have contributed have proven
their worth, and should be granted every credit that that implies.

What that all means is that we have absolutely no need to bow and scrape
and compromise just for the sake of trying to attract experts.  Doing
that seems to demean the contributions that have already been made.

Eclecticology


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Breadth test

body:
The website http://www.xrefer.org/ has the full text of several
desktop reference books, including (for example) the Oxford Paperback
Encyclopedia, with 17,696 entries (they claim 20,000 on the site, but
there are only 17,696 that I can find).  These are all fairly short,
in the manner of a desktop encyclopedia, and many of them are what we
would disparage as mere "stubs".

But presumably, these entries were selected by some central conscious
process, as opposed to the random meandering wiki process, and so they
should have fewer odd gaps in their entries than we do.  (And fewer
articles on obscure topics that someone here happens to care about, of
course!)

My breadth test is to select 10 random entries from their work and
check to see if there is a corresponding entry in ours.

A raw number test would make us look better for having lots of stubs;
I'm not sure we want to encourage stubs, though.  It's a controversial
issue, anyhow.  So I'm looking at the quality of what we do have rather
than trying a simple count.

The urls for their articles are like this:
http://www.xrefer.com/entry/218376

----
218376 Klein, Melanie
They have: 2 sentence stub article
We have: no article, she is list in 2 articles on psychology
----
211517 Brandt, Willy (born Karl Herbert Frahm) (1913-1992)
They have: 5 sentence article on this Nobel Peace Prize winner
We have: 5 paragraph short article.

In this case, our article is much better.  The Oxford Paperback
Encyclopedia article does not even reveal that Brandt was Chancellor
of the Federal Republic of Germany.
----
209321 Akali (Punjabi, worshipper of the Timeless One)
They have: 5 sentence article
We have: nothing
----
217782 Jagannath Temple
They have: 2 sentence article
We have: nothing
----
215496 forester moth
They have: essentially a redirect to 'burnet moth', a 4 sentence article
We have: a link [[lepidoptera]] to [[zygaenidae]], which is the scientific name for
these
----
213209 community care
They have: 4 sentence article, mostly juxtaposing community care with institutional care
We have: basically nothing, a mention of 'community care centers' in [[involuntary commitment]]
----
221760 Petrarch (born Francesco Petrarca) (1304 - 1374)    Italian poet.
They have: 3 sentence short article
We have: 2 sentence stub.  Their article is better than ours.
----
219474 Malcolm (Four kings of Scotland)
They have: Short article on Malcolm I - Malcolm IV
We have: Short articles on each of Malcolm I and  Malcolm III, no mention of II and IV, who
it seems were less important.  Our articles are better than their single article.
----
214901 E number
They have: "See 'food additive'"
We have: http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/E_number - an explanation of what an E number is,
along with a list of them.  Our article is a LOT better here.
----
212615 Prince Charles
They have: 4 sentence short article
We have: 4 paragraph short article, much better than theirs

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

Well, I said that I wouldn't keep numerical score, but here it is anyway:
They win 7, we win 3, in terms of who has a better article.

In terms of sheer breadth, we cover 5 of 10 topics.

--Jimbo


body:
daniwo59 at aol.com wrote:

>In 1933 a small group of Jews declared war on Germany (in response to the
>government's official policies of anti-Semitism). Germany responded with an
>official boycott of all Jewish shops and eventually launched an all-out
>campaign to murder all the Jews of Europe.
>
The sort of event where a small extremist group purporting to represent
a larger community performs irrational acts is not unknown to history.
 Equally common is the tendency of governments and the public press to
fan the flames of discontent by taking these groups at their word in
their claims of being representative.  Often, as was the case in 1930s
Germany, the extremists fit hand in glove with preconceived notions.

I find the overreaction of governments far more frightening than the
original acts of the extremists.  Of a sudden, in response to a single
extremist event the freedoms and liberties of everyone in a society are
revoked.  It then takes many years (and incidentally big profits by many
lawyers) to sort out the damages, even in a society that makes a big
deal of proclaiming the freeedom it offers.

As important as it may be to keep a watchful eye on the extremists
(which is not done by surpressing reports of their activities), it is
also important to apply the same dilligence to the activities of
governments.

Ec


from_name: Krzysztof P. Jasiutowicz

subject: [Wikipedia-l] The "Casio Effect"

body:
On 03-09-2002, Anthere wrote thusly :
> --- lcrocker at nupedia.com wrote:
>  Perhaps Nupedia could be
> > pared down to a
> > simpler function, and one that would be easier for
> > experts to
> > participate in: instead of creating articles, or
> > even editing them,
> > why not simply let the experts /write reviews/ of
> > articles submitted
> > to them, which then get attached to the articles?
> > Wikipedia authors
> > could, whenever they feel an article is ready for
> > it, ask for it to
> > be submitted to expert review. The expert then just
> > writes what he
> > thinks about the article (you've omitted this, you
> > got that wrong,
> > etc.) and sends it back.  The Wikipedia process can
> > then go to work
> > on the article again, with the expert commentary
> > available.
> > That way, the experts never have the problem of
> > having their names
> > associated with the mediocre work itself--only with
> > the review,
> > which is entirely their own creation and therefore
> > ego-satisfying.
> > And those of us who enjoy the work of writing and
> > polishing have
> > the expert's input to work with.  The experts will
> > be providing
> > only the last 10% of quality that Wikipedia can't,
> > and no more.
> That's an interesting proposition.
> Also, why wouldnot near-expert wikipedians
> (considering the real experts are on Nupedia :-)) do a
> rather similar work of "reviewing" articles in which
> they have not been involved themselves but are
> interested and knowledgable. Maybe it could help make
> another 2%.

There was a notion of teaming up groups of Wikipedians
around some areas of Wikipedia content - operating
systems, unix, punk rock or the Roman Empire.

They should have some infrastructure (namespace ? mailing list ?)
to rely on in order
to coordinate, review and discuss. Not to mention
do some planning and quality assurance.

Regards,
kpjas.


from_name: Julie Hofmann Kemp

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Militia Call-out request -- also on my talk page

body:
Could some of you perhaps try to reason with DW (who may also be
209.202.xxx.xxx) As far as I can tell (unless it's a major coincidence),
he's brought in his friends Olivier and Suzanne to help ram through a
bunch of French articles. Mast are pretty good, but both Zoe and I have
asked that they try to stick to the format we've used for historical
biography, with no response. I think a couple of others have also put
comments for him and also have been ignored.  There have also been
questions about sources and images -- no response. It wouldn't matter if
the articles were all neutral, but DW tends to put in phrases like "he
had the morals of a tomcat" -- it's bad writing and without some kind of
citation, it isn't appropriate (and I'd still re-write it).
I've tried to talk to this person, but he refuses to talk to me because
he thinks I'm a German revisionist -- his last shot to me was to demand
my credentials after implying that I had made them up.   I provided them
and asked for his -- no response.
I'll stop whining here, but I thought we were a community -- this guy
seems to be a loose cannon with no respect for anybody else.

A tired Jules, who knows it's not her job to oversee all of history, but
is apparently addicted.

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from_name: Andre Engels

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Average Size of Articles and Article Size Evolution

body:
> This is an interesting approach.  The article set could be divided into
> deciles (or some other suitable sized sample).  I would guess that the
> median article size that we currently have is likely fairly constant.
>  The markers for the deciles are likely similarly constant.  This is, of
> course, subject to minor sampling variation.  People who use population
> pyramids let them be indicators of broad changes in populations.
>  Statistically significant variations from key markers would suggest
> differences in the patterns of participation.
>
> Perhaps one of our more mathematically could do an analysis on "The
> fractal geometry of Wikipedia participation"

My first guess would be that the article sizes are (from a minimum size
that would be the size of an average mini-stub upward) distributed according
to a Pareto distribution.

Andre Engels


from_name: Magnus Manske

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Uneditable reviews

body:
Forgive me for spoiling the hopeful mood, but I'm not so sure the
uneditable review idea would work.

The obvious reason is that in order to write a review about a wikipedia
article, you'd have to be interested in wikipedia  in the first place.
So if I'm an academic interested in moving wikipedia along, why should I
bother with a review? It would be less work to make the changes myself.
My name would automatically be associated with the edit on the article's
history page. And even if I write such a review, people would read it
and fix the mistakes and missing issues I found (talking about
duplicated effort here!). So, soon after my review is out, it won't fit
the article anymore, because the article changed. So, all people would
soon find is my outdated (=incorrect) review, with my name below it. No
thanks!

As a to-be-academic, I'd rather have a stable article that says
"...based on [[this article]] at wikipedia, edited by ..." (or "reviewed
by" or "streamlined by";) where there's a backlink to the wikipedia
article, maybe like "For a more current, but unreviewed version, see [[]]".

I might be wrong, and this is the "magic formula", but I don't see many
academics interested in that review function, certainly less than in the
original Nupedia (and even that didn't work...)

Magnus


from_name: Tom Parmenter

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Uneditable reviews

body:
|From: Jan Hidders <hidders at uia.ua.ac.be>
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|Date: Wed, 4 Sep 2002 11:57:52 +0200
|
|On Wed, Sep 04, 2002 at 11:03:07AM +0200, Magnus Manske wrote:
|> Forgive me for spoiling the hopeful mood, but I'm not so sure the
|> uneditable review idea would work.
|
|Neither do I. In fact, I'm pretty sure that it won't work for the reasons
|that Magnus already gave. As the academic that I believe myself to be, my
|motivation to write such a review would be zero.
|
|-- Jan Hidders
|

If we could get one of these lofty personages to write a review, why
would we not be able to get them to write an article?  Fear of the
hurly-burly?  If they fear the hurly-burly, why would we want the
review anyway?

I think some folks have an artificially elevated notion of who it is
exactly writing all those encyclopedia articles in those other
encyclopedias.  For the most part they are written by ordinary smart,
well-educated folk who swot up on a subject, write it up, and then go
on to the next subject.  Just like the ideal Wikipedia article, except
they get paid.

The most productive effort, it seems to me, would be recruiting people
to write for Wikipedia, and the best process improvement would be some
sort of probationary status, or cooling-off (warming-up?) period for
contributions before they become fully party of the encyclopedia.

And, rather than clicking on Random Page to judge articles, why not
click on Random Page to improve them?

Tom Parmenter
Ortolan88


body:
>
>
>Could some of you perhaps try to reason with DW (who may also be
>209.202.xxx.xxx) As far as I can tell (unless it's a major coincidence),
>he's brought in his friends Olivier and Suzanne to help ram through a
>bunch of French articles. Mast are pretty good, but both Zoe and I have
>asked that they try to stick to the format we've used for historical
>biography, with no response. I think a couple of others have also put
>comments for him and also have been ignored.  There have also been
>questions about sources and images -- no response. It wouldn't matter if
>the articles were all neutral, but DW tends to put in phrases like "he had
>the morals of a tomcat" -- it's bad writing and without some kind of
>citation, it isn't appropriate (and I'd still re-write it).
>
>
>I've tried to talk to this person, but he refuses to talk to me because he
>thinks I'm a German revisionist -- his last shot to me was to demand my
>credentials after implying that I had made them up.   I provided them and
>asked for his -- no response.
>
>
>I'll stop whining here, but I thought we were a community -- this guy
>seems to be a loose cannon with no respect for anybody else.
>
>
>A tired Jules, who knows it's not her job to oversee all of history, but
>is apparently addicted.
>
A google search for "artistic temperament of a Renaissance prince
and the morals of a tomcat" gets no hits, so if it copied might not be from
the internet.

Good phrase to remember for the Mick Jagger article...

Fred


from_name: Anthere

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Welcome messages

body:
--- Daniel Mayer <maveric149 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> On Wednesday 04 September 2002 10:38 am, Helga
> wrote:
> > Hello, I am a little swamped with all the wiki
> list reading material and it
> > seems my limited email is getting overloaded.
>
> You might want to create an email filter to sort any
> emails with the string
> "Helga" in the subject into a special folder (just
> use the help menu of
> whatever email program you use and look up
> "filter").
>
> Otherwise you may miss some emails that concern you.
>
> -- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)
> [Wikipedia-l]
> To manage your subscription to this list, please go
> here:
> http://www.nupedia.com/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l

Mav, you're again living in the past...

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


from_name: lcrocker at nupedia.com

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Uneditable reviews

body:
>> Forgive me for spoiling the hopeful mood, but I'm not so sure
>> the uneditable review idea would work.

> Neither do I. In fact, I'm pretty sure that it won't work for
> the reasons that Magnus already gave. As the academic that I
> believe myself to be, my motivation to write such a review would
> be zero.

You may be right; I have no plans to act on the idea yet, I
just threw it out for comment.  Magnus's alternative is more
in line with what Larry was suggesting, and that may be what
we have to do.  But I see the problem there is this: if the
expert is charged with writing the article itself, what incentive
does he have to pay any attention whatsoever to the Wikipedia
content?  Wouldn't he just write a whole new article that he
can claim authorship of, totally ignoring the /development/
process that went into the wiki content?


from_name: Jan Hidders

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Uneditable reviews

in_reply_to: <3D75CC4B.60401@epost.de>; from magnus.manske@epost.de on Wed, Sep 04, 2002 at 11:03:07AM +0200

body:
On Wed, Sep 04, 2002 at 11:03:07AM +0200, Magnus Manske wrote:
> Forgive me for spoiling the hopeful mood, but I'm not so sure the
> uneditable review idea would work.

Neither do I. In fact, I'm pretty sure that it won't work for the reasons
that Magnus already gave. As the academic that I believe myself to be, my
motivation to write such a review would be zero.

-- Jan Hidders


body:
--- Fred Bauder <fredbaud at ctelco.net> wrote:
> >
> >
> >Could some of you perhaps try to reason with DW
> (who may also be
> >209.202.xxx.xxx) As far as I can tell (unless it's
> a major coincidence),
> >he's brought in his friends Olivier and Suzanne to
> help ram through a
> >bunch of French articles. Mast are pretty good, but
> both Zoe and I have
> >asked that they try to stick to the format we've
> used for historical
> >biography, with no response. I think a couple of
> others have also put
> >comments for him and also have been ignored.  There
> have also been
> >questions about sources and images -- no response.
> It wouldn't matter if
> >the articles were all neutral, but DW tends to put
> in phrases like "he had
> >the morals of a tomcat" -- it's bad writing and
> without some kind of
> >citation, it isn't appropriate (and I'd still
> re-write it).
> >
> >
> >I've tried to talk to this person, but he refuses
> to talk to me because he
> >thinks I'm a German revisionist -- his last shot to
> me was to demand my
> >credentials after implying that I had made them up.
>   I provided them and
> >asked for his -- no response.
> >
> >
> >I'll stop whining here, but I thought we were a
> community -- this guy
> >seems to be a loose cannon with no respect for
> anybody else.
> >
> >
> >A tired Jules, who knows it's not her job to
> oversee all of history, but
> >is apparently addicted.
> >
> A google search for "artistic temperament of a
> Renaissance prince
> and the morals of a tomcat" gets no hits, so if it
> copied might not be from
> the internet.
>
> Good phrase to remember for the Mick Jagger
> article...
>
> Fred
>
>
>
> [Wikipedia-l]
> To manage your subscription to this list, please go
> here:
> http://www.nupedia.com/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l

Dear tired Julie (you know do you, that Jules is
masculine in french ?)

I will relieve you a tiny little bit

http://www.beloit.edu/~arthist/historyofart/gothic/reimscath.htm

You'll notice both images are there. Poor job, he
didnot even try to "steal" it from a non-english
speaking site. Didnot show on french google, but was
fourth hit on english yahoo.

Ain't that a very pretty cathedral?
I saw it several times, during field trips, looking
for champagne...

Cheers

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


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Militia Call-out request -- also on my talk page

body:
Thanks for checking out the pix, Anthere.  I was aware that Jules in
French is masculine -- when I speak French (somewhat execrably), I'm
Julie.  With fellow wikipedians, I pretty much answer to anything.   I'm
going to attempt to go into lurk mode so I can get some work done --
although we all know that I'm not so good at that.

Still, at the moment, I think we have a clear case of why so-called
experts might drop off the site.  It's physically and emotionally
exhausting trying to defend a reputation rather than to make one -- or
to make the wrong kind.    Once your name is on an article, you feel a
bit of responsibility to make sure the article remains good --
especially in case your colleges see your name attached.

One of the things I love about this place is the people and the
community (the one ark denied existed).   I've found it very supportive
for the most part, and I've learned something from almost everyone I've
worked with,   mostly because the people who write good articles are
experts at learning enough about something to write good articles.   I
think that that is the kind of expertise that a good education brings,
no matter the level of (or lack of) degree.

Jules (Fr. Julie)


subject: [Wikitech-l] [sjc@easynet.co.uk: Sysop]

body:
Done.

Jimmy Wales wrote:

>Is there a way for us to sysop people from the web, or is this a database thing.  If
>it's a database thing, could someone grab this for me?
>
>----- Forwarded message from Steve Callaway <sjc at easynet.co.uk> -----
>
>From: "Steve Callaway" <sjc at easynet.co.uk>
>Date: Wed, 4 Sep 2002 07:47:32 +0100
>To: <jwales at bomis.com>
>Subject: Sysop
>
>Jimmy,
>
>I have long been putting off requesting sysop privileges; I am and always have been, to say the least of it, a little unhappy with certain aspects of sysopdom, as you probably have gathered. However, the SQL querying functionality is beginning to become a "must have" for me. It will enable me to identify shortfall areas particularly in my specialist subjects (e.g. mythology, history, topology of SW England) where we need to get some efforts focussed, spot stubby or quasi-stubby articles that need attention, etc. My SQL btw is very very good (I am a full time DBMS designer) so hopefully I will be able to throw up some useful stuff for the other sysops.
>
>I am also (occasionally) probably the only (sane!) person up at certain times, so if there is any vandalism occurring I might be on hand to deal with it. I certainly won't be deleting articles (except perhaps the patently pointless created by vandals) etc. Hope you think I'm safe enough to be let on the loose with 'em!
>
>rgds
>
>Steve Callaway (user:sjc)
>
>----- End forwarded message -----
>_______________________________________________
>Wikitech-l mailing list
>Wikitech-l at nupedia.com
>http://nupedia.com/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>
>
>


from_name: Michael R. Irwin

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Helga again

body:
Jimmy Wales wrote:
>
> Michael R. Irwin wrote:
> >  The totality of the material
> > presented should not be selected to support the frame or view that
> > the Holocaust was undeserved.
>
> But, the Holocaust was undeserved.  That's as uncontroversial a fact as
> "The Earth goes around the Sun".

Only if one considers a major World War beneath notice.  To me
that seems a bit controversial if one is presenting an NPOV
as a neutral reporter.

I reviewed the NPOV last night.   It is lengthy and internally
contradictary.  It also attempts to assume/conclude in circular
arguments that many/most are inherently neutral or well practiced
from their jobs in presenting material in a neutral fashion.

Despite these flaws there seems to be a lot of support for
my position that all views, information, evidence etc. should
be presented and the reader allowed to draw their own conclusion.

When we start assessing situations as "obvious" and "offensive"
then I suspect a personal frame of reference is in use.

>
> > Similarly, there were legitimate security concerns that lead to
> > U.S. Japanese internment camps. We should present the concerns,
> > the evidence, the surrounding context, the allegations which revolve
> > around the failure to isolate/intern the large U.S. population of
> > German descent, etc. and allow the reader to draw their own conclusions.
>
> Without turning this into an argument about history, I would say that
> although *I* think that the U.S. Japanese internment camps were
> morally unjustified, that there are _legitimate arguments_ about
> security concerns, etc., that make the situation less clear.  The
> United States did not exterminate the Japanese in gas ovens.

No we used firestorms in Tokyo and the Atomic bombs in
Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Civilians dead are dead.  How much the leaders enjoyed issuing
the directives which provided the results or the victims suffered
seems almost another entire topic to me.

>
> > Selection, censorship or propaganda?  If Nazi views can be
> > summarily dismissed as inappropriate or incorrect then there
> > are few modern minorities influential enough to justify NPOV
> > presentation.
>
> This is a misrepresentation of what I have said.  Clearly, the
> encyclopedia must report on Nazi views.  The ideas of the Nazis are an
> important part of history, and the encyclopedia must cover just what
> those views are.

Agreed.

>
> Let me see if I can explain this with an example.
>
> Here's an evil idea, held by at least some Nazis: "Jews are vermin."
> Now, the fact that those people held that idea is an important
> historical fact.  We should report on it.

Agreed.

>
> We are not required, however, to say, in an article on Jews, "Jews are
> widely considered great people.  Maybe not, though, since some people
> think they are vermin."  This is no longer _reporting on a point of
> view_, it is _giving credence to this point of view as a legitimate
> minority opinion_.

I agree the wording quoted is above poor.  It appears to quote several
opionions and give them "credence".

The NPOV policy specifically or implicitly states in several places
(If I recall or interpret correctly) that we are not to choose the
legitimate option or frame of reference.   Our job as neutral writers
is to present the facts in a neutral way for the readers critical
assessment.  We are not attempting to indoctrinate the reader into
any specific "legitimate" view.

>
> Similarly, in an article on holocaust deniers, we must report on the
> Daily Express article, as an example of the types of things that the
> deniers say.  We must _not_, though, suggest in an article on the
> holocaust that "maybe" the holocaust was deserved.

Agreed.

OTOH It is not "offensive" to report the facts on the
Holocaust without mentioning in every other paragraph that the
Nazi's were obviously to all right thinking people sick and evil.
Just as it is not necessary every time the Bible is quoted to point
out that it reports the Jews were practicing Genocides along with
most other identifiable or surviving tribes or religions at various
times and places who were organized well enough to keep verbal or
written histories.

OTOH2 We should not be implying that every Nazi involved in
the Holocaust was an automaton who was merely following
orders unenthusiastically.  No government capable of continent
spanning warfare has one guy with a gun pointed at millions
of unbelievers directing all traffic.

Somebody thought the Holocaust was deserved or it would
not have happened.   Likewise, post war analysis by some
parties have a hard time justifying the "strategic" bombing
conducted by the Allies.   Its primary effect seems to
have been to kill civilians.   Somebody thought this was
justified or it would not have occurred.

The NPOV (to me) seems to advance the proposition of
staying off the slippery slope of telling other people
what to think; by proposing to stick to informing them
of the facts in the best neutral summaries we can provide.
It suffers a bit from assuming that scholarly academics
are obviously capable of neutrally weighing the relative
relevence of "facts" and minority or radical views.
However, it recovers nicely by stating that all should
be presented.

If neutrality is to be presented in the context of personal
judgements such as "obvious" or "offensive" then (IMO) some
editorial guidelines or criteria beyond the existing
"NPOV" policy will be required.

Regards,
Mike Irwin


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Helga again

body:
Vicki Rosenzweig wrote:
>
> At 04:29 AM 9/4/02 -0700, Jimmy Wales wrote:
> >Michael R. Irwin wrote:
> > >  The totality of the material
> > > presented should not be selected to support the frame or view that
> > > the Holocaust was undeserved.
> >
> >But, the Holocaust was undeserved.  That's as uncontroversial a fact as
> >"The Earth goes around the Sun".
>
> Exactly. Otherwise we'd need to carefully avoid suggesting--on each of the
> September 11 pages--that the victims were innocent. Either is absurd and
> offensive.

Absurd and offensive to who?  The prevailing mainstream
Arab view seem pretty supportive of the attacks.

The Afghanistan government (unrecognized by the U.S. but
effectively in charge anyway) did not choose to recognize
it as a criminal act and hand over the leaders of Al Quada.

Hence, they were invaded and replaced.  Is this also
the obviously correct thing to do?

Might makes right and the mighty write history
which is "obviously" correct anytime a new faction
is in charge?

Are Irael's current pogroms or attacks in Palestinian
neighorhoods or camps in response to "terrorist" attacks
"obviously" incorrect?

Regards,
Mike Irwin


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

body:
This is an area of code I'm planning changes to very soon,
so let me jump in before anyone else explains the way it works
now, which won't help you in a week or two.

The way it's going to work soon is this: the first word
appearing before a : character in a link [[like:this]] will
determine how that link is rendered in the final document.
There are several sets of such words that have different
functions.  For example, two-letter ones are reserved for
language links, so that [[pl:xxx]] will create a link to
the article "xxx" on the Polish wiki.  Recognized URL methods
are another set: [[http:xxx]], [[ftp:xxx]], etc., will make
direct links to those URLs.  Another set is the wiki database
namespaces like "talk", "user", and "wikipedia".  Those will
create links to wikipedia pages under those name spaces.  Each
of these namespaces has a corresponding talk page--"talk"
links to the talk page of the main article; "user talk" to the
talk page of the User page; "wikipedia talk" to the talk page
of the "wikipedia" space article.  This correspondence is used
for the "talk page/subject page" link in the sidebar.  Coming
next week sometime, the "file" and "file talk" namespaces will
point to the image description pages and their corresponding
discussion pages (now confused with "image", which causes
problems).

Uploaded files are stored in a database independent of wiki pages.
The special-case prefixes "image:" and "media:" access these.
"Image:xxx" means "look for the file 'xxx' among the uploaded
files, and produce an HTML IMG tag".  "media:xxx" means "look
for file 'xxx' among the uploads, and produce a regular A HREF
tag".  "File:" and the corresponding "File talk:" will be regular
wiki page namespaces that link to a page with special association
with an uploaded file of the same name (so the page will
automatically show its upload history, what pages use the file,
etc.), but will otherwise be a normal editable wiki page.

Combining interwiki prefixes and article namespaces will work
in that order; so [[de:benutzer:Magnus Manske]] will make a link
to Magnus's user page on the German wiki.  Image links will need
to come /before/ any others, so to create an IMG tag referencing
an image on the German wiki, you would use [[image:de:xxx]], and
the German wiki would use [[bild:en:xxx]] to link here.
[[image:http:xxx]] will NOT work; you will no longer be able to
inline-render external images.  Alternately, I could make it
work for a specifically allowed subset of external sites.

So you will need to translate the namespaces like "user",
"wikipedia", and "file", and their corresponging talk namespaces,
and also the special prefixes "image" and "media".  The two-
letter interwiki codes are international, as are "HTTP" and the
other URL schemes.


from_name: Vicki Rosenzweig

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Helga again

body:
At 04:29 AM 9/4/02 -0700, Jimmy Wales wrote:
>Michael R. Irwin wrote:
> >  The totality of the material
> > presented should not be selected to support the frame or view that
> > the Holocaust was undeserved.
>
>But, the Holocaust was undeserved.  That's as uncontroversial a fact as
>"The Earth goes around the Sun".

Exactly. Otherwise we'd need to carefully avoid suggesting--on each of the
September 11 pages--that the victims were innocent. Either is absurd and
offensive.

> > Similarly, there were legitimate security concerns that lead to
> > U.S. Japanese internment camps. We should present the concerns,
> > the evidence, the surrounding context, the allegations which revolve
> > around the failure to isolate/intern the large U.S. population of
> > German descent, etc. and allow the reader to draw their own conclusions.
>
>Without turning this into an argument about history, I would say that
>although *I* think that the U.S. Japanese internment camps were
>morally unjustified, that there are _legitimate arguments_ about
>security concerns, etc., that make the situation less clear.  The
>United States did not exterminate the Japanese in gas ovens.
>
> > Selection, censorship or propaganda?  If Nazi views can be
> > summarily dismissed as inappropriate or incorrect then there
> > are few modern minorities influential enough to justify NPOV
> > presentation.
>
>This is a misrepresentation of what I have said.  Clearly, the
>encyclopedia must report on Nazi views.  The ideas of the Nazis are an
>important part of history, and the encyclopedia must cover just what
>those views are.
>
>Let me see if I can explain this with an example.
>
>Here's an evil idea, held by at least some Nazis: "Jews are vermin."
>Now, the fact that those people held that idea is an important
>historical fact.  We should report on it.
>
>We are not required, however, to say, in an article on Jews, "Jews are
>widely considered great people.  Maybe not, though, since some people
>think they are vermin."  This is no longer _reporting on a point of
>view_, it is _giving credence to this point of view as a legitimate
>minority opinion_.
>
>Similarly, in an article on holocaust deniers, we must report on the
>Daily Express article, as an example of the types of things that the
>deniers say.  We must _not_, though, suggest in an article on the
>holocaust that "maybe" the holocaust was deserved.

Thank you for putting this clearly and calmly.

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


from_name: Jeroen Heijmans

body:
Reading the postings on setting up an article approval system for
Wikipedia, I had the following ideas (most elements of it have already
been mentioned by others).

Even though experts are no guarantee for quality, the credibility of
Wikipedia will grow as articles have been approved by field experts.
Therefore, there should be a mechanism to nominate an article for
approval by an expert (or more, if these are available); this should in
a way similar to the old voting system, and should IMO only be possible
by logged in users.

Experts are defined in two ways: field and nationality. This has the
benefit that an article on, say, a German mathematician is not only
verified by a mathematical expert, but also by somebody with knowledge
of Germany, being able to check the spelling of names, cities and check
local information (the mathematician's influence in Germany may be much
bigger than in the rest of the world). While experts will know a great
deal about their fields (mathematics, biology, philosophy), they
probably have some smaller areas in which they're particularly
knowledgable (logic, evolution theory, Nietzsche). When an article is
submitted for approval, the submitted should indicate which general
field the article is in, potentially specify the sub-field, and a
country (if applicable). For example, the article on the German
mathematician will be have : mathematics, sub-field trigonometry (f.e.),
country Germany. This will cause the page to show up on the approval
lists of the experts that have subscribed to one of these areas. An
expert can than indicate if he wishes to review the article or not. If
there are multiple experts willing to review, they can decide what
approach to take (the country expert may f.e. let the math-man do most
work and only check for names or so). After review, the experts may put
the document back without approving it. In that case, they should
indicate which elements are still missing in their opinion, and point
out other deficiencies (probably in the talk page). Alternatively, the
expert can decide to fix the current deficiencies and put the article
back as approved, or may simply give the article approval without change.

After approval, the article should NOT be locked for editing, but the
page should indicate that "this article is approved by an expert" or "a
previous version of this article was approved by an expert", in case the
article was edited since the last approval.

As for the admittance of experts, I think expert status should not just
be given to people with lot of titles or the like. Actually, I think
most of the current frequent editors, or at least the sysops, would
already qualify as an expert in my view. Having finished a higher-level
education on a specific subject, or even still studying is already some
qualification. A proven record of quality edits to Wikipedia articles on
the subject should be enough to get expert-status.

These are my ideas. They're still a bit of loose sand, and several
problems are still not addressed (such as the issue of how we actually
give people expert status), but I'd still like hear your reactions.

Jeroen Heijmans


from_name: Imran Ghory

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

body:
On 2 Sep 2002, at 13:06, Sean Barrett wrote:

> Taking up the gauntlet that KQ has hurled down ;->, I have thrown
> together a Perl script (undoubtedly hideously inefficient; I am not a
> native speaker of Perl) that has automated this process -- it
> repeatedly calls Wikipedia's random page link, grabs the title, drops
> all dates, turns all punctuation (including subpage slashes) into
> spaces, googles for the result, and looks for links to "wikipedia."
>

<cut>

There's an easier way to do it, just parse the web server logs, pull
out all of google referrers, and remove all of the ones which have
"&start=" in them, that will give you those linked to from the first
page of a google search.

Imran


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Uneditable reviews

in_reply_to: <200209041844.g84Ii3o24087@ross.bomis.com>; from lcrocker@nupedia.com on Wed, Sep 04, 2002 at 11:44:03AM -0700

body:
On Wed, Sep 04, 2002 at 11:44:03AM -0700, lcrocker at nupedia.com wrote:
>
> [...] But I see the problem there is this: if the expert is charged with
> writing the article itself, what incentive does he have to pay any
> attention whatsoever to the Wikipedia content?  Wouldn't he just write a
> whole new article that he can claim authorship of, totally ignoring the
> /development/ process that went into the wiki content?

Exactly! But, as Magnus already pointed out, if the expert is prepared to
take that into account then he or she is probably going to write directly in
Wikipedia anyway. We have to keep in mind that what we have here is a
bootstrapping problem. Once we have enough good experts that are interested
in writing in Wikipedia, we don't need voting systems, reviews, expert
status, or whatever else has been suggested.

I may sound a bit negative here, but actually I think I'm a bit more
optimistic than Larry. It's very rare that articles go back in quality, so
Wikipedia is only getting bigger and better. One of Larry's complaints was
that his initially imported writings on philosophy hadn't improved much. I'm
still wondering if that is not simply what usually happens to large imported
chuncks: they remain "undigested". There's probably also something about the
style and structure of an article that was "home grown" on our own soil that
makes it attract more new edits.

Finally, let's also not forget that Wikipedia has made a big jump since the
new script. It might be interesting to look at the number of edits and the
number of articles in the course of time. Even uncorrected for stubs et
cetera they would tell us something about the trend of the growth.

So my suggestion: let's just wait a little more until we hit 50.000 (2
months?) and then start making some noise.

-- Jan Hidders


from_name: youandme at poczta.fm

body:
Good day to everybody,

I started participating in Wikipedias only 5 weeks ago and lately
I decided to get involved into translation Language.php -> LanguagePl.php
(ie. Polish). I've already got rough translation. Of course many problems
have arisen. Two of them are pointed out beneath. As I studied the code
of the whole Wikipedia for only few hours I'm not aware of many things.

On English Wikipedia, both images and sound files (what else in future?)
are loaded using SpecialUpload.php and appear on 'Special:Imagelist' (both!)
As far as I understand the code (cf. files convertdb.php, OutputPage.php as
well) there is no threat of confusion while using 'media' namespace for other
purposes. Did I understand the code right?  Any plans taking into account
this namespace? Can we use 'media' as a namespace name
FOR BOTH IMAGE AND SOUND FILES on Polish Wikipedia without
any harm to the DB?

Another issue is the purpose of the namespace 'Wikipedia_talk'. I've discovered
only one page on English Wiki, sth about bugs of Phase II software.
Are there any other pages in this ns? (of course plain Search does not help
in finding those pages). What is the future of this ns? Any clues would help
in proper translation to Polish.

Thanks in advance for any replies
(User:)Youandme

----------------------------------------------------------------------
Zaufaj swojej intuicji... >>> http://link.interia.pl/f1646


body:
> Still, at the moment, I think we have a clear case
> of why so-called
> experts might drop off the site.  It's physically
> and emotionally
> exhausting trying to defend a reputation rather than
> to make one -- or
> to make the wrong kind.    Once your name is on an
> article, you feel a
> bit of responsibility to make sure the article
> remains good --
> especially in case your colleges see your name
> attached.
>
> One of the things I love about this place is the
> people and the
> community (the one ark denied existed).   I've found
> it very supportive
> for the most part, and I've learned something from
> almost everyone I've
> worked with,   mostly because the people who write
> good articles are
> experts at learning enough about something to write
> good articles.   I
> think that that is the kind of expertise that a good
> education brings,
> no matter the level of (or lack of) degree.
>
> Jules (Fr. Julie)

Yes, I agree, right now I don't think being an expert
is the point. The only point is "reputation". Because
you care for your reputation, you feel the need to
preserve it. You have two reputations to protect, the
"virtual" one, here on Wikipedia, and the "real"
professional one. I'm not so much around, but I had
the feeling your "virtual" reputation was pretty good
(ever wrote an article on bonding to break it ? jk).
It seems people here trust you and your expertise.
I understand your deep inner desire for information to
be precise and reliable, but it appears to be also
(mostly ?) a fear that an article you take care of, is
flawed, causing your professional reputation to
suffer.
If so is your fear, why did you give your name and
references ? Why leaving that information everywhere
on the net ? Why not give that information privately,
only to those who need to know ? Why not earn
credentials later, while being one of wikipedia
validating "expert" ? What you will lose in (potential
better professional) reputation, you might earn in peace.

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


from_name: Helga Hecht

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Welcome messages

body:
Hello, I am a little swamped with all the wiki list reading material and it seems my limited email is getting overloaded.

But I want to thank all those wonderful wikipedians, who posted 'welcome to the list' messages and sent helpful tips. It will take me a while to carefully read through all of this and I just wanted to let you know in the meanwhile, that I appreciated the messages.

[[H. Jonat]]

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


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Breadth test

body:
Hi all, sorry if this does not thread properly, already erased orginal
message.  Oops!  Sorry about the duplicate to list-admin.

I think I sort of inverted Jimbo's methodology and took 10 random pages
from Wikipedia and then compared to the search results in the
encyclopedia category at xrefer.org, if no hits were found there then
I searched all categories.   In some cases I searched for closely
related
links accessible links in stubs.

results (my tally at the bottom):

1.  Montgomery

Wikipedia
 OUCH! Disambiguation page.  Mainly on named locations, 86 U.S.
locations, 18 counties, a couple of history facts about people
places are named after.

xrefer.org over 50 hits mostly on:

a.  Montgomery, Bernard Law 1rst yada yada WWII General of Eighth Army
       1 paragraph "The Oxford Paperback" (top)
       6 concise paragraph biosketch - The Macmillan Encyclopedia (tmme)
       1 page biograhy - Who's Who in the Twentieth Century:
                         Oxford University Press (wwtc)

    Wikipedia
       6 short paragraphs, about the same as (tmme)

       Wikipedia in the low middle of the pack.

b.  Montgomery, Alabama - Confederacy capital, first capital of Alabama,
civil rights incidents

    xrefer.org
    1 concise paragraph - Oxford Paperback Edition (ope)
                          Oxford University Press

    1 concise paragraph - (tmme)
    slightly different facts

    No hits on counties or cities other than Montgomery, Alabama.

    Wikipedia
    Bunch of County and City Stubs ranging from 500 bytes to 2500 bytes,
    most need work.

    Wikipedia wins on breadth but needs work in all articles.

c.  Montgomery, Lucy Maud  Poet

    xrefer.org
        Penguin Biographical Dictionary of Woman (pbdw)
        One paragraph citing several works

    Wikipedia
        One concise paragraph followed by list of all works.

    Wikipedia has more information.

Call this article a tie with Wikipedia in the lower middle
of the pack.  Started with one apple and ended up comparing
three oranges and grapefruit.

2.  choir

    Wikipedia
      Excellent article.  A candidate soon for brilliant prose.
      Has some hooks for further information.
      Excellent work lately by Koyannis Quatsi and Tbackstr

    xrefer.org
      (tmme) one paragraph stub
      (others) one line definitions

Wikipedia wins this one, hands down.

3.  substantia nigra

    Wikipedia

       Technical definition stub, links to slightly
       better stub dopamine.

    xrefer.org
       No hits on substantia nigra
       12 hits on middle brain, nothing directly equivalent

Wikipedia scores on breadth, still needs work to be
an adequate technical medical dictionary or encyclpedia.
Unless, of course, nothing is known of midbrain, which
I doubt.

4.  Seamus Heaney

   Wikipedia
      3 short (1-2 sentence) paragraphs, sketchy bio.

   xrefer.org
      1 paragraph Oxford English Reference Dictionary (oerd)
      1 paragraph (ope)
      1 paragraph (tmme)
      2 long paragraphs (wwtc)

xrefer - My impresssion was that two xrefer.org were
at least slightly better and a couple were
better than Wikipedia.

5.  Netherlands Cabinet Balkenende-1

   Wikipedia
      This crashed my Win98/Nav 4.7 3 times, once
      after reboot.

      In mozilla, it is an excellent informatative
      article providing lots of information.  Recently
      relocated from Politics of Netherlands it appears
      to be election and subsequent organization results
      of the Netherlands governing bodies.  Excellent
      supporting article for Politics of Netherlands.

   xrefer.org
      No hits on Netherlands Cabinet Balkenendre-1
      6 hits on Netherlands Politics, all historical figures
      7 hits on Netherlands Elections, 15th-18th century

Wikipedia scores, at least against the search engine at xrefer.

6.  1058

    Wikipedia 2 events, 2 deaths, (priests and kings)

        Looked sketchy till I played with the links, Very nice!
        Not quite a time machine but quick temporal browing! 8)

    xrefer.org
      (tmme) and (ope) have several kings, priests
       and/or poets in one liners that Wikipedia does not.
       I have notes and this shall be easily rectified,
       until then however ....

xrefer.org scores, Wikipedia lacking some detail, at least
      under the date index .... I did not search for the
      information direct.  Still, the links are missing if
      the info is not, legitimate hit.

7.  Free Convection

     Wikipedia
        Stubby definition with link to a fair one page
        article on convection.

     xrefer.org
        Not hits on "free convection"
        Convection yields two one paragraph definitions
        in dictionaries.

Wikipedia, say one half point?

8.  Kamov

     Wikipedia
        Stubby definiton of a company with links to
        good helicopter and aircraft articles.
        External link to russian company web site
        available in English yields yummy photos and
        specifications.

     xrefer.org
        No hits on Kamov

        3 hits on "Russian Helicopters" All on
        Russian born American helicopter designer
        Sikorsky.

        No hits on "russian helicopter manufacturer"

Wikiipedia scores on breadth.  Unless someone deletes
this stub before it fleshes out.  Notice one link
adjacency to good portal articles .... spare this
meagre beginning fellow sages, I beseech thee.

Sorry, back to work.

9.  Margaret II of Denmark

   Wikipedia
      Very poor stub, birth and ascension of currently
      reigning monarch.

   xrefer.org  "Margrethe II" comes up from search
      Penguin Biographical Dictionary provides 3 paragraph
      biographical sketch.  Concise but many particulars.

      The Mcmillan Dictionary of Women's Biography
      1 long paragraph, better than Wikipedia's stub.

Wikipedia takes a hit on depth and detail.

10.  Illyrian

   Wikipedia

     Stubby technical definition linked back to Illyria
     which is 7 paragraph, 10-12 sentences total history stub
     with many links.  Pretty good factual presentation but
     looks and feels sketchy.  Also has links to modern
     Albania and Bosnia.

   xrefer.org

      One paragraph, about same quantity of information as
      Wikipedia.  No internal links.  Oxford English Reference
Dictionary

      2 ext links
         Oxford Paperback Encyclopedia  2 sentence stub
         (tmme)  6 sentence stub.

I give the edge to Wikipedia.

Tally ho!

Wikipedia has articles as good or better than xrefer.org
resources .....  7.5/12

xrefer is as good or better
than wikipedia.org  .... 7/12

Of course we scored a few cheap ones outside of xrefer.org's
stated scope.   Still, not bad for a project in progress.
Results similar to Jimbo's but letting Wikipedia pick the
topics switched the edge.  I look foward to seeing
other peoples' homework.  8)

Regards,
Mike Irwin

P.S.  I shall of course be doing some fact checking,
entering and editing with the careful notes resulting
from this exercise.   A quantum here, and an essay
there, it all adds up.


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Helga again

body:
Gareth Owen wrote:
>
> "Michael R. Irwin" <mri_icboise at surfbest.net> writes:
>
> > Jimmy Wales wrote:
> > >
> > > But, the Holocaust was undeserved.  That's as uncontroversial a fact as
> > > "The Earth goes around the Sun".
> >
> > Only if one considers a major World War beneath notice.  To me that seems a
> > bit controversial if one is presenting an NPOV as a neutral reporter.
>
> Excuse me, but perhaps you could enlighten me as to in what way the holocaust
> was deserved?

I do not think that I have asserted that it was deserved, merely
that many people were involved in helping create it.  Presumably
they believed it was deserved.  It has been my experience that
few people consider themselves the villians or perpetrators of
injustice.  It is usually the view of one faction that it is
the other side's fault and vice versa.

Thus it has been my assertion that at least some of the Germans
responsible for it (the Holocaust) probably felt it was deserved
and this (and reasons they provide regarding why they felt it
was deserved) could be reliably reported within the confines of
an "NPOV" presentation of the facts surrounding the holocaust.


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Helga again

body:
Andre Engels wrote:
>
> > The Afghanistan government (unrecognized by the U.S. but
> > effectively in charge anyway) did not choose to recognize
> > it as a criminal act and hand over the leaders of Al Quada.
>
> The reason was not that they did not see it as a criminal act, but that
> they were not convinced that Al-Qaida was responsible for it - the US
> basically told when asked for proof: "We have proof, and that should be
> enough for you." This asking for proof might well have been a tactic to
> give some formal international political reason for a decision that was
> taken on fully other grounds, but the Taliban have never said (publically)
> that they did not regard the attacks a crime. In fact, like Khadafi, but
> unlike Saddam Hussein, they reacted to the attacks with a message of
> sympathy for the victims.

Excellent clarification!  Thank you!

Regards,
Mike Irwin


from_name: Jimmy Wales

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Helga again

in_reply_to: <3D7687B1.83CD9EE5@surfbest.net>; from mri_icboise@surfbest.net on Wed, Sep 04, 2002 at 03:22:41PM -0700

body:
Michael R. Irwin wrote:
> > But, the Holocaust was undeserved.  That's as uncontroversial a fact as
> > "The Earth goes around the Sun".
>
> Only if one considers a major World War beneath notice.

The only way we can say that it is uncontroversial that the Holocaust
was undeserved is if we think that WWII is unworthy of notice?  To put
it another way, are you saying that if we think WWII is an important
event, we have to regard it _controversial_ to claim that the
Holocaust was wrong?

That's what you said; I'm sure it isn't what you intended.  But I
think this illustrates the lack of clarity in your thoughts on these
matters.

> OTOH It is not "offensive" to report the facts on the
> Holocaust without mentioning in every other paragraph that the
> Nazi's were obviously to all right thinking people sick and evil.

This is a straw man fallacy.  Absolutely no one here is claiming that
we have to inject moral condemnation of the Nazis into "every other
paragraph".  Pretending that we are merely muddles the discussion to
no good purpose.  Please don't do that.

Here's a false alternative: (a) pretend that 'maybe' the Nazis were
right or (b) engage in random moralizing on every controversial topic
in wikipedia.  When I say that we must avoid (a), I am not advocating
(b).

You may think that the NPOV is muddled and self-contradictory.  I
think that you aren't thinking clearly, as shown by your fallacies and
non sequiturs.

--Jimbo


from_name: Fred Bauder

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Help Wanted

body:
Assistance is needed in editing the [[law]] article. No detailed knowledge
of law is needed. We are now at the headbutting stage.

Fred


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Historical Revisionist Crap

body:
At 03:55 AM 9/5/02 -0700, you wrote:
>
>
>Gareth Owen wrote:
>>
>> "Michael R. Irwin" <mri_icboise at surfbest.net> writes:
>>
>> > Jimmy Wales wrote:
>> > >
>> > > But, the Holocaust was undeserved.  That's as uncontroversial a fact as
>> > > "The Earth goes around the Sun".
>> >
>> > Only if one considers a major World War beneath notice.  To me that
seems a
>> > bit controversial if one is presenting an NPOV as a neutral reporter.
>>
>> Excuse me, but perhaps you could enlighten me as to in what way the
holocaust
>> was deserved?
>
>I do not think that I have asserted that it was deserved, merely
>that many people were involved in helping create it.  Presumably
>they believed it was deserved.  It has been my experience that
>few people consider themselves the villians or perpetrators of
>injustice.  It is usually the view of one faction that it is
>the other side's fault and vice versa.
>
>Thus it has been my assertion that at least some of the Germans
>responsible for it (the Holocaust) probably felt it was deserved
>and this (and reasons they provide regarding why they felt it
>was deserved) could be reliably reported within the confines of
>an "NPOV" presentation of the facts surrounding the holocaust.

We have done that. The reasoning is set forth (probably more fully than
necessary) in the article on [[Nazism]].

What the discussion is about is nonsense about Zionism "causing" the
holocaust and other historical revisionist, neo-nazi crap.

Likewise maybe we will have an article on Stalin that sets forth his
reasons, but  neutral point of view isn't going to require an article on
Trotskyite Wreckers and how wide spread sabotage lead to necessary
elimination of the perpetrators.

I have changed the name of the article because this is not Helga talking,
her issue or her position, as far as I know.

Fred


from_name: Sean Barrett

body:
> parse the web server logs, pull out all of google referrers...

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

-----Original Message-----
From: wikipedia-l-admin at nupedia.com
[mailto:wikipedia-l-admin at nupedia.com]On Behalf Of Imran Ghory
Sent: Wednesday, September 04, 2002 12:46
To: wikipedia-l at nupedia.com
Subject: RE: [Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia:Top 10 Google hits

On 2 Sep 2002, at 13:06, Sean Barrett wrote:

> Taking up the gauntlet that KQ has hurled down ;->, I have thrown
> together a Perl script (undoubtedly hideously inefficient; I am not a
> native speaker of Perl) that has automated this process -- it
> repeatedly calls Wikipedia's random page link, grabs the title, drops
> all dates, turns all punctuation (including subpage slashes) into
> spaces, googles for the result, and looks for links to "wikipedia."
>

<cut>

There's an easier way to do it, just parse the web server logs, pull
out all of google referrers, and remove all of the ones which have
"&start=" in them, that will give you those linked to from the first
page of a google search.

Imran
[Wikipedia-l]
To manage your subscription to this list, please go here:
http://www.nupedia.com/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l


from_name: koyaanisqatsi at nupedia.com

body:
Sean Barret Wrote:
>Imran wrote:
>> parse the web server logs, pull out all of google referrers...
>
>What Web server logs?  I don't have access to the logs.

I think only Lee, Brion Vibber, and Jimmy have access to the logs.  It's a good idea, though.

kq


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Helga again

body:
Michael R. Irwin wrote:

>An accurate presentation of facts involved in history
>is going to require the presentation of various peoples
>views, when they are known, can be determined or possibly
>estimated with any reliability.  Stating they are "offensive"
>and refusing to explore the details of the event merely
>allows similar incidents in the future via ignorance as
>well as design.
>
Victors uniformly believe that their own side was incapable of war
crimes.  History often needs to wait until the participants have died of
old age before truths can be discovered.  By that time any determination
of guilt for war crimes is moot.

>Such as the current internment of non U.S. Arabs
>(and U.S. Citizens of Arabic descent? I have not been
>following this closely) picked up for questioning in
>the U.S.  Personally I can see no justification for this
>in U.S. law yet they have been repeatedly denied any
>relief by the U.S. courts.
>
These events are far more alarming than the original terrorist acts.
 Hysteria is the only required justification.

>Such as holding "terrorists" as POWs to claim that
>no trial is appropriate or required while claiming
>the Geneva Conventions do not apply because the U.S.
>does not recognize the government it attacked.
>The U.S. has never accepted other countries allegations
>that our soldiers are terrorists or war criminals.
>Very convenient that Al Quada troops captured in
>Afghanistan turn out to be "terrorists" with no
>rights requiring no trial as long as they are not
>detained on U.S. soil.  Very convenient that Quantico
>is not U.S. soil (as Cuba as been alleging for decades)
>but is merely controlled by the U.S. military.
>
Quantico is in the USA.  Guantanamo is the base in Cuba.  If suddenly
the Americans are recognizing Guantanamo as being on Cuban soil, then
these jailed "terrorists' should have the full protection of Cuban law.
 That could be an interesting prospect.  It would be an interesting
reversal of the incident a few years back when Castro emptied his jails
of common criminals and shipped them all to the United States.

>It seems to me that in history, conflicts, etc.
>that the losers (victims) typically feel this
>was undeserved while the victors seem to have ways
>to feel it was justified or they (losers) deserved it.
>
Victors win the right to invent the history.

>I think that we should
>simply state what happened and who believed what (or
>state what they claim to have believed or what they wrote
>down as their beliefs and supporting and conflicting
>evidence, etc. etc.) and let the future readers decide
>for themselves what is "obvious" and "offensive".
>
We can't honestly do much more.

>If the fact that I do not view Jewish lives
>as inherently more valuable than other human
>lives (or discussion of events surrounding their
>death inherently "offensive") "offends" you or
>others then I feel that this is unfortunate.
>
I don't even consider American lives more valuable than others.


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

> I think only Lee, Brion Vibber, and Jimmy have access to
> the logs.  It's a good idea, though.

...and Axel, Magnus, Neil, and anyone who asks nicely.  I'll
gzip some of them up and put them in /tarballs so others can
do some analysis.


body:
> Don't forget to make a table (or even a new database?)
> for the "real" language links, while you're at it. This
> will be needed for automatic language link building.
> Magnus

I don't know what this means.  Please explain.


from_name: Gareth Owen

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Helga again

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

> Jimmy Wales wrote:
> >
> > But, the Holocaust was undeserved.  That's as uncontroversial a fact as
> > "The Earth goes around the Sun".
>
> Only if one considers a major World War beneath notice.  To me that seems a
> bit controversial if one is presenting an NPOV as a neutral reporter.

Excuse me, but perhaps you could enlighten me as to in what way the holocaust
was deserved?
--
Gareth Owen


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Server logs

in_reply_to: <200209051820.UAA02446@linde.uni-paderborn.de>; from axel@uni-paderborn.de on Thu, Sep 05, 2002 at 08:20:55PM +0200

body:
I'm not really in favor of this for two reasons:

1.  Blanking the last three digits isn't really enough to protect privacy
when there's a trail of information here.  Perhaps you see me editing some
respectable topic several times, and then you see me visiting a bunch of
pages.  You'll be able to know what I viewed.

Since there's nothing scandalous about anything on Wikipedia, we don't
need to be paranoid to great extremes about this sort of thing, but we
don't need to publish web server logs to the general public, either.

(perhaps this could be solved by removing the ip numbers completely,
but this precludes some kinds of analysis, as does
last-three-blanking)

2.  These things are big, and getting bigger all the time.  I wouldn't
really like to have people downloading them on a cron job or anything,
since I do pay the bandwidth bills around here.  :-)

-------

What I'd prefer is that people who want to write programs to study the
logs do so by getting developer access.  You could then download
sample logs to study on your home machine, but then we could also all
work together on custom log analysis scripts to be run on a cron, with
reports generated for the general public.  (We have to watch the CPU
usage, though.)

--Jimbo


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Ban warning to GrahamN

in_reply_to: <200209051827.UAA02481@linde.uni-paderborn.de>; from axel@uni-paderborn.de on Thu, Sep 05, 2002 at 08:27:20PM +0200

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

What did the guy say, anyway?

Axel Boldt wrote:

> >This is a warning: any more personal or provocative remarks, and I
> >will will ban you for a day. --Ed Poor, sysop
>
> ...and the ban will be undone immediately of course. Ed, please
> refrain from using your sysop status as if it were a position of
> power.
>
> Axel
> [Wikipedia-l]
> To manage your subscription to this list, please go here:
> http://www.nupedia.com/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l


from_name: Andre Engels

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Helga again

in_reply_to:
<3D7689C6.222F4405@surfbest.net> from "Michael R. Irwin" at "Sep
 4, 2002 03:31:34 pm"

body:
> The Afghanistan government (unrecognized by the U.S. but
> effectively in charge anyway) did not choose to recognize
> it as a criminal act and hand over the leaders of Al Quada.

The reason was not that they did not see it as a criminal act, but that
they were not convinced that Al-Qaida was responsible for it - the US
basically told when asked for proof: "We have proof, and that should be
enough for you." This asking for proof might well have been a tactic to
give some formal international political reason for a decision that was
taken on fully other grounds, but the Taliban have never said (publically)
that they did not regard the attacks a crime. In fact, like Khadafi, but
unlike Saddam Hussein, they reacted to the attacks with a message of
sympathy for the victims.

Andre Engels


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Ban warning to GrahamN

body:
Ed,

For this to be useful, I would need to know what talk pages you are
refering to. Also, although I should know and presumably GrahamN should
too, it wouldn't hurt to tell us how to link to MetaWikipedia (maybe it's
just a page in Wikipedia, for all I know). Also POV is a term of art; it
might help if you spelled it out.

I also, without knowing what he did, find your message rather ambiguous and
difficult to understand; perhaps he understands it better since he knows
the context.

Fred

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


from_name: Poor, Edmund W

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Ban warning to GrahamN

body:
I placed the following notice on GrahamN's user page:
----
Please refrain from giving your opinion in the Talk pages. Personal opinions of contributors are welcome in the MetaWikipedia (where, by the way, April is hosting a debate) -- as well as on your own User page.

Article talk pages are for discussion of how to improve the article. If there is a point of view (POV) that you happen to agree with, which you think ought to be represented in the article, then please focus on how to describe that POV. Avoid arguing for or against any POV. Instead, help your co-contributors to learn which proponents advocate the POV, and what reasons those advocates give.

For example, Joe Camel might say, "I hate Jews because they smell like lox." We need not debate how often an odor of lox is detectable in the vicinity of Jews (my Mom, who is Jewish, made me an excellent lox sandwich over Labor Day, by the way). We need not debate whether smelling like lox is a "good" reason to hate someone. All that matters is whether or not to mention Joe Camel's POV in some Wikipedia article. And if some contributor decides to describe that POV, we might debate the best choice of words to describe it.

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

Ed Poor


body:
yeh, I forgot about those, sorry.  Didn't mean to get the
whole "cabal" thing started again.

kq

You Wrote:
>>> What Web server logs?  I don't have access to the logs.
>
>> I think only Lee, Brion Vibber, and Jimmy have access to
>> the logs.  It's a good idea, though.
>
>...and Axel, Magnus, Neil, and anyone who asks nicely.  I'll
>gzip some of them up and put them in /tarballs so others can
>do some analysis.


subject: [Wikipedia-l] War Crimes

body:
mirwin wrote (in part):

>The U.S. has never accepted other countries allegations
>that our soldiers are terrorists or war criminals.

What about the My Lai Massacre? Wasn't Calley convicted of a war crime, under US law? As a former US soldier, I must say that American servicemen are considered to be responsible for their actions, even (or especially) when under the stress of combat or captivity.

One of the things I admire most about my country, America, is the exaltation of law and principle. All people are required to respect the rights of others, and no one is above the law. Our freedom of press makes evasion of justice exceedingly difficult to hide.

Excuse me if I sound patriotic this month, but the anniversary of 9-11 is coming up...

Ed Poor


subject: [Wikipedia-l] ban attempt

body:
Okay, the "ban" is lifted. Gimme a break, okay?

I just wanted to re-focus the talk constructively, but then Lee is like, let the kids bicker and pull hair, as long as they don't damage the furniture.

Ed


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

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

That's right.  It's completely inappropriate--an attempt at intimidation and nothing more--completely un-wiki.

kq


subject: [Wikipedia-l] War Crimes

body:
"Poor, Edmund W" wrote:
>
> mirwin wrote (in part):
>
> >The U.S. has never accepted other countries allegations
> >that our soldiers are terrorists or war criminals.
>
> What about the My Lai Massacre?

IIRC, Calley was court martialed by a U.S. Military Court.

>Wasn't Calley convicted of a war crime, under US law?

I do not know the precise articles of the UCMJ which he
was charged under and convicted.   The thing that really
seemed to stand out for me was that his defense that he was
following verbal orders was dismissed because no written
substantiation could be produced and his superiors denied
issuing the orders.

Aircraft napalming villages usually have a substantial
paper trial.  It is useful in getting the aircraft off
the ground.  Hence the usefulness of terms such as
"collateral damage".

A platoon or battalion commander in the field for a few
weeks would seem less likely to be maintaining written
records in well organized filing systems.

>As a former US soldier, I must say >that American servicemen are considered to be >responsible for their actions, even (or >especially) when under the stress of combat or >captivity.

Responsible to who?  Their own chain
of command and U.S. public opinion.

How many have been tried by the other side of
the conflict?   Has the U.S. Government ever
acknowledged the validity of these trials?

>
> One of the things I admire most about my country, America, is the exaltation of law and >principle. All people are required to respect the rights of others, and no one is above >the law. Our freedom of press makes evasion of justice exceedingly difficult to hide.

lol  Yes, we have an amazingly meticulous "rule of law
party" running things now.  No t left uncrossed or i
undotted when it comes to "warfare" on "terrorism".

It would be my assertion that we do better than most
other places on the globe.  I have no intention of
emmigrating anywhere anytime soon.

I shall certainly scrutinize the charter, contract,
organization, etc. of any space settlement effort
that I choose to consider joining.  No sense in
giving away hard won freedoms.

>
> Excuse me if I sound patriotic this month, but the anniversary of 9-11 is coming up...

No problem.  Just keep an eye out for scoundrels.

Regards,
Mike Irwin


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Helga again

body:
Ray Saintonge wrote:
>
> Michael R. Irwin wrote:
>

> >If the fact that I do not view Jewish lives
> >as inherently more valuable than other human
> >lives (or discussion of events surrounding their
> >death inherently "offensive") "offends" you or
> >others then I feel that this is unfortunate.
> >
> I don't even consider American lives more valuable than others.

As a former military brat with 3 siblings who
served in the U.S. Armed Forces, and a
brother-in-law still serving, I am probably
somewhat biased.   At least when it comes to
giving the other armed people a "fair" chance once
the dreck hits the fan.

Still I can acknowledge it is an ideal to
strive towards in an imperfect world.

Regards,
Mike Irwin


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Helga again

body:
Jimmy Wales wrote:
>
> Michael R. Irwin wrote:
> > > But, the Holocaust was undeserved.  That's as uncontroversial a fact as
> > > "The Earth goes around the Sun".
> >
> > Only if one considers a major World War beneath notice.
>
> The only way we can say that it is uncontroversial that the Holocaust
> was undeserved is if we think that WWII is unworthy of notice?

No, there is another way.  We can deny or censor that the Nazi's
or anyone else ever existed who thought the Holocaust was deserved.
Then it would be "uncontroversial".

We can deny that human cultures which embrace killing outsiders
either individually or collectively for their own purposes have
ever existed.  Alternatively, we can contend that they "obviously"
knew they were wrong when we judge their behavior by our standards.

Either approach will reduce our workload substantially.  The
result may be in conflict with our presently stated project goals.

>To put
> it another way, are you saying that if we think WWII is an important
> event, we have to regard it _controversial_ to claim that the
> Holocaust was wrong?

Yes.  It provides clear evidence that a significant fraction
of the human beings alive at the time of the Holocaust supported
the leadership or power structure that performed it.  Clearly
they did not think it was wrong.  Hence we have some potential
controversy or disparate views to report.

Controversy is where you find it.

I can claim it is "obvious" that the claim "Murder is criminal
behavior." is "uncontroversial".

I can also reduce the potential controversy by
categorising some perceived forms of homicide as "collateral damage",
"terrorism", "just war", etc.

If multiple parties show up to contend that abortion, infanticide,
war, chemical dumping, market manipulation, justifiable
homicide, willful endangerment resulting in death, etc. is or
is not murder (when it leads to death of human beings);

then controversy exists and the subject is not "obviously"
"uncontroversial", by definition.

My working definition of "controversy" is:  Disagreement
exists regarding a specific subject.

What is your working definition of "uncontroversial"?

>
> That's what you said; I'm sure it isn't what you intended.  But I
> think this illustrates the lack of clarity in your thoughts on these
> matters.

Perhaps it demonstrates lack of clarity of common context or
use of words and phrases.

Obviously it would be my contention that my thinking is as clear
as anyone elses.  Mistakes in thoughts or presentation are possible
but should be proven, not merely alleged or assumed.

>
> > OTOH It is not "offensive" to report the facts on the
> > Holocaust without mentioning in every other paragraph that the
> > Nazi's were obviously to all right thinking people sick and evil.
>
> This is a straw man fallacy.  Absolutely no one here is claiming that
> we have to inject moral condemnation of the Nazis into "every other
> paragraph".  Pretending that we are merely muddles the discussion to
> no good purpose.  Please don't do that.

Interjecting personal standards such as "obvious" and "offensive"
to shutdown discussion of how to present the unpleasant material
is much more damaging.   If every other paragraph is deleted because
it is "offensive" and not worth "NPOV"ing or leaving in an acceptable
workspace for others to "NPOV" at their leisure, then other methods
will be needed:  such as injecting moral condemnation adequate to
allow the material to sit around waiting for appropriate editing.

Please consider the possibility that I have a legitimate point
that I am attempting to make when I bother to type a message.

Pretending that I do not make a good faith effort is bordering on
"insulting" as I have seen the term used previously here locally.
Errors and fallacies are possible.  In my perception, it is the
purpose of discussion to detect them, not present them.

>
> Here's a false alternative: (a) pretend that 'maybe' the Nazis were
> right or (b) engage in random moralizing on every controversial topic
> in wikipedia.  When I say that we must avoid (a), I am not advocating
> (b).
>

I never proposed a.   My opinion of the Nazi's behavior has no
impact on history or an NPOV presentation of the facts.

I proposed to present what the Nazis thought they were doing
(along with the rest of the material presented) from their own
POV presented in an NPOV context for readers interested in
the Holocaust.

Regarding b.  I am more interested in discussing our processes and
how they can be scaled effectively to massive participation.
Unfortunately there seems little interest in discussing this in
the abstract.  I am left with participation in the available
controversies to attempt to understand the mechanisms working
(or not working) within the process forming the community fabric.

> You may think that the NPOV is muddled and self-contradictory.  I
> think that you aren't thinking clearly, as shown by your fallacies and
> non sequiturs.

I am confident that when next we (the community at large) discuss
the NPOV in any detail or length, some flaws can be detected.
Given the intellectual resources currently at our collective
command, perhaps the presentation or implementation can be improved.

Is it your assertion or conclusion at the moment that the
statement or presentation of the "NPOV" policy cannot be
improved?

Regards,
Mike Irwin


from_name: Brion VIBBER

body:
I've been randomly looking through the referer log for the last day or
so, and have found a few amusing things.

Here's a site that republishes some Wikipedia articles:
   http://din-timelines.com/cyclopedia/dir/index.shtml

This is rather tasteful compared with the Fact Factory; there are ad
banners at the top and bottom, but not too obstrusive, and everything is
explicitly credited and linked to Wikipedia -- there's even links to
take you to the article at Wikipedia for view or edit. It's not a fork,
just an encapsulation.

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

This Salon column links our article on [[Leet]]:
   http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2002/08/28/0wnz0red/index.html

http://www.why-is-the-sky-blue.org/why-is-the-sky-blue.html
   links our [[Raleigh scattering]].

And of course in the middle east department, we have links to:

[[History of ancient Israel and Judah]] from
   http://www.palestinefacts.org/pf_early_palestine_israel_antiquity.php

[[Mohammed Atta]] from some site claiming 7 of the 9/11 hijackers are
   still alive: http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/stf3.html

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


from_name: Magnus Manske

body:
lcrocker at nupedia.com wrote:

>Combining interwiki prefixes and article namespaces will work
>in that order; so [[de:benutzer:Magnus Manske]] will make a link
>to Magnus's user page on the German wiki.  Image links will need
>to come /before/ any others, so to create an IMG tag referencing
>an image on the German wiki, you would use [[image:de:xxx]], and
>the German wiki would use [[bild:en:xxx]] to link here.
>[[image:http:xxx]] will NOT work; you will no longer be able to
>inline-render external images.  Alternately, I could make it
>work for a specifically allowed subset of external sites.
>
Don't forget to make a table (or even a new database?) for the "real"
language links, while you're at it. This will be needed for automatic
language link building.

Magnus


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

body:
>------------------
>To this [[Neturei Karta]]/Talk beteen Dany and myself I want to add, that
1. The number is still not substanciated.

Ok, but how will you substantiate a number? (and why?) Why the focus on this?

>2. Not only the Neturei Karta, but also the http://www.jewsnotzionist.org/
and the Woman in Black (or Women for Peace) http://adot.com/green/wib.html
are demonstrating against Israeli violence etc.

To be sure, and especially about west bank settlement, check out
http://www.tikkun.org and true some article in Wikipedia could cover the
Israeli Peace Movement, but if you check out Tikkun you'll see a very
different attitude from notions that Zionism aggravated Nazi oppression.

>Contrary to Danny's denial of the there are people , who claim to have
information, >that in fact the Havaara undertaking was handled by later
Israeli prime ministers incl >Ben Gurion, Moshe Sharret(or Shertok), Golda
Meir, Levi Eshkol >http://www.codoh.com/zionweb/zionmythgar.2.html
>google.com : Havaara , or Google.com Women in Balck, gives a number of
websites.

But can you trust the information on those sites, I don't; why do you?

>I am only bringing all this up, because of Danny's bad choice of a title
[for his posting]: "Helga and other Internet kooks."

Fair enough, but you're going to have to step out here and show you are not
going to rely on historical revisionist (made-up as far as I'm concerned)
material when you write articles.

I also want to substantiate my talk to Danny, that there are a lot more
facts , that the general public is not aware of.

To be sure, but you are choosing to contradict people who do know most of
what can be learned about the holocaust and its causes and relying on
historical revisionist sources with no credibity.

 I also stated that I do not want to get anyone hurt and that I have a
great concern for people wanting to make war, war war...

Yes, and accurate information may help.

It was also before I found out that Danny works in the Holocaust memorial,
which some writers including Jewish writers, might call the Holocaust
industry.

So an informed critic is somehow illegitimate?
>
>This is all I want to say about this.
>
>H. Jonat
>

I was hoping for a lot more.

Fred


from_name: Stephen Gilbert

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Helga again

body:
--- Jimmy Wales <jwales at bomis.com> wrote:
> Here's a false alternative: (a) pretend that 'maybe'
> the Nazis were
> right or (b) engage in random moralizing on every
> controversial topic
> in wikipedia.  When I say that we must avoid (a), I
> am not advocating
> (b).

Exactly. In Larry's Big Reply on the NPOV, he said,

"Your assumption appears to be that, if we do not
explicitly declare something to be true, then the
reader can draw certain inferences about us--such as
that we wish to placate creationists, or that we think
creationism might be scientifically respectable, or
that we might be creationists ourselves, etc., etc.
Well, no. Reasonable people do not draw such
inferences when presented with unbiased texts. You
[...] would not typically draw such inferences--you
know better, of course. Suppose that a history text
adopted a policy of failing to identify Nazi scum as
the murdering bastards they were--but simply reported
the facts about what they did. Would it be reasonable
to assume that the text's author(s) might just be
willing to admit the possibility that the Nazis were
upstanding citizens doing a service to Europe?"

Of course not. No one is going to read a NPOV article
on the Holocaust think it was ok... except Nazis.
People don't need an encyclopedia to say "Look now,
those Nazis were bad." The facts speak for themselves.

Stephen Gilbert

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


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Helga again

body:
At 03:31 PM 9/4/02 -0700, you wrote:

>Vicki Rosenzweig wrote:
> >
> > At 04:29 AM 9/4/02 -0700, Jimmy Wales wrote:
> > >Michael R. Irwin wrote:
> > > >  The totality of the material
> > > > presented should not be selected to support the frame or view that
> > > > the Holocaust was undeserved.
> > >
> > >But, the Holocaust was undeserved.  That's as uncontroversial a fact as
> > >"The Earth goes around the Sun".
> >
> > Exactly. Otherwise we'd need to carefully avoid suggesting--on each of the
> > September 11 pages--that the victims were innocent. Either is absurd and
> > offensive.
>
>Absurd and offensive to who?  The prevailing mainstream
>Arab view seem pretty supportive of the attacks.

As far as I know, nobody--even the mainstream Arab press--is saying that the
individuals killed in the September 11 attacks were personally guilty of
anything:
the argument by defenders of the attack is that this was an act of war, not
that
people who happened to work at Windows on the World or Cantor Fitzgerald or
the NY Fire Department specifically deserved to die.
--
Vicki Rosenzweig
vr at redbird.org
http://www.redbird.org