from_name: Stevertigo

body:
--- Rick <giantsrick13 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Gee, I don't know.  10 steps instead of 1.  Wow, how
> easy is that?
>

Why exactly were you made a sysop, Rick? Remind me.

~S~

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list: wikien-l

source: pipermail-mbox

subject: [WikiEN-l] "special dispensation" (was :Deletion Poetry

body:
--- Rick <giantsrick13 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> I wish I could do that.  Whenever I delete ANYTHING
> without going through VfD, I'm attacked as a
> terrible person.  You must have some sort of special
> dispensation.

How about if we deal with Rick's "special
dispensation" on the list -- make more constructive
comment, please --or, well -- I should expect there to
be consequences.

Is anyone else bothered by Rick's "special
dispensation?" (on the list I mean)

~S~

__________________________________
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subject: [WikiEN-l] Deletion policy needed (lists)

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

> I don't think we really have a big difference here.
> All that would be
> left to delete after a month is a redirecting
> article with a long title
> that is too long to be something that would be used
> in a search.  I know
> the argument that redirect articles take up minimal
> space in the DB.  I
> clashed with Mav on that when I was suggesting in my
> newbie days that
> some old Camel Case titles should be deleted.

Mav's only human -- and back in those days, old CC
titles were still fresh -- just because WP upgraded,
dont mean that you get rid of all those nice
searchwords.  This is why all the list business got
brought up again -- a year ago Jimbo found that Google
just fell in love with "list of" pages and said so on
the list  (mail) --it instantly became policy that
something like a [[list of theoretical opinions on the
exact contents of Britney Spears underpants]] was
going to get WP *hits!, and therefore --people "saw
that it was good."

Now of course we deal with the fact that all of these
[[lists of famous last meal toasts and/or last
beverages]] are actually noticeable and "hurt the
integrity of Wikipedia" far more than the stubs do --
stubs are nice to newbies (no politics), and are at
least excusable, which is more than can be said for
the [[list of how famous people like their coffee,
cream and sugar]].

~S~
"Reaching for an oversized chrome spoon he gathers an
intimate quantity of dried muffin remnants ..."

__________________________________
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from_name: Erik Moeller

subject: [WikiEN-l] NPOV and personal attacks

body:
To improve the discussion climate and the handling of NPOV on Wikipedia, I
have worked on two new pages and would appreciate input:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Remove_personal_attacks
-  An attempt to address the problem of personal attacks in the wiki-way
rather than with force.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:NPOV_tutorial
(together with Ed Poor)
-  A guideline to point newbies to so they can quickly understand the
basics of NPOV.

Go ahead and edit, and in the case of the first page, please do add your
name to the poll on the talk page after reading it.

Thanks,

Erik


from_name: Adam [name omitted for privacy reasons]

subject: [WikiEN-l] Adam Carr

body:
Yes, its true --  my comments regarding him were inappropriate; it is inevitable that, within this often hostile community (where personal attacks are a dime a dozen); that I would also succumb to an occasional outburst of spite. I apoligize to Adam for attempting to bring undue attention towards his statements -- in the future, I will try to make more of an effort to ignore those who harass and taunt me.
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from_name: Rick

subject: [WikiEN-l] Deletion policy needed

body:
So when other people attack personally those of us who use Votes for Deletion, it's not wasted bandwidth, but my comments on those attacks are?  Besides, I have repeatedly made serious objections to Cleanup, both here and on the Cleanup Talk page.  And I am definitely not alone in my objections.  Cleanup is merely several layers of bureaucracy with inarticulate explanations as to just what its purpose is, and how to use it.

RickK

Toby Bartels <toby+wikipedia at math.ucr.edu> wrote:
If you have a serious objection to [[Wikipedia:Cleanup]], then state it.
Otherwise, you're just wasting bandwidth (3 posts in a row now).

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subject: [WikiEN-l] Deletion policy needed

body:
But empty pages now show up as brown links.  This is an important distinction.

RickK

Toby Bartels <toby+wikipedia at math.ucr.edu> wrote:
RickK wrote:

>Jake Nelson wrote:

>>Making it so that blanked pages produced red links
>>would probably help shoot down one of the arguments for deletion, as well.

>How do you expect to make links red if they aren't deleted?

This is a software change that's been requested for years now
(in various forms -- actually predating the switch to red!).
Jake is giving an argument in favour of it.

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subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Deletion policy needed

body:
Yes, just as I said.  You are making personal attacks on those of us who use the VfD page and believe in using it.

RickK

Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
Not at all. I was referring to the activities at VfD.
Ec

Rick wrote:

> WHAT????? Are you saying that those of us who actually believe in
> deleting obnoxious and ridiculous articles are somehow damaging Wikipedia?
>
>
>
> RickK
>
> Ray Saintonge wrote:
>
> This has my support. VfD seems to have become a nest of control
> freaks
> determined to invent newer, more complicated and more unworkable
> rules.
> It's managing to suck in more and more useful contributors just to
> watch these people who are obsessed with maintaining our bodily
> humours.
>
> Ec
>

_______________________________________________
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WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l

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subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Re: Re: Deletion policy needed

body:
Oh, and look, another personal attack.  How useful.

RickK

Stevertigo <utilitymuffinresearch2 at yahoo.com> wrote:

--- Rick wrote:
> Gee, I don't know. 10 steps instead of 1. Wow, how
> easy is that?
>

Why exactly were you made a sysop, Rick? Remind me.

~S~

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body:
I don't understand what you're saying.  What special dispensation do I have?

RickK

Stevertigo <utilitymuffinresearch2 at yahoo.com> wrote:
--- Rick wrote:
> I wish I could do that. Whenever I delete ANYTHING
> without going through VfD, I'm attacked as a
> terrible person. You must have some sort of special
> dispensation.

How about if we deal with Rick's "special
dispensation" on the list -- make more constructive
comment, please --or, well -- I should expect there to
be consequences.

Is anyone else bothered by Rick's "special
dispensation?" (on the list I mean)

~S~

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list: wikitech-l

from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] Email-Problem on the German Wikipedia

body:
On Wednesday, Oct 22, 2003, at 05:59 US/Pacific, Joachim Kerschbaumer
wrote:
> When I send a Wikipedia-Userpage-Email on the German Wikipedia,
> instead of
> "???" i get something like  "=E4 =D6"  and the "Sender" is empty or has
> strange content.
>
> On the english Wikipedia it works.
> I guess, it is just on option to be set on the server.

I'm not able to reproduce the problem; =E4 =D6 etc is the normal MIME
"quoted-printable" encoding, and the message seems to be correctly
marked up and displays correctly in my mailer (Apple Mail). Here's the
raw source of my test message to myself, sent through de.wikipedia.org:

   From brion at pobox.com Sat Oct 25 16:53:34 2003
   Return-path: <apache at wikipedia.org>
[transfer info snipped]
   Date: Sat, 25 Oct 2003 23:53:29 +0000 (UTC)
   From: Brion VIBBER <brion at pobox.com>
   Subject: Wikipedia e-mail =?UNKNOWN?B?5Pb8?=
   To: Brion VIBBER <brion at pobox.com>, Brion VIBBER <brion at pobox.com>
   Reply-to: Brion VIBBER <brion at pobox.com>
   Message-id: <20031025235329.8870DB83B at mail.wikipedia.org>
   MIME-version: 1.0
   X-Mailer: Pediawiki interuser e-mailer
   Content-type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1
   Content-transfer-encoding: quoted-printable
   Delivered-to: brion at pobox.com
   Original-recipient: rfc822;vibber at email.usc.edu

   Hello! testing =E4=F6=FC...

which has subject "Wikipedia e-mail ???" and contents "Hello! testing
???...".

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


body:
On Saturday, Oct 25, 2003, at 17:15 US/Pacific, Jake Nelson wrote:

>>    Subject: Wikipedia e-mail =?UNKNOWN?B?5Pb8?=
> [snip]
>>
>>    Hello! testing =E4=F6=FC...
>>
>> which has subject "Wikipedia e-mail ???" and contents "Hello! testing
>> ???...".
>>
> note what was quoted... I looked at the headers, and it had:
> X-MIME-Autoconverted: from quoted-printable to 8bit by [my ISP's mail
> server]

The headers of what?
The mail I sent to myself through the wiki?
The mail I sent to the mailing list, which includes a quotation of that?
A similar mail you sent to yourself through the wiki?

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: tarquin

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Mailing lists (Was: Dammit!)

body:
Brion Vibber wrote:

>
> [fr]
> Comme exp?rience (pseudo-)scientifique, pendant les journ?es sequentes
> je ne parlerai pas l'anglais en Wikip?dia. Pour me contacter, il faut
> utiliser le fran?ais ou l'esp?ranto. Si vous ne les parlez pas,
> recherchez un traducteur. J'esp?re demonstrer un peu la frustration
> sentie des wikip?diens non-anglophones; je m'excuse pour l'inconv?nient.
>
c'est une excellente idee! :)


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Esperanto sucks

body:
Delirium wrote:

> On a mildly more on-topic note, there was some discussion earlier of
> some sort of automatic translation of units based on user preferences
> (kg/lbs, degrees F / degrees C, mi/km, etc.).  Did anything ever come
> of that?  Despite the obvious convenience of using metric as a
> standard, currently a fairly large percentage of English speakers
> would have to convert the units to make sense of them (the ~300
> million Americans form a fairly decent percentage of English
> speakers), so using the old "standard" units for them makes some sense.
>
The problem would be one of context. You don't want "3-mile Island" to
be converted!
The simple solution is to *always* link to an Orde of Magnitude page,
which gives links to converters.

Besides,
* most people are at least familiar with the basic units of the SI system,
* Americans may have trouble visualising, say "15 metres". But frankly,
*WHO* can visualize "Lake Titicaca has a volume of 300,000,000 litres?


body:
On Saturday, Oct 25, 2003, at 18:09 US/Pacific, Jake Nelson wrote:
> Brion Vibber wrote:
>> The headers of what?
> Sorry. The header of the mail sent to the mailing list. Note the [my
> ISP's
> mail server]... my thought is that it's the quoted-printable to 8bit
> conversion by the end mail server that's screwing things up...

Since your quote looked just like what I sent out, I'm not sure what is
supposed to have been screwed up.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


from_name: Luc Van Oostenryck

subject: [Wikitech-l] suggestion to developpers : Google search form

body:
The Google search form is in fact independent of the language.
Is it possible to remove it from the "searchdisabled" text so that only the
    "
Full-text search has been temporarily disabled due
     to high server load; we hope to get it online again after some hardware
     upcoming upgrades. In the meantime, you can search via google:
"
remain?

Thanks

-- Looxix


from_name: Jake Nelson

body:
>    Subject: Wikipedia e-mail =?UNKNOWN?B?5Pb8?=
[snip]
>
>    Hello! testing =E4=F6=FC...
>
> which has subject "Wikipedia e-mail ???" and contents "Hello! testing
> ???...".
>
note what was quoted... I looked at the headers, and it had:
X-MIME-Autoconverted: from quoted-printable to 8bit by [my ISP's mail
server]

Hmmm?

-- Jake


body:
Brion Vibber wrote:
> The headers of what?
> The mail I sent to myself through the wiki?
> The mail I sent to the mailing list, which includes a quotation of that?
> A similar mail you sent to yourself through the wiki?

Sorry. The header of the mail sent to the mailing list. Note the [my ISP's
mail server]... my thought is that it's the quoted-printable to 8bit
conversion by the end mail server that's screwing things up...

-- Jake


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Re:  Re: Re: Re: Deletion policy needed

body:
Stevertigo wrote:

> > 6. Type " nominate for VfD in 2 weeks. ~~~~"
>
>Actually we want to keep comments brief as possible --
>so just VFD is always fine. Also, just use ~~~ -- not
>~~~~. Saves space.

I know but I had a conflicting design objective. I needed to come up with a process which could satisfy those who would list a page on VfD. IMO that requires two features: a definite timeline and feedback so they can see whether they are happy with the result and list it on VfD if they aren't. ~~~~ is the easiest way to both give a timestamp and identify who wants to be given feedback.


body:
Forget it, I'm writing while overtired again.

-- Jake


body:
--- user_Jamesday <user_Jamesday at myrealbox.com> wrote:

> I know but I had a conflicting design objective. I
> needed to come up with a process which could satisfy
> those who would list a page on VfD. IMO that
> requires two features: a definite timeline and
> feedback so they can see whether they are happy with
> the result and list it on VfD if they aren't. ~~~~
> is the easiest way to both give a timestamp and
> identify who wants to be given feedback.

Originally, I wanted to use timestamp headers as
breaks --but we dont have non-sig timestamps (AFAIK)
--and they wouldnt work well anyway if they were
minute specific -- hours is still too small
considering the average load of about ten articles a
day (AFAIK).  Maybe just using a day tag (like VFD)
would be fine for now. :\

<fancy> Maybe coding something like /early morning/
noon/ afternoon/ evening/ night/ late night/ stamps --
as better delimiters.  These could display differently
--appropriate to the local time of the user . </fancy>

~S~

__________________________________
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from_name: ray at ganymede.org

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Robot code _and_ Re: off-line editing...

body:
I am curious why the note that I sent about this issue seemed to end
the thread, with no follow-up. Has this kind of option been rejected in
the past? This seems to be a fairly standard security/authentication
issue and I believe that the technology I suggested is the kind of
thing that would be fairly obvious. Am I wrong about something here?

Just to add, with a authentication architecture, you could much more
easily offer offline editing with subsequent re-integration of the
content. Or am I swimming against the current here?

thanx - ray

Begin forwarded message:

> From: ray at ganymede.org
> Date: October 22, 2003 7:26:25 PM PDT
> To: Wikimedia developers <wikitech-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Subject: Re: [Wikitech-l] Re: Robot code: open source or lock away in
> safe?
> Reply-To: Wikimedia developers <wikitech-l at Wikipedia.org>
>
>
> It occurs to me that we could require bots to use a protocol to
> guarantee their accountability. If one wants to use a bot, that person
> would be given one-half of a private key. The other half would be kept
> by the wiki servers.
>
> We need to be able to detect bots. There are ways, in general, to do
> this, but none are 100% reliable, but that might not be too much of a
> problem. Any unauthorized bot would be denied access.
>
> A bot wanting to be authorized would check in with their key and get
> handed back a temporary key (a shorter, easier to confirm key) set to
> last for some time. They can then use that to make their edits.
>
> This is going to have to be done at some point. Why not get started
> now? If we want bots to be allowed and to be well behaved, we need to
> make them identifiable and accountable.
>
> - ray
>
>
> On Oct 22, 2003, at 6:30 PM, Tim Starling wrote:
>
>> Stevertigo wrote:
>>> --- Tim Starling <ts4294967296 at hotmail.com> wrote:
>>>> I don't see what the problem is. A vandalbot and a
>>>> well-behaved bot are two different things. The common code is only a
>>>> small proportion. As long as sysops are not shy about blocking
>>>> clueless,
>>>> unapproved bots, I have no problem with making the code public.
>>> <snip>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>
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subject: [Wikitech-l] German deletion log broken

body:
On Sunday, Oct 26, 2003, at 15:20 US/Pacific, Elisabeth Bauer wrote:
> I suppose this is widely known, but still quite annoying: the deletion
> log
> seems to parse wiki (and some html) tags and displays them as is.

Currently the deletion and upload logs are just wiki pages. They can't
include any evil tags that can't be put into normal pages, but yes, it
can look ugly because the comments aren't screened prior to being
dumped into wikitext.

They can be edited for cleanup and archival purposes. When edits are
made, the prior version is saved to the history.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


from_name: Alfio Puglisi

subject: [Wikitech-l] Offline editor

body:
On Fri, 24 Oct 2003, Magnus Manske wrote:

>I'll have to try Brion's linux makefile later. But, is there a
>standalone http server for linux as well? Otherwise, this won't really
>work...
>
>Now just give me the wikipedia images, and we can start mass-dumping CDs :-)

After Magnus' great work, the need for a static html dump is quite
reduced. Anyway, I think there's still value in providing pure html dumps
for download (mirrors, older machines, platforms without servers, and so
on).
I'm currently sitting on a 724MB gzipped file (english wiki with images),
is there any way I can upload to http://download.wikipedia.org?
I would like to put the Perl script I'm using into CVS, or some other
public places. Maybe on meta?
I am now working on language support (currently, only the English wiki can
be processed), so I expect to be able to process any language wiki in a
few days.

Ciao,
Alfio


subject: [WikiEN-l] Mother Teresa article

body:
"Once and for all?" LOL. Did we forget this was a
wiki? -- Or did we forget the possibility of some
other upstart coming along and rewriting it?  Heck I
may take a crack at the intro pgphs.

~S~

--- James Duffy <jtdire at hotmail.com> wrote:
> Hi, I've called a vote on [[Talk:Mother Teresa]] to
> clarify once and for all
> what people think about the current article and what
> we should do about it.
> Please express your opinion. lol
>
> JT
>
>
_________________________________________________________________
> Protect your PC - get McAfee.com VirusScan Online
>
http://clinic.mcafee.com/clinic/ibuy/campaign.asp?cid=3963
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l

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from_name: Brad Johnson

body:
> From  Tim Starling
> ray at ganymede.org wrote:
> >
> >
> > I am curious why the note that I sent about this issue seemed to end
the
> > thread, with no follow-up. Has this kind of option been rejected in
the
> > past? This seems to be a fairly standard security/authentication
issue
> > and I believe that the technology I suggested is the kind of thing
that
> > would be fairly obvious. Am I wrong about something here?
> >
> > Just to add, with a authentication architecture, you could much more
> > easily offer offline editing with subsequent re-integration of the
> > content. Or am I swimming against the current here?
>
> How can you tell the difference between a bot and a person without
> annoying people? I'm not aware of any non-annoying method which is
even
> close to effective. Without an effective method, your scheme do
nothing
> but annoy the legitimate bot-runners and slightly inconvenience the
> hackers. Not to mention the development time required.
>
You use the honor system. That is, you ask people to register their
bots.


body:
It depends.

Do you want to determine that a user is a bot almost all of the time,
assuming people are not trying to fool you?

Or do you want a secure method?

A secure method would be a bother. It would probably require us to put
up dot-pictures that people have to recognize patterns in, ala yahoo's
account creation page.

We can certainly use a heuristic to determine if a user is acting like
a bot. Then, they can be challenged as above, to see if they are a
person.

- ray

On Oct 26, 2003, at 6:01 PM, Tim Starling wrote:

> ray at ganymede.org wrote:
>> I am curious why the note that I sent about this issue seemed to end
>> the thread, with no follow-up. Has this kind of option been rejected
>> in the past? This seems to be a fairly standard
>> security/authentication issue and I believe that the technology I
>> suggested is the kind of thing that would be fairly obvious. Am I
>> wrong about something here?
>> Just to add, with a authentication architecture, you could much more
>> easily offer offline editing with subsequent re-integration of the
>> content. Or am I swimming against the current here?
>
> How can you tell the difference between a bot and a person without
> annoying people? I'm not aware of any non-annoying method which is
> even close to effective. Without an effective method, your scheme do
> nothing but annoy the legitimate bot-runners and slightly
> inconvenience the hackers. Not to mention the development time
> required.
>
> -- Tim Starling.
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>


from_name: Dante Alighieri

subject: [WikiEN-l] Mother Teresa article

body:
At 10:02 PM 10/26/2003, Erik wrote:
>My last edit to [[Mother Teresa]] was on October 21. It is now October 27.

<snip>

>I don't have energy for this, I don't have time for this, and frankly,
>real life is a lot more attractive.

I must say, even though I'm personally rather fond of JT, I think he's sort
of dropped the ball here. I really think the best thing to do would have
been to accept Erik's peace offer, as it seemed very fair and sincere. I
hope he'll see that he's not really winning a lot of converts by being so
confrontational at this stage and pull back the reins a bit.

-----
Dante Alighieri
dalighieri at digitalgrapefruit.com

"The darkest places in hell are reserved for those who maintain their
neutrality in times of great moral crisis."
    -Dante Alighieri, 1265-1321


from_name: James Duffy

subject: [WikiEN-l] Mother Teresa article

body:
Hi, I've called a vote on [[Talk:Mother Teresa]] to clarify once and for all
what people think about the current article and what we should do about it.
Please express your opinion. lol

JT

_________________________________________________________________
Protect your PC - get McAfee.com VirusScan Online
http://clinic.mcafee.com/clinic/ibuy/campaign.asp?cid=3963


from_name: Neil Harris

body:
ray at ganymede.org wrote:

>
>
> I am curious why the note that I sent about this issue seemed to end
> the thread, with no follow-up. Has this kind of option been rejected
> in the past? This seems to be a fairly standard
> security/authentication issue and I believe that the technology I
> suggested is the kind of thing that would be fairly obvious. Am I
> wrong about something here?
>
> Just to add, with a authentication architecture, you could much more
> easily offer offline editing with subsequent re-integration of the
> content. Or am I swimming against the current here?
>
> thanx - ray
>
Ray, I think the problem is that since the Wikipedia uses HTTP and is
completely open to anonymous edits,  there is no way to prevent anyone
from writing a bot that just emulates what a web browser does when
acting as an agent for human editors.

Thus, there's really no way to keep the know-how secret: any competent
person can write a bot. It takes about an hour to write one, less if you
have HTTP scripting experience. Adding registered user support takes
just a little more knowledge.

Soft security is the best defence, except in extreme cases.

-- Neil


from_name: Elisabeth Bauer

subject: [Wikitech-l] German deletion log broken

body:
Hello,

I suppose this is widely known, but still quite annoying: the deletion log
seems to parse wiki (and some html) tags and displays them as is.

An example can be viewed here where a not closed <code>-tag rendered large
parts of the deletion log unreadable:
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:L%F6sch-Logbuch

I played a little bit with the deletion log, at least it doesn't like
script-tags too much but you can do quite a lot of nonsense with it. Apart
from that I wonder why admins can edit the deletion log directly - isn't
this exactly contrary to the goal of a log-file?

greetings,
elian


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: [Wikide-l] Installationsproblem

body:
On Sunday, Oct 26, 2003, at 23:44 US/Pacific, D I wrote:
> es geht immer noch nicht. wenn ich die datenbank erstellen lasse mit
> install.php dann kommt immer folgender fehler:
>
> Warning:  Wrong parameter count for fgets() in
> /home/disenman/wiki/mediawiki-20030829/phase3/install.php on
> line 198

It looks like you've got a really old version of PHP (prior to 4.2.0),
where fgets has two required paramaters instead of one required and one
optional. The wiki might not even run on that old a PHP... if you can't
upgrade, try changing the line in install.php:
		$line = trim( fgets( $fp ) );
to:
		$line = trim( fgets( $fp, 1024 ) );
and similarly fix up any other problems you have.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


from_name: The Cunctator

subject: [WikiEN-l] Mother Teresa article

body:
> Erik Moeller wrote:
>
> My last edit to [[Mother Teresa]] was on October 21. It is now October
27.
> I have also abstained from editing other articles where Jtdirl is
> involved. I made a peace offer to him, trying to agree on some ground
> rules for editing the article and apologizing for any past offenses to
> him, on October 22. That offer has been ignored by Jtdirl. Instead, he
has
> now opened a vote on whether the article is "POV" or "NPOV", with each
> voter who votes POV being a crown witness in his permanent attacks
against
> me.

1) Your peace offer was admirable and it is unfortunate that everyone
now is not on the same page. (Or avoiding the page, as the case may be.)
2) It's possible that Jtdirl isn't trying to build a personal case
against you, but in a misguided manner is trying to figure out how to
deal with the article.
3) Jtdirl's actions are a prime example of the kind of broken behavior
that comes from the muddled, ugly current conception of NPOV, combined
with the destructive institution of voting on everything as a simplistic
and biased substitute for constructing consensus.

That is to say, in my opinion, the root causes for this current upset
lie in failures of the institution (Wikipedia policies and customs)
rather than the individuals--though the individuals should be able to
transcend the current failures of the institution by avoiding such
temptations as calling for NPOV votes.

> He does this even though I have already agreed to various
modifications,
> including using a massive rewrite as a basis for the article. He
continues
> attacking me on a personal level on the talk page, other users' talk
pages
> and on the mailing list, while I have done nothing of the sort to him
ever
> since my PO (and even before that, very little).

Sad, isn't it? I guess Jtdirl has to get it out of his system every so
often.

> With the exception of Cimon avaro, no Wikipedian has challenged
Jtdirl's
> behavior. When this happened for the first time, and I announced
> complaining to Jimbo about it, I was immediately attacked for
> "threatening" Jtdirl. I have proposed a policy to remove and refactor
> personal attacks. Currently there's a very slim majority in favor of
it,
> but nothing close to consensus. Those opposing it say that this is an
easy
> cop-out, that this behavior needs to be dealt with on a social level,
with
> Wikipedians sending a clear signal to offenders that such behavior is
not
> allowed.

You didn't announce complaining to Jimbo. You said you wanted him to be
banned. There have been failures of tone on all sides. One important
difference is that you tried apologizing.


subject: [Wikitech-l] full text search

body:
On Monday, Oct 27, 2003, at 04:01 US/Pacific, D I wrote:
> hi,
> how can i activate the full text search? the normal search works, but
> i want the full text search.
>
> who can help??

If you imported a database from dumps, you have to regenerate the
search index table or you'll only get results for pages you newly edit.

There's a rebuildtextindex.php script in the maintenance directory
which, theoretically, does this.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject: [WikiEN-l] Mother Teresa article

body:
No Steve. Though the current article has been roundly criticised as POV by
most people who have commented, including people who make clear they have
little time for Mother Teresa but still find the article blatently flawed
and unfair, but one user, Erik, is determined to ignore everyone else and
defend his POV text come what may. I called the vote so that people can
clearly and unambiguously express their opinion on the text, what should be
in and what should be out.

Though even doing that was a nightmare as Erik tried to move the vote,
change the vote, add in 'disputed' to questions he doesn't approve of, etc.
Though as the debate showed, notwithstanding Erik's endless lectures to
everyone, the vote is going as expected, with voters stating that the
current text is POV, the picture selection is POV, the caption use is POV,
and that the article needs NPOVing. Maybe /this/ time Erik might get the
message that there is a problem, as he has consistently ignored everyone's
comments, people's attempts to fix the problem and delivered increasingly
bizarre interpretations, most recently using Pol Pot (!) as an example of
something or other. Even MT detesters like the author Christopher Hitchens
would not attempt to prove a point about Mother Teresa by referring to a
mass murderer like Pol Pot. But Erik did so! And you wonder why there is a
problem trying to NPOV Erik's edits, and why so many people are so
despairing of salvaging the article at this stage from Erik's agenda! I know
Erik has strong views against religion (and is entitled to), but his verbage
at this stage is perverse.

As Daniel Quinlan wrote, in an attempt to bring some sense to the article,
"Just because the critics aren't getting to add all 45 pages of criticism
and it's just half the article, does not make it okay. Only here on
Wikipedia can Mother Teresa get more criticism than Saddam Hussein, Joseph
Stalin, Idi Amin, or Moammar Al Qadhafi. Check those articles."

As Delirium observed, "*  I personally think Mother Theresa's reputation is
overblown, but the article as currently written is entirely unacceptable. It
reads as an anti-Mother Theresa piece, and is clearly written by someone
with an agenda."

Or in Andrewa's words, "I don't think I have an axe to grind either way, but
my personal impression of the current article is that it is POV and anti
Mother Teresa. . . . They are documents of fact, yes, but they aren't
important to this article. I've probably been photographed with criminals
too... actually I certainly have, I'm involved in a prison ministry! They
are trivial in an article on her life. They are very important to an essay
questioning the significance of her life or the validity of her likely
sainthood, and they might even belong in an article reporting this debate,
but they don't IMO deserve inclusion in the main article. The fact they are
there is a symptom of its being used to promote a POV."

Maybe the vote will /finally/ get Erik to listen to someone other than
himself and Christopher Hitchens for once. But after the last week, that is
more of a hope than an expectation.

JT
>
>"Once and for all?" LOL. Did we forget this was a
>wiki? -- Or did we forget the possibility of some
>other upstart coming along and rewriting it?  Heck I
>may take a crack at the intro pgphs.
>
>~S~
>
>--- James Duffy <jtdire at hotmail.com> wrote:
> > Hi, I've called a vote on [[Talk:Mother Teresa]] to
> > clarify once and for all
> > what people think about the current article and what
> > we should do about it.
> > Please express your opinion. lol
> >
> > JT
> >
> >
>_________________________________________________________________
> > Protect your PC - get McAfee.com VirusScan Online
> >
>http://clinic.mcafee.com/clinic/ibuy/campaign.asp?cid=3963
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > WikiEN-l mailing list
> > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>
>
>__________________________________
>Do you Yahoo!?
>Exclusive Video Premiere - Britney Spears
>http://launch.yahoo.com/promos/britneyspears/
>_______________________________________________
>WikiEN-l mailing list
>WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l

_________________________________________________________________
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from_name: Jimmy Wales

body:
ray at ganymede.org wrote:
> Do you want to determine that a user is a bot almost all of the
> time, assuming people are not trying to fool you?

It would be nice to be able to do that, but it doesn't seem like it
would solve any problems that we actually have.  Would it?

But sure, if you want to code it up, I think it makes sense.  If we
heuristically detect that someone is "acting like a robot" then on the
fly, we stop and ask them: "are you a person or a robot" with images
such that only a person could answer properly.  If they fail the test,
we classify them as a bot.

--Jimbo


subject: [WikiEN-l] Mother Teresa article

body:
My last edit to [[Mother Teresa]] was on October 21. It is now October 27.
I have also abstained from editing other articles where Jtdirl is
involved. I made a peace offer to him, trying to agree on some ground
rules for editing the article and apologizing for any past offenses to
him, on October 22. That offer has been ignored by Jtdirl. Instead, he has
now opened a vote on whether the article is "POV" or "NPOV", with each
voter who votes POV being a crown witness in his permanent attacks against
me.

He does this even though I have already agreed to various modifications,
including using a massive rewrite as a basis for the article. He continues
attacking me on a personal level on the talk page, other users' talk pages
and on the mailing list, while I have done nothing of the sort to him ever
since my PO (and even before that, very little).

With the exception of Cimon avaro, no Wikipedian has challenged Jtdirl's
behavior. When this happened for the first time, and I announced
complaining to Jimbo about it, I was immediately attacked for
"threatening" Jtdirl. I have proposed a policy to remove and refactor
personal attacks. Currently there's a very slim majority in favor of it,
but nothing close to consensus. Those opposing it say that this is an easy
cop-out, that this behavior needs to be dealt with on a social level, with
Wikipedians sending a clear signal to offenders that such behavior is not
allowed.

Well, that hasn't happened.

If that continues, I will cease my active participation in this project.
The principles of NPOV, Wikiquette and WikiLove have always fascinated me.
But if these principles are not protected, the person who can shout the
loudest eventually gets his way.

Jtdirl can shout very loudly. I don't want to shout.

I don't have energy for this, I don't have time for this, and frankly,
real life is a lot more attractive.

In WikiLove,

Erik


from_name: Fred Bauder

subject: [WikiEN-l] Mother Teresa article

body:
....This behavior needs to be dealt with on a social level, with
>Wikipedians sending a clear signal to offenders that such behavior is not
>allowed.
>
>Well, that hasn't happened.
>
>If that continues, I will cease my active participation in this project.
>The principles of NPOV, Wikiquette and WikiLove have always fascinated me.
>But if these principles are not protected, the person who can shout the
>loudest eventually gets his way.
>
>Jtdirl can shout very loudly. I don't want to shout.
>
>I don't have energy for this, I don't have time for this, and frankly,
>real life is a lot more attractive.
>
>In WikiLove,
>
>Erik

I think your perception is somewhat distorted due to your over-involvement
in this particular issue, an issue I haven't had a lot of interest in or
time for although I do believe you over-emphasised the negative aspects in
your article. As to Jtdirl I have had experience with him, been denounced
as a right wing bigot, etc and certainly would support banning him for ugly
behavior despite being right on Mother Teresa.

Fred


from_name: D I

body:
D I wrote:

>>hi thomas,
>>also wenn ich die Seite http://meinserver/main.phtml aufrufe, dann
>>l?dt er kurz und zeigt mir dann die komplette ?bersicht des verzeichnisses
>>mit den namen der dateien. ich hab den apache eigentlich konfiguriert das
>>er die phtml dateien annimmt. hhmm. kannst du mir nochmal genau erkl?ren
>>wie ich den apache konfigurieren muss, damit er die phtml dateien
>>annimmt?? ich habe eine neue zeile eingef?gt und zwar mit addtype
>>application...... .phtml
>>ist diese zeile korrekt oder muss ich was anderes eintragen??
>>
>>danke im voraus.
>>gru? daniel

>mmh, hast Du die main.phtml als Indexdatei eingetragen? Also bei mir sieht
>ein Teil von httpd.conf so aus:
>DirectoryIndex index.html index.htm index.php index.phtml index.shtml
>main.phtml wiki.phtml
>AddType application/x-httpd-php .php .php3 .phtml
>
>Damit l?uft die lokale Kopie bei mir ohne Probleme...
>Gru?
>
>Thomas

Hi,

es geht immer noch nicht. wenn ich die datenbank erstellen lasse mit
install.php dann kommt immer folgender fehler:

Warning:  Wrong parameter count for fgets() in
/home/disenman/wiki/mediawiki-20030829/phase3/install.php on line
198

kann mir da vielleicht jemand helfen??

die einstellungen wie du sie mir geagt hast, hab ich gemacht, aber es hat
nichts geholfen. dann kommt nur eine leere seite wenn ich die seite ?ber den
webbroswer aufrufe....

hilfe...........

danke

_________________________________________________________________
MSN Groups & Chat - Freunde finden - leicht gemacht
http://groups.msn.com/people/


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [WikiEN-l] Mother Teresa article

body:
The Cunctator wrote:

>That is to say, in my opinion, the root causes for this current upset
>lie in failures of the institution (Wikipedia policies and customs)
>rather than the individuals--though the individuals should be able to
>transcend the current failures of the institution by avoiding such
>temptations as calling for NPOV votes.
>
I agree to the point that I almost feel ashamed for having participated
in some of those votes.  The development of voting processes seems to
lend support to the idea that voting is evil.  In the wake of a highly
complex process over the logo, the painful Votes for Deletion, and now
NPOV votes on an individual article it becomes clear that voting is a
technique for majorities to marginalize minority opinions.

I would say that there is a failure of institutional custom in the face
of institutional policy.  As a custom NPOV works very well; as a policy
it begins to cry for clear definitions that may in reality be unachievable.

I believe that there is wide consensus that NPOV is something very
positive.  That tends to break down when we try to define what that
means.  Trying to impose NPOV is a very POV activity.  NPOV is a natural
by-product of open-mindedness and fair-mindedness; it's not about
ensuring that critics and supporters of a particular POV have paragraphs
of equal size.  The latter only changes the search for NPOV into a
pissing match.

Ec


from_name: Poor, Edmund W

subject: [WikiEN-l] Be bold (was: Deletion policy needed)

body:
Toby answered Ed Poor:

> >Instead, once or twice a month I glance at the article deletion log
and
> >resurrect anything that was thrown out too hastily (it's the Ent in
me,
> >I guess: no such thing as dead wood, hoom, hoom).
>
> Ed, I'd like to hear more (on the list or by email)
> about how you find this tactic works for you --
> especially given the cautious approach you take to most controversy.
> For example, do people get upset at your undeletions? Do you find
> yourself spending a lot of time researching good stubs to replace
> deleted text on articles that you'd otherwise ignore? And so on.

No one's ever complained about the articles I've undeleted. Most of them
were graffiti that I turned into a stub with 5 minutes of googling.

One time, I hastily "blanked" a couple of articles that I thought were
sheer POV, but another user pointed out the context so I unblanked them
(something to do with natural health, non-Western medicine or
[[Holism]], I think).

I don't like deleting "pages". If I find a horribly written article, but
it's a topic of interest (to me or to potential readers) -- then I think
it's a better use of community time to:

* take 5 minutes of my own time to google it into a stub; or,
* take 15 to 30 minutes and whip it into shape (e.g., by refactoring)

Rather than:

* take 2 minutes of my time to list it on votes for deletion
* take up huge amounts of others' valuable time by 'inviting' them to
figure out whether to "keep" or "delete" it.

As eclectic as we are, we don't need any more lightning rods...

Ed Poor


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Mother Teresa article

references:
<8weWeIpSpVB@erik_moeller>
	<012c01c39c5a$4ff6a620$74001c12@reflection>
	<bnjj7r$cei$1@sea.gmane.org>

body:
Louis Kyu Won Ryu wrote:
> Root causes of the "current upset" have everything to do with Wikipedia
> policies and customs, in particular, the absence of some sort of means
> for dealing with article disputes that cannot be solved within the Wiki
> consensus editing model.

Is there any evidence that this is the case in the current
controversy?  What I mean is that the article already seems much
improved over the past several weeks.  So in what way is it really
true that the problem can't be solved within the Wiki consensus
editing model?

> Whether this mechanism is formal (mediation
> and arbitration have been suggested)

Hmm, well, I don't think of mediation and arbitration as being means
for settling run of the mill legitimate disputes about the content of
the articles, but rather as a means to formalize and decentralize the
_banning_ process, i.e. to deal with persistent, ongoing disruptive
and counter-productive behavioral patterns.

I do not envision, and would strongly oppose, that mediation and
arbitration committees get involved in ruling on the exact detailed
contents of articles.  (There is of course some overlap, since some
behavioral problems exhibit themselves via a refusal to engage in NPOV
editing over a long period of time.)

> This the latest in a number of attempts at out-of-process methods to
> control the content of the article.

I am opposed to the use of such votes, but I don't regard this as
out-of-process at all.  Such votes are nothing more than expressions
of opinion, and are thus non-binding in every relevant sense.  Do you
see what I mean?  Voting is just one method (a bad one, in cases like
this, I think) of _talking about the article_.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Lightning rod (was: Deletion policy needed)

body:
Ray,

The [[List of heterosexuals]] page is an example of a *useful* lightning
rod. It shunts dangerous high voltage energy away from the "real
contributors". If the children want to play, let them. They're safe
there.

Uncle Ed <== giving out coloring books, next


subject: [WikiEN-l] Deletion Poetry

body:
Rick sighed:

> I wish I could do that. Whenever I delete ANYTHING without
> going through VfD, I'm attacked as a terrible person.

First of all, no one should attack you or insult you -- no matter what
you do here.

Second, you CAN do what I do, the way I do it -- and you'll get the same
results.

I don't have a special dispensation; I'm just careful about what I do,
and when I
make mistakes I always admit it, apologize and change my ways (sometimes
quickly, sometimes after a few days of kicking and screaming :-)

Uncle Ed
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from_name: Stevertigo

subject: [WikiEN-l] Mother Teresa article

body:
Erik Moeller wrote:
> >I don't have energy for this, I don't have time for
> this, and frankly,
> >real life is a lot more attractive.

Ah yes.  A new girlfriend can be distracting.

Fred Bauder wrote:
> I think your perception is somewhat distorted due to
> your over-involvement
> in this particular issue, an issue I haven't had a
> lot of interest in or
> time for although I do believe you over-emphasised
> the negative aspects in
> your article. As to Jtdirl I have had experience
> with him, been denounced
> as a right wing bigot, etc and certainly would
> support banning him for ugly
> behavior despite being right on Mother Teresa.

I too have had experience with JT -- if and when he
actually admits to seeing someone elses point of view,
it will be when things tone down.

I think part of this is, Erik -- that you have a
reputation to protect -- youre generally a
moderate-toned person with an almost universal respect
from the community -- this kind of thing is an
obstacle when edit warring with JT.  You need to roll
around in the dirt, basically -- and then you might
get a point or two accross.  Being a sysop and a
devor, you would jeopardise your status here if you
told people what you actually think -- which is
frustrating, since whats the point, if  you can speak
your mind, eh?

So... to quote a guy named Erik Moeller:
"Unfortunately, the best way someone can make me
support a position which they oppose is "threatening
to quit" over it."  ???User:Eloquence, From
User:Stevertigo/Favorite Wikipedian quotes

~S~

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Exclusive Video Premiere - Britney Spears
http://launch.yahoo.com/promos/britneyspears/


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Jtdirl ban (was : Eric's abuse of his sysop powers)

body:
Rick wrote:
> Are you saying you are prepared to ban a user because you are having
>an edit war with him?  That is MOST DEFINITELY an abuse of your sysop
>powers, and should cause YOU to be instantly banned.

That isn't what he said, actually.  (I know I'm a few days late, just
back from a wedding, so maybe what I'm about to say has already been
said.)

Erik has proposed that Jtdirl's actions on the Mother Theresa article
were of the sort that, in his view, ought to lead us to consider a ban
of Jtdirl.  Not having yet reviewed the whole conflagration, I can't
say for sure, but I'm rather inclined to suppose that I would not
agree with that assessment.

I prefer for people to not be very quick at all to rush to the notion
that a ban is the proper solution for a problem.  And that's why we
are headed toward a system where formal mediation is the "first final
step".

Particularly for longtime contributors like Jtdirl and Erik, both of
whom know and accept the NPOV policy as foundational, it strikes me as
very unlikely that we'll be unable to produce an article that both
find satisfactory.

The process of getting to that version may be a bit rough and tumble
at times, of course.  It might occassionally, and regrettably, involve
some heated words.  But as long as we all remain passionately and
lovingly committed to the overarching ideal of neutrality, we can see
effective progress made.

--Jimbo


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Deletion policy needed

body:
Rick moaned:

> This is an insult to the people who actually
> participate in Votes for Deletion and feel that we
> and the page provide a useful function.  If you feel
> that any and all pages need to be kept, then why
> don't you say so on the VfD page?  Because you are
> better than that?  You're above it?  VfD is beneath
> your contempt?  You are so much superior to those of
> us who feel that made-up articles and people's
> resumes don't belong on Wikipedia?
>
> Please explain how to fix an article which contains
> nothing but a resume of someone nobody has ever
> heard of.

I delete resumes right away, or blank them with a note in talk to the
"contributor" advising them not to post their resume.

I don't feel that "any and all pages need to be kept" - I've only voting
*against* on VfD a few times.

Sorry if you feel that "ignoring" a page is insulting. I also ignore
almost all of the pop culture pages. But that doesn't mean I "hate" pop
culture. I just don't know enough about it to comment or write.

VfD just seems like a cumbersome time-consuming way of pruning. I don't
see what above and below has to do with it.

Uncle Ed
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subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Eric's abuse of his sysop powers

body:
Andre Engels wrote:
> What about the basic question of whether Wikipedia should be NPOV,

Yes, absolutely!  This is foundational, non-negotiable, one of my very
few stipulations that rises to the level of Policy with a capital 'P'.

> and how we do that?

The wiki process!  Editing, re-editing, striving to accomodate others,
loving care for the facts, respect for others, editing some more,
re-editing some more, arguing, talking on the talk page, complaining
on the mailing list about article contents, etc.

> Maybe we should finally stop circumventing that question and
> actually discuss it. Would be useful, I'd say.

I would say that's about the only thing that we discuss all the time.
:-)

--Jimbo


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Mother Theresa

body:
Vicki Rosenzweig wrote:
> Wikipedia's job is not to create an aura of holiness. We're an
> encyclopedia.

That's right.

It should go without saying that it's also not our job to attack
religious figures and so on.

--Jimbo


subject: [WikiEN-l] Deletion Poetry

body:
--- "Poor, Edmund W" wrote:

> I don't have a special dispensation; I'm just
> careful about what I do,
> and when I
> make mistakes I always admit it, apologize and
> change my ways (sometimes
> quickly, sometimes after a few days of kicking and
> screaming :-)

Plus, Rick -- Ed puts out his {{((soothe))}} vibe --
which if you're not careful --kind of stuns you like
the swaying motion of a mongoose before it snaggles a
cobra.

;)
~S~

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Exclusive Video Premiere - Britney Spears
http://launch.yahoo.com/promos/britneyspears/


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Mother Theresa

body:
(I'm moving responses that seem to pertain more to the content of the
article to wikien-l, and responses that seem to pertain more to global
issues of NPOV and policy to wikipedia-l.)

Stevertigo wrote:
>Who is Mother Teresa?  Is she on her way to being a saint, or a
>contemporary person, for whom an encyclopedia article can write up all
>kinds of dirt on her.

I think this is a false dichotomy.  We can "write up all kinds of
dirt" on Catholic Saints.

But I don't really like that phrasing, since 'dirt' implies a certain
kind of evaluation that should be avoided when contentious.  We should
report on Mother Theresa and the reasons given by the Church leaders
that she is being beatified and may be canonized.  But we should also
report on secular (or Church!) critiques.

But we should do all of those things in a way that both a supporter
and critic of Mother Theresa would agree are fair.

A philosopher might imagine a supporter of Mother Theresa who claims
that any mention or discussion of critics or criticism is inherently
unfair.  But I don't think such a person actually edits Wikipedia.

--Jimbo


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: [Wikipedia-l] Eric's abuse of his sysop powers

body:
Erik Moeller wrote:
> The simple reality is that most people do not know much about the
> criticisms concerning Mother Teresa,

For whatever it is worth, I can personally testify to the truth of
this part of what Erik is saying.  Ideologically, I'm the sort of
person likely to be eager to be critical of Mother Theresa, and yet,
until a couple of years ago, I had not the least clue of the secular
(Hitchens) criticisms of her work and her order.

--Jimbo


subject: [WikiEN-l] potential VfD abuse?

body:
Well, if that's all he's doing, I'm unlikely to say that it's
vandalism or even anything much to worry about.  I do think it'd be
good if he responded, at least by saying "Well, I'm a radical
inclusionist and I think everything should be included."  That's a
respectable, if wrong, position.

Dante Alighieri wrote:

> Just a heads-up. A user "Wartortle" (a Pokemon reference, apparently)
> has been voting "keep" /en masse/ on the VfD page with no explanations
> for awhile now. He has been questioned (politely) numerous times as to
> his intentions via his talk page.... there has been no response. I
> think the time may come for Jimbo to give him a talking too... or else
> we all could decide together if this is vandalism of a sort.
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Special:Contributions&target=Wartortle
>
> The above link is to his contributions page.
>
> -----
> Dante Alighieri
> dalighieri at digitalgrapefruit.com
>
> "The darkest places in hell are reserved for those who maintain their
> neutrality in times of great moral crisis."
>    -Dante Alighieri, 1265-1321
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] potential VfD abuse?

body:
Toby Bartels wrote:
> But if you say that VfD requires only a supermajority of 75%,
> then you're going to see a hell of a lot more of this later on.

I think that's a legitimate point against any voting rule that is
strictly numerical.

I wish the damned website weren't so slow or I could study these
things more effectively.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Mother Teresa article

body:
--- The Cunctator <cunctator at kband.com> wrote:

> 1) Your peace offer was admirable and it is
> unfortunate that everyone
> now is not on the same page. (Or avoiding the page,
> as the case may be.)

I proposed that the community be able to soft-ban any
pair of partisans from editing an article.  It got
zero airplay whatsoever, and even Louis (whoever he
really is) went and turned the /article ban page into
a redirect. The ban idea would make both people happy
I think -- keep each others hands out of the article
--which in this case JT was not gracious enough to do.

> Sad, isn't it? I guess Jtdirl has to get it out of
> his system every so
> often.

Yes.

> > With the exception of Cimon avaro, no Wikipedian
> has challenged
> Jtdirl's
> > behavior.

Huh? Irish Potatoes?

> You didn't announce complaining to Jimbo. You said
> you wanted him to be
> banned. There have been failures of tone on all
> sides. One important
> difference is that you tried apologizing.

Yes --but I thought we established it a long time ago
-- Erik was just letting off steam, which was in terms
of bright ideas, inline with Antheres and LD's
"experimental accounts," or with my threatening to ban
Jesus is Lord! if he didnt change his name (as the
community had voted).  All of these bad ideas come
from the notion that time and energy can be saved if
only a bit more force were applied.  Well -- Vietnam 2
is going on on the other side of the planet, and I
suppose its not too unusual for humans to make things
worse by applying violence.

~S~

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from_name: Peter Gervai

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Metric system

references:
<8wTW8fbhpVB@erik_moeller> <3F98AE81.7050600@rufus.d2g.com>
	<3F9AADA9.5070909@planetunreal.com>

body:
On Sat, Oct 25, 2003 at 06:06:49PM +0100, tarquin wrote:
> Delirium wrote:
>
> >On a mildly more on-topic note, there was some discussion earlier of
> >some sort of automatic translation of units based on user preferences
[...]

> The problem would be one of context. You don't want "3-mile Island" to
> be converted!

Unlikely.

<wiki>My tool is [[unit:inch:12.4]] long.</wiki>

Renders "My tool is 12.4 inch long." and "My tool is 29.88 cm long.",
depeding on my settings. (With natural IQ, like write 23.5 km instead of
2350000 cm, etc.)

Syntax was just an example, not even a suggestion.

> But frankly,
> *WHO* can visualize "Lake Titicaca has a volume of 300,000,000 litres?

Easy. Just imagine 500 billion glass of beer...

:-)

grin

ps: ...which reminds me to write an international beer-to-lake converter...


from_name: Louis Kyu Won Ryu

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Mother Teresa article

body:
The Cunctator wrote--
> That is to say, in my opinion, the root causes for this current upset
> lie in failures of the institution (Wikipedia policies and customs)
> rather than the individuals--though the individuals should be able to
> transcend the current failures of the institution by avoiding such
> temptations as calling for NPOV votes.

The Cuncator is absolutely right.

Root causes of the "current upset" have everything to do with Wikipedia
policies and customs, in particular, the absence of some sort of means
for dealing with article disputes that cannot be solved within the Wiki
consensus editing model.  Whether this mechanism is formal (mediation
and arbitration have been suggested) or social (with, for example, other
Wikipedians engaging in facilitative behavior in an effort to contain
and resolve the conflict), is a choice we can make.

 > the individuals should be able to
 > transcend the current failures of the institution by avoiding such
 > temptations as calling for NPOV votes.

This the latest in a number of attempts at out-of-process methods to
control the content of the article.  Neither Erik nor James has exactly
been a model of civility and restraint, probably due to the fact that
they are both passionate about the article and do not have any clear,
fairly administered recourse for resolving the conflict.

Louis


from_name: Rick

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Mother Theresa

body:
I agree.  There is a strong anti-canonization movement against Father [[Junipero Serra]] from [[Native Americans]] over his treatment of them during the creation of the [[California mission]]s.  His article mentions that.

RickK

Jimmy Wales <jwales at bomis.com> wrote:
(I'm moving responses that seem to pertain more to the content of the
article to wikien-l, and responses that seem to pertain more to global
issues of NPOV and policy to wikipedia-l.)

Stevertigo wrote:
>Who is Mother Teresa? Is she on her way to being a saint, or a
>contemporary person, for whom an encyclopedia article can write up all
>kinds of dirt on her.

I think this is a false dichotomy. We can "write up all kinds of
dirt" on Catholic Saints.

But I don't really like that phrasing, since 'dirt' implies a certain
kind of evaluation that should be avoided when contentious. We should
report on Mother Theresa and the reasons given by the Church leaders
that she is being beatified and may be canonized. But we should also
report on secular (or Church!) critiques.

But we should do all of those things in a way that both a supporter
and critic of Mother Theresa would agree are fair.

A philosopher might imagine a supporter of Mother Theresa who claims
that any mention or discussion of critics or criticism is inherently
unfair. But I don't think such a person actually edits Wikipedia.

--Jimbo

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subject: [Wikitech-l] full text search

body:
hi,
how can i activate the full text search? the normal search works, but i want
the full text search.

who can help??

thanks
daniel

_________________________________________________________________
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from_name: Toby Bartels

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Mailing lists

body:
Peter Gervai wrote:

>Well I hope it's okay then if I expect everyone to resolve issues in
>Hungarian language, since I only understand English and Hungarian?

You're certainly permitted to post to wikipedia-L in Hungarian.
But as a practical matter, of course, it may not do much good.
However, if you post in both English /and/ Hungarian,
then some other person that knows Hungarian better than English
would be better off.  So if such a person might exist,
then certainly do both!

>Akkor ezennel javaslom, hogy Wikip?dia editor csak v?rszerz?d?ssel lehessen
>valaki, teliholdn?l egy fekete kakast ?ldozva. Ha valaki nem ?rt egyet, azt
>jelezze. Ha mindenkinek j?, akkor egy h?t m?lva bevezethetj?k. :-)

This I don't understand, of course, since I don't know Hungarian.
(I suppose "Wikip?dia editor" = "Wikipedia editor" but miss the rest.)
But if, hypothetically, you also know French, and posted both,
then I would understand you much better, even without the English.

I post only in English not because I think that English is the best,
but because English is the only language that I can write in
without taking an inconveniently long time to look things up.
(Since English is well understood, I can get away with that.)
However, if somebody else knows more than one language well,
then I definitely encourage them to post in all convenient languages!
Even Esperanto, terrible language that it is. ^_^

-- Toby


subject: [WikiEN-l] Attacks and threats vs. world harmony

body:
Personal attacks are not allowed. See [[talk:Silesia]] for an example of
me (as Uncle Ed) laying down the law.

Saying "Stop attacking me verbally, or I'll ask the site owner to decide
whether your contributions amount to a bannable offense" is not itself a
threat. To put it another way, insisting that someone stop hurting you
or you'll report them to the authorities is not a "threat" in the same
sense as "shut off that damn stereo or I'll come over to your house and
jolly well do it myself - and woe to anyone who tries to stop me!"

It's the distinction between vigilante activity and seeking help from
the sheriff. Visitors to Jimbo's living room (or tavern or reference
library) have to follow Jimbo's rules, or he'll kick them out. It's not
against Jimbo's rules to ask someone (politely) to follow the rules.
It's not a "bannable offense" to warn someone that their repeated
violations are provoking you to request Jimbo to ban them.

I applaud JTD and Eloquence for DOING THEIR BEST to be civil toward one
another, despite the strength of their feelings on the MT article. The
fact that no one had to ring Jimbo's cell phone while he attended the
wedding is really a cause for mutual back-patting all around.

These are trying times. Violence is heating up in the Middle East. We
can do our part for world peace by finding ways to work harmoniously
together on the Great Project of Wikipedia. We are contributing to world
knowledge, and it's not easy.

We need something we can all rally around. An idea or person, maybe. For
now, it's the idea of creating a top-notch free encyclopedia. This idea
is being sponsored by a wonderful philanthropist, Jimmy Wales.

Ed Poor


subject: [WikiEN-l] Deletion policy needed

body:
Eclecticology (Ray Saintonge) wrote in part:

>Toby Bartels wrote:

>>Once we move the article to a more convenient name,
>>then the long name is harmless and it's ''OK'' to leave it alone.
>>OTOH, if it exists for a month, then it will get archived,
>>so there is a reason, assuming that you didn't catch it immediately,
>>why it's ''good'' to leave it alone.

>I don't think we really have a big difference here.  All that would be
>left to delete after a month is a redirecting article with a long title
>that is too long to be something that would be used in a search.

It's not the search that matters; if the title is long and awful,
then it's unlikely to ever be typed in again by anybody.
Except ... that if it's been sitting around for a month,
then it might be saved by somebody (not only Google).
So we should keep it ... since it's cheap in the memory:

>I know the argument that redirect articles take up minimal space in the DB.

>Ultimately deleting the orphaned redirecting remnant was really the least
>important element in my proposal.

And that's why we don't really have a big difference here:
you'll be relatively willing to give that bit up. ^_^

-- Toby


from_name: Tim Starling

body:
ray at ganymede.org wrote:
>
>
> I am curious why the note that I sent about this issue seemed to end the
> thread, with no follow-up. Has this kind of option been rejected in the
> past? This seems to be a fairly standard security/authentication issue
> and I believe that the technology I suggested is the kind of thing that
> would be fairly obvious. Am I wrong about something here?
>
> Just to add, with a authentication architecture, you could much more
> easily offer offline editing with subsequent re-integration of the
> content. Or am I swimming against the current here?

How can you tell the difference between a bot and a person without
annoying people? I'm not aware of any non-annoying method which is even
close to effective. Without an effective method, your scheme do nothing
but annoy the legitimate bot-runners and slightly inconvenience the
hackers. Not to mention the development time required.

-- Tim Starling.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Be bold

body:
Ed Poor wrote in part:

>I don't like deleting "pages". If I find a horribly written article, but
>it's a topic of interest (to me or to potential readers) -- then I think
>it's a better use of community time to:

>* take 5 minutes of my own time to google it into a stub; or,
>* take 15 to 30 minutes and whip it into shape (e.g., by refactoring)

>Rather than:

>* take 2 minutes of my time to list it on votes for deletion
>* take up huge amounts of others' valuable time by 'inviting' them to
>figure out whether to "keep" or "delete" it.

This is a very interesting perspective.

It takes /you/ much more time to improve an article than to list it on VfD.
But it takes /the community as a whole/ much less time if you work on it.

So you are to be commended for being so altruistic.
OTOH, how can we give other people an incentive
to take the same route that you are taking?

-- Toby


subject: [WikiEN-l] Mother Teresa article

body:
Eclecticology (Ray Saintonge) wrote in part:

>In the wake of a highly
>complex process over the logo, the painful Votes for Deletion, and now
>NPOV votes on an individual article it becomes clear that voting is a
>technique for majorities to marginalize minority opinions.

I rather like the voting procedure for the logo.
It demonstrated the practical problems with voting quite well,
yet led to a largely inconsequential effect on Wikipedia itself.
(Largely inconsequential not because the logo is unimportant,
but because there were several good logos, and any would have been fine.)
When we can make a logo vote go smoothly and with minimal acrimony,
/then/ we'll be in a position to adapt voting to the content!

In the meantime, have Ed and mav accepted my nominations for mediator?
(Is mav even reading this list right now???)

-- Toby


subject: [WikiEN-l] Mother Teresa article

references:
<8weWeIpSpVB@erik_moeller>
	<012c01c39c5a$4ff6a620$74001c12@reflection>
	<bnjj7r$cei$1@sea.gmane.org> <20031027171843.GA9264@joey.bomis.com>

body:
Jimmy Wales wrote in part:

>I do not envision, and would strongly oppose, that mediation and
>arbitration committees get involved in ruling on the exact detailed
>contents of articles.  (There is of course some overlap, since some
>behavioral problems exhibit themselves via a refusal to engage in NPOV
>editing over a long period of time.)

Arbitration of content would be pointless, since the content isn't permanent.
Somebody new (or old but pretending to be new?) could change things again.
So ceratinly arbitration on content would be silly.

But mediation could work here as well -- and it likely /would/ happen,
if the mediation is with a user that doesn't work well with others.
The mediator can start by mediating conflicts over content,
because that's exactly what non working well with others is about.

Unlike arbitration, mediation makes sense when it comes to content,
because mediation is merely the /facilitation/ of discussing conflict.
And discussing conflict over content is exactly what we're supposed to do.
Certainly I would agree that mediation is a better means than voting
to facilitate discussion!  As you said:

>Voting is just one method (a bad one, in cases like
>this, I think) of _talking about the article_.

And Erik has suggested that JTD may need to be banned,
so this is directly relevant to what we're dealing with here.
If we had a mediation process, then as soon as Erik said that,
the mediator would have a mandate to come in and try to smooth things over.
To some extent, Ed Poor (my first nominee for mediator, no coincidence!)
has been trying just that on this mailing list.

Not that we need to set anything up formally to have a mediation process.
Keep talking, Ed!

-- Toby


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [WikiEN-l] Be bold

body:
On Monday, Oct 27, 2003, at 13:23 US/Pacific, Toby Bartels wrote:
> This is a very interesting perspective.
>
> It takes /you/ much more time to improve an article than to list it on
> VfD.
> But it takes /the community as a whole/ much less time if you work on
> it.
>
> So you are to be commended for being so altruistic.
> OTOH, how can we give other people an incentive
> to take the same route that you are taking?

Well, they'd have to put up with a lot less of THIS THREAD GOING ON AND
ON AND ON.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Mother Teresa article

references:
<8weWeIpSpVB@erik_moeller>	<012c01c39c5a$4ff6a620$74001c12@reflection>	<bnjj7r$cei$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<20031027171843.GA9264@joey.bomis.com>

body:
Jimbo,

Thank you for taking the time to respond to my concerns.

>>Root causes of the "current upset" have everything to do with Wikipedia
>>policies and customs, in particular, the absence of some sort of means
>>for dealing with article disputes that cannot be solved within the Wiki
>>consensus editing model.
>
>
> Is there any evidence that this is the case in the current
> controversy?  What I mean is that the article already seems much
> improved over the past several weeks.  So in what way is it really
> true that the problem can't be solved within the Wiki consensus
> editing model?

James and Erik became frustrated to the point where they each were
trying to line up support and get you involved.  I consider that a
failure of the "Wiki consensus editing model," and the collateral damage
(that is, Erik and James' frustration and anger, and that of others who
tried to help) isn't worth it, even if the article is better in the end;
also, it does not scale so when we have ten times the active
participation we do today, the process, such as it is, breaks down.
Besides, we're not done yet (with the Mother Teresa article, that is),
and several key points remain unsettled.

> Hmm, well, I don't think of mediation and arbitration as being means
> for settling run of the mill legitimate disputes about the content of
> the articles, but rather as a means to formalize and decentralize the
> _banning_ process, i.e. to deal with persistent, ongoing disruptive
> and counter-productive behavioral patterns.

Perhaps there are two separate things.  Most disruptive and
counter-productive behavior by longstanding users has its roots in
disputes over content.  Provide a fair, effective means of resolving the
content disputes, and >poof<, the cases of disruption requiring bans
become rare.

> I do not envision, and would strongly oppose, that mediation and
> arbitration committees get involved in ruling on the exact detailed
> contents of articles.  (There is of course some overlap, since some
> behavioral problems exhibit themselves via a refusal to engage in NPOV
> editing over a long period of time.)

Well, anyone involved in mediation shouldn't be ruling on anything at
all, since it is their role to marshall users through a group
decision-making process rather than to make edicts.  As for arbitration,
well, if we are going to have an arbitration committee, there isn't
going to be much for them to do if they aren't going to hear article
disputes :-).

Ideally, we would find some way to bring about a culture change to
encourage more supportive and facilitative work on the part of
Wikipedians in general.  Had their been a greater amount of this in the
Mother Teresa article, I think the dispute would have been contained and
resolved.  Instead, Wikipedians reviewed the article and made their own
edits; though the article may have improved, that didn't help the
dispute much.

Perhaps it has something to do with the demographics of the Wikipedia
participants.  Somehow I don't think there's too much background in
group dynamics.

>>This the latest in a number of attempts at out-of-process methods to
>>control the content of the article.
>
>
> I am opposed to the use of such votes, but I don't regard this as
> out-of-process at all.  Such votes are nothing more than expressions
> of opinion, and are thus non-binding in every relevant sense.  Do you
> see what I mean?  Voting is just one method (a bad one, in cases like
> this, I think) of _talking about the article_.

Well, I think we agree that voting may not be the best choice for
creating great articles.  Did you read the "votes" in question?  I think
there was an intent to make them more or less binding.  There were
several different things one could vote upon, and fairly good
participation.

Louis


from_name: Daniel Mayer

subject: [WikiEN-l] Mother Teresa article

body:
Toby wrote:
>In the meantime, have Ed and mav accepted my
>nominations for mediator?(Is mav even reading this
>list right now???)

Sorry - I've been out of town a lot lately and have
only been skimming the lists. However, I already
volunteered to be an arbitrator via an email to Jimbo.
I really don't have enough spare time to be a
mediator, sadly.

-- mav

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from_name: tarquin

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Metric system

references:
<8wTW8fbhpVB@erik_moeller>
	<3F98AE81.7050600@rufus.d2g.com>	<3F9AADA9.5070909@planetunreal.com>
	<20031027092535.GF27057@narya.grin.hu>

body:
Peter Gervai wrote:

><wiki>My tool is [[unit:inch:12.4]] long.</wiki>
>
>Renders "My tool is 12.4 inch long." and "My tool is 29.88 cm long.",
>depeding on my settings. (With natural IQ, like write 23.5 km instead of
>2350000 cm, etc.)
>
>Syntax was just an example, not even a suggestion.
>
>
>
Two points (which have already been raised):
1. articles should be easy to write. Minimize complex markup.

2. How can a machine tell what level of accuracy is needed?
Eg:
"A cat is an animal about a foot long"
"A cat is an animal about 30cm long."
You don't want the decimals!


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Metric system

references:
<8wTW8fbhpVB@erik_moeller> <3F98AE81.7050600@rufus.d2g.com>
	<3F9AADA9.5070909@planetunreal.com>
	<20031027092535.GF27057@narya.grin.hu>
	<3F9D2CD8.2080609@planetunreal.com>

body:
On Mon, Oct 27, 2003 at 02:34:00PM +0000, tarquin wrote:

> ><wiki>My tool is [[unit:inch:12.4]] long.</wiki>
> >
> >Renders "My tool is 12.4 inch long." and "My tool is 29.88 cm long.",
> >depeding on my settings. (With natural IQ, like write 23.5 km instead of
> >2350000 cm, etc.)
> >
> >Syntax was just an example, not even a suggestion.
> >
> >
> >
> Two points (which have already been raised):
> 1. articles should be easy to write. Minimize complex markup.

Markup is like chocolate: you're not forced to use it.
Others will gladly fix it up after you. (eg. eat your chocolate.)

But, point taken.

> 2. How can a machine tell what level of accuracy is needed?
> Eg:
> "A cat is an animal about a foot long"
> "A cat is an animal about 30cm long."
> You don't want the decimals!

I can create markup as complex as you just want to be. Decimals surely a
possible optional part (like, erm, let's say, [[unit:<measure>.<integer
precision>:<measure>]] like [[unit:inch.-2:199]] would
become "200 inch" and "280 cm", respectively, rounded to closest 10 (10^2)
and [[unit:inch.2:199]] "199 inch" and "282.58 cm"). No, it's not user
friendly at all. Maybe it worths thinking about it.

If one deperately needed there could be a
"the damned cat is about [[unit:verbal:30cm|a foot]] long" form, giving
metric and english measures in text form.

Still I'm not satisfied with my own idea, oh well...

grin


from_name: Daniel Ehrenberg

subject: [Wikipedia-l] OFFLIST Mailing lists

body:
<snip/>
> Even Esperanto, terrible language that it is. ^_^>
> -- Toby

en: What's wrong with Esperanto?
eo: Kio estas malbona pri Esperanton?
LDan

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from_name: Till Westermayer

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Metric system

body:
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . till we *) . . .

[27.10.03: grin at tolna.net]

><wiki>My tool is [[unit:inch:12.4]] long.</wiki>

>Renders "My tool is 12.4 inch long." and "My tool is 29.88 cm
>long.", depeding on my settings. (With natural IQ, like write 23.5
>km instead of 2350000 cm, etc.)

>Syntax was just an example, not even a suggestion.

"The cat is <unit>30 cm</unit> long in the average" may be a better
syntax, especially because it's easier to add after an article is
written.

The other way would be to use SI metrics only ;-)
 __ .
 / / / /                            ... Till Westermayer - till we *)
. .
  . mailto:till at tillwe.de . www.westermayer.de/till/ . icq 320393072
  . Habsburgerstr. 82 . 79104 Freiburg . 0761 55697152 . 0160 96619179
  . . . . .


subject: [WikiEN-l] Be bold

body:
Toby,

I don't know if it's "altruism" -- I'm just trying to accomplish our
mutual goal as efficiently as possible.

If I can get more people to focus on writing the kinds of articles I
want to see, by donating 15 minutes here or 30 minutes there -- and this
harnesses 5 staff-hours of time (300) minutes of other writers' time...

Everyone who donates time or money to this project is altruistic. If my
"perspective" has any praiseworthy aspect, perhaps it has more to do
with my concern for efficiency. Call it a "management" perspective,
maybe.

Uncle Ed


subject: [WikiEN-l] Resolving content disputes (was: Mother Teresa article)

body:
Grandfather Louis predicted:

-> Provide a fair, effective means of resolving the
-> content disputes, and >poof<, the cases of disruption
-> requiring bans become rare.

Here I have been remiss. Erik asked me weeks and WEEKS ago to work with
him on an NPOV tutorial, and I have barely lifted a finger there.

I seem to be better at actually 'neutralizing' an article or 'talking'
to a specific user about NPOV in context. But I'm having trouble
organizing my thoughts for a [[Wikipedia:NPOV tutorial]]. Someone else
kind of took it over, but it looks like a rehash of an 'NPOV definition'
article.

I'd like to see a series of examples modeled on Strunk & White's
"Elements of Style" which show clear rules like Omit Needless Words and
striking examples of omitting them with vigor and boldness.

Other works which are an inspiration to me in this vein include Huff's
"How to Lie with Statistics" -- which, with calculated irony and gobs of
good humor and common sense, shows readers how to *counteract* attempts
by advertisers and politicians to deceive us with statistics.

Sheepishly,

Ed Poor


body:
ray at ganymede.org wrote:
> It depends.
>
> Do you want to determine that a user is a bot almost all of the time,
> assuming people are not trying to fool you?
>
> Or do you want a secure method?
>
> A secure method would be a bother. It would probably require us to put
> up dot-pictures that people have to recognize patterns in, ala yahoo's
> account creation page.
>
> We can certainly use a heuristic to determine if a user is acting like a
> bot. Then, they can be challenged as above, to see if they are a person.
>
> - ray
>

I don't think I understand what you want this for. By your response, I
gather you're not interested in preventing serious, concerted attacks.
How is a cryptographically-authenticated bot more accountable than a bot
using a standard user account? I've already suggested that user accounts
  displaying bot-like characteristics should be blocked, unless they
have been approved. How is your system any better?

-- Tim Starling.


from_name: James Duffy

subject: [WikiEN-l] Mother Teresa article

body:
>
>I must say, even though I'm personally rather fond of JT, I think he's sort
>of dropped the ball here. I really think the best thing to do would have
>been to accept Erik's peace offer, as it seemed very fair and sincere. I
>hope he'll see that he's not really winning a lot of converts by being so
>confrontational at this stage and pull back the reins a bit.

Let me clarify:

1. I am rather fond too of Dante! :-)

2. I have a lot of respect for Erik.

3. I do believe that on a few occasions (usually to do with religion) Erik
loses all sense of judgment and, probably without realising it, produces
edits that are glaringly POV.

4. I want to work with Erik.

5. IMHO Erik does have a habit of ignoring criticism of his work, of seeing
agendas, or personalising criticism as attacks, etc.

6. On the page in question, Erik added in text with is seriously POV and
unbalanced. I tried to NPOV the article while not censoring the allegations,
by making a new article specifically focused on discussing the allegations,
many of which are not directly about Mother Teresa, the focus of the
original article. That article was to be linked to the main one, with a
summary of the allegations, focusing on those centred on MT, contained in
the main article. (Interestingly, a couple of people, unaware that this was
originally attempted a week ago, are suggesting that as the obvious
solution.) However Erik went ballistic, reverted, listed pages on the VfD,
talked about bans, accused me of censorship and a 'pro-Catholic' agenda.
Since then many users have come to the talk page and said that there /is/ a
clear problem with the MT page as edited by Erik. People other than me have
talked about POV, agendas, lack of balance, etc. Some have observed that the
MT article carries more extreme criticism than in articles on Hiter and Idi
Amin! Erik has ignored all the criticism and focused his attacks on me. I
have not edited the page in days, but to clarify for the community what is
the problem and what is the proposed solution, called a vote. Erik tried to
move the questions, change the questions, dispute the terminology, add in a
900th repeat of his constantly repeated defence (ok, 900th is an
exagguration but you get the point) all about censorship, etc (bizarrely
linking in Pol Pot in the debate!).

To set up the vote, I left messages on plenty of talk pages, including
people who agree with Erik. I left messages on the Village Pump and here. In
other words, while Erik has been talking about working with people, I have
been doing it; trying to NPOV a poor article, trying to get a debate, trying
to set up a vote to clarify what the community want. I have been seeking a
community consensus. Erik has been trying to get people to accept what he
wants.

But I have a lot of respect still for Erik. I do want to work with him. But
it is difficult when, on topics touching his pet topic, his dislike of
religion, he lets his personal opinions blind him to the NPOV requirement.
/If/ I was a catholic apologist, I would have deleted Erik's controversial
stuff, not given it its own linked article. On [[Pope Pius XII]] I would not
have dug up a quote from Hitler to a cabinet meeting that supports Erik's
thesis.

My bottom line is ensuring that articles are NPOV and encyclop?dic. And all
that I have done is to ensure that. I just wish that Erik would show the
same neutrality and concern with NPOV. That he holds strong opinions is his
right. But he needs to avoid pushing those agendas in a 'case for the
prosecution' style that makes articles 70% accusationary (another
contributor suggested 80%). There is no point Erik talking peace if he
insists it is a peace based on getting his way, when most people have been
repeating over and over again 'this article has a POV problem'.

wikipeace

JT

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subject:
[WikiEN-l] Re: Resolving content disputes (was: Mother Teresa
	article)

body:
The Cunctator wrote:

> NPOV is an ideal.
>
> If you understand what that means and what the implications are, you're
> on the right track.

NPOV is important, it's great, it's the way we write articles.  Amen.

It is not a palliative for every malady.  It has its limits, which have
been widely discussed in our various forums.

I'm going out on a limb somewhat here, but I believe that NPOV is
difficult to apply in the MT dispute because there is disagreement over
the amount and prominence of critical material that should be included
in the article.  This is a judgment call, hence the dispute.  Having and
applying an NPOV policy does not abrogate the need to make a judgment
call in this case.

Louis


subject: [WikiEN-l] War? What war?

body:
I don't think what JTD and Eloquence are doing is any cause for alarm.
As Louis said, it's a content dispute.

And as Uncle Ed said (quoting myself like Gandalf! :-) they are actually
doing rather well at keeping cool while the editing gets hot.

So let's stop all this talk of banning or quitting.

Perhaps in coming weeks, one or both will grow tired of the deadlock
over the article and bow out, asking for others to take on the work for
a while. (I've started a sidebar on Hitchens's anti-MT book, which I
gather is a primary source for one side of the conflict.)

Ed Poor


from_name: The Cunctator

body:
> From: Poor, Edmund W
> Sent: Monday, October 27, 2003 4:59 PM
> To: lazolla at hotmail.com; English Wikipedia
> Subject: [WikiEN-l] Resolving content disputes (was: Mother Teresa
> article)
>
> Grandfather Louis predicted:
>
> -> Provide a fair, effective means of resolving the
> -> content disputes, and >poof<, the cases of disruption
> -> requiring bans become rare.
>
> Here I have been remiss. Erik asked me weeks and WEEKS ago to work
with
> him on an NPOV tutorial, and I have barely lifted a finger there.
>
> I seem to be better at actually 'neutralizing' an article or 'talking'
> to a specific user about NPOV in context. But I'm having trouble
> organizing my thoughts for a [[Wikipedia:NPOV tutorial]]. Someone else
> kind of took it over, but it looks like a rehash of an 'NPOV
definition'
> article.

I'll say it again, and I'll probably say it until I'm blue in the face:
the problem you're having with describing NPOV is that the current
LMS-influenced description of what a neutral point of view means is
flawed by self-contradiction, muddled meaning, and bad directives.

I've explicated what I consider a healthy and useful conception of how
to construct better articles and build a better Wikipedia in the past.
I'll just repeat this mantra again:

NPOV is an ideal.

If you understand what that means and what the implications are, you're
on the right track.


subject: [WikiEN-l] War? What war?

body:
> From: Poor, Edmund W
>
> I don't think what JTD and Eloquence are doing is any cause for alarm.
> As Louis said, it's a content dispute.
>
> And as Uncle Ed said (quoting myself like Gandalf! :-) they are
actually
> doing rather well at keeping cool while the editing gets hot.
>
> So let's stop all this talk of banning or quitting.
>
> Perhaps in coming weeks, one or both will grow tired of the deadlock
> over the article and bow out, asking for others to take on the work
for
> a while. (I've started a sidebar on Hitchens's anti-MT book, which I
> gather is a primary source for one side of the conflict.)
>
After bringing up talk of banning, and before talking about quitting,
Erik did "grow tired of the deadlock over the article and bow out,
asking for others to take on the work for a while." Hadn't you noticed?

It's a bit strange to predict something that's already happened.


subject: [WikiEN-l] War? What war?

body:
LOL, I *knew* you were going to say that!

Uncle Ed

<<After bringing up talk of banning, and before talking about quitting,
Erik did "grow tired of the deadlock over the article and bow out,
asking for others to take on the work for a while." Hadn't you noticed?

It's a bit strange to predict something that's already happened.>>


from_name: A Anthere

subject: [WikiEN-l] Mother Teresa article

body:
> From: Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net>
> The Cunctator wrote:
>
> >That is to say, in my opinion, the root causes for
> this current upset
> >lie in failures of the institution (Wikipedia
> policies and customs)
> >rather than the individuals--though the individuals
> should be able to
> >transcend the current failures of the institution
> by avoiding such
> >temptations as calling for NPOV votes.
> >
> I agree to the point that I almost feel ashamed for
> having participated
> in some of those votes.  The development of voting
> processes seems to
> lend support to the idea that voting is evil.  In
> the wake of a highly
> complex process over the logo, the painful Votes for
> Deletion, and now
> NPOV votes on an individual article it becomes clear
> that voting is a
> technique for majorities to marginalize minority
> opinions.
>
> I would say that there is a failure of institutional
> custom in the face
> of institutional policy.  As a custom NPOV works
> very well; as a policy
> it begins to cry for clear definitions that may in
> reality be unachievable.
>
> I believe that there is wide consensus that NPOV is
> something very
> positive.  That tends to break down when we try to
> define what that
> means.  Trying to impose NPOV is a very POV
> activity.  NPOV is a natural
> by-product of open-mindedness and fair-mindedness;
> it's not about
> ensuring that critics and supporters of a particular
> POV have paragraphs
> of equal size.  The latter only changes the search
> for NPOV into a
> pissing match.
>
> Ec

Someone wrote me offline, to ask me what I thought of
voting, because he noticed I rather rarely did, in
particular very rarely on vfd. He pointed out that
mail from Ec and TC to me.

I had not read it.
I recently aged up a lot on the english wikipedia, so
I am now 8 instead of 6, and isolated this mailing
list here, while I stayed younger in other places.

I think voting is generally bad. Really bad. I can see
an advantage in voting when it is to try to see better
where people stand, as a poll. But a binding vote is
something that imho should just not exist on
wikipedia.

For two reasons

1) When people vote, they inherently think
"democracy". They set percentage for acceptance or
reject. That implies we tolerate to set aside the view
of minorities.
Supposingly, we should work per consensus. I already
said my opinion about what consensus was a while ago.
As for me, it is not per majority, 51 % 75% 90%. I
consider consensus is 100%, given that in the 100%,
some do not care at all, some are not happy but can
live the decision, and some are satisfied. A 90%
satisfaction, leaving in utter madness and despair the
leftover minority of 10 miserable % is a bad choice
for and is not consensus. Everyone should make effort
to be consensual, but veto should be a "right" to me.

Believing that an article could be said "neutral" by
voting per majority upon it, is just something beyond
me. A poll to clarifies things, and perhaps put the
finger on the root points is absolutely ok, but a
binding vote, where the final state of the article is
chosen because 5 people agree when 1 disagree is just
non-sense. NPOV votes ! I think it is hard to believe
! NPOV comes from all of our inputs, all together,
about giving all opinions and trying to mix them so
well we can ALL be satisfied with the result. This
can't come from voting, each person isolated in his
little idea, just happy he finally was able to put in
name in front of a point. So bad ! So desctructive, so
limitative. So uncreative.

2) Voting has a very dangerous drawback, that I often
see on the fr wikipedia, less on en. It had become
classical at some point (less now) that each time a
point had to be discussed, someone set a page, and
divided it in three parts.
1st part : the problem was described in a couple of
lines
2nd part : a collection of choices was proposed by the
initiator, where each one could put his name
3rd part, a heading : discussion

Even before starting discussing a point, most of what
people could see what this vote area. With all mashed
options, just as if there were none others. The
initiator inconsciously manipulating people in
believing these were *the* options, and none else.
Then voted they did, put their names, and without a
comment, hit the button with the comment "my vote !".
So proud.

And gone they were, happy to have done what they were
asked to. Voted. How surprising that after a while,
when results were not showing consensus that
discussion was tough to get started !

A vote (be it a binding vote, or even a poll) should
never be proposed until sufficient discussion has
occurred, so that the various propositions and ideas
of people have erupted, even the wildest ones, which
could feed other people in having themselves other
wild or very bright ideas. That is what brainstorming
is ! If a vote, with the propositions is already
there, all prepared, the brightest enlightment just do
not come, that's all. Asking people to vote is just
the best way to risk not finding the best solution.
Just as shutting up people who have the crazy ideas is
just the way to risk that the problem does not
progress.

I prefer crazy suggestions to any vote.
Just as I would prefer that french people participate
to saying what rules they want to monitor blocking
process, instead of just signing their names and
saying "yes, I want blocking, but only with serious
procedure rules", and just go away waiting for others
to set these rules for them. I should even suggest
stupid rules just to promote reaction :-)

The last point is about votes for deletion.

I have on purpose, never looked at the discussions
over what changes some of you are suggesting to solve
that huge black point that is vfd on en.

Here is just what I do on fr.

I meet something bad, irrelevant, non interesting, I
boldly delete (I must admit, I very boldly delete
since deleted article can be restored easily). My
assumption : if someone is not happy, he will
complain. Then I can restore. Honestly, it did not
happen often.

When I think the content or the title is likely to
promote an interesting discussion (that is not often),
I list it.

In all other cases, I just blank it (usually move the
content in the discussion). I assume that an involved
author watches his article, so will notice the change
occurring. If he has a problem, he will say so in the
talk page or revert. If he was just a bugger, or is
not really interested in what he wrote (?), well, it
is gone (blanked). If nobody restores anything, well,
that was not very important.
Once in a while, I go to short pages, and I delete all
those with 0 bytes (I check discussion pages of
course, but usually, those who raised discussion were
already treated, hence not at 0 bytes anymore).
This way, I am sure not to forget any. I clean up the
place quickly and without pain. It could nearly be
automated, but I do not like the idea.

I consider this way much quicker and much cleaner than
vfd, which I reserve for limited cases where I am in
doubt. Our vfd is short. It's crude, but I think that
is just as effective than spending so much time voting
for articles to be kept or deleted. And somehow, just
as consensual.

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subject: [Wikipedia-l] OFFLIST Mailing lists

body:
--- Daniel Ehrenberg <littledanehren at yahoo.com> wrote:
> <snip/>
> > Even Esperanto, terrible language that it is. ^_^>
>
> > -- Toby
>
> en: What's wrong with Esperanto?
> eo: Kio estas malbona pri Esperanton?
> LDan

Oops. As you can tell by the title, that was meant to
be offlist. Sorry.

__________________________________
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Exclusive Video Premiere - Britney Spears
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