from_name: Jim Kork

subject: [WikiEN-l] RE: WikiEN-l Digest, Vol 11, Issue 1

body:
"Having taken a look at the Serdar Argic article,
I note that you twice insisted on qualifying "Armenian Genocide" as
"alleged",
& when both of those changes were reverted, you blanked the article."
I am making variou changes, and the reason I blanked the article is that I
didn't see any credibility to the story. There is virtually none whatsoever.
The point of the article is that, there is one bad Turkish who tried to
disturb people over the Usenet and that he was trying to rewrite the
history. The only link I have seen is from Armenian Genocide page. If I add
some obscure page that points out a discussion between two people and claim
that he was the first one who actually spammed, what would you think? Where
is the credibility of the articles? I also didn't understand what's wrong in
changing your opinions for a given article, at one time you may think
something is ok, at another time you may conclude that it is unnecessary.

"The reasons you gave for this change was that without the word "alleged"
the
article was POV -- only this assertion, with no proof or evidence either
at the Talk page for this article, nor at [[Talk:Armenian Genocide]].
(Incidentally you made 10 edits to the main Armenian Genocide page, which
were removed every time, & you never discussed the reaons for your
changes.)"
I couldn't discuss it because with the old interface I couldn't figure out
how to discuss it. With this new interface everything is much clearer to me,
and thus I started to leave comments. This is not vandalizing, you can check
out the policy again. Also the admin who blocked me accused me of being
Serdar Argic, but never left a note how to discuss it.

"Uh, everybody except Turkish nationals (& perhaps even some of them) agree
that it happened"
You are quite arrogant on this topic, nobody denies what had happened, what
people couldn't disagree on is whether it was an intentional genocide.
Genocide has a specific meaning, during wartime people die all the time,
nobody call those "genocide".

"From a quick glance at the history logs, your contributions was to
misrepresent
cited sources to reduce the number of victims."
Could you please give me the proof for the Hitler's quote. A specific page
so that I can go to the library and find it? It is in the article though.

"If you have access to a source that provides different numbers, you are
welcome to add those figures;"
Many sources have different numbers, one person reading the article can
easily see that this is pure propaganda as it stands now. Link to Serdar
Argic is one example, just to discredit anybody who opposes this idea,
another one is accusing me of vandalizing even though according to
wikipedia's own rules I didn't vandalize. Vandalizers do not join mailing
lists and complain!

"you are welcome to change verifiable numbers -- unless you can clearly
show that they are misquoted, which you did not bother to do."
I will, but as I said none of these are proving that I was vandalizing it.
If these were proofs then you should better check out the authors of that
article, since they also put so many number of "facts" which are not facts.

"I will concede one point about [[Armenian Genocide]]: I did not see an
explanation for the Turkish POV."
If you accuse them of vandalizing I don't you will ever see. By the way I am
not Turkish.

"The article would be better if it were provided -- although it would need
to be clearly identified as such."
The article should contain only facts and clearly explain why it is
disputed. Right now, what happened is provided as intentional and
systematic. It doesn't tell how many number of Turks have died to the same
events. Also, currently the article is highly political, it puts Turkish
government as the adversary, rather than historians with opposing views. It
doesn't tell the motivations behind lobbying governments like France to
accept this allegation as a law. The claims over the soil of the Turkey and
so on.

"The acts I detail above clearly show why you were blocked."
NO! What you showed me is NOT vandalism. Go and read the blocking policy. It
clearly states that vandalism is not different point of view, is not being a
newbie (leaving a reason or discussing the article). If you block everybody
making modification without leavnig a reason or discussing then we will have
a problem.

"But had you created an account, it would have added to your credibility."
I was planning to create an account, but looks like it is useless if someone
accuse me of vandalising everytime I try to correct an article for being
objective.

"New editors often make mistakes out of ignorance, & creating an account on
Wikipedia
tells the rest of us that you are interested in doing more than making
only a few, specific edits; by that simple act, you are showing that you
want to contribute for a while, & it worth someone's time to work with you."
Yes, it seems to me that quite a few article are not as good as it should
be, giving one sided views, sometimes totally wrong and highly political. I
would like to make them more objective, as well as add tons of information
that is not there yet.

"If I were to edit an article on the fictional J. Random Publicperson, to
add "Publicperson is a jerk", & offer nothing more, I'd expect it be
speedily
reverted: I have made a claim, with no collaborating evidence or arguments
for why I wrote this."
Yes, but there are so many edits I have seen in wikipedia that is simply
wrong and without evidence. Someone just put there and nobody either didn't
object it or that didn't have time to play this revert game.

"However, if I wrote the same sentence, then added
details such as he is known to have appeared drunk in public, made
inappropriate sexual comments to his colleague's children, & squandered
public funds to buy bauble-head dolls for his personal collection, some if
not all of that text should remain in some form. And even better would be
if I cited the journalist Busybody's book "The Embarassing Politician",
which made all of these claims, or mentioned that Publicperson was indicted
or arrested on these charges."
You are right that I should spend some more time on this aspect of editing.

"ometimes a non-anonymous editor can get away with making a contribution
of the first example -- e.g., "Publicperson is a jerk", especially if the
article is not on a controversial topic. But with any controversial topic,
one has to make one's point as convincingly as possible."
One serious problem here is that though, right now some of the articles are
so much distorted that, you can't be convincing enough no matter what. For
example, you flat out reject the idea that this may not be a genocide,
claiming that only Turkish nationals (I am not one) reject this. You seem to
take the word genocide lightly, as if you can put it anywhere when lots of
people die. If you look at the article, all the point of views are to prove
that Turkish government is bad, Turkish people are bad, they already killed
lots of people and so on. Serdar Argic (which seem to be a discussion
between two sides, there is another party which does the same but his name
is not mentioned there), Varlik Tax (Vergisi) which has nothing to do with
the disputed massacres are also mentioned there. You also have to do a
better job in explaining exactly why you reject these or similar points,
rather than simply saying that only Turkish nationals reject this idea.

"And from the record, speaking as someone who is entirely disinterested
in the matter (I didn't even know that there was an article on Serdar Argic
until now), I find you have failed to be convincing."
I will fail on this as long as I am being accused of vandalizing and
considered to be a Turkish National by default.

Jim

_________________________________________________________________
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list: wikien-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Anthere

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Brion Vibber Day

body:
Euhhhhh, bonne f?te cher Brion ?

Jimmy Wales wrote:
> Saluton!
>
> I hereby decree, in my usual authoritarian and bossy manner, that
> today (June 1st) shall forever be known as Brion Vibber day.
> Wikipedians of the distant future will marvel at his incredible
> dedication and hard work, without which the project should have
> collapsed a long time ago.  Tonight at dinner, every Wikipedian should
> say a toast to Brion and his many inventions.
>
> On Brion Vibber day, Wikipedians everywhere greet each other in
> Esperanto.
>
> Dankon, Brion.
>
> Bondezirojn,
>
> --Jimbo


list: foundation-l

from_name: David Gerard

subject: [Foundation-l] Copyright issues of wikimedia projects

body:
On 06/01/04 20:37, Toby Bartels wrote:
> Daniel Mayer (maveric149) wrote:

May I suggest that rehashing [[GPL]] vs [[BSD license]] may not be
the best possible use for this mailing list and everyone's mailbox.

- d.


list: wikimedia-l


from_name: Matthew Trump

subject: [WikiEN-l] Can we ban 172 now? And VV too!

body:
This seems to be the worst kind of intractable edit controversy on
Wikipedia, i.e. a "meta controversy". That is, a controversy about
whether or not there is actually a controversy.

When one editor believes no controversy exists, then it becomes very
difficult to find a NPOV stance that will satisfy both parties, since
the that editor will see any mention of a controversy as being
inherently POV. In this case, any mention that there is no complete
agreement that the U.S. supported the coup is unacceptable to 172.

I was unfortunately involved in this kind of dispute for much of the
spring over an obscure physics article. I believed the subject to be
controversial. The other editor (anon using multiple proxies) would
not accept any wording regarding the existence of my position at all,
since he believed that no such controversy existed about the subject.
I was sure it would be one of those hellish endless edit wars that I
fought alone against an anon editor.

The only solution we reached after weeks was to strip the article of
much of the detailed material in it, leaving the entire subject
somewhat hollowed out and just saying the subject of the article is
"controversial." Nothing more. Hardly the optimal solution, but the
anon editor would not accept any eloboration of what the controversy
was about. It was a marginal topic, one I was fighting alone, and
thus I really had no choice.

Of course I don't stripping the article would work in the [[Augusto
Pinochet]] article, however. It's a much more historically imporant
topic.

Ray Saintonge said:
> Erik Moeller wrote:
>
>>Poor,-
>>
>>
>>>According to my reading of the edit history of [[Augusto
>>> Pinochet]],
>>>both 172 and VV engaged in a "more than 3 times" reversion war.
>>>
>>>
>>
>>The edit war is mostly about whether the intro should state that the
>> 1973
>>coup was "US backed", with some (primarily 172) arguing that this is
>> an
>>indisputable fact, and others (primarily VV) holding that it is
>>controversial and therefore needs to be written in NPOV "many
>> believe"
>>style. Majority opinion is on 172's side, and Encarta also uses the
>>"United States backed" phrase.
>>
>>I initially agreed with VV that some compromise was needed, but last
>> week
>>new evidence was revealed in the form of a transcript of a
>> conversation
>>between Kissinger and Nixon, shortly after the coup, in which
>> Kissinger
>>flat-out stated "We helped them" and Nixon responded "That's right".
>> In my
>>opinion, in combination with the sum of the evidence (including a
>> CIA memo
>>which states that Allende should be overthrown with a coup, and that
>> the
>>American hand should be "well hidden"), this justifies the phrase
>> "United
>>States backed". VV sees no reason to change his position.
>>
>>172 has long proposed a compromise, namely a footnote behind the
>> "United
>>States backed" to clarify what it means, but VV has ignored that
>>compromise. I have worked with him on another compromise intro with
>> the
>>"many believe" phrase, but I feel this is no longer adequate in
>> light of
>>the new evidence.
>>
>>Both 172 and VV have edit warred repeatedly on the article in
>> violation of
>>policy. In addition, there have been a number of personal attacks.
>>
>>I'm against banning either of them from Wikipedia as a whole, but a
>> 3
>>month ban from editing [[Augusto Pinochet]] may be a good idea. The
>> sad
>>result of these edit wars is that the article has been protected for
>> much
>>of its lifespan, which is obviously completely against the spirit of
>> a
>>wiki.
>>
>>I think that a quickpoll was held on the matter when quickpolls for
>> three-
>>revert violations were still in effect. The result was a vote for
>> banning
>>VV but not for banning 172. This is one of the reasons people,
>> including
>>myself, have become skeptical about the procedure: it ends up as a
>>popularity contest. If we have a three revert rule, everyone should
>> have
>>to respect it.
>>
>>
> I've looked at the matter and I agree with Erik on this.  I've never
> been keen about the 3-revert rule because it accomplishes nothing.  A
> 50-revert rule would do no better.  The state of an article when the
> warriors have reache the threshold might just as well be determined
> by a
> toss of a coin.  After each has had his three reverts they wait until
> the next day and have three new reverts each; that accomplishes
> nothing
> either.
>
> The side which provides reference and sources in an argument should
> be
> given preference.  Opposition to those sources is valid, but that too
> needs some basis in reality.  It is not enough to oppose something
> because it would cause embarassment to one's favoured side.  NPOV is
> best attained when we can accept substantiated information contrary
> to
> our own point of view.  It makes an article much easier to read than
> one
> sprinkled with weasel words..
>
> Ec
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Peter Jaros

subject: [WikiEN-l] Locked

body:
On May 29, 2004, at 7:10 PM, Fennec Foxen wrote:

> In case you haven't noticed by now (and I don't see any replies here
> yet) it's all done now. The most visible new feature is the new
> MonoBook skin, though categorizations and revamped templates are also
> of note. Someone will post a URL with the details before long, I
> assume...

Hooray!  But, er, are these features documented yet?  Documented in
the Wikipedia: namespace, that is, rather than more technical
explanations on meta.

Peter

                            -- ---<>--- --
                  A house without walls cannot fall.
     Help build the world's largest encyclopedia at Wikipedia.org
                            -- ---<>--- --


from_name: daniwo59 at aol.com

body:
In a message dated 6/1/2004 9:34:25 PM Eastern Standard Time,
saintonge at telus.net writes:
The side which provides reference and sources in an argument should be
given preference.  Opposition to those sources is valid, but that too
needs some basis in reality.  It is not enough to oppose something
because it would cause embarassment to one's favoured side.
Agree. 172 also happened to provide sources and this should certainly be
taken into consideration. VV seems to be a POV warrior on this one.

Danny
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from_name: Geoff Burling

body:
I beg everyone's indulgence as I respond to the points in this email.
There is an important clarification that must needs be made here.
Further discussions will be taken to the appropriate Talk page.

On Tue, 1 Jun 2004, Jim Kork wrote:

> "Having taken a look at the Serdar Argic article,
> I note that you twice insisted on qualifying "Armenian Genocide" as
> "alleged",
> & when both of those changes were reverted, you blanked the article."
> I am making variou changes, and the reason I blanked the article is that I
> didn't see any credibility to the story. There is virtually none whatsoever.

Blanking an article is an extreme act, & is bound to offend many people
even if done by a seasoned contributor who has much experience & has earned
much trust. You did that with no explanation, & after having your edits twice
rejected; sorry, but anyone will read that as pushing your own POV without
concern for the views or feelings of other people who contribute to
Wikipedia.

> The point of the article is that, there is one bad Turkish who tried to
> disturb people over the Usenet and that he was trying to rewrite the
> history.

I think you read too much into the point of the article. Someone was
abusing Usenet in a very clumsy fashion to push his political agenda: that
was the entire point of the Serdar Argic episode. But instead of asking
questions about the intent of the article on the Talk page, or explain
how it came over to you, you decided to blank it without a justification
for your act to anyone.

[snip]
>
> "The reasons you gave for this change was that without the word "alleged"
> the
> article was POV -- only this assertion, with no proof or evidence either
> at the Talk page for this article, nor at [[Talk:Armenian Genocide]].
> (Incidentally you made 10 edits to the main Armenian Genocide page, which
> were removed every time, & you never discussed the reaons for your
> changes.)"
> I couldn't discuss it because with the old interface I couldn't figure out
> how to discuss it. With this new interface everything is much clearer to me,
> and thus I started to leave comments. This is not vandalizing, you can check
> out the policy again. Also the admin who blocked me accused me of being
> Serdar Argic, but never left a note how to discuss it.

If you could figure out how to make changes to an article, why couldn't you
figure out how to discuss making changes to it? Help me understand this:
when I came to Wikipedia, I understood how to both make changes & add
comments to articles; you claim that you couldn't figure this out, which
means that our interface as somehow broken.
>
> "Uh, everybody except Turkish nationals (& perhaps even some of them) agree
> that it happened"
> You are quite arrogant on this topic, nobody denies what had happened, what
> people couldn't disagree on is whether it was an intentional genocide.
> Genocide has a specific meaning, during wartime people die all the time,
> nobody call those "genocide".

I've read the Wikipedia article: Genocide is the intentional mass murder
of people based on their ethnic heritage. A large number of Armenians were
killed on the basis of their ethnic background -- you admit that this
happened. However, you then talk about people dying in a war, which does
not logically follow.

I would hazard a guess here about what you are trying to say, but I find
it hard to be sympathetic after you've called me "arrogant". If you want
to start an argument over this topic, I'm sure you can find a better
combatant elsewhere: I'm just trying to explain how your behavior is hurting
your participation here on Wikipedia.
>
> "From a quick glance at the history logs, your contributions was to
> misrepresent
> cited sources to reduce the number of victims."
> Could you please give me the proof for the Hitler's quote. A specific page
> so that I can go to the library and find it? It is in the article though.

I didn't say anything about "Hitler's quote"; you removed that passage after
I wrote my email. I was talking about the following changes to [[Armenian
Genocide]]:

1. On 13 May 2004, the number of victims of the was given as between 500,000
and 2,000,000 dead, but 1,500,000 is the most commonly accepted number.
2. You subsequently changed the numbers to "between 300,000 and 2,000,000
dead" and to 500,000 as the most commonly accepted number; these numbers
were reverted to the first set of numbers on 18 May.
3. Once again you changed the numbers, this time to "between 300,000 and
1,000,000" and to 400,000 as the most commonly accepted total; & once again
these numbers were reverted, on 22 May.
4. Again you changed the numbers, this time the range was "between 200,000
and 1,000,000", & while you left the most commonly accepted total unchanged,
you changed the figure Toynbee is said to have estimated. These numbers
were once again restored to the original figures on 24 May.
5. Then you changed the figures once last time, giving a range of "between
100,000 and 1,500,000 died" & the most commonly accepted number to
300,000, as well as deleting McCarthy's estimate. These were restored on
30 May.

The only consistent pattern I can see to these changes are that you kept
trying to reduce the numbers, as if to find a lower number that everyone
invovled in the article would accept, & thereby minimize the tragedy of this
event. You deleted or altered verifiable facts (e.g., what Toynbee & McCarthy
wrote). As a couple of veteran Wikipedians have said in another thread,
if you don't agree with what is stated, why don't you instead provide better
facts instead of changing them? Can't you take the time to find authorities
who attest to the lower numbers you offered, & thereby improve quality of
the article's content? I don't know where the original figures for the
casualties came form, but the fact 3 or 4 different editors agreed on one
set of numbers is far more convincing than the 4 different numbers you
supplied without attribution.
>
> "If you have access to a source that provides different numbers, you are
> welcome to add those figures;"
> Many sources have different numbers, one person reading the article can
> easily see that this is pure propaganda as it stands now. Link to Serdar
> Argic is one example, just to discredit anybody who opposes this idea,
> another one is accusing me of vandalizing even though according to
> wikipedia's own rules I didn't vandalize. Vandalizers do not join mailing
> lists and complain!
>
First, I didn't call you a vandal: the point of my original email was to
explain how your contributions were not taken seriously. I still hope this
is the case: Wikipedia is in constant need of contributors who want to
improve its content. Yet if you consider my attempt at constructive criticism
is nothing more than calling you a "vandal", then I feel that I'm at a
loss to convince you otherwise.
>
> "you are welcome to change verifiable numbers -- unless you can clearly
> show that they are misquoted, which you did not bother to do."
> I will, but as I said none of these are proving that I was vandalizing it.
> If these were proofs then you should better check out the authors of that
> article, since they also put so many number of "facts" which are not facts.
>
> "I will concede one point about [[Armenian Genocide]]: I did not see an
> explanation for the Turkish POV."
> If you accuse them of vandalizing I don't you will ever see. By the way I am
> not Turkish.

When I first read your second sentence, I was puzzled over how what relevance
this had to my statement: I had expressed an opinion about a weakness in the
article; you somehow understood this as a statement about you.

Then I remembered in my original email I wrote that "everyone except Turkish
nationals" believe this. Absolute statements are always hazardous: I should
have written "almost everyone except Turkish nationals".

And that statement is a fair one: I Googled on the phrase "Armenian Genocide",
& got 105,000 hits. The first few pages were all on pages that believed
that it was a historical fact: one (http://www.cilicia.com/armo10c.html)
was a collection of contemporary articles from the New York Times detailing
the events; another (http://www.umd.umich.edu/dept/armenian/facts/gen_bibl.html)
is a list of publications about this event, which includes a number of
reports published by the League of Nations investigating the event.

My point of mentioning all of this evidence is not to prove that it happened,
but to show you that you have a lot of work ahead of you to present the
Turkish POV in convincing way. And making deletions from an IP address, &
offering only the most brief explanations is not going to do it.

>
> "The article would be better if it were provided -- although it would need
> to be clearly identified as such."
> The article should contain only facts and clearly explain why it is
> disputed. Right now, what happened is provided as intentional and
> systematic. It doesn't tell how many number of Turks have died to the same
> events. Also, currently the article is highly political, it puts Turkish
> government as the adversary, rather than historians with opposing views. It
> doesn't tell the motivations behind lobbying governments like France to
> accept this allegation as a law. The claims over the soil of the Turkey and
> so on.
>
Well, this is the first I have read about these claims. You would be better
off taking the time explaining these things & not deleting or altering what
you find objectionable. This article is not going anywhere; Wikipedia is not
going anywhere. The world won't end because any given article needs fixing:
I can think of dozens of articles that need work, but I won't be working
on soon because they need some research. Take the time to explain & document
these points, & they will better survive future edits.
>
> "The acts I detail above clearly show why you were blocked."
> NO! What you showed me is NOT vandalism. Go and read the blocking policy. It
> clearly states that vandalism is not different point of view, is not being a
> newbie (leaving a reason or discussing the article). If you block everybody
> making modification without leavnig a reason or discussing then we will have
> a problem.

It is not the fact you made changes. You made changes without concern
that other people disagreed with you, & continued to repeat them without
venturing into any form of dialogue until your IP address was blocked. Instead
of responding to comments on your Talk page, you deleted them; instead of
providing better figures for casualties in [[Armenian Genocide]], you
changed them to lower numbers, seemingly picked at random.

[snip]
>
> "And from the record, speaking as someone who is entirely disinterested
> in the matter (I didn't even know that there was an article on Serdar Argic
> until now), I find you have failed to be convincing."
> I will fail on this as long as I am being accused of vandalizing and
> considered to be a Turkish National by default.
>
If I came to your house & put a new roof on for free, you would think that was
an act of kindness; if I came to your house & threw a brick through one of
your windows, you would consider it an act of hostility. We want people to
come to Wikipedia & make our house better, not worse. Can you put yourself
in our place & see how we might consider your actions hostile?

Geoff


from_name: Viajero

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Can we ban 172 now? And VV too!

body:
On 06/01/04  at 04:38 PM, "Poor, Edmund W" <Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com> said:

> I think they should both be banned for 3 weeks, and also that 172 should
> lose sysop privileges for 3 months (after which he can re-apply via the
> usual community process).

Ed, a process for dealing with such conflicts is evolving and it is called the Arbitration Committee. Such matters aren't tackled on an ad hoc manner on the ML anymore.

V.


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Pochung(Pektiong) Chen(Tan)

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Request to rename zh-cfr.wikipedia to zh-min-nan

body:
Hi There,

The user community on "southern min" (min-nan) wikipedia would like
to request to rename the currently used "zh-cfr" to "zh-min-nan".
The tag "cfr" makes no sense to the native speaker and the user community.
The tag "zh-min-nan" makes sense and is a registered RFC 3066 tag.
Please rename the name of southern min wikipedia a.s.a.p, thanks!

pektiong


list: wikitech-l

subject: [Wikitech-l] Request to rename zh-cfr.wikipedia to zh-min-nan


from_name: Karl Eichwalder

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Whitespace problems; please fix parser

in_reply_to:
<c9cs44$mbf$3@sea.gmane.org> (timwi@gmx.net's message of "Sun, 30
	May 2004 15:45:44 +0100")

body:
Timwi <timwi at gmx.net> writes:

> Please could someone modify the parser so that, after taking out the
> category and inter-wiki links, it removes (ignores) all whitespace at
> the beginning and end of the article, and reduces sequences of paragraph
> breaks to a single one?

Comments are
<!-- also -->
still broken.

Cf. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Keichwa#Testing_comments

--
                                                         |      ,__o
                                                         |    _-\_<,
http://www.gnu.franken.de/ke/                            |   (*)/'(*)


from_name: Erik Moeller

body:
Toby-
> Anyway, since you're now saying that Wikimedia policy
> should require all Wikimedia works to be copyleft,
> you're now in disagreement with (if I'm remember correctly
> how this conversation went) me, Erik, Andre, and Anth?re.
> Since they're probably not all paying attention anymore --
> we took many detours to discuss theoretical issues --
> I'll bring this to their attention (after checking
> that I've got the correct people), so we can stop you. ^_^

Mav is a reasonable person and he would never use his influence or power
in the project to unilaterally enforce his point of view. The rift in
opinion between "copyleft" and "attribution-only" likely exists across the
whole Wikimedia community. A project-wide vote may be useful.

However, please keep in mind the one-way incompatibility that would result
from adopting a copyleft license: for example, Wikipedia content could no
longer be combined with such material (unless you want to end up with
documents where only part of them is dual-licensed as non-copyleft). This
is a huge deal with repercussions many years down the line, so we should
consider very carefully if the additional exposure we can gain from a non-
copyleft license justifies such a change.

I agree with Mav that first and foremost, we need to work with the FSF
towards simplifying the FDL for our purposes, perhaps just as an FDL 2.0,
or using his FCL migration clause idea.

Regards,

Erik


from_name: jheiskan at welho.com

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Klingon Wikipedia

body:
Lainaus Jimmy Wales <jwales at bomis.com>:

> A proclamation
>
> I support the continuation of the Klingon Wikipedia, because it seems
> that a (very rough) consensus has been reached.  It's worth noting,
> too, that Klingon is a "special case" in many ways in the geek culture
> where we all live, and that my own confusing remarks caused it to be
> created, and then deleted, causing hurt feelings which are fully my
> own fault and much regretted.

Ahhah.

> In short, this is a unique historical situation that ought not to be
> viewed as creating a precedent.  I feel the same way about the sep11
> wiki, a project that we likely would not have undertaken or continued
> to support, except for a set of unique historical facts about how our
> project has evolved.

Yeah. Sure; absolutely true.

> I'm not really ready to declare an _exact_ policy for future cases,
> and it would be inappropriate of me to do so until we have more
> consensus building, but I think that we can easily recognize the broad
> outlines of a reasonable policy...

Snipping here, because all of it has been designed to be non-controversial,
and indeed has been nicely constructed with that view.

...

...

...

> ----
>
> I think almost everyone can agree with the outline above, but mostly
> because it's an abstract procedure that leaves us with no concrete
> guidance.  ;-) I'm good at that.  But I freely admit that the hard
> part is settling on a "rule" for the future.
>
> Some things that I think people can agree on about what the rule should
> look like:
>
> 1.  The rule should not tell us to have separate wikipedias for
> British English and Australian English and American English.  (Nor for
> "African-American Vernacular English", popularly called "ebonics", nor
> for "Southern American English", my own native dialect.)

Actually (and this is just about my only objection) you seem to be falling
into the same mistake here that was perpetrated with clumping Toki Pona,
Esperanto and Klingon with a bunch of other languages; except you are doing
it with a view to exclusion, rather than inclusion.

It is a singularly unhelpful approach to decide beforehand which languages
you want a universal rule to "justify" and which to "condemn"; and then to
_design_ a "universal" rule that would produce the wanted result.

To prove that I am not making a purely idle procedural point; consider
the grouping of "ebonics" here with the other varieties of speech.

As far as I understand it, Ebonics is motivated by a genuine political
desire towards recognition (even if not separatism). It therefore may well
have the "legs" to keep it going till eventual _actual_ separation from the
English Language occurs. This is supported by the fact that the people at
the center of the process have actually been _describing_ actual differences
of grammar between this "vernacular" and "English proper".

To take a strong stance against including a "Ebonics" wikipedia, when we
really have a poor view of its future evolution, is in my opinion counter-
productive.

To try to gerrymander a "universal rule" which would keep it out, would
(frankly) be ludicrous.

> 2.  The rule should provide some means of exclusion for vanity
> projects and extremely small (and thus unlikely to be successful)
> groups.
>
> 3.  The rule should be external to Wikipedia, based on some other
> official standards.  The reason for this is that this is only our
> default, and the whole purpose of the rule is to give us one less
> thing to argue about.  Let some international body make the decision,
> and then we follow it unless we do something unusual.
>
> --Jimbo


body:
Poor,-
> According to my reading of the edit history of [[Augusto Pinochet]],
> both 172 and VV engaged in a "more than 3 times" reversion war.

The edit war is mostly about whether the intro should state that the 1973
coup was "US backed", with some (primarily 172) arguing that this is an
indisputable fact, and others (primarily VV) holding that it is
controversial and therefore needs to be written in NPOV "many believe"
style. Majority opinion is on 172's side, and Encarta also uses the
"United States backed" phrase.

I initially agreed with VV that some compromise was needed, but last week
new evidence was revealed in the form of a transcript of a conversation
between Kissinger and Nixon, shortly after the coup, in which Kissinger
flat-out stated "We helped them" and Nixon responded "That's right". In my
opinion, in combination with the sum of the evidence (including a CIA memo
which states that Allende should be overthrown with a coup, and that the
American hand should be "well hidden"), this justifies the phrase "United
States backed". VV sees no reason to change his position.

172 has long proposed a compromise, namely a footnote behind the "United
States backed" to clarify what it means, but VV has ignored that
compromise. I have worked with him on another compromise intro with the
"many believe" phrase, but I feel this is no longer adequate in light of
the new evidence.

Both 172 and VV have edit warred repeatedly on the article in violation of
policy. In addition, there have been a number of personal attacks.

I'm against banning either of them from Wikipedia as a whole, but a 3
month ban from editing [[Augusto Pinochet]] may be a good idea. The sad
result of these edit wars is that the article has been protected for much
of its lifespan, which is obviously completely against the spirit of a
wiki.

I think that a quickpoll was held on the matter when quickpolls for three-
revert violations were still in effect. The result was a vote for banning
VV but not for banning 172. This is one of the reasons people, including
myself, have become skeptical about the procedure: it ends up as a
popularity contest. If we have a three revert rule, everyone should have
to respect it.

Regards,

Erik


body:
I wrote:
> However, please keep in mind the one-way incompatibility that would result
> from adopting a copyleft license

which should of course be "non-copyleft".


from_name: Daniel Mayer

body:
--- Toby Bartels <toby+wikipedia at math.ucr.edu> wrote:
>...
> But this is precisely the comparison that is relevant!
> The public domain, like CC-by, is free but not copyleft.
> And the public domain ''is'' made use of for derivative works
> more readily than copyleft material is.
> ...

Copyleft for content has existed for a very small part of the history of
copyright, so I wouldn't expect anything else at this point. The volume of PD
content vs copyleft content also does not compare (lots more PD but most of it
isn't very good).

My point about positive feedback is still valid here - each of those
proprietary derivative works are forks that for practical reasons can never be
combined to create something better. Effort is wasted making the same
improvements in many different ways when that effort ''could'' have been
condensed and combined into a smaller set of forks that could exchange bits and
pieces back and forth as needed. The time saved could be used to write more
content or further improve the wording of the old.

Proprietary forks dilute effort permanently while improvements to copyleft
forks can be backported to the original - or any other copyleft fork for that
matter. Thus copyleft encourages the freer exchange of knowledge (PD and
attribution-only licenses encourage the exchange in just one direction).

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
http://mail.yahoo.com


from_name: Timwi

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: a humble request about the category display bug

body:
Neil Harris wrote:

> An alternative solution is:
>
>
> ARTICLE TITLE
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>                                                   Categories: Foo | Bar
> ARTICLE BODY....
>
> which is likely to scale better for long lists of categories.

The solution I had in mind does scale perfectly for long lists of
categories, but I'm sorry my presentation of my idea was too incomplete
to show that.

My idea was to write:

   Categories: Foo | Bar

Article title

Parsed article text begins here.

This will introduce a spacing between the article title and the article
body *only* if the list of categories is long enough to be higher than
the article title.

Timwi


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Suggesting change to error message

body:
Josip Rodin wrote:

> Err, you don't need to remove the actual reason (inability to contact the
> database server) in order to make it "comprehensible". I wouldn't be
> surprised if the techies previously ignored the request because they refused
> to blithely dumb the message down.

What use is it to any user to know that the reason for the technical
difficulty is an inability to contact the database server? Regular users
do not (and are not supposed to nor expected to) care about this.

Regardless of that, though, the point was not to remove that -- if you
want, you can leave that in, I don't mind. What I dislike about the
message is that it says "the wiki" when the name of our website clearly
isn't "the wiki", that it doesn't state that the problem is temporary,
that it doesn't ask the user to try again later and that it doesn't
apologise for the inconvenience.

Timwi


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: What's the deal with categories?

body:
K Forstner wrote:

> Also, why should I change anything? I may be wrong.

Loads of people change loads of things all the time, and many of them
are wrong. Someone else fixes the wrongs over time. That's how Wikipedia
works.

> What's more, I'm not at
> all familiar with those new categorizations, I don't think they have been
> properly discussed, so why should I go ahead and contribute to something I'm
> not convinced of?

Because that's the best way to convince yourself of something (whether
it be "categories are great" or "categories are crap").

Timwi


from_name: Guillaume Blanchard

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: [Wikipedia-l] Brion Vibber Day

body:
Dankon, Brion !

Aoineko

----- Original Message -----
From: "Jimmy Wales" <jwales at bomis.com>
To: <wikipedia-l at wikimedia.org>; <wikien-l at wikimedia.org>
Sent: Tuesday, June 01, 2004 10:16 PM
Subject: [Wikipedia-l] Brion Vibber Day

> Saluton!
>
> I hereby decree, in my usual authoritarian and bossy manner, that
> today (June 1st) shall forever be known as Brion Vibber day.
> Wikipedians of the distant future will marvel at his incredible
> dedication and hard work, without which the project should have
> collapsed a long time ago.  Tonight at dinner, every Wikipedian should
> say a toast to Brion and his many inventions.
>
> On Brion Vibber day, Wikipedians everywhere greet each other in
> Esperanto.
>
> Dankon, Brion.
>
> Bondezirojn,
>
> --Jimbo
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Brion Vibber Day


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Brion Vibber Day

body:
Jimmy Wales wrote:

> I hereby decree, in my usual authoritarian and bossy manner, that
> today (June 1st) shall forever be known as Brion Vibber day.

In the cases of Magnus Manske day and Tim Starling day, you explicitly
specified what it was that made you declare these days. What is it in
this case?

(Maybe it's something obvious and I just missed it?)


from_name: Erik Zachte

subject: [Wikitech-l] EasyTimeline and WikiHiero enabled on all wikis

body:
TimWi wrote:
"Shouldn't it be called WikiTimeline? ;-)"

Although made specifically for Wikipedia it can be used outside a wiki
context.

Updating an existing timeline (e.g. correcting or adding an event) should be
easy indeed for uninitiated, yet creating an original design and fine-tuning
may easily take a couple of hours. I'm not sure everyone would consider that
'wikiwiki' enough. :)

Once I got some new features online, and unicode support added, I will work
on more examples, which can serve as a template.

----

Here are two great sites that may serve as inspiration, my hands itch to
recreate some of those timelines verbatim, but I'm afraid that would be 'not
done'.

Hyperhistory (e.g. click on button 'people' left, then on 'special
lifelines', right.
http://www.hyperhistory.com/online_n2/History_n2/a.html

I hope we will have a set like this in a years time (click on full size
image for any map), possibly even with images. The main effort will be to
gather all info without snatching everything from here (most of these maps
are based exclusively on data from Brittanica).
http://chaos1.hypermart.net/pg/world.html

Erik Zachte


from_name: Evan Prodromou

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Brion Vibber Day

body:
>>>>> "JW" == Jimmy Wales <jwales at bomis.com> writes:

    JW> On Brion Vibber day, Wikipedians everywhere greet each other
    JW> in Esperanto.

Vivu longe kaj bone Brion Vibber, la plejhelpema Vikipediisto!

~ESP

--
Evan Prodromou <evan at wikitravel.org>
Wikitravel - http://wikitravel.org/en/
The free, complete, up-to-date and reliable world-wide travel guide


from_name: Gabriel Wicke

subject: [Wikitech-l] parser trouble

body:
On Tue, 2004-06-01 at 16:29 +0200, Peter Danenberg wrote:
> > I think there's no debate that 2) is the way to go, however this will
> > most likely involve writing the parser in c (possibly as php extension)-
> > not very likely to happen in the next days.
>
>
>      Speaking  of which, Gabriel: has there been any serious
> deliberation on C?
>
>      I'm rewriting the lexer/parser for WikiTeX, and it  may
> be  an opportune time to design a system from the ground up;
> robust enough to take into account, for instance,  arbitrary
> tags and local languages.

One idea is to make the parser available as a php component and lobby to
get it included in future php versions- the tokenized parser we used
until recently can serve as a fallback for small (= not
performance-critical) installations. I think Taw wrote something along
these lines already (in ocaml), Magnus has something in C++ iirc and
JeLuF already experimented with Taw's parser as a php module. So there
are some bits already there to play with.

Gabriel Wicke


subject: [Wikitech-l] Idea regarding CSS, taxoboxes, etc.

body:
On Mon, 2004-05-31 at 00:12 +0100, Timwi wrote:
> Hi.
>
> I've played around with the /User:xyz/monobook.css feature today. It's
> incredibly cool. Not just because I can customise the look of the site
> for myself, but also because it's pretty damn flexible.
>
> However, almost all formatting for infoboxes like the taxoboxes and
> article series boxes (ignoring for a second the question whether we
> still want them, with the categorisation system in place now) is in the
> markup for those tables themselves.
>
> It should instead be in a Wikipedia-global CSS file.
>
> So my idea would be to have a [[Wikipedia:monobook-global.css]] or
> something like that, which contains the CSS for these boxes, and which
> is also wiki-editable, so as to allow users (or at least sysops) to
> define new classes for new kinds of elements as they are invented.
>
> Then
> (a) we can keep the styling out of the table mark-up
> (b) users can customise these things with the same flexibility as
>      everything else!
>
> Thoughts?

Strong support. Somebody should start to coordinate/collect these style
wishes- there's already a section in [[meta:Skins]] ([1]) about it.

Gabriel Wicke

1) http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skins#Generic_css_classes_for_content


from_name: VV

body:
This is my first ever posting to the mailing list.  Hi everybody!  I
wish the circumstances surrounding my introduction were more pleasant,
but alas I'm here because of this conflict, as I feel the need to
respond to a few of Eloquence's points.

> 172 has long proposed a compromise, namely a footnote behind the "United
> States backed" to clarify what it means, but VV has ignored that
> compromise.

Eloquence, I'm disappointed by this summary.

To say that I ignored this faux "compromise" is wholly untrue.  Both
Cadr and I have expended thousands of words explaining our objection.
172 has responded with evasiveness, word games, and personal attacks.
Just watch one of the long threads between him and Cadr to see how he
dances around the issues.

You've witnessed 172's behavior, have you not?  This does not come
through in your posting.

As for the "new" evidence, I not long ago laid out a detailed,
500-word case summarizing responses point by point.  No one has
refuted it.  172 is just resting on the protection.  Furthermore, I, Cadr, AstroNomer, and perhaps JamesMLane have all objected to this
wording.  Text which this many regular contributors strongly object to
is prima facie controversial (the bogus poll notwithstanding).

I know how people feel about revert wars, and I have likely hurt my
reputation by partaking in them.  But understand that I am tired of
allowing 172's bully tactics to carry the day.  And the quickpoll
experience, accurately relayed by Eloquence, demonstrates how
seriously the 3-revert "rule" is taken, even when it was supposedly
being enforced.

Of late I have been perusing the archives both here and on the 'pedia
and see *many* occasions of 172 exhibiting the same behavior in other
cases, with sometimes even talk of banning (e.g., a thread "It's time
for 172 to be banned").  It is bad enough he claims "ownership" of
certain articles and reverts others' edits, but in this case he came
to an article others were working on, erased our work, reverted
attempts to restore it even in part, and began dictating terms to the
editors (e.g., "If [the edit] makes you uncomfortable, you'll probably
have to bear it", "I offered you a footnote... take it or leave it").

Perhaps the question comes down to whether a user who does make
valuable contributions but grossly flouts standards of neutrality,
civility, and conduct is desirable.  You can guess my answer.

Best,
VeryVerily

_______________________________________________
No banners. No pop-ups. No kidding.
Make My Way your home on the Web - http://www.myway.com


from_name: Jimmy Wales

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Brion Vibber Day

body:
Timwi wrote:
> Jimmy Wales wrote:
>
> >I hereby decree, in my usual authoritarian and bossy manner, that
> >today (June 1st) shall forever be known as Brion Vibber day.
>
> In the cases of Magnus Manske day and Tim Starling day, you explicitly
> specified what it was that made you declare these days. What is it in
> this case?
>
> (Maybe it's something obvious and I just missed it?)

With Magnus Manske and Tim Starling, yes, it was a single unique
achievement at a point in time.  Brion's award is a lifetime
achievement award.  He's done so much, for so long, it was impossible
to single out any one thing.

Since I'm planning to keep doing this once per year, and since there
are so many deserving people, it's going to have to be more of a
lifetime achievement sort of thing.

--Jimbo


from_name: Abe Sokolov

body:
Sigh.

Below taken from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_comment/172#Outside_view

==Outside view==

''This is a summary written by users not directly involved with the dispute but who would like to add an outside view of the dispute.''

I completely disagree. 172 has shown considerable restraint, given his professional expertise in this field. Meanwhile, I see little evidence that the other parties to the dispute really understand the content as well as him. I can only wonder if they are really interested in the quality of the encyclopedia or just having their own voices heard.

Users who endorse this summary (sign with <nowiki>~~~~</nowiki>):

# [[User:Danny|Danny]] 00:05, 22 May 2004 (UTC)

# [[User:Hephaestos|Hephaestos]]|[[User talk:Hephaestos|§]] 00:09, 22 May 2004 (UTC)

#[[User:Mirv|—No-One]][[User talk:Mirv| ''Jones'']] 02:19, 25 May 2004 (UTC)

# [[User:Viajero|Viajero]] 17:12, 26 May 2004 (UTC)

# [[User:Tannin|Tannin]] 01:57, 30 May 2004 (UTC)

# [[User:Markalexander100|Markalexander100]] 03:06, 30 May 2004 (UTC)

# [[User:Sj|+sj]][[User Talk:Sj|+]] 07:06, 30 May 2004 (UTC)

# [[User:Eclecticology|Eclecticology]] 07:08, 30 May 2004 (UTC)

#[[User:G-Man|G-Man]] 11:59, 30 May 2004 (UTC)

''This is a summary written by users not directly involved with the dispute but who would like to add an outside view of the dispute.''

Below taken from See http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Talk:Augusto_Pinochet&oldid=3762775#Another_poll

==Another poll==

Is the assertion of U.S. backing for the coup misleading or controversial in [[Augusto Pinochet/intro (succinct version)]], even in the presence of the footnote?

:This is loaded phrasing. I do not consider it misleading, but the simple fact that this discussion is taking place is proof that it is controversial. [[User:Eclecticology|Eclecticology]] 17:07, 2004 May 19 (UTC)

::Ec, this is asking whether or not the assertion is controversial, as opposed to an undisputable fact, not whether U.S. actions were 'controversial'. [[User:172|172]]

[IMO "even in the presence of a footnote" should not be in the question, because some of us do not want a footnote even if we think it goes some way towards clearing up the NPOV issue. [[User:Cadr|Cadr]] ]

:::AFAIC, this shouldnt be considered "controversial." -[[User:Stevertigo|Ste]][[User_talk:Stevertigo|vertigo]] 03:34, 22 May 2004 (UTC)

'''Yes:'''

# By 172's own definition (see the discussion in section 10) the possible meanings of "backed" include "aided", so the word is misleading. 172 should also note that readers of this article are unlikley to look up every word they read in a dictionary, and should take the context of the word into account (as VV points out in his previous comment). [[User:Cadr|Cadr]]

#:My own definition to "back" (v) is ''American Heritage's'', which is to provide support, assistance, '''''or''''' encouragement for (a contending force). It does not necessarily entail the provision of "aid." Cadr is putting words in my mouth; I said "or" as opposed to "and" when I has written the word "aid" once (very hastily). [[User:172|172]] 11:49, 19 May 2004 (UTC)

#::The fact that you said "and" instead of "or" is of no significance, as I've pointed out already. If one possible meaning of "US-backed" is "US-supported" or "US-assisted" ''or'' "US-aided" (going on 172's earlier, different definition), the word is misleading. (There is no conclusive evidence that the US assisted/aided the actual 1973 coup). [[User:Cadr|Cadr]]

# The US didn't back the coup. Am I missing something here? Why would we say they backed it if they didn't? POV perhaps? [[User:Sam Spade|Sam]] [[http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=User_talk:Sam_Spade&action=edit&section=new '''Spade''']] 12:21, 19 May 2004 (UTC)

## Actually the US did back the coup. Nixon even said so [http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB110/#docs on tape]. Welcome to 'Real US Foreign Policy, le?on 1.' -[[User:Stevertigo|Ste]][[User_talk:Stevertigo|vertigo]] 03:33, 22 May 2004 (UTC)

'''No:'''

#I recommend that respondents look up the dictionary definition for backing (n) or to back (v). [[User:172|172]] 11:31, 19 May 2004 (UTC) "Backing" does not mean "instigated," "initiated," "orchestrated," "engineered," etc. [[User:172|172]] 11:31, 19 May 2004 (UTC)

#This entire debate is utter nonsense. The historical record is clear: Nixon and Kissinger wanted Allende out and the CIA went about engineering it by funding the opposition, spreading FUD, and the like. The day of the coup, the American reporter Charles Horman was in Vi?a del Mar, near the port of Valpara?so, which was a key base for both the Chilean coup plotters and US military and intelligence personnel who were supporting them. He spoke with several US operatives and took notes documenting the role of the United States in overthrowing the Allende government. Several days later he was arrested and executed by the Chilean armed forces. His family believes this was because he (accidently) bore witnesss the US role in the affair. 'Backing'? Yep, I'd call it backing, although perhaps we could debate how active a role the CIA et al played in the coup, but nobody is claiming that the CIA itself bombed La Moneda -- [[User:Viajero|Viajero]] 16:03, 19 May 2004 (UTC)

#:OK, so where is all the evidence for this? (I expect it's all correct, but so far no-one has linked to any hard evidence.) [[User:Cadr|Cadr]]

#::Cadr, this is a poll, not a debate. Please allow other users to chime in. [[User:172|172]] 18:17, 19 May 2004 (UTC)

#:::Erm yes...and this is not an argument ;) Other users are free to chime in, anyway. [[User:Cadr|Cadr]]

#::::cf: ''Missing'' by Thomas Hauser (1982) ISBN 01400.64532 (Sorry, not everything in the world is online) -- [[User:Viajero|Viajero]] 19:57, 19 May 2004 (UTC)

#:::::OK, so is there any evidence in it more concrete than the beliefs of a reporter's family? (Again, I would not be at all surprised if it does contain such evidence, ''but no-one has yet explained what it is'', even vaguely.) [[User:Cadr|Cadr]]

#I thought that the U.S. (unofficial but institutional) support for the coup in Chile was widely known and uncontroversial. Are people disputing the facts or the choice of words? Certainly this issue must be in the article. [[User:Slrubenstein|Slrubenstein]] 15:27, 19 May 2004 (UTC)

#*See the discussion if you want to know what the controversy is. (That is, you should have already.) [[User:VeryVerily|V]][[User talk:VeryVerily|V]] 21:31, 19 May 2004 (UTC)

#*It deals with [[Augusto Pinochet/intro (succinct version)|the wording in this version of the intro]], which VeryVerily and Cadr deem "controversial" and "misleading," regardless of the footnote and the definition of 'backing'. [[User:172|172]] 15:50, 19 May 2004 (UTC)

#*:I don't find it particularly misleading with the footnote, but I don't like the footnote for independent reasons (i.e. that it would be far better to replace it with a proper explanation of US involvement, rather than trying to clarify single vague adjective). [[User:Cadr|Cadr]]

#[[User:Wik|Wik]] 15:33, May 19, 2004 (UTC)

#[[User:Hephaestos|Hephaestos]]|[[User talk:Hephaestos|§]] 15:35, 19 May 2004 (UTC)

#[[User:Infrogmation|Infrogmation]] 15:48, 19 May 2004 (UTC)

#Like Slrubenstein, I'd never thought this was controversial until I saw the argument here. [[User:John Kenney|john]] 16:06, 19 May 2004 (UTC)

# [[User:Ruhrjung|Ruhrjung]] 16:32, 19 May 2004 (UTC) No, it's the other way around. It's an issue of Wikipedia's credibility outside of the US. (Inside the US I recognize that not so few citizens, ignorant of US foreign politics, could deem this issue controversial – I know such people myself.)

#*Yes, yes, more about us dumb ignorant Puritan Americans and how we lack the sophistication and wisdom of you European intellectuals. Now, any ''substantive'' counterarguments, perchance? (P.s. You acknowledge "not so few"; see how that connects to NPOV policy?) [[User:VeryVerily|V]][[User talk:VeryVerily|V]] 21:31, 19 May 2004 (UTC)

#**Puritan yes – dumb no, not except for in your rhetoric above. Since I was 17 and started full-time apprenticeship, I admit to have studied the foreign language of the country where I live in any way resembling school. "Intellectual" - just the right accusation to throw at me! Common Americans being more ignorant of their country's foreign politics than the electorates of other democracies, that's a fact. The arguments are very well presented by plenty of others. There is no need to repeat those. I added what I hold for the most important, i.e. that of Wikipedia's credibility (outside of the US). [[User:Ruhrjung|Ruhrjung]] 17:41, 20 May 2004 (UTC)

#***Supposed credibility over neutrality? Once again, I think you confuse your own personal opinions with those of the "rest of the world" (i.e., not the US). Which electorates of other democracies do you refer to, anyway? India? Nigeria? Oh no, wait, I know which you mean. P.s. I can't make head or tail of the "I admit..." sentence. [[User:VeryVerily|V]][[User talk:VeryVerily|V]] 07:42, 21 May 2004 (UTC)

#[[User:AndyL|AndyL]] 16:36, 19 May 2004 (UTC) Even conservative analysts admit the US was involved in the coup. The only reason for claiming this question hasn't been settled is POV.

#[[User:Eclecticology|Eclecticology]] 17:07, 2004 May 19 (UTC) Not misleading. Under protest against using polls as a way to establish facts.

#[[User:Everyking|Everyking]] 19:11, 19 May 2004 (UTC)

#[[User:Hajor|–''Hajor'']] 20:18, 19 May 2004 (UTC) Not misleading; certainly not controversial in my neck of the woods. But not particularly happy about voting to establish facts, or about call-outs to footnotes in articles. Uncle Ed's suggestion below would be useful, if only we could get the right quotes (doubtful).

#[[User:Secretlondon|Secretlondon]] - I had no idea people still disputed this.

#*Welcome to the outside of the box. [[User:VeryVerily|V]][[User talk:VeryVerily|V]] 21:31, 19 May 2004 (UTC)

#I wasn't going to vote on this, because I thought the poll question missed the mark. The issue isn't whether a particular wording is misleading, etc., but rather what's the best way to present the subject. I don't like the footnote. I thought the best approach was an in-text summary in the introduction, avoiding the word "backed," even though living with some nuance made for a longer intro. To that end I essayed a revision of the first-created sandbox. I tried to meet Cadr's objection to my initial version. Now, however, I find that VeryVerily has edited it so as to eviscerate any discussion of this issue in the intro.
It seems, then, that each side has its own sandbox and the two sides continue to talk past each other. With regard to the intro, 172 wants a flat statement of "backed," somewhat qualified in a footnote, while VV wants a mere allusion to what "many believe," with no indication in the intro that they have any factual basis for their beliefs. ''As between those two
 extremes'' (CIA role stated as fact versus CIA role stated as mere unsupported opinion, albeit opinion of "many"), I prefer the former, although the specific wording of the footnote would need some work.
I still think the footnote is, by its nature, an inelegant solution. It would be better for the text of the intro to state a few key evidentiary points, including the CIA's denial, rather than present the conclusion as an established fact. If other people agree with me, and say so and/or restore key data to the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augusto_Pinochet/intro original intro sandbox], then perhaps we have a chance of reaching consensus on that approach. Until then, I'm going to turn my attention to editing the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augusto_Pinochet/intro_(succinct_version) "succinct version"] of the intro.
Finally, on the issue of recruitment: 172 did urge me to vote in this poll. I ignored his urging for the reasons stated above. I have now been "recruited" to
 vote by VV's edit, not by 172's electioneering. [[User:JamesMLane|JamesMLane]] 00:13, 20 May 2004 (UTC)

#*It's your vote, but puzzling reasoning: you're not voting on the question asked in the poll. Anyway, the whole point of the sandbox is to experiment. I gave my reasons (several times) for my edits, which (perhaps ironically) largely come to succintness: the ''intro'' does not need to lay out the evidence, that's what the ''article'' for. The intro serves to summarize. Fercrissakes, look at the [[Augusto Pinochet|article]], nearly ''half'' of which is now about the CIA. [[User:VeryVerily|V]][[User talk:VeryVerily|V]] 00:36, 20 May 2004 (UTC)

#**My vote is that the wording being polled is not misleading (the question asked in the poll) but that the wording also isn't good. Sorry if that wasn't clear. I agree that the intro should summarize, not present the whole discussion, but it involves striking a balance between, on the one hand, going into too much detail about the facts, and, on the other hand, simply saying "many believe" with no allusion whatsoever to the facts until later on. I don't think your edit version makes any attempt to strike that balance. Your version isn't a summary, it's a reference. My idea was that something taking up nearly half the article, as you put it, deserves a bit more space in the intro. I tried to put in a few critical points that would, for example, in response to SamSpade's inquiry, show that there are indeed references available, while also noting the CIA's denial and leaving the full elaboration for later in the article. My hope was that we could work out a consensus summary. Perhaps I
 was unduly optimistic. [[User:JamesMLane|JamesMLane]] 02:48, 20 May 2004 (UTC)

# I like the internet, and how people can talk on it and stuff. -[[User:Stevertigo|Ste]][[User_talk:Stevertigo|vertigo]] 03:33, 22 May 2004 (UTC)

# [[User:Warofdreams|Warofdreams]] 17:08, 25 May 2004 (UTC)

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from_name: Fred Bauder

body:
You caught yourself in a trap. 172 consistently distorts a number of
articles in order to soften the impact of leftist totalitarianism. But he
would like Wikipedia articles to be rather plain-spoken about reactionary
atrocities which the Chilean coup certainly was. No reasonable person doubts
that the CIA backed Augusto Pinochet. To folks in the know it was obvious in
1973. So when you try to put a positive spin on this monster, who indeed is
small potatos as compared to the typical Stalinist despot, you try to create
the same false impression that 172 regularly works toward. Thus you bring
both camps down on your head.

I have recused myself in this matter, for those who are interested.

Fred

> From: "VV" <veryverily at myway.com>
> Reply-To: veryverily at myway.com, English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Date: Wed,  2 Jun 2004 04:15:25 -0400 (EDT)
> To: wikien-l at Wikipedia.org
> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Can we ban 172 now? And VV too!
>
>
> This is my first ever posting to the mailing list.  Hi everybody!  I
> wish the circumstances surrounding my introduction were more pleasant,
> but alas I'm here because of this conflict, as I feel the need to
> respond to a few of Eloquence's points.
>
>
>> 172 has long proposed a compromise, namely a footnote behind the "United
>> States backed" to clarify what it means, but VV has ignored that
>> compromise.
>
> Eloquence, I'm disappointed by this summary.
>
> To say that I ignored this faux "compromise" is wholly untrue.  Both
> Cadr and I have expended thousands of words explaining our objection.
> 172 has responded with evasiveness, word games, and personal attacks.
> Just watch one of the long threads between him and Cadr to see how he
> dances around the issues.
>
> You've witnessed 172's behavior, have you not?  This does not come
> through in your posting.
>
>
> As for the "new" evidence, I not long ago laid out a detailed,
> 500-word case summarizing responses point by point.  No one has
> refuted it.  172 is just resting on the protection.  Furthermore, I, Cadr,
> AstroNomer, and perhaps JamesMLane have all objected to this
> wording.  Text which this many regular contributors strongly object to
> is prima facie controversial (the bogus poll notwithstanding).
>
>
> I know how people feel about revert wars, and I have likely hurt my
> reputation by partaking in them.  But understand that I am tired of
> allowing 172's bully tactics to carry the day.  And the quickpoll
> experience, accurately relayed by Eloquence, demonstrates how
> seriously the 3-revert "rule" is taken, even when it was supposedly
> being enforced.
>
> Of late I have been perusing the archives both here and on the 'pedia
> and see *many* occasions of 172 exhibiting the same behavior in other
> cases, with sometimes even talk of banning (e.g., a thread "It's time
> for 172 to be banned").  It is bad enough he claims "ownership" of
> certain articles and reverts others' edits, but in this case he came
> to an article others were working on, erased our work, reverted
> attempts to restore it even in part, and began dictating terms to the
> editors (e.g., "If [the edit] makes you uncomfortable, you'll probably
> have to bear it", "I offered you a footnote... take it or leave it").
>
>
> Perhaps the question comes down to whether a user who does make
> valuable contributions but grossly flouts standards of neutrality,
> civility, and conduct is desirable.  You can guess my answer.
>
>
> Best,
> VeryVerily
>
> _______________________________________________
> No banners. No pop-ups. No kidding.
> Make My Way your home on the Web - http://www.myway.com
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l


from_name: ZH Wikipedia

subject: [Wikitech-l] Chinese WP fonts unreadably small

body:
Dear skin designer-developer(s),

Chinese characters have many many more strokes than Roman letters. So
the current MonoBook font size at Chinese WP is very hard on the eye.

Almost every single Chinese user who experienced the skin have pointed
out that the font size's difficult to read.

Please increase it to at least 11pt so ZH WP is ... minimally readable.

Xiexie,

Menchi


subject: [Wikitech-l] Parser testing page

body:
I've created a page for testing and debugging our parser:
http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parser_testing

It's far from complete, but anyone with a knowledge of our syntax can add
to it and I hope it grows into something useful. So if you want to help
debugging the software but don't know how, please contribute here.

There should be one section for each test. A test can consist of a variety
of individual cases, all of which should be added first as  <pre>..</pre>,
then verbatim, so that the difference between user input and parser output
can be seen.

One bug I noticed is that mixed lists seem to no longer work, unless I'm
missing something. I also think that we shouldn't use stuff like "left"
and "50px" as image alt text.

It's not always obvious what we *want* our behavior to be. Right now I'm
assuming that everything the parser does is correct unless the result is
really strange.

Kudos to Jens for the image caption parsing code, it seems to grok almost
anything.

Regards,

Erik


from_name: Stan Shebs

body:
Abe Sokolov wrote:

>Sigh.
>
>Below taken from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_comment/172#Outside_view
>
>
Heh, carefully selective quoting. Why don't you quote some of your
personal abuse and ad hominems too?

Stan


from_name: Jerome Jamnicky

subject: [Wikitech-l] will overheating?

body:
I noticed some messages while logged in to will today:

Message from syslogd at will at Tue Jun  1 20:21:45 2004 ...
will kernel: CPU0: Temperature above threshold

Message from syslogd at will at Tue Jun  1 20:21:45 2004 ...
will kernel: CPU1: Temperature above threshold

Message from syslogd at will at Tue Jun  1 20:21:45 2004 ...
will kernel: CPU1: Running in modulated clock mode

Message from syslogd at will at Tue Jun  1 20:21:45 2004 ...
will kernel: CPU0: Running in modulated clock mode

.. and so on, continuing until 20:41 - which suggests that someone might have
forgotten to plug in a fan or two.  Jimbo, if you're heading to the colo
tomorrow, could you take a look at it please?

-Jerome


from_name: K Forstner

subject: [WikiEN-l] What's really the deal with categories?

body:
----- Original Message -----
From: "Timwi" <timwi at gmx.net>
To: <wikien-l at wikipedia.org>
Sent: Wednesday, June 02, 2004 1:46 AM
Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: What's the deal with categories?

> K Forstner wrote:
>
> > Also, why should I change anything? I may be wrong.
>
> Timwi's answer: Loads of people change loads of things all the time, and
many of them
> are wrong. Someone else fixes the wrongs over time. That's how Wikipedia
> works.

And let me add now once more: No, that's NOT how Wikipedia works for me.
Anyone may be unintentionally wrong, but if I'm not sure to begin with, this
is certainly NOT a good prerequisite for changing an article, even if it's a
minor thing. It's just a lot more work for the rest of us correcting the
mistake(s) again.

> > What's more, I'm not at
> > all familiar with those new categorizations, I don't think they have
been
> > properly discussed, so why should I go ahead and contribute to something
I'm
> > not convinced of?
>
> Timwi's answer: Because that's the best way to convince yourself of
something (whether
> it be "categories are great" or "categories are crap").

And again I can't say I understand this. You know, I've got used to waiting
and seeing what will happen. It seems anyone (a single contributor) can
create a new category, merge existing ones, rename them, whatever. Soon the
same questions, those we had when lots of lists where being created, will
crop up: Where do we draw the line? Do we need a category "People whose left
index finger is crippled"? etc. etc.

By the way, I'm not a cunctator. I'm certainly NOT reluctant to contribute
something to Wikipedia, including making major changes. But as I said, I
have to be convinced BEFOREHAND that a particular change is a good thing.

All the best,

KF


from_name: Karl Eichwalder

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Wikimedia Commons

body:
Jimmy Wales <jwales at bomis.com> writes:

> I think it would be very nice to be able to have portfolios of images
> of specific topics, even when we only use 1 or 2 of the images in a
> particular article on a particular wikipedia.

I'd like to support your proposal.

> For example, we might quickly end up with 50 different pictures of the
> Leaning Tower of Pisa.

Yes, those series are very useful.  Don't hesitate to upload detailed
pictures (with descriptions, of course) and link them together on a main
page.

--
                                                         |      ,__o
                                                         |    _-\_<,
http://www.gnu.franken.de/ke/                            |   (*)/'(*)


from_name: Jim Kork

subject: [WikiEN-l] RE: WikiEN-l Digest, Vol 11, Issue 4

body:
First of all, let's keep in mind what we are trying to find here. We are not
trying to show that I made mistakes or you made mistakes, what we are trying
to do is to show that whether I have vandalized wikipedia or not. So, please
keep your claims in check and don't go over the board and depict me as
hostile, since disagreeing is normal, what is not normal is claiming that
the other person is a vandalizer. I hope you keep that in mind.

"Blanking an article is an extreme act, & is bound to offend many people
even if done by a seasoned contributor who has much experience & has earned
much trust. You did that with no explanation, & after having your edits
twice
rejected; sorry, but anyone will read that as pushing your own POV without
concern for the views or feelings of other people who contribute to
Wikipedia."
I think, you didn't read my earlier emails. Please, please, please
understand that with the earlier version of wikipedia I couldn't figure out
how to leave a comment for my changes. In fact I thought only privileged
users could do that.

"I think you read too much into the point of the article. Someone was
abusing Usenet in a very clumsy fashion to push his political agenda: that
was the entire point of the Serdar Argic episode. But instead of asking
questions about the intent of the article on the Talk page, or explain
how it came over to you, you decided to blank it without a justification
for your act to anyone."
Again and again, I couldn't figure out the talk page until the design change
in wikipedia. Before replying, if you dared to read the blocking policy of
wikipedia you would realize that, such mistakes are not considered to be
vandalizing.

"If you could figure out how to make changes to an article, why couldn't you
figure out how to discuss making changes to it?  Help me understand this:
when I came to Wikipedia, I understood how to both make changes & add
comments to articles; you claim that you couldn't figure this out, which
means that our interface as somehow broken."
You may believe it or not, if I was lying, I wouldn't come here and complain
about this. My ban is lifted already. The point is that, if you do not want
to understand people having problem with the wikipedia's interface (the old
one), you can never improve wikipedia. If everybody was like you, maybe the
interface wouldn't change at all. Now, in every page I can clearly see all
the actions and it makes perfect sense to me, previously I didn't realize
that there was a discussion page at all, though I read references to such
pages. As I said, I thought only certain users can access to such pages. Oh,
editing the article is easy, because there was a link that says edit this
page. From my earlier experience with wikis, I have never seen such
discussion pages, I think that past experience is the real reason why I
couldn't figure out discussion pages.

"I've read the Wikipedia article: Genocide is the intentional mass murder
of people based on their ethnic heritage. A large number of Armenians were
killed on the basis of their ethnic background -- you admit that this
happened. However, you then talk about people dying in a war, which does
not logically follow."
So are you saying that during the wars, there were genocides. Say, American
bombers bombing Japan cities were actually part of a Japanese genocide?
Please, put everything in perspective, and try to get to the bottom of this,
instead of simply saying this is a genocide. There are so many aspects of
this issue, and yet the article currently is not credible enough.

"I would hazard a guess here about what you are trying to say, but I find
it hard to be sympathetic after you've called me "arrogant". If you want
to start an argument over this topic, I'm sure you can find a better
combatant elsewhere: I'm just trying to explain how your behavior is hurting
your participation here on Wikipedia."
So far, my only mistake is not being able to understand how to edit,
discuss, leave reasons and so on. With the new design all these problems are
solved for me.

"1. On 13 May 2004, the number of victims of the was given as between
500,000
and 2,000,000 dead, but 1,500,000 is the most commonly accepted number.
2. You subsequently changed the numbers to "between 300,000 and 2,000,000
dead" and to 500,000 as the most commonly accepted number; these numbers
were reverted to the first set of numbers on 18 May.
3. Once again you changed the numbers, this time to "between 300,000 and
1,000,000" and to 400,000 as the most commonly accepted total; & once again
these numbers were reverted, on 22 May.
4. Again you changed the numbers, this time the range was "between 200,000
and 1,000,000", & while you left the most commonly accepted total unchanged,
you changed the figure Toynbee is said to have estimated. These numbers
were once again restored to the original figures on 24 May.
5. Then you changed the figures once last time, giving a range of "between
100,000 and 1,500,000 died" & the most commonly accepted number to
300,000, as well as deleting McCarthy's estimate. These were restored on
30 May."
I have read so many documents on this issue, since I don't know how to
revert a change (get back an older one) I edited that part multiple times.
In some instances I remembered the numbers wrong and in some case misread
one number. I don't memorize all the numbers, and during my edits I make
mistakes. You can find other mistakes too, not just numbers. Now, I am
editing in my local computer first and then posting it. Also I save the
document locally so that I can later on read what I wrote exactly, trying to
do that through browser is somewhat complicated and long.

"The only consistent pattern I can see to these changes are that you kept
trying to reduce the numbers"
I am not trying to reduce the numbers, that is quite childish, however those
numbers should be reduced based on the resources I have read (including
credible Armenian and Turkish resources). The article is quite ridicilous
here, for example it says 1'500'000 is the normally accepted number. There
is no such historic acceptance. As I said, this article looks more like a
propaganda article, rather than an objective one which provides all sides of
the equation.

"You deleted or altered verifiable facts (e.g., what Toynbee & McCarthy
wrote)."
That was a mistake while I was editing it. Though McCarthy seem to be
disputed.

"As a couple of veteran Wikipedians have said in another thread,
if you don't agree with what is stated, why don't you instead provide better
facts instead of changing them? Can't you take the time to find authorities
who attest to the lower numbers you offered, & thereby improve quality of
the article's content? I don't know where the original figures for the
casualties came form, but the fact 3 or 4 different editors agreed on one
set of numbers is far more convincing than the 4 different numbers you
supplied without attribution."
First of all, which editors are you talking about? Are there specific
editors for articles, or are you talking about in general users who modify
the articles? Second, I already mentioned that I will do a better job in
providing more resources, however that doesn't change the fact that the
current article as it stands is not objective enough and needs editing. You
don't put few numbers there and declare them to be the accepted norm by
yourself, you need to do some serious research. From the research I have
done (involves both sides) I couldn't see such an accepted number and I
should also mention that the accepted number happen to be the higher end of
the range in the article! Also, from the population numbers given in the
article, the detah numbers seem to be quite unreliable and somewhat
conflicting.

"First, I didn't call you a vandal: the point of my original email was to
explain how your contributions were not taken seriously."
But blocking due to vandalism is the reason why I send the initial email. I
see that to be a serious contributor I need to do more, but how can I learn
if you simply block me. The blocking policy clearly shows when to block, how
to block. You can't block because you disagree with me, you have to block
when I am in fact vandalizing.

"I still hope this is the case: Wikipedia is in constant need of
contributors who want to
improve its content."
I also realized that and I am trying to contribute as much as possible, not
just in these controversial issues, but others too. Recently I started to
use Wikipedia heavily and realized that it is quite good in certain number
of subjects.

"Yet if you consider my attempt at constructive criticism is nothing more
than calling you a "vandal", then I feel that I'm at a loss to convince you
otherwise."
I do take your constructive criticism seriously, and I do hope that in my
replies I reflect that. But again, this email was sent because the blocking
page said me to send it if the blocking violates the blocking policy, and as
I tried to express, it does. I didn't vandalize anything and I didn't
attempt to do that. Blocking policy page is quite clear about my actions.

"When I first read your second sentence, I was puzzled over how what
relevance
this had to my statement: I had expressed an opinion about a weakness in the
article; you somehow understood this as a statement about you."
Sorry, if I misunderstand you.

"Then I remembered in my original email I wrote that "everyone except
Turkish
nationals" believe this. Absolute statements are always hazardous: I should
have written "almost everyone except Turkish nationals"."
I disagree here. I don't know too much Turkish guys, but I do know some, and
they all know what happened. Turkish historians know what happened. The
problem here is how you describe those events and what do you call them.
That's the main problem and this issue turned into a political game (France
signed a law about this historic debate!). I have also seen people accusing
Turkey of being an oil rich country (which it is not and quite funny) and
that because of this reason Turkish point of view is accepted in US
government. Let's be more accurate on these issues.

"And that statement is a fair one: I Googled on the phrase "Armenian
Genocide",
& got 105,000 hits. The first few pages were all on pages that believed
that it was a historical fact: one (http://www.cilicia.com/armo10c.html)
was a collection of contemporary articles from the New York Times detailing
the events; another
(http://www.umd.umich.edu/dept/armenian/facts/gen_bibl.html)
is a list of publications about this event, which includes a number of
reports published by the League of Nations investigating the event."
I am quite puzzled the way you are trying to show me that I am wrong.
Everybody uses the term "Armenian Genocide" including the Turkish resources,
because that's the issue you are talking about. Obviously you will find that
many links on the net. Another point is that, putting more and more number
of pages do not make this a truth, remember google bombing? Finally, your
second link "http://www.umd.umich.edu/dept/armenian/facts/gen_bibl.html"
gave me "no longer available" page. I hoped you put more effort to check out
your references and a better way of doing that. As an example search for
"Web Standards" in google and see the first page, it is not W3C. By the way,
again, nobody says nothing have happened, and that's maybe part of the
problem, since you quickly jump into the conclusion that "so, you see it is
a genocide". Unfortunately that's not that easy.

"My point of mentioning all of this evidence is not to prove that it
happened,
but to show you that you have a lot of work ahead of you to present the
Turkish POV in convincing way. And making deletions from an IP address, &
offering only the most brief explanations is not going to do it."
I don't know exactly what Turkish POV, and I don't think there is one. What
I am trying to do is to make the article more credible, more objective and
more appealing to the reader. Right now, you read something like a
propaganda. The person who blocked me claimed that I am Serdar Argic, for
example. If the idea is to make Wikipedia credible and serious, these hotly
debated articles should be as objective as possible. Right now, the whole
article is just saying that Turkish government is evil and that they deny
what had happened. It doesn't go the distance and present the whole issue
clearly to the reader. It is like a movie plot now, good guy, bad guy etc...

"Well, this is the first I have read about these claims. You would be better
off taking the time explaining these things & not deleting or altering what
you find objectionable. This article is not going anywhere; Wikipedia is not
going anywhere. The world won't end because any given article needs fixing:
I can think of dozens of articles that need work, but I won't be working
on soon because they need some research. Take the time to explain & document
these points, & they will better survive future edits."
As I said, once that I learnt how to edit and discuss I can be more helpful
on these issues. I wasn't trying to rush or anything. And once again, my
original poit was that this blocking was not right, since I didn't vandalize
anything. Though I am glad to learn more about wikipedia this way.

"It is not the fact you made changes. You made changes without concern
that other people disagreed with you, & continued to repeat them without
venturing into any form of dialogue until your IP address was blocked.
Instead
of responding to comments on your Talk page, you deleted them; instead of
providing better figures for casualties in [[Armenian Genocide]], you
changed them to lower numbers, seemingly picked at random."
I deleted the comments in my Talk page because it was accusing me of being
Serdar Argic! Also the person who left me that note says that he is going to
delete any other anonymous users's comments from his page. So where is the
justice here? Someone who deletes my comments is happy to leave a comment to
my page. That's why I deleted my talk page comment from RickK.

I hope I clearly explained why I couldn't discuss my changes or leave a
reason. In the old interface, I couldn't find how to leave a reason for
example. I also couldn't find the discussion page, actually I didn't know
that there is one, until I saw in a user page that mentions the discussion
pages. Anyway, this was not vandalizing. Vandalizing is quite clearly
explained in the blocking policy page.

"If I came to your house & put a new roof on for free, you would think that
was
an act of kindness; if I came to your house & threw a brick through one of
your windows, you would consider it an act of hostility. We want people to
come to Wikipedia & make our house better, not worse. Can you put yourself
in our place & see how we might consider your actions hostile?"

Wikipedia is everybody's house, including mine. ;)

Jim

_________________________________________________________________
Is your PC infected? Get a FREE online computer virus scan from McAfee?
Security. http://clinic.mcafee.com/clinic/ibuy/campaign.asp?cid=3963


subject:
[WikiEN-l] Can we ban 172 now? And VV too! (in response to	Fred
	Bauder)

body:
Fred Bauder wrote:

>You stand convicted by your own words. This exerpt is an excellent example,
>no famines, no mass murder, no gulag, no deportations. And most especially,
>no failure to produce enough to adequately feed the Soviet people.
>
>
>
No, he explains it right there where it's the people's fault for having
"poor
worker productivity" even though the main agricultural areas had produced
surpluses for export since ancient times.

Stan

>Fred
>
>
>
>>From: "Abe Sokolov" <abesokolov at hotmail.com>
>>Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
>>Date: Wed, 02 Jun 2004 14:37:19 +0000
>>To: wikien-l at Wikipedia.org
>>Subject: [WikiEN-l] Can we ban 172 now? And VV too! (in response to Fred
>>Bauder)
>>
>>==Agriculture==
>>
>>[[Agriculture]] was organized into a system of state and collective farms.
>>Organized on a large scale and highly mechanized, the Soviet Union was one
>>of the world's leading producers of cereals, although bad harvests (as in
>>[[1972]] and [[1975]]) necessitated imports and slowed the economy. The
>>[[1976]]-[[1980]] five-year plan shifted resources to agriculture, and
>>[[1978]] saw a record harvest. [[Cotton]], [[sugar beet]]s, [[potato]]es,
>>and [[flax]] were also major crops.
>>
>>Despite immense land resources, extensive machinery and chemical industries,
>>and a large rural work force, Soviet agriculture was relatively
>>unproductive, hampered in many areas by the [[climate]] (only 10 percent of
>>the Soviet Union's land was arable), and poor worker [[productivity]].
>>
>>Conditions were best in the temperate black-earth belt stretching from the
>>Ukraine through southern [[Russia]] into the west spanning the extreme
>>southern portions of [[Siberia]].
>>
>>Stalin established the USSR's system of state and collective farms when he
>>moved to replaced the NEP with collective farming in 1928, which grouped
>>peasants into collective farms (''[[kolkhoz]]es'') and state farms
>>(''[[sovkhoz]]es'').
>>
>>
>
>_______________________________________________
>WikiEN-l mailing list
>WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
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>
>
>


subject:
[WikiEN-l] Can we ban 172 now? And VV too! (in response to
	Fred Bauder)

body:
You stand convicted by your own words. This exerpt is an excellent example,
no famines, no mass murder, no gulag, no deportations. And most especially,
no failure to produce enough to adequately feed the Soviet people.

Fred

> From: "Abe Sokolov" <abesokolov at hotmail.com>
> Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Date: Wed, 02 Jun 2004 14:37:19 +0000
> To: wikien-l at Wikipedia.org
> Subject: [WikiEN-l] Can we ban 172 now? And VV too! (in response to Fred
> Bauder)
>
> ==Agriculture==
>
> [[Agriculture]] was organized into a system of state and collective farms.
> Organized on a large scale and highly mechanized, the Soviet Union was one
> of the world's leading producers of cereals, although bad harvests (as in
> [[1972]] and [[1975]]) necessitated imports and slowed the economy. The
> [[1976]]-[[1980]] five-year plan shifted resources to agriculture, and
> [[1978]] saw a record harvest. [[Cotton]], [[sugar beet]]s, [[potato]]es,
> and [[flax]] were also major crops.
>
> Despite immense land resources, extensive machinery and chemical industries,
> and a large rural work force, Soviet agriculture was relatively
> unproductive, hampered in many areas by the [[climate]] (only 10 percent of
> the Soviet Union's land was arable), and poor worker [[productivity]].
>
> Conditions were best in the temperate black-earth belt stretching from the
> Ukraine through southern [[Russia]] into the west spanning the extreme
> southern portions of [[Siberia]].
>
> Stalin established the USSR's system of state and collective farms when he
> moved to replaced the NEP with collective farming in 1928, which grouped
> peasants into collective farms (''[[kolkhoz]]es'') and state farms
> (''[[sovkhoz]]es'').


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Can we ban 172 now? And VV too! (in response to Fred
	Bauder)

body:
Abe Sokolov wrote:

> Over the past 18 months that I've been contributing to Wikipedia, I've
> been asking Fred over and over again to stop charging that I am a
> Stalinist, a Communist, or a Soviet supporter. These are outright
> lies. **I am not a Stalinist or a Communist.**
>
> However, I do not ask that readers of the mailing list believe take my
> word for it, but rather judge me by the work I've contributed to WP,
> as opposed to the second-hand lies and distortions on the mailing
> list. Enclosed in this e-mail below is an example of some of my work,
> which should put these stale lies and slandars to rest once and for all.

( very, very long-winded snip)

I was sorely tempted to respond to VV's posting with the single word,
"Bullshit!" but I managed to dig down and find a hidden source of
restraint.

Fred is a known quantity when it comes to left/right issues.  - He has a
tendency to paint every left-leaning philosophy Red with the blood of
the left's own extremists, but tends to be one of the more constructive
persons when he is away from those crusades.

Given that, I considered his response to the VV posting to be high
praise of your approach to Pinochet.  It is a small blessing that he
will not give you very often.

I am fully aware that your battle with VV goes well beyond the Pinochet
article, but the painful solution to these conflicts will need to happen
one article at a time.  A solution to this problem will not
automatically imply a solution to the edit wars over Stalinist era
history or the My-Lai massacre.

I am no fan of the 3-revert rule or quickpolls.  These two attempts at
solution may marginalize the most vocal warriors, but they do absolutely
nothing for the article being disputed.  The Wikipedia ultimately is
about its articles and not about those who write those articles.

Historiographical standards are difficult for many people to understand,
tainted as they are by one's association with a particular view and
vested interests in a conflict.  People are too easily influenced by the
propaganda that was required to insure patriotism.  The history of these
political conflicts is usually created by the victors who apply a
post-bellum extension of the might-is-right doctrine.  In the middle
ages it may have been appropriate to have your truth established by your
knight champion, but objectively that is very poor historiography.

Ec


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] RSS-Feeds

body:
Jakob wrote:
> [[meta:MediaWiki_roadmap]] states that RSS syndication is available for many
> special pages, such as Special:Newpages. Which special pages are you talking
> of?

Right now, Newpages and Recentchanges only.

> http://meta.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Special:Categories
>
> There is a Link in the Toolbox (rss/atom) but it does not work?

Odd. That shouldn't show.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: contributions to HU wiki

body:
Timwi wrote:
> Hi Brion,
>
> of course, all you say is kind of true, and I understand you found the
> initial message a little vague. But at the same time, I must frankly say
> that I find your handling of this case rather cold and inconsiderate.
> You dismiss it as "not a problem" simply because there is not enough
> information *to you* to conclude that there is a problem.

Sorry, I don't mean to say there *definitely is no problem*. But if
you're going to start accusing people, you need to accuse them of
something in particular, not just demand that people who haven't seen
any of what you're talking censure the other guy.

As of apogr's follow-up post, all we've got is that this guy wrote a
couple pages which were removed on an apparent copyright issue. Then the
guy comes into wikipedia-l and publicly insults Grin and demands we
censure him.

We're still not sure even which pages are involved, though someone who
speaks Hungarian might have a shot at finding them (something to do with
dictionaries).

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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from_name: Daniel Mayer

body:
--- Abe Sokolov <abesokolov at hotmail.com> wrote:
>....
> BTW, an aunt of mine was murdered by the Stalinist USSR. Aside from her one
> surviving sibling, the rest of her family was murdered by Nazi Germany. I
> don't need some senile, 1950s era U.S. McCarthyite throwback lecturing me
> about totalitarianism.

Hey - let's all calm down and take a deep breath. Now please be nice to one
another!

-- mav

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Friends.  Fun.  Try the all-new Yahoo! Messenger.
http://messenger.yahoo.com/


body:
Extracting concepts and other facts is perfectly legal. If unacknowleged
(Which is standard Wikipedia operating practice and WRONG) this may be
plagarism but is not a copyright violation. Neither ideas or facts can be
copyrighted.

Fred

> From: Mathias Schindler <neubau at presroi.de>
> Reply-To: wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> Date: Wed, 02 Jun 2004 18:24:27 +0200
> To: Mailingliste der deutschsprachigen Wikipedia <wikide-l at Wikipedia.org>,
> wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> Subject: [Wikipedia-l] "Why Wikipedia Sucks. Big Time"
>
> http://homepage.univie.ac.at/horst.prillinger/blog/archives/2004/06/index.html
> #000623
>
> Eine Perle:
>
> "Text and concepts for Wikipedia entries are often blatantly copied from
> other websites. To avoid instant recognition, the text is sometimes
> rewritten, adding inaccuracies, inconsistencies or even errors. Due to
> the nature of the content and the open format of Wikipedia, no copyright
> holder can do anything about this."
>
>
> (I don't agree with this text but I find it interesting to read most
> objections to wikipedia condensed on a single non-wikipedia-affiliated page)
>
> Sonnenscheinverw?hnte bitte wegschauen..
> Nicht, da? ich glaube, da? er das Prinzip in der letzten Konsequenz
> verstanden hat...
>
> Mathias
> --
> nach uns der synflood.
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
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