from_name: Phroziac

subject: [WikiEN-l] Worrying trends

body:
sounds great to me, but i still like Talrias's adminship proposal
better. I'm sorry, but what is husting?

On 7/26/05, Theo Clarke <wiki at tignosis.com> wrote:
> On Tue, 26 Jul 2005 22:16:13 +0100, Jack Lynch wrote:
> >The current method of open voting on RfA is terrible, btw, and
> >causesa great deal of hurt feelings, log rolling, and clique development.
>
> It seems to me that the problem is that RfA has come to be seen as a democratic vote with a high pass mark rather than the poll of consensus that it used to be.  We do not help ourselves in this regard with our use of tallies and other aspects of the format that simplify the process but encourage misperception.  In my opinion, the process would be better aligned with its earlier intent if it adopted a format along the following lines:
>
> Proposal: I propose that User:Foobar be given admin facilities. [Note: No advocacy; no details]
> Acceptance by candidate: [Signature; No husting]
> Acceptances:
> [List of signatures with no explanations. Acceptance means "I can live with this"; it does not need unreserved endorsement.]
> Requested changes:
> [Suggestions formatted along the lines of "I would support this proposal if ...". Note: No counter-arguments; no debate]
> Discussion:
> [Comments, responses and rebuttals. This is the debating space.]
>
> This approach formalises a drive towards consensus without democracy.  In an enhanced form all participants who have requested changes would be asked to confirm that their request is still unaddressed at the point of closure.
>
> Theo
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

--
signature


list: wikien-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Haukur Þorgeirsson

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Example vs. Original research

body:
> It's not a matter of the number of religious fundamentalists, or how
> persistently anyone argues, or lines being drawn.  I certainly don't
> believe that today's points of view should hold sway over historical ones.

Then what is it a matter of? I still fail to understand
your position. Do you or do you not want a statement about
the near-spherical shape of the Earth to be qualified as
"just one point of view" on Wikipedia?

Regards,
Haukur


list: wikitech-l

from_name: SJ

subject: [Wikitech-l] New feature proposal: Verify

body:
Awesome.  When you edit a verified page, do you edit the verified
version, or the latest version?  This could be a user preference.

SJ

On 7/24/05, Salvatore Ingala <spider87 at katamail.com> wrote:
> Hi, I'm a newcomer to the developers group. I uploaded in the branch
> SHOW_VERIFIED a modified version of MediaWiki where I added a new feature.
> This wants to be an alternative to the page protection. I added a
> verify/unverify button: 'verify' sets the current revision (or the one
> indexed by oldid) as the verified one for that page. This means that any
> user can edit the page, but the new revisions are not shown (though they can
> be accessed through the hystory, where the currently 'verified' revision is
> shown in bold characters) until a sysop 'verifies' it again. 'unverify', of
> course, removes this protection.
>
> If anyone wants to test it, after setting the wiki up, it's sufficient to
> add "$wgEnableVerify = true;" to LocalSettings.php.
> Any suggestion is welcome.
>
> Regards,
> Salvatore Ingala
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>

--
++SJ


subject: [WikiEN-l] Borlaug feature pre-reporting; About about WP

body:
This is a first:  someone published an article about the upcoming
featuring of the excellent Borlaug article:
   http://www.truthabouttrade.org/article.asp?id=4166

And, now that we are passing About in popularity, their web Guides
report that our stats charts are "pretty dang cool":
   http://websearch.about.com/b/a/188129.htm

SJ, noting that as growth rates persist, at one feature a day, many
featured articles will never have their day in the sun.


from_name: Ray Saintonge

body:
Haukur ?orgeirsson wrote:

>>It's not a matter of the number of religious fundamentalists, or how
>>persistently anyone argues, or lines being drawn.  I certainly don't
>>believe that today's points of view should hold sway over historical ones.
>>
>>
>Then what is it a matter of? I still fail to understand
>your position. Do you or do you not want a statement about
>the near-spherical shape of the Earth to be qualified as
>"just one point of view" on Wikipedia?
>
Ultimately all of our opinions are just one more point of view, and
every statement is probabilistic.  The near sphericity of the earth is a
POV with a very high probability of truth.  If all Wikipedians (and we
are many) hold that POV than the NPOV will also be in that range as a
consensus   Why would it be necessary to add that qualification if
no-one is disputing the shape?

Ec


from_name: Philip Newton

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Case sensitivity on Afrikaans Wiktionary

body:
On Thu, 21 Jul 2005 21:41:21 +1000, Andrew Dunbar <hippytrail at gmail.com>
wrote:

> Many languages do not have a concept of "infinitive". Many languages
> use some other form as the headword in dictionaries. Such forms are
> known as citation forms. The other extremely common form used by
> many languages as the verbal citation form is the 3rd person singular
> present indicative. If verbs have gender then it is the masculine form.
> I am not aware of another verb form used as the citation form but
> there's a good chance there are others in exotic languages.

FWIW, (Modern) Greek uses first person singular present indicative. I
believe that Ancient Greek and Latin dictionaries often use the first
person singular present indicative as the citation form as well, even
though both languages have infinitives.

Arabic uses third person singular masculine *perfect* (usually past),
rather than imperfect ("present"), as does Maltese by tradition, though
I'm told that some Maltese consider the second person singular imperfect
to be the preferred citation form.

--Ph.


from_name: Chris Jenkinson

subject: [WikiEN-l] userpage and user subpage protection

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

Jtkiefer wrote:
> I can see why locking your userpage and userpage subpages is counter
> wiki, but I think that an exception to this would be things like
> monobook.css and monobook.js since they are a real pain to fix if a
> vandal wants to continually vandalize them and even then the page
> shouldn't be permanately protected.

They are automatically protected by the MediaWiki software. Non-admins
cannot edit other people's stylesheets or javascript files, for obvious
reasons.

Chris

- --
Chris Jenkinson
chris at starglade.org
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from_name: Theo Clarke

subject: [WikiEN-l] Worrying trends

body:
On Tue, 26 Jul 2005 22:16:13 +0100, Jack Lynch wrote:
>?The current method of open voting on RfA is terrible, btw, and
>?causes?a great deal of hurt feelings, log rolling, and clique development.

It seems to me that the problem is that RfA has come to be seen as a democratic vote with a high pass mark rather than the poll of consensus that it used to be.  We do not help ourselves in this regard with our use of tallies and other aspects of the format that simplify the process but encourage misperception.  In my opinion, the process would be better aligned with its earlier intent if it adopted a format along the following lines:

Proposal: I propose that User:Foobar be given admin facilities. [Note: No advocacy; no details]
Acceptance by candidate: [Signature; No husting]
Acceptances:
[List of signatures with no explanations. Acceptance means "I can live with this"; it does not need unreserved endorsement.]
Requested changes:
[Suggestions formatted along the lines of "I would support this proposal if ...". Note: No counter-arguments; no debate]
Discussion:
[Comments, responses and rebuttals. This is the debating space.]

This approach formalises a drive towards consensus without democracy.  In an enhanced form all participants who have requested changes would be asked to confirm that their request is still unaddressed at the point of closure.

Theo


from_name: A. Nony Mouse

subject: [WikiEN-l] Worrying trends

body:
I have to disagree.

Saying that agreement requires no justification, while disagreement
does, is ludicrous and is solely a method for putting those who
disagree "on the spot."

If someone has a disagreement or thinks that someone does not have
what it takes to be a good Admin, but doesn't want to give their
reason, their voice in the matter ought to be given the same weight
that someone who agrees, but does not give a reason, has.

A. Nony Mouse

On 7/26/05, Theo Clarke <wiki at tignosis.com> wrote:
> On Tue, 26 Jul 2005 22:16:13 +0100, Jack Lynch wrote:
> >The current method of open voting on RfA is terrible, btw, and
> >causesa great deal of hurt feelings, log rolling, and clique development.
>
> It seems to me that the problem is that RfA has come to be seen as a democratic vote with a high pass mark rather than the poll of consensus that it used to be.  We do not help ourselves in this regard with our use of tallies and other aspects of the format that simplify the process but encourage misperception.  In my opinion, the process would be better aligned with its earlier intent if it adopted a format along the following lines:
>
> Proposal: I propose that User:Foobar be given admin facilities. [Note: No advocacy; no details]
> Acceptance by candidate: [Signature; No husting]
> Acceptances:
> [List of signatures with no explanations. Acceptance means "I can live with this"; it does not need unreserved endorsement.]
> Requested changes:
> [Suggestions formatted along the lines of "I would support this proposal if ...". Note: No counter-arguments; no debate]
> Discussion:
> [Comments, responses and rebuttals. This is the debating space.]
>
> This approach formalises a drive towards consensus without democracy.  In an enhanced form all participants who have requested changes would be asked to confirm that their request is still unaddressed at the point of closure.
>
> Theo
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Jack Lynch

subject: [WikiEN-l] Worrying trends

body:
The current method of open voting on RfA is terrible, btw, and causes
a great deal of hurt feelings, log rolling, and clique development.

Jack (Sam Spade)

I am the only one who feels that votes for adminship is a slightly
different matters than other polls? You are discussing a particular
individual, and it gets a lot more personal than discussing other
matters. Saying that voting yes is to agree with the nomination and
voting no is the only version that needs to be explained is really to
ask for rough behaviour against those who oppose the nomination, like
Jay describes. If I know that if I vote no I have to give a
motivation, someone will think I am cruel and the consequence is I get
into a hailstorm - then maybe I choose not to vote.

 Maybe you need either a culture where the votes are always motivated,
really _always_ and votes that are not motivated are removed -
including votes agreeing with the nomination - or an exception
regarding votes for adminship. The election for the Wikimedia board,
that recently was finished, was done not only without motivation but
closed, so you did not display who you voted for. In Wikipedia
context, with the ideals of concensus etc. it would be interesting to
hear why this method was chosen.

/ Hab


from_name: Tomer Chachamu

subject: [Wikitech-l] Ultimate Wiktionary and design decisions

body:
On 26/07/05, Lars Aronsson <lars at aronsson.se> wrote:
> There are two approaches to dictionaries: (1) The encyclopedic
> approach, trying to find (define, spellcheck, explain, ...) "all"
> words (and their deflections), or (2) the statistics based
> approach, trying to find the most commonly used words.  I think
> the OED is of the first kind, while many dictionaries in recent
> decades (built with the help of computers, extracting word
> frequency statistics from large text corpora) have been of the
> latter kind.  Some would call (1) a 19th century approach.
>
> The real difference is their handling of the least common words.
> The encyclopedic approach sees every missing word as a failure,
> while the statistics based approach recognizes that there is an
> infinite number of words anyway (new ones are created every day)
> and some might be too uncommon to deserve a mention.
>
> As a consequence, spellchecking in the statistics based approach
> can never say that a spelling is "wrong" when it is missing from
> the dictionary, only that it probably is "uncommon" and thus
> suspect.  The remedy for this is a statics based dictionary of
> common misspellings.  Wikipedia article history can be used as a
> source for this.  Just find all edits that changed one word, e.g.
> speling -> spelling, and you will have a fine dictionary of common
> spelling mistakes.
>
> > From a database point of view a Word has one Spelling.
>
> This would be an example of the encyclopedic approach.

It is clear to me that the approach we want to take is the
"encyclopedic" one, simply because we can handle it. The Oxford
dictionary in paper cannot handle it "elegantly" as it becomes
unwieldy, spans a whole shelf. A good database can.

It is unacceptable for a Word to have one Spelling for reasons
described previously (German a-with-umlaut, Hebrew niqqud and optional
vowels, etc), but I am unable to find out who originally wrote that.


from_name: Salvatore Ingala

body:
> This is a step in the right direction. Something similar has been
> discussed for a while, with an additional element: The live version of
> the page is replaced *automatically* with the temporary version after a
> set period of time without edits.

As pointed out by the e-mail you linked, the timer part would be
not-so-easy, even if I think it may be a good idea.

> Your current implementation has the drawback that it might become very
> popular soon, even on pages where we otherwise try to avoid protection,
> and give sysops too much editorial responsibility.

IMHO sysops should be thought as reasonable people, so it shouldn't be
difficult to dissuade them from abusing of the feature.

Regards, Salvatore


subject: [WikiEN-l] Worrying trends

body:
On Tue, 26 Jul 2005 23:13:47 +0100, Phroziac wrote:
>?I'm sorry, but what is husting?

Husting is political electioneering oratory.

Theo


body:
>Awesome.  When you edit a verified page, do you edit the verified
>version, or the latest version?  This could be a user preference.

I preferred to make the user edit the latest revision by default (that is,
when $oldid is empty).
This is because I wanted the verify feature not to interfere with the
article editing (but just with article viewing).
Of course this may be changed, and the user can still view and edit any
version from the history.

Salvatore


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Mark Williamson

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Notification of Meta discussion: "Proposed policy for
	wiki closure".

body:
Hi all,

I think it's best not to inject this mail with POV, this time we can
set an example by keeping arguments on Meta, rather than filling up
people's inboxes.

Also, it's probably pointless to give my POV here as I'm sure everyone
already knows what it will be, based on the content on the proposal.

However, I request that everyone, even if you're not interested in
languages, please have a look at
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Proposed_policy_for_wiki_closure
written by Toytoy from the Chinese Wikipedia.

In it, he proposes a policy that would mean closure of the majority of
existing Wikipedias (of course, it would leave en, de, es, fr, ja,
etc., but would possibly close even such successful ones as the
scn.wiki, or as noted on the talkpage maybe even zh.wiki)

For details and justification, please see that page.

To discuss the policy, and voice opinions for or against, please go to
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Proposed_policy_for_wiki_closure

I request that everyone give their opinion on the talkpage. If we only
have opinions from people deeply interested in languages, surely it
will be a more slanted discussion than if we have replies from many
Wikimedia project participants.

Cheers
Mark


from_name: Fred Bauder

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Re: Example vs. Original research

body:
On Jul 27, 2005, at 5:08 AM, Phil Boswell wrote:

> That's because you're working on a relatively tiny scale. If you
> were to
> scale up a billiard ball (which is smooth enough to be a clich?d
> comparator)
> to the size of the Earth, guess which would end up being smoother?

A billiard ball the size of the Earth would have mountains 50 miles
high.

Fred


subject: [WikiEN-l] Worrying trends

body:
On Jul 27, 2005, at 5:41 AM, Theo Clarke wrote:

> Anybody who chooses to cite no change that will enable them to
> accept a proposal  is applying an immutable veto and refusing to
> participate in consensus building.

Exactly, consensus is a process which contemplates discussion of
issues and good faith consideration of alternatives.

Fred


from_name: Chris Lüer

body:
Alphax wrote:

>It should also be noted that the sphericity of the Earth only applies on
>a macroscopic scale; the hills and valleys don't seem to spherical to me ;)
>
>Oh, and did anyone mention the fact that the sphericity of the Earth is
>distorted by the tides?

This would be a common scientific approach to dealing with critics, I
believe. Instead of addressing their concerns, one adds lots of
irrelevant, complicated details and hopes to confuse the heck out of
them so that they shut up. ;)

         Chl


from_name: Nikola Smolenski

body:
On Monday 25 July 2005 11:28, Gerard Meijssen wrote:
> Nikola Smolenski wrote:
> >On Monday 25 July 2005 09:02, Andrew Dunbar wrote:
> >>On 7/24/05, Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
> >>accent according to the offical orthographical rules, Russian (and some
> >>other Cyrllic script languages) can optionally indicate where the stress
> >>is and in some contexts it is the norm. With Hebrew and most
> >
> >Yes, and one of the places where it is the norm is in a dictionary ;)
> >
> >Regardless of how is this resolved in the end, it would make sense to
> > built in at least some ability of determining such things automatically.
> > You don't want to duplicate entire Russian corpus (with inflections, it
> > could easily rise to ten million words), so that you could have each one
> > of them with and without diacritics. It makes sense to have only
> > canonical spellings in the dictionary, and a bit of code to offer nearest
> > match when someone tries to retrieve a word spelled in a different way.
>
> As a matter a fact I do want all inflections even if they are ten
> million words. Now I do not expect to have all these inflections to

Of course, but do you want ten million words with diacritics, and then ten
million of same words without diacritics?

>  From a database point of view a Word has one Spelling. That is given
> the ERD very much technical and non negotialbe. It is the Spelling that
> is validated by a Spelling Authority.

Simply change relation spelling.spellingID-word.spellingID from 1-inf to
inf-inf. That way each word could have multiple spellings, each validated by
a spelling authority.

By the way, what is table "table" (related to "pronunciation") for?


body:
On Monday 25 July 2005 11:04, Gerard Meijssen wrote:
> Nikola Smolenski wrote:
> >On Saturday 23 July 2005 10:13, Gerard Meijssen wrote:
> >>Nikola Smolenski wrote:
> >>>On Friday 22 July 2005 13:25, Gerard Meijssen wrote:
> >>>>Nikola Smolenski wrote:
> >Then I have misunderstood the database design :( I believed at first that
> >inflections would be stored in "inflection" table. Now when I understand
> > the design better, I don't think that it is a good idea to have separate
> > "word" for each inflection because it brings a lot of unneccesary
> > redudance, and much room for error. For example, it would be possible to
> > mark "whiter" as an adverb and "white" as a verb! And then, imagine the
> > horror which would ensue if someone would use wrong PartOfSpeech for base
> > word and now it has to be changed for 100 inflections...
> >
> >Though this would be a crucial change, please think about it. I think that
> >"word" table should contain only lemmas.
>
> Right, well this is very much a design decision. The inflections will
> have to be entered by hand. And if some poor sod does enter all these
> inflections and they are wrong, there will be the need for an other poor
> sod to remove them.

Well, I see it as a bad design decision.

First, the inflections don't have to be entered by hand. If a word is not
irregular, the inflections could, and should, be entered automatically.

Second, I don't understand this boasting of a flaw. If a problem with database
structure is noticed, it should be solved. At the very very least it should be
concluded that the problem can't be solved. Instead you are telling me that
users will have to work around the problem. I knew that already, but do you
see a solution?

> >>>>relevant for the inflections and the headword.. A Wordtype indicates a
> >>>>noun a verb an adjective etc.
> >>>
> >>>I still don't understand why is gender singled out of all properties a
> >>>word could have. For example, a verb could be transitive or
> >>> intransitive, and this information is important. To give an example:
> >
> >[...]
> >
> >>At this moment in time I would not have intransitive verbs or transitive
> >>verbs at all. To me they are verbs. When they are transitive, they have
> >>a different meaning from when they are intransitive so to me the
> >>destinction is in the meaning.
> >
> >OK, for a better example, why not number? Perhaps transitivity doesn't,
> > but number also affects inflection, much as gender does.
>
> When it comes to meaning, all the inflections can share the same
> meaning. The number (first, second, third person) will be implied by the
> Inflection in the table Inflection-Word. (at this moment it still says
> Conjugation in this table)

By number I meant singular/plural. But regardless, why then gender wouldn't be
specified in inflection-word?

> >>>I was thinking about something else; for example, on
> >>>http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/account there is this example: "A beggarly
> >>>account of empty boxes. - Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet, V-i"; but I
> >>>understand now it is going to be just a part of "meaningtext". I'm not
> >>> so certain, but maybe it would be good to create a separate table for
> >>> examples, because same examples could (and probably will) be used in
> >>> "meaningtext"s in different languages. It would also make it easier to
> >>> automatically add new examples (for example, by grepping Project
> >>> Gutenberg ;)
> >>
> >>"A beggarly account of empty boxes" is a quote and why not have it as a
> >>seperate Word and marked as such ?? It would be a idiom for "account"
> >>and this is linked through Relation. Many famous quotes have been
> >>translated and we could have them all. (Een paard , een paard, een
> >>koninkrijk voor een paard)
> >
> >Because, ideally each word (in each language) should have an example or
> > two, and so the number of examples would approach the number of words;
> > and, it would become impossible to distinguish between notable quotes
> > (Kingdom for a horse!), which occur frequently, need a description, and
> > need to be canonically translated, and non-notable quotes, which are in
> > the wiktionary only to be used as examples of use for other words, need
> > not have a description, and translators won't encounter them at all.
>
> The idioms, proverbs and quotes will be "Word" records in their own
> right. So we have to be selective in the idiom that we choose. What is
> new ?? That is what the editorial process is for. For instance for the
> Dutch French speaking people the phrase "Papa fume un pipe" is famous
> and as such it is noteworthy but its significance will bewilder the
> French.. :)

Problem is, for ultimate majority of words we will have to choose a
non-notable quote as an example.

Maybe we don't understand each other: maybe this isn't the case with other
languages, but in a dictionary of Serbian that I have, *EACH* word has at
least one, usually two, sometimes even more examples, from common words like
"what" to rare and complex words. At least for Serbian and other languages
with same lexicographic tradition we will want to do the same in the
Wiktionary.

> >>I do not think grepping Project Gutenberg makes much sense. If anything
> >>it helps you find occurances of the word but you have to be selective of
> >>what to include. That is an editorial process and just the fact that a
> >>word is used does not make for a good idiom in the UW.
> >
> >I think it would make sense for rarer words, which might occur once or a
> > few times in entire Gutenberg's corpus. Of course, at the end a human
> > editor has to decide whether a quote is really relevant.
> >
> >Related to grepping Project Gutenberg, have you considered adding
> > information on word frequency? Only a single new table is needed,
> > "frequency", with fields "spellingID", "corpus" and "frequency";
> > eventually "corpus" colud become "corpusID".
>
> There is more to frequency than that. If anything grep may find it but
> you still need to know the meaning of the word in that text. When the

This is why "frequency" is related to "spelling" and not to "meaning". Change
of meaning is not the only useful thing which could be gathered from a
frequency analysis.

> word gets a new meaning, that is what you want to know .. I will speak
> to the people of Rotterdam CS (developers of Lucene) about just these
> kind of issues.

A corpus could (would) be as small as a single text, usually a book. So, you
would be able to extract frequency in any desired timespan, or observe how it
changes over time.

> >I agree, it is not a dialect, but if some words are recognisable as
> > belonging to a distinctive group of words, they should somehow be marked
> > as belonging to it, and I was suggesting that they are marked in a same
> > way they would be marked as belonging to a certain dialect. Another
> > solution would be to use "wordrelation" table instead, even though it
> > isn't meant to be used in that way :)
>
> Collection is the mechanism of choise for this. Relation is to indicate
> thesaurus like structures including antonymes..

Wait, "collection" is related to "meaning" and not to "word". I don't see how
could it be used for such things. It would be possible to have names of
Asterix characters/Disney characters/whatever grouped together, and that is
good. But it still isn't possible to distinguish between two groups of
translations of names of Asterix characters. It would be possible to have all
words related to seamanship grouped together, but it would not be possible to
mark which of these are dockworkers' slang, which are sailors' slang, and
which are not slang.


from_name: Brion Vibber

body:
Salvatore Ingala wrote:
>>Awesome.  When you edit a verified page, do you edit the verified
>>version, or the latest version?  This could be a user preference.
>
> I preferred to make the user edit the latest revision by default (that is,
> when $oldid is empty).
> This is because I wanted the verify feature not to interfere with the
> article editing (but just with article viewing).
> Of course this may be changed, and the user can still view and edit any
> version from the history.

That sounds nice and sane. :)

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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from_name: Gerard Meijssen

body:
Tomer Chachamu wrote:

>On 26/07/05, Lars Aronsson <lars at aronsson.se> wrote:
>
>
>>There are two approaches to dictionaries: (1) The encyclopedic
>>approach, trying to find (define, spellcheck, explain, ...) "all"
>>words (and their deflections), or (2) the statistics based
>>approach, trying to find the most commonly used words.  I think
>>the OED is of the first kind, while many dictionaries in recent
>>decades (built with the help of computers, extracting word
>>frequency statistics from large text corpora) have been of the
>>latter kind.  Some would call (1) a 19th century approach.
>>
>>The real difference is their handling of the least common words.
>>The encyclopedic approach sees every missing word as a failure,
>>while the statistics based approach recognizes that there is an
>>infinite number of words anyway (new ones are created every day)
>>and some might be too uncommon to deserve a mention.
>>
>>As a consequence, spellchecking in the statistics based approach
>>can never say that a spelling is "wrong" when it is missing from
>>the dictionary, only that it probably is "uncommon" and thus
>>suspect.  The remedy for this is a statics based dictionary of
>>common misspellings.  Wikipedia article history can be used as a
>>source for this.  Just find all edits that changed one word, e.g.
>>speling -> spelling, and you will have a fine dictionary of common
>>spelling mistakes.
>>
>>
>>
>>>From a database point of view a Word has one Spelling.
>>>
>>>
>>This would be an example of the encyclopedic approach.
>>
>>
>
>It is clear to me that the approach we want to take is the
>"encyclopedic" one, simply because we can handle it. The Oxford
>dictionary in paper cannot handle it "elegantly" as it becomes
>unwieldy, spans a whole shelf. A good database can.
>
>It is unacceptable for a Word to have one Spelling for reasons
>described previously (German a-with-umlaut, Hebrew niqqud and optional
>vowels, etc), but I am unable to find out who originally wrote that.
>
Hoi,
You have to realise that the name convention used is that Word and
Spelling refer to records in the database. Consequently it is
unacceptable to have but one Spelling to one Word. You can have all the
spellings that are correct and associate them through Relation and
SynTrans. Now the different Words have to be marked for what they are.
The niqquds are according to some system and as such they have to be
identified; this leads to collections of the same type of niqquds that
can be identified.

Thanks,
    GerardM


from_name: Mateo Nares

subject: [Wikitech-l] Install: Issue with restricted MySQL database user

body:
I have my MySQL database hosted with XO, and as such the user that is given
admin access to the database is not "root".  I would like to know what file
I need to modify to specify a user aside from "root" when the installation
script runs.

Thank you,

Mateo E. Nares
Technical Manger
Hot Studio
415.284.7250 ext. 33
mateo at hotstudio.com


body:
Nikola Smolenski wrote:

>On Monday 25 July 2005 11:04, Gerard Meijssen wrote:
>
>
>>Nikola Smolenski wrote:
>>
>>
>>>On Saturday 23 July 2005 10:13, Gerard Meijssen wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>>Nikola Smolenski wrote:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>>On Friday 22 July 2005 13:25, Gerard Meijssen wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>>Nikola Smolenski wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>Then I have misunderstood the database design :( I believed at first that
>>>inflections would be stored in "inflection" table. Now when I understand
>>>the design better, I don't think that it is a good idea to have separate
>>>"word" for each inflection because it brings a lot of unneccesary
>>>redudance, and much room for error. For example, it would be possible to
>>>mark "whiter" as an adverb and "white" as a verb! And then, imagine the
>>>horror which would ensue if someone would use wrong PartOfSpeech for base
>>>word and now it has to be changed for 100 inflections...
>>>
>>>Though this would be a crucial change, please think about it. I think that
>>>"word" table should contain only lemmas.
>>>
>>>
>>Right, well this is very much a design decision. The inflections will
>>have to be entered by hand. And if some poor sod does enter all these
>>inflections and they are wrong, there will be the need for an other poor
>>sod to remove them.
>>
>>
>
>Well, I see it as a bad design decision.
>
>First, the inflections don't have to be entered by hand. If a word is not
>irregular, the inflections could, and should, be entered automatically.
>
>Second, I don't understand this boasting of a flaw. If a problem with database
>structure is noticed, it should be solved. At the very very least it should be
>concluded that the problem can't be solved. Instead you are telling me that
>users will have to work around the problem. I knew that already, but do you
>see a solution?
>
>
First off all, if creating inflections is done programmatically, it is
not part of the database design. The database design says that there
will be a record for each inflection. The inflections are translated as
every other word is, there is Spelling for it. This means that these
words have an importance in their own right and that is more than just
the sharing of the meaning with a headword. So I do not share your
argument at all. Yes, we can generate inflections but this WILL result
in new Spelling - Word - Meaning. And as long as we do not have software
to do this for us, we will have to do it by hand.

>>>>>>relevant for the inflections and the headword.. A Wordtype indicates a
>>>>>>noun a verb an adjective etc.
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>I still don't understand why is gender singled out of all properties a
>>>>>word could have. For example, a verb could be transitive or
>>>>>intransitive, and this information is important. To give an example:
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>[...]
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>>At this moment in time I would not have intransitive verbs or transitive
>>>>verbs at all. To me they are verbs. When they are transitive, they have
>>>>a different meaning from when they are intransitive so to me the
>>>>destinction is in the meaning.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>OK, for a better example, why not number? Perhaps transitivity doesn't,
>>>but number also affects inflection, much as gender does.
>>>
>>>
>>When it comes to meaning, all the inflections can share the same
>>meaning. The number (first, second, third person) will be implied by the
>>Inflection in the table Inflection-Word. (at this moment it still says
>>Conjugation in this table)
>>
>>
>
>By number I meant singular/plural. But regardless, why then gender wouldn't be
>specified in inflection-word?
>
>
>
Because it is important to know for a noun what its gender is. When you
know "probleem" (neutral) you know by inference that the idiom "het
probleem is groter dan ik dacht" is correct because the neutral implies
"het". This is the base knowledge that may be expected or when we go the
extra mile and you do not know about genders, you may be led to an
article about a gender in a particular language.

>>>>>I was thinking about something else; for example, on
>>>>>http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/account there is this example: "A beggarly
>>>>>account of empty boxes. - Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet, V-i"; but I
>>>>>understand now it is going to be just a part of "meaningtext". I'm not
>>>>>so certain, but maybe it would be good to create a separate table for
>>>>>examples, because same examples could (and probably will) be used in
>>>>>"meaningtext"s in different languages. It would also make it easier to
>>>>>automatically add new examples (for example, by grepping Project
>>>>>Gutenberg ;)
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>"A beggarly account of empty boxes" is a quote and why not have it as a
>>>>seperate Word and marked as such ?? It would be a idiom for "account"
>>>>and this is linked through Relation. Many famous quotes have been
>>>>translated and we could have them all. (Een paard , een paard, een
>>>>koninkrijk voor een paard)
>>>>
>>>>
>>>Because, ideally each word (in each language) should have an example or
>>>two, and so the number of examples would approach the number of words;
>>>and, it would become impossible to distinguish between notable quotes
>>>(Kingdom for a horse!), which occur frequently, need a description, and
>>>need to be canonically translated, and non-notable quotes, which are in
>>>the wiktionary only to be used as examples of use for other words, need
>>>not have a description, and translators won't encounter them at all.
>>>
>>>
>>The idioms, proverbs and quotes will be "Word" records in their own
>>right. So we have to be selective in the idiom that we choose. What is
>>new ?? That is what the editorial process is for. For instance for the
>>Dutch French speaking people the phrase "Papa fume un pipe" is famous
>>and as such it is noteworthy but its significance will bewilder the
>>French.. :)
>>
>>
>
>Problem is, for ultimate majority of words we will have to choose a
>non-notable quote as an example.
>
>Maybe we don't understand each other: maybe this isn't the case with other
>languages, but in a dictionary of Serbian that I have, *EACH* word has at
>least one, usually two, sometimes even more examples, from common words like
>"what" to rare and complex words. At least for Serbian and other languages
>with same lexicographic tradition we will want to do the same in the
>Wiktionary.
>
>
That is fine with me. Use notable quotes if possible and when you do not
have them use non notable quotes.

>
>
>>>>I do not think grepping Project Gutenberg makes much sense. If anything
>>>>it helps you find occurances of the word but you have to be selective of
>>>>what to include. That is an editorial process and just the fact that a
>>>>word is used does not make for a good idiom in the UW.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>I think it would make sense for rarer words, which might occur once or a
>>>few times in entire Gutenberg's corpus. Of course, at the end a human
>>>editor has to decide whether a quote is really relevant.
>>>
>>>Related to grepping Project Gutenberg, have you considered adding
>>>information on word frequency? Only a single new table is needed,
>>>"frequency", with fields "spellingID", "corpus" and "frequency";
>>>eventually "corpus" colud become "corpusID".
>>>
>>>
>>There is more to frequency than that. If anything grep may find it but
>>you still need to know the meaning of the word in that text. When the
>>
>>
>
>This is why "frequency" is related to "spelling" and not to "meaning". Change
>of meaning is not the only useful thing which could be gathered from a
>frequency analysis.
>
>
>
>>word gets a new meaning, that is what you want to know .. I will speak
>>to the people of Rotterdam CS (developers of Lucene) about just these
>>kind of issues.
>>
>>
>
>A corpus could (would) be as small as a single text, usually a book. So, you
>would be able to extract frequency in any desired timespan, or observe how it
>changes over time.
>
>
>
>>>I agree, it is not a dialect, but if some words are recognisable as
>>>belonging to a distinctive group of words, they should somehow be marked
>>>as belonging to it, and I was suggesting that they are marked in a same
>>>way they would be marked as belonging to a certain dialect. Another
>>>solution would be to use "wordrelation" table instead, even though it
>>>isn't meant to be used in that way :)
>>>
>>>
>>Collection is the mechanism of choise for this. Relation is to indicate
>>thesaurus like structures including antonymes..
>>
>>
>
>Wait, "collection" is related to "meaning" and not to "word". I don't see how
>could it be used for such things. It would be possible to have names of
>Asterix characters/Disney characters/whatever grouped together, and that is
>good. But it still isn't possible to distinguish between two groups of
>translations of names of Asterix characters. It would be possible to have all
>words related to seamanship grouped together, but it would not be possible to
>mark which of these are dockworkers' slang, which are sailors' slang, and
>which are not slang.
>
You can have multiple collections; the names of one translation
tradition can be one collection the other the other. The two words for
Asterisk can be used as synonym.

Thanks,
    GerardM


from_name: aerik at thesylvans.com

body:
Salvatore writes:
>>Awesome.  When you edit a verified page, do you edit the verified
>>version, or the latest version?  This could be a user preference.
>
>I preferred to make the user edit the latest revision by default (that is,
>when $oldid is empty).
>This is because I wanted the verify feature not to interfere with the
>article editing (but just with article viewing).
>Of course this may be changed, and the user can still view and edit any
>version from the history.

This sounds cool; I'd envision that the "verified" version would simply be a flag set pointing at one of the versions ("oldid=") that is older than the most current, and the page would be set up to show that by default instead of the most recent change.  This would show up in a page history and perhaps a user could set whether they wanted to default to the verified page or the most recent page.

This is beginnning to sound more and more like a business type "document management system" with a released version and several possible unreleased revisions...  :-)

Also, this sounds like a different means to the same ends as "page validation" - not that that's a bad thing, flexibility is good!  But it might make sense to take a "big picture view" and pursue these features with an eye on redundant code, what should be configurable by site and by user, and so on (sorry, much as  I love the feature I haven't had time to help with the page validation code - new "real job" taking up lots of time...).

Best Regards,
Aerik


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Worrying trends

body:
> Anybody who chooses to cite no change that will enable
> them to accept a proposal  is applying an immutable veto and refusing to
> participate in consensus building.

No, they are on the side of a consensus that it SHOULD NOT BE DONE.

> It amounts to saying "I object and
> nothing anyone can say or do will change my mind".
> That is the prerogative
> of a democratic voter but, in this context, it is a refusal to participate
> in the consensus building process.

No, hardly. It is a request by those voters that the consensus lean
towards the most minimal option possible: no change. Face facts: there
ARE some people who simply do NOT want to see certain changes. Their
opinions are no more valid than yours.

> And consensus is one of our tenets. If
> you want to be part of an encyclopedia project that is a democracy, go and
> find one; Wikipedia is not that animal.

There are some policies that should never be passed, no matter what.
There are some editors who should never be given Admin powers, no
matter what (and there are quite a few of them that, to the detriment
of Wikipedia as a whole, seem to have been given Admin powers
anyways).

Speaking this fact is NOT a "refusal to participate in the consensus
building process." It is a statement that they do not feel the current
proposal, in WHATEVER form, benefits Wikipedia.

A Request for Adminship is a request to see whether someone is
suitable for Adminship. You're trying to turn it into a "what can we
do to make this person an Admin" forum rather than a real discussion
of whether or not the person SHOULD be an admin at all.

If a large number of people - large enough to show that there is NOT a
concensus - believe that someone should not be an admin, then that is
reason enough that they  should not be an admin. It may be for one
reason, it may be for a thousand reasons, and it may change later, but
they are free to be nominated later.

The whole "your opinion doesn't matter if you don't write something"
idea is pure nonsense.

A. Nony Mouse


from_name: BJörn Lindqvist

body:
> Using the Flat Earth example again, the FES's notions
> are generally unclear in terms of whether they are
> actually sincere (still), or that they might be
> speaking metaphorically, or IMHO from the POV of human
> experience. Thus it can rather ridiculous to talk in
> terms of science, without explaining what their actual
> point is, which might be something like:
>  'Thinking about the Earth as round is only a
> conceptual construct which also requires thinking
> along notions of complex relativity-- in real life, we
> intrinsically think of the world as Euclidian, and
> therefore, "flat." The FES might just be claiming that
> the religious view that all souls be on the same
> plane, or else that in personal terms, thinking in
> global terms is just a waste of precious time.

That is very interesting and you may be right that they are arguing
from a metaphysical perspective. Maybe you would even start to believe
so after reading the Flat Earth Society's website? But, IMHO, a great
loss is that you cannot state that in Wikipedia. While Wikipedia
allows you to use facts drawn from sources, it does not allow you to
interpret sources. You can write that the FES states that the earth is
flat, but you can not say that they are using a metaphysical
perspective.

Same thing with Daniel P.B. Smith's example:

"The earth is approximately an oblate spheroid (a sphere flattened at
the poles.... For many navigational purposes the earth is assumed to
be a sphere, without intolerable error."

That you can write that the U.S. Naval Oceanographic Office say. But
you cannot write that the U.S. Naval Oceanographic Office says that
the earth is round because that would require you to interpret the
source. Because of these things, many editors resort to using no
sources at all, because a statement without a source is often
percieved as less controversial than the same statement drawn from
interpreting a source.

--
mvh Bj?rn


from_name: Phil Boswell

body:
"Alphax" <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote in
message news:42E755D6.6070307 at gmail.com...
[snip]
> It should also be noted that the sphericity of the Earth only applies on
> a macroscopic scale; the hills and valleys don't seem to spherical to me
> ;)

That's because you're working on a relatively tiny scale. If you were to
scale up a billiard ball (which is smooth enough to be a clich?d comparator)
to the size of the Earth, guess which would end up being smoother?

> Oh, and did anyone mention the fact that the sphericity of the Earth is
> distorted by the tides?

{{sofixit}} :-)
--
Phil
[[en:User:Phil Boswell]]


subject: [WikiEN-l] Worrying trends

body:
"Ludicrous" is a harsh word.  I am assuming that it is hyperbole.

My proposal did not include anything that 'is solely a method for putting those who disagree "on the spot."' I might agree with you in principle were we discussing a democratic process. But RfA is no more democratic than the rest of Wikipedia.  It is consensual by design. Consensus amounts to "we will do this thing if almost all of us accept it". In practice, we do not need to know the reasons for acceptance or the extent of that acceptance by individuals.  All we need to know is whether it is acceptable and what would need to change to make it acceptable to an individual. If changes are made to accommodate the issues raised, then that should help some people to accept the proposal. And, in some cases, the change might result in some acceptors withdrawing their acceptance. In the case of RfA, immediately constructive change requests might be "I wish the candidate to promise to use full edit summaries in future" or "I wish the  the decision to be deferred by x weeks to see if the candidate will avoid edit wars'' or "I wish the candidate to reach x edits so that I have a fuller set upon which to make a decision". Anybody who chooses to cite no change that will enable them to accept a proposal  is applying an immutable veto and refusing to participate in consensus building. It amounts to saying "I object and nothing anyone can say or do will change my mind". That is the prerogative of a democratic voter but, in this context, it is a refusal to participate in the consensus building process. And consensus is one of our tenets. If you want to be part of an encyclopedia project that is a democracy, go and find one; Wikipedia is not that animal.

Theo

On Wed, 27 Jul 2005 05:04:51 +0100, A. Nony Mouse wrote:
>?Saying that agreement requires no justification, while disagreement
>?does, is ludicrous and is solely a method for putting those who
>?disagree "on the spot."
>
>?If someone has a disagreement or thinks that someone does not have
>?what it takes to be a good Admin, but doesn't want to give their
>?reason, their voice in the matter ought to be given the same weight
>?that someone who agrees, but does not give a reason, has.


from_name: Ray Saintonge

body:
Ryan Delaney wrote:

> Ray Saintonge wrote:
>
>> Haukur ?orgeirsson wrote:
>>
>>>> The difference is that some people actively argue that the earth is
>>>> not a sphere, whereas those who argue that Paris is not the capital of
>>>> France so far have kept their activities secret.
>>>>
>>>> If a fact is contentious, then it should be backed up with a cite.
>>>
>>> How many religious fundamentalists does it take to
>>> make a fact contentious? How actively do they have
>>> to argue? Where are you going to draw the line? And
>>> why should we privilege the points of view that
>>> happen to be held by people alive today?
>>>
>>> Wikipedia would be a parody of an encyclopedia if it
>>> held that the approximately spherical shape of the
>>> Earth is contentious. People expect an encyclopedia
>>> to be written from a scientific point of view - and,
>>> for the most part, that's how Wikipedia is written.
>>
>> It's not a matter of the number of religious fundamentalists, or how
>> persistently anyone argues, or lines being drawn.  I certainly don't
>> believe that today's points of view should hold sway over historical
>> ones.
>>
>> When we put forth these intuitive truths as examples of the need for
>> citations we put up a straw man that is there to be knocked down.
>> There is a presumption that any statement is true unless and until it
>> is challenged.  Of course the more ridiculous and outrageous
>> statements will be challenged very quickly.  Statements about the
>> near-spherical shape of the earth may not be challenged at all.
>>
>> The "scientific point of view" would be fine if it meant rigorous
>> adherence to the principles of scientific method; it is not fine if
>> it means support for the prevailing prejudices of mainstream scientists.
>>
>> Some people may very well expect an encyclopedia to be written from
>> that mythical "scientific point of view"; others may expect it to be
>> from a "religious point of view" of some sort.  We still need to
>> stick to a neutral point of view.  Implicit to the neutral point of
>> view is the dynamic of questioning everything.
>
> My big problem with this is that very frequently, especially in fields
> like science and philosophy, commonly held beliefs might be very
> different from the "correct" beliefs, or the consensus among learned
> experts. But because of the format of Wikipedia, some extremely wrong
> beliefs are inserted into articles because they are commonly held,
> even if they wildly contradict the research that professionals in the
> field are doing -- and I mean this is just as bad as saying the Earth
> is flat. The only difference is that the roundness of the Earth is
> common knowledge, but there are some things in science that are just
> as obvious to professionals but completely unknown to the general public.

"Commonly held beliefs", "'correct' beliefs", and expert consensus are
three different frames of mind, and all three can still be wrong.
Often, but certainly not always, the professionals have it right; that's
reason enough to leave open the avenues for criticizing science.
"Correct" beliefs are often promulgated by people with a political end
in mind, and they have no qualms about bending facts if it will help
their cause  The general public, and thus our editors are often in the
difficult position of having a limted basis for making a decision.  The
need to cite sources should apply equally to the scientists and to those
who express commonly held beliefs; the scientists have an advantage here
because that practice has been a part of their experience.

Science is very poorly reported to the general public.  An understanding
of what's going on is incompatible with the 15-second sound bite.  Look
at the evolution of a long established publication like "Popular
Science".  In its early days, shortly after the US Civil War it had a
lot of articles designed to get everybody to think about science; since
then it has managed to evolve into something far more gadgety.  Much of
science has retreated into the ivory tower.  This is great for the
protection of scientific sinecures, but is terrible for the promotion of
scientific understanding by the general public.

One of the greatest things that Wikipedia could accomplish would be to
produce a generation of critical thinkers with both the tools and the
confidance to question any kind of established truth wherever they can
find it.

> The [[Race and intelligence]] article is a perfect example of this
> phenomenon. People who know nothing about the research done in this
> field have many times gone into that article and edited it mercilessly
> in the name of NPOV because the established scientific opinion
> presented (and extensively referenced) in the article is very
> contradictory to the "politically correct" opinion. In my view,
> Wikipedians need to have more respect for references and experts to
> prevent this kind of thing from happening. The usual Wiki philosophy
> usually works in other cases, but in such an emotional subject as
> [[Race and intelligence]], people tend to go way overboard, and the
> NPOV and "everyone's equal" policies only make them more convictional
> about their right to push their POV over that of the academic consensus.

It's a challenge.  The statistics say what they say - nothing more,
nothing less.  The statistics thenselves are unconcerned about how
anyone misinterprets them.  People don't usually understand what
statistics are all about, and are quick to draw conclusions that are not
warranted.  This subject matter is a good example where we can look for
creative ways to build consensus.  Simply telling the public that they
are wrong and that they should pay attention to their academic betters
will get us nowhere except into a never ending flame war.  Somewhere
along the way the scientists dropped the ball.  Lewis Terman was
respected as a scientist in his day when he worked to develop the
Stanford-Binet intelligence tests.  He wrote in his 1916 book, "The
Measurement of Intelligence" (pp. 91-2)  --

    "It is interesting to note that [the two subjects] represent the
    level of intelligence which is very, very common among
    Spanish-Indians and Mexican families of the Southwest and also among
    negroes. Their dullness seems to be racial, or at least inherent in
    the familyn stocks from which they come.  The fact that one meets
    this type with such extraordinary frequency among Indians, Mexicans,
    and negroes suggests quite forcibly that the whole question of
    racial differences in mental traits will have to be taken up anew
    and by experimental methods.  The writer predicts that when this is
    done there will be discovered enormously significant racial
    differences in general intelligence, differences which cannot be
    wiped out by any scheme of mental culture.

    Children of this group should be segregated in special classes and
    be given instruction which is concrete and practical.  They cannot
    master abstractions, but they can often be made efficient workers,
    able to look out for themselves.  There is no possibility at present
    of convincing society that they should not be allowed to reproduce,
    although from a eugenic point of view they constitute a grave
    problem because of their unusually prolific breeding."

Terman was from the academic community.  How is a general public that
has been instilled with the principle of respecting scientists to deal
with such comments?  For other academics to say, "He's not really a
scientist," doesn't help us with a public that may only see that as
bickering between scientists.  If either side in that debate is
believed, respect for academics will have been undermined.  If Terman's
view are to be criticised on the basis that they reflect thinking from
89 years ago the public deserves an explanation of how we got from there
to here.

> In these cases, I don't think that any amount of voiciferous objecting
> and arguing should be considered relevant. I think that even if the
> consensus of Wikipedians editing the article disagrees with it, that
> consensus should lose, unless they can find some evidence that the
> article is wrong. This obsession with consensus has a real possibility
> of going terribly wrong. I think the emphasis should be on having
> Wikipedia advance _correct_ beliefs, not popular ones.

"Correct" too easily becomes "politically correct".  It's too easy to
become emotionally attached to one's "correct" beliefs.  There is great
normalizing power to effective consensus building.  Scientists would do
better by judiciously planting seeds in Wikipedia's great fractal
Mendelbrot.

Ec


body:
Phil Boswell wrote:

>"Alphax" <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote
>
>
>>It should also be noted that the sphericity of the Earth only applies on
>>a macroscopic scale; the hills and valleys don't seem to spherical to me
>>;)
>>
>>
>That's because you're working on a relatively tiny scale. If you were to
>scale up a billiard ball (which is smooth enough to be a clich?d comparator)
>to the size of the Earth, guess which would end up being smoother?
>
>
It could be worse.   We could be living on the surface of a golf ball. :-)

Ec


body:
Haukur ?orgeirsson wrote:

>>Ultimately all of our opinions are just one more point of view, and
>>every statement is probabilistic.  The near sphericity of the earth is a
>>POV with a very high probability of truth.  If all Wikipedians (and we
>>are many) hold that POV than the NPOV will also be in that range as a
>>consensus   Why would it be necessary to add that qualification if
>>no-one is disputing the shape?
>>
>>
>So, your answer to my question: "How many fundamentalists does it take to
>make something controversial?" is "One. As long as she's a Wikipedian."
>
>Or am I reading you wrong? :)
>
>
That seems like an accurate representation.  Of course that one person
may have difficulty finding a place to stand with Archimedes' lever.

Ec


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Re: Re: Example vs. Original research

body:
Alphax wrote:

>Reminds me of the definition of Poll Tax -
>if you don't pay, they've got this big pole...)
>
The novel "Bridge on the Drina" by Ivo Andric has a lovely description
of the way that the Turks practised impalement.

>As I've often thought to myself, "if the world was a wiki, there are
>people I'd nominate for deletion...."
>
Maybe they could find a way to be nominated for a Darwin Award. :-)

Ec


from_name: steve v

subject: [WikiEN-l] Fwd: Re: Meta e-mail

body:
Fwd - thought this was on-list.

--- steve v <vertigosteve at yahoo.com> wrote:
> From: steve v
> Subject: Re: Meta e-mail
> To: Irate
>
> Anthere gives the reason as "uncooperative," and Im
> not going to second guess her decision. If you
> explain
> yourself here, there's a good chance that you can be
> unblocked early. Should "uncooperative" behaviour
> continue, meta's rules for blocking and banning are
> up
> to the sysops there, as they deem someone to be
> disruptive with normal developments there.
>
> IOW, wikis are collaborative web
> communities--cooperation and sense of community are
> necessary, although just plain civility will often
> suffice.
>
> SV
>
>
> --- Irate wrote:
>
> >
> > I have been blocked by Anthere. With no
> explnation,
> > other than Matt Crypto. I want tto be reenabled
> now.
> > and I would like to know why I was blocked.

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subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Meta e-mail

body:
Here's what prompted the fwd (last) email:

--- Irate wrote:
> You haven't reanabled my WikiMeid a account after
> Anthere corrupt Blocking, and most of you haven't
> replied. That seems a tad uncooperative to me. I
> suggest you block yourself so as not to be
> inconsistent.
>
> If I am blocked Zannerium should defintely be
> blocked. He ignored my request for many times longer
> than I ignored him. I even had to go looking for an
> admin to try and get him to stopped editing my
> comments on my talk page, without signing them.
>
> I now thanks to the activities of one of your admins
> am blocked. The explnation lack of cooperatine is
> false, as people have cooperted with me far less.
> Like people who have received this email but refuse
> to answer or do anything are you and more or less
> guilty of being uncooperative.
>

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from_name: Haukur Þorgeirsson

body:
> Ultimately all of our opinions are just one more point of view, and
> every statement is probabilistic.  The near sphericity of the earth is a
> POV with a very high probability of truth.  If all Wikipedians (and we
> are many) hold that POV than the NPOV will also be in that range as a
> consensus   Why would it be necessary to add that qualification if
> no-one is disputing the shape?

So, your answer to my question: "How many fundamentalists does it take to
make something controversial?" is "One. As long as she's a Wikipedian."

Or am I reading you wrong? :)

Regards,
Haukur


subject:
[WikiEN-l] Re: Wikipedia is *already* written from a scientific
	POV

body:
Well, there we go: We now have to rewrite everything
in from a "creationism" POV --because external,
independently unverified polls, with unknown
demographic factors and unknown questions, have
expressed an overruling of both science consensus and
WP-local consensus.

Why is WP consensus not US general consensus? As
people become more educated and involved in NPOV-based
projects, the move toward rationality. NPOV requires
at least a rational basis for article craftsmanship,
which implies rationality in other areas.

IIRC, the typical MBTI for WPdians is quite different
from the average majority. WP by default is
represented by bookish, eristic types. PR crusades by
any particular irrational POV, regardless of its
representaion, is bound to fail, simply because
belief=irrationality, hence not NPOV.

--- James Gibbon <wikipedia at jamesgibbon.com> wrote:

> On Sun, 03 Jul 2005 14:12:57 +0100
> Timwi <timwi at gmx.net> wrote:
>
> > 	# 45% believe that God created human beings
> pretty much in their
> > 	  present form at one time within the last 10,000
> years or so
> > 	# 37% believe that human beings have developed
> over millions of
> > 	  years from less advanced forms of life, but God
> guided the
> > 	  process.
> >
> > That's 82%, which I call "most".
>
> I think that's 82% of the US specifically though,
> no? For other Western
> countries the figure will be considerably lower.
>
> >
> > 	When asked by name whether they believe in or
> lean more towards
> > 	the "theory of creationism" or the "theory of
> evolution", 57%
> > 	indicated creationism, 33% indicated evolution,
> and 10%
> > 	responded "not sure."
> >
> > Again, 57% I call "most".
>
> Is that 57% of the 82%?
>
> --
> Dig It : a forum for Euro Beatles fans -
> http://beatles.dyndns.org/
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

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body:
What about allowing for three FA's a day, perhaps even
rotating between them, every couple hours?? This would
mean more work, and more previous featured articles
listed... but it might be fun.

SV

--- David Gerard <fun at thingy.apana.org.au> wrote:

> SJ (2.718281828 at gmail.com) [050727 09:37]:
>
> > SJ, noting that as growth rates persist, at one
> feature a day, many
> > featured articles will never have their day in the
> sun.
>
>
> That's fine. The purpose of FA is to note and
> encourage a certain standard
> of quality, not just to pick front page candndates.
> The ratio of FAs has
> stayed fairly constant at 1 in 900 to 1000; we would
> ideally want it to be
> better than that.
>
> Raul has stated that in his opinion (as Featured
> Articles Dictator), *any*
> article fit to survive VFD could potentially be a
> feature; I think this is
> an entirely worthy goal.
>
>
> - d.
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

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subject: [WikiEN-l]  Mental illness (fm Example vs. Original research)

body:
--- Delirium <delirium at hackish.org> wrote:
> the areas on
> psychiatry/psychology/mental-illness could use a
> revamping to better
> attribute and cover the range of: 1) medical
> consensus [e.g. what the
> _DSM_ says]; 2) scientific consensus of current
> research [often not the
> same as #1]; 3) philosophical consensus opinion
> [e.g. on the definition
> of "mental illness"]; and 4) public/political
> opinion.  So long as all
> opinions are properly attributed to who holds them,
> rather than
> presented as "the right opinion", I don't see why
> these can't all co-exist.

Very nice.

SV

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body:
--- Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> It could be worse.   We could be living on the
> surface of a golf ball. :-)

Actually that would be impossible, as the pits on a
golf ball would translate to differences of several
hundreds of miles, even rather steep cliffs at the
edges.

The weather patterns would be extremely localized, and
solar energies would make each pit a virtual cauldron.
At the very least, the life generated on such such a
planet wouldnt resemble life as its developed here
--consisting mostly of extremophiles at the hot low
and cold high regions. And thats assuming the process
of water/atmosphere creation and maintenance were
successful and continuous.

Did I miss anything?

SV
...besides the actual point of the thread?

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

> Phil Boswell wrote:
> >"Alphax" <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote
> >>It should also be noted that the sphericity of the
> Earth only applies on
> >>a macroscopic scale; the hills and valleys don't
> seem to spherical to me
> >>;)
> >That's because you're working on a relatively tiny
> scale. If you were to
> >scale up a billiard ball (which is smooth enough to
> be a clich?d comparator)
> >to the size of the Earth, guess which would end up
> being smoother?
> >
> >
> It could be worse.   We could be living on the
> surface of a golf ball. :-)
>
> Ec

Sphericity =/= Smoothness ?

:)
SV

This thread went from POV diputes to Flat Earth to
yeesh/OMG... in just two days. Sorry I brought it up!
Next topic: Reproductive rights and abortion !!

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subject: [WikiEN-l] NPOV: Fetus personhood

body:
Now for a *real* NPOV tickler:

User:Meelar and I are having a friendly dispute over
how NPOV should be interpreted for the issue of "Fetus
personhood" (no article yet), beginning on the talk
pages of Talk:Pro-life and continuing at
Talk:Reproductive rights. (Sorry no links -- FFox
users can just selectlinks> rightclick> search - I
love how google finds WP:WP links easy these days too
:))

Question: Is it POV to say that a fetus is a "human
life," and by terminology, thus entitled to universal
"human rights" and societal "personhood" status?

I say its not, while Meelar feels that because
pro-choice advocates have disputed the human status of
a fetus, its therefore POV to say a human fetus is
human. This may be a simplistic reference of his NPOV
interpretation, (more on the talk pages) but my
general point is that just because PC says "its not
so" doesnt mean "its not so" just as with the FES
claim of the earth being "flat." AIUI PC has largely
avoided "human rights" for fetuses, by simply claiming
they arent human, or bypassing the question through
lesser "social rights" issues such as privacy. There
is no "human right" to kill another human being.

SV

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from_name: James Gibbon

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Wikipedia is *already* written from a scientific POV

body:
On Sun, 03 Jul 2005 14:12:57 +0100
Timwi <timwi at gmx.net> wrote:

> 	# 45% believe that God created human beings pretty much in their
> 	  present form at one time within the last 10,000 years or so
> 	# 37% believe that human beings have developed over millions of
> 	  years from less advanced forms of life, but God guided the
> 	  process.
>
> That's 82%, which I call "most".

I think that's 82% of the US specifically though, no? For other Western
countries the figure will be considerably lower.

>
> 	When asked by name whether they believe in or lean more towards
> 	the "theory of creationism" or the "theory of evolution", 57%
> 	indicated creationism, 33% indicated evolution, and 10%
> 	responded "not sure."
>
> Again, 57% I call "most".

Is that 57% of the 82%?

--
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body:
"Alphax" <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote in
message news:42E78E9D.1090002 at gmail.com...
> Phil Boswell wrote:
>> "Alphax" <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote in
>> message news:42E755D6.6070307 at gmail.com...
>> [snip]
>>>Oh, and did anyone mention the fact that the sphericity of the Earth is
>>>distorted by the tides?
>> {{sofixit}} :-)
> Give me a place to stand on...

YM an "edit" button to click on.

WikiWorld, here we come...:-)
--
Phil
[[en:User:Phil Boswell]]


from_name: Ryan Delaney

body:
Ray Saintonge wrote:

> Ryan Delaney wrote:
>
>>
>> My big problem with this is that very frequently, especially in
>> fields like science and philosophy, commonly held beliefs might be
>> very different from the "correct" beliefs, or the consensus among
>> learned experts. But because of the format of Wikipedia, some
>> extremely wrong beliefs are inserted into articles because they are
>> commonly held, even if they wildly contradict the research that
>> professionals in the field are doing -- and I mean this is just as
>> bad as saying the Earth is flat. The only difference is that the
>> roundness of the Earth is common knowledge, but there are some things
>> in science that are just as obvious to professionals but completely
>> unknown to the general public.
>
>
> "Commonly held beliefs", "'correct' beliefs", and expert consensus are
> three different frames of mind, and all three can still be wrong.
> Often, but certainly not always, the professionals have it right;
> that's reason enough to leave open the avenues for criticizing
> science.  "Correct" beliefs are often promulgated by people with a
> political end in mind, and they have no qualms about bending facts if
> it will help their cause  The general public, and thus our editors are
> often in the difficult position of having a limted basis for making a
> decision.  The need to cite sources should apply equally to the
> scientists and to those who express commonly held beliefs; the
> scientists have an advantage here because that practice has been a
> part of their experience.
> Science is very poorly reported to the general public.  An
> understanding of what's going on is incompatible with the 15-second
> sound bite.  Look at the evolution of a long established publication
> like "Popular Science".  In its early days, shortly after the US Civil
> War it had a lot of articles designed to get everybody to think about
> science; since then it has managed to evolve into something far more
> gadgety.  Much of science has retreated into the ivory tower.  This is
> great for the protection of scientific sinecures, but is terrible for
> the promotion of scientific understanding by the general public.
> One of the greatest things that Wikipedia could accomplish would be to
> produce a generation of critical thinkers with both the tools and the
> confidance to question any kind of established truth wherever they can
> find it.

> The [[Race and intelligence]] article is a perfect example of this
> phenomenon. People who know nothing about the research done in this
> field have many times gone into that article and edited it mercilessly
> in the name of NPOV because the established scientific opinion
> presented (and extensively referenced) in the article is very
> contradictory to the "politically correct" opinion. In my view,
> Wikipedians need to have more respect for references and experts to
> prevent this kind of thing from happening. The usual Wiki philosophy
> usually works in other cases, but in such an emotional subject as
> [[Race and intelligence]], people tend to go way overboard, and the
> NPOV and "everyone's equal" policies only make them more convictional
> about their right to push their POV over that of the academic consensus.

> It's a challenge.  The statistics say what they say - nothing more,
> nothing less.  The statistics thenselves are unconcerned about how
> anyone misinterprets them.  People don't usually understand what
> statistics are all about, and are quick to draw conclusions that are
> not warranted.  This subject matter is a good example where we can
> look for creative ways to build consensus.  Simply telling the public
> that they are wrong and that they should pay attention to their
> academic betters will get us nowhere except into a never ending flame
> war.  Somewhere along the way the scientists dropped the ball.

Generally speaking (and I am speaking from my personal experience here)
whenever what I am calling a "learned expert" -- be it a graduate
student in a subject or a PhD or a professional with years of time on
the job -- makes contributions, they are well argued and highly
referenced. As you say, these people have a lot of experience making
these kinds of arguments and I think their method of discovering truth
is the best one we have. So no, I don't want to tell the public that
"they are wrong and that they should pay attention to their academic
betters". I don't think it should even have to be said.

I think people on Wikipedia should be more humble and conscious of the
limitations of their knowledge and expertise, and willing to admit that
if another person knows more about it than they do, that his or her
opinions are more likely to be closest to the truth. If an expert says
something you think you can disprove with adequate research and
referencing, then go ahead and bring that up. But I've seen some
astonishing arrogance in Wikipedians who think their common knowledge
should weigh just as heavily as the opinions of eminent and established
thinkers in an advanced field.

That doesn't promote the spread of academic-level scientific knowledge
that you want -- it obscures it, by breeding a culture that only
perpetuates the commonly held beliefs over the rigorous testing of
scientific method.

> [snip]

>> In these cases, I don't think that any amount of voiciferous
>> objecting and arguing should be considered relevant. I think that
>> even if the consensus of Wikipedians editing the article disagrees
>> with it, that consensus should lose, unless they can find some
>> evidence that the article is wrong. This obsession with consensus has
>> a real possibility of going terribly wrong. I think the emphasis
>> should be on having Wikipedia advance _correct_ beliefs, not popular
>> ones.
>
>
> "Correct" too easily becomes "politically correct".  It's too easy to
> become emotionally attached to one's "correct" beliefs.  There is
> great normalizing power to effective consensus building.  Scientists
> would do better by judiciously planting seeds in Wikipedia's great
> fractal Mendelbrot.

I don't think that Wikipedia should take a position that truth is
subjective. I know that's not precisely what you're saying, but I do
think this is a dangerous slippery slope.

Some beliefs are wrong despite being widely held. Yes, if you dig deep
enough into the philosophy of correspondence theory and epistemology
you'll discover that we only know things with a limited degree of
certainty. But as you know, that doesn't mean that Wikipedia should
include caveats that the moon might actually be made of Norweigan beaver
cheese. Science has a way of shifting the burden of proof, and that also
happens in academic subjects where the discoveries of a few people are
not yet common knowledge despite the availability of the facts to anyone
who wants to look at them.

Human civilization works as well as it does because our skills are
diversified and we can each specialize to great degrees in individual
tasks. But Wikipedia has abandoned that format, and I think that in
exchange for freedom of information exchange, we're paying a price we
don't have to pay, in the form of scaring away the people who have
specialized the most in a single field. I don't want Wikipedia to be an
academic journal with all its red tape, politics, and anal-retentive
peer review. I just want Wikipedians to be encouraged to understand
their limitations, and stick to the things they know.

- Ryan


from_name: Delirium

body:
William M Connolley wrote:

>>This would be a common scientific approach to dealing with critics, I
>>believe. Instead of addressing their concerns, one adds lots of
>>irrelevant, complicated details and hopes to confuse the heck out of
>>them so that they shut up. ;)
>>
>>
>
>A fair comment, as long as you delete "scientific" and replace it with
>"political"...
>
>
Eh, it's not uncommon in scientific circles either.  The sort of paper
that buries its reader in gratuitous and only-tangentially-relevant
equations and data tables as a substitute for actually making a good
argument is sadly altogether too common.  Most do get caught by peer
review (at least in good publications and conferences), but there are
still a fair number that slip through...

But regardless, *we* don't want to do that.  A few of the articles that
get too citation-happy do seem to do this sometimes... when every single
sentence ends with an external link (half of them broken, since the web
is mostly ephemeral), and the writing style is "a bunch of gratuitous
facts are asserted with no coherent explanation", something is wrong...

-Mark


body:
Ryan Delaney wrote:

> The [[Race and intelligence]] article is a perfect example of this
> phenomenon. People who know nothing about the research done in this
> field have many times gone into that article and edited it mercilessly
> in the name of NPOV because the established scientific opinion
> presented (and extensively referenced) in the article is very
> contradictory to the "politically correct" opinion. In my view,
> Wikipedians need to have more respect for references and experts to
> prevent this kind of thing from happening. The usual Wiki philosophy
> usually works in other cases, but in such an emotional subject as
> [[Race and intelligence]], people tend to go way overboard, and the
> NPOV and "everyone's equal" policies only make them more convictional
> about their right to push their POV over that of the academic consensus.

In such cases, where there are mostly-irreconcilable differences of
opinion held by various groups, it makes sense to simply describe the
opinion of each group, properly attributed.  In this case, there could
be a section on academic viewpoints, and one on how the issue plays out
in the political sphere.  Of course, political groups who attack the
academic consensus should have their POV reported as well and properly
attributed.

Sometimes there might be more than two sections as well---the areas on
psychiatry/psychology/mental-illness could use a revamping to better
attribute and cover the range of: 1) medical consensus [e.g. what the
_DSM_ says]; 2) scientific consensus of current research [often not the
same as #1]; 3) philosophical consensus opinion [e.g. on the definition
of "mental illness"]; and 4) public/political opinion.  So long as all
opinions are properly attributed to who holds them, rather than
presented as "the right opinion", I don't see why these can't all co-exist.

-Mark


subject: [WikiEN-l] NPOV: Fetus personhood

body:
Then we're in agreement that Fetal personhood needs to
be an article. I disagree with Skyring's claim that
NPOV policy and NPOV terminology should be left to
each article. As physical science has rational bearing
on issues regarding the concept of universe, so does
medical science have a bearing on all medical issues.
The view that NPOV rel. rationality rel. science, and
POV rel. irrationality rel. claim/belief is not a
controversial interpretation of NPOV, IMHO.

Hence we can feel free to state a dominant consensus
that at some certain point, a fetus is a human life,
and hence marginalize both extreme absolutist views
which claim either that "human life begins at
conception" or that the issue is entirely "in the
domain of woman's choice [until its feet are out]."

Sinreg,
SV

PS starting progress on: consolidating issues to
Template:Abortion

--- Delirium <delirium at hackish.org> wrote:
> This is a pretty complex question to sum up easily,
> and there's a huge
> body of writing on it from all sides (not just
> political advocates
> either; there's a huge body of literature in
> applied-ethics philosophy
> journals).  Some opinions agree that it's a "human
> life" but argue that
> "human rights" is a misnomer and ought to be
> "personhood rights", and
> not granted automatically to humans but only to
> persons; others dispute
> that a fetus is "human" in the sense that the term
> is generally meant,
> and instead will only grant it is "of the species
> homo sapiens" or
> something similar.  There is a whole *other* body of
> literature on what
> exactly "personhood" is and means, and once you've
> established that,
> still another body of literature on what sort of
> ethics ought to apply
> to people who have been deemed "persons" in the
> relevant sense (fifty
> flavors of utilitarians, Kantians, and all the
> rest).
>
> Basically there's nothing Wikipedia can say about
> this subject that has
> a consensus anywhere, other than some very basic
> medical facts like "a
> fetus is genetically of the species homo sapiens".
> There is, however, a
> lot of stuff other people say about it that would be
> nice to summarize.
>
> -Mark

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from_name: Magnus Manske

subject: [WikiEN-l] Encarta article list

body:
Based on a list collected by [[user:Bluemoose]], I have generated
link-lists at

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Encarta_Encyclopedia_topics

There are 19 lists, with initially 2000 links each, *including existing
links*. The lists will have to be manually cleaned from links to
existing articles (due to naming problems, I would not recommend a bot).

I have already done two of these lists (one and a half, to be honest, as
#19 was only half full), but now it becomes a PITA ;-)

So please, assist in the effort. Each of the remaining 17 pages has 40
sections to ease editing. If just a few of you do some sections, the
lists will be usable pretty soon.

Thanks,
Magnus
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from_name: William M Connolley

body:
On Wed, 27 Jul 2005, Chris [iso-8859-1] L?er wrote:
> Alphax wrote:
>
> >Oh, and did anyone mention the fact that the sphericity of the Earth is
> >distorted by the tides?

Mostly by the equatorial bulge, which is rotational. The tidal stuff is
secondary.

> This would be a common scientific approach to dealing with critics, I
> believe. Instead of addressing their concerns, one adds lots of
> irrelevant, complicated details and hopes to confuse the heck out of
> them so that they shut up. ;)

A fair comment, as long as you delete "scientific" and replace it with
"political"...

-W.

William M Connolley | wmc at bas.ac.uk | http://www.antarctica.ac.uk/met/wmc/
Climate Modeller, British Antarctic Survey | (01223) 221479
If I haven't seen further, it's because giants were standing on my shoulders


body:
> SJ, noting that as growth rates persist, at one feature a day, many
> featured articles will never have their day in the sun.

Hmm... The queue may grow faster than it moves
forward but still it does move forward, so any
given featured article will eventually appear
at the front page, even if the line keeps
growing longer.

Regards,
Haukur


body:
Skyring wrote:

>On 7/28/05, Ryan Delaney <ryan.delaney at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>
>>Generally speaking (and I am speaking from my personal experience here)
>>whenever what I am calling a "learned expert" -- be it a graduate
>>student in a subject or a PhD or a professional with years of time on
>>the job -- makes contributions, they are well argued and highly
>>referenced. As you say, these people have a lot of experience making
>>these kinds of arguments and I think their method of discovering truth
>>is the best one we have. So no, I don't want to tell the public that
>>"they are wrong and that they should pay attention to their academic
>>betters". I don't think it should even have to be said.
>>
>>
>
>I've found that "learned experts" on WP sometimes use themselves as
>references to push their own POVs, and if you then ask them for
>sources, they provide impressive-looking material that doesn't
>actually address the issue.
>
>NOR applies just as much to self-proclaimed experts as anyone else.
>
>
>
Of course it does, and of course they do. I don't feel like you're
really responding to the argument I'm making here.

- Ryan


from_name: Jimmy Wales

subject: [WikiEN-l] Irate

body:
Anthere wrote:
> For the record since he is an english wikipedian, I blocked Irate for
> one week on meta. Those unhappy with that decision may of course cancel
> it and unblock him. Reason given for the block : uncooperative behavior
> with his fellow wikipedians.

And after an irc conversation today in which he appealed his latest
block in en by Snowspinner, I blocked him indefinitely from English
Wikipedia.

He says that our rules are rubbish, and that he intended to continue
"following" them as he has in the past.  (i.e., not at all)  I implored
him to take on a higher standard of behavior, but he adopted a lawyering
posture about it, that he's going to do as much as he can within the
rules as he sees them being applied to others.  (i.e. the argument that
if anyone gets away somehow with bad behavior, he can do it too).

We've got an encyclopedia to write, and we should be very very sorry to
those who have had to put up with him for this long.

--Jimbo


from_name: Phroziac

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Verify feature

body:
sounds great to me, I like the idea.

On 7/27/05, Salvatore Ingala <spider87 at katamail.com> wrote:
> Hi! I've added to MediaWiki a feature which could be an alternative to page
> protection: the verify feature. I've added to the sysops' bar a
> 'verify'/'unverify' button: 'verify' sets the current revision as
> 'verified'. When there is a 'verified' revision, users can still edit the
> page, but new revisions are not shown until a sysops verifies it again (of
> course, even new revisions can be accessed though the history, and the
> verified one, if any, is in bold).
> 'Unverify', of course, removes the protection.
>
> I think this would be a very good alternative to page protection against
> vandals.
> I would like to heard what do you think of it.
>
> Regards,
> Salvatore
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

--
signature


from_name: Dori

body:
On 7/27/05, Mateo Nares <mateo at hotstudio.com> wrote:
> I have my MySQL database hosted with XO, and as such the user that is given
> admin access to the database is not "root".  I would like to know what file
> I need to modify to specify a user aside from "root" when the installation
> script runs.

Doesn't the installer ask for a MySQL username and password?


subject: [WikiEN-l] NPOV: Fetus personhood

body:
I don't think so. It's a human, it moves, it must be alive. I think it
would be POV to say that it is entitled to universal human rights and
stuff though. There's still people that don't think females, blacks,
whatever are entitled to universal human rights!

On 7/27/05, steve v <vertigosteve at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Now for a *real* NPOV tickler:
>
> User:Meelar and I are having a friendly dispute over
> how NPOV should be interpreted for the issue of "Fetus
> personhood" (no article yet), beginning on the talk
> pages of Talk:Pro-life and continuing at
> Talk:Reproductive rights. (Sorry no links -- FFox
> users can just selectlinks> rightclick> search - I
> love how google finds WP:WP links easy these days too
> :))
>
> Question: Is it POV to say that a fetus is a "human
> life," and by terminology, thus entitled to universal
> "human rights" and societal "personhood" status?
>
> I say its not, while Meelar feels that because
> pro-choice advocates have disputed the human status of
> a fetus, its therefore POV to say a human fetus is
> human. This may be a simplistic reference of his NPOV
> interpretation, (more on the talk pages) but my
> general point is that just because PC says "its not
> so" doesnt mean "its not so" just as with the FES
> claim of the earth being "flat." AIUI PC has largely
> avoided "human rights" for fetuses, by simply claiming
> they arent human, or bypassing the question through
> lesser "social rights" issues such as privacy. There
> is no "human right" to kill another human being.
>
> SV
>
>
>
>
>
> ____________________________________________________
> Start your day with Yahoo! - make it your home page
> http://www.yahoo.com/r/hs
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

--
signature


from_name: Fred Bauder

subject: [WikiEN-l] NPOV: Fetus personhood

body:
Presented as a flat fact, of course, but NPOV policy contemplates
that all significant points of view be fairly presented. This point
of view is significant and ought to be included in the articles it is
relevant to, such as abortion, as should the opposing points of view.

Fred

On Jul 27, 2005, at 4:22 PM, steve v wrote:

> Question: Is it POV to say that a fetus is a "human
> life," and by terminology, thus entitled to universal
> "human rights" and societal "personhood" status?


subject: [WikiEN-l] NPOV: Fetus personhood

body:
steve v wrote:

>Question: Is it POV to say that a fetus is a "human
>life," and by terminology, thus entitled to universal
>"human rights" and societal "personhood" status?
>
>
This is a pretty complex question to sum up easily, and there's a huge
body of writing on it from all sides (not just political advocates
either; there's a huge body of literature in applied-ethics philosophy
journals).  Some opinions agree that it's a "human life" but argue that
"human rights" is a misnomer and ought to be "personhood rights", and
not granted automatically to humans but only to persons; others dispute
that a fetus is "human" in the sense that the term is generally meant,
and instead will only grant it is "of the species homo sapiens" or
something similar.  There is a whole *other* body of literature on what
exactly "personhood" is and means, and once you've established that,
still another body of literature on what sort of ethics ought to apply
to people who have been deemed "persons" in the relevant sense (fifty
flavors of utilitarians, Kantians, and all the rest).

Basically there's nothing Wikipedia can say about this subject that has
a consensus anywhere, other than some very basic medical facts like "a
fetus is genetically of the species homo sapiens".  There is, however, a
lot of stuff other people say about it that would be nice to summarize.

-Mark


body:
"William M Connolley" <wmc at bas.ac.uk> wrote in
message news:Pine.GSO.4.55.0507271627390.14710 at bsucena...
On Wed, 27 Jul 2005, Chris [iso-8859-1] L?er wrote:
[snip]
> > This would be a common scientific approach to dealing with critics, I
> > believe. Instead of addressing their concerns, one adds lots of
> > irrelevant, complicated details and hopes to confuse the heck out of
> > them so that they shut up. ;)
>
> A fair comment, as long as you delete "scientific" and replace it with
> "political"...

YM "human" :-)

HTH HAND
--
Phil
[[en:User:Phil Boswell]]


from_name: slimvirgin at gmail.com

subject: [WikiEN-l] NPOV: Fetus personhood

body:
> On Jul 27, 2005, at 4:22 PM, steve v wrote:
>
> > Question: Is it POV to say that a fetus is a "human
> > life," and by terminology, thus entitled to universal
> > "human rights" and societal "personhood" status?
>
At [[Human]], we wrote (though I see it's been changed): "Human life
begins at conception ...  As the zygote grows through successive
stages inside the female's uterus over a period of 38 weeks, it is
called an embryo, then a fetus. At birth, the fully grown fetus, now
called a baby, is expelled from the female's body, and breathes
independently for the first time. At this point, most modern cultures
recognize the baby as a person entitled to the full protection of the
law, though some jurisdictions extend personhood to human fetuses
while they remain in the uterus."

I would say it's NPOV to say that a fetus is human life (what other
kind of life could it be if it's a human fetus?), but it's POV to
attribute personhood to the fetus, which is a legal issue only
indirectly tied to the biological one.

Sarah


from_name: Alphax

body:
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Ray Saintonge wrote:
> Haukur ?orgeirsson wrote:
>
>>> It's not a matter of the number of religious fundamentalists, or how
>>> persistently anyone argues, or lines being drawn.  I certainly don't
>>> believe that today's points of view should hold sway over historical
>>> ones.
>>>
>>
>> Then what is it a matter of? I still fail to understand
>> your position. Do you or do you not want a statement about
>> the near-spherical shape of the Earth to be qualified as
>> "just one point of view" on Wikipedia?
>>
> Ultimately all of our opinions are just one more point of view, and
> every statement is probabilistic.  The near sphericity of the earth is a
> POV with a very high probability of truth.  If all Wikipedians (and we
> are many) hold that POV than the NPOV will also be in that range as a
> consensus   Why would it be necessary to add that qualification if
> no-one is disputing the shape?
>

I think you might run foul of both the Flat Earth Society and the
Systematic Bias folks for those statements :)

It should also be noted that the sphericity of the Earth only applies on
a macroscopic scale; the hills and valleys don't seem to spherical to me ;)

Oh, and did anyone mention the fact that the sphericity of the Earth is
distorted by the tides?

- --
Alphax                      |   /"\
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from_name: Chris Lüer

subject: [WikiEN-l] NPOV: Fetus personhood

body:
At 05:22 PM 7/27/2005, steve v wrote:

>Question: Is it POV to say that a fetus is a "human
>life," and by terminology, thus entitled to universal
>"human rights" and societal "personhood" status?

This has been debated by philosophers for
centuries, so yes, it is POV. This question is
much deeper than the current US American
pro-life/pro-choice debate. For example, Thomas
Aquinas and Ren? Descartes were on opposite ends
of this debate (Thomas - no, Descartes - yes),
even though they were both devout Catholics.

         Chl


subject: [WikiEN-l] NPOV: Fetus personhood

body:
Alternatives include when it is viable, when it is born.

Fred

On Jul 27, 2005, at 6:59 PM, <slimvirgin at gmail.com> wrote:

> I would say it's NPOV to say that a fetus is human life