from_name: Dan Drake

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Consumerium

body:
On Fri, 7 May 2004 22:03:07 UTC, Caroline Ford
<caroline at secretlondon.me.uk> wrote:

> uninvited at nerstrand.net wrote:
>
> >Anyone who believes that the trolls will go away if not fed should take some time to review:
> >
> >http://develop.consumerium.org
> >
> >Among other features of the site are a number of articles that attempt to organize leftist POV authors and get
> >them to edit at Wikipedia.
> >...
> Do you all really believe that WP is dominated by the left? All I ever
> seem to see is US rightists and nationalists. If Wikipedia was dominated
> by the left it would be a much more pleasant place to edit.

Well, I don't believe it; but I also don't quite understand this thread.
Uninvited's message didn't say that Wikipedia is dominated by leftists, or
anything of the sort; it said that that website was trying to organize
certain kinds of leftists to work on Wikipedia. Certain kinds, meaning (as
far as I see in a quick look at their site) peaceful pro-nature people who
want only health and joy and threatening people's lives, as Tim  Starling
showed us. (*)  What does their _desire_ for Wikipedia to reflect the
views certain kinds of leftist have to do with its _being_ that way, or
with our thinking that it is?

(*) This is unfair, of course. It appears that some people there properly
despise 142.)

Personal bias disclosure: I'm in favor of ecologically sound peace and
joy, not unlike what their main page seems to claim. If they want to
participate here, playing by the rules, I'll welcome them. If people with
the opposite view do, I'll have to put up with them.

What others might see as left-wing or right-wing bias (or pro- or anti-
US) I see as the result of its attracting lots of seriously unsound people
to sound off. It goes with the territory. We each see the worst junk as
being the junk on the Other Side, and get the impression that the O.S. is
dominating.  But perhaps (if you will allow me the liberty of quoting an
American) error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to
combat it.

--
Dan Drake
dd at dandrake.com
http://www.dandrake.com

Whoever tries to imagine perfection simply reveals his own emptiness.
 --George Orwell


list: wikien-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Matt McLauchlin

subject: [WikiEN-l] Grievance

body:
Is there any official way to file a grievance against another user?
[[User:Chameleon]] has just insulted my religion in [[Talk:Zaragoza,
Spain]]. I find this unacceptable behaviour.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Driven_off_by_trolls

body:
On Mon, 10 May 2004 19:01:58 UTC, Mark Richards
<marich712000 at yahoo.com> wrote:

>  As far as I can see,
> this is an attempt by an advocacy group to get their
> point of view to dominate certain articles - my
> understanding was that we were using the term 'troll'
> to mean users who post to deliberately stir up
> controversy.
[for its own sake. -- my addition]

We were; and that was  the meaning when it was first used in newsgroups.

>http://develop.consumerium.org/wiki/index.php/Driven_off_by_trolls

In applying the term to Larry Flynt's disreputable political move (I take
no stance on whether it was a _bad_ political move) is helping to take
away the meaning of a useful word; cf. hacker.

--
Dan Drake
dd at dandrake.com
http://www.dandrake.com

Whoever tries to imagine perfection simply reveals his own emptiness.
 --George Orwell


from_name: Rich Holton

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: troubled.

body:
--- Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> Okay. So, let us set a consistent policy on this.
> I totally approved
>  > * picture that is universally considered
> offensive -> link
>  > * picture that is considered offensive by some,
> not by others -> embed
>
I'm not sure if you meant this literally,
figuratively, or sarcastically. If you really meant
that a picture must be "universally considered
offensive" before if is moved behind a link, I must
disagree. You will never get "universal" agreement on
anything. So that policy will end up the equivalent of
never putting a picture behind a link.

If the consensus view is that a picture should never
be "hidden" behind a link, then let's state that
plainly. If we want to allow for variation based on
the context, then let's eliminate the "universal"
wording.

> Fortunately, I fixed the clitoris page, otherwise,
> we had
> -> clitoris -> link -> universally considered
> offensive
> -> torture -> embedded -> considered offensive by
> some, not by others
>
> Which I do not think is consistent with reality.
>
It seems to me that one of the important issues is,
who is to determine what is or is not consistent with
reality? I know that some cultures/subcultures have a
much greater sensitivity to public nudity than do
others. Which culture is consistent with reality? From
which culture's point of view will the decision be
made?

NPOV concerns more than just slanted writing. It
includes such things as what cultural bias is revealed
in the presentation. Obviously, we cannot eliminate
culture bias, but we do make efforts to make
reasonable accommodations.

For example, we strive to be multi-lingual. There are
Wikipedias in every language on which people are
willing to work. In theory, at least, there is no
preferred language in the Wikipedia world.

We go to quite a bit of effort to ensure that there is
not a de-facto bias against non-technical people
(Hence, Wiki mark-up). We try to support as many
browsers as possible, to the detriment of those with a
"standard" browser (the developers time is "wasted" on
supporting those other browsers).

In other words, the majority sometimes makes
sacrifices to accommodate the minorities. It is a
central principle of NPOV and Wikipedia.

How much is lost if we "mask" an image that a
significant number of people find offensive?

I understand that some could be offended by the fact
that we mask images. The penalty that those people pay
is minimal, as the photo is readily available. The
penalty is one mouse click per image.

If we approach it the other way, and do not mask the
images, the penalty for those who are offended is that
certain articles will become *unavailable* to them,
unless they view what they find offensive. They have
no alternative (short of using a different source for
information).

I would say the cost of masking some images is minimal
compared with other costs that we accept without
question.

Clearly we cannot mask all images. It seems to me that
masking none is also not the answer.

The question becomes, what is a "significant number of
people"? At what point do we mask the image? How do we
decide?

-Rich Holton

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Movies - Buy advance tickets for 'Shrek 2'
http://movies.yahoo.com/showtimes/movie?mid=1808405861


from_name: Lakshminarainan Ramachandran

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: troubled

body:
<snip>
> Couldn't this whole problem be addressed simply by creating a
> separate article, with a title such as [[Abu Ghraib/Photos of
> abuse]]? </snip>

I dont quite agree with this. By doing that I feel we will be
over-emphasizing these photos and separate from the main article which
in itself will be a crude digression - like a link to the museum of
the grotesque. The current policy of putting a warning message on top
(whether it be for articles on literature, legal terminology or images
and articles of graphic nature) sounds sufficient to me and seems to
serve its purpose.


from_name: Imran Ghory

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Re: Historian: origin of apparent "policy" re
	recipesand how-tos?

body:
On Tue, 11 May 2004, Timwi wrote:

> KNOTT, T wrote:
>
> >>If so many people want them, why not make a new project -- WikiHowto?
> >>Either that, or extend the scope of Wikibooks slightly.
> >
> > It's within the scope of wikibooks.
>
> In what way? I can see there's a cookbook on Wikibooks, so if I wanted
> to write a recipe I guess I would add it there, but what if I want to
> write just a single howto on something I found out (say, how to install
> something in Linux)?

Just create a software howto book and stick it in there as one of the
chapters.

Imran
--
http://bits.bris.ac.uk/imran


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Gabriel Wicke

subject: [Wikitech-l] timelines on test

body:
Hi,

i tried to enable timelines on test today bud didn't succeed. Ploticus
is installed and produces an (empty-looking) svg file in
upload/timeline, but no png.

When run from the commandline, EasyTimeline.pl produces this:
commandline:
/usr/local/apache/htdocs/test/w/extensions/timeline/EasyTimeline.pl
-i /home/wikipedia/htdocs/test/upload/timeline/2a5f2e34e5eb39f1d62cba28491eef33 -d -l -T /tmp -P /usr/bin/pl
----
Generating output:
Using ploticus command "/usr/bin/pl" (/usr/bin/pl)
Running Ploticus to generate svg file
Running Ploticus to generate bitmap

INFO
- TimeAxis attribute 'format' not specified. Value 'yyyy' assumed

Image /home/wikipedia/htdocs/test/upload/timeline/2a5f2e34e5eb39f1d62cba28491eef33.png not created.

The test page used is
http://test.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michail_Gorbatschow.

Any ideas?
--
Gabriel Wicke


subject:
[WikiEN-l] Re: Historian: origin of apparent "policy" re recipes
	and how-tos?

body:
On Tue, 11 May 2004, Anthere wrote:

> ~You miss the point. Many people do consider many recipees are
> encyclopedic, as some have cultural value.

The central basis on which I argue on vfd when these things come up is
that wikipedia should be descriptive not prescriptive. Instructive works
come under the remit of wikibooks so that is where they should go.

So a description of how a food is made is encyclopedic, but instructions
on how to make that food are not encyclopedic.

Imran
--
http://bits.bris.ac.uk/imran


list: foundation-l

from_name: Daniel Mayer

subject: [Foundation-l] First Past the Post

body:
--- hcheney <hdcheney at yahoo.com> wrote:
> I am extremely concerned about the use of the
> plurality first past the post system. Generally, such
> systems encourage the establishment of two opposing
> sides and the use of tactical voting, which is not in
> the spirit of Wikipedian consensus building.

I hate first past the post too. In fact one of the reasons I haven't decided to
run yet was to not divide the vote between me and a few other like-minded
people and thus ensure we give the election to somebody else.

> Considering the large number of well respected
> candidates running, the vote will probably be narrowly
> divided, and a small dedicated group of users or
> sockpuppets could usurp this election.

I don't think that is what we should be most concerned about ; the more likely
outcome is electing somebody a small minority of people honestly voted for
while three or four people who were had similar stands on a set of issues
collectively got over 70%. Thus the *issues* that those candidates wanted to
address don't get addressed even though there was a great deal of support for
the group of candidates that expressed them. Plurality elections totally suck!
The bastard cure for them is to have two opposing political parties and have
each party select just one candidate to run. But I think that polarizing
Wikimedia between two camps is the last thing we want to do.

> I very strongly urge an adoption of Instant Runoff
> Voting-Single Transferable Vote (similar to the method
> used to elect the President of Ireland). Unlike First
> Past the Post, IRV-STV will eliminate candidates that
> lack a clear mandate and will favor consensus building
> candidates.

We should have a vote on what method to vote by. But then what method do we use
for that vote? :)

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Movies - Buy advance tickets for 'Shrek 2'
http://movies.yahoo.com/showtimes/movie?mid=1808405861


list: wikimedia-l

subject: [Foundation-l] First Past the Post


from_name: Anthere

body:
~You miss the point. Many people do consider many recipees are
encyclopedic, as some have cultural value.

Plus, do you have (or did you ever see ?) a paper version of the first
encyclopedia set by the encyclopedists ? It was definitly a practical
encyclopedia. Some people do consider that howtos belong to an encyclopedia.

Timwi a ?crit:
> Daniel P.B.Smith wrote:
>
>> I've been very puzzled by an apparent consensus or policy--one with
>> which I obviously do not agree--that recipes in particular, and
>> didactic or "how-to" articles in general, do not belong in Wikipedia.
>
>
> If so many people want them, why not make a new project -- WikiHowto?
> Either that, or extend the scope of Wikibooks slightly.
>
> Timwi


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: troubled.

body:
Erik Moeller a ?crit:
> Anthere-
>
>>We censor pictures of clitoris on the english wikipedia.
>
>
> It was not censored, it was moved away. I had repeatedly argued against
> that, but the outcome of the vote was:
> 9 people in favor of embedding a photo in the article
> 8 people in favor of using a drawing in the article and linking to a photo
> 1 person in favor uf using neither a drawing nor a photo
>
> Of the 9 people in favor of keeping a photo in the article, 2 didn't want
> to use the *particular* photo that we have, which they argued looks like
> retouched pornography (and indeed it does, if you look at earlier versions
> of the image). So that makes "embed drawing, link to photo" the strongest
> position.
>
> No such vote was held on the Abu Ghraib article.
>
> I agree with you that our policies should be consistent. My suggestion
> would be:
> * picture that is universally considered offensive -> link
> * picture that is considered offensive by some, not by others -> embed
>
> One should never err on the side of censorship. I consider the acts that
> were committed in Abu Ghraib offensive, but not the photos of these acts.
>
> Regards,
>
> Erik

Voting on the clitoris page was an error, because it was voting for a
particular case, rather than trying to fix a general situation.

Okay. So, let us set a consistent policy on this.
I totally approved
 > * picture that is universally considered offensive -> link
 > * picture that is considered offensive by some, not by others -> embed

Fortunately, I fixed the clitoris page, otherwise, we had
-> clitoris -> link -> universally considered offensive
-> torture -> embedded -> considered offensive by some, not by others

Which I do not think is consistent with reality.


from_name: Meir Mendelovich

subject:
[Wikitech-l] How to translate the downtime warning + short domain
	proposal

body:
Hi,

1.
How can we translate to other languages the "Server will be down for maintenance on 2004-05-12 from about 02:00 to 03:00 UTC" message? I saw it is translated in FR and ES. I haven't found it in MediaWiki:All_messages.

I think it is over used since most of the viewing users are not interested in downtimes. Only wikipedians should see that message and in their own language.

2.
A new proposal for short domain: wp.info is free!!

   Meir :->
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from_name: Jens Frank

subject: [Wikitech-l] timelines on test

body:
On Tue, May 11, 2004 at 07:09:12PM +0200, Gabriel Wicke wrote:
> Hi,
>
> i tried to enable timelines on test today bud didn't succeed. Ploticus
> is installed and produces an (empty-looking) svg file in
> upload/timeline, but no png.
>
> When run from the commandline, EasyTimeline.pl produces this:
> commandline:
> /usr/local/apache/htdocs/test/w/extensions/timeline/EasyTimeline.pl
> -i /home/wikipedia/htdocs/test/upload/timeline/2a5f2e34e5eb39f1d62cba28491eef33 -d -l -T /tmp -P /usr/bin/pl
> ----
> Generating output:
> Using ploticus command "/usr/bin/pl" (/usr/bin/pl)
> Running Ploticus to generate svg file
> Running Ploticus to generate bitmap
>
> INFO
> - TimeAxis attribute 'format' not specified. Value 'yyyy' assumed
>

Which version of ploticus is this?

Regards,

	JeLuF


from_name: Theresa Robinson

subject: [WikiEN-l] I just blocked someone for 9999 hours

body:
For an idea on how to do the increasing warning, then block thing, check
out MediaWiki:Test2, MediaWiki:Test3, and MediaWiki:Test4, which I've been
using for a while now.

moink


body:
On Tue, 11 May 2004, Ray Saintonge wrote:

> >So a description of how a food is made is encyclopedic, but instructions
> >on how to make that food are not encyclopedic.
> >
> The descriptive/prescriptive distinction is very narrow in this case.  I
> prefer to avoid a pompous definition of what is encyclopedic.

Not really, the instructive case tells you how to make a specific version
of a food product but the descriptive case tells you how it is made in
general.

To look at a very simple case consider boiling rice, a specific recipe
could tell you to use a kettle to pre-boil water, another could state the
entire procedure should be done on a hob, yet another could suggest using a
microwave. And that's before you start considering things such as whether
you should add salt and how much you should add.

On the other hand a descriptive version could just be "the rice is heated
in boiling water".

Imran
--
http://bits.bris.ac.uk/imran


from_name: Erik Zachte

subject: [Wikitech-l] timelines on test

body:
On Tue, May 11, 2004 at 07:09:12PM +0200, Gabriel Wicke wrote:
> Hi,
>
> i tried to enable timelines on test today bud didn't succeed. Ploticus
> is installed and produces an (empty-looking) svg file in
> upload/timeline, but no png.
>
> When run from the commandline, EasyTimeline.pl produces this:
> commandline:
> /usr/local/apache/htdocs/test/w/extensions/timeline/EasyTimeline.pl
> -i
/home/wikipedia/htdocs/test/upload/timeline/2a5f2e34e5eb39f1d62cba28491eef33
 -d -l -T /tmp -P /usr/bin/pl
> ----
> Generating output:
> Using ploticus command "/usr/bin/pl" (/usr/bin/pl)
> Running Ploticus to generate svg file
> Running Ploticus to generate bitmap
>
> INFO
> - TimeAxis attribute 'format' not specified. Value 'yyyy' assumed
>

Gabriel,

EasyTimeline writes input for Ploticus to /tmp/EasyTimeline.txt.nnnn (where
nnnn is a number generated by PHP parser)

You could try running from the command line:

/usr/bin/pl -png -o test.png  /tmp/EasyTimeline.txt.nnnn -tightcrop

and look for any errors in the Ploticus output

Erik Zachte


from_name: David Friedland

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Naming policy for places

body:
Rick wrote:

> I refuse to participate as I've learned from past history that people
> will do just whatever they feel like doing, regardless of whether they
> win the vote or not.
>
> HOWEVER, I strongly suggest that you indicate what the rules are up
> front:  What is consensus, what is the minimum number of votes.  Even
> then, it will probably be ignored, but at least you set ground rules early.
>
> RickK

I'm sorry you're not interested in participating, but I believe some
attempt at making consensus-supported policy is better than no attempt.
Your point about the rules is well taken, and that's what I attempted to
do here. I didn't specify a mininum number of votes though. That should
be fixed before the vote begins.

- David


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] Database happiness

body:
Suda has free disk space on the root partition. Curly is on its way to
syncing up again. Life is good!

We've also installed a 2.6 kernel on zwinger, and may try rebooting it
at some point in the next couple days (once we're sure everything's
backed up on another machine) to see if it's a little snappier in the
IDE realm.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Shane Spencer

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Problems with displaying south Asian languages on my
	computer

body:
I have Windows 98 SE and I have problems displaying text characters in Hindi, Bengali, Tamil and Malayalam...they're always bars and blocks.  I tried to find the text display supports in those languages on my Win98SE CD-ROM, but I'm out of luck.  Can you please help me?  Thank you very much.
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from_name: Toby Bartels

subject: [Foundation-l] First Past the Post

body:
>Imran and I have discussed this. It seems that most people who have spoken
>out are opposed to First Past the Post as our voting system. We selected this
>because it seemed the easiest for everyone to understand and implement, and with
>the understanding that there will be opposition. In fact, I believe that no
>matter what voting system is chosen, there will be opposition to it.

We will need to compromise on a system to achieve consensus.
The effects of the voting system (which make people hate FPTP) are important,
but so are the need of the administrators (Danny and Imran in this case)
for a simple system.  I'm highly suspicious of any argument that Wikipedians,
who have learned how to use apostrophes and brackets to mark up text,
can't learn to rank candidates in order as IRV and Condorcet methods require.
However, I'm sympathetic to the greater work that Danny and Imran would have.

>On the other hand, we are willing to consider other methods. Imran will be
>posting on this later. Without having a huge vote on how we should vote, I would
>like to invite people on this list to propose alternative methods. I will
>also pose this same question to the candidates themselves.

I believe that approval voting ([[en:Approval voting]] has good coverage)
is very easy to implement and, while not an ideal system in my opinion,
is far and away better than FPTP while being quite nearly as easy to do.
It's the sort of thing that one might expect as a compromise between
fans of IRV (my fave), fans of Condorcet (often strongly principled),
and the people who have to run the vote (who hate this complicated stuff).
So while I'd prefer either IRV ''or'' Condorcet if Danny and Imran will do it,
starting with Approval may yield a quick resolution to the issue.
(We shall see if somebody objects to it!)

>This is not a commitment to change the current system--only to examine other
>options. Your comments are welcome either here or at WikiElections at aol.com,
>where they will be accessible to Imran and me only.

I hope that people will discuss things on the mailing list,
where a call for opinions has been given out (just now by Danny).
Shunting discussion to an unidentified meta page will spread it out,
and mails to the AOL address above won't be any good for discussion.
(Of course if somebody feels the need for confidentiality,
then that's another matter.)

-- Toby


subject: [Foundation-l] First Past the Post


subject: [Foundation-l] voting systems

body:
Toby Bartels a ?crit:
>>I very strongly urge an adoption of Instant Runoff
>>Voting-Single Transferable Vote (similar to the
method
>>used to elect the President of Ireland).
>
>
> If we're not careful, then we'll get into big
religious wars
> about what is the best method of voting in this
situation.
> Many people think that IRV is unnecessarily complex,
> while agreeing that FPTP is still indefensibly
simple.
>
> Although I'm personally a big fan of transferable
vote systems,
> if we really want to get a clear consensus to do
away with FPTP,
> then it may be best if all of the FPTP opponents
agree up front
> that any voting system chosen from instant runoff,
approval voting,
> and Condorcet (with any specified method for
resolving Condorcet ties)
> is an acceptable, consensus-building voting system,
while FPTP is not.
>
>
> -- Toby

The current voting system chosen has certainly the
benefit of simplicity.

However, I think it is a bad choice for several
reasons. In particular, it leads potential candidates
to decide not to participate, to avoid dividing votes
and to preserve chances of candidates they approve
themselves. I think it highly problematic.

I think many wikipedians regularly participate to
votes, which do not rely in fptp. Just thinking
quickly, I can't even see a topic where we vote with
fptp on Wikipedia. At a minimum, we spontaneously use
approval voting, because it naturally allow us to
express opposition.

Given that we will be voting for a "representant", I
think that the ability to express "opposition" is just
as important that ability to express "support". In
terms of representation, I would say that it is best
to have a final choice with which every one (or most)
feels confortable with, rather than a final choice
which half of wikimedia thinks absolutely great, while
the other half thinks absolutely disastrous.

fptp does not allow to express opposition. I think it
highly problematic.

Wikipedians are also used to sligtly more complicated
methods, and they do so, not thinking in terms of
voting methods. They just do it sponteneously. In
front of 4 propositions, they will often write :
option 1 : strong opposition, this is ugly !!!!
option 2 : well, that could do it
option 3 : same, acceptable
option 4 : yes, best, I love it !

Now, if you begin to ask participants "would you
prefer borda method or condorcet method or approval
voting or plain fptp" (in particular to non-english,
who will have to gather from english article what
these methods are), you won't have much success :-)

Ihmo, simple approval voting is not the best choice in
this case, because it does not allow to express
subtelty of positions. I do not think it best to have
to qualify people in terms of
1 (yes) : this candidate is good
0 (no) : this candidate is bad
No one is ever all white or all black. Just asking
people to qualify candidate this way is forcing them
to take/consider a extrem position, not suitable in
case the candidate is finally elected. It is never
good to push someone from a position of "I do not
really approve this person" to "I am plain opposed to
this person".

Il ne faut pas radicaliser les gens :-)

Any ranking method, or ranging method with more than 2
choices will be acceptable to me. I have some
preferences, but I can live with all choices.

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Movies - Buy advance tickets for 'Shrek 2'
http://movies.yahoo.com/showtimes/movie?mid=1808405861


subject: [Foundation-l] voting systems


from_name: Michael Snow

body:
Imran Ghory wrote:

>On Tue, 11 May 2004, Ray Saintonge wrote:
>
>
>>>So a description of how a food is made is encyclopedic, but instructions
>>>on how to make that food are not encyclopedic.
>>>
>>>
>>The descriptive/prescriptive distinction is very narrow in this case.  I prefer to avoid a pompous definition of what is encyclopedic.
>>
>>
>Not really, the instructive case tells you how to make a specific version
>of a food product but the descriptive case tells you how it is made in
>general.
>
>To look at a very simple case consider boiling rice, a specific recipe
>could tell you to use a kettle to pre-boil water, another could state the
>entire procedure should be done on a hob, yet another could suggest using a microwave. And that's before you start considering things such as whether you should add salt and how much you should add.
>
Actually, to comply with our NPOV policy, an encyclopedic article on
cooking rice needs to incorporate all of these different possibilities.
A recipe is a point of view on how to prepare something. After all,
there are almost always other recipes to prepare the same dish. Also, a
recipe is POV as to how many servings are desired.

Having examined the issue in this way, I find the solution easier. I
think in this case the distinction between description and instruction
is a false dichotomy. We do not delete material for being POV, we
rewrite it so that it is presented in a neutral fashion. If you find an
overly "biased" recipe, rewrite the article so that it describes how to
prepare the food in question, and take into account different opinions
about what to cook it in, how much salt to use, etc. I look forward to
the inevitable edit wars between competing traditional family recipes,
as I'm sure that will be far more entertaining than the ones I see now.

I do note that our material on the domestic arts (or are they sciences,
I'm never sure) is sorely neglected in general.

--Michael Snow
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list: wiktionary-l

from_name: vp

subject: [Wiktionary-l] automatic content extraction of ispell dictionnaries

body:
Hi,

I checked the french wiktionary anf found around 500 definitions for 'usual' words. Nice.
But what if i search for the spelling of a word rather than its definition ? I think it would be real cool if we could use the Ispell dictionnaries to fill the databases with blank definitions
('sorry, no definition yet') but correct spelling

V1nce

PS: Excuse my English, I'm French


subject: [Wikitech-l] Database happiness

body:
Thanks once again for all your hard work!

-Rich
--- Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com> wrote:
> Suda has free disk space on the root partition.
> Curly is on its way to
> syncing up again. Life is good!
>
> We've also installed a 2.6 kernel on zwinger, and
> may try rebooting it
> at some point in the next couple days (once we're
> sure everything's
> backed up on another machine) to see if it's a
> little snappier in the
> IDE realm.
>
> -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at Wikipedia.org
>
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Movies - Buy advance tickets for 'Shrek 2'
http://movies.yahoo.com/showtimes/movie?mid=1808405861


from_name: Angela

body:
 --- Meir Mendelovich <meir_m at mail.com> wrote:
> How can we translate to other languages the "Server
> will be down for maintenance on 2004-05-12 from
> about 02:00 to 03:00 UTC" message?

Just add your translation to
http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Server_outage_message
and a developer will take care of it.

Angela

____________________________________________________________
Yahoo! Messenger - Communicate instantly..."Ping"
your friends today! Download Messenger Now
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from_name: daniwo59 at aol.com

subject: [Foundation-l] First Past the Post

body:
Imran and I have discussed this. It seems that most people who have spoken
out are opposed to First Past the Post as our voting system. We selected this
because it seemed the easiest for everyone to understand and implement, and with
the understanding that there will be opposition. In fact, I believe that no
matter what voting system is chosen, there will be opposition to it.

On the other hand, we are willing to consider other methods. Imran will be
posting on this later. Without having a huge vote on how we should vote, I would
like to invite people on this list to propose alternative methods. I will
also pose this same question to the candidates themselves.

This is not a commitment to change the current system--only to examine other
options. Your comments are welcome either here or at WikiElections at aol.com,
where they will be accessible to Imran and me only.

Thank you.

Danny
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subject: [Foundation-l] First Past the Post

body:
Imran and I have discussed this. It seems that most people who have spoken
out are opposed to First Past the Post as our voting system. We selected this
because it seemed the easiest for everyone to understand and implement, and with
the understanding that there will be opposition. In fact, I believe that no
matter what voting system is chosen, there will be opposition to it.

On the other hand, we are willing to consider other methods. Imran will be
posting on this later. Without having a huge vote on how we should vote, I would
like to invite people on this list to propose alternative methods. I will
also pose this same question to the candidates themselves.

This is not a commitment to change the current system--only to examine other
options. Your comments are welcome either here or at WikiElections at aol.com,
where they will be accessible to Imran and me only.

Thank you.

Danny
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subject: [Foundation-l] First Past the Post

body:
Imran and I have discussed this. It seems that most people who have spoken
out are opposed to First Past the Post as our voting system. We selected this
because it seemed the easiest for everyone to understand and implement, and with
the understanding that there will be opposition. In fact, I believe that no
matter what voting system is chosen, there will be opposition to it.

On the other hand, we are willing to consider other methods. Imran will be
posting on this later. Without having a huge vote on how we should vote, I would
like to invite people on this list to propose alternative methods. I will
also pose this same question to the candidates themselves.

This is not a commitment to change the current system--only to examine other
options. Your comments are welcome either here or at WikiElections at aol.com,
where they will be accessible to Imran and me only.

Thank you.

Danny
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subject: [Foundation-l] First Past the Post

body:
Imran and I have discussed this. It seems that most people who have spoken
out are opposed to First Past the Post as our voting system. We selected this
because it seemed the easiest for everyone to understand and implement, and with
the understanding that there will be opposition. In fact, I believe that no
matter what voting system is chosen, there will be opposition to it.

On the other hand, we are willing to consider other methods. Imran will be
posting on this later. Without having a huge vote on how we should vote, I would
like to invite people on this list to propose alternative methods. I will
also pose this same question to the candidates themselves.

This is not a commitment to change the current system--only to examine other
options. Your comments are welcome either here or at WikiElections at aol.com,
where they will be accessible to Imran and me only.

Thank you.

Danny
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subject: [Foundation-l] First Past the Post

body:
Imran and I have discussed this. It seems that most people who have spoken
out are opposed to First Past the Post as our voting system. We selected this
because it seemed the easiest for everyone to understand and implement, and with
the understanding that there will be opposition. In fact, I believe that no
matter what voting system is chosen, there will be opposition to it.

On the other hand, we are willing to consider other methods. Imran will be
posting on this later. Without having a huge vote on how we should vote, I would
like to invite people on this list to propose alternative methods. I will
also pose this same question to the candidates themselves.

This is not a commitment to change the current system--only to examine other
options. Your comments are welcome either here or at WikiElections at aol.com,
where they will be accessible to Imran and me only.

Thank you.

Danny
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subject: [WikiEN-l] Grievance

body:
 --- Matt McLauchlin <matt_mcl at sympatico.ca> wrote: >
Is there any official way to file a grievance
> against another user?
> [[User:Chameleon]] has just insulted my religion in
> [[Talk:Zaragoza,
> Spain]]. I find this unacceptable behaviour.

There is an official way. This is described at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Dispute_resolution.
If you find that talking to this user doesn't help,
you can ask others to review the situation at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_comment
and then seek mediation if the grievance can not be
resolved in this way.

Wikipedia has a policy of "no personal attacks"
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:No_personal_attacks).
I would recommend you remove them, as suggested at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Remove_personal_attacks,
but some users have disagreed with this sort of
response (see the talk page).

Angela.

____________________________________________________________
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your friends today! Download Messenger Now
http://uk.messenger.yahoo.com/download/index.html


from_name: Rich Holton

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: troubled.

body:
EM = Erik Moeller
me = me (Rich Holton)

me> How much is lost if we "mask" an image that a
me> significant number of people find offensive?
>
EM> Quite a bit, in my opinion. By doing so, we
EM> emphasize this particular
EM> bias. For example, if we censor images of body
parts
EM> (connected to their
EM> body *cough*), we emphasize the bias of modern US
EM> society against nudity,
EM> a bias which is by no means universal.
>
In this case we may be emphasizing the bias of modern
US society against nudity, but in another case we may
be emphasizing the bias of another culture -- for
example, one in which a woman's face is not to be seen
in public.

EM> Of course you can argue that by not censoring
EM> ourselves, we become biased
EM> *against* that viewpoint. But that is not true if
EM> our lack of censorship
EM> is consistent. Then we are merely biased in favor
of
EM> being inclusive
EM> which, in my opinion, is a necessary bias for an
EM> encyclopedia, just like
EM> we are pro-knowledge rather than anti-knowledge
and
EM> pro-neutrality rather
EM> than pro-atheism or pro-theism, etc.
>
Well, first of all, I would not argue that we are or
are not censoring ourselves. I never suggested
removing images; I only suggested allowing the user
the choice to view the article and not view the
images.

Second, I don't follow how masking the images is
*less* inclusive than not masking them. Do you mean
more inclusive of images, or more inclusive of people?
My argument is precisely that masking the images is
more inclusive of people, without excluding any
images.

The cost of catering to those who are offended by the
images is a mouse-click from those who are not. The
cost of catering to those who would be offended by
having masked images is the non-participation of those
who are offended by the images.

I agree with you that an encyclopedia, particularly
Wikipedia, needs to be pro-knowledge and pro-NPOV. But
another guiding principle of Wikipedia is that it is
pro-user/pro-reader. We go out of our way to make it
accessible to as many people as possible. Why not
apply that to the display of offensive images?

Again, I am NOT suggesting the elimination of the
images. Only presenting them in a way that improves
the "accessibility" and usability of Wikipedia.

With respect,
Rich Holton

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Movies - Buy advance tickets for 'Shrek 2'
http://movies.yahoo.com/showtimes/movie?mid=1808405861


subject: [Wikitech-l] timelines on test

body:
On Tue, 2004-05-11 at 21:16 +0200, Erik Zachte wrote:

> EasyTimeline writes input for Ploticus to /tmp/EasyTimeline.txt.nnnn (where
> nnnn is a number generated by PHP parser)
>
> You could try running from the command line:
>
> /usr/bin/pl -png -o test.png  /tmp/EasyTimeline.txt.nnnn -tightcrop
>
> and look for any errors in the Ploticus output

Thanks for the tip, that helped me to identify the problem. Some png
libs were missing, and the rpm version segfaulted anyway. But- now it's
working!

First test page is http://test.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michail_Gorbatschow.

Cheers
--
Gabriel Wicke


subject: [Wikitech-l] Number of articles function

body:
Ray Saintonge wrote:
  > Ronline from the Romanian Wiktionary has pointed out that the
> ((NUMBEROFARTICLES)) function on that Main Page gives only the number
> "-1".

Fixed.

>  That also seems to be the case in several other new Wiktionaries.
> While checking this I also noticed that the list of all articles by
> title in same projects also comes up blank.

Ugh, will have to deal with a good way to fix those.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


from_name: Delirium

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: troubled.

body:
Erik Moeller wrote:

>>How much is lost if we "mask" an image that a
>>significant number of people find offensive?
>>
>>
>
>Quite a bit, in my opinion. By doing so, we emphasize this particular
>bias. For example, if we censor images of body parts (connected to their
>body *cough*), we emphasize the bias of modern US society against nudity,
>a bias which is by no means universal.
>
>Of course you can argue that by not censoring ourselves, we become biased
>*against* that viewpoint. But that is not true if our lack of censorship
>is consistent. Then we are merely biased in favor of being inclusive
>which, in my opinion, is a necessary bias for an encyclopedia, just like
>we are pro-knowledge rather than anti-knowledge and pro-neutrality rather
>than pro-atheism or pro-theism, etc.
>
>
I don't think that's being neutral, but taking a point of view.  You are
taking the point of view that some things---decapitated hostages,
[[golden showers]], [[coprophilia]], and any number of other
subjects---are too offensive to have inline images, but that some---such
as nudity---are due to particular biases you disagree with.

I'd say the bias against nudity is probably pretty heavy in the world.
The US is actually one of the most liberal countries in the world when
it comes to permitting nudity---there are plenty of countries where
merely possessing pornography will earn you a trip to jail.  Several
billion of the world's citizens are pretty solidly opposed to public
depictions of nudity.

-Mark


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: troubled.

body:
Erik Moeller wrote:

>If we are more forgiving of our own biases than of those of other
>cultures, then we effectively endorse a certain "POV" of what is and what
>isn't offensive, and this flies in the face of everything this project
>stands for. The standard of "near universal offensiveness" is the only one
>which avoids this problem.
>
>
In that case, I think "public depiction of close-up explicit images of
genitalia" meets the standard pretty handily in most of the world, with
a few minor exceptions of portions of the world that are highly
over-represented amongst Wikipedians.

-Mark


from_name: Nathan Hamblen

subject: [Wikitech-l] extension .mp4 not served with proper mime type

body:
I tried uploading a movie in MPEG 4 format with the extension .mp4, but
when I linked to it with [[media:movie_name.mp4]] it just came up as
gibberish, which usually would mean that the mime time was wrong. I'm
pretty sure that giving it a .mov extension would work fine so long as
the user has Quicktime 6, but that's not really as correct as mp4. (And
  there are probably players out there that can handle MPEG 4 but not
quicktime movies in general.)

Nathan


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re-troubled

body:
From: Rich Holton <rich_holton at yahoo.com>

--- Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> Okay. So, let us set a consistent policy on this.
> I totally approved
>  > * picture that is universally considered
> offensive -> link
>  > * picture that is considered offensive by some,
> not by others -> embed

>I'm not sure if you meant this literally,
>figuratively, or sarcastically. If you really meant
>that a picture must be "universally considered
>offensive" before if is moved behind a link, I must
>disagree. You will never get "universal" agreement on
>anything. So that policy will end up the equivalent of
>never putting a picture behind a link.

>If the consensus view is that a picture should never
>be "hidden" behind a link, then let's state that
>plainly. If we want to allow for variation based on
>the context, then let's eliminate the "universal"
>wording.

--------------------
Hi Rich

Figuratively...

You are absolutely correct. This is not a very good phrasing. There is probably no universally offending picture.

Clearly, human genitalia, torture pictures, humiliations, death, body in pieces, people playing with poop...none of this is fully universally offending.
And not only is it not universal, but on top of it, some consider these not offending at all.
Now, just because it is not "universal", does not mean it is not widely considered "hard to watch".
And it is not because newspapers chose to display rudely these pictures that we should do the same.
And it is not because Boston Globe does not display female genitalia but displays tortured bodies, that we should do the same, because it is only the Globe pov to do so.

We thrive on giving all points of view in article. I think we should a least try to do that a bit with regards to displaying tough pictures.

We can't define "universally" and we will probably always fight over what is supposingly really offensive and what is supposingly not really offensive, and we will probably never fully agree on this, because it is our education and sensibility that makes us see something offensive or not. There is no measure possible, and no "truth". It is just reality, and opinion on that reality.

---------------------------------
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subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Troubled

body:
Rich wrote

--- Anthere wrote:
>

> Fortunately, I fixed the clitoris page, otherwise,
> we had
> -> clitoris -> link -> universally considered
> offensive
> -> torture -> embedded -> considered offensive by
> some, not by others
>
> Which I do not think is consistent with reality.
>
It seems to me that one of the important issues is,
who is to determine what is or is not consistent with
reality? I know that some cultures/subcultures have a
much greater sensitivity to public nudity than do
others. Which culture is consistent with reality? From
which culture's point of view will the decision be
made?

NPOV concerns more than just slanted writing. It
includes such things as what cultural bias is revealed
in the presentation. Obviously, we cannot eliminate
culture bias, but we do make efforts to make
reasonable accommodations.

------------------------------------
We could find a middle way, where pictures are not censored entirely (removed), but are displayed in a less agressive way, as soon as it appears that the pictures might be hurting a reasonable number of people. As you say, we could both suit those who do not want censorship, and those who do not want wide availability.

I do not think a "reasonable number of people" has to be 80%. 50% being offended by a picture is a *very high* number in terms of audience, and deserve attention and care from us.

Those who feel like they do not personally care for the picture to be widely visible, but who "know inside themselves" that the picture will be offensive for many, should give it attention to it as well. We are not making an encyclopedia for "us" but for "all". So what matters is not so much "our" opinion, but the way we perceive the readers opinion will be. Because we are "not" a representative sample of whom will read the encyclopedia. We should try to jump in other people pants.

What I really want to point out, is that currently, we have ways to reduce offensivity (by galleries or by direct links to images), but we are applying these options in a non consistent way, based on who is around at the time the picture is put in the article and what his "personal" opinion is.

Example :
My personal opinion : I consider it important that human genitalia pictures are on WP. I think it not offensive at all. I would support these pictures to be on the article itself.
My social opinion : I know however, that this is offensive to some people; so I can live with these pictures being hidden behind a link if that is a way to offer more visibility to the encyclopedia.

Ie, if schools censor WP because of these pictures, I highly prefer that these pictures are less visible and WP is on school computers.

If a high school teacher wants to give a course on human rights next week to his 14 years old kids, and to do so, print the prison article as educative support for his students, I think it would be **great**. Perhaps, he won't do so, if those pictures are spread on the whole article. Do you think he will make some cut and paste of bits of the article to extract the pictures ? I do not think so. If he knows about WP, he will just run a print and make 30 copies and distribute them in the classroom.

Now, would you imagine students bringing the photocopied article home ? With the pictures ? Any idea of the parents reaction ? Any hope for the teacher not to get fired on the spot ?

---------------------------------
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subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Troubled

body:
Message: 8
Date: Wed, 12 May 2004 05:06:20 +0200
From: Nikola Smolenski
Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Re: troubled.
To: English Wikipedia
Message-ID: <200405120506.20190.smolensk at eunet.yu>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"

On Tuesday 11 May 2004 18:25, Mark Richards wrote:
> I wonder whether you could have a sub-page with
> exactly the same text but with the pictures, so that
> you would have a link at the top to 'switch on the
> pictures'. It would be kind of tricky to maintain I
> suppose.

Not at all: text could be in the MediaWiki namespace (articles should then
probably contain a comment telling newbies how to edit the text).

------------
Regarding the article about the prison, and its pictures of torture practices, humiliation of human beings and dead bodies, I think everyone agree that these are important and should be in the encyclopedia.
The following propositions have been made

* keep all pictures in the article (ie, considering information should prime over feelings)
    --> I think this does not take into consideration the opinion of those feeling these pictures are offending.

* have two articles, one with pictures, one without
    --> Interesting, but perhaps unpractical from an editing point of view (doable with mediawiki, but without neat display of pictures within the article)

* have offending pictures visible only per a link, individually
    --> Already practiced for other offending pictures. Good choice, but perhaps unpractical for the reader, as there are several pictures, and the reader has to click on each picture one after the other

* keep perhaps one picture in the article (least offensive), and offer a gallery of pictures (with a warning for readers aside from the link)
    -> I think this is a good idea. Many newspapers do that. I remember Le Monde did that a lot for all the covering of the war. Plus, it offers the benefit to lighten the weight of the article page.

---------------------------------
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subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: troubled

body:
> I'm not sure if you meant this literally,
> figuratively, or sarcastically. If you really meant
> that a picture must be "universally considered
> offensive" before if is moved behind a link, I must
> disagree.

It was meant figuratively rather than literally. I am talking about 95-
100% agreement. If I added a photo of the decapitated hostage, Nick Berg,
to an article and insisted on voting on it, I'm sure that's pretty much
what we would get - 95-100% in favor of removing the image or replacing it
with one just showing the hostage when he was still alive.

If I dare say... I think we also said "display image that hold an interest".

Now, the picture of Nick decapitated is interesting (but gross).
But why would his picture "before decapitation" be interesting ? After all, he is just a human being, with nothing special but to be unfortunately one of the numerous victim of a war.

I see not well why Nick with a head is more interesting than any of the picture of those people who died in the towers. People who were put in sept11, because they are "no one special".

Again, please, no double standards.

---------------------------------
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subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: troubled

body:
>> How much is lost if we "mask" an image that a
>> significant number of people find offensive?

>Quite a bit, in my opinion. By doing so, we emphasize this particular
>bias. For example, if we censor images of body parts (connected to their
>body *cough*), we emphasize the bias of modern US society against nudity,
>a bias which is by no means universal.

>Of course you can argue that by not censoring ourselves, we become biased
>*against* that viewpoint. But that is not true if our lack of censorship
>is consistent. Then we are merely biased in favor of being inclusive
>which, in my opinion, is a necessary bias for an encyclopedia, just like
>we are pro-knowledge rather than anti-knowledge and pro-neutrality rather
>than pro-atheism or pro-theism, etc.

<feminist rant>

When we hide female genitalia (offending) while showing male genitalia (not offending), which bias are we exactly showing ?

</feminist rant>

It is nice to say we are pro-knowlegde and pro-neutrality and pro-whatever, but could we be consistent in what we are ?

When I used the term "censorship" to describe the decision of hiding the female genitalia behind a link, some people answered it was NOT censorship, since the information was available. I agree. I made a bad use of the terminology.

I think Nick argument is sensible. Little is lost when putting the picture behing a link. People can click on the link and the information is there.

Now, you appear to disagree with the idea that little is lost, and you base your argument on the fact we should not censor ourselves. So, hiding images behind links is censorship for you ? What is censorship exactly ? Making information is little bit less available ? Or plain removing information ?

ant

---------------------------------
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subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: troubled.

body:
Erik Moeller wrote:

>Do not confuse the legal situation with people's beliefs. Even in the most
>fundamentalist countries there are strong minorities opposed to the
>madness they are subjected to. For example, during the high point of
>Taliban rule, the Revolutionary Association of Women of Afghanistan still
>advocated a secular, open society.
>
>
On the other hand, do not confuse people's beliefs with the legal
situation.  Even in the most liberal countries, there are strong
minorities (even often majorities) who oppose the public display of
close-up images of genitalia.  For example, even in the EU (probably one
of the more liberal parts of the world), I doubt you will find many
people in Greece who would be willing to print such an article---this
despite the fact that Greece is well-known to have many nude beaches, so
has no qualms with nudity, even public nudity, in general.

I think if you were to take a poll and ask people if they found the
image that's been wrangled over on [[Clitoris]] acceptable for public
display, you'd find a large majority of the world's population would say no.

-Mark


from_name: Ray Kiddy

subject: [Wikitech-l] Language file updates

body:
On Feb 24, 2004, at 4:38 AM, Brion Vibber wrote:

> <snip>

> My old todo list page has gotten rather unwieldy and out of date, I'm
> afraid, and it's hard to tell what's been done, what hasn't, etc. It
> would be a big help if people could put the relevant information onto
> these new wiki pages (currently empty):
>
> http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complete_list_of_language_names
> All the suggestions for native language names that have been posted
> separately recently.
>
> <snip>

Is the intention that you are using ISO-639? or ISO-629/2? Or both? Or
ISO-639 and ISO-629/2 and whatever we feel like adding?

See http://www.loc.gov/standards/iso639-2/langcodes.html

This page purports to list all the ISO-639/2 codes and, where they
exist, the ISO-639 codes as well. I was looking for an authoritative
page. The LoC does it for me.

Does it matter that "als" is not actually an ISO-639/2 language code?
"Alcasian" does not seem to have been assigned any other code.

As I am looking at the langs table in the "experimental schema", I am
curious if there is a reason you did not go ahead and put a column in
for the locale, as defined in ISO 3166. The point is almost too obvious
to make. Does American English equal British English? There may be no
need for this right now. However, one can easily imagine that people
might want to localize articles, as well as translate them. At that
point, the locale would become significant.

- ray


subject: [Wikipedia-l] any ja: Wikipedians?

body:
According to the wikistats page
(http://www.wikipedia.org/wikistats/EN/Sitemap.htm in English), Japanese
(ja:) is the 3rd-largest Wikipedia, after English and German, both in
terms of articles and in terms of active contributors.  I haven't really
heard any discussion from there though---there's plenty of people from
the de:, fr:, and even lots of smaller Wikipedias here, but not many at
all from ja: that I've heard of.  Anyone know how things are going on
over there?  Do they know about the Wikimedia Foundation and have any
interest in it or requests or concerns or whatnot?

-Mark


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: troubled.

references:
<98jhgsxSpVB@erik_moeller> <40A1FB17.8090303@hackish.org>
	<40A20241.2040900@yahoo.com>

body:
Anthere wrote:

> I expect that female genitals have the same right of display than male
> genitals.
>
> Either hidden, or visible.
>
> But that equal standards are respected between women and men.

I personally agree they're approximately equal, and think both should be
a link.  But I don't see how we can make that pronouncement.  If the
majority of the world happens to be more offended by one than the other
(which seems to be the case), we're not really moral arbiters that are
here to say they're wrong.  Principles such as "the offensiveness of
female and male genitalia should be equal" might make for an interesting
discussion for a philosophy of media class, or a journal of feminist
theory, but I don't think we should really be in the business of putting
forth new standards for what people should find offensive and what they
shouldn't find offensive.  If it's easy to keep them consistent then
fine, but if people find one much more offensive than the other, then
that's a matter to debate using some other tool than Wikipedia.

-Mark


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: troubled.

body:
Erik Moeller wrote:

>>I think if you were to take a poll and ask people if they found the
>>image that's been wrangled over on [[Clitoris]] acceptable for public
>>display, you'd find a large majority of the world's population would say no.
>>
>>
>
>Maybe, maybe not. My argument is that majorities are irrelevant in this
>context. There should not be a tyranny of the moral majority.
>
>
But what *should* there be a tyrrany of?  The majority of people who
happen to edit Wikipedia, who are generally well-off and concentrated in
North America and Europe?

-Mark


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: troubled.

body:
KNOTT, T wrote:

>How can we ever know if the majority of the world finds something
>offensive? All we ever get to hear about are the vocal minority. I think
>it's pretty easy to make a pronouncement on body parts, saying that male
>and female parts should be treated in the same way on wikipedia. If you
>are worried about it we could just take a vote. All those in favor of
>treating the penis and clit photos the same say eye.
>
>
Sure, we can make such a pronouncement, but it's simply taking a
particular point of view on what properly constitutes offensive
photographs.  Here we'd be proposing the principle that offensiveness of
a photograph ought to be gender-neutral, which is a rather non-trivial
stance that would need to be argued for if one is to apply it across the
board, and in any case isn't the sort of principle we have any business
proposing.

-Mark


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: troubled.

body:
Anthere wrote:

> So, are you saying that we should mask female genitalia because the
> world is generally offended by watching it, while we should display
> male genitalia because the world is generally not offended by watching
> it ?
>
> Are you also gonna remove pictures of women who show their hair
> because in most of the world women hide their hair ?
>
> And how exactly do you measure the level of offensiveness of female
> genitalia in the world compare to level of offensiveness of these
> humiliation pictures in the prison article ?
>
> Mind you, I think most of the world think these are VERY offensive, so
> by your standards, they should be immediately put into a separate page.

For what it's worth, I think they should both be put on a separate page,
prominently linked, but not displayed inline.

I don't like the idea of us telling people that they are wrong to be
more offended by one than by the other though.  Changing that, if you
believe it needs to be changed, is a debate for somewhere
else---Wikipedia shouldn't be a tool to promote particular ideologies
about media, apart from the very basic one that we support GFDL'd material.

I don't think most of the world has women hide their hair, though I
could be wrong.  A sizable minority does though.  I would not think we
should put pictures of women's hair in a particular language's Wikipedia
if a large majority of that language's speakers found it offensive (I
don't know if this is the case for any actual languages, so that's
hypothetical).  Our goal should be to produce a free encyclopedia, not
to force people to look at images they find offensive simply because we,
as the moral arbiters of the world in a somewhat western-imperialist
fashion, have deemed that people who are offended by them are wrong and
should adopt our (much better, of course) political and ethical beliefs
instead.

-Mark


from_name: Nikola Smolenski

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: troubled.

body:
On Tuesday 11 May 2004 18:25, Mark Richards wrote:
> I wonder whether you could have a sub-page with
> exactly the same text but with the pictures, so that
> you would have a link at the top to 'switch on the
> pictures'. It would be kind of tricky to maintain I
> suppose.

Not at all: text could be in the MediaWiki namespace (articles should then
probably contain a comment telling newbies how to edit the text).


from_name: Anthere

subject: [Wikipedia-l] japanese around

body:
Tomos is japanese, and he is frequently around Mark.
He has been there for a while...perhaps a year at
least ?

Anthere

Delirium a ?crit:
> According to the wikistats page
> (http://www.wikipedia.org/wikistats/EN/Sitemap.htm
in English), Japanese
> (ja:) is the 3rd-largest Wikipedia, after English
and German, both in
> terms of articles and in terms of active
contributors.  I haven't really
> heard any discussion from there though---there's
plenty of people from
> the de:, fr:, and even lots of smaller Wikipedias
here, but not many at
> all from ja: that I've heard of.  Anyone know how
things are going on
> over there?  Do they know about the Wikimedia
Foundation and have any
> interest in it or requests or concerns or whatnot?
>
> -Mark

__________________________________
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http://movies.yahoo.com/showtimes/movie?mid=1808405861


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: troubled.

body:
Erik Moeller wrote:

>There shouldn't be any tyranny at all. Instead we should treat all
>material in the same way: link or remove if it is almost universally
>offensive, show if it isn't. Everything else is POV.
>
>See, if you "masked" nudity, for example, you would be trampling on my POV
>that nudity is perfectly normal and should be shown. You will respond:
>Yes, but if you show nudity, you trample on the *majority* POV that it
>should not be shown. That assertion is incorrect. By treating all images
>equally, on the basis of community consensus, we do not endorse any single
>point of view. Selectivity is the issue here.
>
>
I don't disagree with your principle in general, but perhaps we disagree
on what exactly the threshold should be, and what factually people
actually do find offensive.  You seem to agree that including a
photograph of the recent beheading in Iraq inline would be above the
threshold, but that a close-up photograph of a clitoris would not be.  I
tend to think that both should be considered above the threshold for
reasonable offensiveness.  I'm not even sure offensiveness is the right
word, but more like visceral discomfort or shock---a great many people
would find it difficult to read an article that had either of those
images embedded (for completely different reasons, of course).  There's
even some stuff I'd personally like to see and wouldn't find offensive
at all, but would not necessarily want to see inline, such as
photographs of [[open-heart surgery]].  As far as information goes, I
don't think we lose much in the way of information by having a detailed
diagram on [[clitoris]] with a caption that says to click here for a
photographic version, or something of that sort.  I'm less sure how to
nicely handle images of the beheading, which are clearly relevant (it's
the entire reason to have an article on [[Nick Berg]] to begin with) but
not easily presented in a way that won't shock people.

I think if we only remove things that absolutely *everyone* finds
offensive, we'd have a lot of odd things in our articles that'd alienate
a lot of people.  A large number of people have no particular problem
with images of [[defecation]] for example (lots of kids even like the
subject!), but I don't think we should really have them inline.

-Mark


subject: [Wikipedia-l] japanese around

body:
Anthere wrote:

>Tomos is japanese, and he is frequently around Mark.
>He has been there for a while...perhaps a year at
>least ?
>
>
Hmm, I guess I've missed some people then. =]

It mostly came to mind from looking at the people running for the board
of directors and noticing nobody active on ja:

In case anyone else is curious, here's a breakdown of the people
running, ordered by Wikipedia size, with people active on multiple ones
listed under each of their top two:

en: 9
de: 3
ja: 0
fr: 2
pl/nl/sv/es/it/da: 0
zh: 1
eo: 1
he/et/ca/pt: 0
fi: 1
rest: 0


from_name: Erik Moeller

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: troubled.

body:
Rich-

> I'm not sure if you meant this literally,
> figuratively, or sarcastically. If you really meant
> that a picture must be "universally considered
> offensive" before if is moved behind a link, I must
> disagree.

It was meant figuratively rather than literally. I am talking about 95-
100% agreement. If I added a photo of the decapitated hostage, Nick Berg,
to an article and insisted on voting on it, I'm sure that's pretty much
what we would get - 95-100% in favor of removing the image or replacing it
with one just showing the hostage when he was still alive.

This is the kind of case where a link (if anything) is appropriate. I
hesitate to use the word "consensus" here because this is increasingly
interpreted as "80%", which is really much too low for such a decision.

> How much is lost if we "mask" an image that a
> significant number of people find offensive?

Quite a bit, in my opinion. By doing so, we emphasize this particular
bias. For example, if we censor images of body parts (connected to their
body *cough*), we emphasize the bias of modern US society against nudity,
a bias which is by no means universal.

Of course you can argue that by not censoring ourselves, we become biased
*against* that viewpoint. But that is not true if our lack of censorship
is consistent. Then we are merely biased in favor of being inclusive
which, in my opinion, is a necessary bias for an encyclopedia, just like
we are pro-knowledge rather than anti-knowledge and pro-neutrality rather
than pro-atheism or pro-theism, etc.

Regards,

Erik


body:
Imran Ghory a ?crit:
> To look at a very simple case consider boiling rice, a specific recipe
> could tell you to use a kettle to pre-boil water, another could state the
> entire procedure should be done on a hob, yet another could suggest using a
> microwave. And that's before you start considering things such as whether
> you should add salt and how much you should add.
>
> On the other hand a descriptive version could just be "the rice is heated
> in boiling water".
>
> Imran

plain rice cooked in boiled water... Sad meal...:-(


from_name: Christopher Mahan

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: troubled.

body:
--- Rich Holton <rich_holton at yahoo.com> wrote:
[large snip]
> Again, I am NOT suggesting the elimination of the
> images. Only presenting them in a way that improves
> the "accessibility" and usability of Wikipedia.

I contend that the value of an encyclopedia comes from what it
includes, not what it excludes.

Imagine if you will that you have to fight a war (a well-known theme
these days), and you need weapons. You can go to the arsenal to fill
up, yet you can't pick just anything you want, because the more,
hummm, dangerous ones are just out of reach...

The same can be applied in the world of business, or recovery from
the myriads of afflictions that plage humanity such as disease,
drug/alcohol/etc abuse, prostitution, underage sex (whichever age)
and   violence, of even politics, ethics, and philosophy. If you want
to know the real facts, you need the real facts, unfiltered, raw,
in-your-face. The reader is the one who can form his or her own
opinion, and will be able to do so with unbiased facts, since all of
them will be readily available on the same footing.

Some may argue: But they are available, just one click away! I
respond that it's like the grocery store putting candy at kids eye
level and fitness magazines up for their dads and moms. The very
placement of the information is suggestive to behavior (they want the
kids to want candy) and thus demonstrates a bias.

We don't sell candy or magazines. If you want to make a
child-friendly encyclopedia, knock yourself out. Most of us live in
the real world where people struggle, suffer and die, and we need the
best information available, no matter how unpalatable it may seem to
some, to survive as individuals, as a specie,  and advance the
achievements of our civilization (especially since, cell-phones and
Internet notwithstanding, we seem to have returned to the Age of
Barbarians).

=====
Christopher Mahan
chris_mahan at yahoo.com
818.943.1850 cell
http://www.christophermahan.com/

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Movies - Buy advance tickets for 'Shrek 2'
http://movies.yahoo.com/showtimes/movie?mid=1808405861


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re-troubled

body:
--- Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:

> Clearly, human genitalia, torture pictures, humiliations, death,
> body in pieces, people playing with poop...none of this is fully
> universally offending.
> And not only is it not universal, but on top of it, some consider
> these not offending at all.
> Now, just because it is not "universal", does not mean it is not
> widely considered "hard to watch".
> And it is not because newspapers chose to display rudely these
> pictures that we should do the same.
> And it is not because Boston Globe does not display female
> genitalia but displays tortured bodies, that we should do the same,
> because it is only the Globe pov to do so.

I generally agree with Anthere.

Let's not forget that the Globe is a for-profit company and will do
whatever it needs to do to maximize profits and minimize losses (it's
called capitalism). It caters to its audience.

On an aside, my wife abhors the sight of blood and any type of
medical procedures. She winces at needles, and averts her eyes at
simulated blood in movies.
Yet, she is an interpreter, and needs to study medical procedures,
because a lot of her work involves them. She is grateful for the
images, no matter how gruesome they are, of open sores, abcesses,
etc, because of their ability to convey information effectively.

So even thought it turns her stomach to see forceps pulling a ribcage
apart, she does not condemn such pictures, since she does understand
that some people need it to make good decisions.

=====
Christopher Mahan
chris_mahan at yahoo.com
818.943.1850 cell
http://www.christophermahan.com/

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Movies - Buy advance tickets for 'Shrek 2'
http://movies.yahoo.com/showtimes/movie?mid=1808405861


from_name: Thomas R. Koll

subject: [Foundation-l] First Past the Post

body:
On Tue, May 11, 2004 at 11:42:03PM -0400, daniwo59 at aol.com wrote:

> On the other hand, we are willing to consider other methods. Imran will be
> posting on this later. Without having a huge vote on how we should vote, I would
> like to invite people on this list to propose alternative methods. I will
> also pose this same question to the candidates themselves.
>
> This is not a commitment to change the current system--only to examine other
> options. Your comments are welcome either here or at WikiElections at aol.com,
> where they will be accessible to Imran and me only.

I'd prefer a majority first past the post. It takes two
turns of election, but it would increase security.

ciao, tom

--
== Weblinks ==
* http://www.tomk32.de - just a geek trying to change the world
* http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benutzer:TomK32 - Free Knowledge
* http://tinyurl.com/27c88 - WikiReader Internet: bald im Druck
* http://tomk32.bookcrossing.com - Free Books


subject: [Foundation-l] First Past the Post


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: troubled.

body:
--- Delirium <delirium at hackish.org> wrote:

> For what it's worth, I think they should both be put on a separate
> page,
> prominently linked, but not displayed inline.

> I don't like the idea of us telling people that they are wrong to
> be
> more offended by one than by the other though.  Changing that, if
> you
> believe it needs to be changed, is a debate for somewhere
> else---Wikipedia shouldn't be a tool to promote particular
> ideologies
> about media, apart from the very basic one that we support GFDL'd
> material.

No, but Wikipedia does strongly promote NPOV. This is what is at
stake here.

> I don't think most of the world has women hide their hair, though I
>
> could be wrong.

You could be.

>  A sizable minority does though.

300 million americans, 300 million europeans, minus 200 million
europeas who really do not, and 50 million americans who do not
(italian neighborhoods etc), and that leaves you with 5%, at best.

Besides, America and Europe do not _have_ women hide their hair as a
matter of fact. It is fashion, and women generally do it by
themselves, to be more beautiful, attractive, etc, and there's really
very little pressure. It's not like an american woman will be flogged
at the post if she did not shave her legs.

> I would not think
> we
> should put pictures of women's hair in a particular language's
> Wikipedia
> if a large majority of that language's speakers found it offensive
> (I
> don't know if this is the case for any actual languages, so that's
> hypothetical).  Our goal should be to produce a free encyclopedia,
> not
> to force people to look at images they find offensive simply
> because we,
> as the moral arbiters of the world in a somewhat
> western-imperialist
> fashion, have deemed that people who are offended by them are wrong
> and
> should adopt our (much better, of course) political and ethical
> beliefs
> instead.

Tell that to the 3000+ chinese editors. They would really enjoy
telling you how little regard they have for western-imperialism.

Besides, don't you think your behavior is somewhat condescending?
Moral-arbiters? Yeah, that's us. The Britney Generation. Moral
arbiters of the world. I laugh! Ahahahah!!! I choke!!! Arrgghhh!!!
Thump.

=====
Christopher Mahan
chris_mahan at yahoo.com
818.943.1850 cell
http://www.christophermahan.com/

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Movies - Buy advance tickets for 'Shrek 2'
http://movies.yahoo.com/showtimes/movie?mid=1808405861


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Ido Wikipedia

body:
Antonio PS wrote:
> I would like to add new Wikipedia in Ido, a constructed language with a
> great history. The ISO 639-2 code for Ido is "ido" and you can find a
> language description in the official homepage:

http://io.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject:
[Wikitech-l]
	Re: [MediaWiki-CVS] phase3/includes EditPage.php, 1.68, 1.69

body:
Gabriel Wicke wrote:
> Log Message:
> don't unescape preview text (made things like \<pre\> a plain
 > \<pre\> in preview mode). Not sure if this has any side effects
 > (and why it was unescaped in the first place).

It used to store the escaped text in the same variable before dumping
into the <textarea>, then did the preview or diff afterwards. Musta
missed one fixing that.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


from_name: James Rosenzweig

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: troubled

body:
The difficult thing for me is that I agree with all of
you to some extent -- with Erik and Anthere's desire
for openness and with Mark (and at least one other
person whose name I've forgotten) who wants to make
the encyclopedia more friendly and available to people
who may be offended.  I think we need to respect both
viewpoints.

And for this reason, I think the choice is actually
relatively clear.  Linking someone to a photograph
allows them to choose to see it -- yes, we can argue
(with reason) that it is a form of censorship, but
surely it's a mild one.  Of course, we can argue that
if we listen to all cultures' taboos we'll have to
link even to pictures of Queen Elizabeth II because
she's not veiled, but I think we all can agree that
we're raising that here more as a debating point than
an actual suggestion.  There are obvious borderline
cases.    The human penis and clitoris are definitely
among them -- I agree wholeheartedly that any solution
for one should be applied equally to the other.  I
don't think there's any great public sentiment in any
culture that warmly embraces public photos of the
penis while rejecting those of the clitoris.  So we
link to them both.

Images of torture, etc., again, I think it's clear.
We link to them.  We carefully choose images that are
least likely to alarm the reader and allow them to be
displayed.  We use the best judgment we can.

Editors do this, and that's what we are.  I don't
think we need to appeal to sweeping principles (though
we should keep them in mind).  We need to use reason
and good sense.  There isn't any answer that will
always fit every occasion well.  We will always have a
tension between showing and not showing pictures,
unless we choose to show them all (which, I think,
will radically limit Wikipedia's audience) or to show
none (which would be a horrid shame and lose us a
bunch of editors).  So we need to find a good middle
ground that makes everyone slightly uncomfortable
without truly upsetting more than a few.  I feel we're
all being pretty reasonable about this (for which I'm
very glad), and I think we can settle this.  I don't
sense any real objection to hiding pictures of both
clitoris and penis behind links, or to showing one or
two pictures from Abu Ghraib while putting the rest in
a gallery behind a link.  If we can all live with
that, let's do it -- I think it serves our readers and
the cause of free speech equally well.  And let's
continue to address these issues as fairly as we can,
always seeking compromises that try to meet the needs
of everyone involved as fully as possible.

That's my two cents,

Jwrosenzweig

__________________________________
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subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: troubled.

body:
--- Erik Moeller <erik_moeller at gmx.de> wrote:
> Rich-
> > The cost of catering to those who are offended by
> the
> > images is a mouse-click from those who are not.
> The
> > cost of catering to those who would be offended by
> > having masked images is the non-participation of
> those
> > who are offended by the images.
>
   ...<large snip>...
> To cite your own example, if we
> started censoring .. uh,
> excuse me, "masking" images of women's faces like
> that, I would 100%
> certainly leave the project, as would probably many
> others. And the
> argument for doing that is no stronger or weaker
> than the argument for
> masking the clitoris photo. In fact, I predict that
> if we masked *all*
> somewhat sexually explicit pictures (penises,
> buttocks, breasts ..) in
> this way, several people would be annoyed and/or
> leave the project.
>

Wow, I sure used a poor example to support my own
cause, and then didn't explain myself either. What I
was thinking at the time was that we should mask
photos of women's faces from a culture that has a
taboo about showing women's faces, ie a photo from a
culture that would be offensive in that same culture.
I was not thinking that the implication was that we
would mask *all* photos of women's faces.

Obviously, my logic was muddled (I'll plead the usual
excuse of trying to think clearly on too much coffee
and too little sleep).

Just in case anyone might have the wrong idea, let me
make it plain that I am not in favor of removing *any*
images based on their offensiveness to anyone, or of
blocking any images from anyone. I am also not
suggesting that we mask all images of women's faces.

Personally, I have no interest in viewing photos of an
execution by decapitation. Some might say that I
should view them for my own good -- they may be right
and I may view them despite my aversion. But to force
me to view them in order to read about the event is
certainly forcing a POV.

One might suggest that there is near universal
agreement that those images should be masked (or would
you say censored?). But if the goal is to achieve
"near universal offensiveness", what better way to
achieve it than to display such images? Why have *any*
images masked?

Any restriction on content betrays a POV. Having no
restriction on content betrays a POV.

The truth is that Wikipedia *does* project a strong
point of view, or several of them
-Information should be freely available
-Wikipedia should be restricted to verifiable
information, of some importance (however that's
defined)
-That topics should be presented evenly, with
criticisms, so that the reader can decide for
themselves based on the facts
-That conversation should be rational and devoid of
personal attacks
-That disputes should be resolved democratically (if
not by a popular vote, then by a vote of
representatives)

I strongly agree with all these POV's in Wikipedia.
But let us recognize that they are POV's that are not
universally held. Wikipedia takes a stand.

At issue here is what stand Wikipedia will take on
images that some find offensive. There is no way to
avoid POV on this topic.

I assert that Wikipedia should take reasonable steps
to remove as many barriers to accessing information as
possible, even when the barrier is socially imposed.
Let people access the information without forcing them
to violate social taboos.

If I understand you correctly, you would want to
require a very high percentage (90-95%?) of voters to
agree before masking an image. In other words, it
would only take 10% to prevent the masking of an
image. That certainly gives a large amount of power to
a small number of people. 10% can force 90% to view an
offensive image if they want to access the
information.

I suggest a much lower threshold -- say 30%. In other
words, 30% of the voters could force 70% to use an
extra mouse click to view the image. The cost to the
70% is low. The benefit is a Wikipedia that is taking
steps to be culturally sensitive.

With respect,
-Rich Holton

__________________________________
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from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: extension .mp4 not served with proper mime type

body:
Nathan Hamblen wrote:
> The type should be "video/mp4" according to this page:
>
> http://developer.apple.com/documentation/QuickTime/QT6WhatsNew/Chap1/chapter_1_section_13.html#144009

Thanks, that was the information we needed.

It should be set now, please test...

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject: [Wikitech-l] Language file updates

body:
Ray Kiddy wrote:
> Is the intention that you are using ISO-639? or ISO-629/2? Or both? Or
> ISO-639 and ISO-629/2 and whatever we feel like adding?

RFC 3066, like the rest of the net, with a few rare exceptions such as als.

> As I am looking at the langs table in the "experimental schema", I am
> curious if there is a reason you did not go ahead and put a column in
> for the locale, as defined in ISO 3166. The point is almost too obvious
> to make. Does American English equal British English? There may be no
> need for this right now. However, one can easily imagine that people
> might want to localize articles, as well as translate them. At that
> point, the locale would become significant.

No idea what schema you're talking about.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


from_name: Ashar Voultoiz

body:
Nathan Hamblen wrote:
> I tried uploading a movie in MPEG 4 format with the extension .mp4, but
> when I linked to it with [[media:movie_name.mp4]] it just came up as
> gibberish, which usually would mean that the mime time was wrong. I'm
> pretty sure that giving it a .mov extension would work fine so long as
> the user has Quicktime 6, but that's not really as correct as mp4. (And
>  there are probably players out there that can handle MPEG 4 but not
> quicktime movies in general.)
>
> Nathan

Why not using the mpg or mpeg extensions ? ;)

--
Ashar Voultoiz
http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utilisateur:Hashar


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: troubled.

body:
Rich-
> The cost of catering to those who are offended by the
> images is a mouse-click from those who are not. The
> cost of catering to those who would be offended by
> having masked images is the non-participation of those
> who are offended by the images.

That is an incorrect statement. The cost of an additional mouse click (and
finding out that there is an image to click to in the first place) may
very well have the same effect on some readers as showing the image may
have on others. To cite your own example, if we started censoring .. uh,
excuse me, "masking" images of women's faces like that, I would 100%
certainly leave the project, as would probably many others. And the
argument for doing that is no stronger or weaker than the argument for
masking the clitoris photo. In fact, I predict that if we masked *all*
somewhat sexually explicit pictures (penises, buttocks, breasts ..) in
this way, several people would be annoyed and/or leave the project.

If we are more forgiving of our own biases than of those of other
cultures, then we effectively endorse a certain "POV" of what is and what
isn't offensive, and this flies in the face of everything this project
stands for. The standard of "near universal offensiveness" is the only one
which avoids this problem.

Well, not the only one. Category tags on images and category filters in
the user preferences might also work. Then you could have something like:

Show the following images in articles:
[ ] Animals
   [ ] Fictional animals
   [ ] Rabbits
[ ] Women
   [ ] Overweight women
      [ ] Overweight women wearing party hats
[ ] Priests
etc.

If we wanted to create a real family filter, we could add another set of
options:
[ ] Allow me to view filtered images on a separate page
[ ] Allow logout
[             ] Preferences password

Censorious parents could then force their children into viewing only
images of priests and rabbits, etc. (although such a filter could be
easily circumvented). Others who merely want to avoid being "surprised" by
offensive images could enable the "Allow me" option and would get a "View
image" link on filtered images.

I'm not saying that I support such a system - my own POV is strongly anti-
censorship and I'm not fond of any system that makes it easier for parents
to indoctrinate their children - but from the standpoint of Wikipedia
policy, this would be acceptable. "Masking" images that are not
universally offensive is not.

Regards,

Erik


from_name: Fennec Foxen

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: troubled.

references:
<40A21B2D.3060807@hackish.org> <98jhqe5CpVB@erik_moeller>
	<40A226AD.3000308@yahoo.com>

body:
And here I thought Wikipedia *itself* was educational. My, my... the
things we learn... O_o

On Wed, 12 May 2004 15:29:17 +0200, Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> What I mean to say, is that kids are interested in their feces till a
> much older age (3-4), than the moment the feces really start to smell.
> While adults are frowning, kids are not yet. I have the personal
> feeling, that the taboo is not spontaneous at all, but the result of
> education. It is not a spontaneous taboo, triggered during natural
> developement of the child, or if a natural taboo is triggered, I guess
> the trigger time comes *after* an educational trigger.


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: troubled.

body:
Delirium wrote:

> Erik Moeller wrote:
>
>>> I think if you were to take a poll and ask people if they found the
>>> image that's been wrangled over on [[Clitoris]] acceptable for public
>>> display, you'd find a large majority of the world's population would
>>> say no.
>>>
>>
>> Maybe, maybe not. My argument is that majorities are irrelevant in
>> this  context. There should not be a tyranny of the moral majority.
>
> But what *should* there be a tyrrany of?  The majority of people who
> happen to edit Wikipedia, who are generally well-off and concentrated
> in North America and Europe?

There shouldn't be a tyranny of any sort.  I didn't take the reference
to a poll as expressing an intent to seriously have one, but as a
hypothetical statement about what such a poll might produce.

NPOV demands that we find some mutually satisfactory middle way.

Ec


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: troubled.

body:
Delirium wrote:

> KNOTT, T wrote:
>
>> How can we ever know if the majority of the world finds something
>> offensive? All we ever get to hear about are the vocal minority. I think
>> it's pretty easy to make a pronouncement on body parts, saying that male
>> and female parts should be treated in the same way on wikipedia. If you
>> are worried about it we could just take a vote. All those in favor of
>> treating the penis and clit photos the same say eye.
>>
>
> Sure, we can make such a pronouncement, but it's simply taking a
> particular point of view on what properly constitutes offensive
> photographs.  Here we'd be proposing the principle that offensiveness
> of a photograph ought to be gender-neutral, which is a rather
> non-trivial stance that would need to be argued for if one is to apply
> it across the board, and in any case isn't the sort of principle we
> have any business proposing.

The argument here is about whether both genders should be treated
equally, either both shown or both not shown.  It still leaves the
question of which of those two options would be chosen.  The logical
alternative to that argument is that the genders should be treated
differntly, but I see no-one trying to make a substantive argument for
that alternative.

Ec


from_name: Carl Witty

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: troubled.

body:
 On Wed, 2004-05-12 at 05:12, Erik Moeller wrote:
> Letting the *majority* view win on this matter would be the first step
> toward abandoning NPOV. And when this issue was brought up in the past,
> people started arguing: Well, maybe we *should* abandon NPOV on this, just
> to avoid losing readers. If you accept that argument, you might as well
> take all the criticisms out of the [[Mother Teresa]] article because they
> might drive readers away, or "mask them" by moving them to a separate
> page, as was initially proposed.

I don't agree that "majority rule" on this is POV.  If we form a policy
such as "images which 50% of our readers will find offensive should be
masked behind a (clearly labeled) link", then we are retreating from the
POV "this image is offensive" to the NPOV "50% of readers find this
image offensive".

Other tests, such as "images of male and female genitalia should be
treated the same", are definitely POV.  Many people would agree with
such a principle; others would disagree.  If we adhere to this
principle, then we are forcing our "enlightened, correct" POV on our
readers.

I think that "Images which are offensive to N% of our readers are
masked" is the only NPOV policy possible.  There is room for debate on
what N should be; Erik has proposed "universally offensive" at 90 or
95%; Rich Holton has proposed 30%.  I think 30% is a much better number
than 90 or 95%.  (I don't remember whether it was Erik who associated
"universally offensive" with 90 or 95%.)

I disagree that the issue of masking images is similar to the idea of
masking information.  Images are obvious and immediate, and have a very
different impact than text.

Carl Witty


from_name: Mark Richards

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: troubled

body:
Sounds very rational and resonable to me.
Mark

--- James Rosenzweig <jwrosenzweig at yahoo.com> wrote:
> The difficult thing for me is that I agree with all
> of
> you to some extent -- with Erik and Anthere's desire
> for openness and with Mark (and at least one other
> person whose name I've forgotten) who wants to make
> the encyclopedia more friendly and available to
> people
> who may be offended.  I think we need to respect
> both
> viewpoints.
>
> And for this reason, I think the choice is actually
> relatively clear.  Linking someone to a photograph
> allows them to choose to see it -- yes, we can argue
> (with reason) that it is a form of censorship, but
> surely it's a mild one.  Of course, we can argue
> that
> if we listen to all cultures' taboos we'll have to
> link even to pictures of Queen Elizabeth II because
> she's not veiled, but I think we all can agree that
> we're raising that here more as a debating point
> than
> an actual suggestion.  There are obvious borderline
> cases.    The human penis and clitoris are
> definitely
> among them -- I agree wholeheartedly that any
> solution
> for one should be applied equally to the other.  I
> don't think there's any great public sentiment in
> any
> culture that warmly embraces public photos of the
> penis while rejecting those of the clitoris.  So we
> link to them both.
>
> Images of torture, etc., again, I think it's clear.
> We link to them.  We carefully choose images that
> are
> least likely to alarm the reader and allow them to
> be
> displayed.  We use the best judgment we can.
>
> Editors do this, and that's what we are.  I don't
> think we need to appeal to sweeping principles
> (though
> we should keep them in mind).  We need to use reason
> and good sense.  There isn't any answer that will
> always fit every occasion well.  We will always have
> a
> tension between showing and not showing pictures,
> unless we choose to show them all (which, I think,
> will radically limit Wikipedia's audience) or to
> show
> none (which would be a horrid shame and lose us a
> bunch of editors).  So we need to find a good middle
> ground that makes everyone slightly uncomfortable
> without truly upsetting more than a few.  I feel
> we're
> all being pretty reasonable about this (for which
> I'm
> very glad), and I think we can settle this.  I don't
> sense any real objection to hiding pictures of both
> clitoris and penis behind links, or to showing one
> or
> two pictures from Abu Ghraib while putting the rest
> in
> a gallery behind a link.  If we can all live with
> that, let's do it -- I think it serves our readers
> and
> the cause of free speech equally well.  And let's
> continue to address these issues as fairly as we
> can,
> always seeking compromises that try to meet the
> needs
> of everyone involved as fully as possible.
>
> That's my two cents,
>
> Jwrosenzweig
>
>
>
>
> __________________________________
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>
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subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: troubled.

body:
Erik Moeller wrote:

>Try it. Add a picture of human feces to an article, hold a vote, and see
>what the threshold will be against inline inclusion. Animal feces, that is
>a different story. You couldn't make a meaningful documentary about plants
>without showing feces, one of their primary means of transportation.
>
It could be useful in an article about how to survive in the wilderness
to have such pictures that help in recognizing the difference between
human, bear, wolf or moose feces. :-)

Ec

>


from_name: Charles Matthews

body:
Danny, yesterday, wrote:

>I have just blocked Yammy Yamathorne for 9999 hours. I did not go through
Quickpolls. I have no regrets.

Possible connection with Yammy Yamathorn, posting right now?

Think I'll delete the page about the school, anyway.

Charles