from_name: Guy Chapman aka JzG

subject: [WikiEN-l] Radical redefinition of OR

body:
On Sat, 24 Mar 2007 10:48:58 -0700 (PDT), Ken Arromdee
<arromdee at rahul.net> wrote:

>> Ultimately, I think we should wait until we have some external sources
>> *for the importance of the case*.  As it stands, it looks to me as if
>> only Langan, the Mega Society pushers and a few Wikipedia editors
>> actually give a damn about it.  And that says "undue weight" to me.

>Sure, it's undue weight.
>Undue weight isn't original research, just like poor notability isn't original
>research.  Call it what it is.

Except that it *is* original research, because it's documented only in
primary sources.

Guy (JzG)
--
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG


list: wikien-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [WikiEN-l] Radical redefinition of OR

body:
Delirium wrote:

>Conrad Dunkerson wrote:
>
>
>>Indeed, that text still appears in our 'No original research' policy.
>>However, efforts to stamp out use of 'primary sources' to spread
>>information that no other national (or international) 'news' / 'reporting'
>>entity has deemed worthy of commenting on have led to a wide-spread view
>>that 'primary sources' in general are bad. They aren't. Once something has
>>been verified as notable we should often take primary sources OVER
>>secondary ones.
>>
>>
>I strongly disagree with that, and think this comes out of an
>unfortunately widespread view that non-scientific research isn't
>"really" research.  Gathering, interpreting, cross-referencing, and
>checking the validity of the primary sources on an individual like, say,
>Thomas Jefferson, in order to write a biography about him, is original
>historical research, and best left to reputable historians.  At
>Wikipedia, we should prefer secondary sources on his life---published
>biographies of Thomas Jefferson written by reputable historians.  If you
>discover some new primary sources relating to his life that have not
>been mentioned in the existing secondary sources, that constitutes
>original historical research, and you should publish it in a history
>journal or book, or at the very least convince someone to write a
>newspaper article about it, before it should go into Wikipedia.
>
>The same actually goes for too-close-to-primary secondary sources.  We
>should not write our article on World War II by referring to
>contemporary newspaper reports, which were often wrong and require
>expertise to properly use, but instead should write it by referring to
>existing, published histories of World War II written by reputable
>historians.
>
I don't have the same faith in "reputable historians".  Being reputable
is often nothing more than a mastery of the party line. Historians
certainly differ on whether dropping the bomb on Hiroshima was a
necessity or a war crime.  Of course all agree that it was in fact
dropped.  For me NPOV is a far more important principle than NOR.
Omitting something just because it has never been considered by
"reputable" historians strikes me as unconscionable, and intellectually
dishonest.  If a new primary source contradicts the "reputable"
historians it should be mentioned in the interests of NPOV; otherwise
NOR is nothing more than an excuse for suppressing distasteful
information..  In the case of Jefferson, are we to avoid quoting the
Federalist Papers just because they are a primary source?

We want readers to think for themselves.  We want them to consider
alternative views.  We don't want them to just cut and paste into their
school essays.  We want them to question the political correctness of
"reputable" historians.  We want them to be aware of how distortions can
so easily arise en route from the primary to the secondary source.

Ec


subject: [WikiEN-l] Radical redefinition of OR

body:
On Sat, 24 Mar 2007 14:26:31 -0800, Ray Saintonge
<saintonge at telus.net> wrote:

>The other problem here is that there is no article on Mega Society while
>there do appear to be articles on a significant number of other high-IQ
>societies as well as the article on Langan.  Viewed together this tends
>to weigh the curent POV heavily in favour of Langan.  It would also seem
>that the lawsuits would be more notable in a Mega Society article since
>it is about the use of their own name.

Mega society is tiny, of no objectively provable importance and has
(or at least had last time it was reviewed) no reliable independent
non-trivial sources, which is why it was deleted and has stayed that
way despite several attempts by its press officer to re-create it.

Guy (JzG)
--
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG


from_name: David Gerard

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Just what *is* Jimbo's role anyway? - personality
	cult

body:
On 24/03/07, Seth Finkelstein <sethf at sethf.com> wrote:

>         Well, I didn't join this list to be a troll, and I suspect if
> I go into detail, many members won't take it kindly. I also don't want
> to deal with The Attack Of The Strawmen, where every statement has to
> be guarded against being made a strawman because someone will feel
> they've scored a big victory by knocking that down.

i.e., you'll make a vague accusation, but getting you to actually
substantiate it is like pulling teeth.

As I understand from your Guardian piece, your theory is more or less
(and correct me word by word as needed): Wikipedia is a cult of
Jimbo's personality, where he gets everyone to write stuff for him for
free, so that he can profit from it using Wikia. Please correct and/or
expand as needed; alternately, actually flesh out your theory from the
one-line synopsis.

- d.


from_name: bobolozo

subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia has no policy on word articles

body:
--- Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:

> On 3/25/07, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
> > In general, I try to pretend that this very broken
> "policy" doesn't
> > exist. When someone can come up with a reasonable
> policy that can
> > distinguish between dictionary entries and
> encyclopaedia entries,
> > without using the self-referential terms
> "dictionary definition" or
> > "encyclopaedic", then perhaps it will serve some
> purpose.
>
> Oh, it exists:
>
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_is_not_a_dictionary
>
> Interesting.
>
> Steve

Basically, according to "Wikipedia is not a
dictionary", Wikipedia articles "are about the people,
concepts, places, events, and things that their titles
denote".  Wiktionary articles "are about the actual
words or idioms in their title".

In other words, according to this policy, we aren't
supposed to have any articles about words at all.
Except, oops, we have thousands, including one
featured article.

As I've said, our policies/practices on this subject
are an accidental broken mess.

____________________________________________________________________________________
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list: commons-l

from_name: Brianna Laugher

subject: [Commons-l] zomg POTD RSS!

body:
On 23/03/07, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 23/03/07, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 23/03/07, Brianna Laugher <brianna.laugher at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > > Thanks to Duesentrieb being a legend, we now have RSS feeds for the
> > > Picture of the Day. :D
> > > http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Press_releases/Picture_of_the_Day_RSS
> > > ^^^^^ edit this as you see fit, and then someone on Monday can "?nnounce" it?
>
> > See if we can get the Gmail bug sorted out first, I suggest!
>
>
> I've suggested to the ComCom that daily-image-l would be a good thing
> to do a proactive press release on, once the Gmail bug's fixed.

Cool. I also filed a bug report with Gmail.
I suspect the RSS feed will be more popular with most tech-savvy
folks, although I'm sure there's plenty of people who are still pretty
non-plussed about the blogosphere who will appreciate the email
option. :)

cheers
Brianna


from_name: Delirium

subject: [WikiEN-l] Radical redefinition of OR

body:
Conrad Dunkerson wrote:
> Indeed, that text still appears in our 'No original research' policy.
> However, efforts to stamp out use of 'primary sources' to spread
> information that no other national (or international) 'news' / 'reporting'
> entity has deemed worthy of commenting on have led to a wide-spread view
> that 'primary sources' in general are bad. They aren't. Once something has
> been verified as notable we should often take primary sources OVER
> secondary ones.
>

I strongly disagree with that, and think this comes out of an
unfortunately widespread view that non-scientific research isn't
"really" research.  Gathering, interpreting, cross-referencing, and
checking the validity of the primary sources on an individual like, say,
Thomas Jefferson, in order to write a biography about him, is original
historical research, and best left to reputable historians.  At
Wikipedia, we should prefer secondary sources on his life---published
biographies of Thomas Jefferson written by reputable historians.  If you
discover some new primary sources relating to his life that have not
been mentioned in the existing secondary sources, that constitutes
original historical research, and you should publish it in a history
journal or book, or at the very least convince someone to write a
newspaper article about it, before it should go into Wikipedia.

The same actually goes for too-close-to-primary secondary sources.  We
should not write our article on World War II by referring to
contemporary newspaper reports, which were often wrong and require
expertise to properly use, but instead should write it by referring to
existing, published histories of World War II written by reputable
historians.

-Mark


subject: [WikiEN-l] Radical redefinition of OR

body:
K P wrote:

>On 3/24/07, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
>
>
>>Sheldon Rampton wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>>>There *would* be a problem, however, if Wikipedia were to treat every
>>>patent application filed and accepted at the U.S. Patent Office as
>>>sufficient documentation to warrant mention in Wikipedia. All kinds
>>>of crackpot scientific theories get patented. (They probably have a
>>>whole wing just for storing blueprints of perpetual motion machines.)
>>>
>>>Reasoning back to the lawsuits that we're discussing here, I would
>>>say that the existence of a lawsuit and court decision is akin to
>>>issuance of a patent by the U.S. Patent Office. It's an undeniable
>>>fact that the patent was issued, but until said patent is deemed
>>>noteworthy enough to be mentioned in a scientific journal, it's not
>>>significant or noteworthy or credible enough for mention in
>>>Wikipedia.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>The Sept. 25, 1920 issue of  "Scientific American" at page 310 included
>>one paragraph articles for recently patented inventions of
>>
>>   * A shawl muffler
>>   * A gun camera
>>   * An apparatus for measuring ohmic resistance of liquids and solutions
>>   * An incandescent lamp protecting device
>>   * A seat for agricultural implements
>>   * A clod breaking agricultural implement
>>   * A stepladder
>>   * A hydrant
>>   * A sponge rubber article and method of making same
>>   * A pressure bar mechanism
>>   * A price marking system
>>   * A copy holder
>>   * A grinding tool
>>   * A combination socket wrench
>>   * A newspaper vending machine
>>   * A bearing puller
>>   * A speed operated circuit closer
>>   * A cushio9n support for large musical devices
>>   * A vaporizer
>>   * An internal combustion engine
>>   * An automatic gas controller
>>   * A railway car door
>>   * A toy book
>>   * A headlight dimmer
>>   * A cushion tire
>>   * A design for a calendar mounting
>>   * A design for a spool holder
>>   * A design for a doll
>>
>>We have a lot of notable patents to write about
>>
>>
>They weren't notable when the patents were issued though, but later.
>
My comments were, of course, in response to the notion that notability
depends on being included in a secondary source

>There
>are many such patents, too, that fall in such general listings.  Was the
>agricultural clod breaking tool the ripper which mechanized and
>revolutionized farming in some areas of the Central Valley, or was it some
>non-functional, go nowhere version of a plough for limited applications?
>
The invention in question was by J. W. Scott of Falcon, CO.  The
description: "The invention relates more particularly to clod breakers
for use in connection with potato diggers and plows.  An object is to
provide a clod-breaking machine having a positive crushing, rolling and
breaking mechanism, resiliently carried on the implement and being
power-driven to effectually crush and pulverize earth being plowed up by
the implement.  A further object is to provide adjustable means for
carrying the resilient tension."  It would take further research to find
out what happened with the patent later.

>I don't know, and having reviewed patents (for toupee devices for historical
>reasons) at least once, there seemed to be to be no way that anyone could
>from the context of the patent application alone could tell how successful
>any such device became or would become (the latter being speculative
>original research, what I call SPOR).
>
In many cases these patents never went beyond the stage of being a great
idea.  Bringing the idea to manufacture could be an insurmountable task
for many of these individuals, no matter how good the idea.

>Interesting how important the ripper is to agriculture today, made it
>possible to farm some of the premium land of the Central Valley, yet it's
>not in Wikipedia.  Is it notable?  Yup.  No tandem offset plow, harrows yes,
>but no ripper.  Oh, I see it's called a chisel plow, on the plough page,
>which redirects itself to the plough page, and no redirect for ripper, and
>it is not listed on its disambiguation page.  Clod breaking tillage
>equipment is of major importance to agriculture, but that doesn't mean I can
>tell the history of the ripper or chiseler from its patent application or
>anything about it that should be in Wikipedia that isn't in secondary
>sources.
>
There are many, many such inventions that drove the industrial age.
Many of them are now taken for granted, and many more got absolutely
nowhere.  Descriptions, such as those in Scientific American, should
satisfy those concerned with notability, but a fair description of these
devices will still require reference to the originall documents.

Ec


list: wikitech-l

from_name: brion at pobox.com

subject: [Wikitech-l] MediaWiki automated test run failure 2007-03-25

body:
An automated run of parserTests.php showed the following failures:

This is MediaWiki version 1.10alpha (r20670).

Reading tests from "maintenance/parserTests.txt"...
Reading tests from "extensions/Cite/citeParserTests.txt"...
Reading tests from "extensions/Poem/poemParserTests.txt"...

  17 still FAILING test(s) :(
      * URL-encoding in URL functions (single parameter)  [Has never passed]
      * URL-encoding in URL functions (multiple parameters)  [Has never passed]
      * Table security: embedded pipes (http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2006-April/034637.html)  [Has never passed]
      * Link containing double-single-quotes '' (bug 4598)  [Has never passed]
      * message transform: <noinclude> in transcluded template (bug 4926)  [Has never passed]
      * message transform: <onlyinclude> in transcluded template (bug 4926)  [Has never passed]
      * BUG 1887, part 2: A <math> with a thumbnail- math enabled  [Has never passed]
      * HTML bullet list, unclosed tags (bug 5497)  [Has never passed]
      * HTML ordered list, unclosed tags (bug 5497)  [Has never passed]
      * HTML nested bullet list, open tags (bug 5497)  [Has never passed]
      * HTML nested ordered list, open tags (bug 5497)  [Has never passed]
      * Inline HTML vs wiki block nesting  [Has never passed]
      * Mixing markup for italics and bold  [Has never passed]
      * dt/dd/dl test  [Has never passed]
      * Images with the "|" character in the comment  [Has never passed]
      * Parents of subpages, two levels up, without trailing slash or name.  [Has never passed]
      * Parents of subpages, two levels up, with lots of extra trailing slashes.  [Has never passed]

Passed 494 of 511 tests (96.67%)... 17 tests failed!


from_name: Peter Jacobi

subject: [WikiEN-l] Radical redefinition of OR

body:
Hi Sheldon, All,

Regarding the issue of patents:

Sheldon Rampton <sheldon at prwatch.org> wrote:
> There *would* be a problem, however, if Wikipedia were to treat every
> patent application filed and accepted at the U.S. Patent Office as
> sufficient documentation to warrant mention in Wikipedia. All kinds
> of crackpot scientific theories get patented. (They probably have a
> whole wing just for storing blueprints of perpetual motion machines.)

You have seen:

*[[Template:US patent]]
*[[Template:US patent reference]]
*[[Template:Cite patent]]
(incomplete list)

And the inevitable
*[[List of Tesla patents]]

Patents are used a lot as references in our
dark corner where death rays, anti-gravity
devices, free energy machines, and the like
are nurtured by their fans.

Regards,
Peter

--
"Feel free" - 10 GB Mailbox, 100 FreeSMS/Monat ...
Jetzt GMX TopMail testen: www.gmx.net/de/go/mailfooter/topmail-out


list: foundation-l

from_name: oscar van dillen

subject: [Foundation-l] Meeting in Belgrade

body:
On 3/24/07, Filip Maljkovic <dungodung at gmail.com> wrote:

Unlike the previous meeting, that was in
> December 2006, we plan to talk a about some more serious issues within
> Wikimedia projects

good stroopwafeltjes filip, rofl!

you mean you did not take my talks in december seriously after all??
apart from mine there were some other remarkably serious talks as well which
i appreciated very much btw ;-)

all joking aside: good initiative too btw, i sincerely recommend belgrade
and the wikimedians living there or in the surrounding countries to all!
(not sure if i myself can be there this time, i probably have a concert
then, but i wish i could...)

best,
oscar

--
DISCLAIMER: This message does not represent an official position of the
Wikimedia Foundation nor of its Board of Trustees.


list: wikimedia-l

subject: [Foundation-l] Meeting in Belgrade


from_name: Sam Blacketer

subject: [WikiEN-l] Observer piece on vandal-fighting

body:
'The Observer' (UK Sunday broadsheet paper)'s piece about how Theresa
Knott fights vandals on Wikipedia has appeared, and it's quite a good
piece:

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,,2042231,00.html

--
Sam Blacketer
London E15


subject:
[Commons-l] Getting our content out there
	(openstockphotography.org)

body:
More out and abouts I found from Google:

News article
http://article.wn.com/view/2007/03/14/Indias_Reliance_says_in_talks_with_Carrefour_but_retailer_de/
Improperly attributed use of
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Carrefour_at_Faa'a_French_Polynesia.JPG

The BBC religion website mentions us as one of their image sources:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/copyright.shtml , although "Old and
public-domain images and media" is not exactly the full story...

Ubuntu desktops:
http://art.ubuntu.com/main.php?g2_itemId=592
(although 'Wikipedia Commons'... argh...almost!)

I also ran across a number of blog posts about the POTD competition. I
didn't realise what a great opportunity that competition would be to
boost our rep a bit. Now I look forward with enthusiasm to 2007's. :)

cheers
Brianna


body:
On 25/03/07, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 3/24/07, Brianna Laugher <brianna.laugher at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Ubuntu desktops:
> > http://art.ubuntu.com/main.php?g2_itemId=592
> > (although 'Wikipedia Commons'... argh...almost!)
>
> I suspect thats a battle that we're not going to win. ;)
> Perhaps we should change our name to match perceptions?

I agree. And also 'Wikipedia Books', 'Wikipedia Source Library',
'Wikipedia News', 'Wikipedia Dictionary' and of course all managed by
the 'Wikipedia Foundation'.

:)

--~~~~


from_name: Matthew Brown

subject: [WikiEN-l] Radical redefinition of OR

body:
On 3/24/07, Peter Jacobi <peter_jacobi at gmx.net> wrote:
> Patents are used a lot as references in our
> dark corner where death rays, anti-gravity
> devices, free energy machines, and the like
> are nurtured by their fans.

Indeed - however, patents are useful sources for more detail or to
shore up a claim of invention date.  They can't be used to establish
the importance of a topic or the accuracy of the claims because a
patent is essentially a self-published document with only a degree of
review; plenty of bogus things have passed inattentive patent
examiners.

It's also worth noting that the patented version of an invention is
often rather dissimilar to the eventual mass-produced item.

-Matt


subject: [WikiEN-l] Radical redefinition of OR

body:
Ray Saintonge wrote:
> Delirium wrote:
>
>
>> Conrad Dunkerson wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>>> Indeed, that text still appears in our 'No original research' policy.
>>> However, efforts to stamp out use of 'primary sources' to spread
>>> information that no other national (or international) 'news' / 'reporting'
>>> entity has deemed worthy of commenting on have led to a wide-spread view
>>> that 'primary sources' in general are bad. They aren't. Once something has
>>> been verified as notable we should often take primary sources OVER
>>> secondary ones.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>> I strongly disagree with that, and think this comes out of an
>> unfortunately widespread view that non-scientific research isn't
>> "really" research.  Gathering, interpreting, cross-referencing, and
>> checking the validity of the primary sources on an individual like, say,
>> Thomas Jefferson, in order to write a biography about him, is original
>> historical research, and best left to reputable historians.  At
>> Wikipedia, we should prefer secondary sources on his life---published
>> biographies of Thomas Jefferson written by reputable historians.  If you
>> discover some new primary sources relating to his life that have not
>> been mentioned in the existing secondary sources, that constitutes
>> original historical research, and you should publish it in a history
>> journal or book, or at the very least convince someone to write a
>> newspaper article about it, before it should go into Wikipedia.
>>
>> The same actually goes for too-close-to-primary secondary sources.  We
>> should not write our article on World War II by referring to
>> contemporary newspaper reports, which were often wrong and require
>> expertise to properly use, but instead should write it by referring to
>> existing, published histories of World War II written by reputable
>> historians.
>>
>>
> I don't have the same faith in "reputable historians".  Being reputable
> is often nothing more than a mastery of the party line. Historians
> certainly differ on whether dropping the bomb on Hiroshima was a
> necessity or a war crime.  Of course all agree that it was in fact
> dropped.  For me NPOV is a far more important principle than NOR.
> Omitting something just because it has never been considered by
> "reputable" historians strikes me as unconscionable, and intellectually
> dishonest.  If a new primary source contradicts the "reputable"
> historians it should be mentioned in the interests of NPOV; otherwise
> NOR is nothing more than an excuse for suppressing distasteful
> information..  In the case of Jefferson, are we to avoid quoting the
> Federalist Papers just because they are a primary source?
>
> We want readers to think for themselves.  We want them to consider
> alternative views.  We don't want them to just cut and paste into their
> school essays.  We want them to question the political correctness of
> "reputable" historians.  We want them to be aware of how distortions can
> so easily arise en route from the primary to the secondary source.
>

I don't have much to say in reply to this except that I disagree with
basically every single sentence in your email.  You're describing an
original-research activist encyclopedia, not Wikipedia.

-Mark


subject: [WikiEN-l] Radical redefinition of OR

body:
Ray Saintonge wrote:
> I don't have the same faith in "reputable historians".  Being reputable
> is often nothing more than a mastery of the party line. Historians
> certainly differ on whether dropping the bomb on Hiroshima was a
> necessity or a war crime.  Of course all agree that it was in fact
> dropped.  For me NPOV is a far more important principle than NOR.
> Omitting something just because it has never been considered by
> "reputable" historians strikes me as unconscionable, and intellectually
> dishonest.  If a new primary source contradicts the "reputable"
> historians it should be mentioned in the interests of NPOV; otherwise
> NOR is nothing more than an excuse for suppressing distasteful
> information.
>

To be a little more detailed:

No, NOR is not "an excuse for suppressing distasteful information", but
fundamental to the very purpose of Wikipedia.  When I go to the article
[[World War II]], I expect to find any of these:
--- a summary of mainstream historical consensus on the subject;-
--- discussions of points where there is significant disagreements among
historians;
--- discussions, less prominently placed, of significant minority views;
--- especially on important topics like World War II, discussions of
small minority views that have nonetheless been published and attracted
some at least minor attention

But what I most emphatically *do not* expect to see a novel historical
narrative that some random guy on the internet has pieced together by
going through archives himself, and never published before anywhere else
except Wikipedia.  That is no more useful or desirable than going to
[[Neutrino]] and seeing original physical research that some physics
crank has decided to publish on Wikipedia.  If you've made novel
historical discoveries by digging through primary sources, then great,
but Wikipedia is not the place to publish them any more than it's the
place to publish your novel physics discoveries.

-Mark


from_name: Keith Old

body:
On 3/25/07, bobolozo <bobolozo at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> Wikipedia has no policy on articles about words.  We
> have "Wikipedia is not a dictionary", and that's it,
> and that only states that we shouldn't have articles
> that are merely dictionary definitions.
>
> This still leaves open the possibility of having vast
> numbers of articles about words which go beyond a mere
> dicdef, but our current vague nonsensical practice
> mostly puts a stop to this.
>
> Our current practice is as follows: an article is made
> about a word.  If the article can be rewritten into
> one on a topic (that is, an article on the word "shoe"
> becomes an article on the subject of shoes), we
> rewrite it, and it's no longer an article on a word.
>
> If the article cannot be rewritten into an article on
> the topic the word represents, and if the article is
> SHORT, we transwiki to wiktionary and delete it for
> being a dicdef or redirect somewhere.  However, if the
> article is LONG, and well written and wikified, we
> generally keep it as being "more than just a dicdef",
> and if there are no sources we hope some are
> eventually found.
>
> This is a bizarre and ridiculous and totally
> unintentional way of handling articles on words, but
> it is exactly what we do.
>
> Imagine if this were our policy or practice on
> astronomy articles.  "If at all possible, rewrite to a
> non-astronomical topic.  If none exists under this
> title, and if the astronomy article is short, redirect
> to a non-astronomical article or delete.  If rewriting
> is not possible, but the article is long and
> well-written, only then do we keep it".
>
> Obviously we do want some articles about words,
> though.  We have "Thou", which is a featured article,
> we have "Truthiness", and many other well sourced and
> well written articles.  We don't want to delete all of
> these, so we must want some articles on words.
>
> But which ones?  There are probably tens of thousands
> of english words which have been written about by
> etymologists, meaning we have sourced content on them.
> Furthermore, Wikipedia is supposed to be global in
> perspective, and has articles on people, places, and
> things from non-english speaking countries, so why
> would we not have articles on non-english words?
>
> But this could end up with us having hundreds of
> thousands of articles on foreign words, do we want
> that?
>
> One way or another, some sort of policy would be
> better than "Rewrite into a non-word article.  If not
> possible, delete if short, keep if long and nice looking".
>
>
>
>
> ____________________________________________________________________________________
> Get your own web address.
> Have a HUGE year through Yahoo! Small Business.
> http://smallbusiness.yahoo.com/domains/?p=BESTDEAL
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

Bobolozo,

Thank you for your question.

We have a dictionary called Wiktionary for all words. The guiding principle
should be whether an encyclopedia can be written about it. An encyclopedia
article can be written about shoes. It is doubtful that one could be written
about shod which is the past participle of shoe.

A person looking for shoe in Wikipedia would be interested in footwear. That
doesn't mean that we couldn't have a paragraph explaining the origins of the
word and its meanings but the bulk of the article should have material on
the origins and history of shoes, how they are made and the varieties of
them.

Regarding policies on word articles, we also have a policy banning
neologisms stopping people from making up words and then sitting down and
writing encyclopedia articles on them.

In my view, a majority of words could have encyclopedia articles written
about them but many couldn't.

Regards

Keith Old
User:Capitalistroadster


from_name: Daniel P. B. Smith

subject: [WikiEN-l] Just what *is* Jimbo's role anyway?

body:
Jimbo's role seems to be that of a strange attractor. His actual
amounts of a) power, and b) influence are significant but limited.
Like the planet Jupiter, he doesn't have enough gravitational pull to
assemble things into an arbitrary pattern through brute force.

But he seems to have an intuitive understanding for the interplay of
forces governing Wikipedia's chaotic behavior. He can detect the
places where things are in a delicate unstable balance, so that
pushing on it will actually have a lasting effect (rather than a tiny
shift and a return to equilibrium once the force is removed). And he
even can guess what the general effect is likely to be.


from_name: Jan Urbánek

subject: [Foundation-l] Meeting in Belgrade

body:
Now I really feel torn apart!! I can either go to Poland or to Serbia. The
conferences are not exactly in the same time, but I can't have holiday two
weeks in a row.

Now give me any advice. I'd really appreciate to visit both conferences. It
is like the tradition to take a part on polish conference. On the other hand
I've nevere been to Belgrade yet and dungo keeps inviting me.

Oh poor me.

hugs,
Zirland

On 3/24/07, Filip Maljkovic <dungodung at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Hello,
> I'm proud to announce that a regional meeting will be held in Belgrade,
> Serbia during the weekend of April 21 and 22. Everyone who has time and
> means to come is, of course, welcome, seeing as we'd like some visitors
> from other countries as well. Unlike the previous meeting, that was in
> December 2006, we plan to talk a about some more serious issues within
> Wikimedia projects (e.g. how each community deals with trolls, vandals;
> copyrights, policies, etc.) instead of just holding lectures. This event
> will be held in the Belgrade Youth Center[1], as a part of a broader
> event dubbed "The Days of Belgrade"[2].
>
> If you have any questions, recommendations et al, send them to me
> (dungodung at gmail.com).
>
> Thank you,
> Filip Maljkovic (dungodung)
>
> [1] http://www.domomladine.org/
> [2] http://www.beograd.org.yu/cms/view.php?id=201222
>
> P.S. Please forward this message if (and where) appropriate.
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


subject: [Foundation-l] Meeting in Belgrade


from_name: Guettarda

subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia - An infinite number of lists

body:
On 3/25/07, Oskar Sigvardsson <oskarsigvardsson at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 3/24/07, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton at gmail.com> wrote:
> > "Endemic to X" means "native to only X"...
> <snip>
>
> And here I always figured that endemic meant a disease that affected a
> stable number of people in a given group, like "The common cold is
> endemic to the United Kingdom". I guess that's not all :)
>
> Tell me, if the number of birds are increasing are they "epidemic to
> Chicago"?
>
> --Oskar

In the biology of species distributions "endemic" means native to an area
and only that area.  Of course, the meaningfulness of the term varies with
how the person defines the term.  "Endemic to North America" isn't nearly as
meaningful as "endemic to a single stream in Tennessee".

Obviously, in talking about diseases, "endemic" has a different meaning.
The term "epidemic to" isn't used for species distributions, although the
same sort of modelling tools can be used for the spread of diseases and the
spread of non-native species (which are often called "exotic" species, just
to confuse ordinary people).


from_name: Marc Riddell

body:
on 3/23/07 9:18 PM, John Lee at johnleemk at gmail.com wrote:

> I'm not sure exactly what you mean, since the laconic nature of your posts
> isn't exactly always conducive to clarity.

John,

I have always felt that the depth of a statement is more important than its
length. Here, too, size matters :-).

Marc


subject:
[WikiEN-l] Just what *is* Jimbo's role anyway? -
	personality	cult

body:
on 3/24/07 6:05 PM, Seth Finkelstein at sethf at sethf.com wrote:

> Well, I didn't join this list to be a troll, and I suspect if
> I go into detail, many members won't take it kindly. I also don't want
> to deal with The Attack Of The Strawmen, where every statement has to
> be guarded against being made a strawman because someone will feel
> they've scored a big victory by knocking that down.

As for being a troll: I believe it all has to to with your intent. If your
intent is to harm, then you could be rightfully defined as a troll, and
should stay the hell away. But, if your intent is to state what you believe
to be truth, then do it - openly and honestly. It may not always be well
received, and you may even be called many things in the process (hell, over
the years I've been called things I had to look up!) - but a name doesn't
define you - unless it agrees with your own definition - or, you haven't, as
yet, defined yourself.
>
>
> Look at it this way: Why *does* someone join a cult? And more
> importantly, why do they *stay*, doing free labor? Stark coercion, of
> the sort if-you-leave-we'll-hunt-you-down-and-kill-you, is extraordinarily
> rare. Much of the process is about manipulating a psychological need.
> Transcendent purpose, internal status, external dangers - these are
> all deep human triggers.

First of all, does anyone really "join" a cult (which, in fact, is a
pejorative term)? Do they consciously say, "That looks like a cult I want to
be a part of?" Or, do they choose to become a part of a group of people with
similar beliefs? Yes, history is replete with instances of harm and
exploitation of persons persuaded (mostly out of fear) to join groups or
movements. In fact, my belief is the only reason most organized religions
are not called cults is centuries of well-schooled, well-financed public
relations. The one word that seems to be subliminal in your statement is
"exploitation". Do you really believe the WP Community members are being
exploited? Personally, that's a real stretch for me.

As for characterizing something as a "cult"; my thinking is that if someone
agrees with the beliefs of a group, and are welcomed in as a part of it,
they refer to it as a group - if not, they call it a cult.

Marc Riddell


from_name: Conrad Dunkerson

subject: [WikiEN-l] Radical redefinition of OR

body:
* Delirium wrote:
> I strongly disagree with that, and think this comes out of an
> unfortunately widespread view that non-scientific research isn't
> "really" research.

You apparently weren't understanding me... because I don't think that at
all. Research is research... in any field.

> If you
> discover some new primary sources relating to his life that have not
> been mentioned in the existing secondary sources, that constitutes
> original historical research, and you should publish it in a history
> journal or book, or at the very least convince someone to write a
> newspaper article about it, before it should go into Wikipedia.

I made precisely the same argument in the post which you "strongly
disagree" with. Wikipedia should not be promoting information that has not
already been widely distributed in professional commentary.

The distinction I was drawing is that if a primary source is NOT 'newly
discovered' and HAS been 'mentioned in the existing secondary sources'
then we should not be banning citation of it. To take your Jefferson
example... if we are quoting the contents of the Declaration of
Independence we should CITE the Declaration of Independence... even though
it is a 'primary source'. It isn't 'new' information and it has definitely
been established as 'notable' by secondary sources. Any interpretation of
meaning or intent should be left to secondary sources, but if we are
simply quoting content then it should go directly to the original.

Citing primary sources is not, by itself, 'original research'... it only
becomes such when the primary sources haven't previously been deemed
noteworthy and Wikipedia would thus be putting itself in the position of
'arbiter of truth and relevance' rather than 'recorder of things deemed
notable by neutral observers in the field'.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Radical redefinition of OR

body:
Delirium wrote:

>Ray Saintonge wrote:
>
>
>>I don't have the same faith in "reputable historians".  Being reputable
>>is often nothing more than a mastery of the party line. Historians
>>certainly differ on whether dropping the bomb on Hiroshima was a
>>necessity or a war crime.  Of course all agree that it was in fact
>>dropped.  For me NPOV is a far more important principle than NOR.
>>Omitting something just because it has never been considered by
>>"reputable" historians strikes me as unconscionable, and intellectually
>>dishonest.  If a new primary source contradicts the "reputable"
>>historians it should be mentioned in the interests of NPOV; otherwise
>>NOR is nothing more than an excuse for suppressing distasteful
>>information.
>>
>>
>To be a little more detailed:
>
>No, NOR is not "an excuse for suppressing distasteful information", but
>fundamental to the very purpose of Wikipedia.  When I go to the article
>[[World War II]], I expect to find any of these:
>--- a summary of mainstream historical consensus on the subject;-
>--- discussions of points where there is significant disagreements among
>historians;
>--- discussions, less prominently placed, of significant minority views;
>--- especially on important topics like World War II, discussions of
>small minority views that have nonetheless been published and attracted
>some at least minor attention
>
I have no problem with that.

>But what I most emphatically *do not* expect to see a novel historical
>narrative that some random guy on the internet has pieced together by
>going through archives himself, and never published before anywhere else
>except Wikipedia.
>
I have said nothing in support of novel historical narratives.  If the
document is completely unpublished then put it into Wikisource.  (There
may still be copyright issues for the WWII period, but that's a separate
matter that would need to be addressed.)  We can then link to these
documents on a buyer beware basis.

There are some people who would use these documents as a basis for
pushing a point of view; there's no denying that.  One clear fact is
that the volume of archived documents is enormous, and historians at
best can only deal with a small fraction of the mass.  There aren't even
enough historians to do it.  You mentioned Jefferson before.  He died in
1826, but much of his work still remains unpublished.  Last summer Danny
raised the issue of discussions that he had in Washington over
publishing the Jefferson and other archives.  If that were to happen
should we ignore that material simply because no historian has
considered it.  Other primary documents have been published in
hard-to-find 19th-century books; are we to ignore them just because they
have not been referenced and interpreted by "reputable" historians?

None of this advocates original research on Wikipedia; that would imply
taking sides or putting our own spin on the material.  What it does say
is that there are these other documents out there.  It says, "Look at
them, and draw your own conclusions."

If our efforts promote amateur historians that's a great
accomplishment.  The problem with making an obsession of reliability is
that it promotes complacency among the users.  I want teachers to keep
rejecting Wikipedia as the sole authority for the principal facts in an
essay.

>That is no more useful or desirable than going to
>[[Neutrino]] and seeing original physical research that some physics
>crank has decided to publish on Wikipedia.  If you've made novel
>historical discoveries by digging through primary sources, then great,
>but Wikipedia is not the place to publish them any more than it's the
>place to publish your novel physics discoveries.
>
The difference is the one betwen invention and discovery, and the
physics example is one of invention, not discovery.  In discovery we
find what was already there, and invention only becomes a factor in
historical research when the authenticity of the documents is disputed.

Ec


body:
on 3/25/07 6:01 AM, Jimmy Wales at jwales at wikia.com wrote:

> Surely there must be some sort of leadership which involves something
> other than encouraging "cult" behaviors.

Yes. Leadership motivated only by a sincere belief in the validity of the
cause. If a person believes they need to lead with fear and intimidation,
they can't have much faith in the substance of the cause. The cause, alone,
should motivate.

Marc


from_name: Robert Horning

subject: [Foundation-l] Language Prevention Committee created

body:
Arbeo M wrote:
> Hello everybody!
>
<*snip*>
> Dear Language Subcommittee Members, please stop preventing multilingualism
> and start enabling and supporting it!
>
> Thank y'all for taking the time to read this!
>
> Arbeo
>

Very well said and Amen!

--Robert Horning


from_name: SJ

subject: [WikiEN-l] BJAODN

body:
As Rich notes, this thread has its own ironic value, just in time for
the one-year anniversary of the first successful BJAODNFD...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Bad_Jokes_and_Other_Deleted_Nonsense

SJ

On 3/25/07, The Cunctator <cunctator at gmail.com> wrote:
> I'm sorry, but this is the most annoying and depressing thing that
> Wikipedians have done. It's certainly predictable, of course.
>
> BJAODN serves an important purpose for the encyclopedia and the community.
>
> If you can't appreciate it, ignore it.
>
> Please, I beg of you.
>
> Stop this.
>
> Please.
>
> On 3/23/07, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:
> > Kingboyk and I thought the time had come to prune the 'pedia of the
> > sixty pages of often acutely unfunny vandalism preserved under the
> > general heading of BJAODN.  Not remove BJAODN, a collection of
> > genuinely if often unintentionally funny edits, but the 59 subsequent
> > archives.  The mechanism we employed was to MfD the current one,
> > because it did not seem worthwhile tagging nearly sixty articles if
> > there was clear consensus to keep.  That didn't work: a lot of people
> > think we want to delete all BJAODN (we don't, just prune it down to a
> > rational size); some people want it kept outright as "harmless" or
> > whatever; some say they won't advocate deletion of one, only if the
> > whole lot is bundled.  It's a mess.  We'd like to know what, of
> > anything, is the best way forward.  We are both still of the opinion
> > that keeping copies of many hundreds of decisively atrocious edits,
> > the majority of which do not rise above the level of childish, is
> > probably not worth the server resources committed to it.  Plus, the
> > insane mountain of crap makes it hard to sot the genuinely creative
> > and funny ones, which was the point.  I also feel that some editors
> > deliberately introduce nonsense in the hope of making BJAODN, but
> > that's an aside.
> >
> > The debate is at [[Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Wikipedia:Close
> > Encounters of the Bad Jokes and Other Deleted Nonsense Kind]] if
> > anyone wants to pitch in there, but there may be a better place to
> > discuss this.
> >
> > Guy (JzG)
> > --
> > http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > WikiEN-l mailing list
> > WikiEN-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> > To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> > http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
> >
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

--
++SJ


body:
On 3/25/07, Sam Blacketer <sam.blacketer at googlemail.com> wrote:
>
> 'The Observer' (UK Sunday broadsheet paper)'s piece about how Theresa
> Knott fights vandals on Wikipedia has appeared, and it's quite a good
> piece:
>
> http://observer.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,,2042231,00.html
>
> --
> Sam Blacketer
> London E15
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

Sam,

Thanks for posting.

I had a similar post which was awaiting moderation because I included the
text of the article. I have cancelled it now.

The article is well worth reading.

Regards

Keith Old


from_name: Daniel R. Tobias

subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikimedia Foundation sued

body:
Apparently, literary agent [[Barbara Bauer]] has sued a number of
people and organizations, including the Wikimedia Foundation, for
defamation because of their involvement in making or publicizing
allegations that Bauer's services are a scam because she insists on
payment up front from authors (where normal industry practice is for
agents to collect only after the author's works sell) and has
apparently sold few or none of her clients' works to anything other
than vanity presses.  She has made it onto the Science Fiction
Writers of America's "20 worst agents" list (they're another of the
defendants in the suit).  She has a long record of threatening suits
against sites and forums that criticize her, at one point demanding a
billion dollars for unauthorized use of her name as the title of a
forum thread asking a question about her business practices.
http://forums.writersweekly.com/viewtopic.php?p=44820

If anybody's interested, the suit is docket number L-001169-07 in
Monmouth County, New Jersey, where it can be looked up here:
http://www.judiciary.state.nj.us/acms/disc/CV0227W0E.ASP
It's one of the many court sites that make it a pain to link to their
stuff because they use a form-post interface for document retrieval.

--
== Dan ==
Dan's Mail Format Site: http://mailformat.dan.info/
Dan's Web Tips: http://webtips.dan.info/
Dan's Domain Site: http://domains.dan.info/


from_name: William Pietri

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Just what *is* Jimbo's role anyway? - personality
 cult

body:
Seth Finkelstein wrote:
> Strawman #1 in this discussion, repeated several times now:
>
> 1) Assume all cults work only by hate and fear
> 2) Assume Wikipedia is filled only with love and happiness
> [Bang! Pow! Down goes the strawman!]
> 3) How silly it is for anyone to speak of the good Wikipedia like the bad cults
>

The way I figure it, either you have a sincere and well-considered
point, or you're one of the many people with an irrational fixation on
Wikipedia. Many of those obsessed seem to be irrationally positive, but
there are some obsessed with the negatives. This list attracts an
unfortunate number of both.

The suggestion that Wikipedia might be cult-like doesn't push the score
either way; it's an interesting notion, and how Wikipedia really works
is not yet well explained. But your unwillingness to describe your
notion in detail loses you points. Your failure to answer reasonable
criticisms directly or to come up with actual evidence loses you more.
And your claim that politeness prevents you from engaging while you
continue to repeat the loaded word "cult" makes you look, frankly, like
someone more interested in causing disturbance than having an actual
discussion.

At this point I would normally file you under "loon and/or troll" and
move on to something more likely to be productive. However, you're a guy
whose work I've respected in other contexts, so I'm not quite ready to
flip the bozo bit on this thread. A few quick questions:

   1. What do you mean by cult? And in particular, do you believe
      Wikipedia scores highly on either of those two cult evaluation
      scales I sent earlier?
   2. Do you have any historical comparisons? The ones I've studied most
      are the new-age and Christian ones, so those would be the most
      helpful to me.
   3. What evidence are you basing this on? Luckily, almost all of
      Wikipedia's communication is logged, so this should be an easy one
      compared with your average cult.

Thanks,

William

--
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:William_Pietri


from_name: Ray Saintonge

body:
Thomas Dalton wrote:

>>It's rather difficult to understand what you're asking, because BY
>>definition, endemic to Chicago means it is native to Chicago, and means it
>>is NOT native to the rest of the USA.  Do you have an example animal here
>>that is not endemic to Chicago, but is native to Chicago but not all of the
>>USA?  "Native to only X but not all of Y," if Y is not a subset of X, and if
>>X is a subset of Y, is endemism, nothing else.
>>
>>
>You're misquoting me. I said "Native to X but not all of Y", not
>"Native to *only* X but not all of Y", there is a big difference.
>
>A bird which is native to Chicago and Rockford and nowhere else is not
>endemic to Chicago,
>or endemic to Rockford, or native to the whole of N. America.
>
The problem here is that the use of "endemic" by biologists is different
from its use by the general population.  For a biologist there are
denotations of limitation or origination, while for the general
population including epidemiologists there is a stronger tendency to
view the term as saying only that the condition is regularly.  The two
groups would give a different answer to the question, "Is the European
starling endemic to the Chicago area?"

Ec


from_name: Ron Ritzman

subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikimedia Foundation sued

body:
On 3/25/07, Daniel R. Tobias <dan at tobias.name> wrote:

> If anybody's interested, the suit is docket number L-001169-07 in
> Monmouth County, New Jersey, where it can be looked up here:
> http://www.judiciary.state.nj.us/acms/disc/CV0227W0E.ASP
> It's one of the many court sites that make it a pain to link to their
> stuff because they use a form-post interface for document retrieval.

And on top of that, the docket number has to be pasted in 3 parts. My
guess is that this is to reduce server load. If it can't be directly
linked then it can't be "Slashdotted".


from_name: Oskar Sigvardsson

body:
On 3/24/07, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton at gmail.com> wrote:
> "Endemic to X" means "native to only X"...
<snip>

And here I always figured that endemic meant a disease that affected a
stable number of people in a given group, like "The common cold is
endemic to the United Kingdom". I guess that's not all :)

Tell me, if the number of birds are increasing are they "epidemic to Chicago"?

--Oskar


from_name: Jeff Raymond

subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikimedia Foundation sued

body:
Eugene van der Pijll wrote:
> Daniel R. Tobias schreef:
>> Apparently, literary agent [[Barbara Bauer]] has sued a number of
>> people and organizations, including the Wikimedia Foundation
>
> And it worked, the article has been deleted.

Yay knee jerk BLP! Whee!

Here's the cache version so people know what we're running from:

http://209.85.165.104/search?q=cache:q77ZSufuJzMJ:en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbara_Bauer+%22Barbara+Bauer%22&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=8&gl=us

-Jeff

--
Name: Jeff Raymond
E-mail: jeff.raymond at internationalhouseofbacon.com
WWW: http://www.internationalhouseofbacon.com
IM: badlydrawnjeff
Quote: "I was always a fan of Lisa Loeb, particularly
	because you kind of get the impression she
	sang every song either about or to her cats.
	They seem to be the driving force in most of
	her creative process."     - Chuck Klosterman


from_name: The Cunctator

subject: [WikiEN-l] BJAODN

body:
I'm sorry, but this is the most annoying and depressing thing that
Wikipedians have done. It's certainly predictable, of course.

BJAODN serves an important purpose for the encyclopedia and the community.

If you can't appreciate it, ignore it.

Please, I beg of you.

Stop this.

Please.

On 3/23/07, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:
> Kingboyk and I thought the time had come to prune the 'pedia of the
> sixty pages of often acutely unfunny vandalism preserved under the
> general heading of BJAODN.  Not remove BJAODN, a collection of
> genuinely if often unintentionally funny edits, but the 59 subsequent
> archives.  The mechanism we employed was to MfD the current one,
> because it did not seem worthwhile tagging nearly sixty articles if
> there was clear consensus to keep.  That didn't work: a lot of people
> think we want to delete all BJAODN (we don't, just prune it down to a
> rational size); some people want it kept outright as "harmless" or
> whatever; some say they won't advocate deletion of one, only if the
> whole lot is bundled.  It's a mess.  We'd like to know what, of
> anything, is the best way forward.  We are both still of the opinion
> that keeping copies of many hundreds of decisively atrocious edits,
> the majority of which do not rise above the level of childish, is
> probably not worth the server resources committed to it.  Plus, the
> insane mountain of crap makes it hard to sot the genuinely creative
> and funny ones, which was the point.  I also feel that some editors
> deliberately introduce nonsense in the hope of making BJAODN, but
> that's an aside.
>
> The debate is at [[Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Wikipedia:Close
> Encounters of the Bad Jokes and Other Deleted Nonsense Kind]] if
> anyone wants to pitch in there, but there may be a better place to
> discuss this.
>
> Guy (JzG)
> --
> http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] BJAODN

references:
<3cu703p1rm865ed4p4in1beod2chbrdivl@4ax.com>
	<f72c02ee0703231722i5f4250a5md9c593b398ec18b4@mail.gmail.com>
	<04E9120D-6C39-4BE4-BC9F-3EDEB976AEAF@gmail.com>

body:
On 3/23/07, Phil Sandifer <Snowspinner at gmail.com> wrote:
> I think there's some point here - there's a lot of junk on BJAODN
> that's just, well, junk. For instance, I don't think much of anyone
> is going to find much to recommend "CHUCK IS AN EVIL MAN WHO EATS
> TENNIS BALLS! HE JUST EATS THEM WITH MANGO SALSA!!!!" as humor.

That's pretty damn hilarious, actually.

> On the other hand, "The Secretary-General of the UN can be
> distinguished from the General-Secretary of the UN in that whilst one
> is in charge of the entire world, the other types letters and answers
> phone calls." is in fact a bit funny.

In fact, I find the incongruous image of eating tennis balls, with
mango salsa no less, as an indicator of evilness, than the passage
above, which is a simple pun on the word secretary.

Remember, it's called "bad jokes and other deleted nonsense", not
"reasonably good jokes that Phil finds humorous." If Phil is correct
in his opinion, than his first selection does a better job of
qualifying as a bad joke.

In all seriousness, humor is a subjective thing.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikimedia Foundation sued

body:
On 3/25/07, Eugene van der Pijll <eugene at vanderpijll.nl> wrote:
> Daniel R. Tobias schreef:
> > Apparently, literary agent [[Barbara Bauer]] has sued a number of
> > people and organizations, including the Wikimedia Foundation
>
> And it worked, the article has been deleted.

# 10:56, 25 March 2007 Doc glasgow (Talk | contribs) deleted "Barbara
Bauer" (per WP:BLP article is a bloody disgrace. Full of 'allegations"
of who said what on message boards . No mainstream media interest.)

Correct me if I'm wrong but shouldn't that comment be in an AFD nom or
is this another one of those "Danial Brandt" deletes?


subject: [WikiEN-l] BJAODN

body:
On 3/25/07, The Cunctator <cunctator at gmail.com> wrote:

> If you can't appreciate it, ignore it.

In other words, WP:DONTREADIT


from_name: Thomas Dalton

body:
> >A dictionary defines words, and sometimes gives their etymologies.
> >
> Not just sometimes; a good dictionary should include the etymology as a
> part of the history which defines the word.

Pocket dictionaries often skip the etymology, or perhaps give an
extremely abridged version. Any large dictionary should give full
etymologies, certainly.

> A dictionary is better equipped to deal with the distinctions between
> American and British usage  An encyclopedia, when explaining the
> underlying concept, would do better to choose a word which avoids such
> ambiguities.

I wasn't really thinking about different dialects, I was thinking
about the same word being used for two concepts by one group of
people. (I can't think of any non-fictional examples, though...)


body:
> "Moron" and "idiot" are nouns.  They can't possibly have the same
> meaning as "stupid", which is an adjective, because they're different
> parts of speech.

Ok, so they have the same meaning as "stupid person". The part of
speech isn't really relevant.


from_name: Ken Arromdee

subject: [WikiEN-l] Radical redefinition of OR

body:
On Sat, 24 Mar 2007, Guy Chapman aka JzG wrote:
> >> Ultimately, I think we should wait until we have some external sources
> >> *for the importance of the case*.  As it stands, it looks to me as if
> >> only Langan, the Mega Society pushers and a few Wikipedia editors
> >> actually give a damn about it.  And that says "undue weight" to me.
>
> >Sure, it's undue weight.
> >Undue weight isn't original research, just like poor notability isn't original
> >research.  Call it what it is.
> Except that it *is* original research, because it's documented only in
> primary sources.

Being documented only in a primary source is not original research.  The NOR
policy says that they can be used when anyone without specialist knowledge
who reads the primary source can verify that the Wikipedia article matches
the source.  Clearly, anyone who reads the court document can tell that a case
has been filed; a statement that the case has been filed isn't OR.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Radical redefinition of OR

body:
> Point remains, we don't use primary sources in the plant articles, such as
> the original research of a scientist published in a primary resource
> otherwise known as a peer-reviewed journal article, but rather we use the
> secondary information from the primary source, the primary source's
> introductory material or background material used in its conclusions, and
> use review articles (which, although this may be changing, not that I've
> seen) rather than conclusions originally and solely drawn in primary
> sources.

You could use primary sources, though. There is no rule against that.
(You have to be careful to keep things neutral, but that shouldn't be
too hard with papers about plants - just be careful if there is
disagreement in the scientific community about something.) There is a
rule against OR, which is why it's important to distinguish between
the two.


body:
> It's rather difficult to understand what you're asking, because BY
> definition, endemic to Chicago means it is native to Chicago, and means it
> is NOT native to the rest of the USA.  Do you have an example animal here
> that is not endemic to Chicago, but is native to Chicago but not all of the
> USA?  "Native to only X but not all of Y," if Y is not a subset of X, and if
> X is a subset of Y, is endemism, nothing else.

You're misquoting me. I said "Native to X but not all of Y", not
"Native to *only* X but not all of Y", there is a big difference.

A bird which is native to Chicago and Rockford and nowhere else is not
endemic to Chicago,
or endemic to Rockford, or native to the whole of N. America.


from_name: Seth Finkelstein

body:
> Jimmy Wales
> Oh, he is talking about how I manipulate and control people in the cult
> through an environment of... well, it isn't intimidation and fear I
> think we all agree... it's manipulation and control through... uh...
> being mostly friendly and trying to see the best in everyone, ...

"It's called a confidence game. Why? Because you give me your
confidence? No. Because I give you mine." -- _House Of Cards_

[This quote is meant to illustrate manipulation via positive versus
negative emotion, not to say Wikipedia is _per se_ a confidence game.]
[This is why this discussion can be overly tedious, every major point
has to be carefully protected against tendentious reading]

Strawman #1 in this discussion, repeated several times now:

1) Assume all cults work only by hate and fear
2) Assume Wikipedia is filled only with love and happiness
[Bang! Pow! Down goes the strawman!]
3) How silly it is for anyone to speak of the good Wikipedia like the bad cults

--
Seth Finkelstein  Consulting Programmer  http://sethf.com/
Infothought blog - http://sethf.com/infothought/blog/
Interview: http://sethf.com/essays/major/greplaw-interview.php


subject: [WikiEN-l] Radical redefinition of OR

body:
On Sun, 25 Mar 2007, Jimmy Wales wrote:
> This is exactly what makes it original research.  You have looked at his
> life story, and looked at this lawsuit, and drawn the original
> conclusion (perhaps plausible, perhaps even correct!) that the case
> reflects negatively on him, showing perhaps something bad about how he
> presents himself to the world, etc.

But he's not trying to insert that original conclusion in the article.  He's
using it to make decisions *about* the article.

Decisions *about what to include in an article* can't *possibly* be
original research.  Otherwise, you could never say "I did a Google search
and found a million hits; maybe it's notable" or "there are hundreds of
journal articles on it published, maybe it's notable".  We couldn't even say
"we can't use that, it's an unreliable source" because the claim that
something is an unreliable source is itself a conclusion drawn by a
Wikipedia editor.


from_name: K P

subject: [WikiEN-l] Radical redefinition of OR

body:
>
> There are many, many such inventions that drove the industrial age.
> Many of them are now taken for granted, and many more got absolutely
> nowhere.  Descriptions, such as those in Scientific American, should
> satisfy those concerned with notability, but a fair description of these
> devices will still require reference to the originall documents.
>
> Ec

I don't think so at all.  For one thing the device as eventually used may
differ substantially from the patent application, particularly for a large
machine.  Patent descriptions are not informative in a way that makes them
usable by the layman, by which I mean any human not seeking directly to
profit off producing the patented item.  In addition, it is, for the
purposes of producing a Wikipedia article, rather like describing a
scientist's work on elucidating a genetic novelty by going to her raw data
tables.  It's not only not necessary, it will work against you.  The
implementation of the patent is what succeeds or fails, and the
interpretation of the data is what is published or not.

KP


from_name: David Gerard

body:
On 25/03/07, Seth Finkelstein <sethf at sethf.com> wrote:

> > David Gerard

> > As I understand from your Guardian piece, your theory is more or less
> > (and correct me word by word as needed): Wikipedia is a cult of
> >                 ^^^^^^^^^^^^
> > Jimbo's personality, where he gets everyone to write stuff for him
> > for free, so that he can profit from it using Wikia.

>         Sigh. I rest my case :-(.
>         David, if you take a swipe that arguably includes me, I think
> it's fair to do a "Marshall McLuhan right here" bit, and correct the
> ideas. That is, the range of cults encompasses far, far, more than
> people who end up in the woods setting themselves on fire. Moreover,
> "New Age" groups can be particularly upbeat in certain ways. Cults
> typically have love in them as well as hate.

It's not clear that you're actually saying anything beyond making a
big splashy accusation - "Wikipedia is a personality cult!" - and then
weaseling out of substantiating that you're saying anything meaningful
in any way whatsoever.

Here's the Guardian article where you conflate Wikia and Wikipedia and
assume (as far as I can tell) more or less what I stated:

http://technology.guardian.co.uk/weekly/story/0,,2028328,00.html

>         You're going to declare yourself the winner anyway, so I
> might as well not waste any time over it.

It seems more like you're declaring yourself the loser. That is, you
won't put up. But I am sure you won't shut up either, as long as you
can keep trolling in other venues where people won't be so rude as to
go "what on earth?" and ask you such unreasonable things as to
substantiate one dot of what you're saying beyond the initial splashy
headline accusation.

- d.


from_name: Jeffrey V. Merkey

subject: [Wikitech-l] More mwdumper bugs

body:
After running mwdumper to strip out the NS_MEDIAWIKI namespace entries
from the 20070206 SQL dumps, the output filtered
XML file created by mwdumper after stripping out the name space has sql
syntax errors in the output:

1.  The output files cannot be used by mwimport because the text labels
for XML types, etc, are modified by mwdumper to the extent the program
can no longer read the dump.
2.  If you take the XML file output by mwdumper and attempt to reimport
it into an empty database with mwdumper, it produces corrupted SQL
statements
and fails.  It will process about 720,000 articles however, before
failing.   Output from mysql error log provided.

ERROR 1062 (23000) at line 15327: Duplicate entry '70473566' for key 1
ERROR 1064 (42000) at line 15328: You have an error in your SQL syntax;
check the manual that corresponds to your MySQL server version for the
right syntax to use near ''== Greatest Common Factor / Least Common
Multiple Problem ==\n\nI recently went' at line 1

Jeff


subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikimedia Foundation sued

body:
Only the last part is problematic:

"There have been a number of complaints on internet message boards about the
fees that Bauer charges. Bauer is also alleged to have made legal threats in
order to suppress discussion of her business's activities, especially on web
sites. Reports of this behaviour are usually found on sites maintained by
people who claim to have received such threats.
[7]<http://209.85.165.104/search?q=cache:q77ZSufuJzMJ:en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbara_Bauer+%22Barbara+Bauer%22&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=8&gl=us#_note-1>She
is also alleged to have caused the popular website, Absolute Write, to
lose its Internet hosting
service<http://209.85.165.104/wiki/Internet_hosting_service>in
May <http://209.85.165.104/wiki/May>, 2006 <http://209.85.165.104/wiki/2006>.
[8]<http://209.85.165.104/search?q=cache:q77ZSufuJzMJ:en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbara_Bauer+%22Barbara+Bauer%22&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=8&gl=us#_note-2>
"

Only the last part is problematic, why are we quoting blogs making
allegations about somebody?  Teresa Nielsen Hayden should be specifically
identified in the text of the article, who she is, what her notability is
for saying this, and her page wikilinked.

We go over this all of the time in FAC, people need to included in-line
information, not just notes, or wikilinks, and all the time the repsonse is
that it's wikilinked so nothing else needs to be said.  BS!  An article
should be complete and defamatory allegations are only complete if they're
notable in the first place, and fully discussed, who alleges what and where,
plus the quote should be ATTRIBUTED to someone else pointing Wikipedia
editors to the notability of the person making the allegation, both the
alleger's notability, and the notability of the alleger's allegation.

"[American Science Fiction] writer and blogger [Teresa Nielsen Hayden]
([Making Light] on where it is served up) has claimed on her blog[5] that in
response to discussion of Bauer's business practices, Nielsen has been
threatened with legal action by Bauer.[6 source, where the Wikipedia editor
got the information about Hayden's blog, NOT sourced to the blog
directly!].  [Fantasy] author, [Victoria Strauss], and science fiction
writer [A. C. Crispin], who maintain a blog ([Writer Beware], on
[Blogspot]), have alleged on their blog[7] that Bauer caused the popular
website [Absolute Write] to lose its web hosting service[8sourced, again, to
the report that editors used for this information, NOT the bloggers
themselves!]."

In other words, DON'T use primary sources!  Or link to them so folks can see
for themselves, but they are not the information included in article, but
rather we use the report of the information.

KP

On 3/25/07, Ron Ritzman <ritzman at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 3/25/07, Eugene van der Pijll <eugene at vanderpijll.nl> wrote:
> > Daniel R. Tobias schreef:
> > > Apparently, literary agent [[Barbara Bauer]] has sued a number of
> > > people and organizations, including the Wikimedia Foundation
> >
> > And it worked, the article has been deleted.
>
> # 10:56, 25 March 2007 Doc glasgow (Talk | contribs) deleted "Barbara
> Bauer" (per WP:BLP article is a bloody disgrace. Full of 'allegations"
> of who said what on message boards . No mainstream media interest.)
>
> Correct me if I'm wrong but shouldn't that comment be in an AFD nom or
> is this another one of those "Danial Brandt" deletes?
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] Radical redefinition of OR

body:
charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com wrote:

>I have come to think that Ray Saintonge should get some kind of award. For the sheer number of his subtly misleading posts to this list.
>
It's hard to know what brought on this personal attack.  If there is
anything "subtly misleading" in my posts let him present the facts that
support that.  Otherwise, I can only assume that Charles' statement was
made out of the sheer pleasure of being argumentative.

Ray


from_name: Marc Riddell

body:
on 3/25/07 12:11 PM, Seth Finkelstein at sethf at sethf.com wrote:

>> Jimmy Wales
>> Oh, he is talking about how I manipulate and control people in the cult
>> through an environment of... well, it isn't intimidation and fear I
>> think we all agree... it's manipulation and control through... uh...
>> being mostly friendly and trying to see the best in everyone, ...
>
> "It's called a confidence game. Why? Because you give me your
> confidence? No. Because I give you mine." -- _House Of Cards_
>
> [This quote is meant to illustrate manipulation via positive versus
> negative emotion, not to say Wikipedia is _per se_ a confidence game.]
> [This is why this discussion can be overly tedious, every major point
> has to be carefully protected against tendentious reading]
>
> Strawman #1 in this discussion, repeated several times now:
>
> 1) Assume all cults work only by hate and fear
> 2) Assume Wikipedia is filled only with love and happiness
> [Bang! Pow! Down goes the strawman!]
> 3) How silly it is for anyone to speak of the good Wikipedia like the bad
> cults

I guess I came late to the party, or haven't been paying attention, or -
something. What is you basic beef, Seth?

Marc Riddell


subject:
[WikiEN-l] Just what *is* Jimbo's role anyway? -	personality
 cult

body:
Jimmy Wales wrote:

>Marc Riddell wrote:
>
>
>>>Wikipedia is really interesting in a way, since it doesn't
>>>have any physical aspect, so it has to rely entirely on psychological
>>>aspects. Which, in fact, means the leader putting up with a lot of crap.
>>>
>>>
>>OK, Seth, I will (predictably) bite :-) - what psychological aspects are you
>>speaking of?
>>
>>
>Seriously, the whole "personality cult" thing loses all meaning if it
>automatically applies to anyone who has successfully led anything.
>Surely there must be some sort of leadership which involves something
>other than encouraging "cult" behaviors.
>
Personality cults don't need the collaboration of their object.  The
idolatry can be completely gratuitous.

Jesus and Mohammed have each had over a billion recruited into their
cults, and they are no longer in a position to do anything about it.

Ec


body:
>
> As for characterizing something as a "cult"; my thinking is that if
> someone
> agrees with the beliefs of a group, and are welcomed in as a part of it,
> they refer to it as a group - if not, they call it a cult.
>
> Marc Riddell

No, that is a cult: if you agree with the benefits and are welcomed in--but
it doesn't have to be a cult, it could be Toastmasters or Alcoholics
Anonymous, or Forest Ridge.  Or you could be welcomed into the cult in order
to force you to agree with the benefits.  What's not a cult is if you
disagree with how the thing is run and are still welcomed in as a part of it
and allowed to continue to disagree.  In spite of my anti-admin comments,
I'm absolutely in no danger of being kicked off of Wikipedia for them, even
by the
Wikipedia-admins-are-British-19th-c.-aristocrats-who-can-do-no-wrong-hang-the-butler-instead-so-the-aristocrat's-bloody-hands-aren't-hurt-with-the-chains
types.  Personality cults allow for no dissent or negative comments on the
leadership.  No matter what Jimbo says, there are negative comments.

There are other don't-stuff-beans-up-your-nose obvious differences.

KP


subject: [Wikitech-l] More mwdumper bugs

body:
Jeffrey V. Merkey wrote:

>
> After running mwdumper to strip out the NS_MEDIAWIKI namespace entries
> from the 20070206 SQL dumps, the output filtered
> XML file created by mwdumper after stripping out the name space has
> sql syntax errors in the output:
>
> 1.  The output files cannot be used by mwimport because the text
> labels for XML types, etc, are modified by mwdumper to the extent the
> program can no longer read the dump.
> 2.  If you take the XML file output by mwdumper and attempt to
> reimport it into an empty database with mwdumper, it produces
> corrupted SQL statements
> and fails.  It will process about 720,000 articles however, before
> failing.   Output from mysql error log provided.
>
> ERROR 1062 (23000) at line 15327: Duplicate entry '70473566' for key 1
> ERROR 1064 (42000) at line 15328: You have an error in your SQL
> syntax; check the manual that corresponds to your MySQL server version
> for the right syntax to use near ''== Greatest Common Factor / Least
> Common Multiple Problem ==\n\nI recently went' at line 1
>
> Jeff
>
NOTE:   These errors occur with the standard English Dumps with the
existing tools.  These dumps are not the modified dumps created by the
machine translator.

Jeff


subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikimedia Foundation sued

body:
Ron Ritzman wrote:

> Correct me if I'm wrong but shouldn't that comment be in an AFD nom or
> is this another one of those "Danial Brandt" deletes?

Yes.

-Jeff

--
If you can read this, I'm not at home.


body:
On 3/25/07, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:

> Thomas Dalton wrote:
>
> >>It's rather difficult to understand what you're asking, because BY
> >>definition, endemic to Chicago means it is native to Chicago, and means
> it
> >>is NOT native to the rest of the USA.  Do you have an example animal
> here
> >>that is not endemic to Chicago, but is native to Chicago but not all of
> the
> >>USA?  "Native to only X but not all of Y," if Y is not a subset of X,
> and if
> >>X is a subset of Y, is endemism, nothing else.
> >>
> >>
> >You're misquoting me. I said "Native to X but not all of Y", not
> >"Native to *only* X but not all of Y", there is a big difference.
> >
> >A bird which is native to Chicago and Rockford and nowhere else is not
> >endemic to Chicago,
> >or endemic to Rockford, or native to the whole of N. America.
> >
> The problem here is that the use of "endemic" by biologists is different
> from its use by the general population.  For a biologist there are
> denotations of limitation or origination, while for the general
> population including epidemiologists there is a stronger tendency to
> view the term as saying only that the condition is regularly.  The two
> groups would give a different answer to the question, "Is the European
> starling endemic to the Chicago area?"
>
> Ec

In articles on species the word is wikilinked to its correct definition,
and, because of this duality of meaning, I generally parenthetically include
its biological meaning in the article.

On 3/25/07, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > It's rather difficult to understand what you're asking, because BY
> > definition, endemic to Chicago means it is native to Chicago, and means
> it
> > is NOT native to the rest of the USA.  Do you have an example animal
> here
> > that is not endemic to Chicago, but is native to Chicago but not all of
> the
> > USA?  "Native to only X but not all of Y," if Y is not a subset of X,
> and if
> > X is a subset of Y, is endemism, nothing else.
>
> You're misquoting me. I said "Native to X but not all of Y", not
> "Native to *only* X but not all of Y", there is a big difference.
>
> A bird which is native to Chicago and Rockford and nowhere else is not
> endemic to Chicago,
> or endemic to Rockford, or native to the whole of N. America.

Actually this is considered endemic if it both populations are relictual
populations from a once more widespread area.  This is the definition of
endemic in biology and for relictual populations with bimodal
distributions.  It means what you keep saying it doesn't mean, and it is
used in botany how you say it can't be used, so I don't think we can go any
further discussing it.

 On 3/25/07, *Thomas Dalton* <thomas.dalton at gmail.com> wrote:
> Point remains, we don't use primary sources in the plant articles, such as
> the original research of a scientist published in a primary resource
> otherwise known as a peer-reviewed journal article, but rather we use the
> secondary information from the primary source, the primary source's
> introductory material or background material used in its conclusions, and
> use review articles (which, although this may be changing, not that I've
> seen) rather than conclusions originally and solely drawn in primary
> sources.

You could use primary sources, though. There is no rule against that.
(You have to be careful to keep things neutral, but that shouldn't be
too hard with papers about plants - just be careful if there is
disagreement in the scientific community about something.) There is a
rule against OR, which is why it's important to distinguish between
the two.
No, we can't realistically use primary sources for many things in a rapidly
changing field like Botany or among the photosynthetic protists, because the
primary sources are, today, proposing radically new taxonomies of various
groups, some based upon controversial techniques such as environmental
sampling of DNA, rather than culturing of organisms.  What we do is quote
the primary source if it is an important paper, but by the time it is an
important paper, there are plenty of secondary sources confirming its
importance with relevant discussions of it.  Photosynthetic single-celled
eukaryotic groups are placed at higher taxonomic levels all over the place,
every once in a while we have someone come in and, in good faith, change the
color code for these groups to lavendar or something.

We do use the primary sources, but under careful circumstances, and after
confirmation of their importance.  There was an article that blew me away a
couple of months ago in AJBotany, yet has made hardly a splash in the
academic community, so I have to wait.  Another plant family that I have
been studying in the Chinese fossil record as a major contribution to basal
angiosperm evolution recently made Nature, so we're good to go there.  But,
if I went with primary sources, Wikipedia would not be a useful source for
people to come to to find information about botany.

There is nothing neutral going on in botany today, it's massive upheaval,
guarding of the old, fanning of the new, reassertion of the old, fights
about molecular techniques versus morphology, cladistics or not, the entire
basic classification scheme is in high disagreement.  It's fun, but it's not
neutral.

KP


from_name: bobolozo

body:
In case anyone is interested, I ended up writing an
essay about this, at [[Wikipedia:Articles about
words]], attempting to explain in an objective and
not-so-critical way what our non-policy is on articles
about words.

____________________________________________________________________________________
TV dinner still cooling?
Check out "Tonight's Picks" on Yahoo! TV.
http://tv.yahoo.com/


from_name: Gwern Branwen

subject: [WikiEN-l] Just what *is* Jimbo's role anyway? -

body:
Date: Sun, 25 Mar 2007 13:28:36 -0400
In-Reply-To: <C22C1FD3.2697%michaeldavid86 at comcast.net> (Marc Riddell's
	message of "Sun, 25 Mar 2007 12:47:15 -0400")
Message-ID: <867it5b5bv.fsf at elan.rh.rit.edu>
User-Agent: Gnus/5.110006 (No Gnus v0.6) Emacs/22.0.95 (gnu/linux)
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed
--text follows this line--
Marc Riddell <michaeldavid86 at comcast.net> writes:

> on 3/25/07 12:11 PM, Seth Finkelstein at sethf at sethf.com wrote:
>
>>> Jimmy Wales
>>> Oh, he is talking about how I manipulate and control people in
the cult
>>> through an environment of... well, it isn't intimidation and
    fear I
>>> think we all agree... it's manipulation and control
    through... uh...
>>> being mostly friendly and trying to see the best in everyone,
    ...
>>
>> "It's called a confidence game. Why? Because you give me your
>> confidence? No. Because I give you mine." -- _House Of Cards_
>>
>> [This quote is meant to illustrate manipulation via positive
   versus
>> negative emotion, not to say Wikipedia is _per se_ a confidence
game.]
>> [This is why this discussion can be overly tedious, every major
   point
>> has to be carefully protected against tendentious reading]
>>
>> Strawman #1 in this discussion, repeated several times now:
>>
>> 1) Assume all cults work only by hate and fear
>> 2) Assume Wikipedia is filled only with love and happiness
>> [Bang! Pow! Down goes the strawman!]
>> 3) How silly it is for anyone to speak of the good Wikipedia
like the bad
>> cults
>
> I guess I came late to the party, or haven't been paying
attention, or -
> something. What is you basic beef, Seth?
>
> Marc Riddell

That there's an article on him ([[Seth Finkelstein]]). I think
he's also trying to follow up on Jaron Lanier's 'Wikipedia Is
Communism^WDigital Maoism' thesis, particularly the personality
cult accusation part.

--
Gwern
Inquiring minds want to know.


body:
Date: Sun, 25 Mar 2007 13:36:19 -0400
In-Reply-To: <20070325161135.GA24971 at sethf.com> (Seth Finkelstein's message of
	"Sun, 25 Mar 2007 12:11:35 -0400")
Message-ID: <861wjdb4z0.fsf_-_ at elan.rh.rit.edu>
User-Agent: Gnus/5.110006 (No Gnus v0.6) Emacs/22.0.95 (gnu/linux)
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed
--text follows this line--
Seth Finkelstein <sethf at sethf.com> writes:

>> Jimmy Wales
>> Oh, he is talking about how I manipulate and control people in
the cult
>> through an environment of... well, it isn't intimidation and
   fear I
>> think we all agree... it's manipulation and control
   through... uh...
>> being mostly friendly and trying to see the best in everyone,
   ...
>
> "It's called a confidence game. Why? Because you give me your
> confidence? No. Because I give you mine." -- _House Of Cards_
>
> [This quote is meant to illustrate manipulation via positive
  versus
> negative emotion, not to say Wikipedia is _per se_ a confidence
  game.]
> [This is why this discussion can be overly tedious, every major
  point
> has to be carefully protected against tendentious reading]
>
> Strawman #1 in this discussion, repeated several times now:
>
> 1) Assume all cults work only by hate and fear
> 2) Assume Wikipedia is filled only with love and happiness
> [Bang! Pow! Down goes the strawman!]
> 3) How silly it is for anyone to speak of the good Wikipedia
like the bad cults
>
> --
> Seth Finkelstein  Consulting Programmer
  http://sethf.com/Infothought

I have to agree with Gerard here: I'm not seeing much of substance
in your emails except a vacuously expansive definition of
cults. In what way does Wikipedia differ from any large-scale
volunteer charitable organization with even a hint of an
ideological motivation?

--
Gwern
Inquiring minds want to know.


in_reply_to:
<20070325160554.GEWR219.aamtaout01-winn.ispmail.ntl.com@smtp.ntlworld.com>
	(charles r. matthews's message of "Sun, 25 Mar 2007 17:05:54 +0100")

body:
<charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com> writes:

> Michael Santora wrote
>
>> The number of articles which Wikipedia can have is
>> limited by the number of at least marginally notable
>> and verifiable things which exist.
>
> Or have existed. Let's not be presentist.
>
>> On the other hand, the potential number of lists is
>> almost infinite, as there are a virtually unlimited
>> number of ways of slicing up portions of reality.
>
> Well, only two to the power of the number of things (unordered
subsets).
>
>> End result: en.Wikipedia, in the year 2050, will have
>> 5 million articles, and 500 million lists.
>
> On a rough calculation at the first London meet-up, I thought 7
million articles was a reasonable estimate of the number, if we
simply covered the rest of the world in the detail given currently
to US placenames. We could get there by 2015, rather than 2050.
>
> But these estimates have always missed quite how deep the
pockets of the academic literature have become. One million
compounds in organic chemistry: pretty much a drop in the
ocean. In the humanities, there are thousands upon thousands of
secondary figures, about whom decent papers have been written and
published in respectable journals. How many myths are there? And
how many mythical characters?
>
> Charles

Heck, just biographies alone could get us to dozens or hundreds of
millions of articles:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Piotrus/Wikipedia_interwiki_and_specialized_knowledge_test>

--
Gwern
Inquiring minds want to know.


from_name: Newyorkbrad (Wikipedia)

subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikimedia Foundation sued

body:
I think we need some input from the Office as to how this situation should
be handled on-wiki.

Newyorkbrad

On 3/25/07, Jeff Raymond <jeff.raymond at internationalhouseofbacon.com> wrote:
>
>
> Ron Ritzman wrote:
>
> > Correct me if I'm wrong but shouldn't that comment be in an AFD nom or
> > is this another one of those "Danial Brandt" deletes?
>
> Yes.
>
> -Jeff
>
> --
> If you can read this, I'm not at home.
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] Radical redefinition of OR

body:
Thomas Dalton wrote:

>>Point remains, we don't use primary sources in the plant articles, such as
>>the original research of a scientist published in a primary resource
>>otherwise known as a peer-reviewed journal article, but rather we use the
>>secondary information from the primary source, the primary source's
>>introductory material or background material used in its conclusions, and
>>use review articles (which, although this may be changing, not that I've
>>seen) rather than conclusions originally and solely drawn in primary
>>sources.
>>
>>
>You could use primary sources, though. There is no rule against that.
>(You have to be careful to keep things neutral, but that shouldn't be
>too hard with papers about plants - just be careful if there is
>disagreement in the scientific community about something.) There is a
>rule against OR, which is why it's important to distinguish between
>the two.
>
The official description of a species is a primary source.  If the
description has been accepted by the governing international society
there is no question of disagreement from the scientific community.  The
merger principle suggests that these definitions many not even be
copyrightable.  If they are to be meningful at all these descriptions
will not change.

Ec


subject: [WikiEN-l] Citizendium to launch this week

body:
--- Keith Old <keithold at gmail.com> wrote:
> G'day folks,
>
> Associated Press  reports that Citizendium will
> launch this week.
>
>
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/webguide/2007-03-25-wikipedia-alternative_N.htm

Probably this has already been discussed here ad
nauseum, but:

Prospective editors are supposed to use their real
name, and provide proof that this is their real name.
However, at the moment,
http://www.citizendium.org/cfa.html says that
providing the proof is optional.

In other words, anyone can sign up, claim their name
is John Johnson from Wisconsin, submit a fake bio, and
be an editor.

If actual proof is later required, just exactly what
percentage of potential editors are going to fax in a
copy of their driver's licence or some such thing?
1%?  I surely wouldn't do that.

So, either: 1. anyone can edit, just like wikipedia,
but having to first provide some bullshit data, or 2.
Some sort of proof will be required, resulting in
almost no editors.

____________________________________________________________________________________
We won't tell. Get more on shows you hate to love
(and love to hate): Yahoo! TV's Guilty Pleasures list.
http://tv.yahoo.com/collections/265


from_name: Simetrical

subject: [Wikitech-l] Saving pages from WP with stylesheet

body:
On 3/25/07, Erik Moeller <erik at wikimedia.org> wrote:
> Whenever I save a page from Wikipedia, or any other MW site, using
> Firefox, the resulting HTML loses its screen stylesheet. This seems to
> be due to the way we are embedding the stylesheet, i.e.:
>
> <style type="text/css" media="screen,projection">/*<![CDATA[*/ @import
> "/skins-1.5/monobook/main.css?61"; /*]]>*/</style>
>
> This appears to cause Firefox to not treat the stylesheet as part of
> the page it needs to retrieve. Is there a way to avoid this behavior,
> either on the client or on the server side?

Dunno, but I'll observe that that syntax was probably used rather than
<link> to stop CSS 1 clients from downloading the stylesheet.


from_name: Steve Bennett

body:
On 3/24/07, Michael Santora <bobolozo at yahoo.com> wrote:
> The number of articles which Wikipedia can have is
> limited by the number of at least marginally notable
> and verifiable things which exist.  After every
> notable person, place, movie, scientific topic, and so
> on have their own article, we'll run out of things to
> write about.  Whether this will happen at 2 million, 3
> million, 4 million, it will happen.

I think this premise is wrong. Here are some reasons:
* New notable things are created much faster than they are forgotten.
How many films, actors, inventions, discoveries, albums, tourist
attractions etc become notable each year?
* There is no definitive list of abstract concepts that don't
correspond to some real-world referent. There is scope for lots of
"criticism of X" or "issues in Y" or articles that cut across several
different concepts in some new way. Like lists :)

Also, if you imagine the breadth of all Wikipedia articles (places,
albums, people) as an X axis, and the depth in certain fields (suburbs
in US towns, songs by some singers, borderline as a Y axis, then
imagine filling out the whole table. Can you imagine Wikipedia with an
article on every suburb in every town of India, with an article about
every song by every Chinese pop star, and about every historical
figure of Saudi Arabia? It would be a few more than 4 million
articles!

Steve