from_name: elian

subject: [Wikipedia-l] NPOV and the israeli-palestinian conflict

body:
Hello,

When I discovered Wikipedia I was really fascinated and decided to join
the project. One of my first selfimposed limitations before I even knew
about the NPOV-policy, however, was not to write about the
Israeli-palestinian conflict because I consider myself as biased (having
friends who are palestinian refugees).

So far no problem, I worked happily on the German wikipedia (wrote
articles about the hebrew language and alphabet, and a lot of philosophy
stuff) until someone started to translate the articles about this conflict
from the english wikipedia. Then I had a look at these articles and I must
say (as many others did, too - see the talk pages):

They don't feel NPOV at all. It's quite difficult to find out why these
articles don't feel NPOV. On the surface everything seems to comply with
the wikipedia standards. Particular views are labelled as such, there is
no obvious propaganda of neither side and though, a very bad feeling
remains for me, when I read these articles. This mail is an attempt to
sort this out. I know it is almost impossible to write objective about
this conflict even if you try hard. It's not the intention of this mail to
propose an euphemization of terrorist attacks or suicide bombings, but a
plead to treat the victims on both sides of this conflict in a fair way in
wikipedia.

First, I see a problem with a lot of little formulations.  There were so
many formulations which hurt: more than 100 killed civilians, women and
children constituted the deir yassin "incident" - see edit history of
"Irgun", where the Irgun was "supposed to have killed them". I am sure the
deads would not consider their murder as "supposedly".

Or "Palestinians claim that the bulk of Palestinian refugees had been
inhabitants of Palestine for many generations": doesn't this obvious,
totally trivial fact, recognized by the UNO, earn a formulation as a fact,
not a claim?

Other things, on the contrary, seem to be facts: "The infiltration, which
was usually carried out at night by desperate people, terrorized the
Jewish civilians, some of whom lived in former Arab areas. Moreover, while
most of the infiltrators didn't come with the intention to kill, many of
them did steal property." (Palestinian_infiltration) There is no question
that this "stolen property" may have been one year earlier the rightful
property of the "infiltrator" before disseized by Israeli law, no, "they
steal property".

It's a real question which definition of law applies in the wikipedia: is
it the positive law, set by the victorious party in a conflict? Or do we
adhere to some internationally defined standards of human rights and
international law?

My last example is the part about the origin of suicide bombings in
"Terrorism against Israel": First comes a view attributed to some Israelis
and Americans that propaganda in palestinian schoolbooks incites
terrorism. It is followed by a view attributed to Palestinians "that the
homicide bombings are forgiveable and understandable effects of the
unsatisfactory situation in which Palestinians live, and that it is the
only way to achieve the results they desire." followed by "In contrast,
Israelis and Americans point out that millions of people live in similar
and worse conditions all over the world, yet these people never resort to
waves of homicide bombings."

Okay, the thing with the schoolbooks should be clear for the interested
reader, but what the hell is the "unsatisfactory situation"?

The goal of an encyclopedia should not be to justify terrorism, but it is
definitely one of its goals to describe accurately what the source of this
terrorism is. There are enough studies around the world who show that
children growing up in an atmosphere of violence (for example african
child soldiers) tend later to attempt to resolve conflicts in a violent
way. Doesn't the experience of children seeing their parents beaten, their
family home blown up and living under curfews or in permament danger of
being shot accidentally when leaving the house merit a mention as possible
influence of palestinian terrorism beside the schoolbook debate?

I don't want to go deeper into details, instead I want to point out
another problem of non neutral point of view formulation. Regarding only
how much space is dedicated to which aspect of an article, the articles
about the israeli-palestinian conflict show a strong tendency towards the
following behaviour:

Palestinian_exodus:
521 chars of facts
5648 chars "Responsibility of the Arab side for the exodus"
435 "Israeli violence, and threats of such"

Palestinian_refugee:
295 chars of facts
229 chars of palestinian claims
1990 chars "Objections which have been raised by Israel" starting with a
denial that palestinians exist at all.

Where is the "arguing for the enemy" that the NPOV-policy demands?

That's the last point of my long posting: people who don't consider
themself neutral and objective enough because they are either party in the
conflict or strongly biased towards one side should ask themselves
seriously if they are able to give a fair account of these things and if
they deem themselves not able, refrain from editing.  I have serious
doubts that for example someone who calls Palestinians "those dratted
Arabs" (see Palestinian_territories discussion page) can be considered
neutral enough.

Instead, I'd like to call on all people who are not part of the conflict,
especially on the historians (because they should be used to present
events in a neutral way) to wage an effort to neutralize these
articles. This is not always done by inserting "claims" and "supposed",
but internationally recognized facts should be presented as such (even if
the Israeli government or the Hamas leaders refuse to acknowledge them).

Israel's existence is a fact and denials of this should be treated in
wikipedia equally to holocaust denial.

But human rights violation are human rights violations, even if the state
Israel says, destroying of palestinian houses is lawful, because a
terrorist lived in it. (see B'tselem discussion page) For the terrorist's
little three-year-old sister, who is then forced to live on the street, it
_is_ a human rights violation and according to the international
declaration of human rights it is, too.

Anything else is a verbal attack and a mockery of the victims of this
conflict on both sides which doesn't become the neutral wikipedia well.

If someone can't understand why this is troubling me so, I can explain
this with an analogy if desired. (I don't do now because this mail is
already long enough)

greetings and sorry for the horrible english,
elian


list: wikipedia-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Jens Frank

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Case sensitivity

body:
On Thu, Oct 03, 2002 at 01:38:47PM +0100, Khendon wrote:
> On Thu, Oct 03, 2002 at 04:55:59AM -0700, Anthere wrote:
> > No, it is not acceptable. Some words in many langages do not have the same meaning with big or small letters. Sometimes for grammar reasons, sometimes for conceptual reasons. We need to be able to make the difference.
>
> Are these not normally small distinctions (like the English god -vs God),
> where it make sense to cover both words on the same page anyway, explaining
> what difference the case makes?
>
> If not, surely it's possible to disambigute in other ways? Say, if flirble
> meant "big red house", but Flirble meant "a kind of jelly", then flirble
> could be a disambiguation page to "flirble (architecture)" and "Flirble
> (jelly)".

In German there is a common play of words:

	Er hat in Moskau liebe Genossen.
	( he's got friendly comrades in Moscow )

	Er hat in Moskau Liebe genossen.
	( He enjoyed Love in Moscow )

Both differ slightly in pronounciation, and are very
case-sensitive!

Regards,

JeLuF


from_name: Kurt Jansson

subject: [Wikipedia-l] spanish wikipedia

body:
> Hum Kurt, I have no idea what "Wp-habitus" means.

Wikipedia habitus. I don't know if habitus is a common word in English,
maybe "habit" would also fit in here?

> But I would strongly suggest not to use the word indoctrination.

It wasn't meant seriously. Maybe I should have written "brainwashed" to
make that clearer :-)

> First because, it smells Stalinism, Goulag and little red book (but
maybe it
> doesnot smell that way in english ?)

I don't know, but I know that it's possible to use it in German with
tongue-in-cheek. But I'll try to remember not to use it again in
English.

>> But how strict are
>> the non-English Wikipedias on issues such as "Wikipedia is not a
>> dictionary" (not a gazetteer, not a product catalog, not a consumer
>> report, etc.)?
>
>Some of us support it is also a dictionary... :-)

It's the same in the German Wp, and I think that's okay.

> When you are a small number, the effect of somebody speaking loudly to
> challenge these "ideals" gets a lot of power, far too much power on
others.

Yes, that's the problem. The first month of a new Wikipedia are the most
vulnerable, I guess.

Kurt


from_name: Lars Aronsson

subject: [Wikipedia-l] spanish wikipedia

body:
Anthere wrote:
> Ah, and who do you think would appoint a "site owner" ???
> Jimbo ?

Yes, of course.  He owns the system, the name, and the machines.  He
is very generous and liberal, but he is the owner.  If you fear that
he will shut down Wikipedia, you should keep a backup copy of the GFDL
contents on your own computer, but it is not self-evident that you
can reuse the name "Wikipedia", since that would be regulated by U.S.
trademark law.  Jimmy might decide to form a non-profit organization
under U.S. law or perhaps Swiss law (like the U.N.?), but as far as I
know, he hasn't done this yet.

I'm not unhappy with this.  I fully trust Jimmy.  But I don't see the
point in denying the fact that he owns the current system and
trademark.  If you eat in a restaurant, the restaurant has an owner,
even if you pay for your food.

> >Maintaining the neutral point of view and avoiding copyright
> >violations should be the easiest part of the job.
>
> Nope, I, unfortunately, do not think so. People are not naturally
> neutral. That is not so bad when many people can work at the same
> time on an article (though...). But just *defining* neutrality is an
> issue on the french wiki. If you are sure it is easy, and if you
> speak french, come and help me please. Right now, it is on hold till
> courage, time and opportunity come back :-)

Sorry, I don't speak Frency, but I would be willing to help out with
German, Norwegian, Danish, or Swedish.  I didn't say maintaining
neutrality would be easy, though, only that it would be easier than
the other part of the job:

> Some of us support it is also a dictionary... :-)

If the trademark Wikipedia has some meaning (NPOV, etc.), perhaps
defined by some charter, that meaning should be the same for all
languages.  A year ago, Larry Sanger was very clear on the point that
"Wikipedia is not a dictionary".  So if the French Wikipedia is
becoming a dictionary, somebody is breaking this rule.  Either the
French Wikipedia should straight up, or the rule should be revised.
Since it is the trademark owner's (Jimmy's) interest to make sure the
trademark keeps its meaning, he should appoint ambassadors who can
help him maintain his policy in the various languages.

> >Is it or will there be a problem to assert authority
> >to weed out poor contributions in the small and slow-growing
> >non-English Wikipedias?
>
> I rather support keeping poor contributions, they might grow better
> in time.

This has not been the conclusion of previous discussions on this list
regarding the English Wikipedia.  People are now actively deleting
"stub" articles.

> small number, the effect of somebody speaking loudly to challenge
> these "ideals" gets a lot of power, far too much power on others.
> I don't think a central power "asserting authority" will solve that
> point : some contributors just don't want to hear anything about
> what an english might have said on that subject

This is why I think that an appointed ambassador or governor is
needed, who knows the language and has the authority (from Jimmy) to
tell people what the policy is, that they can join this list if they
want to discuss the policy, and if they cannot accept this policy,
then they must leave and start their own project.  If you eat in a
restaurant or stay in a hotel, you must behave as the owner tells you.

--
  Lars Aronsson (lars at aronsson.se)
  Aronsson Datateknik
  Teknikringen 1e, SE-583 30 Linuxk?ping, Sweden
  tel +46-70-7891609
  http://aronsson.se/ http://elektrosmog.nu/ http://susning.nu/


subject: [Wikipedia-l] spanish wikipedia

body:
> > But what guarantee do you have that e.g. the German Wikipedia is
"doing
> > things the wikipedia way"? And what would you do if you knew we
aren't?

> [...]
> Then, I would remove their sysop privileges for abuse.

Okay, but if the problem aren't the sysops, but the users? A tendentious
Wikipedia would attract tendentious users, and after some time it would
be a very big effort, if not impossible to find enough motivated people
to neutralize the articles. Maybe we would have to abandon it and start
a new one.

Okay, this is a worst case scenario, and I'm only writing this to
emphasize the importance of taking care for new Wikipedias.

Maybe when a new Wikipedia as starting, and we don't have enough
speakers to keep an eye on it, we should place an ad in a science
magazine of that language, or make a few anouncements in usenet.

Kurt


from_name: Anthere

subject: [Wikipedia-l] spanish wikipedia

body:
--- tarquin <tarquin at planetunreal.com> wrote:
>
> > Nope, I, unfortunately, do not think so. People
> are not naturally
> > neutral. That is not so bad when many people can
> work at the same time
> > on an article (though...). But just *defining*
> neutrality is an issue
> > on the french wiki. If you are sure it is easy,
> and if you speak
> > french, come and help me please. Right now, it is
> on hold till
> > courage, time and opportunity come back :-)
> >
> I can try and help: what's the page?

Oh, well, I guess it's now swimming in different
places...but after several discussions not going in
the right direction, it was interesting to raise the
issues of what consensus was and what neutrality was.
I was "lazy" and did a little bit of translation of
some stuff about neutrality on wiki I agreed on, to
trigger reactions. You may find these here
http://fr.wikipedia.com/wiki.cgi?Wikipedia-La_Neutralit%E9_De_Point_De_Vue/Discuter

I think it rather "depressing". Especially since I
believe most contributors are supporting the en
definition of neutrality. I guess there are some times
when things work better when no official policy is
set. Better good habits with a few questionable points
of view, than a wrong policy spoiling the good
habits...
So, I dropped the point;  maybe I should just launch a
good old very-biaised article to see what happen.
Something like excision or hidjab wearing in public
republican schools...but, not now.

> BTW, when is fr: switching to phase III?
> Is there anything I can do to help with that too?

I let the translation page on the english embassy, for
I didnot really where to put it (and had a very bad
time moving it, too big a file to be confortable
with). So I hope some of our developper will be able
to take on the next step when the other wikis are
done. Buzz, in particular, tried it as best as he
could on his pc, to minimize bugs numbers. Could never
reproduce the edit conflict though :-) Who could tell
us what we need to do next, and when ?

__________________________________________________
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New DSL Internet Access from SBC & Yahoo!
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from_name: Brion VIBBER

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Unprotecting does not work

body:
Andre Engels wrote:
> Someone noted on [[Wikipedia talk:Disambiguation pages with links]] that
> [[Wikipedia:Disambiguation pages with links]] was locked. Going back to the
> page, I noted that it was, clicked on unlock (there is no good reason to lock
> this page, while there is a good reason to not lock it, namely giving people
> the chance to remove pages they have fixed). But after that, the page
> remained locked. What is going on?

It looks unprotected to me. Did anybody else do anything to it?

(Did you try reloading the page? Did you try clearing your cache? etc)

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


from_name: Khendon

subject: [Wikipedia-l] spanish wikipedia

body:
On Thu, Oct 03, 2002 at 08:55:23AM -0700, Larry Sanger wrote:
> In one very attenuated
> sense, sure, he's *ultimately* responsible for the decisions about the
> projects, but that's *only* insofar as the projects happen to reside on
> his servers.

A useful (if not *entirely* accurate) analogy would be the position of
the monarch in the UK government, who has theoretically huge powers
but is restricted in their use by convention and popular opinion.

> Again, this is misleading on a number of points.  First of all, what
> Wikipedia stands for has **NOTHING** to do with the fact (if it is a
> fact--I honestly don't know) that "Wikipedia" is a commercial trademark.
> By suggesting that, Lars, you are suggesting that it is somehow quite
> important that Wikipedia policies, as promulgated so far, are bound up
> with "Wikipedia" being a trademark.  But why think that?  I'm sorry, but
> that just sounds silly.

It *is* important, in a certain sense. The name "Wikipedia" carries with
it a certain (small, but growing) reputation. To allow it to be diluted
by projects with different characteristics would be bad, I think. There
needs to be a clear sense of what Wikipedia is, and that needs to be
true of anything carrying that name.

--
Khendon  (Jason Williams)
khendon at khendon.org.uk    http://www.jasonandali.org.uk/jason/


from_name: Daniel Mayer

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Wikipedia-l] our images aren't being indexed

body:
On Thursday 03 October 2002 04:22 pm, you wrote:
> Google isn't picking up our images. ?does anyone know why? ?(I for one
> would like them to be indexed--no point in giving pictures away if nobody
> knows they're there.) ?;-)
>
> Maybe it's a non-issue.
>
> cheers,
>
> kq

I would classify this as a bug report. Please file it at;
http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=34373&atid=411192


from_name: Poor, Edmund W

body:
Thank you, Elian. That was very well put. As one of those who have contributed to the pro-Israeli bias, I must apologize.

I also find the pages you mention very one-sided. I don't know enough about the situation to fix it myself.

If there is anything I can do to help you to fix these pages, please let me know. I offer my editing services to you.

Ed Poor

From: elian [mailto:elian at gmx.li]
Subject: [Wikipedia-l] NPOV and the israeli-palestinian conflict

When I discovered Wikipedia I was really fascinated and decided to join
the project. One of my first selfimposed limitations before I even knew
about the NPOV-policy, however, was not to write about the
Israeli-palestinian conflict because I consider myself as biased (having
friends who are palestinian refugees).
[snip]


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Obscuring some redirects in the search

body:
tarquin wrote:
> Brion VIBBER wrote:
>> Also there are links from external sites and personal bookmarks. Maybe
>> nothing links Zimbabwe/History, but there's at least one link to
>> Zimbabwe/Geography at this page:
[...]
> That is a fair point which I'd forgotten about.
> But other sites do not feel compelled to maintain old links.

I like to think we're better than other sites. ;)

> I have suggested before that instead of just "Describe the text of the
> new page here.", we have the system run a page-title search and say:
>
> "This page does not exist in wikipedia. Pages that match your requested
> title include: [[History of Zimbabwe]], .... etc"

Wouldn't hurt to do that _in addition_ to keeping explicit redirects.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


from_name: Toby Bartels

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Policy

body:
The Cunctator wrote in part:

>When I said "lock down" I meant "prevent unauthorized edits". It doesn't
>matter if that prevention is done through technology or practice--it all
>amounts to the same thing.

There's glory for you!

-- Toby


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Policy

body:
The Cunctator wrote:

>A lot of it comes down to a definition of "policy". What is it? Is it
>what people do? Is it what it says on the pages? Is it an admixture of
>the two? Is it what the most active contributor to Wikipedia at the time
>does? Etc. etc.

It is what people do -- that seems sufficiently vague to be correct.
The pages should reflect this accurately.

>What I'm saying is that most changes to policy don't need to be
>discussed.

True, but also most policies aren't written down.
I rather suspect that most policies that have been written down
were discussed first, and thus would merit discussion to change them.
But most policies just change as people's habits evolve.

>If that assertion is true, then the best meta-policy is to by default
>just change the policy.

Sure -- but this has nothing to do with changing the policy page.

>Does that reduction make more sense?

Yes, except that it's irrelevant to the issue under discussion
(the editing of policy pages).

>>There are lots of ways to edit the policy pages
>>without changing the policy they describe: correcting
>>typos and grammar, linking, re-writing for clarity.

>None of those change the policy much (but they do change the
>policy--it's not a black and white thing) except for "re-writing for
>clarity". One man's clarity is another man's pea soup.

None of those, of course, change the policy.
They merely change how the policy has been written.
Even rewriting for clarity doesn't change the policy,
although it may change whether the policy page is accurate.

Is my definition of "policy" (as what people do) correct?
Yes, because it has been discussed on this list,
and everybody except for you agrees.
I might or might not write that down.

-- Toby


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Policy

body:
Maveric149 wrote in first part:

>Toby Bartels wrote:

>>That should be easy enough; ensure accuracy and NPOV on these pages
>>just as on encyclop?dia articles.

>But they are /not/ encyclopedia articles, or even talk pages for that matter.
>Therefore normal rules of editing do not really apply.

To clarify:
I didn't mean to imply that we should assure accuracy and NPOV
on policy pages *because* we do so on encyclop?dia articles.
I do however think that we should assure accuracy and NPOV on them;
referring to encyclop?dia articles is only for reference.

-- Toby


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Policy

body:
The Cunctator wrote in small part:

>Decisions made by committees aren't much better than decisions made by
>trustworthy individuals. In fact, they're often worse.

IME, this is one of the world's great myths.

-- Toby


from_name: Axel Boldt

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Spanish Wikipedia and Enciclopedia Libre

body:
The $100,000 question is: does the following

> No obstante, de cara al futuro del proyecto (centralista) de
> Wikipedia (americana) bajo Bomis (compa??a privada) comprendo que lo
> mejor es la reunificaci?n.

mean in effect "I understand that for the future of *your* centralist
American project under Bomis, the reunification *would be* best", i.e.
he rejects reunification, or does it mean "I understand that four *our*
project, reunification *is* best", i.e. he favors reunification.

> Efectivamente, el pez grande se traga al peque?o.

("Really, the big fish swallows the small one.") That seems to point to
the second interpretation. But for my taste, he could have been
clearer. :-)

Axel

__________________________________________________
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subject: [Wikipedia-l] Metacomments

body:
>I'd like to know exactly what the consensus is on "metacomments" within
>an article text - "More should be written here", "See WikiProject Foo
>for help with editing this page", "Is this correct?", and so on.

>I'm of the opinion that things like this should almost always
>be in the Talk page. Having them in the article looks tacky and
>unprofessional. Only things that directly affect "customers"
>should be in the article, I'd say.

IMO:
Some metacomments ("More needs to be written on this aspect.")
have a place, and can be very useful to readers as well as writers.
Others ("This is based on material from an unnamed 1911 encyclopedia.")
can safely be relegated to [[Talk:]], if that.

-- Toby


subject: [Wikipedia-l] spanish wikipedia

body:
--- Lars Aronsson <lars at aronsson.se> wrote:
> Anthere wrote:
> > Ah, and who do you think would appoint a "site
> owner" ???
> > Jimbo ?
>
> Yes, of course.  He owns the system, the name, and
> the machines.  He
> is very generous and liberal, but he is the owner.
> If you fear that
> he will shut down Wikipedia, you should keep a
> backup copy of the GFDL
> contents on your own computer, but it is not
> self-evident that you
> can reuse the name "Wikipedia", since that would be
> regulated by U.S.
> trademark law.  Jimmy might decide to form a
> non-profit organization
> under U.S. law or perhaps Swiss law (like the
> U.N.?), but as far as I
> know, he hasn't done this yet.
>
> I'm not unhappy with this.  I fully trust Jimmy.
> But I don't see the
> point in denying the fact that he owns the current
> system and
> trademark.  If you eat in a restaurant, the
> restaurant has an owner,
> even if you pay for your food.

Lars, there's something rather important that I would
like to state here. And that will go for every
embassador I think. If we are, for example, to report
what the feelings on a subject are on a international
wiki, I think it is important that one does not
confuse the feelings reported with the feelings of the
reporter. And I feel that some of the "you" over there
might be adressed to me.

So, let's say, I have no problem with Jimbo being an
owner, and I decided to trust him. I don't like an
encyclopedia being confused with a dictionary (though
I own a Larousse encyclop?dique and like it a lot, so
could survive with a few dictionary definitions
included in Wikipedia). I dont feel any need for a
backupcopy.
But I'm not gonna talk about the french wikipedians by
saying "they", but rather "we" or "some" or "most"
And I say, I think "most" would not appreciate at all
a surrogate site owner appointed by Jimbo. This is
just my opinion of course...

My personal belief is that we have to share a common
set of rules, the rest of them are our own business,
as long as it respect the common set view.

> "Wikipedia is not a dictionary".  So if the French
> Wikipedia is
> becoming a dictionary, somebody is breaking this
> rule.  Either the
> French Wikipedia should straight up, or the rule
> should be revised.

The French wikipedia is not becoming a dic. Some
support it, other do not; and since we don't agree on
that, there certainly is no rules. So nothing to
revise. And I don't see very well who could straighten
that up.

> This has not been the conclusion of previous
> discussions on this list
> regarding the English Wikipedia.  People are now
> actively deleting
> "stub" articles.

this is an english rule. It was discussed on the
english list, by english people. Not us. Does your
wiki only follow english rules ? You don't have your
own ?

> If you eat in a
> restaurant or stay in a hotel, you must behave as
> the owner tells you.

I know how to behave when it is *required*. You are
welcome to invite me to the restaurant in the future.
I will behave ;-)

__________________________________________________
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subject: [Wikipedia-l] spanish wikipedia

body:
I thank you for these two messages Eclecticology

Anth?re

--- Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> Anthere wrote:
>
> > Kurt Jansson wrote:
> > > I think it's very important that the people
> (often just one or two)
> > > working on a new international Wikipedia are
> already indoctrinated with
> > > our ideals (or have a social Wp-habitus, if that
> sounds nicer ;-).
> >
> > Hum Kurt, I have no idea what "Wp-habitus" means.
> But I would strongly
> > suggest not to use the word indoctrination.
> >
> > First because, it smells Stalinism, Goulag and
> little red book (but
> > maybe it doesnot smell that way in english ?)
> >
> These connotations of "indoctrination" depend on the
> context.  I would
> object if such a sentence were used in and article,
> but not on the
> mailing list where it is clearly informal and
> reflects a developed set
> of habits rather than something that has been
> imposed by higher powers.
>
> > >Lars Aronsson wrote:
> > >I think this is an important question, and my
> best suggestion is to
> > >appoint one or two ambassadors for each language,
> who can act as
> > >site owners towards the other users and as
> translators/reporters to
> > >Bomis and developers. Therefore I welcome the
> newly set up embassies.
> >
> > Ah, and who do you think would appoint a "site
> owner" ???
> >
> Ambasadors as site owners seems like a contradiction
> in terms.  Talking
> about directors of a non-profit organization would
> make more sense.
>
> With a non-profit corporation, the corporation would
> become the owner
> rather than any individual.  One criterion should be
> that no one country
> should have 50% or more of the directors.  This may
> conflict with a
> frequent requirement that a majority of directors be
> from within the
> incorporating jurisdiction, but this varies
> considerably (at least
> across North America).  If this becomes a problem a
> little jurisdiction
> shopping would be in order.
>
> > Jimbo ? I think it will be perceived the wrong way
> by most...
> > People on this list ? most internat wikipedians
> would probably
> > consider it an anglosaxon decision
> > Internat wikipedians themselves ? They could
> appoint anybody with a
> > good reputation, rather than somebody caring about
> these "ideals".
> > Self-appointement ? Reporting and translating is
> one thing. "Owning"
> > is another.
> >
> The first set of directors might very well be
> arbitrary, but one of its
> duties would be to develop a set of rules acceptable
> by Wikipedians for
> the naming of future directors.
>
> I believe that in addition to directors, the group
> should also have a
> set of Trustees.  They would not normally have
> corporate decision making
> powers, but would be in a position to step in to
> ensure survival of the
> project if the directors completely screw up.  Their
> right to step in
> would need to be strictly defined.
>
> > >Maintaining the neutral point of view and
> avoiding copyright
> > >violations should be the easiest part of the job.
> >
> > Nope, I, unfortunately, do not think so. People
> are not naturally
> > neutral. That is not so bad when many people can
> work at the same time
> > on an article (though...). But just *defining*
> neutrality is an issue
> > on the french wiki. If you are sure it is easy,
> and if you speak
> > french, come and help me please. Right now, it is
> on hold till
> > courage, time and opportunity come back :-)
> >
> You're right!  Defining neutrality will always be a
> problem.  Don't
> think that the English Wikipedia is exempt just
> because it's bigger.
>  People with prejudices never see them as
> prejudices.  As for copyright,
> protecting the GFDL nature of Wikipedia copyrights
> is a far greater
> challenge than catching copyright violations by
> contributors.
>
> > >But how strict are the non-English Wikipedias on
> issues such as
> > "Wikipedia is not a
> > >dictionary" (not a gazetteer, not a product
> catalog, not a consumer
> > report, etc.)?
> >
> > Some of us support it is also a dictionary... :-)
> >
> I would consider three of these four to be secondary
> issues where
> different languages could easily develop their own
> guidelines.  Product
> catalog is a different matter because it relates to
> issues of
> advertising and consumerism
>
> > >Is it or will there be a problem to assert
> authority
> > >to weed out poor contributions in the small and
> slow-growing
> > >non-English Wikipedias?
> >
> > I rather support keeping poor contributions, they
> might grow better in
> > time.
> >
> Yes.  Who makes the judgement that something is a
> "poor" contributions?
>  Asserting authority would certainly be worse than
> anything we have now.
>  The ones complaining so much about the poor
> articles should simply
> improve them themselves. If they feel that there are
> so many that they
> don't have enough time to improve them, that's their
> problem for being
> such perfectionists.  Maybe they should just lighten
> up.
>
> > The fact is I think most contributors basically
> agree with the main
> > issues (such as encyclopedia, collaboration,
> neutrality, consensus)
> > but they are not necessarily the ones that speak
> up. When you are a
> > small number, the effect of somebody speaking
> loudly to challenge
> > these "ideals" gets a lot of power, far too much
> power on others. I
> > don't think a central power "asserting authority"
> will solve that
> > point : some contributors just don't want to hear
> anything about what
> > an english might have said on that subject (like
> Jimbo's opinion on
> > what neutrality is), they just consider that,
> being on an
> > international wikipedia, their opinion has more
> weight.
> >
> Most political revolutions, coups-d'?tat, etc. are
> the work of dedicated
> minorities, without regard to where they come from
> on the political
> spectrum.  Naturally, they want to diminish the
> influence of those with
> opposing points of view.  The large majority of
> people is not
> confrontational, and they prefer the path of least
> resistance.  The
> majority will concede issues where they disagree for
> the simple purpose
> of avoiding a fight.  This can be a problem for  a
> small group that has
> not enough strong-willed people with opposing views.
>  I think each
> language group will need to deal with these problems
> separately, and,
> apart from the need to adhere to a very limited
> number of core
> principles, each may end up very different.
>
> Eclecticology
>
>
>
=== message truncated ===

__________________________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
New DSL Internet Access from SBC & Yahoo!
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subject: [Wikipedia-l] spanish wikipedia

body:
Anybody interested in this subject should take a look at
http://makeashorterlink.com/?F15463EF1
and the pages that are linked from there.

It's a google translation, so I didn't understand everything, but maybe
you can ;-)

BTW, google can also translate English to Spanish, so if want to make a
comment you can also include a bad translation.

Kurt


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Spanish Wikipedia; Negotiation

body:
Jimmy Wales wrote:

>Daniel Mayer wrote:

>>6) State that we have no intention of ever removing es.wikipedia.com but we
>>could point that URL to the Seville server is they wish to stay on that
>>server.

>I don't think this is acceptable.  Without sever unity, there is no
>way for us to enforce openness.  If they start to ban people for
>political reasons, forming a 'cabal', we would be powerless to stop
>them.

And they would be powerless to stop you.

You want to maintain ultimate control over any [[es:]].
The whole point of the fork is that they don't want you
to maintain ultimate control over their enciclopedia.
This is a pretty significant impasse.

When we get a nonprofit set up, will you maintain ultimate control?
Or will the nonprofit raise funds and pay you for server usage?
If you won't maintain ultimate control anymore,
then that would be the time to approach EL.

-- Toby


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Propects for future growth

body:
Jimmy Wales wrote:

>Ai yi yi.  I used to be rich, I'm not anymore.

See [[Stock market crash of 2002]]?
^_^

-- Toby


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Case sensitivity

body:
On Thu, Oct 03, 2002 at 09:54:58AM -0700, koyaanisqatsi at nupedia.com wrote:
> Khendon wrote:
> >> Also, capitalizations sometimes distinguish one subject from another.
> >
> >Often enough to justify the problems case-sensitivity brings?
>
> Refresh my memory on what the problems are again, if you would please.

It's easy to get the capitalisation on a link wrong.

--
Khendon  (Jason Williams)
khendon at khendon.org.uk    http://www.jasonandali.org.uk/jason/


from_name: Larry Sanger

body:
Can someone bilingual offer an English translation?

Larry


from_name: Jeroen Heijmans

body:
I have a feature request that I'd first like to put on the mailing list,
before putting it at SourceForge.

When I use the search feature, I am frequently annoyed by the large
number of pages showing up that are simply redirects. When I type
Zimbabwe, I might also be interested in "History of Zimbabwe", which
shows up. I am, however, not interested in the redirect
"Zimbabwe/History", which is a previous location of that same article. I
know it is important to keep that redirect for linking (both internal
and external), but it is not useful for searching. The same holds for
all other pages that were moved because of some naming convention or
change in policy, or moved across namespaces (as a side note, I'd like
to be able to search in Wikipedia: namespace articles as well, there are
getting too much of these pages).

My proposal is to make two kinds of redirects. The first type is the
type we currently have, the second one is different in that it still
redirects those visiting it, but the page does not show up in any
searches. I think this can be implemented relatively easy (a "flag" in
the database might do the trick), but I'm not sure if that is true; it
may have some performance impact. However, I do think this is an
important feature with respect to those that are using Wikipedia as an
encyclopedia: you want to find thing fast, and not get 231 article title
matches if searching for "Wikipedia" (which is only the 19th hit, anyway).

Of course, it would be necessary to check all redirects over time to see
if it should be a "silent" redirect or not, but that's a one-time thing.

Jeronimo


subject: [Wikipedia-l] spanish wikipedia

body:
Lars Aronsson wrote:

>Anthere wrote:

>>Ah, and who do you think would appoint a "site owner" ???
>>Jimbo ?

>Yes, of course.  He owns the system, the name, and the machines.  He
>is very generous and liberal, but he is the owner.  If you fear that
>he will shut down Wikipedia, you should keep a backup copy of the GFDL
>contents on your own computer, but it is not self-evident that you
>can reuse the name "Wikipedia", since that would be regulated by U.S.
>trademark law.  Jimmy might decide to form a non-profit organization
>under U.S. law or perhaps Swiss law (like the U.N.?), but as far as I
>know, he hasn't done this yet.

Amazing that this has appeared in the midst of a thread
where we decide how to woo back la enciclopedia libre.
They will never come back to such a situation.
If they fear that Jimmy will betray the project,
then you tell them to put the material on their own server.
Well, that is just what they have done.
We're trying to convince them that Jimmy will *not* betray the project;
you're telling them to go to hell.

>This is why I think that an appointed ambassador or governor is
>needed, who knows the language and has the authority (from Jimmy) to
>tell people what the policy is, that they can join this list if they
>want to discuss the policy, and if they cannot accept this policy,
>then they must leave and start their own project.  If you eat in a
>restaurant or stay in a hotel, you must behave as the owner tells you.

And that is why EL has built its own hotel.

If we want EL back, then we must build a hotel
that they own just as much as any of the rest of us:
a 501(c)(3) nonprofit educational organisation,
The Wikipedia Foundation, which happens to use
servers and Net access donated by Bomis, Inc.

-- Toby


body:
Jeronimo wrote:

>My proposal is to make two kinds of redirects. The first type is the
>type we currently have, the second one is different in that it still
>redirects those visiting it, but the page does not show up in any
>searches. I think this can be implemented relatively easy (a "flag" in
>the database might do the trick), but I'm not sure if that is true; it
>may have some performance impact. However, I do think this is an
>important feature with respect to those that are using Wikipedia as an
>encyclopedia: you want to find thing fast, and not get 231 article title
>matches if searching for "Wikipedia" (which is only the 19th hit, anyway).

My proposal is to have "#REDIRECT" and "#DEPRECATED".
The latter can also be rendered as nonarchivable,
so that they can be deleted after some time in most cases,
since they'll fall out of the memories of search engines.
They can also be used as you suggest in searches.
(But they should still be found in searches
if the article that they point to *doesn't* show up.)

-- Toby


body:
> I have a feature request that I'd first like to put on the mailing
list,
> before putting it at SourceForge.
 >
> [...]

How about excluding all redirects from the search results, that lead to
an article that is already listed?

An yes, I'd also like to be able to search in all the other namespaces,
like the many people that have asked before me. Can't we have an
"advanced search" feature on some special:page?

Kurt


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Obscuring some redirects in the search

body:
Kurt Jansson wrote:

>> I have a feature request that I'd first like to put on the mailing
>list,
>> before putting it at SourceForge.
> >
>> [...]
>
>How about excluding all redirects from the search results, that lead to
>an article that is already listed?
>
That would do for most, but not all cases I was aiming for. For example,
if there's is an article Wikipedia:Wikipedians/Zimbabwe that used to be
at Wikipedians/Zimbabwe, I get a redirect to an article in the
non-article namespace. A similar situation occurs if the article on
Harare used to be at Zimbabwe/Harare.

Jeronimo


from_name: The Cunctator

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Case sensitivity

body:
On Thu, 2002-10-03 at 14:29, Daniel Mayer wrote:
> >....., the instances where it would
> >*actually* be a problem are vanishingly
> >small. I've yet to hear of or think of an
> >example, in fact (although I'm sure there
> >are a few).
>
> Here is some previous discussion and some examples
> (its all been said before);
> http://www.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Wikipedia:Feature_requests&oldid=96067
>
> >And the instances where capitalisation causes
> problems are many.
> >
> >Khendon  (Jason Williams)

> Only proper nouns and some other terms should be
> capitalized -- anything else is just incorrect
> grammar. We needn't encourage incorrect grammar.
>
One of the reasons for the automatic capitalization is that first words
of sentences are capitalized. [[Capitalization]] should work the same
way as [[capitalization]]. If we just added case sensitivity without
extending other capabilities, then the previous sentence would have to
be written "[[capitalization|Capitalization]] should work..." which is a
bigger problem than the ones caused by lack of case sensitivity.

However, I too am annoyed by the lack of case sensitivity, so the
addition of case sensitivity with automatic methods of avoiding
[[uncap|Cap]] might be nice. For example, the software could render
"[[capitalization]] should work..." as "Capitalization should work..."
if it can tell that "[[capitalization]]" is at the beginning of a
sentence. But that's difficult to do right 100% of the time.

Other solutions would have similar complexities.

In short, the status quo isn't perfect, but its consequences are simple
and well-understood.

Other languages may have different priorities, of course.

--tc


body:
> >How about excluding all redirects from the search results, that lead
to
> >an article that is already listed?
> >
> That would do for most, but not all cases I was aiming for.

But it would be much easier :-)

> For example,
> if there's is an article Wikipedia:Wikipedians/Zimbabwe that used to
be
> at Wikipedians/Zimbabwe, I get a redirect to an article in the
> non-article namespace.

That's true. At the moment I sometimes use these redirects to find pages
in the wikipedia namespace.
I think those few redirects wouldn't be too annoying.

> A similar situation occurs if the article on
> Harare used to be at Zimbabwe/Harare.

Why? If you search for Harare and Zimbabwe/Harare is a redirect to that
page it will be excluded. - But maybe I didn't understand you right.

Kurt


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Case sensitivity

body:
> I think this policy is fine the way it is.

Point conceded. Thanks for being patient, everybody :-)

--
Khendon  (Jason Williams)
khendon at khendon.org.uk    http://www.jasonandali.org.uk/jason/


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Metacomments

body:
On Thursday 03 October 2002 06:22 pm, you wrote:
> IMO:
> Some metacomments ("More needs to be written on this aspect.")
> have a place, and can be very useful to readers as well as writers.
> Others ("This is based on material from an unnamed 1911 encyclopedia.")
> can safely be relegated to [[Talk:]], if that.
>
>
> -- Toby

I'm not sure about the 1911 part since that tag in effect saying that the
data may be out of date and/or biased. However, in general I do not like
meta-tags (esp. WikiProject ones).

As a matter of fact, earlier today I had to explain to a frantic newbie that
they didn't have to get permission to edit a WikiProject London article or
any WikiProject article for that matter. The newbie simply saw an edit
summary in the history of the page that read "WikiProject London framework"
and also saw the talk page which said "This page is part of the [[WikiProject
London]]: please add information about this area to this article" (this was
on one of the dozens of WikiProject London entries where I moved the
WikiProject tag to the talk page - apparently that wasn't enough in this
case).

I went on to explain that the only people who are in any way bound by a
particular WIkiProject's standards are the people who have agreed to be part
of the WikiProject. Everyone else should feel free to add or edit articles
the way they see fit and if that does not conform to a WikiProject's
standards in a radical way then members of that project can reformat the
additions to work best for their project. Of course knowingly going against a
WikiProject for combative reasons is still bad form (if you want to change
the format you should try to convince the WikiProject members that it is a
good idea).

In short; newbies should only have to worry about where the edit button is -
everything else will come in time.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)


from_name: Ray Saintonge

body:
tarquin wrote:

> well it is if I want to see if there exists a page "surrealist" so I
> don't need to write a pipe for [[surrealism|surrealist]].
>
> As for redirects like "Zimbabwe/History", we don't want people to link
> to those.
> I am of the opinion that we should simply delete them -- the only
> argument against is that Google has indexed them.

I happen support the view that some of these useless old redirects
should simply be deleted.  That Google indexes them is really no excuse
for keeping them.  We keep them because Google indexes them; Google
indexes them because we keep them.  How can it end that way?

The risk that we might lose some potential follower because the link to
the article he is searching is broken is so low as to be ridiculous.  As
Wikipedia gets bigger that risk keeps getting smaller.  If we keep
things just long enough for Google to index the article under its
updated name that should be more than enough.  Many of these old format
articles are in such an irregular format that they aren't likely bases
for searches.  A search for /Zimbabwe History/ is going to give "History
of Zimbabwe" anyway.

Keeping garbage on a site just because the space is cheap on the hard
drive seems like such a wasteful attitude.

Ec

>


from_name: tarquin

body:
Jeroen Heijmans wrote:

> I have a feature request that I'd first like to put on the mailing
> list, before putting it at SourceForge.
>
> When I use the search feature, I am frequently annoyed by the large
> number of pages showing up that are simply redirects. When I type
> Zimbabwe, I might also be interested in "History of Zimbabwe", which
> shows up. I am, however, not interested in the redirect
> "Zimbabwe/History", which is a previous location of that same article.
> I know it is important to keep that redirect for linking (both
> internal and external), but it is not useful for searching.

well it is if I want to see if there exists a page "surrealist" so I
don't need to write a pipe for [[surrealism|surrealist]].

As for redirects like "Zimbabwe/History", we don't want people to link
to those.
I am of the opinion that we should simply delete them -- the only
argument against is that Google has indexed them.


subject: [Wikipedia-l] French dictionary-like entires (was: spanish wikipedia)

body:
Ray Saintonge wrote:

>>   A year ago, Larry Sanger was very clear on the point that
>> "Wikipedia is not a dictionary".  So if the French Wikipedia is
>> becoming a dictionary, somebody is breaking this rule.  Either the
>> French Wikipedia should straight up, or the rule should be revised.
>> Since it is the trademark owner's (Jimmy's) interest to make sure the
>> trademark keeps its meaning, he should appoint ambassadors who can
>> help him maintain his policy in the various languages.
>>
> If the French Wikipedia feels that it is appropriate to include being
> a dictionary that's their business.  I don't see the need for them to
> be bound by one of Larry's rules from a year ago when thay had no
> opportunity to participate in its development.
>
It would be worth noting at this point that in France the distinction
between "Dictionary" and "Encyclopedia" is not at all the same as in the
UK and the US.
The Larousse and the Robert are both combined dictionaries &
encyclopedias, in fact my copy of the 1-volume Petit Larousse says
"Dictionaire Encyclopedique".
The first half is the "dictionary", but this includes "dictionary
definitions" as well as "encyclopedic knowledge", with pictures (for
example of trees, cathedral layout, architecture, etc.) .
The 2nd half is people, places, works: Proper nouns.

Larousse do a "pure" dictionary too, but it is seen much less often.

Perhaps this explains the tendency on fr: to include dictionary topics.


from_name: Adam Williamson

body:
On Thu, 2002-10-03 at 22:43, Poor, Edmund W wrote:
> Thank you, Elian. That was very well put. As one of those who have contributed to the pro-Israeli bias, I must apologize.
>
> I also find the pages you mention very one-sided. I don't know enough about the situation to fix it myself.
>
> If there is anything I can do to help you to fix these pages, please let me know. I offer my editing services to you.
>
> Ed Poor
>
>
> From: elian [mailto:elian at gmx.li]
> Subject: [Wikipedia-l] NPOV and the israeli-palestinian conflict
>
> When I discovered Wikipedia I was really fascinated and decided to join
> the project. One of my first selfimposed limitations before I even knew
> about the NPOV-policy, however, was not to write about the
> Israeli-palestinian conflict because I consider myself as biased (having
> friends who are palestinian refugees).
> [snip]

Ed, please reply below, not above, quoted material - it helps reading
flow.

To add to what Ed said - I don't think you should necessarily
'disqualify' yourself from editing articles because you consider
yourself biased. One perfectly good way of arriving at NPOV is for
people with opposite biases to edit the same article. Just go ahead and
edit it, and if you get it wrong, i'm sure someone will be happy to fix
it :)
--
adamw


body:
Brion VIBBER wrote:

> tarquin wrote:
>
>> As for redirects like "Zimbabwe/History", we don't want people to
>> link to those.
>> I am of the opinion that we should simply delete them -- the only
>> argument against is that Google has indexed them.
>
>
> Also there are links from external sites and personal bookmarks. Maybe
> nothing links Zimbabwe/History, but there's at least one link to
> Zimbabwe/Geography at this page:
>   http://www.geometry.net/basic_z/zimbabwe_geography.php
>
> How would it help our project if people follow links to what they are
> told are articles only to find "Describe the text of the new page here."?
>
> Do not delete redirects just because you find them un-aesthetic.
>
That is a fair point which I'd forgotten about.
But other sites do not feel compelled to maintain old links.

I have suggested before that instead of just "Describe the text of the
new page here.", we have the system run a page-title search and say:

"This page does not exist in wikipedia. Pages that match your requested
title include: [[History of Zimbabwe]], .... etc"

then again, we could just leave redirects, it's easier :-)


from_name: Edgar Enyedy

body:
Hi everyone,

Sorry, I'm not going to post in English.

Moraleja: El pez grande siempre acaba trag?ndose al pez peque?o.
Un logro ha sido, si se quiere, que algunos colaboradores de otras Wikipedias sean m?s sensibles al tema de la publicidad y al dominio .org.

Pero la tan prometida fundaci?n que regir?a Nupedia Y Wikipedia sigue sin constituirse, al igual que no existen servidores espejos y todo permanece bajo una compa??a privada (Bomis Inc.).

No quiero llamar a enga?o, pero sinceramente yo no he visto ninguna muestra de buena voluntad por su parte, s?lo una posici?n de fuerza, basada fundamentalmente en que la inminente migraci?n de software de es.wikipedia.com permitir? importar todos los contenidos de esta enciclopedia y alimentar es.wikipedia.com de manera cont?nua.

Y aclarar que nunca fue un malentendido, tengo textos de la Wikipedia sajona y bastantes correos privados que pueden demostrar al m?s ciego que nunca hubo el tan manido "malentendido". El "malentendido" forma parte de la desinformaci?n.

No obstante, de cara al futuro del proyecto (centralista) de Wikipedia (americana) bajo Bomis (compa??a privada) comprendo que lo mejor es la reunificaci?n.

Efectivamente, el pez grande se traga al peque?o.

Edgar Enyedy

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from_name: Andre Engels

body:
Someone noted on [[Wikipedia talk:Disambiguation pages with links]] that
[[Wikipedia:Disambiguation pages with links]] was locked. Going back to the
page, I noted that it was, clicked on unlock (there is no good reason to lock
this page, while there is a good reason to not lock it, namely giving people
the chance to remove pages they have fixed). But after that, the page
remained locked. What is going on?

Andre Engels


from_name: Jimmy Wales

body:
This really seems like a better discussion for the /Talk pages, but
it's probably worth discussing a bit on the list, too.  Obviously, the
Israeli/Palestinian situation is one of the most important stories of
our time, one for which our encyclopedia ought to provide a solid
background.  But equally obviously, it is a topic of great complexity
and passion that makes NPOV difficult to achieve.

I think that elian's approach is exactly the right one.  I, too, have
avoided certain topics where I was unsure that I could strike the
right balanced tone.

In this case of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict I have a few opinions
(against suicide/homicide bombings against civilians, against mistreatment
of any kind again Palestinians, the need for love and flexibility on both
sides to reach genuine longterm settlement), but don't know enough of
the complex history to write much about the factual background.

elian wrote:
> First, I see a problem with a lot of little formulations.  There were so
> many formulations which hurt: more than 100 killed civilians, women and
> children constituted the deir yassin "incident" - see edit history of
> "Irgun", where the Irgun was "supposed to have killed them". I am sure the
> deads would not consider their murder as "supposedly".

Is it generally uncontroversial that the Irgun killed more than 100
civilians?  If so, then I see no reason for the "supposed to have
killed them" formulation.  The word "murder" should be used, in many
contexts, but it should be used cautiously, I think.

I'm sure we could have two weeks discussion of just what makes for a
murder versus other descriptions!  I wouldn't want to open that can of
worms unless absolutely necessary, so just understand me to be saying
that such judgments can be difficult and controversial, and that
sometimes the arguments could be avoided through careful word choices
to avoid the controversial conclusions.

> Or "Palestinians claim that the bulk of Palestinian refugees had been
> inhabitants of Palestine for many generations": doesn't this obvious,
> totally trivial fact, recognized by the UNO, earn a formulation as a fact,
> not a claim?

I think so, but perhaps it should be bolstered by estimates of the
percentage of Palestinian refugees who were born elsewhere, etc.

We might say (and I am making these numbers up, and perhaps valid
numbers are not available) that 80% of the Palestinian refugees are
children or grandchilden of people who lived in the area before the
creation of the state of Israel, and 15% are people from other
countries with cultural/familial ties that go back further than that,
and 5% are people who have intermarried into the Palestinian
population.

> Other things, on the contrary, seem to be facts: "The infiltration, which
> was usually carried out at night by desperate people, terrorized the
> Jewish civilians, some of whom lived in former Arab areas. Moreover, while
> most of the infiltrators didn't come with the intention to kill, many of
> them did steal property." (Palestinian_infiltration) There is no question
> that this "stolen property" may have been one year earlier the rightful
> property of the "infiltrator" before disseized by Israeli law, no, "they
> steal property".

Could we not here simply describe the uncontroversial facts, without
any _judgment_ as to the status of the property in question?  It might
be difficult to word properly, but it seems possible to me.

> It's a real question which definition of law applies in the wikipedia: is
> it the positive law, set by the victorious party in a conflict? Or do we
> adhere to some internationally defined standards of human rights and
> international law?

I think the right answer to this is: whenever there is controversy, we
do neither.  It is not up to wikipedia to judge the controversial
moral issues of our day, but to present information agreeable to all
reasonable parties in a controversy so that both feel that a neutral
observer will have sufficient data to come to the right conclusion.

> My last example is the part about the origin of suicide bombings in
> "Terrorism against Israel": First comes a view attributed to some Israelis
> and Americans that propaganda in palestinian schoolbooks incites
> terrorism. It is followed by a view attributed to Palestinians "that the
> homicide bombings are forgiveable and understandable effects of the
> unsatisfactory situation in which Palestinians live, and that it is the
> only way to achieve the results they desire." followed by "In contrast,
> Israelis and Americans point out that millions of people live in similar
> and worse conditions all over the world, yet these people never resort to
> waves of homicide bombings."
>
> Okay, the thing with the schoolbooks should be clear for the interested
> reader, but what the hell is the "unsatisfactory situation"?

Would simply fleshing out the details of what Palestinians regard as
the 'unsatisfactory situation' be enough here?

> The goal of an encyclopedia should not be to justify terrorism, but it is
> definitely one of its goals to describe accurately what the source of this
> terrorism is. There are enough studies around the world who show that
> children growing up in an atmosphere of violence (for example african
> child soldiers) tend later to attempt to resolve conflicts in a violent
> way. Doesn't the experience of children seeing their parents beaten, their
> family home blown up and living under curfews or in permament danger of
> being shot accidentally when leaving the house merit a mention as possible
> influence of palestinian terrorism beside the schoolbook debate?

Yes, it does.

On the other hand, stepping a bit more into the controversy than I
like, I would say that most Americans are puzzled about the
differences between Palestinians and other people with grievances
around the world.  Why didn't we see suicide bombings and terror
campaigns by the victims of South African apartheid?  Why didn't we
see suicide bombing campaigns by Jews in WWII Germany?  Why didn't we
see suicide bombings against British rule in India?

It does seem relevant to examine what things, beyond the raw fact of
grievances, led to this reaction.  Part of this must be cultural and
religious (Islamic martyrdom).  And part of it is likely due to
differences in strategy and tactics on the part of Israelis?

> Where is the "arguing for the enemy" that the NPOV-policy demands?

Dig in and do it!  It would be much apppreciated, especially since (a)
you seem to know a lot about it and (b) you have a sensitivity to the
demands of NPOV.

> This is not always done by inserting "claims" and "supposed", but
> internationally recognized facts should be presented as such (even
> if the Israeli government or the Hamas leaders refuse to acknowledge
> them).

I agree with this, but caution that there are ways to get into trouble
here.  Sometimes the Israeli government or Hamas leaders may be right
to raise a denial, in which case we have to acknowledge that, as well.

> But human rights violation are human rights violations, even if the state
> Israel says, destroying of palestinian houses is lawful, because a
> terrorist lived in it. (see B'tselem discussion page) For the terrorist's
> little three-year-old sister, who is then forced to live on the street, it
> _is_ a human rights violation and according to the international
> declaration of human rights it is, too.

I agree with this, except -- it is not correct for wikipedia to take
the side of international law as put forward by the U.N. -- the
U.N. can be (and often is, in my opinion) wrong about right and wrong.

On the other hand, violation of a U.N. resolution is the violation of
a U.N.  resolution.  That's a fact that people could agree about,
whether they think the violation is acceptable or not.

> greetings and sorry for the horrible english,

Horrible English?  I thought it was perfect.

--Jimbo


body:
Adam Williamson wrote:
> One perfectly good way of arriving at NPOV is for
> people with opposite biases to edit the same article. Just go ahead and
> edit it, and if you get it wrong, i'm sure someone will be happy to fix
> it :)

I think this is right, but it only works if both sides approach things
in the spirit that Elian and Ed Poor have shown: an earnest
willingness to work to generate an _encyclopedic_ report.

--Jimbo


subject: [Wikipedia-l] spanish wikipedia

in_reply_to: <3D9C963A.2050202@telus.net>; from saintonge@telus.net on Thu, Oct 03, 2002 at 12:10:50PM -0700

body:
Ray Saintonge wrote:
> If the French Wikipedia feels that it is appropriate to include being a
> dictionary that's their business.  I don't see the need for them to be
> bound by one of Larry's rules from a year ago when thay had no
> opportunity to participate in its development.  Demanding that they
> "straighten up" would be unnecessarily dictatorial.

I agree with this, to an extent.

Wikipedia is not a dictionary is simply a statement rejecting as a
priority some types of entries that are just simple explanations of
word usage.  This is a relatively minor point in the grand scheme of
things, and one that is open to a consensus of the people actually
working on the project.

But "Wikipedia is not a joke book" is not the sort of policy that's
open to consensus change.  The judgment that we don't ban people for
working towards NPOV (thus preserving some political slant that we
prefer) is not the sort of policy that's open to consensus change.

If I went on vacation for two weeks and came back to find that the
developers, with full consensus on the part of contributors, had
decided that Wikipedia would henceforth be pro-atheist,
pro-libertarian, pro-reason, and pro-technology _as a matter of
policy_, and started banning people for political disagreements, then
I'd forcefully start taking away sysop privileges and unbanning
people, consensus be damned.

That's *even though* I am personally pro-atheist, pro-libertarian,
pro-reason, and pro-technology.

The reason is that openness and neutrality and that wikipedia is an
encyclopedia and not a joke book are all fundamental parameters for
the project, in a way that decisions about the exact cutoff between an
encyclopedia and a dictionary are not fundamental at all.

The article that I would write, on another website, as a polemic,
about, let's say, Ed Poor's religion, or Eclectiology's unrepentant
leftism, would be critical and one-sided, let's suppose.  And they
might, on another website, criticise my atheism or libertarianism.

But here on wikipedia, we leave all that at the door, and we
appreciate that our differences do not stand in the way of writing an
_encyclopedia_.

--Jimbo


subject: [Wikipedia-l] our images aren't being indexed

in_reply_to: <200210032154.g93Lspq09443@ross.bomis.com>; from koyaanisqatsi@nupedia.com on Thu, Oct 03, 2002 at 02:54:51PM -0700

body:
I looked through the referer log, and it seems that many are:

http://images.google.com/images?q=louis+pasteur&svnum=10&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&start=20&sa=N

I also found this:
http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=www.wikipedia.com/upload/naoko.gif&imgrefurl=http://www.wikipedia.com/wiki/Naoko%2BTakeuchi&h=181&w=180&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dmanga%26start%3D400%26svnum%3D10%26hl%3Des%26lr%3D%26ie%3DUTF-8%26oe%3DUTF-8%26sa%3DN&frame=small%20-%3E%20/upload/naoko.gif

I.E.

http://www.wikipedia.com/wiki/Naoko+Takeuchi

It seems unlikely that this picture is available to us?

--Jimbo


from_name: Kurt Jansson

body:
I tested some automatic translations, and
http://www.translate.ru/
made the one where I understood the most.

Kurt


body:
Well, I tried some online translators, but did not really understand
in the details.

There's no cause for the big fish to swallow the small one.  If EL can
not continue for any financial reasons, I will be happy to provide
resources to them without charge, without any imposition of any
policies at all upon them, with them having full control of their
software, etc.  -- under the EL name.

Edgar speaks perfectly good English himself -- perhaps he could be so
kind as to provide a translation of his remarks?

--Jimbo


body:
Toby Bartels wrote:
> When we get a nonprofit set up, will you maintain ultimate control?

The nonprofit will maintain ultimate control, which means that the
board of directors will maintain ultimate control.  I will be on the
board of directors, of course.  And I will pack the board of directors
with people who agree with me about NPOV, etc.

My goal is that the things I regard as of fundamental importance are
preserved.  It would be a great tragedy to me to have spent all this
money to jump start my vision, only to see it corrupted by poor
choices about a nonprofit organization.

Suppose I turn everything over to the nonprofit and I'm immediately
outvoted and new policies are insitituted to create a hierarchical
system with a controlling cabal with a particular political agenda.
That would be tragic to me.

So, for obvious reasons, I will carefully set up the organization so
that my control of these fundamentals is continued, at least by proxy.
(I.E., I won't be inviting '24' or Helga onto the board of directors!)

> Or will the nonprofit raise funds and pay you for server usage?

There will be no need to pay me for server usage for the foreseeable
future.  Probably I will not be buying any more $3000 servers.
Probably.

> If you won't maintain ultimate control anymore, then that would be
> the time to approach EL.

That's probably right.  But they will have to understand that the
nonprofit would exercise ultimate control, which indirectly means me.

--Jimbo


from_name: koyaanisqatsi at nupedia.com

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Wikipedia-l] our images aren't being

body:
WojPob wrote:
>The google image search feature isn't really that great
>compared to their 'normal' index, IMO.

I would say not.  I searched for "kiwifruit", scrolled through everything, and saw nothing but mediocre pictures.

What I wanted was to be able to search for the subject & find it.  Funny that.... I'm surprised Google hasn't figured out how to do this.

kq


body:
Jimmy wrote:
>I looked through the referer log, and it seems that many are:
>
>http://images.google.com/images?q=louis+pasteur&svnum=10&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&start=20&sa=N

interesting.  well, it's not working for me.  I guess it just needs
improvement--or I need improvement in searching for images.

>http://www.wikipedia.com/wiki/Naoko+Takeuchi
>
>It seems unlikely that this picture is available to us?

Probably not.

kq


from_name: Sean Barrett

body:
That picture also appears on
http://www.geocities.com/sm_smseiya/mt.html.  While it is not
inconceivable that "My Shrine On Naoko Takeuchi" took the picture from
the Wikipedia, it seems much more likely to me that both the Wikipedian
and the Shrine-builder lifted it from a copyright source.

-----Original Message-----
From: wikipedia-l-admin at nupedia.com
[mailto:wikipedia-l-admin at nupedia.com]On Behalf Of Jimmy Wales
Sent: Friday, October 04, 2002 02:39
To: wikipedia-l at nupedia.com
Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] our images aren't being indexed

I looked through the referer log, and it seems that many are:

http://images.google.com/images?q=louis+pasteur&svnum=10&hl=en&lr=&ie=UT
F-8&start=20&sa=N

I also found this:
http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=www.wikipedia.com/upload/naoko.gi
f&imgrefurl=http://www.wikipedia.com/wiki/Naoko%2BTakeuchi&h=181&w=180&p
rev=/images%3Fq%3Dmanga%26start%3D400%26svnum%3D10%26hl%3Des%26lr%3D%26i
e%3DUTF-8%26oe%3DUTF-8%26sa%3DN&frame=small%20-%3E%20/upload/naoko.gif

I.E.

http://www.wikipedia.com/wiki/Naoko+Takeuchi

It seems unlikely that this picture is available to us?

--Jimbo
[Wikipedia-l]
To manage your subscription to this list, please go here:
http://www.nupedia.com/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l


from_name: wojtek pobratyn

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Re: Wikipedia-l] our images aren't being
  indexed

body:
At 02:18 04.10.2002, fellow wikipedians wrote thusly:
>On Thursday 03 October 2002 04:22 pm, you wrote:
> > Google isn't picking up our images.  does anyone know why?  (I for one
> > would like them to be indexed--no point in giving pictures away if nobody
> > knows they're there.)  ;-)
> >
> > Maybe it's a non-issue.
> >
> > cheers,
> >
> > kq
>
>I would classify this as a bug report. Please file it at;
>http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=34373&atid=411192

well a google image search for 'wikipedia'
http://images.google.com.pl/images?q=wikipedia&svnum=10&hl=pl&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&start=20&sa=N
yields 793 results, several of which are images on wikipedia.com.

The google image search feature isn't really that great
compared to their 'normal' index, IMO.

++WojPob


subject: [Wikipedia-l] spanish wikipedia

body:
Jimmy Wales wrote:

>But "Wikipedia is not a joke book" is not the sort of policy that's
>open to consensus change.  The judgment that we don't ban people for
>working towards NPOV (thus preserving some political slant that we
>prefer) is not the sort of policy that's open to consensus change.
>
Although the "not a joke book" concept had not been heretofore been a
part of this thread it is a good illustration thast there are core value
issues that must take precedence even if they haven't been mentioned
before.  They might be put into a more general category of tendencies
that could bring the entire project into disrepute.  Becoming a joke
book could do that; becoming a dictionary would not.

One of the problems with a lot of explicit rules is that some people
tend to treat them too literally without any consideration or
understanding of the background that led to the formation of that rule.
 A related effect is the view that if there is no rule about it, it must
be OK no matter what the consequences.

>That's *even though* I am personally pro-atheist, pro-libertarian,
>pro-reason, and pro-technology.
>
>The article that I would write, on another website, as a polemic,
>about, let's say, Ed Poor's religion, or Eclectiology's unrepentant
>leftism, would be critical and one-sided, let's suppose.  And they
>might, on another website, criticise my atheism or libertarianism.
>
The wonder is that those who are bitter opponents on one issue, can be
staunch allies on an other.  Jimmy and I would likely clash over
libertarianism, but be on the same side over atheism.  We may agree on
reason, but differ on what it means.

As long as Wikipedians can continue to base their views on what people
say rather than who they are we have a healthy project.

Eclecticology


body:
Jimmy Wales wrote:

>This really seems like a better discussion for the /Talk pages, but
>it's probably worth discussing a bit on the list, too.
>
The unfortunate difficulty with doing this on the Talk pages is that the
issue covers such a broad collection of articles that putting it on one
would leave it unread by all who didn't visit that particular page, but
have concerned themselves with a different aspect of the problem.

Ec


subject: [Wikipedia-l] spanish wikipedia

in_reply_to: <3D9DB910.2000600@telus.net>; from saintonge@telus.net on Fri, Oct 04, 2002 at 08:51:44AM -0700

body:
Ray Saintonge wrote:
> The wonder is that those who are bitter opponents on one issue, can be
> staunch allies on an other.  Jimmy and I would likely clash over
> libertarianism, but be on the same side over atheism.  We may agree on
> reason, but differ on what it means.
>
> As long as Wikipedians can continue to base their views on what people
> say rather than who they are we have a healthy project.

That's right.  And the astonishing near-miracle to me, a veteran of
too-many years on Usenet and mailing lists, is that even people of
very different ideas can agree on an encyclopedic presentation.  In
the early days of wikipedia, I was skeptical.

--Jimbo


in_reply_to:
<3D9CE696.6070902@pobox.com> from Brion VIBBER at "Oct 3, 2002 04:53:42
 pm"

body:
> Andre Engels wrote:
> > Someone noted on [[Wikipedia talk:Disambiguation pages with links]] that
> > [[Wikipedia:Disambiguation pages with links]] was locked. Going back to the
> > page, I noted that it was, clicked on unlock (there is no good reason to lock
> > this page, while there is a good reason to not lock it, namely giving people
> > the chance to remove pages they have fixed). But after that, the page
> > remained locked. What is going on?
>
> It looks unprotected to me. Did anybody else do anything to it?
>
> (Did you try reloading the page? Did you try clearing your cache? etc)

Ah, no I did not... When I do an edit, I automatically get a reloaded
version of the page; I had automatically assumed that this would be the
case here as well. Thanks for looking.

Andre


from_name: Daniel Mayer

body:
>Jimmy Wales wrote:
>
>>Daniel Mayer wrote:
>>
>>>6) State that we have no intention of ever removing

>>> es.wikipedia.com but we could point that URL to
the
>>> Seville server is they wish to stay on that
server.
>>
>>I don't think this is acceptable.  Without sever
unity,
>>there is no way for us to enforce openness.  If they

>>start to ban people for political reasons, forming a

>>'cabal', we would be powerless to stop them.
>
>And they would be powerless to stop you.

Answered on the International mailing list.

__________________________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
New DSL Internet Access from SBC & Yahoo!
http://sbc.yahoo.com


from_name: Robert Graham Merkel

body:
On Thu, Oct 03, 2002 at 03:55:24PM +0200, elian wrote:
>
> Hello,
>
<discussion of perceived pro-Israeli bias on pages
about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict snipped>

The problem is that most of the people who know  a lot
about the issue are strongly partisan one way or the other,
and that on the wikipedia most of the people are strongly
pro-Israeli.  As much as they *try* to be NPOV about things,
it's understandably very hard to do on issues close to your
heart, particularly when you don't have people forcefully
and *knowledgably* putting dissenting views.

I think you find that if you try and edit these pages for
extra balance, you find yourself trying to justify this with
people who have spent a lot more time studying the issue,
even if it is only one side of it, and consequently it's
very hard to win an argument on the topic.  Additionally,
most of us *know* we don't know enough about the issues
to be able to justify editing  them.  On other topics,
such as, say, computer related topics, I have enough confidence
in my own knowledge to argue with people about issues.  I
suspect this problem applies to many of the more prolific
Wikipedia contributors.

I can't see these articles improving until we have more
contributors with genuine expertise and a broader set of
perspectives on the issue.

This is not to demean the people who have worked on
these articles - I believe you have all tried your best
in good faith.  However, I also honestly believe that they are
not NPOV at this stage.

--
------------------------------------------------------------
Robert Merkel	                           rgmerk at mira.net

"...the moral issues raised by driving a car, both from an
environmental and from a safety point of view, are much more
serious than those raised by sex" -- Peter Singer
------------------------------------------------------------


from_name: Poor, Edmund W

body:
>First, it's not only a problem of bias but also a problem of language
>difficulties - it takes me more than three times longer to write in
>English than in German. Plus, often it's a question of subtle nouances of
>formulations which make the difference in the neutrality of an article,
>as I tried to point out. As a non-native speaker I can feel that something
>is "smelling" but my corrections would eventually make things only
>worse. (I already had such a problem in a discussion with maverick where I
>still don't know what exactly I got wrong in grammar - anyway, sorry mav)
>
>Third, I have serious doubts that the normal wikipedian strategy you
>described would work in this special area. My impression was that articles
>tend to grow longer and longer, each writer adding deeds, arguments,
>objections, denials, accusations of each side, leaving it totally to the
>reader to sort out the relevant material. This is not my vision of a
>NPOV-encyclopedia and nothing I want to participate in.
>
>Finally, I could do, but you would agree that 15 simultaneous edit wars
>are not a very pleasant situation to be in?
>
>So I'd prefer a consensual attempt to make the articles NPOV, which seems
>to be made possible by Ed's generous offer. Maybe I should also talk to
>Uriyan.
>
>greetings,
>elian

Elian,

As you pointed out, there are many obstacles to fixing these articles. Writing in English is time-consuming, and the nuances are hard to master. The edit war which results from accusation and denial just makes it worse.

One practice that seems to work well, is when a partisan for one side does his best to explain the viewpoint of the other side. Stephen Covey once described a debate in which neither side was permitted to say a single word about their own views, until they had first restated the opposing viewpoint _to the satisfaction of the other side_.

Sometimes, I'm just too close to a subject to be able to step back and write neutrally. I don't know why, but I just start to think, "But this is RIGHT! Why do I have to give equal time to nonsense?" At such a time, a third party who can step in would be welcome.

I appreciate the confidence you and some others place in me, but I have doubts about how helpful I can really be. I don't remember whether I have revealed my biases yet. (I think Israel should annex Gaza and West Bank; Palestinian Arabs can either tolerate subjection to Israeli authority, or emigrate to a friendly neighbor like Jordan, Egypt or Syria.)

Is it really possible for a person holding this view to write _neutrally_ about it or about opposing views? Some Wikipedians think I can do it, and some think I can't.

Another obstacle is the amount of time it will take. I would say at least two years. Several contributors have given up after a few weeks.

Another problem I have no idea how to solve, because I might be part of the problem, is the personal attacks between contributors. "You're a troll." "Oh, yeah? You're a *&@#$!" If I step in, both sides immediately say, "He started it." "No, he started it. All I was saying was..." "Yeah, but he...." When I proposed to ban one party for as short as 24 hours, several long-time contributors criticized me for exceeding my authority. (What authority? You have none!) These critics were all correct: only Jimbo can ban a signed-in contributor, and he's only done so one time.

Can we make peace on Wikipedia by silencing "troublemakers"? Perhaps even to think so shows that I failed to grasp the essence of "neutral point of view".

I do want to work with you, Elian. But it will be a lot of hard work. And it will not be smooth sailing.

I think we should continue to discuss "how to approach" these pages, here, on the mailing list. Specific questions about how to describe facts, ideas and viewpoints are probably best left to the talk pages of the articles themselves.

Ed Poor


from_name: Axel Boldt

body:
Anybody who wants to jump in and fix the Israeli-Palestinian pages
could do much worse than having a look at

http://www.npr.org/news/specials/mideast/history/index.html

This is an overview of the background behind the conflict, by National
Public Radio. In general, NPR seems to be pretty fair, somewhat in
between (most of) the European media and (most of) the American media.

Axel

__________________________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
New DSL Internet Access from SBC & Yahoo!
http://sbc.yahoo.com


body:
elian wrote:
>> It does seem relevant to examine what things, beyond the raw fact of
>> grievances, led to this reaction.  Part of this must be cultural and
>> religious (Islamic martyrdom).  And part of it is likely due to
>> differences in strategy and tactics on the part of Israelis?
>
>*calming down* From a scientific point of view this would be rather
>interesting to know. Perhaps in a common effort of psychologues, political
>scientists and islam scientists of wikipedia there could be written a
>neutral article about it. Any volunteers? A general article about the
>origins of terrorism?

In my not-so-humble opinion, terrorism results when people are reminded constantly that they have no voice in their own government.  As an aside, I'm rather surprised there hasn't been more terrorism inside the U.S. since the public was told exactly that in November 2000.  But, alas, I am not a political scientist, nor am I anyone famous & profound, so I'll continue leaving that out of wikipedia.  :-)

kq


from_name: Toby Bartels

body:
Jimmy Wales wrote:

>Toby Bartels wrote:

>>If you won't maintain ultimate control anymore, then that would be
>>the time to approach EL.

>That's probably right.  But they will have to understand that the
>nonprofit would exercise ultimate control, which indirectly means me.

Presumably they can get on the board as well,
which should work better.

-- Toby


body:
Certainly people who are mistreated are likely to become angry. I don't know why some people bear mistreatment patiently, while others become filled with murderous rage. If anyone can discover the answer, I hope they will include it in a Wikipedia article.

One thing I'm interested in, is how much the anger of Palestinian nationalists is due to mistreatment by Israel -- compared to how much is frustration because of rejection by Islamic nations to assimilate refugees -- and also how much is due to rabble-rousing by groups dedicated to Israel's destruction. How's that for a "dangerous question"?

Ed Poor


from_name: elian

body:
"Poor, Edmund W" <Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com> writes:

> Thank you, Elian. That was very well put. As one of those who have
> contributed to the pro-Israeli bias, I must apologize.

First of all, thank you for this reaction. I expected flames and
everything else, but not this, so I am completely surprised :-)

> I also find the pages you mention very one-sided. I don't know enough
> about the situation to fix it myself.

There's a simple answer: read as much of the conflict as you can get hold
of. Read personal memories and autobiographies from both sides, read about
the enthusiasm and the hard efforts of the Jewish people building the
state Israel and their fear of "being driven into the sea" by the Arab
states, but read also about the Palestinians living in the Westbank
under military law, with no political freedom, no right to vote. I'd like
to recommend you the autobiography of Sumaya Farhat-Naser, a peace
activist, but I think there is no english translation. Read
the book of Morris about the Palestinian refugees.

Imagine yourself living under all of these conditions. Think about
everything and then start writing.

> If there is anything I can do to help you to fix these pages, please let
> me know. I offer my editing services to you.

gratefully accepted :-)
I put up a list of articles which need IMHO minor or major modifications,
plus a proposal for points to pay attention to when editing articles about
the conflict.

http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Elian
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Elian/Proposal

If you could help to oversee the articles and modify them, this would be
very nice. I'd also appreciate help in formulating the
neutralizing-guidelines.

greetings,
elian


body:
>> One thing I'm interested in, is how much the anger of Palestinian
>> nationalists is due to mistreatment by Israel -- compared to how much is
>> frustration because of rejection by Islamic nations to assimilate refugees --
>> and also how much is due to rabble-rousing by groups dedicated to Israel's
>> destruction. How's that for a "dangerous question"?
>
>Can people now see why these articles are a big problem for Wikipedia? This is
>how long it took for a meta discussion to get nasty on specific points.
>
>I'm in favour of just removing the articles and stating that Wikipedia at this
>date is unable to provide a NPOV, even after a year of trying.
>
>-- Daniel

I don't understand: what is "nasty" about trying to sort things out? If the nationalists' anger is due entirely to (a) and not at all to (b) or (c), just say so. I wasn't trying to make a point; I was really trying to get information to put into the article.

I would like us to be able to write something like:

(B) Palestinian Arabs have never expressed a desire to be assimilated into existing Islamic nations such as Jordan or Syria; they just want to establish a new nation.

Or:

(C-1) Arab Palestinians do not want to destroy Israel but live in peace as neighbors.

But it might instead be:

(C-2) The Arab world is dedicated to Israel's destruction, and once they gain military control over the West Bank their next plan is to launch a fourth war against Israel.

There are some people who believe C-1 and some who believe C-2. Is is wrong to try to find out who believes what? How else can I find out other than asking questions? (I'm not good at original research.)

Ed Poor


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Gareth Owen

subject: [Wikitech-l] SmartQuotes (tm)

body:
ASCII has perfectly good quotes and apostrophes, and HTML even has entities
for open and close quotes, but some contributors still insert those weird
non-standard ?, ?, ? characters in articles.

Is there someway to automagically convert them into ASCII/HTML equivalents?


body:
Adam Williamson <aw280 at cam.ac.uk> writes:

> To add to what Ed said - I don't think you should necessarily
> 'disqualify' yourself from editing articles because you consider
> yourself biased. One perfectly good way of arriving at NPOV is for
> people with opposite biases to edit the same article. Just go ahead and
> edit it, and if you get it wrong, i'm sure someone will be happy to fix
> it :)

First, it's not only a problem of bias but also a problem of language
difficulties - it takes me more than three times longer to write in
English than in German. Plus, often it's a question of subtle nouances of
formulations which make the difference in the neutrality of an article,
as I tried to point out. As a non-native speaker I can feel that something
is "smelling" but my corrections would eventually make things only
worse. (I already had such a problem in a discussion with maverick where I
still don't know what exactly I got wrong in grammar - anyway, sorry mav)

Third, I have serious doubts that the normal wikipedian strategy you
described would work in this special area. My impression was that articles
tend to grow longer and longer, each writer adding deeds, arguments,
objections, denials, accusations of each side, leaving it totally to the
reader to sort out the relevant material. This is not my vision of a
NPOV-encyclopedia and nothing I want to participate in.

Finally, I could do, but you would agree that 15 simultaneous edit wars
are not a very pleasant situation to be in?

So I'd prefer a consensual attempt to make the articles NPOV, which seems
to be made possible by Ed's generous offer. Maybe I should also talk to
Uriyan.

greetings,
elian


from_name: Stephen Gilbert

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Case sensitivity

body:
--- Khendon <jason at jasonandali.org.uk> wrote:
> On Thu, Oct 03, 2002 at 09:54:58AM -0700,
> koyaanisqatsi at nupedia.com wrote:
> > Khendon wrote:
> > >> Also, capitalizations sometimes distinguish one
> subject from another.
> > >
> > >Often enough to justify the problems
> case-sensitivity brings?
> >
> > Refresh my memory on what the problems are again,
> if you would please.
>
> It's easy to get the capitalisation on a link wrong.

Not really. Our naming conventions have some
guidelines for capitalization, namely, don't
capitalize unless it's a proper noun.

Stephen G.

__________________________________________________
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body:
Can any Spanish speakers provide an English
translation for interested English speakers (like
myself)?

Stephen

--- Edgar Enyedy <enyedy at ya.com> wrote:
> Hi everyone,
>
> Sorry, I'm not going to post in English.
>
> Moraleja: El pez grande siempre acaba trag?ndose al
> pez peque?o.
> Un logro ha sido, si se quiere, que algunos
> colaboradores de otras Wikipedias sean m?s sensibles
> al tema de la publicidad y al dominio .org.
>
> Pero la tan prometida fundaci?n que regir?a Nupedia
> Y Wikipedia sigue sin constituirse, al igual que no
> existen servidores espejos y todo permanece bajo una
> compa??a privada (Bomis Inc.).
>
> No quiero llamar a enga?o, pero sinceramente yo no
> he visto ninguna muestra de buena voluntad por su
> parte, s?lo una posici?n de fuerza, basada
> fundamentalmente en que la inminente migraci?n de
> software de es.wikipedia.com permitir? importar
> todos los contenidos de esta enciclopedia y
> alimentar es.wikipedia.com de manera cont?nua.
>
> Y aclarar que nunca fue un malentendido, tengo
> textos de la Wikipedia sajona y bastantes correos
> privados que pueden demostrar al m?s ciego que nunca
> hubo el tan manido "malentendido". El "malentendido"
> forma parte de la desinformaci?n.
>
> No obstante, de cara al futuro del proyecto
> (centralista) de Wikipedia (americana) bajo Bomis
> (compa??a privada) comprendo que lo mejor es la
> reunificaci?n.
>
> Efectivamente, el pez grande se traga al peque?o.
>
> Edgar Enyedy
>
>
>
>
>
>

__________________________________________________
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Faith Hill - Exclusive Performances, Videos & More
http://faith.yahoo.com


from_name: Rosa Williams

subject: [Wikipedia-l] NPOV, the israeli-palestinian conflict, and the ANC

body:
> On Fri, 2002-10-04 at 10:14, Jimmy Wales wrote:
>
> > On the other hand, stepping a bit more into the controversy than I
> > like, I would say that most Americans are puzzled about the
> > differences between Palestinians and other people with grievances
> > around the world.  Why didn't we see suicide bombings and terror
> > campaigns by the victims of South African apartheid?  Why didn't we
> > see suicide bombing campaigns by Jews in WWII Germany?  Why didn't we
> > see suicide bombings against British rule in India?

>From: "Adam Williamson" <aw280 at cam.ac.uk>
> (To jump into an off-topic debate, sorry...)
>
> Just like to say - at first this seems an interesting point, but I think
> it's a bit misleading. The answer to the question Jimmy asks, in my
> opinion, is Islam ideology, which makes suicide bombing a good deal more
> attractive than most others I can think of right now.
>
> However...the implications of the question he asks are nasty, and to do
> with the incorrect demonisation of suicide bombing. Sure, it's a
> thoroughly nasty thing to do, but in effect it's just one way of
> murdering people, often innocent people, and there's a hell of a lot
> more than one way to do that. And many of the other ways were used in
> all the conflicts Jimmy mentions above. The anti-apartheid campaign was
> frequently murderous and brutal on both sides; South African blacks may
> not have strapped bombs to themselves and blown people up, but they sure
> killed people. As, of course, did South African whites. ... (Truncated for
space.)

As a kid, I idolized the African National Congress.  The ANC seemed to me to
be
heroes, much as the civil rights heroes I grew up celebrating.  They were
engaged
in a fight against a system that was unquestionably wrong; they were
fighting *for*
a system of "blacks and whites together", an unquestionably just goal.  I
was
awestruck when I finally got the chance to meet the members of an ANC
delegation - the more so as the leader of the delegation was willing to sit
and
chat with a 13-year-old kid.

I don't remember most of that conversation. I *do* remember one statement,
very
clearly. Imagine it spoken with a smile and a tone of soft pride:

"... We killed fifty Boers."

I tell you, I grew up rather a lot in the next 60 seconds, in the process of
wrapping
my mind around this concept.  These were my heroes, the side of Good and
Right.
Here was one of them, a woman only ten years or so older than I... Bragging.
About. Killing. Fifty. People.

I was subsequently to learn much more about the ANC. I learned about the
fifty
years of nonviolent resistance, and the massacre at Suweto that proved to be
the
last straw. I couldn't blame anyone, after that, for wanting to fight any
way they
could when the opposition was proven willing to mow down unarmed people in
the streets.

But I couldn't get that statement and that smile out of my mind.  Try to
understand this,
if you will.  The members of the ANC were still, largely, heroic to me. And
I still am,
as I was then, deeply opposed to killing.  In realizing what conditions can
exist to drive
people so far, I was forced to change a lot of my other ideas, however.  I
still don't
approve of killing. But ... I also cannot condemn these people, knowing
their reasons.

Since then, the world has been - forgive the phrase - much less black and
white to me.

And so, yes, I rather can understand what might drive Palestinians to take
actions that
I *still* consider abhorrent.  There are some parallels with the situation
of the
Palestinians that (obviously) make some Israelis deeply uncomfortable.  As
with all
comparisons, this one is not exact - merely analogous.

I can also understand the flip side of this, knowing what I do about the
Holocaust. I can
well understand what would drive people to a deep, driving determination to
create for
themselves at least one safe place in the world. I can believe that the
actions taken toward
that end are not just or justified, and I can argue they may well be
counterproductive, but
I can certainly *understand* what might drive Israelis to take such actions.

Perhaps if more of us took the approach that *both* sides have wronged each
other...
and indeed, both sides have sometimes turned on their own people... that
these come
out of understandable hurts and fears... "With malice toward none, with
charity toward
all..."  at least we'd be taking a first step toward neutrality. We may
still not agree on
specific facts, justifications, or solutions, but at least it'd tone down
the name-calling.

And in conclusion, if we need a good place to discuss "neutralizing" these
pages,
why not use meta? That seems to be one of the things meta is ideally adapted
for,
provided we can get everyone to participate in the same article rather than
in 15+
of them. :)

-- April