subject: [WikiEN-l] Let's not get rid of VfD

body:
Rick-
> I am just so sick of being told that every single thing I do is wrong.  And
> now Jimbo, the so-called "benevolent dictator", is attacking me for what I
> thought was right.  Well, I must be wrong, then, so why should I continue
> doing what is obviously wrong?

You're beginning to sound a lot like User:Zoe. Not everything is directed
at you personally. If you take everything as a personal attack, you will
not be able to endure Wikipedia much longer.

Regards,

Erik


list: wikien-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Jimmy Wales

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Delete vs salvage (was: Context and POV (was:
	Effective bullying strategy))

body:
Daniel Mayer wrote:
> Furthermore, the mere existence of bad articles encourages more bad articles
> to be added. Incomplete is one thing - that is relatively easy to fix - but
> bad is another and if often much more difficult to fix.

I agree.  But if the topic is _itself_ valid, then the right thing to
do with a bad article is to fix it, not delete it or redirect it.
It's usually pretty easy to go to an article, and move the bad parts
to the talk page along with a courteous request for more
documentation, or rewriting of some biased terminology or whatever.

--Jimbo


subject: [WikiEN-l] Let the article say that X reports Y about Z

body:
Viajero,

Notwithstanding the ridiculousness of RK's charges of anti-Zionism,
which I don't think is really the issue here, do you agree with him
at least on these central points?

1.  That an article "Palestinian views of the peace process" is a
legitimate topic of significant importance

and

2. That the article ought to report neutrally on just what Palestinian
views are, both the views of the people in general, but also the views
as expressed in their own words by prominent Palestinians

All that is necessary to move forward in a productive manner on the
article is agreement on those two points.  The central point that RK
is absolutely right about here is that simply omitting quotes from
Arafat and others simply because those quotes show them in an unflattering
light is not acceptable.

--Jimbo


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Evan Prodromou

subject: [Wikipedia-l] mirror of Dutch Wikipedia

body:
>>>>> "DM" == Daniel Mayer <maveric149 at yahoo.com> writes:

    DM> We may be able to argue that it is since we explicitly give
    DM> people the option of providing a link-back in lieu of the more
    DM> strict author requirement of the GNU FDL. Given our liberal
    DM> interpretation of the GNU FDL I don't think that a mention of
    DM> our project's name is much to ask (even if it is just a
    DM> request, and not a mandate). As I said before this may even go
    DM> beyond the GNU FDL and get into proper referencing practices.

So, isn't the whole point of Wikipedia to create and distribute free
information? I mean, yes, downstream publishers should -- no, *must*
-- comply with the GFDL, but besides that, shouldn't we be _happy_
that someone's redistributing the encyclopedia?

We need to make it _easier_ for people to re-publish the encyclopedia
in a way that complies with the GFDL -- not punish them for doing so.

That said, it's probably a good idea to ask for links back to
xx.wikipedia.org. Not to promote the site (hell, it's plenty popular),
but to make it easier for readers to contribute and fix errors in
articles.

~ESP

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


list: wikitech-l

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Re: Call for Configurations

body:
Nikos-Optim wrote:
> $68 for a CDROM????? IDE (ATAPI) or SCSI? In Greece we
> pay 30 Euro for DVDROMs and less than 20 Euro for IDE
> (ATAPI) CDROMs. Second-hand CDROMs cost no more than
> 10 Euro (I recently sold a dozen of them at that
> price)

Yes, I'm absolutely certain that cheaper ones are available.  I could
do all of this a lot more cheaply, of course, if I ordered all the
parts and built the machines myself.  But in the interests of time and
professionalism, I intend to just buy stock boxes from a reputable
manufacturer.

--Jimbo


from_name: Karl Eichwalder

body:
Arnaud G <wikipedia at amarys.com> writes:

> If you have one nic you can use PXE to boot and reinstall
> everything. You just need to add bootserver service to one of the box.

Yes, don't buy floppy drives.  If you really think you need one,
recycle one - poeple throw those devices away daily.

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


subject: [WikiEN-l] Legal advice

body:
Andrew Cleveland wrote:
> User:Anthony DiPierro claims on Wikipedia:Possible copyright infringements
> that Wikipedia is violating his copyright by not releasing the entirety of
> an article he modified under GFDL (Al Gore) including images, some of which
> may have been used under fair use. The images were included after his
> modifications. He claims the entire article, including images, must be
> released under GFDL to avoid breaking the license. I'm not a lawyer, I'm
> just confused (heh) and worried that this may become a problem.. probably
> just me being weird.

I wonder if you could ask him to come to the mailing list and express
his concerns.  I'm not sure I understand what he's saying.

I've talked this fair use images issue over with a number of people,
including Larry Lessig and Richard Stallman, but it's still very
complex.

--Jimbo


subject: [WikiEN-l] Let's not get rid of VfD

body:
Rick wrote:
> I am just so sick of being told that every single thing I do is
>wrong.  And now Jimbo, the so-called "benevolent dictator", is
>attacking me for what I thought was right.  Well, I must be wrong,
>then, so why should I continue doing what is obviously wrong?

Rick, how am I attacking you?  I fully support your work.  I don't
really know what you're talking about.

Let me repeat -- my complaints about VfD are not complaints about all
deletions, nor are they complaints about most of what goes on there.

Allow me to give a very inexact analogy.  Imagine a court system in
which 99% of the time defendants are given a fair trial, but in 1% of
the cases they are not, perhaps due to some loophole in the process.

A person can say that the process is broken, because in a small but
important number of cases the wrong thing is done, without thereby
criticizing in any way the other 99%.

You're solidly in the 99%.

I have no complaints about people working to clean up vandalism and my
concerns should not be taken as a slight against anyone doing that.

--Jimbo


subject: [WikiEN-l] VfD

body:
Daniel Mayer wrote:
> Yes - I agree. Jimbo really should take a look at the stuff added to VfD
> before making a decree that VfD should be abolished.

I'm not about to make any sort of decree, don't worry about that.

Erik suggested that the problems with VfD can only be resolved by me
making a decision, or appointing someone to make a decision.  But I
have a slightly different view.

Nothing about VfD is Policy with a capital P, laid down or decreed by
me.  It's just a social custom, no more and no less.  If the VfD
process decides that an article like "Palestinian views on the peace
process" should be redirected or deleted, there's absolutely nothing
to prevent the next person who comes along from trumping the VfD
process by just editing the page.

And if they do so in a positive, co-operative, and NPOV manner, then
Wikipedia will be the stronger for it.  If they do so in a negative,
non-co-operative, and POV manner, then the Wiki process will work
again -- the article will get re-deleted, re-redirected, etc.

--Jimbo


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Move of datacenter

body:
Daniel Mayer wrote:
> Where is the new colo going to be? IMO it should be less than an hour away
> from Brion and/or Jason (preferably somewhere in-between where they both
> live).

It's going to be 30 minutes or less from my house.  I have 2 other
people in this area who are sufficiently tech-savvy to get over there
if I'm out of town, and more will be added soon.

In addition, actually going there will not usually be necessary,
because unlike our current facility, they have 24x7 hands on service,
so if we really need something done physically, they can do it for us.
If it's too complex for them to do, I can do it.

--Jimbo


from_name: Nikos-Optim

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Pictures of genitalia

body:
probably refers to [[Penis]]

(damn, please let us find something more productive to
do than wasting our time with penises and such stuf!)

--Optim

--- Anthere <anthere8 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>
> dpbsmith at verizon.net a ?crit:
> > Re circumcision: it looks to me as if the current
> article has pictures of
> > both a circumcized and an uncircumsized penis, so
> what's the problem?
>
>
> http://en2.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circumcision ?
>
> There is no images whatsoever on that article.
>
> Is there another article on circumcision somehow ?
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l

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subject: [WikiEN-l] Potentially offensive pictures

body:
Erik Moeller wrote:
> Are they? It's been a while since I last watched TV, but my impression
> always was that US TV is more violent than Euro-TV. I may be wrong, of
> course.

I watch a lot of US TV.

In the US, television news rarely shows graphic images of blood and
guts, but "if it bleeds it leads" they love to cover bloody stories.
If there's been a horrible car accident, we will see only a body under
a clean white sheet, or a child's shoe in a gutter.  The most popular
war footage is the twisted wreckage of vehiciles but actual dead
people are virtually never seen.

Movies and television shows are similar -- lots of cartoon violence,
but very little realistic blood and guts.

I might or might not agree with the specific answers that Erik gave
here, but I would agree with his overall approach -- context matters,
and mostly it just depends on the demands of quality writing and sound
factual presentation of information.  Editorial good taste can go a
long way towards balancing competing concerns responsibly.

And there will always be hard cases that are tough to decide.  We
aren't the first to confront these issues, and I doubt if we will come
up with a magic formula that will always resolve the issues cleanly.

--Jimbo


from_name: Christopher Mahan

body:
--- Erik Moeller <erik_moeller at gmx.de> wrote:
> Christopher-
> > What about pictures of:
> >   Dead, bloody people (common on european TV)
>
> Are they? It's been a while since I last watched TV, but my
> impression
> always was that US TV is more violent than Euro-TV. I may be wrong,
> of
> course.

On French Paris Match (paper magazine), last summer, saw photo of
israeli soldier killed in combat, brain cavity was emply, brian had
been removed by impact, cranium was 1/2 missing, and photo showed the
inside of the head with the brain mostly removed, and part of the
skull still attached and hanging. Soldier was on a stretcher, others
were mulling about paying him no attention. This kind of photo, we
don't see on US tv/print media.

> Answer: Depends on context - we don't needlessly throw pictures of
> "dead,
> bloody" people into articles. Why would we?  An article about
> decompensation, rigor mortis etc. might include an image, but
> obviously,
> the more generally offensive such a picture would be, the more
> likely we
> would want to link to it instead of displaying it inline.

> >   Step by step bomb making
> Could be legally problematic.

> >   Deformed lifeforms from genetic experiments
> Sure, if they warrant an article.
>
> >   Injured people from combat (limbs tangled, guts spilled, heads
> > disfigured)
> Definitely, but only in an article that is explicitly about the
> effects of
> war; in a main article about war they should be linked to.
> >   Medical pictures of diseased bodypart
> Definitely useful, but preferably link instead of displaying
> inline.
> >   War crimes (remember the photo of the US officer executing a
> > vietnamese during the vietnam war?)
>
> Definitely, see above re: combat.
>
> >   Sexual acts, such as penetration, arousal, nipple clamps,
> bondage,
> > etc.
> Legally problematic. Nipple clamps no problem.
> >   Domestic violence
> Link to.
> >   Aborted Foetuses
> Link to.

Link to but where? What webserver do you trust will be there 2, 5
years down the road, with the same URL with the same picture?

The problem with a linked-to URL (and this has been discussed prior)
is that the picture may change, the picture server may disappear, or
the picture server may change its licensing.

As far as legality of images, we should let lawyers do that. I think
this would be a good thing to spend money on: asking real legal
advice on what photos can and cannot be posted. Anything that can be
posted, on a legal standpoint, and adds to the imformation conveyed
in the article, should be.

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

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from_name: Sascha Noyes

subject: [WikiEN-l] Images of sex organs

body:
On Saturday 10 January 2004 10:05 am, Robert wrote:
> > This is not the case for genitalia -- I think pictures
> > of genitalia are only offensive to a relatively small
> > segment of the population
>
> I disagree. A very large number of Americans will refuse to
> use Wikipedia if it contains color photographs of penises,
> vaginas, anal sphincters, etc.  If we do not have at least
> some level of protection, then we will become one of
> America's most-blocked site on home and school Internet
> filters.

We should not stoop to the level of the American puritans. Pictures of human
anatomy are patently unoffensive - or are these same puritans offended by
themselves when they go for a shower? And even if they are irrationally
offended, what the censors do not understand is that they do not have a right
to not be offended.

I agree that there is an argument to be made for having as broad an acceptance
as possible, but we should not accept the lowest common denominator of
offensiveness. Some religious people are offended by pictoral representations
of deities, which does not mean wikipedia should go out of its way to not
display pictures of deities. Personally, I would be inclined to tell those
people to 'sod off', and get their "sanitised" version of reality elsewhere.
Recognising that this is unlikely to be adopted as the policy of wikipedia
(unfortunately), I agree with Erik that we should try to limit ourselves to
things that are almost universally considered offensive.

Best,
Sascha Noyes
--
Please encrypt all email. Public key available from
www.pantropy.net/snoyes.asc


subject: [WikiEN-l] pictures of genetalia

body:
On Saturday 10 January 2004 12:14 pm, Nikos-Optim wrote:
> --- tarquin <tarquin at planetunreal.com> wrote:
> > Diagrams instead of photos would probably be better.
>
> Since some people seem to have problems with photos, I
> agree to replace them with diagrams, find some other
> solution, but I also think it wouldn't hurt if we left
> the article unchanged - except if lots of people
> consider it offensive. --Optim.

I do not agree with replacing pictures with diagrams. Both are useful and
informative.

> Anyway, if pictures of sexual organs really offend
> some people, we should take care of this.

No we shouldn't. Only if they offend most people.

> As an
> encyclopedia, Wikipedia should not be offensive.

Why? Some people find pictures of deities offensive. Doesn't mean we shouldn't
include them.

Best,
Sascha Noyes
--
Please encrypt all email. Public key available from
www.pantropy.net/snoyes.asc


from_name: Graham Burnett

subject: [WikiEN-l] footnotes and citations

body:
>
> However, wiki-markup has no convenient way of representing footnotes and
> citations.  In my fantasy, some hypertexty mechanism could give you the
best
> of both world--invisible footnotes that don't interrupt the text but can
be
> made visible if you want to trace the authority for something.
>

This is exactly the sort of thing I had in mind, but didn't express too well
due to the imbibing of far too much home-made wine last night ;-)

Graham (Quercus robur)

---
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subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: WikiEN-l Digest, Vol 6, Issue 25

body:
On Saturday 10 January 2004 10:48 am, Matt M. wrote:
> It seems a little odd that all
> of the body parts we have photos of, to my knowledge, are photos of white
> people (except the 'eyes' article).

There is a perfectly logical explanation for this. Distribution of wealth: One
has to be wealthy (by world standards) to contribute a picture to wikipedia.
(Computer, Internet access, Camera, Free time, etc.). "White-skinned" people
are comparatively more wealthy than non white-skinned people.

Best,
Sascha Noyes
--
Please encrypt all email. Public key available from
www.pantropy.net/snoyes.asc


from_name: tarquin

subject: [WikiEN-l] I've edited an article!

body:
Jimmy Wales wrote:

>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slogan_%27The_science_is_settled%27
>
>I may have left some things out, or made some mistakes,
>
>
 > which strongly opposes the Kyoto treaty, claims that "US lead global
warming negotiator Stu Eizenstat misled the press at a November 10 press
briefing. He announced that the "science is settled," parroting Vice
President Al Gore's favorite non-truth, and went as far as to refuse to
answer a reporter's question about the science.

Missing close-quote. Unclear where quotation ends


body:
--- Erik Moeller <erik_moeller at gmx.de> wrote:
> Christopher-
> > On French Paris Match (paper magazine), last summer, saw photo of
> > israeli soldier killed in combat, brain cavity was emply, brian
> had
> > been removed by impact, cranium was 1/2 missing, and photo showed
> the
> > inside of the head with the brain mostly removed, and part of the
> > skull still attached and hanging. Soldier was on a stretcher,
> others
> > were mulling about paying him no attention. This kind of photo,
> we
> > don't see on US tv/print media.
>
> Well, the conclusion that this is a US vs. Euro phenomenon seems
> overreaching. I've never seen such photos in German newspapers, for
>
> example. German media always seemed very sanitized to me.

Point taken. Is there an article somewhere discussing the differences
in media reporting between various european countries?

> > Link to but where?

> To a file uploaded on our server (provided copyright is not an
> issue),
> using a [[Media:]] link.

So we host the photo but don't include it with the article, but on a
separate instance (machine) that is easily accessible.

Do we provide thumprints?

What's truly gained? I mean, having a link to an image and the image
itself are fairly the same. If we cloak the penis image because it
offends, do we cloak the democratic demonstration? The photo of dalai
Lama? The headshot wound? The gnarly, nasty, disgusting-looking yet
medically significant photo of a "insert horrible, disfiguring
medical condition"?

I wonder. I think this might lead to bias. What shows in the article,
verus what is not shown. (Mao's photo shown in article, Sun Yat Sen's
photo cloaked (available, but only through a link)...

I wonder.

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

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from_name: dpbsmith at verizon.net

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Pictures of genitalia

body:
Re circumcision: it looks to me as if the current article has pictures of
both a circumcized and an uncircumsized penis, so what's the problem?

Re pictures of genitalia. As a reference point, the Encyclopedia Britannica,
11th edition, the index word "penis" references the article "Reproductive
system." This article contains a number of detailed line drawings
(engravings?), mostly from Cunningham's Textbook of Anatomy. None of them
are, however, what I'd call a picture of a genital. The male section shows a
transverse section of a "young Prostate" (eeewwwww); a transverse section of
a testis and epididymus (eeeewwww); a sagital median section of bladder
prostate, and rectum, and a three-dimensional-looking detailed view that
looks to me like a dissected cadaver (EEEEEwwwwww), showing a "view of the
base of the bladder, prostate, seminal vesicles, and vasa deferentia." The
female section offers a cadaverous view of the uterus and broad ligament, and
a diagram of the vaginal cavity, cervix, and uterus.

In other words, I infer that their policy is "an encyclopedia should have
pictures," and also that their policy with respect to genitalia "cadavers and
transverse sections only, and no erectile tissue at all."

Let me say as clearly as I can that I present that just as a data point. I am
not, repeat NOT suggesting that this is the appropriate policy for Wikipedia!


subject: [WikiEN-l] pictures of genetalia

body:
Nikos-Optim wrote:

>I see no problem. however, I would not have objections
>to the replacement of the photographs with diagrams,
>although I still don't see where the problem is.
>
>
>
Diagrams instead of photos would probably be better.


from_name: Peter Jaros

subject: [WikiEN-l] External links in articles, and a citations feature?

body:
On Jan 9, 2004, at 10:36 PM, Jimmy Wales wrote:

> Graham Burnett wrote:
>> "External links within the article are against wiki policy."
>
> Earlier today I used external links in an article, but I didn't
> really like it.  And I found myself doing something really bad --
> but I caught myself.
>
> I wrote something like...
>
> In [http://www.whatever.com/ this article], so-and-so says
> such-and-such.
>
> that's really bad because when the content is repurposed, that sentence
> will make no sense at all.

Sure, but "So-and-so says such-and-such [http://www.whatever.com/]."
will make perfect sense once it's been repurposed.  Citation-type links
are parenthetical and can simply be removed; the content just loses a
little credibility.  If any information about the context of the
referenced material is useful to the reader of the article (who wrote
it, where it was published, etc.), this information ought to be in the
article anyway.  Readers should not be expected to follow the link to
understand the reference, only for the full story.

When such content is repurposed it may be appropriate to move this link
to an equivalent of an "External links" section, but this can be done
without garbling the text.  Putting it there on the wiki version just
makes the context of the reference unclear and confuses the reader.

Peter

---
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subject: [WikiEN-l] pictures of genetalia

body:
On Jan 10, 2004, at 9:00 AM, tarquin wrote:

> Nikos-Optim wrote:
>
>> I see no problem. however, I would not have objections
>> to the replacement of the photographs with diagrams,
>> although I still don't see where the problem is.
>
> Diagrams instead of photos would probably be better.

Perhaps an inline diagram and a linked photo, so as to less offend the
casual reader who stumbles (somehow...) on an article he didn't want to
read, ? la [[breast]].

Peter

---
Funding for this program comes from Borders without Doctors: The
Bookstore Chain That Sounds Like a Charity.
		--Harry Shearer, Le Show


from_name: Bjorn Lindqvist

subject: [WikiEN-l] vfd

body:
> Have you looked at the crap that's been deleted lately?  Much of it
> *was* on Cleanup first, sometimes for over a month, and most of the rest
> either doesn't belong here, or is such terrible nonsense as to be
> useless as a savageable starting point for a future article.
>
> A sampling:
> [[JumpTheCroc]], an idiosyncratic term coined on Wikipedia
> [[Mac OS XI]], a made-up mac rumor that even the mac-rumor sites don't carry
> [[The mo]], an animal invented by the submitter with a somewhat amusing
> backstory
> [[Soylent Greens]], a fictitious political party invented by the
> submitter

Look at [[List of nicknames for George W. Bush]] that article was also
deleted. :-(

> So I disagree; I think VfD is working perfectly fine.  Do those who
> think otherwise actually read and participate in it (The Cunctator
> excepted, because I know he does)?

Some chose to work inside the system others outside it.

BL


from_name: Anthere

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Why can't I ban Michael on Meta?

body:
Daniel Mayer a ?crit:
> Tim wrote:
>
>>Wikipedia will forever be haunted by problems such as these, since, at
>>Anthere's request, I turned username blocking off by default. I'll turn
>>it on at meta. Are there any other wikis you want it enabled at, while
>>I'm at it? How about simple, wikibooks and wiktionary?
>
>
> Oh, I thought it was the other way around. Might as well enable it on simple,
> wikibooks and wiktionary.
>
> -- mav

Why would you alone take such an important decision ?


subject:
[Wikitech-l] Banning user names (was Re: Why can't I ban Michael on
	Meta?)

body:
Erik Moeller a ?crit:
> Tim-
>
>
>>Wikipedia will forever be haunted by problems such as these, since, at
>>Anthere's request, I turned username blocking off by default. I'll turn
>>it on at meta. Are there any other wikis you want it enabled at, while
>>I'm at it? How about simple, wikibooks and wiktionary?
>
>
> I sympathize with Anthere's concerns. If there are no clear policies on
> banning in one language, sysops might feel encouraged to ban signed in
> contributors for non-vandalism. This would clearly be problematic and
> difficult to resolve from outside.

As long as there is no clear policy in any language, and that the
discussion has not been made *in that language*, I think it is the
right/duty of the community of *this* language to decide such a thing.

> However, I think the right thing to do is to inform all Wikipedias about
> this pending change, and to set a clear policy on banning that is valid
> across all Wikipedias. Having inconsistent configurations is a very bad
> thing for a multitude of reasons.

I disagree Erik.
There are a couple of policies that are *mandatory* across all
wikipedias, such as the npov one.
There are a couple of policies that might be *recommanded* consistant
across all wikipedia (such as the positionning of interlanguages links :-))

But there are very numerous policies that have to be decided by each
local community. The policy of banning on en is not the *correct* policy
to handle difficult user, it is *one* point of view among other. A pov
that might fit the cultural background of en users, but not of all
wikipedias.

You might consider expliciting the "for a multitude of reasons" for any
further fruitful discussions on why multiplicity of view points is a
"very bad thing".

For all these reasons, I go on considering that the possibility of
banning user names should be kept exceptions rather than rules for the
wikipedias that have never discussed it (usually, this will be discussed
first time a persistent pseudonymed vandal will get on that wikipedia).
There are other options to deal with problematic users. And some
wikipedias might wish to use other ways than those decided by english users.

This said, I agree with the feature being turned on meta, because it is
a difficult place to keep clean, in particular because of language
issues (such as a banned user of one wiki having to be stopped there). I
would appreciate, however, that Mav discuss updating the policy if this
is made possible :-)

> To this end, I think it is absolutely necessary to merge the wikipedia-l
> and intwiki-l mailing lists. intwiki-l is effectively a ghetto for the
> non-English lists, and people from the non-English wikis complain that
> they haven't heard about policy decisions on wikipedia-l. There's really
> no good reason to have two different lists here.

I agree with this. Intwiki is a dead place :-)

> Regards,
>
> Erik


from_name: Magnus Manske

subject: [WikiEN-l] Effective bullying strategy.

body:
Jimmy Wales wrote:
> So when I say
> that the process is broken, I don't mean to say that we should not
> have a process.  I mean that the process is clearly going astray when
> a page like the one we've been discussing on Palestinian views on the
> peace process are deleted.

I hereby propose a new, semi-automated tagging (in contrast to voting!)
system:
* All logged-in users (yep, my favourite phrase!) get a "tag this
article" link for each article, leading to a "set tag" special page
* Tags can be set for many things: copyright problem, NPOV problem,
brilliant prose, stub, etc.
* There's a "YES/NO" rabio button, so one can say "that's no copy vio"
* A comment can be added, one per user per article. If a user changes
his/her mind, the old comment is overwritten.
* Special pages can be created from this information:
** Brilliant prose pages (sorted by number of tags)
** NPOV/copyright problem pages (sorted by date of first entry and
number of tags)
** etc.
* Some of this information can be displayed on the article page as well
("This article is considered [[brilliant prose]]")

I suggest to create a new "article tag" table in the database for that
purpose, once we're back on the monster server.

Magnus


from_name: Erik Moeller

subject:
[Wikitech-l] Banning user names (was Re: Why can't I ban Michael
	on Meta?)

body:
Anthere-

> But there are very numerous policies that have to be decided by each
> local community. The policy of banning on en is not the *correct* policy
> to handle difficult user, it is *one* point of view among other. A pov
> that might fit the cultural background of en users, but not of all
> wikipedias.

I doubt that there's any substantial cultural difference when it comes to
banning *vandals* - and that's all the banning feature is for, other bans
have to be authorized by Jimbo. Wheter you're in Beijing, in Stockholm, in
Chicago or in Tokyo, if someone enters your home and destroys your stuff,
you probably want to throw them out. There may well be cultural
differences when it comes to banning people who misbehave in other ways,
but this is not at all affected by the banning policy on En: - sysops are
*not* allowed to ban signed in users for non-vandalism.

Making this policy consistent across all wikis makes sense because it
makes the non-English wikis less dependent on help from the English one.
No need to call for help from California (Brion) or Florida (Jimbo) when a
signed in vandal runs amok on the French Wikipedia. The current policy is
discriminatory to the non-English wikis -- it gives the En-Wikipedia a
useful tool and keeps it away from the others, under the false pretense
that they can't handle this kind of responsibility. I for one trust the
non-English Wikipedias that they will use banning of signed in users
responsibly if they are informed of the limitations.

This should be announced first and any serious objections should be dealt
with, until near unanimous consensus is reached.

Regards,

Erik


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Effective bullying strategy.

body:
Delirium a ?crit:

> So I disagree; I think VfD is working perfectly fine.  Do those who
> think otherwise actually read and participate in it (The Cunctator
> excepted, because I know he does)?
>
> -Mark

I have a shudder each time I think of VfD. I go there the minimum. Plus
I hate edit conflict :-)

I made sort of a pledge to myself (I do not always respect it, but I try
:-))

* never vote "delete". The idea is that if it is garbage enough, it
should be deleted on the spot. If it is not, it should be kept.

* if I vote "keep", I try to go to the article, and to edit it to
improve it. Sometimes immediately. Sometimes, it can be much later. But
I try to do edit all those for which I voted keep.


from_name: Walter Vermeir

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: mirror of Dutch Wikipedia -> is down

body:
Erik van den Muijzenberg wrote:

> A Dutch ISP is mirroring the Dutch Wikipedia in a way which
> makes it VERY up to date. (Method yet unknown to us.)
[cut]

The site is down;
http://static.machine.freeler.nl/cgi-bin/wiki.pl

We have not recieved a responds to the email send to Freeler yet.

--
Contact: walter AT wikipedia DOT be
Let your computer do something possibly usefull today
Join SETI and team Wikipedia.
http://setiathome.ssl.berkeley.edu/stats/team/team_172338.html


subject: [WikiEN-l] I've edited an article!

body:
Jimmy Wales wrote:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slogan_%27The_science_is_settled%27
>
> I may have left some things out, or made some mistakes, but at least
> until shown otherwise, I think this type of edit is a model of what we
> ought to strive to do, i.e. find a way to characterize an issue in a
> way that both sides to a dispute can agree to, and refrain to the
> maximal extent possible from writing things that we know will only
> inflame passions on the other side.

Welcome to wikipedia, Jimbo! ;-)


subject: [WikiEN-l] Images of sex organs

body:
Robert-
> I disagree. A very large number of Americans will refuse to
> use Wikipedia if it contains color photographs of penises,
> vaginas, anal sphincters, etc.  If we do not have at least
> some level of protection, then we will become one of
> America's most-blocked site on home and school Internet
> filters.

We've gone through this before. My point of view is that we have no
obligation to pander to filters - we have an obligation to be an
encyclopedia. Being overly offensive hurts our usefulness as an
encyclopedia, but being in the filters is not an indication for being
overly offensive. A lot of stuff is put in filters that is not offensive
by any reasonable standard.

> Perhaps main articles should have no such images, but can
> contain a link to a related article with such photos.

I find this to be an implicit endorsement of the shamefulness/sinfulness
POV that has some prominence in American culture. NPOV should be paramount
except for cases of near-universal offensiveness.

We should probably formulate a policy on this. On Talk:Clitoris there was
a near consensus for including either a photo or a drawing, and a slim
majority for a photo (although no suitable free illustration has been
found yet). I do not see a fundamental difference between clitoris and
penis in this regard. So it appears that the vast majority of Wikipedians
favors liberal standards of inclusion rather than conservative ones.

Regards,

Erik


subject:
[WikiEN-l]
	Re: Representing all P'sOV is important; "balance" isn't.

body:
dpbsmith at verizon.net a ?crit:
> The essence of censorship, and of social thought control, is the suppression
> of alternative points of view to the point where the average member of
> society literally does not know that the point of view exists. Orwell,
> insanity is a minority of one. The goal is to get people with doubts or
> tendencies to inquiry to believe "I am _the only person in the world_ who
> believes this."

One point I raised on the fr wikipedia a few times is that neutrality is
an ultimate goal that has to be reached globally, and that each article
is only a subset of a more global scheme.

It is nice to think of having an article in itself neutral, but
neutrality will be nearer when all view points are introduced globally.

That goes in particular for all articles covering war issues.
A *neutral* article on ... say "Palestinian view of conflict blablabla"
is great.
But as long as there is no neutral article on "Israelian view of
conflict blablabla", there will be unsatisfyied readers.

We write for the whole world :-)

Neutrality is important; balance is important as well.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: External links in articles, and a citations feature?

body:
Graham Burnett a ?crit:
> Hi all- on the Anarchism talk page jack lynch has stated;
>
> "External links within the article are against wiki policy."
>
> To which I replied;
>
> "PS. Where is it wiki policy not to use external links in articles? I always
> thought citations were a standard way of referencing, if it is policy it
> should be changed forthwith."

Most of the time, the links are at the bottom of the article. Sometimes,
I think it is best that the links are within the text for clarity.

I do not think there is a policy for links inside the text. If there is
one, let's change it Quercus ! (or decide not to follow it :-))


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: the 'truth'

body:
susan allen a ?crit:
> ja, yah, yeah, yea, hear ye!  The following is a quote from another
> subscriber:
>
> "He who shouts the loudest wins on Wikipedia. This is the reason that
> it has not evolved into real storehouse of knowledge. It is more like
> USENET groups but in a more academic tone. In other words, it is full
> of urban legends and anyone who relies on it for facts is walking a
> dangerous path."
>
> Susan Allen
>
> PS I am really disappointed in this poor encyclopedic attempt.... it is
> so terribly lame!

Susan ?

Are you a woman ?
Do you speak (write actually) french ?

If so, the french wikipedia needs you in the music department and I
would most welcome you.

ant :-)


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Felching

body:
Erik Moeller a ?crit:
> Adam-
>
>>or should I upload the pictures I took at the 2003
>>North American Felching Convention?
>
>
> Linked to they would be fine. We do link to goatse.cx.

Hi Lir

Just as I suggested at goatse.cx, links to offensive pictures may be
offered with non clickable links. That may prevent quick clicking by kids.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: pictures of genetalia

body:
Nikos-Optim a ?crit:
> --- A [name omitted for privacy reasons] <wikilir at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>>The pages on genetalia should not contain images of
>>genetaila. There are basic taboo issues which we
>>should make some attempt to respect.

The natural state of a penis is with the skin.
Not circumsized.

In some places in the world, circumsision hold a very strong pov (jewish
faith) and memories (WWII).

It is not until I came to the US, and a very unwise doctor carelessly
asked me to sign the paper wherupon I was supposed to agree to have my
child defaced (maybe not the best word), and I had to loudly forbid such
a move, that I realise that people could do circumsision for other
reasons than religion really.

I think the picture of the circumsized penis has nothing to do in that
article and should be moved to the article about circumsision (a
difficult word to spell).

If no one does it, I will (open threat :-))


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject:
[Wikitech-l] Re: Banning user names (was Re: Why can't I ban
	Michael on Meta?)

body:
On Jan 10, 2004, at 15:39, Erik Moeller wrote:
>> But in any cases, I support dissolution of the international mailing
>> list.
>
> Brion, are you following this?

I would not be totally averse to folding intlwiki-l back into
wikipedia-l, though in theory intlwiki-l is mainly intended for
discussion of needs for localization.

>> That is why I mentionned the &bot=1.
>
> It's an interesting concept. I hope you don't miss any edits. Note,
> however, that in order to mark a user as a bot, you need developer
> permissions -- again a dependency on Brion & Co.

I should clarify this: Tim set this up as an experimental feature to
help with the ongoing Papotages saga. It's a variant on the 'rollback'
function which, in addition to resaving the page with the previous
user's edit, marks both the vandal-edit and the restoration as hidden
from default Recentchanges display (by using the marker originally
added to keep massive bot edits from flooding recentchanges, hence the
"bot").

Any sysop can use this, but it's not integrated into the UI yet so you
have to manually add "&bot=1" to the contribs URL to set it up.

The edits are, like edits by an account marked as an official bot,
hidden from Recentchanges unless "hidebots=0" is passed to it, but are
not hidden from contribs, history, watchlist, etc. The edits remain in
the database and are not removed, but they no longer flood
Recentchanges.

I was initially skeptical but after seeing it in action I'm quite taken
with it; it greatly reduces the annoyance factor of a flood vandal with
relatively little effort. That the vandalism is still in the edit
histories is not that big a deal compared to the potential for abuse of
an unrecoverable rollback that actually disappeared the edits.

It could use some refinement; making this the default behavior for
rollback, making the 'show hidden edits' in RC easier to use and more
prominent, perhaps a count of the number of hidden edits if any; and
some way of noting the gravity of rollback (ie, that it should _not_ be
used for reverting a change you just don't like, but is meant only for
base vandalism, particularly massive flood vandalism).

Separately: setting up sysops and marking accounts as official bots and
such certainly is something that shouldn't be a bottleneck on the
developers. Feel free to make some suggestions (or write the code :)
for a less centralized setup.

>> I think that my suggestion to do as you did the other time (which was
>> to
>> add a message to all village pumps, even in english, with a link to
>> the
>> announcement) was more positive than this comment.
>
> I disagree. I think a mailing list digest service, either on Meta or
> on a
> newly created page on each Wikipedia, would be more useful than a "clog
> the pumps" function,

That'd be a fine thing. A number of large project mailing lists have
regular summaries of interesting discussions and proposals.

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

body:
Jimbo wrote:
>I agree.  But if the topic is _itself_ valid, then the right thing to
>do with a bad article is to fix it, not delete it or redirect it.
>It's usually pretty easy to go to an article, and move the bad parts
>to the talk page along with a courteous request for more
>documentation, or rewriting of some biased terminology or whatever.

As I said before; if the article contains only chaff and no wheat then an edit
link is more informative (the validity of the topic is a side issue).
Sometimes this cannot be determined by just one person or other times the
amount of wheat in the heap of chaff just isn't worth the effort to salvage -
thus the VfD process is invoked. But of course if that process results in
somebody fixing the article (which it often does), then great.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: pictures of genetalia

body:
Arvind Narayanan a ?crit:
> On Sat, Jan 10, 2004 at 03:59:05PM +0100, Anthere wrote:
>
>
>>The natural state of a penis is with the skin.
>>Not circumsized.
>>
>
> The natural state of people is without clothes. Should
> we post only nude photographs of people we write about?

Yes, on an article about human, it is perfectly logical to see a human
in its natural state : nude.

See http://en2.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human

In this case, the topic of the article is the *penis*

Not *circumsision*

...an article on which there is *currently* no picture.

>>I think the picture of the circumsized penis has nothing to do in that
>>article and should be moved to the article about circumsision (a
>>difficult word to spell).
>>
>
> I don't agree. If a significant fraction of males worldwide are
> circumcised then certainly the picture is relevant to the article.
>
> Arvind

If so, let's change the picture legend.

We put at the top of the article the natural picture of a penis, with a
legend stating "this is a penis"

Then, much more at the bottom of the article, we indicate that some
people have their penis transformed, and we put the relevant picture
with a label "circonsized penis"

Labelling the normal penis a "uncircumsized penis" is POV.


body:
Anthere wrtote:
>Why would you alone take such an important decision ?

The policy on how to deal with this is already there - only simple vandals are
to be blocked. I've already wasted a dozen or so hours trying to keep a step
ahead of logged-in vandals. I don't wish that on anybody.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Move of datacenter

body:
Jimbo wrote:
>It's going to be 30 minutes or less from my house.  I have 2 other
>people in this area who are sufficiently tech-savvy to get over there
>if I'm out of town, and more will be added soon.

OK - that's good too. I was mainly thinking of the great deal of work that has
to be done to set it up in the first place and later add more servers. But if
you have local help, then it should be fine.

-- mav


body:
Matt M. a ?crit:
>>Diagrams instead of photos would probably be better.
>
>
> I would favour diagrams, not for reasons of prudishness (for christ's sake,
> nearly everyone has one or the other) but because they have the advantage of
> not having any skin colour or ethnicity. It seems a little odd that all of
> the body parts we have photos of, to my knowledge, are photos of white
> people (except the 'eyes' article).
>
> Matt

errrr... Matt, I know I have some black blood (guadaloupe and martinique
ancestry), but I am usually considered white. I apology :-(


from_name: Viajero

body:
On 01/10/04  at 06:32 AM, Robert <rkscience100 at yahoo.com> said:

> Danny and Zero simply didn't want this information made
> available. They have an anti-Zionist agenda (which is their right), and
> they do not want quotes from Palestinian
> leaders made available at all, if it hurts their political
> views (which is not their right.) To claim that they don't
> have anti-Zionist agendas is untenable; they are very clear on these
> issues.

Sorry Robert, I won't let you get away the defaming these two contributors
behind their backs; Danny appears to have left us and Zero doesn't
subscribe to this list. Smearing them as "anti-Zionists" is a ludicrous
charge; it is as meaningless a term as calling them "anti-American" and
simply demonstrates nothing more than the poverty of your argument. You
think perhaps Danny and Zero wish for the destruction of Israel??? I
challenge you to supply even the fainest shred of evidence that these two
think this way. They may be critical of the Israeli government, just like
some Americans are critical of the US government, but the problem is that
in your ultra-fanatical Zionist worldview that would do the Taliban proud
there is no space for even the most minimal criticism of Israel. Unless
you come up with more substantial criticisms of Danny and Zero I trust the
readers of this list will dismiss your complaints as just more of your
tiresome whining.

> Secondly, when someone repeatedy says that they want to
> destory Israel, and they repeatedly admit that they lied to the
> Israelies, and that they have no intention of ever having a real peace
> with them, we are obligated to report these facts. We may not censor
> these facts and claim that "Those silly Arabs don't really mean what
> they sa".  When we do this, we push am obviously anti-Israeli agenda,
> and we also infantilize Arabs. We may agree or disagree with
> them, but let's stop treating them like children incapable
> of expressing simple thoughts.

This is just more of your shameless, ultra-Zionist fantasy as Israel the
victim. Has the Israeli government never lied to its people or to Israel's
neighbors???

> There has developed two standards of intellectual integrity among the
> Wiki-En contributors. One standard is for Arabs, and the other standard
> is for the rest of the world. This
> double-standard must end if Wikipedia wants to be taken
> seriously outside left-wing circles.

An other wholly unsubstantiated claim without merit that is an insult to
the many Wikipedians who have contributed on articles on the Middle East.

V.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: pictures of genetalia

body:
Anthere wrote:
>A circumsized penis is not the natural state of a penis. It is pov to
>label a regular penis by describing him not being a non-natural state of
>a penis

It seems that you are most offended by the label so then label the circumsized
one as circumsized and the other one as intact.

>Wikipedia is not a source of information for America only. And the rest
>of the world does not necessarily want to hear about America only.

Within the bounds of NPOV, the English Wikipedia is first and foremost by and
for the English speaking world (with an emphasis on the needs of native
speakers - other languages have their own 'pedias, so this is only fair). It
has already been noted that a large part of that world has very significant
percentages of their male population with circumsized penises. So to not
include a photo of circumsized penis while including one of an obviously
intact penis is POV.

But I see you moved both photos to [[circumcision]] while retaining the photo
of an erect penis (which is, of course, more difficult to tell if it is
circumcised or not). While not ideal, I can live with that since the
comparison is more relevant to that article.

>American men are far from being the majority of men on planet.

So they should be ignored then? Since when has Wikipedia been a place where
only majority views are expressed?

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)


from_name: Robert

subject: [WikiEN-l] Personal attacks from Viajero are unacceptable

body:
Viajero writes:
> Sorry Robert, I won't let you get away the defaming
> these two contributors behind their backs; Danny appears
> to have left us and Zero doesn't subscribe to this list.

First off, Zero is probably Danny. Secondly, I have re-read
my initial letter and I can find no defamation or personal
attacks at all. I only described his own stated political
philosophy. (Which is also clear from dozens of public
statements and edits he has made.)

Unlike you, I really tried to work with Danny, and I had a
real relationship with him off of Wikipedia as well (i.e.
in the real world) for several months. He repeatedly made
it clear that he was anti-Zionist...yet we still got along
for some time. I have no reason to believe that he was
lying about his own beliefs.

> Smearing them as "anti-Zionists" is a ludicrous
> charge; it is as meaningless a term as calling
> them "anti-American" and simply demonstrates nothing
> more than the poverty of your argument.

Please stop your baseless slander of me. Your words only
show your ignorance of the topic, and prove to others that
you cannot be taken seriously.

In reality, Danny, Adam Carr and I all cooperated on the
new Wikipedia anti-Zionism article, and we all came to an
agreement. All of us agreed that the term anti-Zionist is
NOT a hate term, it is not slander, and that it does not
carry the specific meaning that _you_ assign to it. Heck,
some of my own family members are anti-Zionist, and I don't
hate them.  I just understand that they have a very
different view of the world than I do.

So please stop being hysterical.

The problem with Danny is that he was very emotional in his
anti-Zionism, and started to push his views. When he found
out that he could not force Wikipedia to promote his
private political views in one article, he deleted his
homne page and quit forever. That was unfortunate, and a
bit surprising. I was expecting more mature behaviour.

If you had taken the time to read the Wikipedia
anti-Zionism article, or just peruse its edit history, you
would know all this, but it seems that you are no longer
here to help. You just have personal animosity towards me.

> You think perhaps Danny and Zero wish for the
> destruction of Israel???

Does it make you feel better to put words in my mouth, and
then attack me for things I never said or implied? That
kind of behavior is out of line. If I did this to you,
people would be calling for me to be banned.

In sadness at your behaviour,

Robert

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Hotjobs: Enter the "Signing Bonus" Sweepstakes
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from_name: Alex T.

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: pictures of genetalia

body:
Many people agree with you Anthere, even
in the United States. This is an issue that has
become galvanized because of the supposed
"antisemite" connotations of circumcision (though
moslems also practice this form of male genital
mutilation as a religious right of the parents).

J. Steven Svoboda, a Harvard Law School
graduate started this UN recognized NGO:
http://www.arclaw.org/

There are also some other sites to look at:
http://www.mgmbill.org/
http://www.noharmm.org/home.htm

This is a serious problem. If you chose to
discuss it on this list it would not be a rant,
Anthere, as I think most list members respect
and value your opinions. It is certainly related
to the issue of NPOV and is not off topic
because of the discussion about what would
be an accurate, unbiased depiction of the
human anatomy.

Alex (en:user:alex756)
----- Original Message -----
From: "Anthere" <anthere8 at yahoo.com>
To: <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
Sent: Saturday, January 10, 2004 5:14 PM
Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: pictures of genetalia

>
>
> cprompt a ?crit:
> > On Sat, 2004-01-10 at 10:41, Anthere wrote:
>
> >>Labelling the normal penis a "uncircumsized penis" is POV.
>
> I repeat, labelling the normal penis a "uncircumsized" penis is POV
>
> It is like putting on an article about [[teenager]], with two pictures
> of two teenager girls, one white and one black :
>
> as legend, "a white girl" and "a non white girl".
>
> > I recall reading that in the United States, most men are circumcised,
> > and in the rest of the world, most men aren't. Since both circumcised
> > and uncircumcised are fairly common, it makes sense to have them
> > side-by-side for comparison. Since men with pierced penises (ouch) are
> > rather uncommon (so I would think), if we were to have a picture of one,
> > I'd agree it shouldn't receive the same attention as the pictures on the
> > top of the article.
>
> in the United States, most men are circumcised
> in the rest of the world, most men aren't
>
> conclusion : both situations are common.
>
> I do not know why, but I feel like I could go on a rant here. I really do.
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l


subject: [WikiEN-l] pictures of genetalia

body:
Nikos-Optim wrote:

>--- tarquin <tarquin at planetunreal.com> wrote:
>
>
>
>>Diagrams instead of photos would probably be better.
>>
>>
>
>Since some people seem to have problems with photos, I
>agree to replace them with diagrams, find some other
>solution, but I also think it wouldn't hurt if we left
>the article unchanged - except if lots of people
>consider it offensive. --Optim.
>
>
>
Diagrams have the advantage of being clearer to understand.
We have a great diagram of the heart :)

I can use vector graphics programs, but I would need something to work
from (I mean a diagram, not a model, btw)


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: pictures of genetalia

body:
I think you missed my point Eric. The point being that
Anthere has a perfectly valid complaint.  There is nothing
NPOV about circumsicion.  It is not a fact, it is something
that people do. As such it should not be used to slant an
article one way or the other.

No one is talking about advocacy here.  If you want to
advocate either way, then join one of the pro or anti
circumcision groups.  If you want to be objective then
don't suggest that an article about genitals should feature
genitals that have been altered by a medical procedure.

Showing a circumsicised genital, male or female, is a culturally charged
act, not something that should be taken for granted in an
encyclopedia that is trying to be neutral.  If someone wants
to write an article about circumcision, that is where a circumsized
male and female genitalia belong, just like I would not put an image
of a person being murdered in an article about some purely
private civil law topic such as breach of contract.
It is just not appropriate.

Certainly the pros and cons of circumcision should be
discussed on the circumcision page, not on a page about
genitals, male or female, otherwise, you are right Eric,
Wikipedia will be nothing more than another verison of Usenet
that is used to distort knowledge rather than clarifying
what is knowledge and what is opinion.

My main point being that Anthere bringing this up is showing that
NPOV is not as easy as some people will make it out to be.
To be culturally and socially neutral requires that one be sensitive
and non-judgemental to all perspectives, otherwise NPOV is
just another way to create propaganda that subtly controls by
using sophisticated references that are hidden while appearing
to be "objective" (whatever that means).

Hopefully you will now understand where I am coming from,
if I telegraphed my opinions and they did not register I hope
this explaination gets through.

Alex756
From: "Erik Moeller" <erik_moeller at gmx.de>
To: <alex756 at nyc.rr.com>
Cc: <anthere8 at yahoo.com>; <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
Sent: Saturday, January 10, 2004 6:09 PM
Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Re: pictures of genetalia

> Alex-
> > Many people agree with you Anthere, even
> > in the United States. This is an issue that has
> > become galvanized because of the supposed
> > "antisemite" connotations of circumcision (though
> > moslems also practice this form of male genital
> > mutilation as a religious right of the parents).
>
> This is not the place for a circumcision flamewar. Many people feel that
> in spite of lacking a foreskin, they are fully sexually functional, and
> may even believe in the supposed medical benefits of the procedure. As a
> matter of fact, there are some recent studies which promote the belief
> that circumcision even prevents HIV. I say "promote the belief" because
> these studies are fundamentally methodologically flawed, but it is easy to
> see that people might believe them, given that they have been published in
> peer reviewed (US) journals and have received widespread (international)
> media attention.
>
> There are people who believe just as forcefully that circumcision is
> right, decent and proper as I believe that it is wrong, harmful and
> pointless, and there are internally consistent arguments that can be made
> for both sides. Few subjects are as eligible to turn into long lasting
> flamewars as this one. Please do not encourage rants on this subject --
> they do not really contribute to a debate about inclusion standards.
>
> Wikipedia is not Usenet. It's not a place for advocacy of any kind. If
> anything, we should talk about how to make the article [[circumcision]]
> better, not about what's morally wrong with the procedure. Otherwise we
> might as well talk about the international arms trade, social equality,
> global warming and electronic voting machines, all very serious issues.
>
> Regards,
>
> Erik


body:
--- Delirium <delirium at rufus.d2g.com> wrote:
> Of the ones you cited, I think the great majority should be
> included
> with "click here for a photo of [blah]", not inline in articles.

Fair enough.

> I
> do
> not generally want to see a graphic picture of an aborted fetus
> even if
> I am reading an article on abortion; if I wish to do so, I am quite
>
> capable of clicking on the link to display the image.  I see no
> benefit
> to forcing our readers to see images they may not wish to see based
> on a
> highly POV claim that they are "normal" images that they should not
> be
> offended by.

Granted, yet since offense is subjective, do we have a
committee/voting cabal that decides which picture is inline and which
picture is "offensive"?

Of course, if the picture was included in the article for "shock
value", I would remove it myself.

If the picture, however, "made" the article, it would not be adequate
to relegate it to another 1-click page. I specifically have in mind
the picture of the student standing in front of a tank in tanamen
square. I think if we had such a picture, it might be seen as
offensive by some, yet would entirely belong in the article.

But I see your point very well.

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

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Hotjobs: Enter the "Signing Bonus" Sweepstakes
http://hotjobs.sweepstakes.yahoo.com/signingbonus


from_name: Delirium

subject: [WikiEN-l] the proliferation of ridiculous titular naming schemes

body:
Fred Bauder wrote:

>This is a difficult problem. If they deserve an article they have probably
>done something under their name (without title), but we have a faction that
>honestly believes that all members of the titled British nobility deserve an
>article based on their title. Long ago someone said, "Well, they appear in
>Who's Who"
>
>
Just to play devil's advocate for a minute, the main reason people seem
to be arguing for the titular naming scheme is that some people were
known primarily by their titles ("The 1st Duke of ...") rather than by
their names, some were known by either, and the whole mess is best
sorted out by just using "Firstname Lastname, Their Title" consistently.

While I can see the reason people might want a standardized naming
scheme like that, I think it detracts from readability and makes some
articles just ridiculous.  The article on [[Bertrand Russell], for
example, should very clearly appear there, *not* at [[Bertrand Russell,
3rd Earl of Russell]], a name by which he was rarely if ever known, and
a name he did not use when signing his writings.  But this is exactly
what the current proposal would mandate.  Though I personally plan to
keep [[Bertrand Russell]] at that location, regardless of the outcome of
the current vote, as I don't recognize the authority of
Wikiproject:peerage over such general-purpose articles as [[Bertrand
Russell]].

-Mark


from_name: Jens Frank

body:
On Sat, Jan 10, 2004 at 05:10:00AM -0800, Nikos-Optim wrote:
> > I'm planning to not buy CDROMs for the bulk of
> > machines, because they
> > cost $68 each (varies with vendor, of course), and
> > --Jimbo
>
> $68 for a CDROM????? IDE (ATAPI) or SCSI? In Greece we
> pay 30 Euro for DVDROMs and less than 20 Euro for IDE
> (ATAPI) CDROMs. Second-hand CDROMs cost no more than
> 10 Euro (I recently sold a dozen of them at that
> price)

Slim line? You don't have much place in a rack mountable
"pizzabox" computer. Putting in a full sized CDROM
wouldn't fit or would cause problems with cooling.

Regards,

	JeLuF


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: pictures of genetalia

body:
Anthere wrote:

> A circumsized penis is not the natural state of a penis. It is pov to
> label a regular penis by describing him not being a non-natural state
> of a penis

By that logic, one could also argue that it is POV to label a person as
"bearded", or to show a cleanshaven person as an example on [[human]],
as, after all, "bearded" is the natural state, and shaving is an
artificial modification to this natural state.

Now one might argue that circumcision is a bad modification, while
shaving is a good (or neutral) modification, but that's also a POV claim.

I think the best we can say is that some people are circumcised, and
some are not, and neither is explicitly "normal", but in some parts of
the world one is more common, and in other parts of the world the other
is more common.  So we should probably have both images, and not make a
statement about which is "normal" or "natural".

-Mark


subject: [WikiEN-l] Felching

body:
Erik Moeller wrote:

>Linked to they would be fine. We do link to goatse.cx.
>
>Obviously there is a gradation of offensiveness -- a point at which we
>decide that not offending readers is more important than NPOV. For
>example, there may be a few felching fans who would feel that it is POV
>not to show such images in the article. We would overrule these readers on
>grounds of offensiveness.
>
>However, I think we should be very careful with such taboos, and only
>apply them when there is almost universal agreement to do so. In other
>words, when there's *near* unanimous consensus not to have images, then we
>can do without them. This is not the case for genitalia -- I think
>pictures of genitalia are only offensive to a relatively small segment of
>the population, whereas a relatively large segment feels that they *are*
>offensive to a large segment (simply because they are never shown in the
>mainstream media), but still maintains that they *themselves* are not
>offended by them.
>
>
I don't see what's wrong with simply linking to them (on the Wikipedia
servers, not externally, but not inline in the article).  Certainly many
people are not offended by genitals, but a great many people would be
somewhat shocked to see them up front without first clicking on a link,
and many people might be unhappy with having them come up right at the
top of the screen if reading Wikipedia from, say, work, school, or a
public library.  Since forcing users to "click here for an image of a
penis" is not really forcing them to do a whole lot of extra work to get
the information, I don't think this is an unreasonable compromise.  I
know I personally would not like an image of a penis to be on my
computer screen if I were in a public library.

-Mark


subject: [WikiEN-l] Images of sex organs

body:
Erik Moeller wrote:

>I find this to be an implicit endorsement of the shamefulness/sinfulness
>POV that has some prominence in American culture. NPOV should be paramount
>except for cases of near-universal offensiveness.
>
>
I don't see that as being the case.  I see nothing shameful or sinful
about penises or clitorises or other such organs, but neither do I want
to see them unless I've gone out of my way to do so.  The same way I
have no problem with people having sex, but I don't generally want them
to be doing it on the street.

So I'd disagree, and propose more conservative standards: anything that
a large portion of the population would be bothered by seeing should be
put in a link.  This detracts very little, as clicking a link is a very
easy thing to do, but gives people the option not to click it.

-Mark


from_name: Mirko Thiessen

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Effective bullying strategy. (RK)

body:
Daniel Mayer wrote:
> Sadly it now seems that Jimbo's declarative and  unmitigated comments have
> resulted in Danny leaving the project. Jimbo should realize the great weight
> his comments have and mix criticism with some sort of mitigating/less sharp
> comments.
>
> I don't think that Danny's absence serves the big picture goal of having NPOV
> over many Middle-east subjects.
>
> I am very sad to see him leave.

That is true. Danny was a valuable contributor who made a large number
of excellent contributions. Unfortunately I can't say the same about
RK. Danny deserved better treatment than this. A sad day for
Wikipedia.

Mirko.


body:
Christopher Mahan wrote:

>On the whole discussion on pictures:
>
>What about pictures of:
>  Dead, bloody people (common on european TV)
>  Drug paraphenalia
>  Step by step bomb making
>  Dangerous animals
>  Deformed lifeforms from genetic experiments
>  Injured people from combat (limbs tangled, guts spilled, heads
>disfigured)
>  Medical pictures of diseased bodypart
>  Election proceedings (hello PRC)
>  War crimes (remember the photo of the US officer executing a
>vietnamese during the vietnam war?)
>  Sexual acts, such as penetration, arousal, nipple clamps, bondage,
>etc.
>  Domestic violence
>  Aborted Foetuses
>
>

Of the ones you cited, I think the great majority should be included
with "click here for a photo of [blah]", not inline in articles.  I do
not generally want to see a graphic picture of an aborted fetus even if
I am reading an article on abortion; if I wish to do so, I am quite
capable of clicking on the link to display the image.  I see no benefit
to forcing our readers to see images they may not wish to see based on a
highly POV claim that they are "normal" images that they should not be
offended by.

-Mark


body:
Christopher-
> What about pictures of:
>   Dead, bloody people (common on european TV)

Are they? It's been a while since I last watched TV, but my impression
always was that US TV is more violent than Euro-TV. I may be wrong, of
course.

Answer: Depends on context - we don't needlessly throw pictures of "dead,
bloody" people into articles. Why would we?  An article about
decompensation, rigor mortis etc. might include an image, but obviously,
the more generally offensive such a picture would be, the more likely we
would want to link to it instead of displaying it inline.

>   Drug paraphenalia

Sure, no problem.

>   Step by step bomb making

Could be legally problematic.

>   Deformed lifeforms from genetic experiments

Sure, if they warrant an article.

>   Injured people from combat (limbs tangled, guts spilled, heads
> disfigured)

Definitely, but only in an article that is explicitly about the effects of
war; in a main article about war they should be linked to.

>   Medical pictures of diseased bodypart

Definitely useful, but preferably link instead of displaying inline.

>   War crimes (remember the photo of the US officer executing a
> vietnamese during the vietnam war?)

Definitely, see above re: combat.

>   Sexual acts, such as penetration, arousal, nipple clamps, bondage,
> etc.

Legally problematic. Nipple clamps no problem.

>   Domestic violence

Link to.

>   Aborted Foetuses

Link to.

Regards,

Erik


from_name: Arvind Narayanan

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: pictures of genetalia

body:
On Sat, Jan 10, 2004 at 03:59:05PM +0100, Anthere wrote:

> The natural state of a penis is with the skin.
> Not circumsized.
>
The natural state of people is without clothes. Should
we post only nude photographs of people we write about?

[snip]
>
> I think the picture of the circumsized penis has nothing to do in that
> article and should be moved to the article about circumsision (a
> difficult word to spell).
>
I don't agree. If a significant fraction of males worldwide are
circumcised then certainly the picture is relevant to the article.

Arvind
--
Its all GNU to me


body:
Anthere-

> Banning of french editors is decided by french community.

Nobody suggested anything else. Although Jimbo could declare a ban if he
wanted to, this seems unlikely.

> This is the english policy. Is valid on the english wikipedia. Was
> discussed and approved by english users.

Actually, I don't think it was discussed and approved in a very open
process. It would have been activated for the non-English Wikipedias as
well if not for your .. constant constructive criticism.

> How do you know that this exact policy (sysops *not* allowed to ban
> signed-in users) is (will be) the one adopted by other wikipedias when
> other part of the banning policy are already different in other wikipedias ?

Certainly auto-reverting like you are practicing now can always be a fall-
back. But I believe most vandals will be deterred by a quick ban, and I
don't see how it can be harmful.

> But some of the wikipedias do not even have sysops !

That's why we need better language coordination over a single mailing
list, so that those pedias which do need sysops can quickly bring this to
general attention. I'm not even subscribed to intwiki-l.

> Which limitations are you talking about ? The limitations that only
> Jimbo has the right to ban loggued in users ? Sorry, too late. We
> outgrew that limitation :-)

right vs. ability

> Nod. But announcement just on the technical list, or even on wikipedia
> list is not enough. A *very* small number of international editors read
> them.

A wiki-based digest service would surely be helpful. If you want to write
summaries of the mailing list for the wikis, you have my full support.
Failing that, the mailing list is the place where policy decisions like
that are made.

Regards,

Erik


subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Sites mirroring Wikipedia [Ex: mirror of Dutch
	Wikipedia]

body:
Ruimu wrote:
>Scanning my logs, I discovered few sites using Wikipedia articles.
>
>http://www.infosearchpoint.com/display/Chinese_poetry
>http://sciencedaily.com/encyclopedia/I_Ching
>http://nationmaster.com/encyclopedia/Yi-Jing

All three of these websites are using our content legally per
[[Wikipedia:Copyrights]]. All appear to have their own copies of our content
which makes them de-facto mirrors.

>Is there a page in Wikipedia where to build this list, so developers can
>check if those "mirrors" aren't harmful for servers ?

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

For non-compliant sites see:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Sites_that_use_Wikipedia_for_content#Sites_with_issues

-- mav


body:
Erik Moeller a ?crit:
> Anthere-
>
>
>>But there are very numerous policies that have to be decided by each
>>local community. The policy of banning on en is not the *correct* policy
>>to handle difficult user, it is *one* point of view among other. A pov
>>that might fit the cultural background of en users, but not of all
>>wikipedias.
>
>
> I doubt that there's any substantial cultural difference when it comes to
> banning *vandals* - and that's all the banning feature is for, other bans
> have to be authorized by Jimbo.

Banning of french editors is decided by french community.

The banned user is offered the possibility to discuss with Jimbo.

Wheter you're in Beijing, in Stockholm, in
> Chicago or in Tokyo, if someone enters your home and destroys your stuff,
> you probably want to throw them out. There may well be cultural
> differences when it comes to banning people who misbehave in other ways,
> but this is not at all affected by the banning policy on En: - sysops are
> *not* allowed to ban signed in users for non-vandalism.

This is the english policy. Is valid on the english wikipedia. Was
discussed and approved by english users.

How do you know that this exact policy (sysops *not* allowed to ban
signed-in users) is (will be) the one adopted by other wikipedias when
other part of the banning policy are already different in other wikipedias ?

Banning policy is not similar on every wikipedias, if only because the
arbitrator deciding the banning on the english wikipedia cannot do it on
the other wikipedias.

I do not necessarily mean this feature is *bad*, I mean that you can't
ask that all wikipedias policies are consistently identical to the
english wikipedias, when structurally the situation is different.

> Making this policy consistent across all wikis makes sense because it
> makes the non-English wikis less dependent on help from the English one.
> No need to call for help from California (Brion) or Florida (Jimbo) when a
> signed in vandal runs amok on the French Wikipedia.

Quite true.

But what is currently a problem is not to ban *loggued-in* users but
rather to know the log information of the user perhaps.
This information is not available to us.

Now, just for information Erik, and for the sake of transparency :
We have a user that have been vandalizing the french wikipedia for now
two months. I talk of hundreds of pages, since each attack is from 10 to
20 or more articles vandalized. Sometimes, several attacks per day.
As soon as his user name was banned, he vandalized under ips. He uses
non-fixed ip, provided from up to 7 internet providers.
We can't block all these adresses, for many people (several current
editors) rely on these isp.

What we do : when the guy is around, we click on the list of
contributions, we add &bot=1 to the end of the link, and we roll back
everything. It takes less than one minute to revert perhaps 20 articles.
As a result, the guy edits are *not even* visible from recent changes,
which is likely to spoil much of his fun. We can hope this way to
discourage him, because except for the few people just here when he is
around, no user even know he has been around.

To the point, more and more users think he has given up vandalising.

It is not even a problem any more really. Just routine work to roll back
his changes to "a deep shaft".

Over interesting features are a "ring" each time someone makes an edit
with a comment containing CENSURE or WARLOPEDIA. Eh ! with vandals, we
get creative :-)

The current policy is
> discriminatory to the non-English wikis -- it gives the En-Wikipedia a
> useful tool and keeps it away from the others, under the false pretense
> that they can't handle this kind of responsibility.

Oh, please Erik. Do not throw in the great "discriminatory" word. You
know quite well it is not the point. Obviously, any wikipedia should be
able to handle weapons of mass destruction :-) Not just the members of a
few self-designed commitee.

But some of the wikipedias do not even have sysops ! I doubt they even
had the opportunity to even begin to think about what they like their
security solution to be. I just would like that they are giving the
right to their own choices, perhaps that they suggest other solutions,
not once again that they are just brought the solution cooked for
another wikipedias technologically 3 years in advance.

I for one trust the
> non-English Wikipedias that they will use banning of signed in users
> responsibly if they are informed of the limitations.

Which limitations are you talking about ? The limitations that only
Jimbo has the right to ban loggued in users ? Sorry, too late. We
outgrew that limitation :-)

> This should be announced first and any serious objections should be dealt
> with, until near unanimous consensus is reached.

Nod. But announcement just on the technical list, or even on wikipedia
list is not enough. A *very* small number of international editors read
them. And those who read do not necessarily transmit the information.
And some wikipedias have nobody reading the list permanently.

You did something I liked at the end of the logo contest. You put a word
  on the pump. Everyone could see it there. That was a good idea.
I suggest that something similar is done perhaps.

A detailed message on the mailing list, explaining the benefits and what
the "so-called" limitations are.
Then, a small message on all pumps, with the link to the mail message.

Even if no one answered, no one comment, we will be sure they *are*
informed and it won't get lost in the mailing list.

I think you misunderstand why I wished that feature not to be made
freely and immediately available. I recognise that this feature is
necessary, likely, everyone will endorse it. But, what bothers me, each
time a new feature is decided by the english wikipedia is that

* it does not give us the opportunity to grow up enough to reach the
state when it is necessary. It is like feeding us with a baby spoon.
That make people even more in a situation of *waiting* for things to be
done by miracle, rather than empowering them. Just passive. The opposite
of what I believe is the wiki way

* it prevents us to explore our own path, to discover our own options.
It is just as if, the solution english found was not only the best, but
the only possible. Again, it kills creativity

* Asking people afterwards if they are interested send a signal that
means they were not very important in the initial decision, much more
than a message telling them they are trusted. Just the mention that one
wikipedia trusts them enough to "let them use the feature" is slightly
offending. We do not need to be "trusted", we need to be "part of".

> Regards,
>
> Erik

Me as well Erik, me as well :-)


body:
Christopher-
> On French Paris Match (paper magazine), last summer, saw photo of
> israeli soldier killed in combat, brain cavity was emply, brian had
> been removed by impact, cranium was 1/2 missing, and photo showed the
> inside of the head with the brain mostly removed, and part of the
> skull still attached and hanging. Soldier was on a stretcher, others
> were mulling about paying him no attention. This kind of photo, we
> don't see on US tv/print media.

Well, the conclusion that this is a US vs. Euro phenomenon seems
overreaching. I've never seen such photos in German newspapers, for
example. German media always seemed very sanitized to me.

> Link to but where?

To a file uploaded on our server (provided copyright is not an issue),
using a [[Media:]] link.

Regards,

Erik


from_name: Markus Baumeister

subject: [Wikitech-l] Wikipedia for the Zaurus

body:
Hello,

I have modified Alfio Puglisi's wiki2static script and added a few of my own
to generate a static compressed version of wikipedia which should be
viewable on any UNIX-PDA featureing a webserver and a sh-compatible shell.
Compression works quite nicely, I currently have the German and the English
content (including media and TeX images) taking up up ca. 600MB on a
microdrive. Since TomeRaider is not available for Linux-based PDAs this
should fill the last non-Wikipedia hole. See
http://www.retsiemuab.de/wiki2zaurus .

Two questions:
1) Can some people (preferably with UNIX PDAs and desktops) check if the
descriptions on the above site are understandable and work for them also?

2) Should I put a link on a wikipedia page and if yes on which one?
"Wikipedia:Database download" has the links to the wiki2static script but I
would rather not be listed on a page about how to get database dumps.
Without necessary bandwidth for offering dumps I'd prefer to distribute only
scripts.

Markus


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Pictures of genitalia

body:
dpbsmith at verizon.net a ?crit:
> Re circumcision: it looks to me as if the current article has pictures of
> both a circumcized and an uncircumsized penis, so what's the problem?

http://en2.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circumcision ?

There is no images whatsoever on that article.

Is there another article on circumcision somehow ?


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: pictures of genetalia

body:
On Sat, Jan 10, 2004 at 04:41:19PM +0100, Anthere wrote:
>
>
> Arvind Narayanan a ?crit:
> > On Sat, Jan 10, 2004 at 03:59:05PM +0100, Anthere wrote:
> >
> >
> >>The natural state of a penis is with the skin.
> >>Not circumsized.
> >>
> >
> > The natural state of people is without clothes. Should
> > we post only nude photographs of people we write about?
>
> Yes, on an article about human, it is perfectly logical to see a human
> in its natural state : nude.
>
> See http://en2.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human
>
> In this case, the topic of the article is the *penis*
>
> Not *circumsision*
>
> ...an article on which there is *currently* no picture.
>
Agreed.

Arvind
--
Its all GNU to me


subject: [WikiEN-l] VfD

body:
Jimmy-
> Nothing about VfD is Policy with a capital P, laid down or decreed by
> me.  It's just a social custom, no more and no less.  If the VfD
> process decides that an article like "Palestinian views on the peace
> process" should be redirected or deleted, there's absolutely nothing
> to prevent the next person who comes along from trumping the VfD
> process by just editing the page.

> And if they do so in a positive, co-operative, and NPOV manner, then
> Wikipedia will be the stronger for it.  If they do so in a negative,
> non-co-operative, and POV manner, then the Wiki process will work
> again -- the article will get re-deleted, re-redirected, etc.

This doesn't sound like an encyclopedia to me - it sounds like a giant
dumping ground where anyone who spends enough time to defend their space
can keep it. It makes all the definitions of [[Wikipedia is not]] moot for
people who are reasonably nice (or, more realistically, sufficiently
persistent).

Without clear policies as to what material is allowed and what is not, and
without clear means to enforce these policies (that is, a deletion
policy), Wikipedia will develop into an Everything2-ish state. Thus you
eventually end up *needing* a Sifter project because Wikipedia will be so
full of crap that nobody takes it seriously. I prefer a model wherein
there are only articles which have at least the *potential* to be
brilliant prose. And when I say, "we have X articles", I would prefer not
to have to follow this up with increasingly cumbersome estimates as to how
many of these *really* qualify as articles.

Although you have in effect made a clarification that you think VfD is not
policy, this clarification is still buried somewhere in a mailing list
archive and will likely not be referred to by persistent trolls to justify
their crapflooding. (That's good!) Without such a declaration being
directly inserted into the respective pages, your view is also
unrealistic, however: Sysops treat VfD as policy. Users are told by sysops
that VfD is policy. Sysops *will* call for bans of users who try to
circumvent VfD. We even have a page called Wikipedia:Deletion *policy*.

So now you've made a bad situation worse:
1) VfD doesn't have a clearly defined process
2) VfD is treated by other pages and by sysops as policy
3) Jimbo says that VfD isn't policy

The potential edit wars and long-term conflicts that can result from this
fuzzy state make my head hurt. I know you value creative anarchy and
consensus building, but I think you also have to come to terms with the
reality that an encyclopedia requires clear rules that are actually
enforced to work. NPOV is such a policy, and I do not see a single good
reason why we shouldn't have a similarly strongly enforced inclusion
policy.

Regards,

Erik


from_name: Matthew Woodcraft

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: VfD

body:
Jimmy Wales wrote:
>Nothing about VfD is Policy with a capital P, laid down or decreed by
>me.  It's just a social custom, no more and no less.  If the VfD
>process decides that an article like "Palestinian views on the peace
>process" should be redirected or deleted, there's absolutely nothing
>to prevent the next person who comes along from trumping the VfD
>process by just editing the page.

Except that, until we have reversible delete, someone who wants to edit
a deleted page is deprived of the opportunity to build on the previous
form.

-M-


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: pictures of genitalia

body:
Anthere wrote:
>I respectfully disagree that the English wikipedia is first and
>beforemost for the English speaking world. Unless you agree
>to include  most Europe for example, as most adults now speak
>a reasonable amount of English.

If they speak English well enough to be able to effectively use the English
Wikipedia, then they are part of the English Wikipedia's audience. And we
should always write to our audience within the bounds of NPOV. However, the
primary audience of the English Wikipedia should still be native speakers.

>We do not build a project with a special pov depending on
>languages and cultures supposed to be associated to specific
>country.

Of course not! :) That is why I said 'within the bounds of NPOV'. It is more
of a focus issue and it is about writting for your audience. That is why
Wikibooks, for example, can use NPOV without having to fill textbooks (a
specialized works of reference) with largely irrelevant side-topics.

>An article on the English wikipedia is supposed to be neutral
>for American readers, but supposed to be neutral for french
>readers as well. If not (actually, it is not), we can't claim our
>goal is to be neutral

Focus and neutrality are two different things. Different cultures will have
different wants and needs from a work of reference. If a large segment of
your readership is interested in a certain aspect of a subject, then that
aspect should have higher prominence in the article that deals with that
subject.

>What would you feel when seeing the pict of a perfectly classical
>(for us) clitoris, with the label being not "clitoris" but being
>"uncirconcized clitoris" ? Would it feel quite right ?

We have already gone over this above where I said go ahead and use the wording
'intact'. Same goes here.

>The topic of female circonsision is only very shortly mentionned in
>two lines at the bottom of the article. And that's it. Not mentionned
>in the anatomy. Not additional link.

This proves my point about focus; Since we are a group of volunteers, I do not
find it at all surprising that the topic of female circumcision is in this
state in the English Wikipedia. It simply isn't on the minds of as many
English speakers as I imagine it is on the minds of French speakers (many of
whom, as you note, are from parts of Africa where this practice is common).

So I would expect there to naturally be more of a need to elevate the issue of
female circumcision to a higher level in the French Wikipedia as there is in
the English one. Maybe even to a level where it would make sense to have a
photo of the genitals of a circumsized female next to a photo the genitals of
an intact female in an article that deals with female genitalia in general.

If a large percentage of your readers would expect such a thing, then it
should be there. That is focus and writing to your readership.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)


body:
Christopher-
> Point taken. Is there an article somewhere discussing the differences
> in media reporting between various european countries?

I've found most general media-related articles on Wikipedia sorely
lacking, but that may have changed. (Just checked: [[mass media]] is still
crap.) We have fantastically detailed articles about individual
publications, though ..

> So we host the photo but don't include it with the article, but on a
> separate instance (machine) that is easily accessible.

It's a regularly uploaded image. You can do this with any image file by
typing [[Media:name.jpg]].

> Do we provide thumprints?

In these cases, probably not.

> What's truly gained? I mean, having a link to an image and the image
> itself are fairly the same.

Not if the image has a very strong shock value to the vast majority of
viewers. http://goatse.cx is one notorious example, see [[shock site]] for
others. But I agree that the penis picture should be displayed inline. As
I said before, my standard is: is it almost universally offensive? If yes,
link to it. If no, show it inline. The only other standards that I can
think of are 1) legality, 2) encyclopedic relevance.

Regards,

Erik


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Pictures of genitalia

body:
male-ish comment if there is :-)

Nikos-Optim a ?crit:
> probably refers to [[Penis]]
>
> (damn, please let us find something more productive to
> do than wasting our time with penises and such stuf!)
>
> --Optim
>
> --- Anthere <anthere8 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>>
>>dpbsmith at verizon.net a ?crit:
>>
>>>Re circumcision: it looks to me as if the current
>>
>>article has pictures of
>>
>>>both a circumcized and an uncircumsized penis, so
>>
>>what's the problem?
>>
>>
>>http://en2.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circumcision ?
>>
>>There is no images whatsoever on that article.
>>
>>Is there another article on circumcision somehow ?


from_name: Rob Hooft

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Call for Configurations

body:
Gabriel Wicke wrote:

> A quote:
> Google's infrastructure: Google uses consumer-level hard disks and
> 'really cheap, unreliable memory.' ('If something fails, it's not
> you, it's probably the memory.') They have around 10,000
> commodity-level Linux computers set up in a parallel network ('the
> largest Linux cluster in the world'), and anticipate the death of 'a
> few machines every day.'

They better do, because even highly reliable machines have a
Lifetime << 10,000 days (~27 years!).

Rob


from_name: John C. Penta

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Pictures of genitalia

body:
Tribble sex?

(I'm sorry. I couldn't resist being both stupid and smartass.)

John

----- Original Message -----
From: Nikos-Optim <optim81 at yahoo.co.uk>
Date: Saturday, January 10, 2004 3:09 pm
Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Re: Pictures of genitalia

> probably refers to [[Penis]]
>
> (damn, please let us find something more productive to
> do than wasting our time with penises and such stuf!)
>
> --Optim
>
> --- Anthere <anthere8 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> >
> >
> > dpbsmith at verizon.net a ?crit:
> > > Re circumcision: it looks to me as if the current
> > article has pictures of
> > > both a circumcized and an uncircumsized penis, so
> > what's the problem?
> >
> >
> > http://en2.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circumcision ?
> >
> > There is no images whatsoever on that article.
> >
> > Is there another article on circumcision somehow ?
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > WikiEN-l mailing list
> > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>
>
> __________________________________
> Do you Yahoo!?
> Yahoo! Hotjobs: Enter the "Signing Bonus" Sweepstakes
> http://hotjobs.sweepstakes.yahoo.com/signingbonus
> _______________________________________________
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> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
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>


from_name: Rick

body:
We have articles on [[Flour bomb]] and a couple of others that I asked about Wikipedia's liability on, and was told that it's not a problem.

RickK

Erik Moeller <erik_moeller at gmx.de> wrote:
Christopher-
> Step by step bomb making

Could be legally problematic.

---------------------------------
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Yahoo! Hotjobs: Enter the "Signing Bonus" Sweepstakes
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from_name: Peter Jaros

subject: [WikiEN-l] pictures of genetalia

body:
On Jan 10, 2004, at 12:14 PM, Nikos-Optim wrote:

> --- tarquin <tarquin at planetunreal.com> wrote:
>
> (humour follows)
> Now, I would like to make my own addition to the
> "offensive material" issue. Article [[Child]] has an
> offensive photograph! It is the photo of a White
> child. But not all children are white. There are black
> and yellow children too! So this article is offensive
> to non-Whites and it is written from a White's Point
> Of View, which is against the NPOV spirit! I strongly
> suggest to remove this photo and replace it with a
> photo showing three children: one white, one black and
> one yellow, representing the friendship between the
> races and the unity of humanity! (in case you are
> wondering, I am White).

Amen!  Personally, I find the picture on the [[Penis]] article *quite*
offensive.  Not all people have penises!  This article is inherently
sexist and should be deleted!

> (humour ends)

(BTW, absolutely no offense to Matt, who brought up the skin color
issue.  Just having a little fun) :)

Seriously, though, I agree that

>> Diagrams instead of photos would probably be better.

If only because diagrams tell you much more (eg.,
[[Image:Maleana2.gif]] vs. [[Image:Erect_penis.gif]]).  I have no
objection to pictures, and I think they are entirely appropriate, but
diagrams are more informative.  If the two are deemed redundant, I'd
rather have the diagrams.

Peter

---
Funding for this program comes from Borders without Doctors: The
Bookstore Chain That Sounds Like a Charity.
		--Harry Shearer, Le Show


subject: [WikiEN-l] VfD

body:
On Jan 10, 2004, at 3:56 PM, Erik Moeller wrote:

> So now you've made a bad situation worse:
> 1) VfD doesn't have a clearly defined process
> 2) VfD is treated by other pages and by sysops as policy
> 3) Jimbo says that VfD isn't policy

Actually, he said VfD isn't Policy, with an explicit capital P.  I
assume there's a significant distinction, though it's unclear to me.
It may resolve the above quandary.  Jimbo?

Peter

---
Funding for this program comes from Borders without Doctors: The
Bookstore Chain That Sounds Like a Charity.
		--Harry Shearer, Le Show


from_name: Erik Moeller

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: pictures of genetalia

body:
Alex-
> Many people agree with you Anthere, even
> in the United States. This is an issue that has
> become galvanized because of the supposed
> "antisemite" connotations of circumcision (though
> moslems also practice this form of male genital
> mutilation as a religious right of the parents).

This is not the place for a circumcision flamewar. Many people feel that
in spite of lacking a foreskin, they are fully sexually functional, and
may even believe in the supposed medical benefits of the procedure. As a
matter of fact, there are some recent studies which promote the belief
that circumcision even prevents HIV. I say "promote the belief" because
these studies are fundamentally methodologically flawed, but it is easy to
see that people might believe them, given that they have been published in
peer reviewed (US) journals and have received widespread (international)
media attention.

There are people who believe just as forcefully that circumcision is
right, decent and proper as I believe that it is wrong, harmful and
pointless, and there are internally consistent arguments that can be made
for both sides. Few subjects are as eligible to turn into long lasting
flamewars as this one. Please do not encourage rants on this subject --
they do not really contribute to a debate about inclusion standards.

Wikipedia is not Usenet. It's not a place for advocacy of any kind. If
anything, we should talk about how to make the article [[circumcision]]
better, not about what's morally wrong with the procedure. Otherwise we
might as well talk about the international arms trade, social equality,
global warming and electronic voting machines, all very serious issues.

Regards,

Erik


from_name: Anthere

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: pictures of genetalia

body:
cprompt a ?crit:
> On Sat, 2004-01-10 at 10:41, Anthere wrote:

>>Labelling the normal penis a "uncircumsized penis" is POV.

I repeat, labelling the normal penis a "uncircumsized" penis is POV

It is like putting on an article about [[teenager]], with two pictures
of two teenager girls, one white and one black :

as legend, "a white girl" and "a non white girl".

> I recall reading that in the United States, most men are circumcised,
> and in the rest of the world, most men aren't. Since both circumcised
> and uncircumcised are fairly common, it makes sense to have them
> side-by-side for comparison. Since men with pierced penises (ouch) are
> rather uncommon (so I would think), if we were to have a picture of one,
> I'd agree it shouldn't receive the same attention as the pictures on the
> top of the article.

in the United States, most men are circumcised
in the rest of the world, most men aren't

conclusion : both situations are common.

I do not know why, but I feel like I could go on a rant here. I really do.