from_name: Christopher Mahan

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Filtering, etc.

body:
--- Geoffrey Thomas <geoffreyerffoeg at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Christopher Mahan wrote:
> >Perhaps not, in fact, because the majority of people in the world
> >want an unbiased source, and almost everyone knows that education
> >material is biased. Being banned from schools might actually be to
> >the project's benefit.
>
> Mff. I go to a school. I want Wikipedia there.
>
> If educational material is biased, all the more reason for an NPOV
> Wikipedia available from schools to independently verify the
> story given to us from the textbooks. And [[There is no Cabal]]
> of teachers intentionally giving us biased facts. I think I'm
> missing your logic somehow - could you explain how it would
> help the 'pedia if it were banned from schools?

The most effective and deadly weapons are banned from civilian hands
(Armored personnel vehicles, Combat aircraft, heat-guided rocket
launchers, grenades, C-4, full-auto M-16s (the list goes on)), and
they are the ones professionals prefer, because of their
effectiveness in their intended area of use.

Likewise the W, as a comprehensive resource of unbiased, in-depth,
well-referenced and pored over the world over tool of learning and
referencey, would make any entity that is unconfortable with anthing
except their own version of the truth du jour wish to curtail its use
among the more tender member of its society.

I would rather the W become famous among leading geneticists and PHDs
in history than among 9 graders.

I would *like* 9 graders to be able to use it, but not at the expense
of seeming to the rest of the world to be a water-pistol in a world
of precision-guided munition.

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

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list: wikitech-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Guillaume Blanchard

subject: [Wikitech-l] New username validation

body:
----- Original Message -----
From: "Anthere" <anthere6 at yahoo.com>
To: <wikitech-l at wikipedia.org>
Sent: Monday, June 09, 2003 10:00 AM
Subject: Re: [Wikitech-l] New username validation

>
> --- Toby Bartels <toby+wikipedia at math.ucr.edu> wrote:
> > Brion Vibber wrote in part:
> >
> > >We may wish to do a case-_in_sensitive check,
> > and/or a
> > >same-except-for-accents check. Or not. Anyway, I
> > think it could use some
> > >tidying up.
> >
> > We'll probably never think of every way to mimic a
> > previous user.
> > If there's an easy check to do (and there clearly
> > are some),
> > then go ahead, but ultimately we'll need to rely on
> > policy:
> > If somebody creates a username for fraudulent
> > purposes
> > (as [[Fr:Utilisateur:Anth?re]] was), then it should
> > be removed
> > (as [[En:User:Throbbing Monster Cock]] was, for
> > other reasons).
> >
> >
> > -- Toby
>
> Hum. Today, on the french wiki, a utilisateur:Fare
> appeared.
>
> We also have a utilisateur:Far?, who is the same (I
> guess, I am not even entirely sure) than the
> user:Far?.
>
> On the en wiki, you also have a user:Fare, who I guess
> is the same person than user:Far?.
>
> I am not entirely sure than User:Far? is the same than
> Utilisateur:Far? though, for en appear to accept
> entirely Far? edits, when these are considered highly
> POV on french wiki.
>
> However, in any case, I doubt very much that
> utilisateur:Fare is the same than utilisateur:Far?.
>
> You might consider it is not important. But I have 4
> user names here. And I don't think I have 1 person. It
> does not help human relationships and trust.
>
> Anthere (the most famous one, not the others :-))

It's exactly why I'm for showing IP like before with UseMod Wiki.
It can not figure out all problems but can solve a great part of them.
If the french community agree, can we have this feature back to
fr.wikipedia.org ?

Aoineko

PS : Anthere, I send you the Anth?re password, change it then no one else
will be able to use it. For other names, I can't help.


list: wikien-l

from_name: Vicki Rosenzweig

subject:
[WikiEN-l] poor writing skills of some non-english
  speaking wiki contributors

body:
It might be a good idea, when adding such pages to the
[[Votes for rewrite]] page, to put in an explicit "needs
copyediting" note. That's a different task--more congenial
for some Wikipedians, less for others--than, say, NPOVing.
--
Vicki Rosenzweig
vr at redbird.org
http://www.redbird.org


from_name: koyaanis qatsi

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Filtering, etc

body:
KQ writes:
>> It's a lose/lose situation, as far as I can see:
>> re-establish a hierarchy of articles, or risk
>> "collateral damage" in filtering--and I expect that
>> collateral damage to include, for different
reasons,
>> [[breast]], [[Michael Jackson]], [[Kurt Cobain]],
>> [[Khmer Rouge]], and [[Robert Blake]].

Jimmy writes:
>What damage do you envision? Because I'm just not
> following you at all.

I'm going to need some time to think about ways to
express my points better, because I'm obviously not
doing so well with it right now.

kq

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subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: WikiEN-l digest, Vol 1 #437 - 15 msgs

body:
KQ writes:
>> effort.  :-)  yet, I think the horse is dead and I
>> should cease to beat it.  :-)

Stevertigo writes:
>Yes, you shouldnt beat it too much there, Kq. ;)

You couldn't have invoked [[Godwin's law]] instead?
;-)

kq

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from_name: Walter

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Static Html

body:
Alfio Puglisi <puglisi at arcetri.astro.it> wrote in
news:Pine.SOL.4.31.0306091421490.4480-100000 at hercules:

>
> Hello all,
> a new static HTML dump can be found in:
>
> http://www/~puglisi/wiki/wikipedia/ma/main_page.html

Strange URL.

[knip]

> So now that the technicalities are being resolved, it's time for
> politics to enter the issue: namely, what we'll do with this version?
> CD distribution? HTML mirrors? what else?

What would be usefull is a read-only wikipedia version for
* WAP users
* I-mode
* Blind people - I have recieved feedback from blind users that the curent
real wikipedia is not very easy to use for blind people.

* Put Wikipedia on FreeNet
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freenet

Not many users would use the FreeNet Wikipedia edition, but it can give
some publicity. It would be a nice support for the FreeNet community.
Wikipedia would be the most famous website the has been ported to FreeNet.

* Setting up a central page for the organisation of the Wikipedia mirrors
and create a pollicy to get and keep the label "Official Wikipedia Stattic
Mirror"

Walter(*)

(*) formaly known as Giskart
--
Contact: walter AT wikipedia.be
Ook een artikeltje schrijven? WikipediaNL, de vrije GNU/FDL encyclopedie
http://www.wikipedia.be


from_name: Alfio Puglisi

subject: [Wikitech-l] Static Html

body:
Hello all,
a new static HTML dump can be found in:

http://www/~puglisi/wiki/wikipedia/ma/main_page.html

The script used for this is not downloadable yet, but it will be soon.
Many errors with wikipedia markup, redirects, etc. are fixed. Search sorta
works with IE and Mozilla.

What to do now:

- images are not included, but linked to the online site (each image is
represented as a link). This is a stopgap solution, but I don't have many
ideas about this :-)

- search is done with word indexes (only for page titles), and is
acceptably fast on IE and a bit slower on Mozilla. Still does not work on
Opera, and still limited to only one word to search for, but already
usable :-)

- according to Nero, this dump fits into a 660 CD-Rom, so it's quite
burnable :-)

So now that the technicalities are being resolved, it's time for politics
to enter the issue: namely, what we'll do with this version? CD
distribution? HTML mirrors? what else?

New version planned to fix some of the problems listed above. Stay tuned
:-)

Ciao,
Alfio


from_name: Jason Richey

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Fair use

body:
Why are we so stuck on the GFDL?  Are we (as a community) opposed to
operating under another (though equally free) license that is more
specific about quoutes and such?

--
"Jason C. Richey" <jasonr at bomis.com>


from_name: Daniel Ehrenberg

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Filtering, etc.

body:
The first two paragraphs you wrote seem to suggest that the knowledge in Wikipedia is two dangerous for ordinary school children like Geoffrey and I, and the next paragraphs explain that that's not the case, it's just that we are insignifigant.

I think neither is the case. We schoolkids should have the right to use wikipedia, and that should be high on our list of priorities. I think we should impliment the system of categorization suggested wherin each article can be categorized as "sexually contravercial", "religiously contravercial," etc. There could also be some other website where these pages classified as contravercial were these were by default blocked, say, edupedia.org (open, i checked), and it would operate off of the same database. Maybe also all editing and talk pages would be blocked, as schools would think students shouldn't be editing an encycloprdia. I see nothing wrong with this idea except extra work for categorization and programming, but that is a considerable problem. If necessary, I could pay for the domain name.

--LittleDan

Christopher Mahan <chris_mahan at yahoo.com> wrote:
The most effective and deadly weapons are banned from civilian hands
(Armored personnel vehicles, Combat aircraft, heat-guided rocket
launchers, grenades, C-4, full-auto M-16s (the list goes on)), and
they are the ones professionals prefer, because of their
effectiveness in their intended area of use.

Likewise the W, as a comprehensive resource of unbiased, in-depth,
well-referenced and pored over the world over tool of learning and
referencey, would make any entity that is unconfortable with anthing
except their own version of the truth du jour wish to curtail its use
among the more tender member of its society.

I would rather the W become famous among leading geneticists and PHDs
in history than among 9 graders.

I would *like* 9 graders to be able to use it, but not at the expense
of seeming to the rest of the world to be a water-pistol in a world
of precision-guided munition.

=====
Christopher Mahan

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from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Fair use

body:
On Mon, 9 Jun 2003, Jason Richey wrote:
> Why are we so stuck on the GFDL?  Are we (as a community) opposed to
> operating under another (though equally free) license that is more
> specific about quoutes and such?

Love it or hate it, we're pretty much stuck with it. Since we don't
require contributors to assign copyright of their work to any central
entity, switching licenses would require the permission of everyone who
has contributed material.

With thousands of contributors, many of whom are known only by a transient
network address and plenty of whom may be long gone and uncontactable, it
would be impractical to get such permission for the entire encyclopedia.
Hypothetically one could fork a new Wikipedia base using only material by
people known to have agreed to a license change, but it would be an
enormous amount of work to sort through it, and then you've got to redo
all the stuff that's missing.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Anthere

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: [WikiEN-l] Software updates

body:
--- Anthere <anthere6 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> --- Erik Moeller <erik_moeller at gmx.de> wrote:
> > We're now up to the latest Wikipedia software
> > version on the English
> > Wikipedia. Some changes I and others made in the
> > last weeks:
> >
> > 1) There is a new feature called "oldest articles"
> > (colloq. "ancient
> > pages"). Currently this inevitably lists first all
> > the imported articles
> > from the phase I software that have not been
> edited
> > yet ever since.
> > Hopefully, as these become updated, this feature
> > will allow us to
> > systematically go through our old material and
> make
> > sure it is in good
> > shape and up to date.
> >
> > 2) Sysops will note that the page deletion feature
> > now auto-pastes the
> > content of pages that are smaller than 500 bytes
> > into the deletion comment
> > (only the first 150 characters). It also does so
> if
> > the current revision
> > is blanked and the previous revision contains text
> > that can be pasted.
> >
> > 3) The deletion feature now indicates if you are
> > about to delete a page
> > that has a history.
> >
> > 4) The "New pages" list now shows the bytesize of
> > each page, making it
> > easier to pick nice, long articles for the Main
> > Page.
> >
> > 5) Some minor layout stuff, some by me, some by
> > others. Notably, the ugly
> > "It was last modified" sentence at the bottom of
> > each page has been fixed.
> >
> > Regards,
> >
> > Erik
>
> Is it planned to make it available to other wikis as
> well ? 2 and 3 in particular
>
> Ant

I think my question was missed. Probably because I
adressed it to the wrong list.

International people are wondering when the last
english features will be applied to other phase III
wikipedias. Is there anything we should provide you to
help there ?

Ant

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subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: [WikiEN-l] Software updates


subject: [WikiEN-l] Request for help with new article (slurs)

body:
I think any of them are equally usable. This agonizing over political correctness seems pointless. I personally like "racial slur" the most because it seems the most common. Once we don't even know how to state a lack of political correctness politically correctly, we've gone too far.
--LittleDan

Dante Alighieri <dalighieri at digitalgrapefruit.com> wrote:
At 10:01 AM 6/9/2003, you wrote:
>>http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ethnic_slurs
>
>I would express a concern about the title. "Ethnic" is certainly more
>comprehensive than "racial", so that part is a clear improvement. On the
>other hand I find "slurs" to be more POV than "epithets". I see a need to
>maintain a perspective of time. What may be a slur to-day may not always
>have been so. When the Doukhobors were given that name it was intended as
>a slur by the Tsarists; eventually they assumed the name themselves and
>the pejorative nature of the word dropped away. Contrariwise, black
>Americans were once called "colored", and that term was generally accepted
>in its time. It has since evolved away from acceptability, but it was
>certainly an improvement over "nigger".
>
>Eclecticology

Well, the problem here is that there are two terms in common usage, ethnic
slur and racial epithet. While I suppose you are correct that ethnic
epithet would be more NPOV than either of the other two, it would be a
contrived phrase that would not show up if someone was doing a search on
the topic (as they will type in racial epithet or ethnic slur). Aside from
that, I think the way to handle your issue in the article (that not all
slurs have always been so, and vice versa) is simply to add a note to those
words for which it is relevant.

-----
Dante Alighieri
dalighieri at digitalgrapefruit.com

"The darkest places in hell are reserved for those who maintain their
neutrality in times of great moral crisis."
-Dante Alighieri, 1265-1321

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from_name: Toby Bartels

subject: [WikiEN-l] poor writing skills of some non-english speaking wiki contributors

body:
Stevertigo wrote in part:

>Proper English is a product of specialization.
>English is not the property of English speakers, but a lingua franca that
>everyone owns. Hence, its destined to become simplified - phonetic - scratch
>that - fonetic speling iz tha furst thing laikli tu hapen tu English - or it
>should. Someday soon.

I disagree.
A spelling reform is unlikely to be accepted by teachers
without some authority's recognising it officially.
Since there is no plausible such authority now
(unlike in the days of Noah Webster for Americans),
standard English spelling will continue to be taught,
and thus it will continue to be used.

>All that registered - I dislike the tone of enforcing propriety. It smacks
>of elitism.
>The articles that Ive seen - written in funky English - are generally
>intelligible - and If I come across one, Ill usually take time to edit it.

And so JTDirl will edit it as well.  He'll even seek them out! ^_^

>If someone wants to make it their perorgative to take this on as a task -
>and to enlist other in it, then so be it. Bat formalaizing som kaind ov
>Englo-defensyzm is the most tryvial of persuts. If that was the spirit in
>which this was raised.

I'm not sure that it was -- RK may have some points along that line --
but let JTDirl seek out articles whose grammar and spelling to correct.
You don't need to do it as well, and he doesn't have to involve us;
now that he's publicised his efforts, we can all do our own thing.

-- Toby


body:
On Mon, 9 Jun 2003, Anthere wrote:
> > Is it planned to make it available to other wikis as
> > well ? 2 and 3 in particular
>
> I think my question was missed. Probably because I
> adressed it to the wrong list.
>
> International people are wondering when the last
> english features will be applied to other phase III
> wikipedias. Is there anything we should provide you to
> help there ?

The original plan was to put all wikis onto the new server _and_ new
software after a few days of testing of the english one. I'm not sure if
we should be putting more pressure on larousse just yet, though... it's
about holding steady (and right now a little under the wheather as it
regenerates new cache files).

If there's no objection, I'll go ahead and upgrade the software for the
remaining phase 3s tonight, while leaving them on pliny.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: [Wikipedia-l] Re: [WikiEN-l] Software updates


from_name: Thomas Corell

subject: [Wikitech-l] LanguageDa.php

body:
Christian List wrote:
> Here is the updated LanguageDa.php, please somebody put it in CVS and on
> the danish Wikipedia.
>
> Some misspellings has been corrected, and the latest strings from
> Language.php has been translated.

I put it in the CVS. (Not on the active Wikipedia!)

--
Smurf

smurf at AdamAnt.mud.de
-------------------------  Anthill inside! ---------------------------


from_name: sannse

subject: [WikiEN-l] We're number two, we're number two!

body:
Uncle Ed?  Is that you??

> >
> Hmm! Does that mean that as number *2* we try harder, as we felch the
> knowledge that cums from WP? :-P
>
> Ec
>
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] This is the English Wikipedia

body:
RK wrote:

>Stevertigo wrote:

>>I think this is nonsense. Proper English is a product of
>>specialization. English is not the property of English
>>speakers, but a lingua franca that everyone owns.

I didn't respond to this in my other post,
so that I could respond to RK as well.
I'm at a loss to interpret your claim
"English is not the property of English speakers".
You might well argue that not all English speakers
live in the US and the British Commonwealth
(you refer later to Bangladeshis, for example),
but surely nobody but English speakers uses English?
Where is the claim to it by those that don't use it?
And where is their claim to the English Wikipedia?

>Pseudo-academic, pseudo-egalitarian nonsense.  That's the
>same kind of talk that has damaged the education of much of
>the inner-city youth in America. Only in the last decade
>have educators finally had the nerve to attack this point
>of view, and to correct the course that our schools were
>making.

I don't know how to interpret this either, however.
One might try reading [[Ebonics]] for some facts first,
but I'm not even sure if this is what RK's talking about.

>Frankly, it is also racist in effect. This kind of attitude
>has created two generations of poorly educated Hispanic and
>Black youth in American cities. I couldn't think of a
>better plan for the KKK to promote if they want to keep
>racism alive forever.

The Booker T. Washington plan for avoiding "racism" in a society
(for our purposes, belief in the relative worth of different races)
by embracing "culturism" (mutatis mutandis) within a society.
Cultural diversity is a wonderful thing,
and it'd be a shame to lose any of it
(from hip hop to the habitual tense)
out of a desire to (as they say) "act white".

I actually agree with what seems to be an implicit premise of yours:
Adopting the trappings of mainstream society
helps oppressed people become better off.
And oppressed people will always do this as they see the need;
I'm hardly in a position to criticise them for it.
But the world will be worse off for losing its subcultures,
and the onus is on the oppressors to make such loss unnecessary.

Of course I disagree with what seems to be another implict premise,
that failing to adopt, or even know, the trappings of mainstream society
is necessarily a sign of "poor education".

>And frankly, many of our articles are being damaged by
>people with good intentions, but who have poor English
>reading or writing skills (or both.)

Except for the user that refuses to accept correction
in certain articles on Chinese matters
(which sounds more about cooperation than English usage),
how is anybody making our articles *worse*?
Good content in bad prose is better than bad content in good prose.
And if JTDirl comes along and improves the prose too --
then we're much better off than if they never wrote anything!

The solution is JTDirl's page to report bad writing --
which can begin as soon as [[Wikipedia:Votes for rewrite]] is cleaned up,
or even earlier if he wants to create a new utilities page --
not to avoid the creation of the bad writing to begin with.

>In Stevertigo's bizarre universe, it is egalitarian to
>encourage this illiteracy, which in the end would produce
>unreadable articles.  In our universe, we are trying to
>ecudate an English speaking audience.

As I read it, SV implied that he'd standardise the English on Wikipedia.
And despite what I've said above, I couldn't support any other plan,
because we are in fact writing in standard English --
more precisely, that English that is widely understood around the world.
Using AAVE or Bangladeshi dialect would limit our audience,
and *that's* why we should rewrite such into standard English --
even though standard English is no more correct or educated.

>It is your choice what kind of encyclopedia we should try
>to produce. I know which path I prefer.

Despite the arguments over theoretical matters and value judgements,
it's not clear to me that *any* of us would produce different encyclop?dias.

-- Toby


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Filtering, etc.

body:
LittleDan wrote in part:

>I think we should impliment the system of categorization suggested wherin
>each article can be categorized as "sexually contravercial", "religiously
>contravercial," etc. There could also be some other website where these
>pages classified as contravercial were these were by default blocked, say,
>edupedia.org (open, i checked), and it would operate off of the same database.

I think that a good solution would be along these lines.
We might revive the sifter project, not for Larry's purpose,
but for this (of course the generic plan would work for both).
Then Edupedia can be a sifted version of Wikipedia,
operating according to guidelines set by LittleDan et al.

The best part is that what was being developed at sifter
wouldn't involve editing the Wikipedia database at all,
thus avoiding potential charges of POV in that database.
Since Edupedia is the site with a POV (though in just one respect),
it should hold the database, which would simply say,
for each Wikipedia (or En.Wikipedia) article,
what categories that article has for potential blocking.
(This would be the reverse of the sifter project,
which would have a database indicating which articles are accepted.)
Then LittleDan and his supporters can set those policies
without besmirching (in some opinions) Wikipedia's NPOV.

I believe that Jimbo has said in the past
that he'd be willing to pay for such auxiliary projects.
(Please correct me if I'm wrong.)
And edupedia.org is definitely a cool domain for it!

-- Toby


body:
Not only that, but our "proper" English isn't phonetic either. Our spelling is probably the most irregular of any language. I've actually been comming up with a completely phonetic rendering of English that uses only lower-cased roman letters, unlike other schemes like IPA and SAMPA. It also takes fewer letters for most words than the usual spelling. Perhaps it would work better than a pseudo-phonetic scheme to indicate accent. Below is this passage written in that scheme in my accent.

Nat onli yat, bqt auqr "prapqr" Xnglxc xznxt fqnetxk iyqr. Auqr spelxing xz prabxbli yq most xregiulqr qv eni laenguxdj.

Wow. That's really time consuming. Maybe not.

--LittleDan

Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
Robert wrote:

>Stevertigo writes:
>
>>I think this is nonsense. Proper English is a product of
>>specialization. English is not the property of English
>>speakers, but a lingua franca that everyone owns.
>>
>
>Pseudo-academic, pseudo-egalitarian nonsense. That's the
>same kind of talk that has damaged the education of much of
>the inner-city youth in America.
>
>Frankly, it is also racist in effect. This kind of attitude
>has created two generations of poorly educated Hispanic and
>Black youth in American cities. I couldn't think of a
>better plan for the KKK to promote if they want to keep
>racism alive forever.
>
>>Hence, its destined to become simplified phonetic -
>>scratch that - fonetic speling iz tha furst thing laikli
>>tu hapen tu English - or it should. Someday soon.
>>
>
>This isn't about ownership, racism or colonialism. It is
>about writing article in English, for people who speak
>English.
>
>And frankly, many of our articles are being damaged by
>people with good intentions, but who have poor English
>reading or writing skills (or both.)
>
Even though I may often differ with some other Wikipedians about just
what is correct English (notably lately over over-capitalization), I am
strongly in support of using good English. If people want to persist in
pseudo-phonetic renderings of the language let them do so on the
yet-to-be-created ebonics Wikipedia. Language is also about a cultural
continuity that includes Mark Twain just as much as Shakespeare. A
generation that grows up on these fanciful spellings is well on the way
to breaking its link with a cultural continuity. That's the cost of
such dumbing down.

Ec

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body:
Often, it is difficult for even the educated to speak in perfect English, as in:
*Neither the kids nor Michael (likes/like) to go to the park now that they use Wikipedia.
*One in six people (uses/use) a peer-to-peer network.
(I put my guesses in bold). My mom and I can't definitively tell which one is right. For these, it is a matter of which grammarian you talk to. If you insist on perfect grammar, something like this may cause excessive back-and fourth editing, maybe even an edit war. I'm just thinking worst-case-scenario.

Stevertigo <stevertigo at attbi.com> wrote:
Robert
> Pseudo-academic, pseudo-egalitarian nonsense. That's the
> same kind of talk that has damaged the education of much of
> the inner-city youth in America.

Robert, if noone else will say it - I will. Youre so full of crap.
Thank you very much for listening.

> Frankly, it is also racist in effect. This kind of attitude
> has created two generations of poorly educated Hispanic and
> Black youth in American cities. I couldn't think of a
> better plan for the KKK to promote if they want to keep
> racism alive forever.

God, what horrible garbage.

> And frankly, many of our articles are being damaged by
> people with good intentions, but who have poor English
> reading or writing skills (or both.)

Oh, God, what a crapload.

> In Stevertigo's bizarre universe, it is egalitarian to
> encourage this illiteracy, which in the end would produce
> unreadable articles. In our universe, we are trying to
> ecudate an English speaking audience.

Well, cutting through all of Robert's crap - the one VALID point he makes
(underneath all the crap, acrimony, etc...) is that a common language
should'nt go willy nilly in different directions. But it's fucking elitist
as tea-sipping lessons to dictate what is "proper" in most contexts -
because you personally dont own it - whether it be a religion or a language.

Americans and Englishmen are a minority of English speakers. Toby(I think)
made a valid point that there is already a page calling attention to pages
in need of a rewrite - the problem is that people do what they are
interested in.
(And most pages are in need of a "rewrite" - whether its a complete hack
job - or a little comma is missing somewhere.)

If people with little teeny tiny sphincters want to take it upon themselves
to focus like a lynch mob on poor, unsuspecting Bengalis, fine. But dont
bitch when I pull the hoods off your heads. Wanna correct the bad English? -
DO IT. But dont come here talking about instituting ideologies that are
fundamentally elitist.

WikiLove be upon you, Kaiser

- Steven MacGrieves

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body:
--- Brion Vibber <vibber at aludra.usc.edu> wrote:
> On Mon, 9 Jun 2003, Anthere wrote:
> > > Is it planned to make it available to other
> wikis as
> > > well ? 2 and 3 in particular
> >
> > I think my question was missed. Probably because I
> > adressed it to the wrong list.
> >
> > International people are wondering when the last
> > english features will be applied to other phase
> III
> > wikipedias. Is there anything we should provide
> you to
> > help there ?
>
> The original plan was to put all wikis onto the new
> server _and_ new
> software after a few days of testing of the english
> one. I'm not sure if
> we should be putting more pressure on larousse just
> yet, though... it's
> about holding steady (and right now a little under
> the wheather as it
> regenerates new cache files).
>
> If there's no objection, I'll go ahead and upgrade
> the software for the
> remaining phase 3s tonight, while leaving them on
> pliny.
>
> -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

You are the one knowing best whether it is ok or not
to move us now. I saw a couple of slow times these
past days, but it appears the speed is (imho) similar
in both places on average). I doubt we would slow down
Larousse, but you certainly can imagine than better
than I can. I did not know the update was necessarily
related to moving us.

(looking at our stats though, I slow steady increase
of our traffic month after month
http://fr.wikipedia.org/stats/)

Btw, the search does not work any more on meta...sorry
:-(((

So, I understand the soft update is related to

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from_name: Sean Barrett

body:
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Hash: SHA1

Daniel Ehrenberg wrote:
| Often, it is difficult for even the educated to speak in perfect
| English, as in:
| *Neither the kids nor Michael (*likes*/like) to go to the park now that
| they use Wikipedia.
| *One in six people (*uses*/use) a peer-to-peer network.
| (I put my guesses in bold). My mom and I can't definitively tell which
| one is right. For these, it is a matter of which grammarian you talk to.

Bah.  The /right/ answers are obvious:
* Michael and the kids prefer Wikipedia to the park.
* Peer-to-peer networks are used by about one-sixth of all people.

(Seriously, your first guess is wrong -- and Michael should be mentioned
before the kids -- and your second guess correct. I would be astonished
if you found any authority that disagrees.)

- --
~ Sean Barrett
~ sean at epoptic.com
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subject: [Wikitech-l] New username validation

body:
Anth?re (who now has the password on [[fr:]]! ^_^) wrote:

>Hum. Today, on the french wiki, a utilisateur:Fare
>appeared.

>We also have a utilisateur:Far?, who is the same (I
>guess, I am not even entirely sure) than the
>user:Far?.

[[Fr:Utilisateur:Fare]] works on the same articles
as [[Fr:Utilisateur:Far?]], and they immediately got into edit wars.
It looks pretty deliberate to me -- this is another imposture.
(My French isn't good enough to understand the substance of the edit wars
without a lot more work than I'm willing to do, however. ^_^)

>On the en wiki, you also have a user:Fare, who I guess
>is the same person than user:Far?.

>I am not entirely sure than User:Far? is the same than
>Utilisateur:Far? though, for en appear to accept
>entirely Far? edits, when these are considered highly
>POV on french wiki.

They seem to me to be the same.
[[en:]] will take longer to adjust to Far? than [[fr:]], I guess.
I don't agree with Far?'s point of view as expressed on [[en:]]
(although I haven't checked if they're violating NPOV there),
but that wouldn't excuse imposture.

>However, in any case, I doubt very much that
>utilisateur:Fare is the same than utilisateur:Far?.

>You might consider it is not important. But I have 4
>user names here. And I don't think I have 1 person. It
>does not help human relationships and trust.

There should be a way for developers to end this.

-- Toby


body:
Awlthoh that wuznt reelee fuhnehtik, I agree with Steverigo in priciple. The only problem is that we are trying to create an encyclopedia (not insyklohpeedeeuh) that is, in most ways, similar to others. That's really what it comes down to. If you want to convince Fred that Internet-encyclopedia should use pseudo-phonetic spelling, then fine. Stevertigo isn't trying to promote illiteracy, he's trying to do a very noble thing to start a movement to make English more regular and accessable. Actually, I'm trying to do the same thing. It would be nice to collaborate with Steveritigo on first making English easier and then making a wikipedia in that language.
--LittleDan

Robert <rkscience100 at yahoo.com> wrote:
Stevertigo writes:

> I think this is nonsense. Proper English is a product of
> specialization. English is not the property of English
> speakers, but a lingua franca that everyone owns.

Pseudo-academic, pseudo-egalitarian nonsense. That's the
same kind of talk that has damaged the education of much of
the inner-city youth in America. Only in the last decade
have educators finally had the nerve to attack this point
of view, and to correct the course that our schools were
making.

Frankly, it is also racist in effect. This kind of attitude
has created two generations of poorly educated Hispanic and
Black youth in American cities. I couldn't think of a
better plan for the KKK to promote if they want to keep
racism alive forever.

> Hence, its destined to become simplified phonetic -
> scratch that - fonetic speling iz tha furst thing laikli
> tu hapen tu English - or it should. Someday soon.

This isn't about ownership, racism or colonialism. It is
about writing article in English, for people who speak
English.

And frankly, many of our articles are being damaged by
people with good intentions, but who have poor English
reading or writing skills (or both.)

In Stevertigo's bizarre universe, it is egalitarian to
encourage this illiteracy, which in the end would produce
unreadable articles. In our universe, we are trying to
ecudate an English speaking audience.

It is your choice what kind of encyclopedia we should try
to produce. I know which path I prefer.

Robert (RK)

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subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Static Html

body:
On Mon, 9 Jun 2003, Walter wrote:

>Strange URL.

Ooops, here is the correct one for the world outside the LAN:

http://www.arcetri.astro.it/~puglisi/wiki/wikipedia/ma/main_page.html

Ciao,
Alfio


from_name: Zoe

subject: [WikiEN-l] Software updates

body:
--- Erik Moeller <erik_moeller at gmx.de> wrote:
> 2) Sysops will note that the page deletion feature
> now auto-pastes the
> content of pages that are smaller than 500 bytes
> into the deletion comment
> (only the first 150 characters). It also does so if
> the current revision
> is blanked and the previous revision contains text
> that can be pasted.
>
> 3) The deletion feature now indicates if you are
> about to delete a page
> that has a history.

I noticed these last night.  Much appreciated.  One
bug that I saw last night, I don't know yet if it's
still there.  After the deletion is completed, there
is still a link to the history on the confirmation
page, even though the history is gone.

Zoe

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body:
I don't know what you're reffering to as 'standard english'. There are many forms of English. First, there's American English, British English, Australian English, and Irish English. Then each country has its legalese, which might be regarded as official english. Then, within American English, there are several similar gramatical dialects that states create for the purpose of standardised testing (oops, I can't spell like that on the test, that's the British spelling) and each state has its own dialect of the national legalese.
--LittleDan

Toby Bartels <toby+wikipedia at math.ucr.edu> wrote:
As I read it, SV implied that he'd standardise the English on Wikipedia.
And despite what I've said above, I couldn't support any other plan,
because we are in fact writing in standard English --
more precisely, that English that is widely understood around the world.
Using AAVE or Bangladeshi dialect would limit our audience,
and *that's* why we should rewrite such into standard English --
even though standard English is no more correct or educated.

-- Toby

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body:
I think that a spelling reform, if ever created, has the potential to come up slowly like open source software.

Toby Bartels <toby+wikipedia at math.ucr.edu> wrote:I disagree.
A spelling reform is unlikely to be accepted by teachers
without some authority's recognising it officially.
Since there is no plausible such authority now
(unlike in the days of Noah Webster for Americans),
standard English spelling will continue to be taught,
and thus it will continue to be used.

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from_name: Robert

subject: [WikiEN-l] The Knowledge article, and Entmoot of Trolls anti-Semitic personal attack.

body:
A few weeks ago we had a discussion on this list about the
topic of the [[Knowledge]] article. A few people had been
confused about its purpose, and we clarified it.

This article, as you will recall, is NOT about just any way
that English speakers might choose to use the word.
Rather, this article is specifically about the
philosophical definition of how to ascertain which beliefs
are true, justifiable and actionable.  The "Knowledge"
article discusses specifically the philosophical definition
of knowledge, as related to epistemology. Among
philosophers, this topic is widely known as the Gettier
problem.

Sadly, in recent days EntmootOfTrolls has been trying to
pervert this article into a treatise on colonialism, racism
and "SCIENTISM".  Sadly, he uses this as an ad-homenim
personal attack against those people who use science and
philosophy.

Both RotenDam and myself have repeatedly tried to explain
to EofT what this article is about, but he keeps ignoring
us, claiming that we are violating NPOV, and he keeps
implying that we are "colonialist", bigoted, and
perpetrators of "scientism" (which in his mind is a form of
hatespeech or bigotry.)

It gets worse. The following anti-Semitic jibe was just
posted on my personal Talk page by EntmootOfTrolls.

*** Begin quote ***

Hmm. It seems clear from the above that you have general
problems discerning racism and colonialism in other
contexts. Likely being an American makes you also prone to
scientism. You should reflect on this cultural bias of
yours. It is now fairly clear why you wish to establish
knowledge as something which derives either from authority
or scientific method, and why other ways to approach
knowledge are degraded by you, as part of your other
beliefs in a hierarchy specific to "your people" (Jews,
Americans, scientists, "settlers"). You will not be
permitted to hijack articles with these views. It is time
for you to reconsider your attempt to do so. EofT

*** End quote ***

I am outraged at his blatant anti-Semitic, anti-Zionist
attack.  We have been trying to explain that this article
is about philosophy and the Gettier problem.  His reponse?
He responds by slandering my entire people (THE JEWS) as
COLONIALIST, SETTLERS, etc.  (Only in a very anti-Semitic
mind could all Jews be seen as Israelis, or settlers, etc.)

This person should be banned, immediately, right?  I assume
that Wikipedia does not allow one to use racist slurs
against blacks, Irish, English, etc.  I hope that Wikipedia
practice forbids the personal abuse of English contributors
as "occupiers", or the slander of Irish people as
"terrorists", etc!  This is not the way to contribute to
articles on philosophy...or anything else.

Racist comments against Wikipedia contributors should not
be allowed. Are we agreed?

Robert (RK)

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subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Filtering, etc.

body:
We could research the standards for a number of english-speaking countries and only include (in the censored database) pages that follow all of them.

Anthere <anthere6 at yahoo.com> wrote:Say, if you want to propose an short-wikipedia to
american schools - such a wikiUSchildrenpedia set for
american education, you need certification teams
coherent with american education standards.

But, a wikiBritishchildrenpedia set for british
education might not require the same censorship
standards. Perhaps the definition of what is porn or
not porn will be different. Maybe some points not
acceptable for american will be acceptable by british
standards and reversely.

Each of these set of people need to define
*themselves* what is ok and what is not ok.

So, we need to provide *everything*, and that is
*their* job to decide to keep or not to keep the
information. Not our job. So we need to provide the
flagging system for an extracted wiki perhaps, but
certainly not to define the nature of the censorship ourselves.

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subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Filtering, etc.

body:
Did you ever show your mother Bomis? That really is pornography.

Jimmy Wales <jwales at bomis.com> wrote:Dante Alighieri wrote:
> I'm sorry, but if other people want to censor information from themselves
> and children in their charge, that's /their/ problem, not ours. I don't see
> why we need to be held hostage to the Puritanical views of a few people out
> there who think that it would somehow be a disaster if a child read the
> felching article. Why do their work for them? If they want a filter, let
> /them/ write it. Let /them/ argue what it should filter. Let's leave
> Wikipedia just the way it is.

In what we are we held hostage just by including content metadata and
allowing people a simple option for how they want to view the
wikipedia? I think such dramatic analogies would be appropriate if
our only possible course of actions were to either self-censor or let
it all hang out, but it seems to me that we have several promising
alternatives that pose a useful compromise.

Again, I ask you to think not of schools and their issues, but of me
and my issues. I'm a modern person offended by almost nothing. And
yet, I wouldn't like to be showing my mother wikipedia and say, o.k.,
here is how you edit, and over here is where people can see the recent
changes, and OH MY!!, er, well, uh, really, this isn't about porn, ma.

--Jimbo
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subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Filtering, etc.

body:
The truth is that people want to be protected from certain information. I'm not sure if it is really our duty to protect them from it, but if it will help Wikipedia get to places it would otherwise be banned, we should at least provide the option of censorship.
--LittleDan

koyaanis qatsi <obchodnakorze at yahoo.com> wrote:
Geoff writes:
>I also think this system solves the POV problem
>by being APOV - the authorities' point of view -
>when the 'pedia _must_ take a point of view. The
>APOV is, after all, the only thing that matters
>when there are authorities with a POV, anyway.

Yes, but wikipedia does not strive for APOV; it
strives for NPOV. The more I hear about this, the
more I'm convinced that it is simply not a project for
wikipedia; that filtering content--or "sifting" it, if
you will--is a project for something else. Let's call
it "sifter," shall we?

You make some good points otherwise, especiallly about
wanting the 'pedia to be broadly available, but miss
the point that annotating articles with culturally
relative standards of e.g. "explicit" is POV. And,
just to get away from the sex examples (they're
becoming tedious), in a film I saw recently about
[[throat singing]], the people of a rural community
outside Mongolia killed a sheep by putting their hand
through a hole in the chest to stop its aorta. I
thought the footage graphic, if not nauseating, but
the people doing the ceremony were unbothered by it
and in fact considered it a great honor. I fail to
see how my opinion about the action is of any
consequence to wikipedia whatsoever; and I'd oppose
anyone's attempts to label the action according to
their moral or cultural standards--even if I share
them.

kq

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body:
I don't think it is in any way elitist. Everyone who writes English writes that way. But I don't think we will ever get a true phonetic spelling.

Stevertigo <stevertigo at attbi.com> wrote:I think this is nonsense. Proper English is a product of specialization.
English is not the property of English speakers, but a lingua franca that
everyone owns. Hence, its destined to become simplified - phonetic - scratch
that - fonetic speling iz tha furst thing laikli tu hapen tu English - or it
should. Someday soon.

All that registered - I dislike the tone of enforcing propriety. It smacks
of elitism.
The articles that Ive seen - written in funky English - are generally
intelligible - and If I come across one, Ill usually take time to edit it.

If someone wants to make it their perorgative to take this on as a task -
and to enlist other in it, then so be it. Bat formalaizing som kaind ov
Englo-defensyzm is the most tryvial of persuts. If that was the spirit in
which this was raised.

-S

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body:
Is this his first offence? If so, he shouldn't be banned.

Robert <rkscience100 at yahoo.com> wrote:A few weeks ago we had a discussion on this list about the
topic of the [[Knowledge]] article. A few people had been
confused about its purpose, and we clarified it.

This article, as you will recall, is NOT about just any way
that English speakers might choose to use the word.
Rather, this article is specifically about the
philosophical definition of how to ascertain which beliefs
are true, justifiable and actionable. The "Knowledge"
article discusses specifically the philosophical definition
of knowledge, as related to epistemology. Among
philosophers, this topic is widely known as the Gettier
problem.

Sadly, in recent days EntmootOfTrolls has been trying to
pervert this article into a treatise on colonialism, racism
and "SCIENTISM". Sadly, he uses this as an ad-homenim
personal attack against those people who use science and
philosophy.

Both RotenDam and myself have repeatedly tried to explain
to EofT what this article is about, but he keeps ignoring
us, claiming that we are violating NPOV, and he keeps
implying that we are "colonialist", bigoted, and
perpetrators of "scientism" (which in his mind is a form of
hatespeech or bigotry.)

It gets worse. The following anti-Semitic jibe was just
posted on my personal Talk page by EntmootOfTrolls.

*** Begin quote ***

Hmm. It seems clear from the above that you have general
problems discerning racism and colonialism in other
contexts. Likely being an American makes you also prone to
scientism. You should reflect on this cultural bias of
yours. It is now fairly clear why you wish to establish
knowledge as something which derives either from authority
or scientific method, and why other ways to approach
knowledge are degraded by you, as part of your other
beliefs in a hierarchy specific to "your people" (Jews,
Americans, scientists, "settlers"). You will not be
permitted to hijack articles with these views. It is time
for you to reconsider your attempt to do so. EofT

*** End quote ***

I am outraged at his blatant anti-Semitic, anti-Zionist
attack. We have been trying to explain that this article
is about philosophy and the Gettier problem. His reponse?
He responds by slandering my entire people (THE JEWS) as
COLONIALIST, SETTLERS, etc. (Only in a very anti-Semitic
mind could all Jews be seen as Israelis, or settlers, etc.)

This person should be banned, immediately, right? I assume
that Wikipedia does not allow one to use racist slurs
against blacks, Irish, English, etc. I hope that Wikipedia
practice forbids the personal abuse of English contributors
as "occupiers", or the slander of Irish people as
"terrorists", etc! This is not the way to contribute to
articles on philosophy...or anything else.

Racist comments against Wikipedia contributors should not
be allowed. Are we agreed?

Robert (RK)

__________________________________
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from_name: Lee Pilich

subject: [WikiEN-l] Deletion of pages by 216.46.68.90

body:
At 20:21 09/06/2003 +0200, you wrote:
>In the last few minutes, 216.46.68.90 (no other history) has deleted several
>pages (Leno, Letterman, etc.) "due to copyright violations". These articles
>have been written, amended and re-written over long periods of time. Can
>anyone make head or tail of the deletions?

Just somebody playing silly buggers, I expect. I restored a couple of the
articles, Dante did a couple more. I've left the guy a note asking him to
explain what copyrights were being infringed, just in case such
infringement really was going on (I doubt very much that there was - I
certainly couldn't find anything on Google).

Lee (Camembert)


from_name: K Forstner

body:
In the last few minutes, 216.46.68.90 (no other history) has deleted several
pages (Leno, Letterman, etc.) "due to copyright violations". These articles
have been written, amended and re-written over long periods of time. Can
anyone make head or tail of the deletions?

KF


body:
At 06:10 PM 6/9/03 -0700, Daniel Ehrenberg wrote:
>Awlthoh that wuznt reelee fuhnehtik, I agree with Steverigo in priciple.
>The only problem is that we are trying to create an encyclopedia (not
>insyklohpeedeeuh) that is, in most ways, similar to others. That's really
>what it comes down to. If you want to convince Fred that
>Internet-encyclopedia should use pseudo-phonetic spelling, then fine.
>Stevertigo isn't trying to promote illiteracy, he's trying to do a very
>noble thing to start a movement to make English more regular and
>accessable. Actually, I'm trying to do the same thing. It would be nice to
>collaborate with Steveritigo on first making English easier and then
>making a wikipedia in that language.

The problem with phonetic spelling is, always, whose dialect? The Texan one
that Molly
Ivins renders by spelling business "bidness"? New York, with our wondrous
mix of four
centuries of languages and accents? Glaswegian? A friend of mine was
greatly confused
when someone told her that "The mile is on strike"--she wondered what that
meant, and
whether they could use kilometers instead, before realizing that while
she'd heard "mile",
her Australian friend had meant "mail."

As for making English easier, the language has the momentum of a billion
speakers.
Efforts at standardizing on any simplified English have fallen down because
people
want the flexibility they get from wide vocabulary (which is not unique to
English--the
same problem would emerge in trying to standardize and simplify any living
language).

Making individual articles, paragraphs, and sentences clearer and easier to
read is a
worthwhile task. It's one of the ways I make my living. And it can't be
reduced to a
formula.
--
Vicki Rosenzweig
vr at redbird.org
http://www.redbird.org


body:
LittleDan wrote:

>*Neither the kids nor Michael (likes/like) to go to the park now that they use
>Wikipedia.

Plural beats singular, so "like".
(I'm not positive that every authority would agree,
but this is what I've always known.)

>*One in six people (uses/use) a peer-to-peer network.

The noun is "one", with "people" merely part of an adjectival preposition,
so "uses".  (I'm positive about this one.)

It's not enough to know the right answer; you must know why! ^_^

>(I put my guesses in bold). My mom and I can't definitively tell which one
>is right. For these, it is a matter of which grammarian you talk to. If you
>insist on perfect grammar, something like this may cause excessive back-and
>fourth editing, maybe even an edit war. I'm just thinking worst-case-scenario.

Indeed, should such an edit war come up, we'd need to remember
not to sweat the small stuff.  Even the species capitalisation
is important primarily because it affects naming conventions.

-- Toby


body:
LittleDan wrote:

>I don't know what you're referring to as 'standard english'.

It's an imprecise term.  But I explained it in the text that you quoted:
>>more precisely, that English that is widely understood around the world.
To be sure, *that* is still imprecise!  But it's a reasonable goal for us,
and any further arguments should be directed towards that goal, IMO.

>There are many forms of English. First, there's American English, British
>English, Australian English, and Irish English. Then each country has its
>legalese, which might be regarded as official english.

Legalese is quite irrelevant.  I said "standard", not "official"!

>Then, within American English, there are several similar gramatical dialects
>that states create for the purpose of standardised testing (oops, I can't
>spell like that on the test, that's the British spelling)

Yes, those are awful!

>and each state has its own dialect of the national legalese.

-- Toby


from_name: Stevertigo

body:
> KQ writes:
> You couldn't have invoked [[Godwin's law]] instead?
> ;-)

I had to refresh my recollection:
Godwin's Law     prov.     [Usenet] "As a Usenet discussion grows longer,
the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one."
There is a tradition in many groups that, once this occurs, that thread is
over, and whoever mentioned the Nazis has automatically lost whatever
argument was in progress. Godwin's Law thus practically guarantees the
existence of an upper bound on thread length in those groups. However there
is also a widely- recognized codicil that any intentional triggering of
Godwin's Law in order to invoke its thread-ending effects will be
unsuccessful.

Jeez this says it all doesnt it?  %)

-SM

PS:::. - I feel I owe the group an a......
po....
Aw fuck it. Almost all o u understand. :)


body:
> Toby wrote: "English is not the property of English speakers".
> You might well argue that not all English speakers
> live in the US and the British Commonwealth

Yea I meant "property of "native" English speakers. Its a mandatory 2nd
language around the world, and yadda....

> >RK:Pseudo-academic, pseudo-egalitarian nonsense.  That's the
> >same kind of talk that has damaged the education of much of
> >the inner-city youth in America. Only in the last decade
> >have educators finally had the nerve to attack this point
> >of view, and to correct the course that our schools were
> >making.
>
> Toby:Of course I disagree with what seems to be another implict premise,
> that failing to adopt, or even know, the trappings of mainstream society
> is necessarily a sign of "poor education".

Brilliant. Toby is cutting through the crap like a snowplow today.

> Toby: Despite the arguments over theoretical matters and value judgements,
> it's not clear to me that *any* of us would produce different
encyclop?dias.

Yeah, I did go off a bit - and in retrospect, I regret my haste - Jay's
announcement framed essentially "Im in an Edit war with a Chinese guy who
cant write English."
As "lets make a point of singling out foreigners who cant write English like
the Queen does." A very hasty and unthought response - that was perhaps
better expressed as a question of intent. Apo.... to James, and even Robert.

We all do have to clean up our points - thank you Dan, Toby, others for
being bearers of the torch...

SM


body:
jlk7e (John Kenny) wrote in part:

>To get in on this wonderful debate, can I say that RK and Stevertigo are both
>full of it?

We're trying to practise WikiLove here,
even if all of us feel the same way privately.

>In particular, phonetic spelling is never going to come and is, in my opinion,
>not particularly desirable.  It would, among other things, make any older book
>ultimately unreadable.  English came to its current (relatively) standardized
>orthography by a lengthy process of natural development, for the most part.

And what impositions by unnatural means have occured weren't always so great!
They put the silent "S" back in "isle" (where it hadn't been missed) --
and at the same time put one in "island" that had never before existed.
Then Webster changed "-ise" to "-ize", putting the United States
out of step with every other English speaking country,
while failing to (as he wanted) phoneticise the usage of "s"
(instead just switching one rule for another).

>In any event, how would any mass spelling revision even come about?

Webster tried, but he was only able to affect one country.
Shaw tried, but he wasn't able to affect anybody permanently.
LittleDan may try with a decentralised approach --
we'll see how well he does.

>In any event, the issue of spelling really has very little to do with the
>initial question, which had more to do with grammar (and with wikipedia,
>even!).  And I genuinely don't understand the argument that using correct
>grammar is somehow cultural imperialism.  Like spelling, English grammar rules
>evolved over centuries, and have, for the most part, been followed in written
>language (with some variations, as who/whom problems, for instance).

The main point (IMO) of the accusers of cultural imperialism
is that the variations over the centuries have been much greater!
This is true even in the written language, but more so in the spoken,
and that a language hasn't been written down much before
is little argument against writing it now (see [[nds:]] aka [[za:]]).
Bangladeshi dialect would qualify here -- they learn this natively
and are hardly making *mistakes*.

Now, there's a question as to whether what JTDirl was *originally*
complaining about is this, or ESL users that *are* making mistakes.
But this is, I think, what SV and RK are arguing about *now*.

As for Wikipedia, I still believe that every participant in this debate
is changing things to standard, internationally understood written forms
(sometimes even changing one standard form to another, which is OK too).
So interesting as the debate is, I doubt that it'll have any impact
on Wikipedia!

-- Toby


from_name: Walter Vermeir

body:
Brion Vibber <vibber at aludra.usc.edu> wrote in
news:Pine.GSO.4.33.0306091530260.15527-100000 at aludra.usc.edu:

> On Mon, 9 Jun 2003, Anthere wrote:
>> > Is it planned to make it available to other wikis as
>> > well ? 2 and 3 in particular
>>
>> I think my question was missed. Probably because I
>> adressed it to the wrong list.
>>
>> International people are wondering when the last
>> english features will be applied to other phase III
>> wikipedias. Is there anything we should provide you to
>> help there ?
>
> The original plan was to put all wikis onto the new server _and_ new
> software after a few days of testing of the english one. I'm not sure if
> we should be putting more pressure on larousse just yet, though... it's
> about holding steady (and right now a little under the wheather as it
> regenerates new cache files).
>
> If there's no objection, I'll go ahead and upgrade the software for the
> remaining phase 3s tonight, while leaving them on pliny.
>
> -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
>

So long the Wikipedias works it is not important of it is on larousse or
plinty from a user point of view. It seems logical to put the Wikipedia
that gets 80% of all traffic on a different server.

I have no complaints about the working of Wikipedia NL the last weeks.

There are some .com wikipedia's waiting for a long time to be converted to
the fase III version. That is more important instead of making sure all
Wikipedia's are running the most current version.

A question from the plattd??tsche Wikipedia;
Is there a technical problem or not to make the wiki-language code "nds" to
work?

Walter Vermeir,
formaly known as Giskart

--
Contact: walter AT wikipedia.be


subject: [WikiEN-l] This is the English Wikipedia - Ideas

body:
Vicki's Right - and well thought out...

The Chinese have a different but similar problem.. Their pictographs
originally were sposed to be ideographic - compound ideas to represent more
difficult concepts, etc..

The problem was that Han Chinese was only one of hundreds of varied dialects
that developed over the millenia (Chinas a huge place). To make a long story
short, Chinese today is a combination of ideographic, phonetic (horse+female
means mother as horse indicates a "ma" sound.) deflective ( ideographs one
step removed etc.) and lastly there are pictures that represent things that
noone can figure out how and why the hell they got that way. :)

As [[ethnoconvergence]] continues at its speedy rate - the notions of
holding onto traditional ways of doing things should simply be left to
happen, But this wont happen - it will cause people to get pissy and wars
will happen and thats what sucks about humanity. Funny I just read a little
piece about this in a well known graphic novel - (email for the torrent
file - clear a cd worth of disk.)

But Vicki hits it. I think the answer (in part) is a pure ideographic
system - based on the thousands of years development of Han gi (Kanji). This
could cross boundaries and be language independent. And yes, Daniel, I would
be more than glad to correspond with you on developing this idea further.
Get a trial copy of FlashMX - and email me.

WikiLovin to all :) -SM

> The problem with phonetic spelling is, always, whose dialect? The Texan
one
> that Molly
> Ivins renders by spelling business "bidness"? New York, with our wondrous
> mix of four
> centuries of languages and accents? Glaswegian? A friend of mine was
> greatly confused
> when someone told her that "The mile is on strike"--she wondered what that
> meant, and
> whether they could use kilometers instead, before realizing that while
> she'd heard "mile",
> her Australian friend had meant "mail."
>
> As for making English easier, the language has the momentum of a billion
> speakers.
> Efforts at standardizing on any simplified English have fallen down
because
> people
> want the flexibility they get from wide vocabulary (which is not unique to
> English--the
> same problem would emerge in trying to standardize and simplify any living
> language).
>
> Making individual articles, paragraphs, and sentences clearer and easier
to
> read is a
> worthwhile task. It's one of the ways I make my living. And it can't be
> reduced to a
> formula.


body:
--- Stevertigo <stevertigo at attbi.com> wrote:
> Robert
> > Pseudo-academic, pseudo-egalitarian nonsense.
> That's the
> > same kind of talk that has damaged the education
> of much of
> > the inner-city youth in America.
>
> Robert, if noone else will say it - I will. Youre so
> full of crap.
> Thank you very much for listening.
>
> > Frankly, it is also racist in effect. This kind of
> attitude
> > has created two generations of poorly educated
> Hispanic and
> > Black youth in American cities. I couldn't think
> of a
> > better plan for the KKK  to promote if they want
> to keep
> > racism alive forever.
>
> God, what horrible garbage.
>
> > And frankly, many of our articles are being
> damaged by
> > people with good intentions, but who have poor
> English
> > reading or writing skills (or both.)
>
> Oh, God, what a crapload.
>
> > In Stevertigo's bizarre universe, it is
> egalitarian to
> > encourage this illiteracy, which in the end would
> produce
> > unreadable articles.  In our universe, we are
> trying to
> > ecudate an English speaking audience.
>
> Well, cutting through all of Robert's crap - the one
> VALID point he makes
> (underneath all the crap, acrimony, etc...) is that
> a common language
> should'nt go willy nilly in different directions.
> But it's fucking elitist
> as tea-sipping lessons to dictate what is "proper"
> in most contexts -
> because you personally dont own it - whether it be a
> religion or a language.
>
> Americans and Englishmen are a minority of English
> speakers. Toby(I think)
> made a valid point that there is already a page
> calling attention to pages
> in need of a rewrite - the problem is that people do
> what they are
> interested in.
> (And most pages are in need of a "rewrite" - whether
> its a complete hack
> job - or a little comma is missing somewhere.)
>
> If people with little teeny tiny sphincters want to
> take it upon themselves
> to focus like a lynch mob on poor, unsuspecting
> Bengalis, fine. But dont
> bitch when I pull the hoods off your heads. Wanna
> correct the bad English? -
> DO IT. But dont come here talking about instituting
> ideologies that are
> fundamentally elitist.
>
> WikiLove be upon you, Kaiser
>
> - Steven MacGrieves

I would like to add a couple more words to the subject

The word "english-speaking" is misleading. Wikipedia
is for english-speaking clearly, but here,
english-speaking does mean any person able to
understand english, not native english-speaking
person. In that sense, english wikipedia is for
english people is true, if it encompass any person
able to read english. It should not limit itself to
native english only. You guys should be proud. So many
of us are using your language now. Even when no
native-english is around, if that is the best for us
to communicate.
I agree wikipedia should be properly written. I just
don't know along which standards, I always failed to
find a grammar book for your language, as French
language has. But in any case, the language escaped
you. English language is not only the language of
native english. It is also ours. Maybe, is it an
international english.

I know quite well I am part of this terminology gap.

I am fully aware of my limitations. Which is why I
never participate in writing meta pages on en (which I
do a lot on fr), as I know people are very keen in
having those very properly written.
Which is also why I very rarely refactor other people
prose; I add, I sometimes remove, I create mostly.
This way, I try to avoid people from accusing me of
"damaging" their work and letting an article in poorer
shape than it was before my input. I basically only
create because I think "not very good" is better than
"no article" at all.

I also several times asked other people to review my
work, and usually people did so very kindly. I must
say I don't really appreciate that some mention in the
comment box that "obviously this has been written by
an non-english and needs much work" and then leave
without doing more than correcting a typo.
If someone is willing to go through all my major
contributions to clean up after me, it is all listed
on my page and old contributions page.

I know quite well Robert is including me in these
people who should be elsewhere than here, as he
suggested a couple of times that I should quit
wikipedia if not being able to read and express myself
properly in english.

That is one of the reasons why, I quit trying to do
anythink on the knowledge article, being aware it
would risk again being considered vandalism as he said
I was guilty on the gaia articles.

Now, I have some doubts. I see that he is doing the
same with the next contributor he is sharing an
article with. Similarly, while in disagreement with
him,

see
http://www.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Talk:Knowledge&diff=1017714&oldid=1016720

He is using the supposed "inability to understand and
speak english" to bully people he does not agree with.

This is so embarassing

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Calendar - Free online calendar with sync to Outlook(TM).
http://calendar.yahoo.com


from_name: Robert Graham Merkel

subject: [Wikipedia-l] What's the slowdown?

body:
The 'pedia seems very slow over the past couple of weeks, despite the new
server.

What's causing the slowdowns?  Is it just that the 'pedia is being overwhelmed
with traffic?  Are there additional performance tweaks left in the software,
or is more hardware the only thing that can be thrown at the problem?

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

--------------------------------------------------------------------------


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Filtering, etc.

body:
  ----- Original Message -----
  From: Daniel Ehrenberg
  To: wikien-l at wikipedia.org
  Sent: Monday, June 09, 2003 7:04 PM
  Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Re: Filtering, etc.

  Did you ever show your mother Bomis? That really is pornography.

  Jimmy Wales <jwales at bomis.com> wrote:
    Dante Alighieri wrote:
    > I'm sorry, but if other people want to censor information from themselves
    > and children in their charge, that's /their/ problem, not ours. I don't see
    > why we need to be held hostage to the Puritanical views of a few people out
    > there who think that it would somehow be a disaster if a child read the
    > felching article. Why do their work for them? If they want a filter, let
    > /them/ write it. Let /them/ argue what it should filter. Let's leave
    > Wikipedia just the way it is.

    In what we are we held hostage just by including content metadata and
    allowing people a simple option for how they want to view the
    wikipedia? I think such dramatic analogies would be appropriate if
    our only possible course of actions were to either self-censor or let
    it all hang out, but it seems to me that we have several p! romising
    alternatives that pose a useful compromise.

    Again, I ask you to think not of schools and their issues, but of me
    and my issues. I'm a modern person offended by almost nothing. And
    yet, I wouldn't like to be showing my mother wikipedia and say, o.k.,
    here is how you edit, and over here is where people can see the recent
    changes, and OH MY!!, er, well, uh, really, this isn't about porn, ma.

    --Jimbo
    _______________________________________________
    WikiEN-l mailing list
    WikiEN-l at wikipedia.org
    http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
  Do you Yahoo!?
  Free online calendar with sync to Outlook(TM).
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body:
I wrote in part:

>The main point (IMO) of the accusers of cultural imperialism
>is that the variations over the centuries have been much greater!

Erg ... I *meant*:
the variations that we have *today* as a *result* of
the evolution over the centuries (which the OP referred to).

>Now, there's a question as to whether what JTDirl was *originally*
>complaining about is this, or ESL users that *are* making mistakes.
>But this is, I think, what SV and RK are arguing about *now*.

"this" in the last sentence refers to the same as "this" in the first:
all the stuff that came before.  They're not arguing over the question.

See, this is why I read my posts again when they come through in the digest!
^_^

-- Toby


body:
Dan: "Is this his first offence? If so, he shouldn't be banned?"

No, Dan. Robert has repeatedly commited the absolute crime of calling people racist anti-Semites. In his message - he seems to be quite quick to admit it.
I do not favor banning anyone based on their ethnicity, their degree of consumedness in thier religions and ethnic traditions. I do favor banning people based on their vile treatment of others. Robert has invited all the negative Karma he recieves - as it is will all Karmic issues.

As Anthere quite eloquently put it - Robert is using Antheres inability in English as a way of trying to chase him off to somewhere else. In fact, despite Anthere's broken English - he is far more expressive in it than Robert - even giving even a hint of pity for his subject.

I dont pity Robert - but I do condemn his actions - his acrimony and venom constantly thrown at people. If he was on an episode of survivor, he'd be kicked off early. He would gripe like a grinch that the reason was "anti-Semitism", but the truth would be that it was his own piss-poor attitude that made others dislike him.  Join the world Robert. I hope your not too old to take a vacation. Get some RandR like the Brazilians do every year. Youll be happier - and you can take the lofty weight of your tribe off your shoulders, finally. Your ego overshadows your faith sometimes. As it does with all of us.

God Bless,
-SM
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body:
Anth?re wrote in small part:

>http://www.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Talk:Knowledge&diff=1017714&oldid=1016720

That's a very interesting diff that you have there, Anth?re.

-- Toby


from_name: jlk7e at juno.com

body:
To get in on this wonderful debate, can I say that RK and Stevertigo are both full of it?

In particular, phonetic spelling is never going to come and is, in my opinion, not particularly desirable.  It would, among other things, make any older book ultimately unreadable.  English came to its current (relatively) standardized orthography by a lengthy process of natural development, for the most part.  Further, I'd say that spelling is surely one of the least difficult parts of learning a foreign language.  The process of foreign language learning (as opposed to learning one's own native language) is geared towards seeing the words in print, and I'd say I'm probably considerably less likely to misspell words in French or German than I am in English, simply because I associate French and German words at least as much with what they look like in print as with what they sound like.  And French words are at least as non-phonetically spelled as English words, although the pronunciations associated with the non-phoneticness in French is probably more standard than in English.

In any event, how would any mass spelling revision even come about?

In any event, the issue of spelling really has very little to do with the initial question, which had more to do with grammar (and with wikipedia, even!).  And I genuinely don't understand the argument that using correct grammar is somehow cultural imperialism.  Like spelling, English grammar rules evolved over centuries, and have, for the most part, been followed in written language (with some variations, as who/whom problems, for instance).  The fact that somebody who has learned English as a second language does not know how to properly express an idea in English suggests to me that it ought to be corrected, not that somehow us native English-speakers are exercising our cultural hegemony over non-native English speakers.  Personally, I wouldn't mind if a native French speaker exerted their cultural hegemony over a hypothetical effort on my part to write something in French by correcting improper grammar (and word use, perhaps).  In fact, I would hope that that would be done.  I don't see how having articles written in some kind of pidgin would have any value over being written in proper English.  Would the incorrect English written by a native speaker of Chinese be more or less intelligible to a native speaker of Russian than correct English?  I don't see why the former would be, at the very least.

In any event, I shall maintain my ridiculously Burkean views on this subject against all you linguistic Jacobins.

best,

John Kenney (jlk7e)


from_name: Fred Bauder

body:
I have had quite a bit of experience in trying to communicate with Chinese
native speakers, including some from the mainland, who are trying to use
English. I have always valued that communication regardless of the various
difficulties that we have encountered with syntax and grammar. On the whole
regardless of whatever difficulties this communication is especially
valuable to everyone concerned.

To crab up and fall into a negative posture is simply rude beyond words. In
the case of Wikipedia articles I can't imagine a more productive situation
than a free-flowing and respectful relationship with the fluent English
speaker sometimes editing a bit for syntax and the native Chinese speaker
grounding material in Chinese reality. It's always worth the trouble.

Fred


subject: [Wikitech-l] edit conflicts in preview mode

body:
On Tue, 2003-06-10 at 06:12, Kurt Jansson wrote:
> I didn't have any edit conflicts in preview mode in the last months. I
> only get them after hitting the save button. But I'm quite sure the
> software used to check for edit conflicts also wenn hitting on "preview".
>
> Was this a necessairy change, or is it just a bug?

I don't think it ever did that....?

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Baltic, Central European, Russian fonts in
	Wikipedia

body:
On Tue, 2003-06-10 at 07:49, Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote:
> It needs to have encoding switched to Unicode.
> Brion ... ? ;)

ARRRRRGGGGGHHHH

I have no free time, I haven't finished the $@&*(% upgrade script, so we
can't upgrade things yet.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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from_name: Jason Richey

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Fair use

body:
Understood...

But how does that "enourmous amount of work" compare to the legal
situation that everyone (or maybe half of everyone) seems to think we
are in now.

Also, is this really a Wikitech topic to begin with?

Jason

Brion Vibber wrote:

> On Mon, 9 Jun 2003, Jason Richey wrote:
> > Why are we so stuck on the GFDL?  Are we (as a community) opposed to
> > operating under another (though equally free) license that is more
> > specific about quoutes and such?
>
> Love it or hate it, we're pretty much stuck with it. Since we don't
> require contributors to assign copyright of their work to any central
> entity, switching licenses would require the permission of everyone who
> has contributed material.
>
> With thousands of contributors, many of whom are known only by a transient
> network address and plenty of whom may be long gone and uncontactable, it
> would be impractical to get such permission for the entire encyclopedia.
> Hypothetically one could fork a new Wikipedia base using only material by
> people known to have agreed to a license change, but it would be an
> enormous amount of work to sort through it, and then you've got to redo
> all the stuff that's missing.
>
> -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikipedia.org
> http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l

--
"Jason C. Richey" <jasonr at bomis.com>


body:
Stevertigo wrote: stuff that's not relevant to this post but in a format
that is....

Black text on  black background? Aggghhh!

sannse

p.s. Anthere = she, as she has said many, many times.

</grump>


from_name: Christopher Mahan

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Baltic, Central European, Russian fonts in Wikipedia

body:
--- Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com> wrote:

> ARRRRRGGGGGHHHH

/me pats Brion on the back.

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

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Calendar - Free online calendar with sync to Outlook(TM).
http://calendar.yahoo.com


subject: [WikiEN-l] More colonialist ravings

body:
I don't understand why Anthere is making personal attacks
towards me.  I was disturbed by Entmoot of Troll's
anti-Jewish remarks.  Anthere's response to this was to
ignore the content of my post, make a defense of EofT, and
then attack me. What should one conclude from her
behaviour?

Listen: I will make it simple.  When you have an
intellectual disagreement with someone, don't descend to
racial or ethnic stereotypes or slurs.  If you are unable
to follow this rule, leave Wikipedia. We don't want bigots
here. Is this so outrageous?

Further, if someone is unable to clearly express what they
mean in English, then what they are writing here is almost
useless.  I don't understand how people can argue
otherwise.  If you really want to fill an encyclopedia with
incomprehenisble, vague and poorly written text, please do
so...but do so elsewhere.

It isn't racist, elitist, "scientist" or colonialist to
wish that articles, and discussions on Talk pages, should
be comprehensible.  Is this too hard to understand?  Or am
I being "colonialist" again...

Robert (RK)

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subject: [WikiEN-l] Two different cases of working with non-native English speakers

body:
Fred Bauder wirtes:

> To crab up and fall into a negative posture is simply
> rude beyond words. In the case of Wikipedia articles
> I can't imagine a more productive situation than
> a free-flowing and respectful relationship with
> the fluent English speaker sometimes editing a bit for
> syntax and the native Chinese speaker grounding material
> in Chinese reality. It's always worth the trouble.

Um, I am totally confused. Why are you rebutting a position
that no one has?  I certainly never offered a position
anything like the one Fred is imagining.  In fact, I
totally agree with everything Fred has written here.  I
think it is *wonderful* that an English speaker would work
with someone to help improve an article.

I just don't like it when someone with poor English skills
is rude to English speakers, and insist on adding material
and phrasings that are vague, incomprehensible, mistaken,
or using non-standard definitions of words that no other
English speakers use.

Is the difference between these two cases clear now?

Sheesh,

Robert (RK)

=====
"I prefer a wicked person who knows he is wicked, to a righteous person who knows he is righteous".
The Seer of Lublin [Jacob Isaac Ha-Hozeh Mi-Lublin, 1745-1815]

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subject: [Wikitech-l] Bugs (again)

body:
Hi,

in the german Datebase are still some bugs:

select cur_id,cur_title, count(cur_title) as num  from cur where
cur_namespace=0 group by cur_title order by num desc limit 5

Which way is the best to get rid of those double enties?

- Delete them via SQL usind the cur_id?
- Delete them both via ''delete article'' and insert the one of interesst
again? (if that works)
- something completly different?

Sorry, for asking again after 3 weeks.

--
Smurf

smurf at AdamAnt.mud.de
-------------------------  Anthill inside! ---------------------------


body:
Hi! Can anyone tell me, please, what to do with characters (Baltic fonts) which do not appear correctly in lv.wikipedia.com? I can see, Czechs have solved similar problem. Typing ā and ņ is quite silly, doesn't it? Especially because every third character in Latvian looks like this.:) Please, help me! I am starting Latvian Wikipedia, and it cannot develop until the problem is solved.

Reinis Lazda
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from_name: Kurt Jansson

body:
I didn't have any edit conflicts in preview mode in the last months. I
only get them after hitting the save button. But I'm quite sure the
software used to check for edit conflicts also wenn hitting on "preview".

Was this a necessairy change, or is it just a bug?

Kurt


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [Wikitech-l] New username validation

body:
Toby Bartels wrote:

>>Hum. Today, on the french wiki, a utilisateur:Fare
>>appeared.
>>
>>We also have a utilisateur:Far?, who is the same (I
>>guess, I am not even entirely sure) than the
>>user:Far?.
>>
>
>[[Fr:Utilisateur:Fare]] works on the same articles
>as [[Fr:Utilisateur:Far?]], and they immediately got into edit wars.
>It looks pretty deliberate to me -- this is another imposture.
>(My French isn't good enough to understand the substance of the edit wars
>without a lot more work than I'm willing to do, however. ^_^)
>
>
>I don't agree with Far?'s point of view as expressed on [[en:]]
>(although I haven't checked if they're violating NPOV there),
>but that wouldn't excuse imposture.
>
Anthere has already raised the issue on my talk page in French, and I
have aleady responded in French.  Although my French is adequate to the
task, it will take someone with a more formal understanding of the
political philosophy of liberalism and libertarianism as well as their
respective histories to sort this out.  Far? seems to be confounding the
two ideas, and he currently has the link from [[en:Libetarianism]]
pointing to [[fr:lib?ralisme]] as though the two were equivalent.
 Far?'s opposition seems to be too busy waving the "Ban the vandal"
placards to come up with any meaningful solution.  Sounds like down home
week on Fr:Wiki. :-)

Ec


body:
>  Robert wroites: Um, I am totally confused.

That much is certain.

> I just don't like it when someone with poor English skills
> is rude to English speakers, and insist on adding material
> and phrasings that are vague, incomprehensible, mistaken,
> or using non-standard definitions of words that no other
> English speakers use.
> Is the difference between these two cases clear now?

Yes, the difference is clear, and those of us who jumped on the gun about
the have admitted our mistake in misunderstanding the problem. In the
future, it would be helpful if one (in this case, James - and afterward
Robert) phrases the problem in the correct way: "Im having an EDIT WAR with
so and so, and he's under some misconceptions about several things. His
English is also poor. I'd like some help."

Thats it! Nes pa?

I admit to having complicated matters by introducing my pet theories of
phonetic English (someday...) etc. At least YoungDan seemed interested.

_SM


subject: [WikiEN-l] More colonialist ravings

body:
> Robert again (gosh) : I don't understand why Anthere is making personal
attacks
> towards me.  I was disturbed by Entmoot of Troll's
> anti-Jewish remarks.  Anthere's response to this was to
> ignore the content of my post, make a defense of EofT, and
> then attack me. What should one conclude from her
> behaviour?

Anthere was putting it all into context - the context of Robert - who has a
long history of crying wolf - "anti-Semitism" - "anti-Semitism"...  (Its
old. I'll write up a psychological profile of you if you like.) There was
nothing anti-Semitic in the statement - (which was obvious ) so Anthere made
the logical leap of explaining the "why," rather than just the "what." And
the "why" seems to be more with you Robert.
Funny, huh?

> Listen: I will make it simple.  When you have an
> intellectual disagreement with someone, don't descend to
> racial or ethnic stereotypes or slurs.  We don't want bigots
> here. Is this so outrageous?

This is agreeable. The problem is Robert that - for a great many
reasons -its not clear to us that your *not a bigot, Robert.  Here, in fact,
what your attempting is - as Toby (I think) alluded to - is to provoke
Godwin's Law. Youre by far the quickest to call people the name "bigot" -
etc... (Which reminds us of another law - "He who smelt it - dealt it.")

> Further, if someone is unable to clearly express what they
> mean in English, then what they are writing here is almost
> useless.

This is wrong - even a broken, unintellegible stub can be transformed. Your
wanting to oust people for not writing English well is at the very least,
elitist - and smacks of the same kind of bigotry you espouse countering.

At least your tone seems more reasonable. I dont want you to leave - youre a
valuable point of view. You simply need to tone down the acrimony. Others
have told you this - I'm sure your Mother probably has too - at one point or
another. I know mine has.

Xiao xin!
-SM


from_name: Tomasz Wegrzanowski

body:
On Tue, Jun 10, 2003 at 01:42:23PM +0300, Wikipedia at inbox.lv wrote:
> Hi! Can anyone tell me, please, what to do with characters (Baltic fonts) which do not
> appear correctly in lv.wikipedia.com? I can see, Czechs have solved similar problem.
> Typing ā and ņ is quite silly, doesn't it? Especially because every third
> character in Latvian looks like this.:) Please, help me! I am starting Latvian
> Wikipedia, and it cannot develop until the problem is solved.
>
> Reinis Lazda

It needs to have encoding switched to Unicode.
Brion ... ? ;)


from_name: Daniel Ehrenberg

body:
Of course, but a non-native speaker shouldn't
repeatedly force his incorrect grammar onto wikipedia
after it has already been fixed by a native english
speaker.

--- Fred Bauder <fredbaud at ctelco.net> wrote:
> I have had quite a bit of experience in trying to
> communicate with Chinese
> native speakers, including some from the mainland,
> who are trying to use
> English. I have always valued that communication
> regardless of the various
> difficulties that we have encountered with syntax
> and grammar. On the whole
> regardless of whatever difficulties this
> communication is especially
> valuable to everyone concerned.
>
> To crab up and fall into a negative posture is
> simply rude beyond words. In
> the case of Wikipedia articles I can't imagine a
> more productive situation
> than a free-flowing and respectful relationship with
> the fluent English
> speaker sometimes editing a bit for syntax and the
> native Chinese speaker
> grounding material in Chinese reality. It's always
> worth the trouble.
>
> Fred
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l

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