body:
On 11/6/03 5:08 PM, "James Duffy" <jtdire at hotmail.com> wrote:

> The Cunctator's idea that if one person opposed a deletion it should be
> stopped is farcical. Wikipedia does have a few people whose contribution to
> debates are 'whatever everyone else wants, I oppose just to be different'.
> If someone wrote an article [[Adolf Hitler was a nun]] the same small group
> would be out on the barricades defending it just to be different. They see
> wikipedia as some sort of game to wage extremist agendas, whether political,
> ideological or analytical. The rules being followed where high-threshholds
> are required for deletion (2/3 etc) are sensible and don't allow the 'watch
> me cause trouble' brigade to force wikipedia to keep nutty, absurd
> ridiculous articles, often through false names being created to allow
> multiple votes.

The straw man arguments are farcical. I don't consider unreasonable
objections to be valid. I do have a wider definition of what I consider
reasonable (when it comes to inclusion) than you do.

> As to the victims of 9/11, there is not one iota of justification for
> keeping these articles on wikipedia. What happened on 9/11 was horrible,
> disgusting and outrageous, but wikipedia is an encyclopedia, not a shrine.
> The US suffered a horrible experience but so have many nations and peoples
> have had just as horrific experiences, many indeed far far worse (the
> Holocaust, Hiroshima, Vietnam, the Hundred Years War, two World Wars, etc).
> Articles based on the Irish War of Independence that covered individuals
> murdered by the British or the IRA, ('Mickey O'Brien was a good man and
> father'; 'Sir Laurence O'Keeffe was a kind employer and father', etc) would
> deservedly be binned.

Again, a straw man argument: your examples violate NPOV.

> America's traumatic experiences in /one/ series of
> incidents, which by world standards has a relatively small death toll,
> cannot be given 'special' treatment no matter how emotionally traumatic the
> impact on the US and its psyche. This is a world encyclopedia, not an
> American one, and cannot treat the life of one US victim as more worthy of
> attention than a Palestinian victim, an Israeli victim, a Holocaust victim,
> an Irish victim, a British victim, a Somali victim, a Chilean victim, etc.
> These pages give the impression that US victims are somehow /more important/
> and in a special league to every other.

Again, this is the "some people put so much work into carefully researching
the reports on the lives of the people killed that day and creating entries
for them, and we can't be bothered to do the same for other people who have
been killed, so we should delete all the entries" argument.


list: wikitech-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] re Need developers (by Tim Starling

body:
On Nov 6, 2003, at 17:04, Dave Caroline wrote:
> Been lurking for a while would like to join in!

Welcome!

> Found a few bugs already!
> $_SERVER
>
> php does not guarantee I quote "You may or may not find any of the
> following elements in $_SERVER." and then lists constants.
> 'HTTP_ACCEPT_CHARSET' seems to be missing in my test environment.

If the header's not there we get a blank and use a default value. If
your PHP error reporting settings are insanely strict it may complain
about this idiom and unnecessarily spam the error log; take E_NOTICE
out if you've got it on. See:
http://us4.php.net/manual/en/phpdevel-errors.php#internal.e-notice

It's not strictly necessary to explicitly check with isset() or empty()
here, but it is good programming style; please feel free to submit a
cleanup patch!

(Do you have a sourceforge account?)

> Update install notes in phase3 to mention the include_once bug in
> php/windows (fix code to avoid in future). It took me ages to find out
> about this. I only stumbled accross this in meta after a long
> persistent search.

I'm not familiar with this bug (or any other Windows eccentricities PHP
may have), can you explain?

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


list: wikien-l

from_name: The Cunctator

subject: [WikiEN-l] Rampant Deletionism

body:
On 11/6/03 5:32 PM, "James Duffy" <jtdire at hotmail.com> wrote:

> There are certain
> things that are utterly and completely irrelevant to encyclopedias. Follow
> Jimbo's argument about paper and should a medical book about colon cancer
> also include articles on Manchester United, a biography of George Bush also
> mention mosquitos, a non-paper book on Napoleon's sex life mention DW's
> edits of sports pages on wikipedia?
>
> Would they do so? Of course not.  A medical book or a biography only can
> contain what is relevant, irrespective of whether there is room to contain
> something else. Ditto with encyclopedias. The above articles have no
> relevance to encyclopedic content. Normal coverage of atrocities don't even
> mention each individual victims, let alone give them /individual/
> biographical entries that tell us they were a disco-dancer. What next?
> Include details of how long Tsar Nicholas like to grow his nail on his left
> big toe? Give details of who made Eamon de Valera's glasses? Discuss the
> weaving pattern used to make Mother Teresa's garments. Come of it. That
> approach would be to encyclopedias what the Muppet Show is to studying
> animal husbandry.

Your assertion that you know the bounds of the ideal encyclopedia is
presumptive. An encyclopedia is a *comprehensive, inclusive* reference.
It should include information about colon cancer, Manchester United, George
Bush, mosquitos, Muppets, animal husbandry, Napoleon's sex life, who made
Eamon de Valera's glasses, the weaving pattern used to make Mother Teresa's
garments, etc.

If it only included the length of Tsar Nicholas's toenails it would be a
farce. But when it includes that information as one element of millions, it
starts to resemble an encyclopedia.

One of the great flaws with the traditional approach to history is its bias
towards the narrative of the hero--that the current world is best understood
as a single dramatic storyline with a few important protagonists and
antagonists. Perhaps you believe that is a complete and accurate
representation of the world, but I don't. I believe that the world, society,
etc. are best understood as products of the interaction of billions of
individuals. To gain a perfectly accurate picture of the world, we'd need to
know all of their stories. The closer we come to that the better.

Of course, one would want to start with those that are collectively accepted
as pivotal.

But we should not exclude knowledge in the pursuit of understanding.


from_name: Stan Shebs

subject: [WikiEN-l] Rampant Deletionism

body:
Jake Nelson wrote:

>[...] I'm going to propose again what I proposed
>once before: a temporary moratorium on deletions. Let's say two weeks.
>Copyvios will be the only exception. Blanking can be used if there's felt to
>be no value at all to the content, but if there's verifiable information in
>it, leave it. Let's try it and see what happens, hmmm?
>
I think this would be an interesting experiment; gives hardcore deletionists
an incentive to think about other ways to control junk, like creating
[[Junk Article]] and making bad articles redir to it - moves debate
from VfD to the talk pages where it should be in the first place. Notify on
VfD, then protect it; and as Vicki mentions, still allow instant deletion
of the asdfasdf stuff.

After two weeks, if [[Junk Article]] has a thousand redirs pointing
to it, deletionists can see "see, we told you so."

Stan


from_name: Rick

subject: [WikiEN-l] Rampant Deletionism

body:
Well, if people feel that there is a space for Wikipedia in these devotionals, and others that there is not, there is no middle ground, and therefore what is there to discuss?

Why shouldn't they be in the encyclopedia?  Because they make Wikipedia look bad.  People look at these articles and say, "How can they claim to be a serious encyclopedia when they have articles about how someone is beloved by their dog?"

RickK

Jimmy Wales <jwales at bomis.com> wrote:
Rick wrote:
> My opinion is the same as yours. Such articles have no place on
>Wikipedia.

Is your opinion the same as Gareth's that further discussion is
worthless? I hope not, and I hope he'll change his mind about that,
too.

I'm interested in hearing about just *why* you think such articles
"have no place on Wikipedia". What's the harm? How does it
negatively impact us?

---------------------------------
Do you Yahoo!?
Protect your identity with Yahoo! Mail AddressGuard
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/attachments/20031106/85934ccb/attachment.htm


from_name: Andre Engels

subject: [WikiEN-l] Rampant Deletionism

body:
"Alex Rosen" <arosen at novell.com> schrieb:
> "Wikipedia is not paper, but it is also not a collection place
> for trivia. It remains an encyclopedia, which remains that we do have
> to
> have some limits on what is and what is not interesting."
>
> Here's how I interpret Jimbo's stance: "Wikipedia 1.0" (the eventual
> edited version) will be an encyclopedia, but Wikipedia is not now
> actually an encyclopedia. And to get to the eventual 1.0 version, it's
> better to encourage contributors, even if that means that a lot of
> non-encyclopedic content is added, because this kind of inclusionist
> policy will encourage more encyclopedic content as well (by not pissing
> people off by deleting things that they write).
>
> I don't know if that's true, but I think his view on this is important,
> and I'm tired of arguing about this (both here and on VfD), and I think
> we need a firm policy. And I'm OK with this policy.

It's a point of view, but I don't share it. In my opinion, we should try to get Wikipedia be as much of an encyclopedia as possible. Having a  stable and published version will be interesting, but to me Wikipedia is the encyclopedia that we are making.

Andre Engels


from_name: Jake Nelson

subject: [WikiEN-l] Rampant Deletionism

body:
I haven't had much time for Wikipedia stuff lately, but I've been watching
the lists... the main reason I've refrained from several-day-delayed
responses has been that Cunctator has said it better than I could. With this
thread, it's very good to see Jimbo reminding people of the principles at
work here.

I've seen a distinct slide downward with VFD lately... a couple weeks ago, I
decided that I would no longer vote 'delete' on any article. Which doesn't
mean I voted keep on everything... only for those I felt had distinct value.
I abstained from otehrs simply because there's already so many delete votes
that will automatically appear for practically anything on VFD...

An experiment I won't make because I hate when people do stupid things to
prove a point, and I fear the point'd be proven: List everything on
Brilliant Prose on VFD. See how many delete votes you get. It'd likely be a
rather large number, with anything under 32K decried as a "useless stub" and
"unencyclopedic", and over 32K as a "long and pointless ramble".

Now, there's been discussion on [[Wikipedia_talk:Deletion policy]] about
criteria for valid voting. This is discussed in a few ways, but there is a
valid point that if there are going to be votes, there needs to be something
to oppose "sock puppets"... now that the edit-count barrier dropped from 100
to 25, and the account is only required to have existed for one week, I
don't have a particular problem with it. The 2/3s majority for deletion
bothers me a lot, even if (as has been pointed out to me) there are very few
articles that end up with votes in the range between 2/3 and 3/4 (which I
consider much more sensible). The trouble is, there are relatively few
people pushing for rules that restrict deletion- the majority of opinions on
the matter seem to be interested in reducing barriers to deletion as fast as
possible, putting the burden of proof on those defending an article... the
second most vocal faction (and it's become disturbingly factionalized there)
is those saying that it should all be a consensus thing, that any voting is
evil, that one person should be able to block any action. Which I don't find
terribly helpful.

I've seen a lot of dodging of the "what does it hurt?" question, the most
I've seen is "it DOES hurt" or "it doesn't belong in an encyclopedia". The
first response isn't an answer, and begs the question to be repeated. As to
the second... what do you define an encyclopedia as? LKWR is the only one
I've seen outline criteria (back on 10/31), 4 of which describe Wikipedia
excellently, and I disagree with the other 2.
The issue is that when people say "encyclopedia" they tend to be referring
to "paper encyclopedia", which is effectively all that's existed to date-
all the big encyclopedias have CD and 'net versions these days, but they're
just the paper with lots of pictures and some sounds and movies here and
there: the people who work on those versions are specifically told not to
put work into any text that won't go into the paper version (I have this
from a friend who worked on Grolier's online edition, who informs me that
the others do the same.). Wiki Is Not Paper. I strongly oppose use of things
like "that's not what an encyclopedia is", because what are you using as a
standard? F&W, Britannica, Grolier, something like that, yes? They're
designed around what fits in paper- there's massive size constraints. A full
print copy of Britannica is really, really big.

(This is getting a bit long.) I'm going to propose again what I proposed
once before: a temporary moratorium on deletions. Let's say two weeks.
Copyvios will be the only exception. Blanking can be used if there's felt to
be no value at all to the content, but if there's verifiable information in
it, leave it. Let's try it and see what happens, hmmm?

-- Jake


subject: [WikiEN-l] Rambot Census Junk

body:
I stronly object to that information as junk.  It is extremely useful, and deserves to be in the Wikipedia, just as much as information about any other location in the world.

RickK, the one that's being attacked as a deletionist

Fred Bauder <fredbaud at ctelco.net> wrote:

Let's do remember, though, that mass-importing raises a lot of
additional issues that are relevant here.

One of the checks and balances against triviality is "can it be
confirmed?" Another important one is "has anyone bothered to write
about it?" Mass-imports defeat this latter check, and so are subject
to a higher degree of scrutiny than hand-edited entries.

--Jimbo

That is the essence of what is wrong with the Rambot census junk

Fred

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

---------------------------------
Do you Yahoo!?
Protect your identity with Yahoo! Mail AddressGuard
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/attachments/20031106/8bd4b5ac/attachment.htm


from_name: Lee Pilich

subject: [WikiEN-l] Rampant Deletionism

body:
At 07:54 06/11/2003 -0800, Jimbo wrote:
>Lee Pilich wrote:
> > Absolutely. But perhaps when you consider that the content of that page
> > was nothing more than "Cory Hall is the Electrical Engineering building
> > at the University of California, Berkeley. It is across the street from
> > Soda Hall", and that the same content has been merged into the U Cal,
> > Berk page, the redirect doesn't seem so "absurd" any more.
>
>Well, possibly 'absurd' is not the right word.  :-) But really, the
>article was a stub on a legitimate topic, and I see no *advantage* to
>the redirect.  What was wrong with including the content into the UCB
>page (if it belongs there too) *and* leaving the page as it was?

As I say, possible duplication of effort in expanding the info in the
future. Person X comes along to the UCB page, thinks, "Oh, Cory Hall, I can
write a bit more about that" and does so. Person Y comes along to [[Cory
Hall]], and writes a bit more there. Repeat ten times. Maybe eventually we
have two completely different paragraphs on exactly the same subject in
different articles. Probably not ideal.

I mean, I'm not sure I'd agree with that reasoning in this particular case,
but it's reasoning that quite a lot of people have used, and it does make a
certain sense.

> > But both seem reasonable positions, neither is absurd.
>
>Maybe.  :-) Absurd was a harsh word, and I regret using it.

Well, I got a bit hung up about the word "absurd". I posted before coffee,
and I regret that :)

The Cunctator wrote:
> > the redirect doesn't seem so "absurd" any more.
> >
>Actually, it does. The Cory Hall page was a legitimate stub. Again, one
>should hesitate to generate such stubs, but it's bad form to delete them.

Just to be clear - the page wasn't deleted. It was redirected to UCB and
the info added there. I think in some cases this is the right thing to do
with stubs (if they're never going to be more than stubs, for example, or
maybe if they demand context to make any sense), though whether it was here
is obviously arguable.

Right, back to this encyclopaedia thing...

Lee (Camembert)


subject: [WikiEN-l] Partial solution to rampant deletionism

body:
Why should it be up to the "deletionists", as you choose to call those of us who use and value VfD, to improve garbage which is garbage to begin with and will always be garbage?  Please tell me how to improve [[Tsesungunille]], an article about a place that the original author made up.  Or [[Old Granny Sweat Weed ]], which no one can find any source to prove that it actually exists, except for the source cited in the article, which no one can find either.  Or [[Disappearing hoagies]], which is supposedly about sandwiches disappearing from the parking lot during Philadelphia Eagles games.  Or [[Abek]], about the supposed colonization of Brazil by Basques, which no one can verify.  Or [[The mode of production of free software ]], which is the Marxist theory of free software.  If we are ordered to improve these articles, I'd love to know how.

I'm also sick and tired of being ridiculed about the snooker guy.  At the time I placed it on VfD, the article consisted of "Born 1949. A snooker champion. He turned professional in 1971. He drank and smoked during tournaments helping sponsored tobacco advertising. Today he is better known for his throat cancer and a stand against tobacco industry."  Please tell me how I'm supposed to know that this is a meaningful article about an important person, based upon this information?

RickK

James Duffy <jtdire at hotmail.com> wrote:
>I think a statement by Jimbo, if he agrees, that it is up to the
>deletionists to improve articles (rather than >deleting them) will be
>somewhat useful for the non-deletionists. I am tired of seeing articles
>listed for >deletion, simply because somebody thinks it "sucks"; I am tired
>of being threatened, "You either improve >this article within the week; OR,
>we are gonna kill it!"

(A classic example was the proposed
deletion of an article on a famous one-time winner of the World Snooker
championships, someone known to millions worldwide but simply not known to
Americans, therefore thought of as not warranting a page. Though to be fair,
the proposer of this ludicrous deletion did realise from the laughter of the
rest of the world that he had made a mistake. Not all proposers of loopy
deletions accept that they made a mistake and crusade to delete perfectly
fine articles simply because /they/ don't accept the article.

---------------------------------
Do you Yahoo!?
Protect your identity with Yahoo! Mail AddressGuard
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/attachments/20031106/ccdd7ad6/attachment.htm


subject: [WikiEN-l] Rampant Deletionism

body:
Why can't you just indicate on VfD why you think the article is valid?  Why would we want to keep blank articles around?

RickK

Jake Nelson <jnelson at soncom.com> wrote:
I'm going to propose again what I proposed
once before: a temporary moratorium on deletions. Let's say two weeks.
Copyvios will be the only exception. Blanking can be used if there's felt to
be no value at all to the content, but if there's verifiable information in
it, leave it. Let's try it and see what happens, hmmm?

-- Jake

---------------------------------
Do you Yahoo!?
Protect your identity with Yahoo! Mail AddressGuard
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/attachments/20031106/4025e49a/attachment.htm


subject: [WikiEN-l] Rampant Deletionism

body:
No, we're intimidated by the people who scream bloody murder if "the rules" aren't followed.  Those who frequent Votes for Undeletion, those who live just to attack people for not doing things the way THEY want them done.  "The rule" is that things stay on VfD for 7 days.  What's so wrong with just letting it sit until then, if you're sure it won't be kept?

RickK

Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
Andre Engels wrote:

>The only thing that went wrong with Talossan language, in my opinion,
>is that it is _still_ on Votes for Deletion, basically cluttering it,
>although there is already a clear majority for keeping, and the reasons
>that were there for deletion do no longer apply. The original act of
>putting it there was completely justified.
>

It seems to me that with such a voting trend the item should simply be
removed from the VfD page. Are people so intimidated by the wrath of
the VfD denizens?

Ec

>

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

---------------------------------
Do you Yahoo!?
Protect your identity with Yahoo! Mail AddressGuard
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/attachments/20031106/2df90e26/attachment.htm


subject: [WikiEN-l] Rampant Deletionism

body:
Please explain to those of us who are "deletionist" idiots (gee, isn't it nice how you can just pigeonhole all of the people who make frequent use of VfD into ONE category?) what useful purpose all of these steps serve.

RickK

Jake Nelson <jnelson at soncom.com> wrote:
Vicki Rosenzweig wrote:
> At 07:06 PM 11/6/03 -0600, Jake Nelson wrote:
>
> >(This is getting a bit long.) I'm going to propose again what I proposed
> >once before: a temporary moratorium on deletions. Let's say two weeks.
> >Copyvios will be the only exception. Blanking can be used if there's felt
to
> >be no value at all to the content, but if there's verifiable information
in
> >it, leave it. Let's try it and see what happens, hmmm?
>
> Unless *just about everyone* disagrees with me, I'm going to continue to
> delete new pages that consist of obvious nonsense--asdfghjkl or the
> equivalent--rude grafitti, and "you should have an article here".
>
Understandable, and not the sort of thing I really oppose... but for the
duration of such a period, I'd prefer we try just blanking... or redirecting
to [[Wikipedia:Dead End]] or somesuch, as was proposed once. Maybe replace
with "(There is currently [[Wikipedia:Dead End|no text]] in this page)"?
Page can be named whatever, I'm just going with a name someone used once
before as an example. The idea being that whatever that page is, we can use
the "What links here" afterwards and evaluate what of that should be deleted
as junk.

-- Jake

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

---------------------------------
Do you Yahoo!?
Protect your identity with Yahoo! Mail AddressGuard
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/attachments/20031106/efa8f5bc/attachment.htm


subject: [WikiEN-l] Rampant Deletionism

body:
Vicki Rosenzweig wrote:
> At 07:06 PM 11/6/03 -0600, Jake Nelson wrote:
>
> >(This is getting a bit long.) I'm going to propose again what I proposed
> >once before: a temporary moratorium on deletions. Let's say two weeks.
> >Copyvios will be the only exception. Blanking can be used if there's felt
to
> >be no value at all to the content, but if there's verifiable information
in
> >it, leave it. Let's try it and see what happens, hmmm?
>
> Unless *just about everyone* disagrees with me, I'm going to continue to
> delete new pages that consist of obvious nonsense--asdfghjkl or the
> equivalent--rude grafitti, and "you should have an article here".
>
Understandable, and not the sort of thing I really oppose... but for the
duration of such a period, I'd prefer we try just blanking... or redirecting
to [[Wikipedia:Dead End]] or somesuch, as was proposed once. Maybe replace
with "(There is currently [[Wikipedia:Dead End|no text]] in this page)"?
Page can be named whatever, I'm just going with a name someone used once
before as an example. The idea being that whatever that page is, we can use
the "What links here" afterwards and evaluate what of that should be deleted
as junk.

-- Jake


subject:
[WikiEN-l] Proposed: stop all deletes for 6 months,
	then reconsider

body:
A six month moratorium is ridiculous.  Even a one week moratorium is ridiculous.  Do you know how many garbage articles get created daily?  Do you really want to keep around an article that says nothing but "Joey is gay"?

RickK

user_Jamesday <user_Jamesday at myrealbox.com> wrote:
I propose that we simply stop deleting anything for six months and use our energy to think about how we handle indicating the significance of entries instead. One exception: copyright complaints from rights holders and other legal process.

There are arguments that articles are not worth having. There is merit to those arguments. Everyone has a different threshold, though.

There are arguments for including almost anything which someone thinks is worth typing. There's merit to that as well. And again, we all have different thresholds.

The fundamental problem is not that things are good or bad, it's that we are not tackling the problem of how to indicate how significant things are.

Side issues are vandalism and such but moves and editing can take care of those with a quick move to [[vandalism: original title]]. The same applies to everything else.

So, stop deleting and spend our time and energy working out a killer specification for how to indicate that articles are or aren't significant. We'll end up with a far less contentious system and less stress for us all... and incidentally be well on our way to working out how we're going to select what to include in all of the subset editions of the Wikipedia.

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

---------------------------------
Do you Yahoo!?
Protect your identity with Yahoo! Mail AddressGuard
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/attachments/20031106/56716f80/attachment.htm


subject: [WikiEN-l] Rampant Deletionism

body:
Stan Shebs wrote:
> I think this would be an interesting experiment; gives hardcore
deletionists
> an incentive to think about other ways to control junk, like creating
> [[Junk Article]] and making bad articles redir to it - moves debate
> from VfD to the talk pages where it should be in the first place. Notify
on
> VfD, then protect it; and as Vicki mentions, still allow instant deletion
> of the asdfasdf stuff.
>
> After two weeks, if [[Junk Article]] has a thousand redirs pointing
> to it, deletionists can see "see, we told you so."
>
Heh, that's almost exactly what I just wrote in reply to Vicki. Great minds
think alike, eh? (ignoring the fact that the second half of that expression
is "and fools seldom differ." for now)

Maybe [[Wikipedia:Junk Article]].

-- Jake


body:
Strawman! Something that is clearly not attempting to be an encyclopedia
article
can be still be deleted unilaterally, and any article can have its content
replaced/rewritten as usual. "Joey is gay" is going to disappear quickly in
any case.

Stan

Rick wrote:

>A six month moratorium is ridiculous.  Even a one week moratorium is ridiculous.  Do you know how many garbage articles get created daily?  Do you really want to keep around an article that says nothing but "Joey is gay"?
>
>RickK
>
>user_Jamesday <user_Jamesday at myrealbox.com> wrote:
>I propose that we simply stop deleting anything for six months and use our energy to think about how we handle indicating the significance of entries instead. One exception: copyright complaints from rights holders and other legal process.
>
>There are arguments that articles are not worth having. There is merit to those arguments. Everyone has a different threshold, though.
>
>There are arguments for including almost anything which someone thinks is worth typing. There's merit to that as well. And again, we all have different thresholds.
>
>The fundamental problem is not that things are good or bad, it's that we are not tackling the problem of how to indicate how significant things are.
>
>Side issues are vandalism and such but moves and editing can take care of those with a quick move to [[vandalism: original title]]. The same applies to everything else.
>
>So, stop deleting and spend our time and energy working out a killer specification for how to indicate that articles are or aren't significant. We'll end up with a far less contentious system and less stress for us all... and incidentally be well on our way to working out how we're going to select what to include in all of the subset editions of the Wikipedia.
>
>_______________________________________________
>WikiEN-l mailing list
>WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>
>---------------------------------
>Do you Yahoo!?
>Protect your identity with Yahoo! Mail AddressGuard
>
>
>------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>_______________________________________________
>WikiEN-l mailing list
>WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Delirium

subject: [WikiEN-l] Rampant Deletionism

body:
The Cunctator wrote:

>One of the great flaws with the traditional approach to history is its bias
>towards the narrative of the hero--that the current world is best understood
>as a single dramatic storyline with a few important protagonists and
>antagonists. Perhaps you believe that is a complete and accurate
>representation of the world, but I don't. I believe that the world, society,
>etc. are best understood as products of the interaction of billions of
>individuals. To gain a perfectly accurate picture of the world, we'd need to
>know all of their stories. The closer we come to that the better.
>
>Of course, one would want to start with those that are collectively accepted
>as pivotal.
>
>But we should not exclude knowledge in the pursuit of understanding.
>
>
>
So I take it you are proposing that we drop Wikipedia's long-held claim
that it is not a geneological database?  Everyone who has ever lived
thus deserves to be included, as long as the facts are verifiable?
Every event that ever took place deserves to be included?  Should I
upload a scan of my diploma (verifiable by contacting my university's
registrar)?  How about articles on about 75 of my relatives who were
refugees from Turkey during the Greek-Turkish war (but were otherwise
not notable)--verifiable by Greek government immigration records.  How
about a professor of mine who is currently on leave in Pennsylvania
(also verifiable)?  My neighbor, who once ran unsuccessfuly for school
board (verifiable from the election records)?  This just seems
ridiculous to me.

-Mark


body:
Rick wrote:

>Why should it be up to the "deletionists", as you choose to call those of us who use and value VfD, to improve garbage which is garbage to begin with and will always be garbage?  Please tell me how to improve [[Tsesungunille]], an article about a place that the original author made up.  Or [[Old Granny Sweat Weed ]], which no one can find any source to prove that it actually exists, except for the source cited in the article, which no one can find either.  Or [[Disappearing hoagies]], which is supposedly about sandwiches disappearing from the parking lot during Philadelphia Eagles games.  Or [[Abek]], about the supposed colonization of Brazil by Basques, which no one can verify.  Or [[The mode of production of free software ]], which is the Marxist theory of free software.  If we are ordered to improve these articles, I'd love to know how.
>
>
If you redir them all to a dead end, no reader will ever see them again. If
after a lengthy period of time the redir hasn't been touched, just delete,
no muss, no fuss. If someone wants to defend the original text, they can do
it on the redir's talk page, have edit wars, debate the nature of an
encyclopedia, and it doesn't have to be in everybody's face all day.

>
>I'm also sick and tired of being ridiculed about the snooker guy.  At the time I placed it on VfD, the article consisted of "Born 1949. A snooker champion. He turned professional in 1971. He drank and smoked during tournaments helping sponsored tobacco advertising. Today he is better known for his throat cancer and a stand against tobacco industry."  Please tell me how I'm supposed to know that this is a meaningful article about an important person, based upon this information?
>
>
I didn't know about this episode! If that had happened to me, I would have
shut up about deletion forever afterwards... It's a perfect demonstration
that the process needs changes, and koan-like, people should keep bringing
it up until you achieve enlightenment. :-)

Stan

>
>RickK
>
>James Duffy <jtdire at hotmail.com> wrote:
>
>>I think a statement by Jimbo, if he agrees, that it is up to the
>>deletionists to improve articles (rather than >deleting them) will be
>>somewhat useful for the non-deletionists. I am tired of seeing articles
>>listed for >deletion, simply because somebody thinks it "sucks"; I am tired
>>of being threatened, "You either improve >this article within the week; OR,
>>we are gonna kill it!"
>>
>
>(A classic example was the proposed
>deletion of an article on a famous one-time winner of the World Snooker
>championships, someone known to millions worldwide but simply not known to
>Americans, therefore thought of as not warranting a page. Though to be fair,
>the proposer of this ludicrous deletion did realise from the laughter of the
>rest of the world that he had made a mistake. Not all proposers of loopy
>deletions accept that they made a mistake and crusade to delete perfectly
>fine articles simply because /they/ don't accept the article.
>
>
>---------------------------------
>Do you Yahoo!?
>Protect your identity with Yahoo! Mail AddressGuard
>
>
>------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>_______________________________________________
>WikiEN-l mailing list
>WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Vicki Rosenzweig

subject: [WikiEN-l] Rampant Deletionism

body:
At 07:06 PM 11/6/03 -0600, Jake Nelson wrote:

>(This is getting a bit long.) I'm going to propose again what I proposed
>once before: a temporary moratorium on deletions. Let's say two weeks.
>Copyvios will be the only exception. Blanking can be used if there's felt to
>be no value at all to the content, but if there's verifiable information in
>it, leave it. Let's try it and see what happens, hmmm?

Unless *just about everyone* disagrees with me, I'm going to continue to
delete new pages that consist of obvious nonsense--asdfghjkl or the
equivalent--rude grafitti, and "you should have an article here".


body:
Andrew Lih wrote:

>>Strawman! Something that is clearly not attempting to be an
>>encyclopedia article can be still be deleted unilaterally, and
>>any article can have its content replaced/rewritten as usual.
>>"Joey is gay" is going to disappear quickly in any case.
>>
>
>With all due respect, how is this a "strawman?"
>
>Jamesday said "I propose that we simply stop deleting anything for six
>months."  Sounds pretty absolute.
>
Yeah, I think I'm mixing up the different ideas. In any case, "asdfasdf"
and friends should still be able to be deleted on sight, and we would have
to rely on sysop honesty not to declare that "list of newspapers in Hong
Kong"
is obvious nonsense that should get the same treatment. :-)

Stan


subject: [WikiEN-l] Rambot Census Junk

body:
Rick wrote:
> I stronly object to that information as junk.  It is extremely useful, and
deserves to be in the Wikipedia, just as much as information about any other
location in the world.

Indeed, it's an extremely important base to work from. Though I wouldn't
mind an option for Random Page to skip it.

-- Jake


subject: [WikiEN-l] Rampant Deletionism

body:
Rick wrote:
> Why can't you just indicate on VfD why you think the article is valid?
VFD is a nasty sucking void of attention. It seems like there's almost
always at least two lists on it, for no other reason than that they're
lists. Things like that. Looking at it today, it's not as bad as last week,
though. Still, there's some things that just keep coming up. I want to try
stopping it altogether for a couple weeks or so to give everyone a break
from it and do other things... and to see what really happens. I'm not
proposing an end to deletion, just that we try not doing it for a period and
observe results. What's the harm?

> Why would we want to keep blank articles around?

Blanking is a much more equal thing than deletion- anyone can do it, and
people can still see histories if it's just blank. And deleted articles are
"kept around", as well... just not where normal users can see them.

-- Jake


subject: [WikiEN-l] Rampant Deletionism

body:
Rick wrote:
> Please explain to those of us who are "deletionist" idiots (gee, isn't it
nice how you can just pigeonhole all of the people who make frequent use of
VfD into ONE category?) what useful purpose all of these steps serve.

Funny, I don't think I used the word deletionist anywhere in what I wrote
(the subject has it, but that's because I don't change subject lines in
replies). I'm trying to avoid it.
All of these steps? I proposed a few different possible actions, but under
the one I currently favor, this is all the steps:
1. redirect to [[Wikipedia:Junk page]]
2. Check the 'What links here' on that page periodically to see if you see
anything to be rescued.
3. post-moratorium, check the 'What links here' on that page and decide what
to get rid of.

I think that's equal to or less than adding it to VFD, adding a VFD notice
to the page, and then dealing with VFD discussion.

-- Jake


from_name: James Duffy

body:
>Lir wrote:
>I often find that many of the deletionists endorse and use this "policy":
>
>If an article is not up-to-date, NPOV, well-written, long enough, or
>sufficiently accurate; then, it should be deleted. It is up to those who
>vote "keep"; to render this article to a "proper" level of quality;
>otherwise, it will be deleted.
>
>I think a statement by Jimbo, if he agrees, that it is up to the
>deletionists to improve articles (rather than >deleting them) will be
>somewhat useful for the non-deletionists. I am tired of seeing articles
>listed for >deletion, simply because somebody thinks it "sucks"; I am tired
>of being threatened, "You either improve >this article within the week; OR,
>we are gonna kill it!"

I think an increasing use of deletion is a natural response to the growth in
wikipedia, which as it takes shape  as a serious encyclopedia, has evolving
boundaries and an envolving concept of what it is all about. Things that
were crap were tolerated in the hope that /someday/ their saviour would come
and rescue them and make them encyclopedic. But the higher the standards
achieved now as wikipedia grows, the more articles once tolerated as
passable (ie not hideously bad, just bad) fall off the edge and are seen as
simply not good enough. So growing deletion of substandard articles is a
natural part of the evolution of wikipedia from early draft encyclopedia to
real attempt to create a real encyclopedic text.

Given all that, I do think deletion has for some users become a first
response, not the last, which it should be. All too many articles are being
put on wikipedia's VfD page because /one/ person has a problem with them or
doesn't know anything about them. (A classic example was the proposed
deletion of an article on a famous one-time winner of the World Snooker
championships, someone known to millions worldwide but simply not known to
Americans, therefore thought of as not warranting a page. Though to be fair,
the proposer of this ludicrous deletion did realise from the laughter of the
rest of the world that he had made a mistake. Not all proposers of loopy
deletions accept that they made a mistake and crusade to delete perfectly
fine articles simply because /they/ don't accept the article.

The Cunctator's idea that if one person opposed a deletion it should be
stopped is farcical. Wikipedia does have a few people whose contribution to
debates are 'whatever everyone else wants, I oppose just to be different'.
If someone wrote an article [[Adolf Hitler was a nun]] the same small group
would be out on the barricades defending it just to be different. They see
wikipedia as some sort of game to wage extremist agendas, whether political,
ideological or analytical. The rules being followed where high-threshholds
are required for deletion (2/3 etc) are sensible and don't allow the 'watch
me cause trouble' brigade to force wikipedia to keep nutty, absurd
ridiculous articles, often through false names being created to allow
multiple votes.

As to the victims of 9/11, there is not one iota of justification for
keeping these articles on wikipedia. What happened on 9/11 was horrible,
disgusting and outrageous, but wikipedia is an encyclopedia, not a shrine.
The US suffered a horrible experience but so have many nations and peoples
have had just as horrific experiences, many indeed far far worse (the
Holocaust, Hiroshima, Vietnam, the Hundred Years War, two World Wars, etc).
Articles based on the Irish War of Independence that covered individuals
murdered by the British or the IRA, ('Mickey O'Brien was a good man and
father'; 'Sir Laurence O'Keeffe was a kind employer and father', etc) would
deservedly be binned. America's traumatic experiences in /one/ series of
incidents, which by world standards has a relatively small death toll,
cannot be given 'special' treatment no matter how emotionally traumatic the
impact on the US and its psyche. This is a world encyclopedia, not an
American one, and cannot treat the life of one US victim as more worthy of
attention than a Palestinian victim, an Israeli victim, a Holocaust victim,
an Irish victim, a British victim, a Somali victim, a Chilean victim, etc.
These pages give the impression that US victims are somehow /more important/
and in a special league to every other.

JT

_________________________________________________________________
Tired of spam? Get advanced junk mail protection with MSN 8.
http://join.msn.com/?page=features/junkmail


subject: [WikiEN-l] Proposed: stop all deletes for 6 months, then reconsider

body:
I propose that we simply stop deleting anything for six months and use our energy to think about how we handle indicating the significance of entries instead. One exception: copyright complaints from rights holders and other legal process.

There are arguments that articles are not worth having. There is merit to those arguments. Everyone has a different threshold, though.

There are arguments for including almost anything which someone thinks is worth typing. There's merit to that as well. And again, we all have different thresholds.

The fundamental problem is not that things are good or bad, it's that we are not tackling the problem of how to indicate how significant things are.

Side issues are vandalism and such but moves and editing can take care of those with a quick move to [[vandalism: original title]]. The same applies to everything else.

So, stop deleting and spend our time and energy working out a killer specification for how to indicate that articles are or aren't significant. We'll end up with a far less contentious system and less stress for us all... and incidentally be well on our way to working out how we're going to select what to include in all of the subset editions of the Wikipedia.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Rampant Deletionism

body:
>
>Gareth Owen wrote:
> > Are you seriously suggesting that the late Mr. Bowman, Eagle Scout
> > and computer specialist is a reasonable target for an article in an
> > encyclopedia.
>
>Jimbo replied:
>In wikipedia, I would say 'yes, unquestionably, absolutely'.  Wiki Is
>Not Paper.  In wikipedia 1.0 for print/dvd, etc., then we will face
>constraints that we don't face on wikipedia proper.
>
>I wouldn't have much interest in working on such an article, but I see
>absolutely no problem with it.

I am flabbergasted. Those articles are so far from the principles of
encyclopedic content as to be mindboggling. I am more than a little
surprised that Jimbo could see /any/ justification /whatsoever/ for keeping
them. The absence of paper is nothing to do with it. There are certain
things that are utterly and completely irrelevant to encyclopedias. Follow
Jimbo's argument about paper and should a medical book about colon cancer
also include articles on Manchester United, a biography of George Bush also
mention mosquitos, a non-paper book on Napoleon's sex life mention DW's
edits of sports pages on wikipedia?

Would they do so? Of course not.  A medical book or a biography only can
contain what is relevant, irrespective of whether there is room to contain
something else. Ditto with encyclopedias. The above articles have no
relevance to encyclopedic content. Normal coverage of atrocities don't even
mention each individual victims, let alone give them /individual/
biographical entries that tell us they were a disco-dancer. What next?
Include details of how long Tsar Nicholas like to grow his nail on his left
big toe? Give details of who made Eamon de Valera's glasses? Discuss the
weaving pattern used to make Mother Teresa's garments. Come of it. That
approach would be to encyclopedias what the Muppet Show is to studying
animal husbandry.
>
> > If so, then there is such little common ground between what we think
> > belongs in an encyclopedia, that further discussion is worthless.
> > I'd be intrigued to see the opinions of others.
>
>O.k., there's mine.  :-) But I hope that further discussion is not
>really worthless.
>

_________________________________________________________________
Protect your PC - get McAfee.com VirusScan Online
http://clinic.mcafee.com/clinic/ibuy/campaign.asp?cid=3963


body:
>> A six month moratorium is ridiculous.  Even a one week moratorium is ridiculous.  Do you know how many garbage articles get created daily?  Do you really want to keep around an article that says nothing but "Joey is gay"?

RickK<<

One edited to say "See [[Wikipedia:Vandalism]]" or whatever else is appropriate it is harmless and lets the creator clearly know that it didn't work.

Nobody will find it after the edit, unless it's us, later, looking for vandalism to deal with via a bulk delete.


body:
>>I will agree only if Wikipedians agree not to bathe, brush their teeth, or launder their clothes for six months as well. You'll get the same result on your person as with Wikipedia.

-Fuzheado<<

I didn't propose no upkeep. I proposed not doing it with deletes. A change of detergent and toothpaste types doesn't bring about disaster.


subject:
[WikiEN-l] Proposed: stop all deletes for 6 months, then
	reconsider

body:
At 10:25 PM 11/6/03 -0500, James Day wrote:

>So, stop deleting and spend our time and energy working out a killer
>specification for how to indicate that articles are or aren't significant.
>We'll end up with a far less contentious system and less stress for us
>all... and incidentally be well on our way to working out how we're going
>to select what to include in all of the subset editions of the Wikipedia.

There are enough Wikipedians that _we don't all have to work on the same
thing_.

There is no reason that some people can't start working on such a specification
now, at the same time as others look for copyright violations, copyedit
articles,
take photos to illustrate bird articles, research people who turn up on
"requested
articles", and do all the other things that are part of creating this
encyclopedia.

I'd suggest that those who want such a specification start a page, maybe
at [[m:How to tell what's significant]], where it can be worked on. I'm not
opposed
to a specification of this sort, I just don't feel up to drafting it. So
I'll keep doing
the things I do know how to do, which includes writing, copyediting, and
deleting
obvious garbage.
--
Vicki Rosenzweig
vr at redbird.org
http://www.redbird.org


from_name: Matthew Brown

body:
RickK wrote:
  I'm also sick and tired of being ridiculed about the snooker guy.  At the time I placed it on VfD, the article consisted of "Born 1949. A snooker champion. He turned professional in 1971. He drank and smoked during tournaments helping sponsored tobacco advertising. Today he is better known for his throat cancer and a stand against tobacco industry."  Please tell me how I'm supposed to know that this is a meaningful article about an important person, based upon this information?
If people bring this up (and I haven't seen it brought up since when it was current on VfD, so unless you get private mails about this, you're being hyper defensive here) it's because it showed you as someone unwilling to even do the most cursory research before recommending deletion.  For one thing, the article himself said the guy was a professional player in a sport, and a champion.  That alone probably makes him important to keep.  A quick Google would have told you more.

-Matt (User:Morven)
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/attachments/20031106/ee5c4ef5/attachment.htm


body:
>> With all due respect, how is this a "strawman?"

Jamesday said "I propose that we simply stop deleting anything for six months." Sounds pretty absolute.

-Fuzheado<<

You expressed an objection which merited a response. A specific problem question would have received a better response, but how you want to be perceived by others is your choice.

All,

Please address any objections or proposals seriously rather than criticising the person posting the comment. Straw men won't impress anyone here, so those using those techniques are hurting their own view enough already. No need to add to it - they already shot themselves in the foot.

I proposed this so we could think about alternative ways to do things, so lets try doing that in his topic, even though it's not the one where we're talking about how to rank and filter comment so the most significant rises to the top and the uninteresting sinks to the point where nobody ever sees it.


body:
>> I'll keep doing the things I do know how to do, which includes writing, copyediting, and deleting obvious garbage.
--
Vicki Rosenzweig<<

I don't actually object to deleting obvious vandalism during the six months but consider the possibilities:

1. you can delete and the vandal can recreate.

2. you can edit to redirect to a page thanking them for the attempt to create an article and suggesting how to write something more serious. If it's repeated, you can lock the page.

Some will completely ignore option 2 but at least a few will be surprised by a constructive response and consider actually joining in. It's also less confrontational than deleting and that should reduce escalation problems a little.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Rampant Deletionism

body:
Jake Nelson wrote:

>I've seen a lot of dodging of the "what does it hurt?" question, the most
>I've seen is "it DOES hurt" or "it doesn't belong in an encyclopedia". The
>first response isn't an answer, and begs the question to be repeated. As to
>the second... what do you define an encyclopedia as? LKWR is the only one
>I've seen outline criteria (back on 10/31), 4 of which describe Wikipedia
>excellently, and I disagree with the other 2.
>
>
My main question is that it makes Wikipedia look ridiculous, and makes
information harder to find.  If I search for "Michael Jordan" and get
4,000 results consisting of every person who has ever been named
"Michael Jordan", that's *much* less useful than the current state, and
a bit laughable.  Wikipedia is not a geneological database after all.

-Mark


subject: [WikiEN-l] Rampant Deletionism

body:
Re: a moratorium on deletions.

I propose instead we continue on the current path: list stuff that can
be cleaned up on Wikipedia:Cleanup, and list stuff that should be
deleted on VfD.  Given that only a small minority of users have
expressed opposition to "deletionism", this seems like the best way to go.

-Mark


body:
I would also like to disagree.  I have complained about aspects of VfD
before, but these have been mostly about listing on VfD when really one
wants Cleanup or something -- articles that the submitter knew full well
shouldn't really be deleted.

-Matt (User:Morven)


from_name: Dave Caroline

body:
Been lurking for a while would like to join in!

Found a few bugs already!
$_SERVER

php does not guarantee I quote "You may or may not find any of the
following elements in $_SERVER." and then lists constants.
'HTTP_ACCEPT_CHARSET' seems to be missing in my test environment.

Therefore all variables that can possibly be uninitialised need fixing with
isset() and proper defaults etc (affects outputpage.php)Update install
notes in phase3 to mention the include_once bug in php/windows (fix code to
avoid in future). It took me ages to find out about this. I only stumbled
accross this in meta after a long persistent search.


from_name: Allan Crossman

subject: [WikiEN-l] Rampant Deletionism

body:
Could the people requesting a moratorium on deletions please go to
[[Wikipedia:Deletion log]] and tell me what percentage of the actual deletions
listed there they would consider harmful?

What on Earth is all the fuss about?

Evercat
--
Allan Crossman - http://dogma.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk
PGP keys - 0x06C4BCCA (new) || 0xCEC9FAE1 (compatible)


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Ashar Voultoiz

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: European domains

body:
On Tue, 4 Nov 2003 09:59:20 -0800, Jimmy Wales wrote:

> An anonymous contributor has donated 200 EUR for European domains.
>
> Normally I register via register.com, because I have been happy with
> their 'automatic renewal' service, but with this wikipedia.de fiasco,
> obviously that isn't a good enough reason.
>
> So, I'm looking for advice on:
>
> 1.  Cheap places to register the domains
>
> 2.  Which domains we ought to register.  Presumably we should
> prioritize in order of popularity somehow?
>
> Possibly some other eager patron would like to subsidize the purchase
> of domains for another region of the world?  (Pacific rim?)
>
> --Jimbo

Hello Jimbo,

For france one need to pass through a registrar to get the french domain.
You will have to either own a trademark name, be a company in france, an
association.

This will lead you to domain such as:

wikipedia.tm.fr (trademark)
wikipedia.fr (company)
wikipedia.asso.fr (association)
everyone can get a nom.fr though (could be like  name.en )

cheers,

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


from_name: Fred Bauder

subject: [WikiEN-l] India problems

body:
I note newspaper article LibertarianAnarchist first linked to in the
article [[2002 Gujarat violence]]
http://www.rediff.com/news/2002/may/13rajeev.htm
the following assertion: "The root cause in India is the decision circa
1947 by the Nehruvian Stalinists to impose apartheid against Hindus, by
oppressing them in every conceivable way: [with laundry list]"

I gather from this that one of the extreme Hindu Nationalist assertions is
the equation of the decisions of the Nehru government with Stalinism. This
goes back to the decision by the founders of modern India that is was to be
a secular state, not a Hindu state. I note also in the article [[2002
Gujarat violence]] the assertion "The Indian English media, which is
largely Communist applauded the burning of Hindus by Muslims and stated
that the Hindus asked for it."

The newspaper article contains the following classic example of doubletalk:
"And the proximate cause of the ensuing riots in Gujarat, according to the
'intelligentsia', is the alleged nature of the so-called Hindu
fundamentalists, a term that is, in passing, an oxymoron: the fundamentals
of Hinduism are tolerance and plurality, so a 'Hindu fundamentalist' is a
contradiction in terms." So there is no such thing as Hindu fundamentalism,
but a few lines down, "The preponderant cause is endemic Islamic
fundamentalism...."

So it seems that LibertarianAnarchist, in fact, is an advocate of a Hindu
Nationalist Point of View with a decidely fascist tinge to his assertions.
So if he has been treated roughly, he has in turn treated others roughly.
This notion that Hindus are somehow oppressed in India is reminisence of
the Nazi position that Germans thoughout Europe were an oppressed people
the rescue of which required heroic actions from the German nation.

That said, I find some portions of LibertarianAnarchist's edit quite
acceptable, for example his opening statement, "In February 2002, 58 train
passengers, including Hindus returning from a pilgrimage to Ayodhya, were
burnt alive by a mob of fundamentalist Muslims who surrounded the train
near Godhra, Gujarat and set it alight after dousing it in petrol." His
critics would replace this with, "In February and March 2002, about 58
people (apparently mostly Hindus) died in a train fire in Godhra, Gujarat."
Neither version matches the report made by the investigation into the
matter:
http://www.sabrang.com/tribunal/vol2/godhra.html
It seems to be the local Muslim population who attacked the train, but they
seem to have been extremely provoked. To characterise them as Islamic
fundamentalists seems false, as does the denatured language,
"In February and March 2002, about 58 people (apparently mostly Hindus)
died in a train fire in Godhra, Gujarat." Somehow it must be included that
it was Hindu fundamentalists who were attacked with fire by a Muslim mob,
not just "there was a fire".

Fred

>On Thu, Nov 06, 2003 at 05:45:09AM -0700, Fred Bauder wrote:
>> Libertarian wrote:
>>
>> In particular, I've been having problems regarding contributions I've
>> made on India. I've tried to stick to verifiable facts and present
>> things in an encyclopedic manner, but there seem to be 3 members
>
>I'm one of them ([User:Arvindn]). The others (that I remember) are
>Wik, VeryVerily, Jiang, Boud.
>
>The articles in question are [[2002 Gujarat violence]],
>[[Bharatiya Janata Party]], [[Racism]], [[Genocide]] and a couple
>of others.
>
>The person making the allegations has 3 usernames LibertarianAnarchist,
>Democrate2003 and Conradx. I'll call them LA for short. The above articles
>are the only ones LA has ever edited.


from_name: Angela

subject: [WikiEN-l] Deletion is a tool

body:
This is from Daniel Quinlan (quinlan at pathname.com),
not me.
----------------------------------------------------

Before I make a few comments, this should be discussed
on the talk page.
I don't subscribe to the lists because I already get
too much email and
I'd rather work on articles and help try to make
Wikipedia valuable
(which also includes collaborative editing work on VfD
and other pages
outside of the article space).

Deletion is a tool like any other.  I don't believe
anyone who has voted
on VfD to "delete" an article has proposed that *any*
bad article be
deleted.  A few people vote to keep articles nearly
100% of the time,
but since there aren't too many in comparison to
everyone else, the
strategy seems to be to push to end deletion.  I
suspect they equate
deletion with censorship or believe that all
information is worthwhile,
but before I go too deeply into anti-deletionism, I'd
rather talk about
why deletion is a valuable tool.

Let's talk about bad articles.  In evolution, maybe
we'd call them unfit
individuals.  For any Wikipedia article, there are two
basic attributes
that make it: (1) the title and (2) the content.

How do we improve bad articles?

  1. we rewrite them (original content becomes
history)
  2. we redirect them (original title becomes
secondary)
  3. we delete them (both title and content are
destroyed)

I'd hate to see one of our most basic tools removed.

Using redirection instead of deletion can never fix a
POV title, a
vandalism title, etc.  When someone creates 17
redirects to their own
personal article and makes it impossible to find
someone with a similar
name, redirection can't fix that either.  Deletion
takes bad articles
off of the radar of search engines and that's a good
thing.  And yes, it
destroys really bad content too and that's a good
thing.

I suspect much of the growing distress of some people
over deletion is
that as Wikipedia grows, the frequency with which new
articles need to
be deleted may be increasing, but I don't stress about
it.  No medium is
perfect.  There are more people on the internet, more
people finding
Wikipedia, and making contributions, etc.  That has
really helped
improve Wikipedia and if it side-effect is that more
vandals and
non-helpful people find us, I think we've dealt with
it pretty well.

Deletion also exerts a lot of evolutionary pressure on
editors.  If you
write a really inappropriate unencyclopedic article
(like "politician
So-and-so is evil"), it might be deleted.  A lot of
horrible articles
are rewritten regularly and removed from VfD because
there's pressure to
delete them.  That's good just like having polar bears
eat cute baby
seals is good.  If the content is worthwhile it will
come back and it
can still be easily undeleted (actually, much more
easily than it can be
deleted, I helped write both guidelines).  Of course,
vandals generally
don't ask to have their articles undeleted.  :-)

- Daniel

P.S. Please feel free to help with my redirect fix-up
project:

http://en2.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia%3AVillage_pump#Fixing_broken_links_with_redirects

http://en2.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Daniel_Quinlan/redirects

________________________________________________________________________
Want to chat instantly with your online friends?  Get the FREE Yahoo!
Messenger http://mail.messenger.yahoo.co.uk


subject: [WikiEN-l] India problems

body:
I wrote:

'That said, I find some portions of LibertarianAnarchist's edit quite
acceptable, for example his opening statement, "In February 2002, 58 train
passengers, including Hindus returning from a pilgrimage to Ayodhya, were
burnt alive by a mob of fundamentalist Muslims who surrounded the train
near Godhra, Gujarat and set it alight after dousing it in petrol." His
critics would replace this with, "In February and March 2002, about 58
people (apparently mostly Hindus) died in a train fire in Godhra, Gujarat."
Neither version matches the report made by the investigation into the
matter:
http://www.sabrang.com/tribunal/vol2/godhra.html
It seems to be the local Muslim population who attacked the train, but they
seem to have been extremely provoked. To characterise them as Islamic
fundamentalists seems false, as does the denatured language,
"In February and March 2002, about 58 people (apparently mostly Hindus)
died in a train fire in Godhra, Gujarat." Somehow it must be included that
it was Hindu fundamentalists who were attacked with fire by a Muslim mob,
not just "there was a fire".'

On closer examination I find the statement, "There was a fire", quite
acceptable. It is not at all clear that the fire was anything but an
accident.

Fred


subject: [WikiEN-l] Rampant Deletionism

body:
Delirium wrote:
> My main question is that it makes Wikipedia look ridiculous, and makes
> information harder to find.  If I search for "Michael Jordan" and get
> 4,000 results consisting of every person who has ever been named
> "Michael Jordan", that's *much* less useful than the current state, and
> a bit laughable.  Wikipedia is not a geneological database after all.

Hm, there seems to be two arguments on what makes Wikipedia look bad:
1. Junk, false info, random gibberish, poorly spelled types of entries
2. True but not terribly noteworthy entries.

I'd say #1 is an issue, but one that's less and less of one- there's a lot
of people that watch RC and keep an eye on what gets added... a lot of junk
pages I've seen are either old (often around the end of '02, IME) or very
very new... just new enough for me to see them before someone gets to them.

As for #2, I disagree that minor info really hurts us.

To respond to your example, [[Michael Jordan]] should have the header we use
for this sort of thing, which is something like ''This article is about
Michael Jordan, the basketball player. For others by this name, see
[[Michael Jordan (disambiguation)]].'' (I might be misquoting the standard
text, but you get the point.), and that article should come up first in a
search.

-- Jake


subject:
[WikiEN-l] Fate of VFD: A humble suggestion incorporating
	manyothers.

body:
Jussi-Ville Heiskanen wrote:
<something obnoxiously complicated>

Gyahhh. I've been accused of coming up with obscure and complex procedures
once or twice, and I've gotten used to them, but... gah.
Sorry, but that's just not going to be readily explainable to people.
I'll try to work out something, perhaps including bits...

-- Jake


subject:
[WikiEN-l] Fate of VFD: A humble suggestion
	incorporatingmanyothers.

body:
Ok, that suggestion: Sort by what the problem is.
[[Wikipedia:Cleanup]] -- lists the others, will probably be the misc dropoff
[[Wikipedia:Cleanup/copyvio]] -- It's a possible copyvio.
[[Wikipedia:Cleanup/foreign]] -- It's in a foreign language.
[[Wikipedia:Cleanup/short]] -- It's not even a full paragraph.
[[Wikipedia:Cleanup/rename]] -- The name is unworkable, and a better name is
unknown or disputed.
[[Wikipedia:Cleanup/odd]] -- Material seems idiosyncratic or unverifiable.
[[Wikipedia:Cleanup/pov]] -- Such a POV rant, some would call it unfixable.

And last:
[[Wikipedia:Votes for deletion]] -- Where an article goes if: 1. It's spent
at least n (2 or 3) days on a Cleanup page, 2. At least three people have
said "Delete" on said page, and 3. It hasn't changed significantly since
those delete votes.

On VFD, it is listed for 5 days. If >= 75% have voted to delete at the end
of that time, it goes.

Now, exactly what Cleanup looks like may need some work yet... the main
reason I propose making things subpages of that is that it just seems the
simplest name. Anyway, I don't much like day pages.
Just thoughts on the matter...

-- Jake


from_name: Jimmy Wales

body:
Rick wrote:
>Please tell me how to improve [[Tsesungunille]], an article about a
>place that the original author made up.

This one fails the 'confirmability' test anyway, so it isn't a good
example.

>Or [[Old Granny Sweat Weed ]] ...  Or [[Disappearing hoagies]] ... Or
>[[Abek]] ... Or [[The mode of production of free software ]],

As far as I can tell, these all fail the 'confirmability' test, and so
they aren't at issue in the current discussion.

Remember, the debate is primarily between two factions (though of
course there are surely many subtle positions within these two
factions).  And neither faction is saying that nothing can ever ever
ever be deleted no matter what.

Confirmability is an important safeguard accepted by most or all
completionists.  Hand-entry (as opposed to mass import) is an
important safeguard accepted by most or all completionists.

Straw man examples don't really help us to clarify the discussion.

Q.  "Should I mass-import 20,000,000 census entries then?"
A.  "Mass-importing is a different issue, which short circuits an important
safeguard against trivia"

Q.  "What about things that aren't confirmable at all?"
A.  "Delete them.  That's not what we're talking about."

Now, I think that *even after* we remove those two categories from the
discussion, we *still* have legitimate arguments on both side.  I'm
firmly in the completionist camp rather than deletionist camp, but I
do accept that other views _which don't engage in straw man argument_
have some good points that we should consider.

--Jimbo


subject: [WikiEN-l] Rampant Deletionism

body:
James Duffy wrote:
>Follow Jimbo's argument about paper and should a medical
> book about colon cancer also include articles on Manchester United, a
> biography of George Bush also mention mosquitos, a non-paper book on
> Napoleon's sex life mention DW's edits of sports pages on wikipedia?

Medical books and biographies are not encyclopedias.

> Would they do so? Of course not.  A medical book or a biography only
> can contain what is relevant, irrespective of whether there is room
> to contain something else. Ditto with encyclopedias.

I agree, but you ask us to accept your definition of what is relevant,
without argument, and without, as far as I can see, any details of how
exactly you define it.  You seem to be taking an "I know it when I see
it approach", which is interesting enough, but we have to talk about
procedures and policies, not outcomes.

Let me explain what I mean by that.  We do get to choose our policies
and procedures, within limits, but the outcomes of those policies and
procedures flow naturally from them.

My view of what an encyclopedia ought to be is that an encyclopedia
ought to be a comprehensive reference work.  Comprehensive is
something that our technology and social system allows us to do on a
scale never before imagined or attempted.

We have often in the past compared ourselves favorably or unfavorably
to Britannica.  I still think that their work is superior to ours in
many relevant aspects, but their days of supremacy are clearly
numbered.  And one of the reasons is that we can do so much more than
they can even conceive of under a top-down centrally directed model.

--Jimbo


subject: [WikiEN-l] Rampant Deletionism

body:
Vicki Rosenzweig wrote:
> Unless *just about everyone* disagrees with me, I'm going to continue to
> delete new pages that consist of obvious nonsense--asdfghjkl or the
> equivalent--rude grafitti, and "you should have an article here".

I don't think anyone disagrees with those deletions.  I don't, anyway.

--Jimbo


subject: [WikiEN-l] Rampant Deletionism

body:
Rick wrote:
> Please explain to those of us who are "deletionist" idiots (gee,
>isn't it nice how you can just pigeonhole all of the people who make
>frequent use of VfD into ONE category?) what useful purpose all of
>these steps serve.

Did someone call you or anyone else an idiot?  If so, I want to
strongly urge against that.  And if no one said anything of the sort,
and you implied it anyway, I want to strongly urge against that.

For the record, I don't intend the labels "deletionist" or
"completionist" to be pejorative in any way, nor do I think that we
should use them in such a fashion as to fail to acknowledge
significant differences among advocates of either side.

--Jimbo


subject: [WikiEN-l] Rampant Deletionism

references:
<BBD039AA.128B0%cunctator@kband.com>
	<041901c3a4cb$6d62e560$d6c0c3cf@Darkblade>
	<3FAB567B.6050609@rufus.d2g.com>

body:
Delirium wrote:
> My main question is that it makes Wikipedia look ridiculous, and makes
> information harder to find.  If I search for "Michael Jordan" and get
> 4,000 results consisting of every person who has ever been named
> "Michael Jordan", that's *much* less useful than the current state, and
> a bit laughable.  Wikipedia is not a geneological database after all.

For the record, I want to say that even though I don't agree with
these two arguments, I think it's appropriate to say that these are
good, non-straw-man arguments on the deletionist side.

1.  Article on 'eternal ephemera' make Wikipedia look ridiculous

2.  Articles on 'eternal ephemera' may make it harder to find the real
articles

I think that both of these can be answered, but that they are valid
concerns.

My essential answer is that articles on truely irrelevant topics are
not likely to be seen by very many people anyway, and that if and when
we have a problem with the search engine returning too many results,
not properly prioritized, we can start to research ranking algorithms
to ensure that well-linked mainstream articles show up first.

--Jimbo


subject: [WikiEN-l] Rampant Deletionism

body:
Rick wrote:
> Well, if people feel that there is a space for Wikipedia in these
>devotionals, and others that there is not, there is no middle ground,
>and therefore what is there to discuss?

Well, for example, the discussion might clarify for you that no one is
advocating that _devotionals_ be included.

> Why shouldn't they be in the encyclopedia?  Because they make
>Wikipedia look bad.  People look at these articles and say, "How can
>they claim to be a serious encyclopedia when they have articles about
>how someone is beloved by their dog?"

Is this a specific reference, or a straw man?

--Jimbo


subject: [WikiEN-l] Rambot Census Junk

body:
Rick wrote:
> I stronly object to that information as junk.  It is extremely
>useful, and deserves to be in the Wikipedia, just as much as
>information about any other location in the world.

Yes, I agree.  For the purposes of narrowing this discussion and
clarifying where everyone stands, I think we should acknowledge that
nearly everyone (and I almost wrote 'everyone') agrees that whatever
the standards for robot-entries ought to be, it's a different matter
than hand-entries.  Robot entries need to be held to a higher standard
than hand-entries.

--Jimbo


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] MediaWiki-20031107 release

body:
I've packaged up the current state of the stable branch from CVS and
put out a new release. There are a number of fixes and changes from the
20030829 release, so please do read the release notes!

Release notes and download:
https://sourceforge.net/project/shownotes.php?release_id=196082

Updating should be fairly straightforward: if you used the install.php
script, copy in your LocalSettings.php and AdminSettings.php and run
update.php, otherwise copy things to the destination directory manually
and run the SQL updaters noted in the release notes.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


from_name: Erik Moeller

body:
I'll just register my strong objections to a deletion moratorium for the
record. I do not see any evidence for "rampant" deletionism and think VfD
works reasonably well (have people agreed on a threshold, 80% or something
like that, of votes required for deletion yet?). If you want to see
rampant deletionism, go to Everything2.com, where pages get "nuked"
arbitrarily and anonymously. Wikipedia's process is open, based on
consensus-forming and well-documented policies.

There are people who make even the deletion of the crappiest conceivable
article difficult by voting to keep by default. This kind of behavior
leads to the amassment of junk in the database, which never gets cleaned
up because once it is gone from RC and VfD, everyone quickly forgets it.
You might say people will eventually edit it, but in the case of the rare,
obscure and idiosyncratic, that might very well happen years from now, if
ever. Of course we shouldn't delete legitimate stubs, but we should remove
articles which are in clear violation of one of our policies, be it NPOV
or "What Wikipedia is not".

Junk will still get spidered by the search engines if a single link points
to it, nd if people come to Wikipedia and find this stuff (like Sep. 11
articles with tributes mixed in), it will greatly lower their opinion of
our project (in cases that I consider "fixable", the 7 days of VfD are a
nice ultimatum for doing so). Remember that most of our new users come
from the search engines.

I am somewhat disturbed by Wikipedia 1.0 being used as an argument not to
keep the working Wikipedia clean of junk. Both serve the same purpose. The
goal for Wikipedia 1.0 (a limited subset for distribution) is to filter
out the kind of stuff that is hard to verify, too obscure, offensive etc.,
but that would go through VfD unscathed.

Given the large majority support needed for deletion, I do not think that
any kind of out-of-control deletion is to be expected. If you are the kind
of person who thinks a "List of heterosexuals" might be useful, then you
might feel that Wikipedia is somehow oppressing you, but if you want to
build an encyclopedia, it is unlikely that you will.

The whole idea to label one faction of Wikipedia as "deletionists" and
another as "inclusionists" is bogus. This only makes it more difficult for
people to reflect their own decisions and contributes to herd-like
behavior. With very few exceptions, everyone accepts that some cleaning up
is needed. We just need to agree on when to delete and what to remove,
which is best done by improving, newly implementing and pointing to policy
pages.

Regards,

Erik


from_name: The Cunctator

subject: [WikiEN-l] Rampant Deletionism

body:
On 11/7/03 3:23 AM, "Delirium" <delirium at rufus.d2g.com> wrote:

> Jake Nelson wrote:
>
>> I've seen a lot of dodging of the "what does it hurt?" question, the most
>> I've seen is "it DOES hurt" or "it doesn't belong in an encyclopedia". The
>> first response isn't an answer, and begs the question to be repeated. As to
>> the second... what do you define an encyclopedia as? LKWR is the only one
>> I've seen outline criteria (back on 10/31), 4 of which describe Wikipedia
>> excellently, and I disagree with the other 2.
>>
>>
> My main question is that it makes Wikipedia look ridiculous, and makes
> information harder to find.  If I search for "Michael Jordan" and get
> 4,000 results consisting of every person who has ever been named
> "Michael Jordan", that's *much* less useful than the current state, and
> a bit laughable.  Wikipedia is not a geneological database after all.
>
This is a straw man argument.


from_name: Poor, Edmund W

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Bureaucratic approach considered harmful (was: Rampant
	Deletionism)

body:
Ray (Eclectology) begs us to stop begging the question:

"How do we make 'Articles needing attention' more functional?"

Well, the problem is that we are trying to take too much of a
bureaucratic approach. Categorize an article by the type of problem you
feel it represents, and hope someone will take care of it.

That would work fine, if we had a fully-staffed help desk. The assigned
copy-editors would fix spelling, punctuation, grammar and such whenever
someone posted an article at [[Wikipedia:articles needing
copy-editing]]. The assigned NPOV experts would neutralize any article
having NPOV problems; and so on.

The problem, I say again, is that we don't have a fully-staffed help
desk. We are not a bureaucracy, let alone a professional one like EB or
the NY Times. We're terribly understaffed, and frightfully disorganized
(even polarized!).

My solution:

We are still small enough that everyone knows each other -- or can get
acquainted quickly enough. I suggest that when an article has a problem,
we simply refer it to a person who we know is able and willing to fix
it.

The form of the request goes something like, "Hey, user:X, can you take
a look at [[article Y]]? It lacks coherence/neutrality/detail..."

Personally,

Ed Poor (aka Uncle Ed)


subject:
[WikiEN-l] No vote needed for obvious nonsense (was: Rampant
	Deletionism)

body:
Vicki announced,

<<Unless *just about everyone* disagrees with me,
  I'm going to continue to delete new pages that
  consist of obvious nonsense--asdfghjkl or the
  equivalent--rude grafitti, and "you should have
  an article here". >>

I agree with Vicki that obvious nonsense may be deleted without a
"vote". We trust all our sysops to know what is "obvious nonsense" -
it's one of the key criteria for becoming a sysop: you've been around
long enough to show that you have good judgment.

Ed Poor


subject: [WikiEN-l] Rampant Deletionism

body:
On 11/6/03 11:20 PM, "Delirium" <delirium at rufus.d2g.com> wrote:

> The Cunctator wrote:
>
>> One of the great flaws with the traditional approach to history is its bias
>> towards the narrative of the hero--that the current world is best understood
>> as a single dramatic storyline with a few important protagonists and
>> antagonists. Perhaps you believe that is a complete and accurate
>> representation of the world, but I don't. I believe that the world, society,
>> etc. are best understood as products of the interaction of billions of
>> individuals. To gain a perfectly accurate picture of the world, we'd need to
>> know all of their stories. The closer we come to that the better.
>>
>> Of course, one would want to start with those that are collectively accepted
>> as pivotal.
>>
>> But we should not exclude knowledge in the pursuit of understanding.
>>
>>
>>
> So I take it you are proposing that we drop Wikipedia's long-held claim
> that it is not a geneological database?  Everyone who has ever lived
> thus deserves to be included, as long as the facts are verifiable?
> Every event that ever took place deserves to be included?  Should I
> upload a scan of my diploma (verifiable by contacting my university's
> registrar)?  How about articles on about 75 of my relatives who were
> refugees from Turkey during the Greek-Turkish war (but were otherwise
> not notable)--verifiable by Greek government immigration records.  How
> about a professor of mine who is currently on leave in Pennsylvania
> (also verifiable)?  My neighbor, who once ran unsuccessfuly for school
> board (verifiable from the election records)?  This just seems
> ridiculous to me.
>
Note the "one would want to start with those that are collectively accepted
 as pivotal."

I see the inclusion of the type of information you're discussing being
something that eventually happens in the lifetime of Wikipedia, but not in
any serious quantity any time soon; there would need to be improvements of
the backend software, etc. E.g. when the Wikipedia at some point becomes
self-aware and starts adding entries on its own.

I really do go back to the reasonableness criterion. I *trust* you that if
you reasonably believe that there should be an entry on one of your
relatives, that you should be able to make it.

A big control on all of this is that Wikipedia entries need to be linked
from other entries.

For example, one of my relatives is an influential computer scientist.
There's an entry in Wikipedia on him. Nothing exciting there. The more
contentious issue would be that if (when) more information is added to the
entry, it would indicate that he was strongly influenced and inspired by an
older relative who is less famous. A good entry on that person could then be
written, discussing his various accomplishments, etc., using information
that is freely available elsewhere.

I understand that because everyone has parents, it would be "dangerous" to
say that a mention of a person in Wikipedia is sufficient to allow an entry.

I'm not advocating that.

I am advocating trusting each other to be responsible in their efforts to
contribute to Wikipedia, rather than try to erase each other's contributions
and spin imagined scenarios of the imminent death of Wikipedia.


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [WikiEN-l] Rambot Census Junk

body:
Jake Nelson wrote:

>Rick wrote:
>
>>I stronly object to that information as junk.  It is extremely useful, and
>>
>deserves to be in the Wikipedia, just as much as information about any other
>location in the world.
>
>Indeed, it's an extremely important base to work from. Though I wouldn't
>mind an option for Random Page to skip it.
>
I suppose that such an option wouldn't hurt anything.

I do support keeping these pages, and I'm clearly not alone in that
view.  Nevertheless, they are constantly mentioned by some of the
deletionists as things that should go.  That alone makes us
inclusionists uncomfortable and suspicious about the other side's motives.

Ec


subject: [WikiEN-l] Rampant Deletionism

body:
Rick wrote:

> Why can't you just indicate on VfD why you think the article is valid?
>
Because it requires us to spend time at VfD when we could be doing
something useful.  The most useful contributors are busy contributing.
 Hurrying them to improve the article in question within seven days
means they have to take time away from what they do best.  If they are
interested in the subject matter they'll deal with it according to their
own timetables, and not when some deletionist tells them to.

Some of us like to consider our votes carefully.  If it takes five
minutes each to consider each of a dozen articles that might appear on
VfD on a given day that's an hour of time spent just deciding on votes,
and the article itself is still unchanged.  Even when the result of a
vote is unquestionably in favour of deletion, and the article is
deleted, we are no further ahead; we're just back at the point where we
were before that article was written.

We are all limited in the amount of time that we can contribute.
 Consider even some of our most severe edit wars, and I would suggest
that at any given time the number of people directly involved is fairly
small.

If somebody who is considering an article to be added to VfD instead
took 15 minutes to half an hour researching and improving that article,
it would save everybody's time, and Wikipedia would end up with a
something rather than a nothing.

Ec


body:
Andrew Lih wrote:

>>[mailto:wikien-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org] On Behalf Of user_Jamesday
>>
>>I propose that we simply stop deleting anything for six
>>months and use our energy to think about how we handle
>>indicating the significance of entries instead. One
>>exception: copyright complaints from rights holders and other
>>legal process.
>>
>
>I will agree only if Wikipedians agree not to bathe, brush their teeth,
>or launder their clothes for six months as well.  You'll get the same
>result on your person as with Wikipedia.
>
Speaking as an inclusionist, I have to agree;  it sets up a scarecrow
with a six month gestation period.  Would nine months make it more human?

Ec


from_name: Andrew Lih

subject: [WikiEN-l] Rampant editorial control  (was: Deletionism)

body:
Trying to enter this conversation is like hopping on a merry go round
... spinning at 1000 km/hr.

First off, we should stop using the label "deletionists" as it maligns
and inaccurately portrays what folks are genuinely are doing in good
faith -- seeking better editorial quality and to further trust in
Wikipedia.  It's no more fair than calling people abortionists or
supporters of euthanasia "suicidists."  Lets find another label.

Second, people are demonizing VfD and the process when the alternative
is far worse - deletion wars, having to dig back into ost edit
histories, resurrecting conversations, etc.

VfD clarifies -- it tries to quantify and clarify the will of the
community.  It provides a firm deadline, which humans respond to.  It
provides a unified forum for discussion on the entire range of topics in
Wikipedia (and by extension, humankind).  It is pointed to by
boilerplate text added to articles, which shows up in peoples'
Watchlists.  The signal to noise ratio is quite good -- obvious deletes
get deleted, and obvious keeps get kept.

It's one of the few places where one can feel "in touch" with the pulse
of what happens in Wikipedia.  It's the last stop between quality and
chaos.  This is especially true for folks who believe in Wikipedia as a
place with quality editorial content and worthy of reader trust, and not
as an attic for all things under the sky.

So I would argue "Wiki is not paper" is not a good enough to justify the
tremendous reach of adding all victims of all tragedies in the history
of the universe.  Yes, being paper-based limits what to put in a paper
encyclopedia.  But what's more important to the editors of those
encyclopedias is good judgment, fostering trust between the publisher
and reader, and the pursuit of "the truth."

-Fuzheado

-----Original Message-----
From: wikien-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org
[mailto:wikien-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org] On Behalf Of Rick
Sent: Friday, November 07, 2003 10:43 AM
To: English Wikipedia
Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Rampant Deletionism

Well, if people feel that there is a space for Wikipedia in these
devotionals, and others that there is not, there is no middle ground,
and therefore what is there to discuss?

Why shouldn't they be in the encyclopedia?  Because they make Wikipedia
look bad.  People look at these articles and say, "How can they claim to
be a serious encyclopedia when they have articles about how someone is
beloved by their dog?"

RickK

Jimmy Wales <jwales at bomis.com> wrote:

Rick wrote:
> My opinion is the same as yours. Such articles have no place on
>Wikipedia.

Is your opinion the same as Gareth's that further discussion is
worthless? I hope not, and I hope he'll change his mind about that,
too.

I'm interested in hearing about just *why* you think such articles
"have no place on Wikipedia". What's the harm? How does it
negatively impact us?

  _____

Do you Yahoo!?
Protect  <http://antispam.yahoo.com/whatsnewfree> your identity with
Yahoo! Mail AddressGuard

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/attachments/20031107/c3a5ea37/attachment.htm


from_name: Jussi-Ville Heiskanen

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Fate of VFD: A humble suggestion incorporating many
	others.

references:
<BBD039AA.128B0%cunctator@kband.com>
	<041901c3a4cb$6d62e560$d6c0c3cf@Darkblade>
	<3FAB56C7.1020500@rufus.d2g.com>

body:
Delirium <delirium at rufus.d2g.com> wrote in part:

> I propose instead we continue on the current path: list stuff that can
> be cleaned up on Wikipedia:Cleanup, and list stuff that should be
> deleted on VfD.  Given that only a small minority of users have
> expressed opposition to "deletionism", this seems like the best way to go.
>
> -Mark

The current path is not to keep doing what we have been doing before, but to
continually improve our ways and means. To that end, I propose the following
plan, which incorporates some features of suggestions made by (in alphabetical
order--apologies to those who this always discriminates against): AndrewA,
Angela, Jake, JamesDay, Jimbo Wales, Stevertigo, TakuyaMurata, Viajero (I know I
am missing some folks.)

Core-rules:
1. Wikipedia:Cleanup be separated into 7 weekday-specific files.
2. Each such file have subheaders indicating which week the listings are from.
3. No article be listed on VFD *before* it has spent *at least* three weeks on
Cleanup.
4. No article be listed on Cleanup *longer* than 12 weeks.
5. No article be blanked without the content being moved to talk.

Subsidiary recommendations:
1.  Articles on Cleanup declared deletable include link to [[Wikpedia:threatened]].
2.  Articles on Cleanup declared stubby include link to [[Wikipedia:stub]].
3.  Articles on Cleanup declared otherwise troubled include link to
[[Wikipedia:attention]].
4.  Articles on VFD  include link to [[Wikipedia:endangered]].
5.  Articles on PNA include link to [[Wikipedia:difficult]]
6.  Cleanup-Listings have score starting at  -4; users can add or decrease the
score by 1.
7.  Listings also have deletability-score starting at +4; users adding or
decreasing by 1.

Fair warning, I may reply to my own message to annotate, expand etc. the above.

Respectfully (as ever):

Jussi-Ville Heiskanen (aka Cimon Avaro)


body:
> [mailto:wikien-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org] On Behalf Of user_Jamesday

> I propose that we simply stop deleting anything for six
> months and use our energy to think about how we handle
> indicating the significance of entries instead. One
> exception: copyright complaints from rights holders and other
> legal process.

I will agree only if Wikipedians agree not to bathe, brush their teeth,
or launder their clothes for six months as well.  You'll get the same
result on your person as with Wikipedia.

-Fuzheado


subject: [WikiEN-l] Rampant Deletionism

body:
Jake Nelson wrote:

>Rick wrote:
>
>>Please explain to those of us who are "deletionist" idiots (gee, isn't it
>>
>nice how you can just pigeonhole all of the people who make frequent use of
>VfD into ONE category?) what useful purpose all of these steps serve.
>
>Funny, I don't think I used the word deletionist anywhere in what I wrote
>(the subject has it, but that's because I don't change subject lines in
>replies). I'm trying to avoid it.
>
I have unapologetically used the word "deletionist", but not in
conjunction with the word idiot.  I've also used the term "inclusionsit"
to refer to the other side in the debate.  For me these represent
general tendencies rather than any kind of absolute positions.

If someone has better terms, I can adapt.

Calling them "abortionists" for what they do to baby articles might not
be suitable ;-)


from_name: Arvind Narayanan

subject: [WikiEN-l] India problems

body:
On Thu, Nov 06, 2003 at 05:45:09AM -0700, Fred Bauder wrote:
> Libertarian wrote:
>
> In particular, I've been having problems regarding contributions I've
> made on India. I've tried to stick to verifiable facts and present
> things in an encyclopedic manner, but there seem to be 3 members

I'm one of them ([User:Arvindn]). The others (that I remember) are
Wik, VeryVerily, Jiang, Boud.

The articles in question are [[2002 Gujarat violence]],
[[Bharatiya Janata Party]], [[Racism]], [[Genocide]] and a couple
of others.

The person making the allegations has 3 usernames LibertarianAnarchist,
Democrate2003 and Conradx. I'll call them LA for short. The above articles
are the only ones LA has ever edited.

Now lets do some fact checking:

* LA has no idea of what NPOV is.
LA simply deletes/replaces any criticism of [[Sangh Parivar]]
that they don't agree with (in several articles). The articles merely
*reported* criticism and thus *attributed* POVs. LA removed [[Sangh Parivar]]
from a "list of allegedly racist organizations", even though it as been
widely alleged to be racist.

* LA is an Indian version of a holocaust denier.
[[2002 Gujarat violence]] is about an alleged state sponsored
genocide of about a 1000 Muslims. LA's version of the article managed
to make the victims look like the agressors!

* LA's "encyclopedic manner" reads like a religious rant.
This has already been noted by Ec.

* The communism part is completely irrelevant.
LA reflexively accuses anyone who disagrees with them of being a communist.
This seems to be the only argument LA has ever made to justify their edits.

(Tip to LA: What you're doing is *so* 1990s. Have you been living in a cave
these last few years? Get with the times, man! These days, if someone says
something you disagree with you call them a TERRORIST. That's right, its
not COMMUNIST anymore. Terrorist is the in-thing now. That's why people
kept reverting your edits. Had you called them terrorists, it would have
worked!)

P.S: I'm Indian.

Cheers,
Arvind

> who keep watch on what I'm posting and revert it to their version
> which carries nothing but what can be classified as propaganda of
> the Communist Party of India(Marxist). These people add allegations
> by this party as a part of an article.
>
> I'm all ready to jump in and give those folks hell, but from looking at the
> article, "India" I find no record of any user Libertarian or of any
> widespread reversions. Could you give more detail with some references to
> specific articles, edits, information, etc?
>
> Fred
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l

--
Its all GNU to me


from_name: Anthere

subject: [Wikitech-l] blocked ip (Brion)

body:
I just found on my old mail box (the one I had when I
was 5), which I do not check very often, that message
from Alno (who is a good french contributor). Send the
6th of november (lucky me, I had not check it for at
least 2 weeks);

-------

Bonjour Anthere,

je me permets de te contacter en priv? car tu es la
seule avec
qui j'ai ete en contact par mail depuis que je me suis
raccroch? au
projet Wikipedia sous le pseudo [AlNo].

Il semblerait que mon adresse IP "193.251.11.142" soit
bloqu?e,
lorsque j'essaie de me connecter a un wiki (en:,
fr:...) je tombe
a chaque fois sur une page :

----------------------------------------------------------------
Forbidden
You don't have permission to access /<ici le nom de la
page>
on this server.

Apache/1.3.28 Server at fr.wikipedia.org Port 80
-----------------------------------------------------------------

est-ce que tu pourrais me dire si c'est le cas, et qui
contacter
pour debloquer la situation ? Merci d'avance pour ton
aide,
   bien cordialement,

PS. Une suggestion a faire sur le Bistro : lorsque une
IP est bloquee,
au lieu de tomber sur cette page assez peu
informative, il serait
bien que le visiteur soit redirige vers une page non
modifiable
expliquant la situation...

--------

I do not know if he still has the pb, but he has not
contributed since the 25. I think he got desperate :-(

Could someone check if he is indeed blocked on fr and
en ?

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Protect your identity with Yahoo! Mail AddressGuard
http://antispam.yahoo.com/whatsnewfree


body:
> Strawman! Something that is clearly not attempting to be an
> encyclopedia article can be still be deleted unilaterally, and
> any article can have its content replaced/rewritten as usual.
> "Joey is gay" is going to disappear quickly in any case.

With all due respect, how is this a "strawman?"

Jamesday said "I propose that we simply stop deleting anything for six
months."  Sounds pretty absolute.

-Fuzheado


from_name: Delirium

body:
Jimmy Wales wrote:

>Q.  "Should I mass-import 20,000,000 census entries then?"
>A.  "Mass-importing is a different issue, which short circuits an important
>safeguard against trivia"
>
>
I disagree with this.  There is absolutely _no_ difference between
mass-importing thousands of articles and a person sitting down for weeks
mass-importing thousands of articles.  The only check the latter imposes
is "someone has to have too much free time to do this", which is not
much of a check at all: there's all sorts of crazy things people are
willing to spend time on that are quite trivial.  And there's all sorts
of important things people aren't willing to spend time on.

To pick a relevant example, I'd consider any of the six million people
who died in the Holocaust more encyclopedia-worthy than the ~3k that
died in the WTC attacks.  The fact that there are people with enough
spare time to mass-import the latter doesn't change this fact.

-Mark