Hello all,
there is a dispute in several articles, whether the Oder/Odra river should be called by its
German or its Polish name. The same for the Neisse/Nysa river and the Oder-Neisse
line/Odra-Nysa line. I'd like to ask the community, which name is used more often by
native English speakers. There are some annoying accusations in this dispute (see
[[User talk:Taw|Taw's talk page]] for more details), so I would like to let the majority
decide and end the seesaw changes on the relating pages.
Mirko.
--
Mirko Thiessen
http://www.mirko-thiessen.de
>.....
>2. "Odra" is the original and the true
>name of the river.
>
>I doubt this. I would guess, that the original
>name was neither Oder nor Odra, but
>something completely different. There is
>nothing like a true name. This is the same
>dispute as for many other placenames
>(Macedonia, Sea of Japan, etc.)
This is not directed specifically at you Mirko, but;
The idea that there is "one true name" of /anything/ is a total fallacy. Names
are not intrinsically linked to subjects - all they are, are abstractions
that the human mind uses in order to index and store data connected to the
subject.
So the only "correct" name for a thing in English Wikipedia is what is most
commonly used and recognized by English speakers.
>I've already told, that I would not mind, if
>we should decide to use the name "Odra".
>But I would like to place a decision in our
>Naming Conventions, so whenever someone
>changes the name again, we can refer him to
>that page and simply correct it without
>having a new chauvinist outcry.
>
>Mirko.
This is already covered by:
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Naming_conventions_(use_English) and
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Naming_conventions_(common_names)
Therefore, as already has been explained, Oder and Neisser are the forms we
should use.
--Daniel Mayer (aka mav)
WikiKarma
Added a bunch of events to [[February 13]]; updated all the year pages and
many of the other articles linked from that page.
Daniel Mayer wrote:
>
>This is not directed specifically at you Mirko, but;
>The idea that there is "one true name" of /anything/ is a total fallacy. Names
>are not intrinsically linked to subjects - all they are, are abstractions
>that the human mind uses in order to index and store data connected to the
>subject.
>
That is what I said. I just replied to this true-name-argument, which was stated on the
relating talk pages.
>
>This is already covered by:
>http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Naming_conventions_(use_English) and
>http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Naming_conventions_(common_names)
>
Yes, but I thought, that there was a dispute on what is the common name in this case.
Mirko.
--
Mirko Thiessen
http://www.mirko-thiessen.de
Magnus Manske wrote:
>Sounds like you've been talking to Helga ;-)
>
Au contraire!
Helga's name is often mentioned in this dispute, although it has nothing to do with Helga
at all. Probably this is a result of the damage, that Helga has done. There are two
arguments from the Wikipedians in favour of Odra:
1. Helga called that river "Oder", so we should not call it "Oder".
This is a little bit like Hitler and the can opener. Only because Hitler opened his cans with
a can opener, this would not be a reason for me to open my cans in another way. "Oder"
is not a term, which was coined by the Nazis. I stated on Taw's talk page, that this is the
German name of the river and not the Nazi name. Some people don't appear to be aware
of this basic fact.
2. "Odra" is the original and the true name of the river.
I doubt this. I would guess, that the original name was neither Oder nor Odra, but
something completely different. There is nothing like a true name. This is the same
dispute as for many other placenames (Macedonia, Sea of Japan, etc.)
I've already told, that I would not mind, if we should decide to use the name "Odra". But I
would like to place a decision in our Naming Conventions, so whenever someone
changes the name again, we can refer him to that page and simply correct it without
having a new chauvinist outcry.
Mirko.
--
Mirko Thiessen
http://www.mirko-thiessen.de
Eclecticology wrote:
>We still have to chose which has the article and
>which has the redirect.
You know what? I wish we had a script that would
create a custom variation of the article, based
on how the reader accesses it.
Like if some looked for [[Occam's Razor]] they
would find:
Occam's Razor (or Ockham's Razor), a principle
attributed to William of Ockham... Modern scientists
appeal to Occam's Razor when they assert, "The
simplest hypothesis is best."
But if a user looked for [[Ockham's Razor]] they
would find this variation:
Ockham's Razor (or Occam's Razor), a principle
attributed to William of Ockham... Modern scientists
appeal to Ockham's Razor when they assert, "The
simplest hypothesis is best."
Of course, this would be difficult and cumbersome
to do. There'd have to be script, and a syntax for
invoking it. But this idea, if carried out, would
help to alleviate feuds like Oder/Odra and Neisse/Nysa.
"Uncle Ed", aka Ed Poor
Thanks, tough cat. I appreciate your concern both for the integrity
of the encyclopedia and for the inclusiveness of the community. We
want to keep bad _material_ out while encouraging new _contributors_
to come in and learn the ropes.
Uncle Ed
-----Original Message-----
From: Tucci [mailto:tucci528@yahoo.com]
Sent: Sunday, February 16, 2003 3:04 PM
To: wikien-l(a)wikipedia.org
Subject: [WikiEN-l] empty album pages, years in MTV and KROQ, Baha
Men...
I just banned an anonymous user who had created many
of the track-listing only album pages, future-releases
on 2003 in music, plus list of years in KROQ, a
fact-free article on the Baha Men and, most recently,
list of years in MTV and related pages. See User
talk:64.175.250.205 for the sordid details of the MTV
stuff, which was what made me finally do it.
I hesitated because he has entered true and relevant
information, it just takes me three times as long to
fix it than it took him to write it. Plus, the Baha
Men thing scared me, because I would never have
bothered to check the facts if somebody hadn't pointed
out that the article said they formed in 1987 and 1988
-- a quick trip to allmusic shows they released their
debut in 1979, and that many of the other facts were
simply wrong as well.
Maybe the ban should be lifted in a day or two, as he
has at least discovered talk pages. Anyway, I just
wanted to make a note here on the mailing list since
I'm normally opposed to banning users who have made
valuable edits in the past.
Tokerboy
For those of you who have the time (I don't, this week), there's a
(copyrighted) mini-encyclopedia about symbols at
http://www.symbols.com/index/wordindex-a.html
containing about 2.500 entries on different symbols. Maybe we should
work through the lists there, covering the symbols in the appropriate
articles, with self-made images, of course :-)
Things like "*Aesculapii staff" are not covered in the wikipedia yet
AFAIK, and I think they should be.
Magnus
*
While looking at the [[Legionnaires' disease]] page, I noticed a lot of information that looked like it had been copied from somewhere. Indeed, it had come from http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/dbmd/diseaseinfo/legionellosis_g.htm. The person who had put it on the page claimed that it was public domain. Looking at the CDC's home page, I find "In general all information presented in these pages and all items available for download are for public use."
Does this mean we can use the information at that website?
Zoe
---------------------------------
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Shopping - Send Flowers for Valentine's Day
Yesterday I looked for an empty link to fill in and came up with [[Madura]],
which appeared in [[Islands of Indonesia]]. I wrote a short article, which
appears, but today, looking for another island to write about, I saw that
the Madura link on the [[Islands of Indonesia]] page still appears empty. I
clicked on it and came to the editing box, with my text there, instead of the
page itself. Is this some kind of bug)?
Danny