RK wrote:
> Zero 0000 _again_ defended Nazi hatespeech and harassment,
> and called for its acceptance on Wikipedia.
and various other vintage-RK lies and insults.
As anyone can check by looking at the block log, I was actually
the first sysop to block the Nazi user NSM88. I was also the
first to bring the issue to the attention of this list.
For the record, I blocked NSM88 because it was a new account
which had only made edits like changing "Many empires and
rulers have sought to liquidate the Jews" to "Many empires and
rulers were forced to liquidate the Jews". I don't believe that
merely identifying as someone who holds obnoxious beliefs
is sufficient cause for a ban, but I thought he was crossing
the line by pushing those beliefs into articles in such a
blatant manner. I'm conflicted on where the boundary is;
that's why I initiated this discussion.
Zero.
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John Lee wrote:
As I said, in Europe and Australia, you guys are probably used to
depictions of lifelike nudity and didn't really notice the image, but
the same cannot be said for those of us from America and Asia.
I agree with John it is clearly a cultural problem. Yet it is a
curious paradox that so much pornography comes from America, the
nation that got so up-tight last year about exposed breasts in TV.
The press there evidently became very shrill, while in the UK we have
our 'Page 3 girls' in main-stream tabloids. I must confess I laughed
when I read the original story, but I am concerned that attempts
will be made to impose these up-tight values on the rest of western
society.
That there are cultural differences is clear from a study of erotica.
Chinese erotica is far kinder and consenual that Japanese, with its
emphasis on violence. Yet these are both Asian countries. Modern
Japanese pornography makes great use of the airbrush, of course, from
the little I have seen on the web.
Until this thread began I was not aware of the Autofelletion image
but remember the shock I felt when looking up some months ago an
innocuous topic and was confronted with an image from Goatse, put
there by a Troll which I promptly deleted, not just reverted. And I
pride myself on being a liberal! I am sure somebody will now say I
was wrong and I ought to have gone through VfD procedures first.:-)
I can well imagine the reaction we are going to get if we don't get
our act together and devise a policy we all can live with.
It strikes me it falls into two halves, in no order:
1) We need to have a policy or policies which preserves Wikipedia'a
reputation as a vehicle for liberal values, and does not make us
liable for a concerted attack by bigots, with all that means in
wasted energy for the management. [Jimbo et al]
This might mean working up a policy to make sure that editors work in
a self-disciplined way. After all, we have NPOV and 'No original
research' now. While technical fixes to turn images on or off are
fine, more thought could also be given to the choice of images in the
first place. But I do accept this is very difficult in the area of
sex, which ranges from loving consensual behaviour on the one hand
through BDSM to pure violence and bestiality at the other.
2) We also need to be able to protect the young and the vulnerable
adult who ARE upset by images like these, which in my view OUGHT to
be on WP.
For the latter maybe something like the system UK newsagents have,
with the raunchy stuff being on the 'Top shelf' , and everything else
lower down where even children can reach it.
But there is, in my view, no easy answer.
A final thought is that a number of our editors are youngsters, one
or two not yet in their teens. How do we stand in regard to their
parents on this?
Tony Woolrich (Apwoolrich)
--
No virus found in this outgoing message.
Checked by AVG Anti-Virus.
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Pete wrote: "Problem is the audio is trapped inside a .avi video file from my
video camera... wasn't there a tutorial somewhere about all the tricks and
tips you can get up to to get video/audio from the formats provided by
popular consumer gadgets into acceptable free formats?"
In unix, to rip the audio out of most basic movie files (including mpg and avi)
to mp3:
>mplayer -dumpaudio file.mpg
>mv stream.dump output.mp3
The first command runs mplayer and dumps the audio to a stream file
in the local directory (stream.dump)
The second command moves (renames) it to an mp3.
Sorry, but I don't know how to do it in Windows.
--Mark (Raul654)
As regards that Macbeth story, I think sheer common sense applies as to what an encyclopedia should have. I'm certainly not against an article on wombs.
Arno
----- Original Message -----
From: dpbsmith(a)verizon.net
To: wikien-l(a)Wikipedia.org
Subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia can never be fully "safe" and also open...
Date: Sun, 20 Feb 2005 16:44:02 -0500
>
> Even if there were total agreement among Wikipedians proper
> content, so long as Wikipedia is open to "zero-threshold" editing,
> it will always contain a certain among of material that does not
> belong. The equilibrium between the rate at which such material is
> inserted and the rate at which it is removed guarantees this.
>
> Even if we had a consensus so clear that "obscenity" could be a
> valid speedy candidate, removal would still not be _instantaneous._
> As things stand, questionable articles will remain visible for at
> least five days--and the very existence of the VfD discussions
> makes it easy for anyone who wishes to attack Wikipedia to find
> them.
>
> No matter what technical mechanism we put into place, tagging an
> article as offensive likely to be considered debatable and require
> several days to ascertain consensus before the tagging becomes
> stable.
>
> This doesn't affect the broad questions we've been discussing, but
> it does mean that Wikipedia will _always_ be vulnerable to those
> who wish to attack it for containing offensive material. The only
> way to change this would be to subject every article to _prior_
> review before release into the main namespace.
>
> I think it's pointless to discuss making Wikipedia "safe for
> classrooms." Any teacher who lets his or students access Wikipedia
> will always be taking some risk with their career. The risk is
> small, and that a prudent teacher in the right circumstances might
> deem it acceptable, but it will always be there. The risk of a
> student running across one of these pages _by accident_ is very
> small, but in the fifties my little friends and I were certainly
> getting _our_ giggles looking up "rape" and "carnal" and "vagina"
> in the dictionary, and discoveries are quickly shared.
>
> In George Orwell's novel, _A Clergyman's Daughter_, a schoolteacher
> inadvisedly presents "Macbeth" to her students. They reach the
> words "Macduff was from his mother's womb/Untimely ripp'd," and a
> student asks the fatal question, "Please, Miss, what does that
> mean." She explains "haltingly and incompletely--but she did
> explain," and the following evening she is confronted by angry
> parents who feel "it is a disgrace that schoolbooks can be printed
> with such words in them; I'm sure if any of us had known that
> Shakespeare had that kind of stuff, we'd have put our foot down at
> the start.... If I had my way, no child--at any rate, no
> girl--would know anything about the Facts of Life till she was
> twenty-one."
>
> Fast forward to Holden Caulfield's tombstone, and Wikipedia.
>
> --
> Daniel P. B. Smith, dpbsmith(a)verizon.net
> "Elinor Goulding Smith's Great Big Messy Book" is now back in print!
> Sample chapter at http://world.std.com/~dpbsmith/messy.html
> Buy it at http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1403314063/
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l(a)Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
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This isn't the right list for it, I know, but I only just found
Wikispecies and started exploring it, and found that almost all the
first page of its Recent Changes is vandalism replacing or creating
pages with crude ASCII "art" and remarks about mooning. I could go
through and replace them all manually, but if anyone on this list can do
the easy reversions there, that'd be much simpler.
Meanwhile, I'll go looking to see if there's a proper wikispecies-l or
whatever.
http://species.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Recentchanges
--
John R. Owens
If I understood a previous recent letter here, then Admins
and Sysops cannot find out a user's ISP when they are
logged in. Is this correct?
If so, this strikes me as a good idea. On occasion I do
some travelling, and I sometimes access Wikipedia while on
the road. Other contributors do a substantial of
travelling. We would greatly appreciate the privacy
afforded by a block on reading ISP's when logged in. It
would probably be unwise to allow Sysops and Admins to
track where people travel, for reasons of privacy. (As I
understand it, following one's ISP effectively allows one
to know approximately which city or town is logged in, in
many cases.)
It does not matter at all for me today, as I decided to
take another three-day Wiki-break. (We'd have fewer edit
wars if more people took such breaks.) Nonetheless the
principle is worth asking about. Is my understanding
correct?
Robert (RK)
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While I hate to interrupt the usual bickering, recriminations, and
complaining
that I've come to expect from this mailing list, I just wanted to point out
this little
gem:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_music
It's the current Collaboration of the Week and, if the trend continues, will
probably be a featured
article soon enough.
The reason I single this particular article out is because I think this
article *really* highlights
how good Wikipedia can be. I really do like the clickable graph of the
lifespans of
major classical composers (in other words, you click on the name and you go
to that composer's
article). It also has almost a dozen full length songs (Many of them put
there by Raulbot in last
week's classical music grab-and-dump binge)
Britannica, eat your heart out.
--Mark (Raul654)
I think the recent incidents involving Everyking's reverts on
[[History_of_SNL:2000-2010]] and [[October 24]] suggest that we need a
mechanism whereby we can ask ArbCom to clarify its rulings. There is
debate on this on
[[Wikipedia:Administrators%27_noticeboard/Incidents#Everyking_Reverting_Again]],
but as far as I can see no current member of ArbCom has commented yet.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Administrators%27_noticeboard/Incide…http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_SNL:2000-2010http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/October_24
Everyking and Jquk are right to say that the articles in question are not
directly related to Ashlee Simpson, but as the passages he is reverting
are those that pertain directly to Ashlee Simpson (some kind of
embarrassing incident on an American TV program involving a backing
track), it appears to me that Luigi30, Carnildo, Calton, Rhobite, silsor,
RickK have a point.
I think that, as Calton has suggested, the point needs clarification, but
I know of no specific forum where this kind of request, requiring a
response from ArbCom, would be appropriate.
Might I suggest that a page be created where ArbCom can be petitioned for
clarification by two or more users in dispute over an ArbCom ruling
pertaining directly to one of them? They would have to demonstrate a
substantive ambiguity in interpretation that requires clarification.
Nicholas Knight wrote:
"There are actions which are unacceptable in civilised society. Any
society that holds a given view/opinion to be unacceptable is not civilised."
Really. If I presented as my view that women are best presented with their legs
spread, and children should be seen and not heard, a civilized society should
accept my statement? Hmmm. ~~~~