While obviously exaggarated, the article does raise some interesting points. For example, the following sentence struck me as insightful: "The 'general public,' you see, is now an entity separate and distinct from those who actually control the creation of Wikipedia." Anyway, irrespective of the truth of these claims the permanent and (apparently) secretive semi-protection of pages will give us very bad publicity, particularly if this is applied indiscriminately to all pages in a category. I think the drawbacks of such a measure outweigh the benefits.
Molu
On Wed, 24 May 2006 13:33:09 -0400 Jimmy Wales wrote:
>http://www.roughtype.com/archives/2006/05/the_death_of_wi.php
>It is worth noting that Nicholas Carr has taken note of this thread to
>announce the death of Wikipedia. Apparently, 154 articles
>semi-protected out of 1,151,768 is the end of open editing.
>--Jimbo
---------------------------------
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On 5/24/06, jayjg <jayjg99(a)gmail.com> wrote:
> On 5/23/06, Prasad J <prasad59(a)gmail.com> wrote:
...
>
> Jimbo, for another good candidate, see poster above.
I should have thought this fellow who chooses to use the name "Abu
Hamza" and gets involved in endless flame wars on this list was a
no-brainer, too. Please, if we don't want to kick him off, could
those who cannot restrain themselves from responding to him at least
either filter out his edits or reply to him off-list?
On Wed, 24 May 2006 17:07:04 +1000 Mark Gallagher wrote:
>Our definition of "public interest" is not the same definition as the
>PRC's. While we're flinging about the "slippery slope" argument with
>gay abandon, I could argue that you are in favour of us throwing away
>all editorial standards. We would no longer be able to argue that
>such-and-such is irrelevant, because That's Censorship, And Censorship
>Is Bad. We would have to print everything we could get our hands on; we
>could not decide not to include something of no import, because if it's
>negative and we leave it out we'd be as bad as the Chinese government ...
And how do you know that your definition of public interest is a Good one while that of PRC is a Bad one? It's all in the Interest of the Public, as decided by some appointed moral guardian who has nothing to do with the Public and most probably doesn't give a fuck about what happens to the Public. I repeat, Wikipedia is not the moral police and it must not start deciding what information are in public interest and what are not, that way lies madness.
>Wikipedia does not and should not report lies as truth merely because
>some filthy rag has published them. Being truthful is an inherent
>component of neutrality --- if we do not report the truth, we are
>showing bias towards those who want to spread lies.
Wikipedia should not report anything as Truth. Why do you get to decide the Truth when the owner of Wikipedia Review doesn't? What objective benchmark are you using to decide that your Truth is superior and more in Public Interest than jis one?.
>Example A:
>"Lyndon LaRouche is a popular and powerful American politician. He has
>become famous worldwide for his expos?s of Dick Cheney's plan to flatten
>Iran with nuclear weapons, the Queen of England's secret Satanic
>connections, and the influence of Masonic Jewish Bankers in
>international politics. He earned critical acclaim in 2004 after
>finally completing the construction of the Eurasian Land Bridge, and has
>been hailed as a modern-day Marco Polo. His critics, however, deny this."
That violates the existing policy of NPOV, not some imagined one about Public Interest. What we should be saying is "Lyndon LaRouche has made these claims [insert source], but his critics have opposed him[insert source]". We are not asserting the Truth of anything, just reporting everything in a neutral way without concern about whether Lyndon's claims are in Public Interest.
>Example B:
>Lyndon LaRouche once had sex with a 15-year-old girl while he was 16 (or
>17 while 18, or insert your own age of consent laws here). So far the
>authorities have refused to do anything about this accusation since it
>surfaced in 2005, sixty years after the fact, but a small group of
>dedicated Internet slander-mongers are working hard to bring this
>troubling issue to light.
Again, the problem is NPOV and not Public Interest. If some source has claimed that Lyndon had sex with a minor then we attrinute the statement to that source, otherwise we remove it. Defamation suits can be avoided by not making assertions. An encyclopedia is a tertiary source. making assertions and presenting the Truth is not our job. [[WP:ROUGE]] has some interesting views about the consequences of trying to report the Truth rather than the NPOV.
Molu
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As someone who regularly polices RFP, I am pretty strict on what I
semiprotect and what I don't. But I must say, that rigor aside, I
very much like the idea of semiprotecting living people's articles as
a matter of course. Accountability skyrockets when someone has to
register for an account to edit.
k
On 5/23/06, David Boothroyd <david(a)election.demon.co.uk> wrote:
> "Steve Bennett" <stevagewp(a)gmail.com> writes:
> >
> >Do we perhaps also need to create the subcategory [[Category:Living persons
> >liable to sue]]?
>
> Unfortunately in English law it is potentially actionable to call
> someone litigious.
> --
> David Boothroyd - http://www.election.demon.co.uk
> david(a)election.demon.co.uk (home)
> dboothroyd(a)westminster.gov.uk (council)
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l(a)Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>
Done. As a reminder to others, you can change these options yourself by
going down the bottom of this page:
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l<http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/>
Steve
On 5/24/06, Dan Rosenthal <swatjester(a)gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Wikipedia-EN ListServ Ops....could you possibly change my settings from
> individual email to digest? I'm about to go out of town for 2 months.
>
> -Swatjester
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l(a)Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>
Either that or a separate mailing list for these activities. I don't know why experienced editors let themselves get dragged into irrelevant and pointless debates and name-calling on silly issues. This is a mailing list about Wikipedia, not about conspiracy theories or their refutations. These long threads are really lowering the signal-noise ratio. Trolls will be trolls, but those of us who are NOT trolls don't need to compete at the same level. Let's put an end to this unhygienic practice.
Molu
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I happened to be glancing down the [[Wikipedia:Facebook]] when, to my great
surprise, I found my own face.
It seems that [[User:Vizcarra]] borrowed the photo I made for [[Making a
Face]], [[Image:MakingAFace.jpg]], cut out half of it and made [[Image:
DavidVizcarra.jpg]], giving it the caption "My picture, taken by myself with
the use of a webcam."
I'm not remotely mad, rather I think this is hillarious. Also rather
flattering. What do you think would be the best way to broach the subject
with him? ("Excuse me, but you look familiar. Are we related?")
Sam
--
Asbestos
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Asbestos
I've decided to post one last message to clarify my views on this
matter. If I'm asked additional questions about it, I'm gladly
willing to clarify beyond this, but I'm done arguing.
I support the indefinite block of Saladin1970. He has made no useful
edits, and has committed copyvios, violated NOR, violated the 3RR,
and has shown a significantly biased editing pattern. This much is,
as far as I can tell, undisputed by anyone except the blocked user
himself.
Saladin1970's biased editing patterns, particularly in the case of
the Harold Shipman article, are problematic. This disturbed me a
great deal. He denounces much of Wikipedia's content as "pro-
Zionist", as well as the admin Jayjg as a "pro-Zionist editor". This,
along with the Shipman obsession, provided significant evidence of
anti-Semitism.
For the purposes of this message, my religious and political views
are completely irrelevant; however, to show that I'm not acting out
of bias, I'm going to clarify a few things. I'm not Jewish, although
I have known my fair share of Jewish people and report that they are
excellent people. For that matter, I'm not Christian either, although
many of them are excellent people too. I am not a conservative, and I
do not support the Bush administration. I think the war on terror and
the war in Iraq are scams--although I'm not a big fan of terrorism
either. I don't have a settled opinion about Israel yet, but I don't
think it was fully moral for the Jews to claim Palestine as their own
and take the place over. I understand the argument that "Zionism is
racism" and give it some credence.
So why do I find this editor's obsession with Zionism evidence of
anti-Semitism? Sensible people don't go around accusing random people
(i.e. Jayjg) of being Zionists. Sensible people don't accuse
administrators in general of favoring a pro-Zionist bias unless they
see a Zionist conspiracy around every corner, which I have to say is
a pretty clear indicator of anti-Semitic conspiracy nutjobbery.
in contrast to my earlier opinions, I don't think that being an anti-
Semite in and of itself justifies a ban. Anti-Semitism is...well,
it's not "fine", but it's tolerable if you keep it to yourself. This
editor's mistake was not keeping it to himself. Even if he doesn't
cop to it now, his editing pattern is not only biased, it's nakedly
biased in favor of a highly offensive viewpoint, in a way that
communism or anarcho-capitalism or furry fandom are not highly
offensive. The distinction in this case is that while communism and
anarcho-capitalism may offend some people's sensibilities, they do so
merely out of disagreement. Anti-Semitism, and any other form of
racism, offends people by attacking an important aspect of their
identities. Whether or not you agree with me that editing towards a
heavily offensive and racist bias is worse than editing towards a
political or ideological bias, I think we can all agree that editing
towards any bias is unhelpful.
A couple more points of clarification. Regarding his use of the name
"Abu Hamza", I can't reliably argue that it's a deliberate reference
to [[Abu Hamza al-Masri]], the British Islamic claric convicted for
racial hatred and incitement to murder. It's been argued that "Abu
Hamza" isn't an uncommon name among those Muslims who choose to use
an Arabic name, and it very well may be. I also have no evidence that
this editor in any way supports terrorism or any of the other
violence advocated by Islamists, so I apologize for earlier
suggesting that he did.
Speaking of that word, I think my usage of it was insufficiently
explained. If you look up "Islamism" on Wikipedia, you'll see that
"Islamism describes a set of political ideologies derived from
Islamic fundamentalism. Islamist ideologies hold that Islam is not
only a religion, but also a political system that governs the legal,
economic and social imperatives of the state according to its
interpretation of Islamic Law." My denouncing of Islamism was only
meant to apply to these ideologies, and not to the Islamic religion
as a whole. In fact, Wikipedia also reports that "Some Muslims find
it troublesome that a word derived from "Islam" is applied to
organizations they consider radical and extreme." I will agree with
this--"Islamist" is indeed an unfortunate term to apply to the
ideologies of Abu Hamza al-Masri, Osama bin Laden, and their
followers. But it is perhaps necessary for the lack of any better
term, as "Islamofascist" and such are ridiculous terms invented by
right wing nutjobs with little understanding of Islam or fascism.
In either case, I'm fully able to distinguish between the ideology of
Hamas and the Islamic religion. The ideology of Hamas is something I
object to rather strongly--the Islamic religion, in contrast, is no
better or worse than Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, or any other
sensible religion. For those of us who understand analogies well, let
me put it this way: Islamism is to Islam what Christian Identity (the
ideology of the Aryan Nations and other white supremacist groups) is
to Christianity. Stated more plainly: Islamism is an attempt to twist
an otherwise sensible religious faith into a justification for murder
and mayhem. Islam is a sensible religious faith practiced by
countless sensible individuals, some of whom I have been fortunate to
have known. If there are any Muslims reading this exchange, allow me
to apologize to them for any misunderstandings I have created.
That is all. Thank you for your attention.
--
Philip L. Welch
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Philwelch
> Date: Tue, 23 May 2006 08:59:01 -0700 (PDT)
> From: Phil Boswell <phil.boswell(a)gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Creation of user photographs
> Peter Mackay wrote:
> >
> > Mmmm, but does requesting someone to take a photograph actually
> > give you
> > copyright over the resulting image? I don't think it does, without
> > explicit assignment.
> >
> If you were on holiday and asked a passing random person to use your
> camera
> to take a picture of you, I suspect that you would be quite surprised
> were they to attempt to assert copyright over the picture.
>
> Many people are in the habit of acquiring pictures in this manner : I
> don't
> suppose there can be more than a handful who would ever even
> contemplate
> this scenario as more than a mental exercise, and if there is a
> single one
> who would consider forcing said passer-by to sign something
> forfeiting copyright, they would rightly be judged a lunatic.
If this ever came up in court, I'm pretty sure the court would
decide that copyright had been transferred the moment the
passer-by handed your camera back, by mutual consent. There
is no requirement that the transfer has to be in writing.
Everyone understands that "will you please use my camera to
take a photo of me?" includes the caveat "and give me the
copyright of it", so unless the passer-by replies "yes, but
I'm keeping the copyright", copyright has indeed been
transferred. It's just like walking up to someone and handing
them $10; you don't have to say anything or write anything to
make them the legal owner of it.
(Disclaimer: actually I know nothing!)
Brendan.
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