http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7914828.stm
It's an article on how wonderful it is that political movements are
better documented in their formative stages these days ... but all I
could think was what a pain it can be researching anything that
happened before 1995.
After the low-hanging fruit come those of us with books.
(I've been *really annoyed* lately when a fact in an article has a
reference ... but it's been tagged {{fact}} because it doesn't have an
*online* reference. Suggestion: searching for all articles with
"</ref>{{fact" in them and sending 50,000 volts through the chair of
anyone who tagged a reference on mere paper.
- d.
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Friends,
I have returned from the field, and look forward to picking up where
I/we left off on the project.
Best regards,
Jon
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Then, please forward this notice to the appropriate board or individuals.
--- On Sat, 3/7/09, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton(a)gmail.com> wrote:
From: Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton(a)gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] "Alan Cabal" article
To: billdeancarter(a)yahoo.com, "English Wikipedia" <wikien-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
Date: Saturday, March 7, 2009, 5:43 AM
2009/3/6 Bill Carter <billdeancarter(a)yahoo.com>:
> Dear Wikipedians:
>
> Since Bali ultimate nominated the "Alan Cabal" article for deletion on January 10th, 2009, the article has been rife with errors, slander, and downright abuse toward Alan Cabal. This is a recurrent theme with Bali ultimate's edits. Time and time
> again he has destroyed good work. Let's take a closer look at the "Alan Cabal" article.
This is not really the place for this. Try
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Biographies_of_living_persons/Notice…
Dear Wikipedians:
Since Bali ultimate nominated the "Alan Cabal" article for deletion on January 10th, 2009, the article has been rife with errors, slander, and downright abuse toward Alan Cabal. This is a recurrent theme with Bali ultimate's edits. Time and time
again he has destroyed good work. Let's take a closer look at the "Alan Cabal" article.
I had previously
laid out a detailed rationale for why two articles should be added to the "Selected bibliography" but
Bali ultimate has removed them and more from the "Selected bibliography"
with an edit summary reading "replaces incorrect
"bibliography" with correct "articles;" makes this actually selected,".
(http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Alan_Cabal&diff=267625445&oldid=2…)
Let me explain why at least 2 articles should be included in Alan Cabal's Selected bibliography:
—. "The Doom that Came to Chelsea", New York Press, vol. 16, no. 23 (June 3–9, 2003).
1) This article is sourced in Christopher Knowles' 2007 book Our Gods Wear Spandex.
2) This article is mentioned all over the web for information on the occult renaissance.
3) This article is used in a paper of the Necronomicon.
—. "Best Things About Being a Middle-Aged
Guy In New York", New York Press, vol. 13, no. 39 (September 27–October 3, 2000).
1) This article appeared in Arts & Letters Daily in 2000.
2) A quote from this article is mentioned by an English Professor at Wayne University.
On the talk page for the "Alan Cabal" article, I have
tried to fix a mistake in the template.
The 2nd AFD is hidden. But Bali ultimate has reverted this change stating "actually this edit hid the afd. not sure why"
(http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Alan_Cabal&diff=270884274&ol…)
Other errors in the "Alan Cabal" article include the sentence "He also appeared on The Patty Duke Show and plays in the White Courtesy Telephone rock band." It should read "played in the White Courtesy Telephone rock band." White Courtesy Telephone is a defunct band.
An omission: the 2007 book Our Gods Wear Spandex has been excised from the "Alan Cabal"
article, along with the information it provided, simply because I pointed out that the book has one error. It describes Alan Cabal as
a Village Voice writer, which was an error introduced by Astrologer Rob
Brezsny and subsequently perpetuated by others. This has been seized upon by Bali ultimate as a rationale for ejecting
the 2007 book from the "Alan Cabal" article, along with Mr. Cabal's article on the occult renaissance, and
anything to do with Mr. Cabal's association with occultism.
Another niggling error, Alan Cabal's article on Ernst Zundel was not
sympathetic, but "sympathetic" as described in a reliable source, so it should be in quotes
like this (which it was until Bali ultimate showed up):
His "sympathetic"[26] article on holocaust denier Ernst Zündel in CounterPunch
titled "Star Chamber Redux: the Prosecution of Zundel", attracted the
attention of the media, including internet forums and blogs and the Jeff Rense radio show,[27] which Zundel called "An amazing break-through" in a letter to the Adelaide Institute.[28][29]
Alan Cabal has corrected a few errors himself, one of which was negligent
(http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Alan_Cabal&diff=267113849&oldid=2…)
and another which was slanderous
(http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Alan_Cabal&diff=266140426&oldid=2…).
These incidents damage the website tremendously. Please correct all of these errors. Alan Cabal has been slandered many times over the years by drive-by trolls but mostly Wikipedians. In July of 2008 he promised legal action unless a slanderous comment was removed from the first AfD, which Wikipedian Stifle promptly removed (http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/A…). Bali ultimate must be denied access to the "Alan Cabal" article so that productive editors can move in and improve the article. If an editor attempts to improve any article which Bali ultimate has significantly damaged they will come upon him and have their edits removed. This abuse must come to an end.
Thank you.
Bill D. Carter
The BBC, presumably worrying about a slow news day, have an article on
Wikipedia vandalism, focusing on UK politicians:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7921985.stm
The Lib Dem advisor quoted, incidentally, comes up with a fairly clear
rendering of the "undue weight"/"jumbled collection of facts" BLP
problem.
--
- Andrew Gray
andrew.gray(a)dunelm.org.uk
Hay wrote:
> > By Hakon Wium Lie of Opera:
> >
> > http://www.princexml.com/howcome/2009/wikipedia/infobox/
> >
> > What is the likelihood of making as much as possible CSS? How to make
> > infoboxes degrade gracefully for non-CSS browsers and IE users?
>
> I don't know if making such an infobox that does not support IE6 and
> IE7 is a good idea. If you would take out all inline style elements
> and replace with them classes that are available in a general
> stylesheet it would already safe a lot of the cruft in the original
> code.
I agree that graceful degradation for IE6/IE7 users is an issue. The
purpose of the case study was first and foremost to explore how
Wikipedia's markup can be simplified and improved when CSS 2.1 is
fully implemented -- like it is in Opera, Firefox, Safari and IE8. I
didn't even test in IE6/IE7.
I think it's possible -- with some careful crafting -- to make things
look ok, but not pixel-perfect in legacy browsers. In lynx, the
table-free version looks better than the original one, but IE6/IE7
users outnumber lynx by a some magnitudes.
I'll look into tweaking the style sheet to aim for graceful degradation.
However, I also think the web should not be hostage to IE6/IE7
forever. Some designers have declared war on IE6 for this reason:
http://blog.wired.com/business/2009/02/norwegian-websi.html
Cheers,
-h&kon
Håkon Wium Lie CTO °þe®ª
howcome(a)opera.com http://people.opera.com/howcome
The quick answer is yes. I recall running acrost it a few years ago. I
think I may have even added my own name for something or other. I have a rather
large library (for an individual) in my house.
The problem is, I can't quite recall what the name of that page was. Maybe
it will come to me later today when I'm not busy trying to patch my roof ;)
Will Johnson
In a message dated 3/4/2009 12:56:25 P.M. Pacific Standard Time,
oldakquill(a)gmail.com writes:
Is there a page on Wikipedia where one user (a rural user, let's
presume), can ask for an offline reference to be checked ("can you
check this page of this book for this statement/fact")? If not, might
it be a useful service to offer?
**************Need a job? Find employment help in your area.
(http://yellowpages.aol.com/search?query=employment_agencies&ncid=emlcntusye…)
(Anyone who has ever dressed a child will love this one!)
Did you hear about the teacher who was helping one of her kindergarten
students put on his cowboy boots?
He asked for help and she could see why.
Even with her pulling and him pushing, the little boots still
didn't want to go on. By the time they got the second boot on, she had
worked up a sweat.
She almost cried when the little boy said, 'Teacher,
They're on the wrong feet.' She looked, and sure enough,
They were. It wasn't any easier pulling the boots off than
It was putting them on. She managed to keep her cool as
Together they worked to get the boots back on, this time
On the right feet ..
He then announced, 'These aren't my boots.'
She bit her tongue rather than get right in his face and scream,
'Why didn't you say so?', like she wanted to. Once again, she
Struggled to help him pull the ill-fitting boots off his little
Feet. No sooner had they gotten the boots off when he said,
'They're my brother's boots. My Mom made me wear 'em.'
Now she didn't know if she should laugh or cry. But, she
Mustered up what grace and courage she had left to wrestle
The boots on his feet again.
Helping him into his coat, she asked, 'Now, where are your Mittens?'
He said, 'I stuffed 'em in the toes of my boots.'
She will be eligible for parole in three years.
On 3 Mar 2009 at 11:49:01 -0500, Gwern Branwen wrote:
> All of those are pretty interesting things - what side of the road
> tells you both historical information, and also is terribly practical
> if you're there*
>
> * Although one certainly hopes that anyone driving in a particular
> country will not need Wikipedia to tell them something like this!
I could see the Simpsons cartoon doing something around this... The
Simpson family has just landed in a foreign country, and Homer has
rented a car, a new high-tech model with built in Internet access.
He suddenly realizes he doesn't know whether to drive on the left or
the right in that country, and brings up the Wikipedia page to look
it up. At that moment, back in Springfield, one of the school
bullies (isn't one of them named Jimbo?) has just vandalized the
country's Wikipedia article to change the driving side to the
opposite of its correct value, and thus Homer starts driving on the
wrong side, honking and cursing out all the other drivers who he says
are all doing it wrong. "Hey, you guys, you're supposed to be
driving on the left! Wikipedia says so!" Then the other drivers,
prompted by Homer's advice, pull up the Wikipedia page in their own
Internet-enabled cars, and realize they've been driving wrong all
their lives, and all switch to the opposite side.
--
== Dan ==
Dan's Mail Format Site: http://mailformat.dan.info/
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Dan's Domain Site: http://domains.dan.info/