/me waves at Andrew Orlowski, confident that this post will be misrepresented in The Register tomorrow. Delirium wrote: Well, the article survived AfD, sensibly enough, even today I notice that Seth has had to revert vandalism *personally*. I just now semi-protected it. For a few weeks, the article contained this little bit of garbage: "Finkelstein is, however, legendary for his willingness to mount personal attacks against those who disagree with him.[citation needed]" When I met Seth, he explained to me how this happened. The vandal used a classic trick... the double edit. The first edit was the vandalism, the second edit was innocent. So if you checked the diffs incorrectly, you would not see the attack paragraph. Personal attack: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Seth_Finkelstein&diff=4285191… Innocent edit to cover it: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Seth_Finkelstein&diff=4285464… Is this not sad? That Seth Finkelstein has to personally monitor his own entry in Wikipedia? His situation is similar to that of Xeni Jardin, for example, who has had to deal with a stalker/attackblog altering her entry unfairly and then boasting about it on the blog! Ok, yes, that is sad. But it is not the saddest part, no. The saddest part is this: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Seth_Finkelstein&diff=5614614… A Wikipedian in good standing, with thousands of edits, reads this obvious personal attack, and instead of *removing* it, chooses instead to put a {{fact}} template around it. Ouch. We need to radically improve our education of editors to understand that this is NOT THE RIGHT ANSWER. If you read something negative about someone, and there is no source, then either find a _legitimate_ source (and make sure that WE do not make the negative claim, but rather than we merely report neutrally on what the claim is), or just remove it... and insist that anyone who wants to put it back, do so with a legitimate source! --Jimbo

Delirium wrote: If we find our social and technological systems are not up to the task of creating and maintaining biographies of barely notable people, particularly those who are flame-magnets, then we are better not having them at all. I agree with you completely on that. What I want to wake people up to, and this is something I have been saying increasingly loudly for months, with _good results_ so far, although I think there is a long way to go: biographies of barely notable living persons present a particularly difficult challenge. --Jimbo

[Crossposted to wikien-l and wikitech-l.] Guy Chapman aka JzG wrote: Presumably this is something that could be countered by technical fixes. Admin rollback already automatically reverts multiple consecutive edits from the same editor; the manifest usefulness of this feature would be one more argument for granting rollback privileges to non-admins. But _seeing_ the sum of the edits should definitely be made easier: I think that the diff links in the watchlist, at least, should automatically show all the combined edits made by the last editor. It'd also be nice if the diff view showed how many edits there are between the two revisions being compared; besides being, IMO, a good thing in general, this would help make the change I proposed above less confusing. I don't think this should be particularly hard to implement. What I'd like is comments on whether this would actually be a good idea, and suggestions on where else, besides the watchlist, it should be applied. (At the risk of [[WP:BEANS]], I'd like to note that there is another related problem; if a vandal blanks the section of an article containing the interlanguage links, a bot will often quickly show up to restore them, as a side effect hiding the vandalism itself from the watchlist. Making the bots smarter would help, but I'm not sure what can be done to solve this problem in general, beyond hiding bot edits from the watchlist by default and making the feature actually do what it should do -- i.e. show the last non-bot edit instead.) -- Ilmari Karonen

On 7/12/06 3:09 PM, "Jimmy Wales" <jwales(a)wikia.com> wrote: I'm beginning to think that any article with [[Category:Living people]] in it should be semi-protected by default. -Travis

On 7/13/06, Jimmy Wales <jwales(a)wikia.com> wrote: http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=bonking Hmm, I must say that "a liberal application of bonking" does sound nice. I'm not sure it would help, though. ;-) What did you really mean by that? Erik

On 7/12/06, Erik Moeller <eloquence(a)gmail.com> wrote: Clearly he meant the third definition: "having sex using a space hopper".

----- Original Message ---- From: Jimmy Wales <jwales(a)wikia.com> To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l(a)Wikipedia.org> Sent: Wednesday, July 12, 2006 3:09:22 PM Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Borderline notable bios (yes, again) --Jimbo Jimbo and others, I've been struggling with what to remove and what to keep on certain Living Person biographies that are on my watchlist. Most of them are athletes and finding the line between encyclopaedic writing and fan cruft is difficult. (It's not difficult for me to see, but it causes friction when you try to remove statements like the following and the "fan" that wrote them thinks they are perfectly okay.) " ... he had another fine season ..." " ... bounced back with another quality season ... " " He was also one of the best players ... " " ... the season was an unqualified success ... " " The news came as a shock ... " " The trade request was harshly received by Edmontonians ... " None of those statements is sourced in any way. And I can find at least that many similar statements in several articles on my watchlist. Can I delete all that on the spot? If it's "positive" can I mark it with [citation needed] and leave it alone? Sue Anne

On 7/13/06, Delirium <delirium(a)hackish.org> wrote: I can't do that without being accused of violating the autobiography policy. Subjects are not supposed to edit their own articles. I have tried detailing the errors on the talk page, but it gets ignored. Angela.

On Jul 12, 2006, at 9:54 PM, Angela wrote: Obviously you are beginning to understand some of the complaints people make. And facing the fact that what has been published about you is not you. Fred

On 12/07/06, Jimmy Wales <jwales(a)wikia.com> wrote: "It's true so we should have it in and who are you to say otherwise and you're just deleting information and... they *asked* for deletion? OMG CENSORSHIP" This is a slightly hyperbolic paraphrase, but a true one. People get insanely twitchy if they think something is removed by request; they *asked* us to remove it? that means they don't want people to know it! it must be important! we must fight to keep it! I've encountered this quite a few times. It seems to be a cultural thing - I don't think I'd be wrong to guess it's a much more common attitude among Americans than Europeans, and among a certain type of them. There's not much we can do except be tactful and occasionally wield the Big Stick Of Editorial Common Sense. "No, the names of his four-year-old twin daughters are not notable. Yes, they're verifiable if you go and... oh, you did go and look up the county registers did you? That's nice. But it's not important. It causes the guy undue distress, and our readers don't need to know it." I mean, trivia stuff. I've seen a few requests on OTRS from people saying things like "I guess you have an article on me, and that's fair, but can you take out the fact that I was born on September 2nd and just have it say 1958?" Or the seemingly inexhaustible list of minor porn starlets who, quite justifiably, write to us and say "your article on me has my real name! take it out! I'm scared!"... Articles are filling up with information that is, at best, borderline trivia (and at worst actively stupid), and we have a (default?) culture that seems to encourage adding it. There are times that I think adopting the rule jp.wiki has on biographies would be a damn good idea... -- - Andrew Gray andrew.gray(a)dunelm.org.uk

On 12/07/06, Jimmy Wales <jwales(a)wikia.com> wrote: My usual policy is to say "we've had someone write to us and say this article is crap, can we do something about it" - it's perfectly true, but it's far more effective than saying "we've had the subject..." Of course, my hacking an article down is less likely to cause a riot than you doing so! [[en:Japanese Wikipedia]] Basically, if you're not a "public figure" (which seems to be defined quite narrowly - perhaps in a similar way to the Western defamation definition?), *you don't get named* at all, much less have an article on you. I'm not a public figure. Angela's not a public figure. Daniel Brandt's not a public figure. You probably are, and so's Xeni, but there's the cutoff, I guess. Incidentally, we have something passably similar discouraging borderline notables. Our *example* for "Less well-known people may be mentioned within other articles" is [[Ronald Gay]], and look where he appears... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Violence_against_gays%2C_lesbians%2C_bisexuals… he's the *only* person in that screenful of text to not be linked. I think the hint may not have taken very well. -- - Andrew Gray andrew.gray(a)dunelm.org.uk

On 7/12/06, Andrew Gray <shimgray(a)gmail.com> wrote: "Probably"? If you make the Time 100 anything, you're a public figure. There's no gray area. Brandt is a public figure because, among other reasons, he's been interviewed by or featured in The New York Times about a half dozen times, and he's not only done this willingly (as opposed to being sucked into a news controversy like Brian Chase), he's courted it through press releases and other means.

On 13/07/06, Rob <gamaliel8(a)gmail.com> wrote: I keep forgetting Wikipedia went and got famous! He certainly is. I confess I have been avoiding paying attention to this whole thing, but yes, that's the sort of thing involved. -- - Andrew Gray andrew.gray(a)dunelm.org.uk

Andrew Gray wrote: Empirically, it doesn't seem to be quite as strict as the defamation of "public figure". It seems that there are broad classes of activity that by default are considered to make you worth having an article on jp:. To pick just one example, basically every sports player ever to play in some professional league, regardless of public notability or even notability within the sport, seems to be fair game for an article, simply by virtue of the fact that they were a sports player in some professional league. -Mark

My response below appeared very belated as I realised after sending it that it woudl go to moderation as I had changed my e-mail address. It is of course now old news as the AfD on Angela's article has been closed as no consensus - keep. This debate had lead me to reconsider my position. I really do not see why we should not delete articles on living persons if they request it and if they have not put themself firmly into the public domain, such as standing for office. Starting a company is not putting yourself into the public domain. It is the company that may deserve an article and the people who founded it should be mentioned. But that does not imply that we should breach their privacy by a full article on the founders. Getting elected to the Royal Society or similar is not pushing yourself into the public domain. Such a person might be mentioned on an article that explained the advance that lead to their election to the RS, but if they do not want a full bio, we should not write one. Privacy is very important. We are not writing an encyclopedia overnight. If a person is really notable, an article can be added later, possibly after their death, if they persit in requesting that there be no article in their lifetime. I do not think this course of action is out of line. For example, I think "Who's Who" does not force an entry on someone who does not want one. They do not argue that someone is notable and people have a right to find out about them whether the person wants this or not. I think there is a terrible arrogance about forcing a WP article on someone who does not want their privacy breached in this way. I understand that my approach is very close to the Japan WP approach that I asked about at the end. I think it should be followed up and implemented in the en WP. Apologies for top posting. I do not normally top post, but I am not specifically addressing the issues in the post below, just following up rather late. Brian. On Thu, Jul 13, 2006 at 08:54:56AM +1000, Brian Salter-Duke wrote: -- Brian Salter-Duke (Brian Duke) b_duke(a)bigbond.net.au - NB New! Old still works Post: 626 Melbourne Rd, Spotswood, VIC, 3015, Australia Phone 03-93992847. http://www.salter-duke.bigpondhosting.com/brian/index.htm Honorary Researcher Fellow, Dept. of Medicinal Chemistry, Monash Univ.

On Wed, 12 Jul 2006 16:54:18 -0500, Jimmy Wales <jwales(a)wikia.com> wrote: Jimmy, I am glad you have not forgotten Brian Peppers. Neither have the YTMNDers. They will be back; I will be there when they come. I hope you will be too. Guy (JzG) -- http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG

On Wed, 12 Jul 2006 18:25:05 -0400, Delirium <delirium(a)hackish.org> wrote: It depends. I was up for allowing a very short biography saying (in strictly neutral terms) that Peppers was an apparently disabled man with a congenital deformity who was convicted of a minor technical offence and gained limited notoriety after a group of sophomoric fucktards got their rocks off laughing at his appearance in mugshots and (wrongly) screaming "child rapist!", something that would earn a serious fine if printed in a newspaper. But in the end, no. I don't think we should have an article on somebody who is in the end "famous" solely because, well, a group of sophomoric fucktards got their rocks off laughing at his appearance. Anybody who thinks the YTMND stuff is anything other than sick and depraved has probably never been close to someone with a serious disability. And frankly I don't care how notable the YTMNDers are in their own minds, I don't believe the bulk of the world cares, and I don't think we should help them perpetuate the supposed meme. Guy (JzG) -- http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG

Shortcut WP:SAP. Template: {{sidestack}} 'Nuf said. -Stevertigo __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com

On 7/13/06, stevertigo <vertigosteve(a)yahoo.com> wrote: Is it your assertion that WP should not use the miliary operation names for describing events? It's one thing to state that military terminology tends to gloss over unsightly details like shooting and killing people, which is true. It's quite another to assert that military operation names are unencyclopedic or so POV that they should not be used in the WP. The operation names are just designators for an event, and are often both the most common and only popularly known public label for those events (Desert Storm, for example). It is possible to take Robin Lakoff too seriously. -- -george william herbert george.herbert(a)gmail.com

On 7/13/06, stevertigo <vertigosteve(a)yahoo.com> wrote: Actually, no. I think it should be called the 2003 Invasion of Iraq. You're overgeneralizing my position. If the military operation name is the most common western, english language designation for an event ("Desert Storm") then it probably should be the article name. If the military operation name is not the most common western, english language description for the event ("2003 Invasion of Iraq") then it should not use the military operation name. The military operation name should exist as a redirect to the event article, in that case. It's a western-english-culture-centric approach, not a pro military or anti-military terminology approach. The article should be named the way "normal people" will most likely look for the article. In some cases that is, and in some cases that is not, the military operation name. Robin Lakoff is the wife of UC Berkeley professor George Lakoff; both of whom have been writing widely on linguistics of military and political actions, from a left-wing viewpoint, for about 20 years now. Your argument may be of independent origin but it's precisely some of their points. See [[George Lakoff]] on en.wikipedia Of course. -- -george william herbert george.herbert(a)gmail.com

On 7/13/06, stevertigo <vertigosteve(a)yahoo.com> wrote: It doesn't. My point is that you're trying to stretch NPOV to the exclusion of other policy. [[Wikipedia:Naming conventions]] Excerpt: "Generally, article naming should give priority to what the majority of English speakers would most easily recognize, with a reasonable minimum of ambiguity, while at the same time making linking to those articles easy and second nature. Another way to summarize the overall principle of Wikipedia's naming conventions: Names of Wikipedia articles should be optimized for readers over editors; and for a general audience over specialists. " That policy is not NPOV. It's western-english-popular-culture-centric. It's the ruling policy here (it's specific on this topic, neutral POV is a general principle). -- -george william herbert george.herbert(a)gmail.com

On 7/13/06, stevertigo <vertigosteve(a)yahoo.com> wrote: I am afraid that I am going to have to ask you to agree to disagree on this point. I do not believe that Wikipedia can survive on NPOV alone, or NPOV raised on a pillar above all other policies and common sense. I suspect that general consensus agrees with me on this point. That is not a style guide; it's an official policy. Your desire that it not be is evident, but that's your opinion, not an accurate reflection of existing policy in my opinion. -- -george william herbert george.herbert(a)gmail.com

On 7/13/06, Fred Bauder <fredbaud(a)ctelco.net> wrote: Trump implies some sort of absolutism. I'm trying to point out that absolutism for any of the policies eventually leads to mutual contradictions with other policies. That way lies madness and flame wars... -- -george william herbert george.herbert(a)gmail.com

On 7/13/06, Fred Bauder <fredbaud(a)ctelco.net> wrote: Are you seriously equating article names with torture??? Obviously we've hit a nerve here, but ... gentlemen, please, calm down. -- -george william herbert george.herbert(a)gmail.com

That is the policy of the United States. No matter how much torture is done, the policy remains. So all the edit warring and voting you Methinks Fred was being multidimensionally facetious, but in a way which somehow advances human dignity. I think. -Stevertigo __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com

On Jul 13, 2006, at 1:15 PM, George Herbert wrote: The point is only that infractions do not abrogate a principle. Fred

--- George Herbert <george.herbert(a)gmail.com> wrote: Then we should probably replace the clause "absolute and non-negotiable" with "catch-as-catch-can." (See [[Catch wrestling]]) I suspect you are right (ironically enough). I submit this point. I had read the lede sentence: "Naming conventions is a list of guidelines" and presumed it was of soft nature. Forgive my misuse of the term "guide." Sure, fine, whatever. -Stevertigo __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com

stevertigo wrote: We're not in the business of trying to impose our notion of NPOV on organizations whose very reason for being is to take a side. Do you think we should retitle the articles on "Department of Defense", or "Planned Parenthood", or "Operation Save America" (formerly "Operation Rescue" apparently). What about the "Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act"? I'm sure there are lots of people who consider that term to be objectionably POV. Why are we using [[People's Republic of China]] instead of "communist China" which is far more common form, and [[Republic of China]]? Even the article on ROC says "Taiwan" has become a more common form. We're not going to do a very good job of reporting other people's POVs if we insist on inventing our own terminology to use in lieu of theirs. Many operation names get trumped by popular usage, which is as it should be. If there is not yet a clear popular usage, fall back to official names. Only if there are dueling official names, with no popular preference, does it make sense to invent a term. NPOV shouldn't even be a consideration, save it for the article. Stan

On 7/13/06, stevertigo <vertigosteve(a)yahoo.com> wrote: How is making up names anything but OR? NPOV is not the only Wikipedia policy and guideline. -- -george william herbert george.herbert(a)gmail.com

stevertigo wrote: Make up your mind - later you say "Either we have a culture that respects NPOV or we do not." If you want to make this into some kind of moral absolute that applies to all of WP, you can't then backpedal and say it's really only about military terminology. Why are you singling out the military for different treatment? If "bigger guns" matter so much, then it should apply throughout the governments that rely on them, to people and corporations that reap benefits from the government's guns, etc. And that's cool, if it's not original research. What's not cool is to put ourselves up as judge and jury on the terms that the rest of the world has already chosen to use. Stan

stevertigo wrote: So you want a discussion, but the it's out of bounds to point out the logical fallacies? OK, fine, I have better things to with my time. Stan

stevertigo wrote: If it's an official name, then that's what it's called. What's next, renaming articles on companies and products because their names were chosen to have positive associations? We could have such winners as "[[computer company named after irrelevant fruit]] is the maker of the [[Apple variety chosen because the name has a snappy abbreviation]]." Stan

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Stan Shebs stated for the record: Several months ago, I actually found myself confronting a person who didn't think Wikipedia should acknowledge that the [[LGM-118A Peacekeeper]] is called the "Peacekeeper." - -- Sean Barrett | I wouldn't recommend sex, drugs, or sean(a)epoptic.com | insanity for everyone, but they've always | worked for me. --Hunter S. Thompson

stevertigo wrote: ...wot? Either what you wrote above is incoherent, or you're using jargon I'm not familiar with. Either way, I can't figure out what you're trying to say or how it's supposed to relate to the discussion. Could you please clarify? -- Ilmari Karonen

On Jul 13, 2006, at 11:14 AM, stevertigo wrote: This issue is very much part of Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/ Añoranza where Añoranza removed several US operational codenames, "operation just cause" and"operation iraqi freedom". He probably overdid it but this question remains unanswered. Fred

--- jayjg <jayjg99(a)gmail.com> wrote: At least I'm trying. -Stevertigo __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com

Ever Article suffers from Original Research. But Jayjg: Do you consider replacing the title of "Holocaust" with "Jewish-Aryan conflict" as neutral as well? What are the criteria there? On Thu, 13 Jul 2006 16:02:00 -0400 jayjg <jayjg99(a)gmail.com> wrote:

On 7/13/06, stevertigo <vertigosteve(a)yahoo.com> wrote: Well, I didn't come up with the title, it's just what it happens to be called now. I'm not sure what you mean by "bypassing any notions of state sovereignty". Are you suggesting that Hezbollah, which is part of the Lebanese government, bypassed any notions of state sovereignty when it entered Israel, and attacked, killed, and kidnapped Israelis? Yep. Aside from the fact that it's intentionally offensive, it's also ridiculous, as "The Holocaust" is the common English name, and we're discussing an event which does not yet have a common English name. It's this kind of thinking and attitude that led to Dabljuh getting a permanent ban. Jay.

--- Fred Bauder <fredbaud(a)ctelco.net> wrote: To the contrary - we might know before they do. -Stevertigo __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com

Or, we do what's sensible and look what, for example, the NY Times calls it, instead of making (possibly) POV names up. Let's see what we've got just on the title page - Israel attacks (several times) - Israeli incursion (I like the sound of that) On Thu, 13 Jul 2006 14:46:57 -0600 Fred Bauder <fredbaud(a)ctelco.net> wrote:

Solution: Two separate articles, one about the Hezbollah kidnappings that sparked the whole thing, one about the "Israeli incursion". Makes a lot of things easier and keeps stuff tidy.

"The Lebanese government wanted a ceasefire calling for the two captured soldiers to be returned to Israel." Here's my take on it: If a bunch of stray israelis attacked Lebanon without authorization of the israeli government in retaliation of a bunch of lebanese without authorization of the lebanese government attacking Israel, one could talk of an "incident" or "crisis". If the proper israeli army attacks lebanon territories in retaliation of Lebanese troops attacking Israeli territories, one could talk of a "conflict" or, when the whole thing takes a long time, "war". If the proper israeli army attacks lebanon in retaliation of a bunch of lebanese without the authorization of the lebanese government, one talks of an "attack" or "incursion". (This might change to conflict or war if the lebanese would start to fight back) As former US DoD chief McNamara said, "Always keep a sense of proportions"

On Jul 13, 2006, at 4:53 PM, jayjg wrote: I seriously doubt those two politicians had anything to do with a commando raid. The Lebanese government is very weak. An invasion is unlikely to resolve that problem. But to address the topic. I think we should attempt to find a neutral title for our article on the incident and I agree with you that the context needs to be part of the article; it should not simply be Israel invasion. Fred

Without actually knowing much about this hot news story, Lebanon or its history, I don know that "There are Hezbollah *ministers* in the government" is *some* kind of logical fallacy. Im not exactly sure which -probably because its so obvious its not worth thinking about. --- Dabljuh <dabljuh(a)gmx.net> wrote: Its obvious that you are reasonably intelligent and articulate, so I can only assume that you were "banned" (as Jay put) because you crossed the line into making personal attacks, or making points which violate Godwin's (now sacred) law banning comparisons to Nazis in internet discussion forums. That itself isnt an issue if you can make your points without sounding bigoted or incivil; the "come to your senses" and "please reconsider your own position" comments were inapproprate because our personal views are beside the point. There is no enlightened way to take a side between competing nationalisms -- all concepts of "nationhood" are equivalent, and equally inferior to a universal concept of civility. Therefore we reserve our distinctions to those which advance civility, and discard concepts based in one particular culture or another as simply POV. That said, I appreciate your explanation of the situation, according to your point of view. It is not a point of view which appears to be sufficiently represented (probably because people under attack -- by anything bigger than bottlerockets -- means the electricity is out and there are probably other things to worry about. Thats assuming you people can write good English in the first place. -Stevertigo __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com

On Jul 14, 2006, at 7:02 AM, Dabljuh wrote: No. You can't habitually break off polite discussion and make attacks. Fred

On 7/14/06, Dabljuh <dabljuh(a)gmx.net> wrote: Not positive, but pretty sure you just proved his point, Dabljuh. --LV

On Jul 14, 2006, at 8:12 AM, Dabljuh wrote: You are the one who is banned indefinitely and this sort of behavior is undoubtedly part of the reason why. That said, your perspective is badly needed and I would be happy to see you actively editing after you clean up your act. Fred

First of all, regarding "More heat than light" You don't fix a broken system by pretending it is not broken. The biggest problem of Wikipedia as an organization is, that it is basically immune to criticism. This is never a good thing, when whoever argues for the change of the man-made system is removed from the system as a Troll. I am also opposed to attempts to try to enforce civility by means of administrative punishment or policy. Because I consider the strategy to be ultimately counterproductive regarding the hostility of the process. You know how Ghandi got started? He said "Lets screw the laws of the british and go pick salt at the shore" because he (and many others) thought it was the right thing to do. Doing that on Wikipedia gets you banned in under 5 seconds. Now back on topic What I am trying to say (with "secular western humanist philosophy") is that we have methods, such as deductive reasoning, that allow us to achieve a sort of POV that can be acceptable to all. What I am saying is that there is a logical and time tested method in finding a neutral position on something. It is hard, it takes a lot of work, and may mean also overcoming one's own biases. Now, in the process of coming to such a "neutral" position, mistakes are made and these should be pointed out and the chain of deductions should be adapted accordingly. Let me make you an example on something that you said: "Enlightened people dislike violence" I love violence. There should be a lot more of it. But that's just my personal opinion. The objective and neutral thing to see, is that violence per se is a part of life, and cannot be deemed morally wrong any more than gravity or the sunlight. What can be criticised rightfully however, is actions of people. If I just established that violence per se is nothing bad, I must make clear that actual instances of violence can very well be bad, in such that the reasons for these instances of violence are bad. So our "enlightened" fella might say, "Bad reasons for committing violence are bad". Certainly you would not categorically forbid the use of violence to the police because you deem violence inherently bad? But what's at the core of your argument, what you are saying, if I understand you correctly (please correct me if I am wrong) is that there is no such thing as a neutral point of view. WP:NPOV should be abandoned because there is apparently no method to actually achieve this NPOV. (And consensus is strictly not one of them) There *is* a method to find a neutral position. Philosophy and logic offer the tools to arrive at it, such as the Socratic Method and the rules of argument. I trust that you will go "Hey, that's right" and change your opinion, because confronted with convincing arguments, I would do just the same - Its one of the rules ;)

On Jul 14, 2006, at 11:17 AM, Puppy wrote: POV editing and insults apparently. Fred

On 7/14/06, Sean Barrett <sean(a)epoptic.com> wrote: It would be a clear violation of WP:POINT. Gandi didn't really want to pick salt himself. He lived along way from the sea and his level of education meant a career in that area was unlikely -- geni

On Jul 14, 2006, at 11:00 AM, Dabljuh wrote: Ok, but I don't think that is going to change. Fred

On 7/13/06, Delirium <delirium(a)hackish.org> wrote: Exactly. Which, no doubt, is what people will next recommend; anything to divorce Israeli's actions from the context in which they are taken. Jay.

Fastfission wrote: <snip> Personally I like "Gulf War II". -- Alphax - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax Contributor to Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia "We make the internet not suck" - Jimbo Wales Public key: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax/OpenPGP

We're not re-inventing the wheel. "Operation Iraqi Freedom" is both 1. not NPOV at all, and 2. most likely not actually the most common name in English for the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003. So it's actually not something that works with either of our policies on content titles. It really shouldn't be too hard to come up with a neutral title here. "2003 invasion of Iraq" or some other variant is descriptive, accurate, NPOV, and more reflective of how this event is actually discussed and named in English (not including Fox News and the Bush administration). FF On 7/14/06, mboverload &lt;mboverload(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote:

On Jul 14, 2006, at 11:02 AM, Stan Shebs wrote: Choosing a descriptive name for an article that does not carry POV implications is our policy. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Naming_conflict#Descriptive_names Fred

On 7/14/06, Stan Shebs &lt;shebs(a)apple.com&gt; wrote: I actually don't see how the policy/guidelines tell us whether a military operation name ("Proper noun") would be preferred or depreciated relative to a descriptive name. The policy gives guidelines for how to select in each of those categories, but for some events (and military operations and wars qualify) selecting between those options is the problem... -- -george william herbert george.herbert(a)gmail.com

On Jul 13, 2006, at 10:11 PM, Alphax (Wikipedia email) wrote: Actually, it's the third Persian Gulf War, the first being the Iran- Iraq War. Then again, there were five or six world wars before World War I, so who cares? -- Philip L. Welch http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Philwelch

--- Rob &lt;gamaliel8(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: Under WP:AGF, all irony should be regarded as intended, deliberate, and thus clever. ;) Stevertigo __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com

On Thu, 13 Jul 2006 12:09:39 -0400, Anthony &lt;wikilegal(a)inbox.org&gt; wrote: How many articles do we have on people known only for their deformities? The only one I can think of is Joseph Merrick. Ahem - that's *attempted* gross sexual imposition (which specifically excludes actual sexual contact). The man is by all accounts disabled and his address is a nursing home. Unfortunately the sophomoric fucktards don't want anyone to realise they are sophomoric fucktards, and they prevent that fact from creeping into the article. How many articles do we have on people for whose entire life there is precisely one primary (court) and one secondary source (Snopes)? And for whom the major source is actually as unreliable as it gets (YTMND)? Leave the guy alone. Guy (JzG) -- http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG

On 7/13/06, Guy Chapman aka JzG &lt;guy.chapman(a)spamcop.net&gt; wrote: articles on people famious for thier phyical abnormalities include [[Chang and Eng Bunker]] [[General Tom Thumb]] [[Lavinia Warren]] [[Zip the Pinhead]] [[Myrtle Corbin]] [[Frank Lentini]] [[Jane Barnell]] to a degree [[Sarah Biffen]] [[The Doll Family]] [[Johnny Eck]] [[Elizabeth Green the Stork Woman]] Etc -- geni

On 7/16/06, Mark Gallagher &lt;m.g.gallagher(a)student.canberra.edu.au&gt; wrote: They're also all - as far as I can tell - dead. So human dignity doesn't really come into it. Strangely, many of them don't have any useful categories beyond "sideshow attractions" that would actually tell you that they had physical deformities. I guess [[Category:Freaks]] got voted out? Steve

On Thu, 13 Jul 2006 18:34:47 -0400, Anthony &lt;wikilegal(a)inbox.org&gt; wrote: Really? So what else is he famous for? Apart from people laughing at his deformities? The extent of them is not relevant to this question, obviously. The conviction record does say attempted. This illustrates quite powerfully the entire problem with an article on Peppers: there is so little to go on that without original research there is virtually nothing that can be said. We don't even have contemporaneous news reports. Guy (JzG) -- http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG

On Fri, 14 Jul 2006 04:40:46 -0400, Anthony &lt;wikilegal(a)inbox.org&gt; wrote: He's not known for his deformities, he's known because people laughed at them. You think not? There was a discussion of it at the time. It barely qualifies as a sexual offence at all. Actually it illustrates the fact that there is virtually nothing that can be said about him without straying into conjecture. Guy (JzG) -- http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG

On 7/13/06, Sue Reed &lt;sreed1234(a)yahoo.com&gt; wrote: That reminds me of [[Hank the Angry Drunken Dwarf]]. I'm sure the list goes on and on. Anthony

On 7/13/06, Erik Moeller &lt;eloquence(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: The other crucial difference is that Peppers is convicted of a felony (and not a victimless felony either, but one involving force or threat of force). Unless the Ohio government seriously screwed up, Peppers is not an innocent victim. Anthony

On 7/13/06, Andrew Gray &lt;shimgray(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: I'm not advocating that we kick Peppers in the face, I'm advocating that we provide information about him in Wikipedia. Peppers either tried to force himself onto a child or lied under oath about doing so. Either way I think we have *more* of a right to provide information about him on Wikipedia than we do information about Eric the Midget. Anthony

On 7/13/06, geni &lt;geniice(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: Then why does the offender details page (http://www.esorn.ag.state.oh.us/Secured/p23.aspx?oid=13753) say "Victim(s): Child Female"? This should also be in the article. Either way, whether it was a child or an adult, my points are still valid. Anthony

On Thu, 13 Jul 2006 20:10:34 -0400, Anthony &lt;wikilegal(a)inbox.org&gt; wrote: Hard to say, but it is not listed as a child in the docket http://commissioners.co.lucas.oh.us/ClerkDockets/Docket.asp?selCaseType=CR&… or on Snopes or on the sex offenders list http://www.co.lucas.oh.us/sheriff/sexoffenderlist.pdf Again, we have so little data that we don't know. Where are the reliable secondary sources? Guy (JzG) -- http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG

On 7/13/06, Andrew Gray &lt;shimgray(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: The simplest answer to why is that there are a lot of people who want to know about him. Also, there is a lot of misinformation going around. Frankly, I thought the answer to "why" was obvious, which is why my message above focussed on why I think it's OK. Anthony

Wikipedia isn't populist. We don't have articles because "a lot of people want to know about [the subject]". On 14/07/06, Keith Old &lt;keithold(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: -- Oldak Quill (oldakquill(a)gmail.com)

On 7/13/06, Anthony &lt;wikilegal(a)inbox.org&gt; wrote: Ah, here's some good evidence: http://www.google.com/trends?q=%22brian+peppers%22%2C%22john+merrick%22%2C%… Anthony

On 7/17/06, Ilmari Karonen &lt;nospam(a)vyznev.net&gt; wrote: Ilmari, Thanks for alerting me to the List of Internet Phenomena. I will be removing Brian Peppers name from that list as well. My personal view is that he is not nearly significant enough to be on that list and we should not further attack him by adding him to the list. I have no doubt that it will be reverted and I won't enter into an edit war over it. My view is that the decision was taken by Jimbo to remove mention of Brian Peppers for at least a year. My assumption is that this included reference to him in other articles. Regards Keith Old Keith Old

On 7/16/06, Keith Old &lt;keithold(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: Just to stir the pot a little, what exactly was wrong with the paragraph we had on the guy? No one's saying he was the next Crazy Frog, but a single, neutral and well-written paragraph about him - minus photo - seems totally appropriate. Especially given that people are apparently still searching the web for information on him, two years after his major memeship. [In other words, I can understand and support the reason not to create an article with photo about him, in order not to add to the poor guy's woes. But a quick sentence summarising his existence as a meme?] Steve

On Thu, 13 Jul 2006 19:40:06 -0400, Anthony &lt;wikilegal(a)inbox.org&gt; wrote: All the indications are that this was a technical offence. It has been suggested that he touched his nurse inappropriately while trying to gain her attention. We don't know, because there is virtually no source material to work on, and that is why we should not have an article. Guy (JzG) -- http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG

On Fri, 14 Jul 2006 05:03:52 -0400, Anthony &lt;wikilegal(a)inbox.org&gt; wrote: Original research. we don't know (either way) because there are no reliable sources. The point is, this has so little neutral coverage that we almost certainly won't know. If we ever get a contemporaneous news report which details what happened and to whom then we might arguably have enough to go on, but honestly there is nothing here on which to base a biography. Guy (JzG) -- http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG

On 7/14/06, Lord Voldemort &lt;lordbishopvoldemort(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: Nada. Ran a general search and then one on Ohio papers specifically. Also ran a search in NewsBank's America's Newspaper's database, which I find more useful than Lexis/Nexis for searching smaller regional newspapers. Nothing there either.

Lord Voldemort wrote: So, since there's no source that isn't "and I read it on the internets", we can't have an article on him, because it's not verifiable. -- Alphax - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax Contributor to Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia "We make the internet not suck" - Jimbo Wales Public key: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax/OpenPGP

On 7/14/06, Anthony &lt;wikilegal(a)inbox.org&gt; wrote: Which paper? Nothing appears in the archive of the Toledo Blade (http://www.toledoblade.com/apps/pbcs.dll/section?Category=ARCHIVES) and the Toledo City Paper and Toledo Free Press do not appear to have searchable archives online.

On 7/14/06, Guy Chapman aka JzG &lt;guy.chapman(a)spamcop.net&gt; wrote: Actually, the person who claimed to be the guy's brother and started that rumor about the nurse admitted it was a hoax. I sent you the link earlier today. As I've said, I disagree. I think there are enough neutral sources to have a short article, maybe two paragraphs long, which would be far better than having nothing. Anthony

On Fri, 14 Jul 2006 12:36:34 -0400, Anthony &lt;wikilegal(a)inbox.org&gt; wrote: You're missing the point. We don't know either way, there are no reliable sources. we don't have a court transcript, a report from the paper, a statement, nothing. We disagree here in two fundamental respects. First, I don't think that there are any sources neutral enough, given that virtually every source we do have is related to the "who's a pepper?" thing. There are no reports unrelated to that, other than the primary sources (eSORN etc.) and they are monumentally uninformative. Second, I think that having a short article ''is'' worse than having no article, because we have no idea what else the guy has done with his life. Maybe he spent his entire childhood rescuing drowning kittens. We oimply have no idea. All we know about him is he pleaded guilty to an attempted felony, and he looks "kinda weird". We can reasonably infer that he is disabled, but even that is probably original research. We really know next to nothing about the guy, so we have no way of presenting a neutral biography. If someone writing a book on memes goes out and researches properly and comes back with some actual substance maybe I'd change my mind, but right now I think that these two facts - conviction and appearance - do not, between them, constitute sufficient material for a WP:BLP. Guy (JzG) -- http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG

On 7/14/06 2:24 PM, "Anthony" &lt;wikilegal(a)inbox.org&gt; wrote: Which again goes to prove that we don't know enough to write a article. We, quite honestly, don't know what kind of offense this is at all, other than the very broad and general legal definition of attempting "gross sexual imposition." We don't know who his victim was, we don't know what he tried to do, we don't know the context of the crime - we don't even know where the crime occurred! Quite simply, there is not enough verifiable information available to write a biographical article on this subject. -Travis

On 7/15/06, Jimmy Wales &lt;jwales(a)wikia.com&gt; wrote: Jimbo, It very much is. There's nothing enyclopedic to write about in these cases. A certain respect and concern for privacy should be beyond the aims of Wikipedia. In all seriousness: there's plenty to do in Wikipedia. Adding articles of such dubious and possibly destructive nature does not belong to that list. sebmol

On 7/14/06, Erik Moeller &lt;eloquence(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: Along these lines: Will anyone care in a year? two years? ten years? one hundred years? Wikipedia is forever. It is a waste of the project's time when someone writes an article on something which will be forgotten before the article matures. Our behavior should be guided both by ethics and by a practical dedication to the goals of our project (*Free Content*, *Encyclopedia*). Articles which represent a breach of ethics should be deleted just the same as topics which are unencyclopedic. Jimbos example rests somewhere inbetween... and a decision which weighs the harms and merits of the coverage should be considered by the community.

Gregory Maxwell wrote: This is clearly a wrong criterion. It should not be our role to judge what will or won't be forgotten, or what should or shouldn't be forgotten. It may be safe to say that many people whose names were included in the earlier editions Britannica were edited out in subsequent editions. We can at least argue that Wiki is not paper. Politicians are always doing and saying things that they hope will be forgotten, and persons with vested interests are often happy with that state of things. There is no waste of the project's time here, though the individual editor may have been wasting his own time. There is a need to avoid this tendency to view Wikipedia as something more than what it is. We are not professionals, so why should we be pretending that we are producing a professional product? Let's quit basing policy simply on what the neighbours think. Human dignity is an entirely different criterion that could be viewed as a derivative of Wikilove. The ethical principle is much more sound but let's not confuse it with "unencyclopedic". Sometimes who is involved is far less important than the incident itself, and in this case that may be adequate reason for omitting the name of the person. For those who really feel that it is something important to know they have ample opportunity to track down the source. Laying down a set of rules and calling them ethics is not what ethics are all about, although rules can still be derived from ethical principles. I would not think it appropriate for our principles of human dignity to be guided and defined by what happened with this one woman. That would be too shallow. The real issue is deeper than that. It could be too that this is an even more important issue for Wikinews. Some have criticized AP for spreading this story. They have done it this way forever. Of course habit is not a justification. They mention names because by failing to do say they risk perpetrating urban myth. Incidents of this sort can easily grow into such proportions. Urban myth can best be controlled by having all the facts available, verifiable and open. Newspapers could print the names; radio and TV stations could report them, and those names would soon be forgotten. When we review old newspapers or other publications it is often with the active intent of developing some particular story as opposed to the more passive intent of repeating whatever random information we happen to find. Will people actively search for these oddball incidents in the wiki database ten years from now when it will be so much bigger? Or will they be pleased to just discover it as a random article? Ec

On 7/15/06, Jimmy Wales &lt;jwales(a)wikia.com&gt; wrote: The Brian Peppers thing appears to have started as an email meme which probably means adults. The google trends result suggests it has been going for a bit over a year which is quite a long time for the internet. It is however less popular than "all your base" oops -- geni

On 7/15/06, Fred Bauder &lt;fredbaud(a)ctelco.net&gt; wrote: My comment as a regular Articles for Deletion participant was that the article doesn't meet WP:BIO. The only possible grounds under WP:BIO are "Persons achieving renown or notoriety for their involvement in newsworthy events." My definition of a newsworthy event is something that is reported over a number of days or page one news on the day it happened such as the Mumbai bombings. Being reported in an AP or Reuters Oddly Enough story just doesn't cut it for mine. Those stories are usually used as filler on Page 9. Further, we have one source the AP story. We don't have enough information to write a reasonable article or stub about her. In my opinion, the same applies to Brian Peppers. We should consider human dignity. We are the leading biographical resource available on the Internet. If an employer is Googling a possible employee, a Wikipedia entry will almost inevitably come up on the first page of results. We should consider human dignity. Please see our biography guidelines. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:BIO Regards Keith Old User:Capitalistroadster

I agree with Bryan, but I am happy that Jimbo has made explicit an issue with which we've frequently dealt tangentially (see, e.g., in the [[Wikipedia:Wikiethics]] and [[WP:NOT EVIL]] discussions). Plainly, to my mind, human dignity is an altogether unencyclopedic concern, and, pace Jimbo, I think that, inasmuch as we ought to edit with complete disinterest vis-à-vis the external consequences of our editing, we ought never to comport our encyclopedic work with, as journalists, a [[Journalistic ethics#Harm limitation principle|harm limitation principle]]. There are, I think, two issues here: (a) whether the community believe there to be anything morally wrong with our creating and maintaining articles apropos of living persons where the notability of those persons is avolitional and where those persons are demonstrably harmed by our having such articles (even where they've not complained to us about that harm) and (b) whether, assuming arguendo that the community does thence appreciate a moral wrong, otherwise encyclopedic concerns militate sufficiently in favor of inclusion that, notwithstanding a moral wrong, we ought to have such articles. Even as I recognize that some editors would find there to be something untoward or immoral in our having an article, for example, about [[Brian Peppers]], I think it is far from clear that the majority of frequent contributors think there to be something immoral with our writing articles that certainly harm their subjects where their subjects are arguably non-notable and in any event avolitionally public; I certainly can't comprehend why anyone would think such writing to be immoral, but that's likely because I am an amoral objectivist. Were there to be a consensus for the idea that we ought to act to limit harm in view of the nebulous "human dignity", I'd suspect that there'd nevertheless be no abiding consensus toward the proposition that the "human dignity" argument ought always to be dispositive; there are, after all, other encyclopedic concerns to which "human dignity" ought not to be superior. As [[WP:POLICY]] makes well clear, the nature of the wiki is such that nothing is immutable; were most frequent contributors, for example, to determine that we should no longer require [[WP:V|verifiability]], it's likely that Wikipedia would (d)evolve in a fashion consistent with community consensus (surely Jimbo would consider whether to jump in at this point, but I think even he would concede that his capabilities to act unilaterally contrary to an evident consensus are somewhat limited and that, in any case, the community would look with strong disfavor on such unilateral action), and so, encyclopedic concerns aside, the community might decide to confer guideline status on the ol' "human dignity" bit. I seriously doubt that the community would so act, though, and I certainly don't think that a discussion on the mailing list ought to be understood as involving the whole of the community. There seems to be, relative to [[WP:OFFICE]] and [[WP:BLP]], an acquiescence to the idea that there are circumstances under which, even where legal and [[WP:V]], [[WP:RS]], and [[WP:NPOV]] issues do not entail, we ought to act to avoid offending subjects, which accession I find wholly ridiculous. If such accession commands the support of the community, though, it should be codified, but only after a Wiki-wide discussion. Cordially, Joe Hiegel [[User:Jahiegel]] ournalistic_ethics#Harm_limitation_principle Bryan Derksen &lt;bryan.derksen(a)shaw.ca&gt; wrote: Jimmy Wales wrote: I would support deleting an article about the incident you describe purely on the basis that it falls below even my rather inclusive "notability" standards, rendering your question moot. Assuming for purposes of argument that there was reason that this incident _was_ notable, however, I wouldn't accept an argument for deletion solely on the basis of "human dignity." Our other policies and guidelines will ensure that the article ultimately only contains information that is commonly available anyway. Removing her article from Wikipedia would do nothing to help "leave her alone" and it would harm Wikipedia's coverage of a notable event, so IMO it'd be a solid net negative. I don't even see what's so undignified about this particular incident that anyone would argue it on that basis in the first place. Everyone does boneheaded things from time to time. _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l(a)Wikipedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l

On 7/14/06, Fred Bauder &lt;fredbaud(a)ctelco.net&gt; wrote: Very true, and well said.

Jimmy Wales wrote: There can be no serious argument against the concept of verifiability, but verifiability standards can vary according to the subject matter. To be sure the standards must be highest when we are dealing with the biography of a living person. For the walk through of a video game or the plot outline of a movie the game or the movie itself should be adequate verification. Superficially "human dignity" is a fine standard, but like notability it is a subjective standard. This makes it difficult to narrow the scope of its application. Ec

Steve Bennett wrote: In many ways yes. There was a tendency at one time to consider notability and verifiability as closely associated, but I still view them as distinct. Notability can often depend on context and local interest. Even if the information is meaningless to most people on the other side of the world it can be interesting to the residents of a town and to that town's expatriates who may otherwise have difficulty finding information about their home town. The discussion about whether we should have Angela's biography is curious. Being a director of an organization that runs a top-100 website alone makes her notable. Of course, the same standards for accuracy should apply as for any other living person. Ec

Stephen Bain wrote: It's standard journalistic practice to report names unless there's some reason to believe that doing so would cause the person imminent harm (e.g. Mafia witnesses). The main reason is so that news can be verifiable by outside sources. There is also sometimes an exception for sources who have agreed to talk to a journalist on condition of anonymity, but that is increasingly discouraged for the same reason---articles based on "a source who asked not to be named" could be, and sometimes have been, entirely made up. -Mark

G'day Anthony, Writing an article to punish its subject is pretty boneheaded in itself. That the subject is "boneheaded" (or worse) is no reason to write a bad article on someone, even people you think are attempted rapists. We attempt to have neutral, unbiased articles about the utter dregs of humanity, the worst scum the human race has produced. We don't say (sorry) "Mr Hitler was a bad man, so we don't need to follow NPOV" --- we say "Let's write a good article about that Hitler chap, and be watchful, because he was such a bad man that other people will no doubt come along and try to POV-push there." If we can do that for history's greatest criminals, why are we even *thinking* of saying "Mr Peppers is a bad man, so basic human dignity doesn't apply here"? -- Mark Gallagher "What? I can't hear you, I've got a banana on my head!" - Danger Mouse

On 7/15/06, Mark Gallagher &lt;m.g.gallagher(a)student.canberra.edu.au&gt; wrote: I never suggested that the reason to write an article was to punish its subject. The reason to write an article on [[Brian Peppers]] is that there are an enormous number of people looking for information on him. And I never suggested writing a bad article on anyone. I don't think this is a matter of basic human dignity. I think it's a matter of personal privacy, which I fully agree with Jimbo is one legitimate factor to consider. But I don't think anyone is suggesting that we don't have any articles on living people, so the question is where do we draw the line. When is an article about a living person acceptable? I think one situation is where they have convicted of the felony attempted gross sexual imposition. You might disagree with me, but please stop mischaracterising my point of view. Anthony

On 7/16/06, Guy Chapman aka JzG &lt;guy.chapman(a)spamcop.net&gt; wrote: About the same as Gandi: http://www.google.com/trends?q=brian+peppers%2C+gandi&ctab=0&geo=al… -- geni

On 7/16/06, Erik Moeller &lt;eloquence(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: A better one would "Brian Peppers", "Tom Thumb", "Zip the Pinhead" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex.com -- geni

geni wrote: I'd expect most of the searches for "Tom Thumb" are for the folklore character or for the grocery store chain. Anyway, I doubt Google Trends is much use in gauging the relative notability of "people with congenital deformations". For comparing "internet memes", however, it is probably a fairly good estimate. -- Ilmari Karonen

On 7/17/06, Guy Chapman aka JzG &lt;guy.chapman(a)spamcop.net&gt; wrote: The curve looks like it will bottom out at almost zero by the end of the year. So we'll really be able to state empirically that noone cares about it on 21 February 2007. -- Stephen Bain stephen.bain(a)gmail.com

On 7/16/06, Arwel Parry &lt;arwel(a)cartref.demon.co.uk&gt; wrote: The list of news items is about Sonia and Rahul Gandhi. It's a pretty common surname. Steve

G'day Anthony, Okay, I've clearly misunderstood your comments in this thread. Just to make things ultra crystal clear, then: you agree that Mr Peppers' criminal conviction actually has no relevance whatsoever in the argument over whether or not an article about the fellow violates some ideal of human dignity, and therefore should never have been mentioned? If you do agree, then I must have completely misread the thrust of your arguments, and I apologise. Well, that's good to hear. <snip/> -- Mark Gallagher "What? I can't hear you, I've got a banana on my head!" - Danger Mouse

On 7/17/06, Anthony &lt;wikilegal(a)inbox.org&gt; wrote: Casting all criminals as "people who voluntarily commited acts which put themselves into the public spotlight" is not the way we want to be going. We should primarily care about what makes the encyclopaedia better, but in doing as little harm as possible in the process. OT: I was irked today when I went to look up OMFGWTFBBQ in Wikipedia, only to find a redirect to [[Internet slang]], which didn't actually mention it. Nor did [[List of internet slang]]. In fact there *was* a useful definition once upon a time, but it got deleted by someone zealously enforcing WP:NOT. What can I say - the encyclopaedia let me down on this one. Steve

On 7/17/06, Anthony &lt;wikilegal(a)inbox.org&gt; wrote: Huh? Didn't he grope a nurse at his nursing home or something? Talk to someone at works at these places, that's an everyday occurrence. Even if he was a rapist or child molester, I don't see why his right to privacy should necessarily be diminished - unless the Wikipedia community takes it upon itself to decide that additional punishment needs to be meted out to such people. I don't think that writing "Brian Peppers was an internet meme due to his oversized head" is violating his privacy. Naming the nursing home where he lives or providing details on the offence he committed could be. Steve

On 7/17/06, Steve Bennett &lt;stevagewp(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: If it's an everyday occurrence, then do you really think that's what happened? The person who made up the story about Peppers accidently groping a nurse has admitted that it was a hoax. So why don't we delete [[John Couey]] and all the others in [[Category:Convicted child sex offenders]]? Are we punishing them? In fact, who *can* we have an article about? Only people who give us permission? Or are there some people we're allowed to punish? I don't think there's any reason to name which nursing home he lives at, of course this information is relatively easy to find anyway. As for providing details on the offence he committed, I most certainly don't think that's a violation of his privacy. Anthony

Could you give me a definition of "notability" that is not entirely centred around the culture and experience of the person who uses it? I'm yet to hear one. IMO, we should completely abandon, or redefine, "notability" for something more tangible, measurable and worthy of our efforts. On 18/07/06, Steve Bennett &lt;stevagewp(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: -- Oldak Quill (oldakquill(a)gmail.com)

I was getting at what you have put across: notability is indefinable and we rely on it far too much. Verifiability and factual accuracy are my two greatest concerns. On 19/07/06, ScottL &lt;scott(a)mu.org&gt; wrote: -- Oldak Quill (oldakquill(a)gmail.com)

Steve Bennett wrote: WARNING: topic drift Without claiming that we should or should not have such a entry in those articles, I have for a long time been interested in looking through the DB dump for redirects to pages that do not contain the term being redirected to them, or something close. Its the "or something close" and the fact that some times this is probably "ok" that makes it hard to just do this. In any event I have frequently come across very bad redirects, some of them POV some of them I think people did just to avoid having a red link. Is there any sort of redirect auditing being done? I can't say I know of a good way to go about it efficiently but its is worth thinking about. Dalf

On 7/18/06, ScottL &lt;scott(a)mu.org&gt; wrote: A useful tool would be some javascript that shows you every redirect that links to each page that you visit, so any bad ones might jump out at you. Steve

On Sun, 16 Jul 2006 11:32:20 +1000, Mark Gallagher &lt;m.g.gallagher(a)student.canberra.edu.au&gt; wrote: Last time I checked, Mr Hitler was (a) dead and (b) dead famous. Guy (JzG) -- http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG

Stephen Bain wrote: I'm not sure what the distinction between "embarrassing" and "undignified" is, here. And I already addressed the lack of other information separately, I would already have supported deletion on that basis alone. I was assuming that there was something more to the incident for the sake of argument so that the matter of "human dignity" could actually be addressed. This incident is really a bad example for discussing the subject we're supposedly discussing, I wish Jimbo had used one that wasn't so obviously deletable for unrelated reasons.

Stephen Bain wrote: Exactly. Perhaps I am surprisingly old-fashioned, but it seems to me that the news reporting in this case would have been _better_ had they simply used initials or some other literary device. For me, the amusement at the cute story (woman calls 911 to ask for a date) was seriously impaired by my distaste for the fact that this poor woman's name was being brought into the matter globally and on the Internet and against her will, in a way that makes it somewhat likely that future googling on her name for the next 30 years will bring this incident, and only this incident, to the forefront. --Jimbo

In message &lt;f30e42de0607180135s3209b202o90f5bbf19e1d8dca(a)mail.gmail.com&gt;om>, Stephen Bain <stephen.bain-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3 Actually, they are identified by name in this article from a newspaper covering the area they stole the boat from: http://icnorthwales.icnetwork.co.uk/news/regionalnews/tm_objectid=1739670 6&method=full&siteid=50142&headline=they-missed-the-ferry----so-stole-a-t rawler-name_page.html -- Arwel Parry http://www.cartref.demon.co.uk/

On 7/18/06, Anthony &lt;wikilegal(a)inbox.org&gt; wrote: I would support a modification of Jimmy's "edict" to the effect that an indefinitely semi-protected article on BP would be subject to regular community processes. Indefinite semi-protection would be an expression of the belief that more harm (unsubstantiated rumors, vandalism) is likely to come from having this particular article edited by unregistered users and very new ones, than productive edits. This, however, is an untested hypothesis. Is there any existing article or set of articles which is highly comparable to BP, where we could verify whether such a trend of inaccuracy/vandalism does indeed exist? Erik

On 7/17/06, Jimmy Wales &lt;jwales(a)wikia.com&gt; wrote: That may have been the point. I know that in the UK at least there has been talk of "naming and shaming" people who missuse emergency phonelines. -- geni