[WikiEN-l] Old Wikipedia backups discovered

[Ian Woollard]

I think that the wikipedia should allow dictionary articles (actually
encyclopedic dictionary articles), but mark them as such and have
different policies for them.

On 22/12/2010, Anthony <wikimail at inbox.org> wrote:
> On Wed, Dec 22, 2010 at 12:25 AM, Tim Starling <tstarling at wikimedia.org>
> wrote:
>> I provided both versions of the XML if you want to muck around with
>> that. I don't think there's much historical value in the control
>> characters.
>
> Probably not.  I was reminded again today that XML 1.1 (for a reason
> I'm still not quite sure of) never really gained all that widespread
> of support.
>
>> Speaking of historical value, I found the argument between Lars
>> Aronsson and Larry Sanger, which caused Lars to quit and found
>> susning.nu. It happened on May 21.
>>
>> Lars had just spent several days writing dictionary-like articles, and
>> he wrote [[Short words]] to organise the effort. At 12:48, Larry
>> complained about this on [[LA2]], and at 12:53, he created [[Wikipedia
>> is not a dictionary]], which was clearly an attack on what Lars was
>> doing. At 12:54, Lars announced that he was leaving, as a comment on
>> [[Wikipedia is not a dictionary]]. There were several responses.
>>
>> On July 24, Larry erased all the comments from [[Wikipedia is not a
>> dictionary]], and on July 28, he rewrote the original text, toning
>> down the language. Before I found this backup, the earliest version we
>> had of this policy page was from August 17.
>
> Interesting.  I came to accept the "Wikipedia is not a dictionary"
> guideline/policy pretty soon after reading that page - and much to my
> dismay I find it to be fairly widely ignored when it comes to
> etymology, usage, and profanity.  I'm interested in seeing what the
> original and/or newly rewritten language had to say about it.
>
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-- 
-Ian Woollard