[Wikipedia-l] Curly brackets and teaching the unteachable

Julie Hofmann Kemp juleskemp at yahoo.com
Mon Aug 5 22:13:34 UTC 2002


My vote is to leave pipelining as it is -- many newbies (and old hands)
have enough trouble figuring it out without adding more layers.  

Re teaching the unteachable -- We'd all love to, but there are some
users, Fr. Jonat being one, who don't want to learn.  They want to say
what they want to say, and facts as the rest of us know them don't come
into it.  I personally think Helga's a special case -- She really does
care about making this a good site; she really believes her articles are
legitimate; she really believes that there is a conspiracy to hide the
truth; and her own personal losses color all of her political insights
and contributions.  It doesn't help that she's also willfully pig
ignorant of how to critically read any historical source, primary or
secondary, IM very fed up with her O; however, she isn't a vandal in the
true sense of the word, and usually is only borderline troll-like.  I
certainly can't in good conscience support banning her, but neither do I
believe she will ever change -- there is no rule against crap
contributions -- just tons of irritation.  The only sure thing is that
she will eventually ride her hobby horse elsewhere after accusing us of
twisting the TRUTH, and a couple of months from now, quietly return to
make changes until someone notices.

Another such person was ark, who seems to have taken his deMause-ian
theories and gone to play elsewhere.

On the bright side, I've found that almost all newbies respond favorably
to hints and direction to NPOV policy, how to make articles better,
etc., so I don't think it's an issue.   Lets keep in mind that, by and
large, the people here actually do want to cooperate and produce good
work -- it's just that lots of that happens without being noticed!!

Done pontificating now...

Jules




More information about the Wikipedia-l mailing list