Thank you, Erik, for your eloquent report. Clearly, you are doing your
best to avert an edit war.
Although I "side" with the POV that Mother Theresa is a saint -- and
disagree with all that nasty Hitchens stuff -- there is something else I
side with which must take priority: our mutual commitment to the Neutral
Point Of View.
James, I do hope you will look to me as a role model. As you know, I
love Rev. Moon but I have a near-perfect record of avoiding edit wars on
Moon-related articles. Please, take a look at the history of the last 2
months. Some anonymous IP added a whole bunch of slanted stuff to [[Sun
Myung Moon]], [[Moonies]], etc. You will note that I didn't revert. I
just have been slowly making NPOV corrections and adding new info.
It pains me to move so slowly, but I value my reputation as a
fair-minded sysop.
I'm confident that Eloquence (Erik) and JTD (James) can work this out,
and I'm already looking forward to bragging to all my off-line friends
about what a congenial bunch of on-line colleagues I've found here!
"Uncle Ed" Poor
James-
this does not belong on wikipedia-l. I have therefore copied it to
wikien-l, and all replies should go there.
1) There was an edit war on the "Mother Teresa" page after you moved away
about 20K of text to a separate "criticism" page in clear violation of our
neutrality policy, which states that no preference should be given to any
side.
2) I have warned you repeatedly not to make any substantial changes to the
article while the major issue of whether the text was to be moved to a
separate page was not settled. You ignored these warnings and pushed
forward to edit the text, including your movement of 20K of text to a
separate page, and complain that these edits were reverted together. This
is simply disingenuous and you know it.
3) A sysop protected the page in an attempt to cool down the edit war.
This was a largely symbolic gesture since we are both sysops, but we chose
not to edit the page while it was protected. However, this precluded non-
sysops who had announced that they wanted to make edits to the page from
doing so. To prevent this unfortunate situation, I unprotected the page
with the comment:
"removing protection for now (I was involved so I won't edit for
another few hours if Jtdirl won't, but others should be able to)"
I did not edit the page for the next few hours and nor did you, the edit
war seems to be over and I considered the matter settled. To call an
unprotection to allow *others*, non-sysops, to continue editing the page
while I myself refrained from doing so an abuse of sysop power is, again,
very disingenuous.
The important facts in this matter are this:
You moved virtually all the criticisms of Mother Teresa to a separate page
without discussing this on the talk page first. Three users (myself, Bryan
and Jiang) disagreed with this. I and Bryan Derksen reverted your changes.
It might be argued that it would have been "wiser" to just wait a day or
two and then address the matter again, but that is clearly wrong -- had we
done so, you would have reorganized the entire article(s) according to
your idea of NPOV, making it very difficult to reach any kind of consensus
on the matter.
In addition to that, you continue to play your usual games, which consist
of
- personal attacks (always singling out one contributor, even though
several users have expressed disagreement with your actions)
- false accusations of abusive behavior
- disingenuous tactics like your behavior in the edit war, piling changes
upon changes to bully your way through
- making false claims (e.g. repeatedly claiming that the criticism section
was merely based on "a single TV show", whereas I have shown you the
multitude of sources on which it was based, including several books and
newspaper articles and an editorial in "The Lancet")
I chose to ignore your continuous stream of attacks against me, but other
users would not have shown the same amount of patience and be driven away
by your behavior, which resembles that of a schoolyard bully.
In spite of this unacceptable behavior on your part, I have repeatedly
offered to seek a cooperative, consensual solution for the alleged or real
NPOV problems on the page in question. In fact, I was working on reaching
a consensus with Bryan and other contributors while you continued
reverting to your style. Everyone can see this by taking a look at
[[Talk:Mother Teresa]].
It is time for you to stop playing strategic games against other
contributors, and to start working in the spirit of mutual cooperation.
Now is a good moment to do so -- I fully approve of your recent edits of
the article (provided you haven't again started moving away the criticism
section). Yet you continue your bullying tactics against other
contributors. You do not want peaceful cooperation, you want to pick
fights and win. That is not how Wikipedia works.
I can and will work with you on this article, provided you make a serious
commitment to seeking consensus on your changes. That cannot always be
done, of course, but there are reasonable courses of actions in the cases
where it can't (act based on established precedent, hold a vote, ask Jimbo
etc.). Just trying to get "your way or the highway" will not lead to any
kind of solution.
So here's my offer: Make the changes to the criticism section you find
important. I will edit the parts which I don't like and if we can't agree,
we'll go to the talk page. Once the criticism section is edited, we will
take a look at the entire article and if it is too long (32K), we will
summarize individual sections and split them away, regardless of their
content. If it is still below that size, we won't do that. If the
criticism section is still too dominant, we will together try to expand
the other sections of the article. How about some wiki-cooperation for a
change?
Regards,
Erik
I agree with Jimbo. Much as I'd hate to see RK leave the project, I feel
that if he can't follow Jimbo's civility guidelines we'll be better off
without him.
For every brilliant but anti-social writer we lose, five or ten will
breathe a sigh of relief and thus stay with us and feel confident to
recruit others.
There's also the uncounted (silent majority?) who lurk for a while, see
the unpleasantness and duck out of the tavern before getting brained
with a stray tankard.
I feel Jimbo's put-the-foot-down policy will help our community to
lighten up and become a happy, congenial place to work together.
Ed Poor
The following are examples of unkind and antisocial remarks that
I'm not going to tolerate for much longer. RK, if you can't keep
yourself from engaging in attacks on others, I'm going to have to
ask you to leave the project permanently.
The truth or falsity of the charges RK is levelling may or may not be
an interesting topic, but it's really beside the point. We just don't
act this way on Wikipedia. Everyone needs to proceed with kindness
and benevolence towards other contributors.
This kind of behavior only escalates problems, it doesn't solve them.
>From page history of [[ecoterrorism]]
"(Reverting bald-faced lies and apologetics for mass murder. This
article was not only a POV violation, it is hatespeech.)"
from page history of [[PETA]]
"(Stop trying to hide facts. This is an encyclopedia, not a whitewash
machine. We need to add more information, not delete things to make
you feel comfortable.)"
And the talk page for PETA:
"Ah, like so many others here, Axel believes that the way to achieve
NPOV is not to make this a better and more comprehensive encyclopedia,
but to cut out material until one achieves some kind of balance. What
nonsense. This isn't about NPOV. Axel is just minimizing a viewpoint
he doesn't want to see in print. RK 16:23, Oct 19, 2003 (UTC)"
I thank you Jimbo
I apologize to all of you collectively for my
emotional dismay, which also show me I must take a
break.
Given that I am a hopeless wikipediholic, I will try
to take holidays from the en wiki.
And focus on non controversial matters on fr
such as GMO and Moonism :-)
perhaps promotion, if we have favorable news from the
dev team.
__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
The New Yahoo! Shopping - with improved product search
http://shopping.yahoo.com
Dante wrote:
>With all due respect mav, this is bs. No one voted
>for the logo that is currently on the 'pedia.
Well I'm sure you already know that I have a BS in BS
(in more ways than one!). ;)
Again, they voted for the *concept* - an unfinished
puzzle ball that gave the impression of many languages
(Erik kept on saying that the concept-implementations
can and and should be improved). A great many people
simply *hated* the particular PM implementation of
that concept, so it was improved by a professional
designer. Still the same concept.
>Where was the revision process announced?
http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2003-October/012323.html
(wikipedia-l post by Erik)
And uh, the announcements page, perhaps?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Announcements
Before that it was on the Main Page for a while but I
moved it to the announcements page (one of the Nohat
logos was already "live" at that point; see my
complaint below).
Making announcements is what the announcements page is
there for! Only very major announcements go on the
Main Page. Improving the logo is not major enough to
warrant that, IMO, but choosing the concept was.
Its also been on the Main Page of
http://meta.wikipedia.org/ for some time.
Alas, it should have been also inputted into Wikimeida
News.
http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_News
>I'm sorry if I don't spend as much time on the meta
>as on the Wikipedia proper, but there wasn't even
If you are concerned about meta issues and policy then
you should pay attention to Wikipedia-l (*cough*
Erik's post) and meta (Main Page link). If you are
concerned with general Wikipedia-related issues then
read the Wikipedia Announcements page (*cough* link to
meta page on this issue). Also, the word
"Announcements" is bolded on RC whenever there is a
new announcement.
>(as far as I can tell) a single mention on the
>Wikipedia proper that the logo was actually being
>CHANGED from the initial winner to the nohat version.
I was also a bit surprised that Nohat's logo found its
way on en.wikipedia so fast. I would have preferred to
have the nohat logo go onto test.wikipeida.org first
so that people could see how it looked on a MediaWiki
installation (same for the original PM winning logo).
It is simply bad form and looks amateurish to keep
changing the logo on a website with over 200,000 pages
- as if some type of 'logo variant war' were going on.
Even the most recent version of the nohat logo can and
probably will be swapped for another, even better
version.
-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)
__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
The New Yahoo! Shopping - with improved product search
http://shopping.yahoo.com
First a few words about a specific example, but please also read to
the bottom where I make MY MAIN POINT.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bolivian_Gas_War
This is a generally good article-in-progress, and the photos are very
nice, but I find them highly problematic.
There are currently 3 images on the page, all taken from
indymedia.org. Two of them are likely taken by IndyMedia activists,
and it strikes me as unlikely that they will complain about our use,
fair use doctrine or no. IndyMedia is an extremely political website
whose views are, ahem, quite different from my own, but nonetheless I
suspect that they have no beef with our NPOV policy.
It *does* strike me as likely that they would object vociferously,
though, to re-use by potential re-licensees, and I think that in a
case like this, _even if our use_ qualifies as "fair use", re-use by
_many_ other people would _not_ qualify.
For that reason, I think that these images, and images from similar
sources, should not be used in Wikipedia.
The third image, the professionally-done graphical map showing the
events of October 12, was taken from IndyMedia, but even the person
who uploaded (Stevertigo) notes "Fair Use//maybe problem -- untraced
source--via Indymedia". Ai-yi-yi! Very bad!
-------------
MY MAIN POINT
"The Independent Media Center is a network of collectively run media
outlets for the creation of radical, accurate, and passionate tellings
of the truth. We work out of a love and inspiration for people who
continue to work for a better world, despite corporate media's
distortions and unwillingness to cover the efforts to free humanity."
Their efforts in this area, as far as I've been able to determine,
mainly consist of promoting tyranny around the world as an antidote to
the problems of freedom and prosperity. ;-) But my own political
leanings aside, it *does* seem likely to me that the IndyMedia people
could be quickly convinced to adopt a policy consistent with their own
stated goals, i.e. to release all their images under a free license.
If they could be so persuaded, then there would be no problem at all
with our use of their images. They would achieve some of their goals,
I suppose, by getting their images included in a respectable source,
as well as being cited by that source.
And here's where I think a too-easy reliance on the crutch of "fair
use" can be harmful. We have an opportunity before us to encourage a
likely receptive audience to engage in free licensing, and yet we have
passed on that because it's just too easy to take their content and
mumble and wave our hands about fair use, knowing full well that they
probably won't complain anyway.
Fair use is a dangerous crutch, and I *really* think we need to start
reforming our fair use practices to be *much* more strict.
Fair use is an absolute necessity for us in some contexts. But it
should be used judiciously and with great care, and only when every
other (freely licensed) alternative has been exhausted.
In this case, I think that hasn't happened. We used the images (well,
Stevertigo did) because they were good, and because it was easy.
--Jimbo
----- Forwarded message from Michael Hardy <hardy(a)math.mit.edu> -----
From: Michael Hardy <hardy(a)math.mit.edu>
Date: Thu, 16 Oct 2003 16:51:13 -0400 (EDT)
To: jwales(a)bomis.com
Subject: 25 years ago today
Who runs the "Main Page"? Is it worth mentioning in
"Week in history" that 25 years ago today a man from communist
Poland was elected Pope (and is still the incumbent)? That
was something of a political coup. -- Mike
--
Michael Hardy
hardy(a)math.mit.edu
----- End forwarded message -----
Anthère,
I'm sorry I caused you heartache, ma cherie. Please don't go because of my hasty, thoughtless remarks!
You are NOT banned, and the "policy" you referred to was NEVER meant to apply to you. The old Mediator passed on the account to you; and you, in good faith, began to use it for the common good of the community.
It would be a cruel joke on all of us if EofT got you to leave: this is EXACTLY the kind of thing I feared might happen!!
Please do not go, and please stay in touch if you need a break...
Avec remorse,
Edmond Le Pauvre
Dear Mr/Mrs
I regret why English is treated as a second, or even third, language of
my country. Of course, I will not despise Indonesia at all. But the
fact that English is far more globally used than Indonesia should
properly be an inevitable ground for the government to fully encourage
English usage in elementary and secondary schools, so that, when pupils
come in to higher level of education (university) after completing the
secondary, they will have had, at least, a basic or elementary English
that can be a foundation to digest university textbooks mostly written
in English.
In my view, a sense of nationality need not to be reflected in a foolish
way by valuing exaggeratedly Indonesia as a home language.
Completely supported by unguarded passion to advance and due to the
financial constraint, I have been initiating an English gathering. To
those who come from common families and everyone who regards English as
a determining key for his or her future, it's hoped that the initiative
can function as a place for idea exchange. We try to practice both
writing and speaking, discuss our works to find out some possible
improper words applied in them.
There are various motivations underlying their participations; study
abroad, teaching, story writing and telling, career opportunity widening,
etc.. Most of them, however, are back-grounded by strong desire to
continue study overseas. Perhaps, the variety reflects their different
professions; fresh graduate, NGO activist, lower officials of both state
and private institutions, young book translator, etc.. All of them come
from common families.
It is necessarily for you to know that such a non-profit-oriented
institution is very rare. Most English courses establish a very high
charge, even sometimes unreasonable. Clearly, this condition narrows
everyone's opportunity and do not provide a wiser breakthrough to those
with restricting financial capabilities. This is the main cause of this
simple but far-reaching-impact message. Therefore, with all my respect
and hopes, would you're pleased to give me a free English dictionary of
synonyms and antonyms or some vocabulary bulider? The sort of book is
very rarely sold at local bookshops, and if available, its price is
really unaffordable, particularly to me or everyone that is still
frequently surrounded by problems of more basic needs but highly
motivated to progress.
Kindest regard,
AMIR ADIL
Postal address: JL. LEGI 12 PAPRINGAN JOGJAKARTA 55281 INDONESIA
_____________________________________________________________
Gift for this season? gift WebSite or personal domain names, $9.95/yr. only http://www.worldonbiz.com/?spreselr=mail.patra.net
--------------------------------
Get free 6MB, fast eMail
Signup now http://mail.patra.net