WikiEN-l October 2003

wikien-l@lists.wikimedia.org

91 participants
397 discussions

Mailing list guidelines
by Jimmy Wales 31 Oct '03

31 Oct '03

The amount of traffic on wikipedia-l and wikien-l is getting way out of hand, and so I'd like to propose the following voluntary guidelines. By 'voluntary' I mean that I'm not about to start moderating the lists or kicking people off for failing this, but I do ask that everyone have consideration for others and try to remember these. (And, I should say up front: I've been bad about this myself, and I admit it, so don't call me a hypocrite!) 1. Wikipedia-l should be used for *policy* discussions that have *global* implications, stuff about the general theory of NPOV, stuff about how the software impacts our actual practices, etc. There will often be overlap with topics on wikien-l, but we should still try to keep wikipedia-l global in scope. 2. Wikien-l should be used for *policy* discussions that have implications primarily on en.wikipedia.org. This includes limited discussion of individual articles, discussion of particular disputes, discussion of policies and practices that have arisen solely on en rather than globally. Discussions of actual _content_ of articles is fine, but should be tied as much as possible to a discussion of general principles -- the place to talk about articles is the article talk pages! 3. The distinction between wikipedia-l and wikien-l is sometimes fuzzy, so let's cut people some slack if they don't do it precisely the way we would do it. ------- For *both* lists, check twice before sending -- could your message be better sent to just one or two people? Is it just a joke? If it is just a joke, it is so funny that you have to crack it to everyone? (Sometimes this is fine, I'm just saying let's keep ourselves under control.) Is your post likely to hurt feelings? Is it likely to make a bad situation worse? Is there a way to rephrase a few words to be kinder, and to have a better chance of swaying good people to your point of view? Are you simply antagonizing a jerk? Are you simply being a jerk? The main thing is: let's keep the lists focussed on our mission, and keep extraneous junk to a bare minimum. --Jimbo

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RE: [WikiEN-l] Following up -
by Poor, Edmund W 31 Oct '03

31 Oct '03

At some point, I'm sure, Jimbo is going to insist that we take this to [[talk:abortion]] -- but, to answer Christopher's question, "Why should the state have this much say in what goes on inside someone's body? Where do we draw the line?" If it were legally established that inside *your* body was another living, breathing human being with "personhood" and a "right to life", then you would have a degree of responsibility to avoid killing it. On the other hand, you could not be forced endure a process with an unacceptably high risk of killing *you* either. It all hinges on whether a fetus is a "human being". Luckily for me, I have no axe to grind on this point. So I consider myself the ideal editor for a writing project aiming at creating a series of neutral (NPOV) articles on the topic. In fact, the only obstacle I can see is that I might (as the Cunctator suggests) have too high an opinion of my own "neutrality". But since more people come running to me for mediation than to any other contributor, I guess I'll have to do it :-) Modestly, Ed Poor

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[jfiske@nac.net: Alger Hiss]
by Jimmy Wales 31 Oct '03

31 Oct '03

----- Forwarded message from Jeffrey Fiske <jfiske(a)nac.net> ----- From: "Jeffrey Fiske" <jfiske(a)nac.net> Date: Thu, 30 Oct 2003 23:13:23 -0500 To: <jwales(a)bomis.com> Subject: Alger Hiss Hello, You might want to update your information on Alger Hiss. There is now hard evidence that he was involved with the KGB. Jeffrey Fiske ----- End forwarded message -----

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RE: [WikiEN-l] Following up -
by Poor, Edmund W 31 Oct '03

31 Oct '03

Tarquin's question raises an interesting point: > How many "pro-lifers" support abortion for > foetuses with say, Down's Syndrome or cerebral palsy? The problem with the 'abortion' issue is similar to the conflict between creationists and evolutionists: the lack of middle ground. For the 45% of Americans who are Creationists, there's no way they can accept evolution in the slightest: the [[fossil record]] has to be explained away, etc. For the 10% or more of Americans who are evolutionists, there's no way they can accept any supernatural intervention that might give rise to new species. They can't even talk to each other, without the sparks flying. And whenever one side has had enough power, it used the force of law to muzzle the opposition. Used to be, teaching evolution was illegal; now, kids who speak out in class against (what they see as) scientific errors or arrogance can be penalized. Likewise, many American pro-lifers equate abortion with murder. Period. They make no exception for birth defects (it's God's will!), some make no exception for rape and incest, and maybe some even want women to return to the days when women had a 1 out of 10 chance of dying in childbirth. I dunno. I'm just glad I'm not in any such dopy church... And many American "pro-choicers" look on "anti-abortion" advocates as some kind of medieval woman-hating kooks who want to turn all females into unwilling baby factories (keep 'em barefoot and pregnant). Fortunately for me, I'm not in either camp. I know a bit more about the arguments of the so-called "pro-life" side, but I know how to find the NARAL website... Ed

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RE: [WikiEN-l] Following up -
by Dante Alighieri 31 Oct '03

31 Oct '03

HITLER There, I mentioned Hitler and now we have to talk about something else. Unless, of course, my intent (to end this thread) is a misuse of Godwin's Law and therefore doesn't trigger the associated cessation of discussion... You be the judge. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin%27s_law ----- Dante Alighieri dalighieri(a)digitalgrapefruit.com "The darkest places in hell are reserved for those who maintain their neutrality in times of great moral crisis." -Dante Alighieri, 1265-1321

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Re: [WikiEN-l] Following up -
by James Duffy 31 Oct '03

31 Oct '03

> >Poor, Edmund W wrote: > >>Ah, but "a woman's right to choose" makes a much more effective slogan >>than "the right of a mother to kill her own baby". >> >> >Tarquin wrote it's not a "baby" until it is born. The only trouble, Tarquin, is that that is a point of view. Some people in their language distinguish between what the call an 'unborn baby' (or pre-birth baby) and 'post-birth baby'. Accepting the argument of /either/ side, that abortion is a right or abortion is wrong, that a woman has a right to choose or a foetus has a right to live, violates Wikipedia's NPOV policy. The nightmare with the abortion debate is that right the way through it you have two diametrically opposed theories on rights, on life and on language. That divergence is implicit even in the two key words of the protagonists; 'life' and 'choice', implying that the other side are 'anti-choice' or 'anti-life'. The biggest problem of all is that /both/ sides imply the existence of absolutes where they don't exist. The 'right to life' isn't absolute; society accepts that sometimes the taking of life is acceptable in some extreme circumstances, (hence armies, executions, etc.) Nor is there simply a 'right to choose', as society operates on the principle of the right to restrict choice; libel and defamation laws deny the 'right to choose' to say what you want; laws deny a 'right to choose' to kill someone except in extreme cases; laws deny people the 'right to choose' to discriminate on the basis of gender, race, orientation etc etc. So both sides speak of absolute /rights/ in society that should be reflected in abortion, in a spin that deliberately hides the fact that even if one accepts that a foetus has a right to life, it doesn't mean an /absolute/ right to life, that even if women have a right to choose in many areas, it does not automatically mean a right to choose the continuation or termination of a pregnancy. Society /chose/ to define a right of choice as applying in the area of pregnancy, a 'right' of choice denied in many other areas of society. Some believe in that instance it was a right that deserved to be awarded. Others argued that in that area, like others, no such right should exist. Wikipedia has to be careful in dealing with a complex issue like abortion not to accept, in implicit or explicit language, that one or other side of the argument is /of course/ right and to understand the underlying principles and perspectives that shape both sides of this divisive and controversial debate. The only trouble is that if one takes out the loaded terminology of both sides, is there actually language that is agenda-neutral? Even the medical community, depending on its views on the issue, loads phrases with meanings to support their agenda, in the view of one side 'sanitising' the procedure, in the view of the other 'emotionally loading' the procedure, a case in point being whether one can use 'partial birth abortion' without appearing anti-abortion/pro-life. But as many wikipedians in the past experienced, any attempt to neutralise terminology in the abortion article can at best lead one to be attacked by whichever side feel the language being removed told the 'truth' (ie, /their/ side of the article, or at worst leading to attacks from both sides who revert any changes because the article isn't pro-choice/pro-life enough in a neutral form, if one could find a neutral form. No wonder one of the first bits of advice I got when I joined wikipedia was to feel free to edit anything /but the abortion article/, the longstanding wikipedian telling me that touching that article was the ultimate nightmare, with "bigoted fanatics" (her words) standing guard like centurions over it, screaming 'right to life'/'right to choose' rants if a comma was out of place, lest a comma in some sentence be seen to be a 'pro-life' comma or a 'pro-choice' comma, ie that one wrongly placed commas would lead the fanatics on both sides to see a hidden agenda in the edit and accuse you of 'defending baby murdering' or 'attacking women's rights'. While wikipedia has many strengths, I doubt if any open edit sourcebook /can/ achieve NPOV on this topic with so many people passionately biased on the topic, convinced that their side are /of course/ right, and determined to use abortion as a plank in a wider ideological debate, whether it is the 'decline of the family' or the 'undermining of the liberation of women'. Abortion I fear is one topic that is beyond wikipedia, and has the potential to place rows of the name of Gdansk, Mother Teresa, anti-semitism, the Middle East and everything else in the halfpenny place, making them look like minor, easy to heal squabbles compared to the dreaded, divisive and daunting a-word, 'abortion'. JT _________________________________________________________________ Tired of spam? Get advanced junk mail protection with MSN 8. http://join.msn.com/?page=features/junkmail

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Eskimo and Inuit
by Daniel Mayer 31 Oct '03

31 Oct '03

Martin Harper wrote: >An entry about the /term/ "Eskimo" should be at >Wiktionary. An enrty about the /term/ "Inuit" should >be at Wiktionary. Meanwhile, [[Eskimo]] should be an >orphan redirect to [[Inuit]], where we should have an >article on the people who live in the North, \ >with links to the relevant Wiktionary articles. No - Wiktionary is not an encyclopedia so encyclopedic information about the term (NOT word!) Eskimo would not be appropriate there. For example the history of the term's use and the controversy surrounding its use and how Inuits feel about its use /would not/ be appropriate for Wiktionary. --mav __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Exclusive Video Premiere - Britney Spears http://launch.yahoo.com/promos/britneyspears/

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Major Correction
by Daniel Mayer 31 Oct '03

31 Oct '03

Vicki Rosenzweig wrote: >There is a legitimate medical term for this procedure, >which goes back to before the anti-choice movement >politicized it: intact dilation and extraction. That some >people haven't heard the term doesn't mean we can't >use it. I agree. "Partial-birth abortion" simply is too POV for us to use because of the use of the word " birth." This negates our "common use" naming convention in a similar way as "Eskimo" is depreciated in favor of the less widely-used "Inuit" ("Eskimo" is a derogatory term meaning "eaters of raw fish" while "Inuit" means "the people"). Might was well also swap the word "abortion" with "murder of the unborne" since "birth" has very clear baby-related connotations. "Intact dilation and extraction" is an accepted medical term that is dryly descriptive. So if I can't say that Pol Pot was a genocidal maniac responsible for the murder of over 2 million of his own people and have to instead dryly state that "During his rule up to two million Cambodians were killed", then I don't think we can use "partial-birth abortion" as an article title about the procedure (maybe, if we get enough material, we could have an article at [[partial-birth abortion]] about the term and the controversy surrounding the use of the term). -- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)

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RE: [WikiEN-l] Following up -
by Poor, Edmund W 31 Oct '03

31 Oct '03

I can't resist one more parting shot: Think about how many times will a pregnant woman be asked this: "So, when is your baby going to be born?" Rather than: "So, when will that fetus growing inside your body turn into a human being?" ("Oh, it's not human yet -- just a blob of biological tissue.") Uncle Ed ==> thinks those blobs are real cute, anyway

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Re: [WikiEN-l] Major Correction
by engelsAG＠t-online.de 31 Oct '03

31 Oct '03

"Daniel Mayer" <maveric149(a)yahoo.com> schrieb: > [[Eskimo]] would be about the /use/ of the word and > the controversy surrounding its use (not really about > the word itself). Similar to our article [[fuck]]. The use of a word is still dictionary rather than encyclopedic. The controversy indeed not, but I still would not think an article about that to be in place. On the other hand, the current mentioning on the [[Inuit]] page I completely agree with. Andre Engels

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WikiEN-l October 2003