WikiEN-l March 2003

wikien-l@lists.wikimedia.org

62 participants
306 discussions

Re: internet-encyclopedia.info
by Sheldon Rampton 13 Mar '03

13 Mar '03

Sascha Noyes wrote: >LOL. I have my doubts about the sanity of forking wikipedia. Why would you >fork wikipedia so that you can have an encyclopedia with a Personal POV? And: >What if someone comes along who has an opposite POV from your own, they don't >have to adhere to NPOV, so what are you going to do? Ban them? Actually, I think it could work. The NPOV works pretty well for Wikipedia, but even it requires a certain amount of enforcement and peer pressure to make it work. The mere idea of making Wikipedia an "encyclopedia" also requires discipline, and enforcing that rule has been possible even though you get a few people who refuse to abide by the guidelines. I don't see any reason to assume that an encyclopedia *has* to have a neutral point of view to succeed. NPOV is only one among multiple possible points of view. Someday maybe there'll be a Commiepedia frequented by leftists, a Nazipedia, a Christipedia, an Intifadipedia, an Agnostipedia... For that matter, there might be different wikipedias devoted to specialized topics: e.g., a "litipedia" devoted to literature, or a "medipedia" devoted to medical information. I'm not saying this has to happen or that it should happen, but I don't think there's any reason to assume that it *can't*. -- -------------------------------- | Sheldon Rampton | Editor, PR Watch (www.prwatch.org) | Author of books including: | Friends In Deed: The Story of US-Nicaragua Sister Cities | Toxic Sludge Is Good For You | Mad Cow USA | Trust Us, We're Experts --------------------------------

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RE: [WikiEN-l] Show and Tell
by Poor, Edmund W 13 Mar '03

13 Mar '03

> uncle ed > > http://www.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=S.C.I.E.N.C.E.&action=history > <http://www.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=S.C.I.E.N.C.E.&action=history> > Michael isn't in that article history. I don't think it'll work -- but I'm a bitter young cynic. I'm prepared to be proved wrong. :-) Yo, tarky-dude! Lighten up, bro!! It's all good!! Surfer Dude

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RE: [WikiEN-l] Turks and Kurds
by Poor, Edmund W 13 Mar '03

13 Mar '03

Like all this bogus text can just go to:: * the article's talk page, or * a user talk page, or * the MetaWikipedia I'm totally into meta, cuz peeps won't be like fighting and stuff over POVs! And when surfs up, the parts we all dig can boogie on over to the real Wikipedia!! Surfer Dude -----Original Message----- From: Stevertigo [mailto:stevertigo@attbi.com] Sent: Thursday, March 13, 2003 12:56 AM To: wikien-l(a)wikipedia.org Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Turks and Kurds Danny complined: Now we have an article called "Turkish atrocities against Kurds" which consists of a random selection of cut and pasted articles from other sources. It exceeds 35 K and the heading says "Notes for an article." Wikipedia is not a place to stick random notes, newspaper articles or whatnot. I believe this can be an article. It can even be an NPOV article (though it isn't now, because apart from political rhetoric, the article barely documents the atrocities it claims to describe). Can we at least formulate a policy on this type of behavior. Steve: Nonsense! In fact we should have *note pages* in addition to talk pages! Great idea Danny, Im glad you came up with it. Reason? Im not in the mood to add material and have it mercillessly chopped up by a bunch of bored piranhas... Im cooking my meal before I serve it. F irst the ingredients! Be well, Dan. _~~~

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Lots of a weird error message
by Tony Wilson 13 Mar '03

13 Mar '03

I guess the wizards that run this thing know all about this, but just in case - I'm getting HEAPS of troubles these last few days. Not just the usual slowdowns and outages, a different one. The most common error message looks like this: > Warning: Too many connections in /usr/local/apache/htdocs/w/DatabaseFunctions.php on line 26 > Could not connect to DB on 127.0.0.1 > Too many connections > If this error persists after reloading and clearing your browser cache, please notify the Wikipedia developers. It's not my browser, because I've had it so far under: Windows 2000 with SP3 with Opera 6.05, Mozilla 1.3B, IE 6.0 & Netscape 4.04, and also on a different machine at a different location on ECS (OS/2 4.5, sort of) with Mozilla 1.3B. Last night the 'pedia was unusable for quite a few hours, then it was back again tonight.No problems connecting to other sites, only the 'pedia. Being in Australia, most of my connect time is off-peak, while the USAians are all asleep. Except the real addicts, of course. I guess it's a known problem, but I thought I better mention it just in case.

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Show and Tell
by Poor, Edmund W 13 Mar '03

13 Mar '03

Sometimes the best approach to "uncooperative" people is to give them a good example. That is, show them what to do instead of telling them. For example, user:Michael responded to Jimbo's and my policy comments by wiping his page today. To me, this means he doesn't want to engage in any dialogue. Should we ban him because he won't talk? No. I don't think refusing to dialogue is (or should be) a bannable offense, and I've also heard people say that actions speak louder than words, so I decided to rack up some wiki karma by following Michael around a bit and demonstrating how a stub can be fleshed out. uncle ed http://www.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=S.C.I.E.N.C.E. <http://www.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=S.C.I.E.N.C.E.&action=history> &action=history

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Re: Hi Holiness Albert Jascher
by Sheldon Rampton 13 Mar '03

13 Mar '03

daniwo59(a)aol.com wrote: >This guy, a self proclaimed prophet, has been trolling since early >this morning. Now he has taken to vandalizing user pages. Can he >please be dealt with accordingly? Second the motion...and given his profession, I think it's safe to assume that he has already been forewarned and knows it's coming. ;) -- -------------------------------- | Sheldon Rampton | Editor, PR Watch (www.prwatch.org) | Author of books including: | Friends In Deed: The Story of US-Nicaragua Sister Cities | Toxic Sludge Is Good For You | Mad Cow USA | Trust Us, We're Experts --------------------------------

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Hi Holiness Albert Jascher
by daniwo59＠aol.com 13 Mar '03

13 Mar '03

This guy, a self proclaimed prophet, has been trolling since early this morning. Now he has taken to vandalizing user pages. Can he please be dealt with accordingly? Danny

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placeholder entry
by None 13 Mar '03

13 Mar '03

This is a placeholder due to old mailing list archive corruption.

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Bias Arab- Israeli conflict
by Stevertigo 13 Mar '03

13 Mar '03

>From the Wikipedia-L List: >Clutch wrote: The flames have been going on for months. The discussion needs to >happen so the flames can be put out. If they spread to the mailing >list, that is not an excuse for forestalling the discussion and allowing >the current bad situation to continue. John, youre doing a couple things here: 1. using *the rhetoric* again... avoid it. Its not useful. Translating the above: Flame wars are avoidable if there are rules agreed to regarding conduct. There ought not be limits on discourse for fear of causing people to be offended. 2. Youre putting all of this on Jim. Knock that shit off. He may be able to work the server, redirect the Wikipedia URL back to bomis.com, erase every piece of data ever written to the server.... but hes not God, and he cant make things all better for you at the wave of a hand. This thing works on one thing only - that is: Interest. If he starts dictating terms right and left, then there will be dimished interest from the public; and hes avoided doing this, for these reasons precisely. An analogy, would be; A nuclear-armed country *may* have severe means at their disposal, but what good would come of it? If I read you right, John, you cross the line in continuing to rag on Jim for simply knowing and staying the course, and his role. >I quote here the learned Professor Noam Chomsky, in his book "The Common >Good", published in 1998. In context, he wrote this paragraph about how >the media in the USA (and many other parts of the world) operate: > The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly > limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively > debate within that spectrum - even encourage the more critical and > dissident views. That gives people the sense that there's free > thinking going on, while all the time the presuppositions of the > system are being reinforced by the limits put on the range of the > debate. You can't argue with Rabbi Chomsky. Unless youve got something other than the plain truth in mind. >It has driven away several credentialed contributors that I >know of. And this fact prevents Wikipedia from gaining much academic >esteem. This may simply be due to perception. I remember RK criticising SL and Danny for calling him on his outbursts, by saying essentially: "If *we* dont make a stand here, *we'll* be "forced out" just like in Newsgroup X." Aside from the rich psychological study material in that statement alone, it does represent a victim mentality, or an aspect of human powerlessness that makes people think that they cant have a place. What Jim is really against is the setup of a team-sport mentality with several people here vs several people there. It belies the nature of sysopdom, as well, as were all human and even sysops will take sides, as they often do now. The assertion that Jim (?) made that sysops must avoid argument is idealistic and does not represent the reality. >You (Jim) always seem to come down on the side of those who are pro-Israel >and/or populist, without regard to the merits or facts. That is your >bias. As long as you decide who gets to play on your wiki, it will >reflect your personal biases. I dont know this. I'm just stating my cause and interests intelligently here - without rhetoric (but perhaps a few double-entendres, however) Before I get back into it with anyone; being ganged up on is not my idea of fun. Like I told you before, I can see why Jim banned you - not because of politics at all, but because of the spite you show for other people, and a kind of desperation in your tone that belies your demonstrated capacity for reason. = SV

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User:Black Widow
by Daniel Mayer 13 Mar '03

13 Mar '03

User:Black Widow is claiming to be DW's widow and is now editing the same kind of articles DW used to edit. A sarcastic eulogy to DW is at; http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Black_Widow Just an FYI for the DW watchers. --mav WikiKarma The usual at [[March 9]]

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WikiEN-l March 2003