WikiEN-l May 2003

wikien-l@lists.wikimedia.org

74 participants
283 discussions

Re: film vs. movie
by koyaanis qatsi 05 May '03

05 May '03

> Put bluntly, Stan, this is wikipedia, not > americopedia. If you want respect > from non-Americans, show their language and > spellings some respect. And get a sense of humour. I'm a movie/film buff myself, and, yes, an American, though that's an unfashionable thing to be these days outside of the U.S.. I don't like (movie) as a disambiguator but I'm using it also, because that's what we decided on. I don't remember ''why'' we decided what we decided, but that is what we decided, so I'm going with it. Otherwise we end up with two articles about one movie, and who needs that? If you want to change the convention, instead of making emotional accusations, you could put forth a calmly reasoned argument for why it should be changed, and we could start the discussion in earnest from there. kq __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? The New Yahoo! Search - Faster. Easier. Bingo. http://search.yahoo.com

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Re: [WikiEN-l] Conventions and movie vs. film
by james duffy 05 May '03

05 May '03

'Taking the piss' means ironic teasing. It is something done the world over, understood the world over. If Stan is incapable of understanding the difference between ironic teasing and being deliberately rude, that is a reflection on him and his humour bypass. But no, Stan, I did not mean to offend you. And if you misunderstood what I was saying as being offensive then I apologise, but that was not what I was doing. I was being sarcastic and ironic, using a standard form of humour in Europe that people do not usually take offence at, they 'getting' the joke. I was making a standard joke which is made all the time about how movie is used to imply Hollywood blockbuster, film is often used to refer to arthouse film or film with intellectual content or a film is in itself a quality piece of work. So 'Dumb and Dumber' is often described as a movie in Europe, Casablanca, The Dead, Schindler's List, American Beauty, The Big Chill, etc are described as films. It is subjective opinion by definition. In any case 'movie' is generally seen as an American term (though it is used occasionally outide the US), film as a worldwide one. There is no one 'right' term unlike formal names or definitions. I think it unacceptable that wiki wants to use an American term that most non-americans don't use, or if they do, they use it as a code for bland, Hollywoodized, heavily merchantised produce. JT >Taking the piss means you were being rude to him, and now think you're >allowed to be >rude because he didn't think it was funny. No. Taking the piss, like many >forms of humor, >only works if all involved agree. The phrase you're looking for is "I'm >sorry, Stan, I didn't >mean to offend you." >-- >Vicki Rosenzweig >vr(a)redbird.org >http://www.redbird.org > >_______________________________________________ >WikiEN-l mailing list >WikiEN-l(a)wikipedia.org >http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l _________________________________________________________________ Protect your PC - get McAfee.com VirusScan Online http://clinic.mcafee.com/clinic/ibuy/campaign.asp?cid=3963

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DW/Black Widow is back
by Zoe 05 May '03

05 May '03

(Sorry if this comes twice, Yahoo gave me errors the first time.) DW/Black Widow is now posting on Wikipedia as [[User:Sonya L]] Zoe __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? The New Yahoo! Search - Faster. Easier. Bingo. http://search.yahoo.com

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Re: [WikiEN-l] Conventions and movie vs. film
by james duffy 05 May '03

05 May '03

> >On Thu, 2003-05-01 at 09:35, The Cunctator wrote: > > We actually did have a big discussion about this and film ended up being > > nixed because of the problem of digital videa replacing actual film as >the > > medium for "films". Thus, "movie". If that is the case, then surely 'movie', a word linked with the silent world of moving pictures, should be replaced on wiki by 'talkie'. And if the Cunctator's assertion is correct, then we need to change it. Non-Americans do not generally use the word 'movie'. It is a word only occasionally used outside the US and usually applied to heavily Americanised Hollywood-ised blockbusters; Bruce Willis saves the world, gets the girl and wisecracks his way to the conclusion, with the promise of 5 sequels and billions of dollars of merchandising to come. In fact 'movie' is used internationally in relation to 'film' the way 'fast food' is used in relation to 'cuisine'. Stuff by Quentin Tarantino is often described as 'film' whereas something with Arnie, Sly or that genre is invariably a 'movie'. And anyone ever heard of a 'movie noir'? JT _________________________________________________________________ Tired of spam? Get advanced junk mail protection with MSN 8. http://join.msn.com/?page=features/junkmail

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it looks like DW is back again
by Tony Wilson 05 May '03

05 May '03

Check out User:Janet Dayton Seem familiar? Tony Wilson (Tannin)

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Could not connect
by K Forstner 04 May '03

04 May '03

What is this?? KF Warning: mysql_pconnect() [function.mysql-pconnect]: Access denied for user: 'wikiuser(a)localhost.localdomain' (Using password: YES) in /usr/local/apache/htdocs/w/DatabaseFunctions.php on line 28 Could not connect to DB on 127.0.0.1 Access denied for user: 'wikiuser(a)localhost.localdomain' (Using password: YES) If this error persists after reloading and clearing your browser cache, please notify the Wikipedia developers.

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Harm reduction techniques
by martin＠myreddice.freeserve.co.uk 04 May '03

04 May '03

Hi all. This whole (long) post is going to go at [[meta:bans]], for people who prefer to have the "edit this page" button available: http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bans It seems to me that our current "zero tolerance" policy towards "banned" users does not have a success rate that we can particularly brag about. We've got Lir (and co), DW (and co), 142.177.etc, Michael (and co), and so it goes on. We ban 'em, they come back under new names and laugh at us. But what are we trying to achieve? * Are we trying to ensure the integrity of the banning system? * Are we trying to punish racists for being evil people? * Or are we trying to build an encyclopedia? Our aim shouldn't be to "crack down" on trolls, for the sake of cracking down. Instead, we should practice [[harm reduction]]. When usenet lore talks of "don't feed the trolls" it means ignore them - not deliberately seek them out in order to ban them or revert them. People have talked of the time burden from Zog's ~150 edits. Let's look at some harm reduction ideas for how to reduce that burden. ==Harm reduction techniques== I'm just thinking though some of this stuff, so my past actions are liable to be inconsistent with this! :) Some edits were reverted under the concept that one should revert all edits made by a banned/troublesome user, including good edits. For example, edits to [[Chaco War]] and [[Amarya]] were reverted. We can improve efficiency by not bothering to revert reasonable edits. Plus, the encyclopedia will then improve slightly in quality. I'm not saying that you *have* to check every edit before reverting. I'm saying that if you do notice that an edit seems reasonable, there's no need to revert it. A substantial number of edits were made to the user pages, such as [[user:Zog]], etc. Less harm is caused by bad stuff here. So, we could be more efficient here by simply waiting a week, and then reverting the whole lot in one go. If Zog edits his user page five times a day, and we wait a week before reverting, then we've magically become 35 times more efficient, just by being lazy. In any case, getting into an edit war with Zog over a non-essential page like [[user:Zog]] encourages hir to come back. By quickly making a [[/ban]] page we can save more time. No need to have the same discussion on a dozen pages, plus the mailing list. As a bonus, if the user in question wants to reform then such a page clues them in to what they're doing at no extra cost. Which means we don't have to waste time telling them what they're doing wrong, which brings me nicely on to the next header: == Troll talk == Here's another way of reducing the time we spend dealing with trolls - don't talk to them. "Why don't you go find another sandbox to stomp in?" says one Wikipedian - every second spent writing that sentence was wasted time. Heck, it asked a banned user a question - it practically *invited* hir to respond. And, unsurprisingly, respond sie did - several times - and we wasted more time reverting hir. And then reverting hir deletion of the "sandbox" question a few times. Flames of trolls are pointless too. We all know that trolls troll in order to receive flames. Therefore, telling them to "go away, Lir" is likely to be counter-productive. Is there any evidence that Lir will go away if asked? Perhaps somehow Lir has got the mistaken impression that he's welcome here, and all we ever had to do was suggest that he should depart and he'd pack up his trouble in his old kit bag and leave, leave, leave? Lir may be evil, but saying "Get thee behind me Satan" won't have a high success rate. Ignore trolls. Don't flame them. Don't ask them questions. If you must communicate with them, to so calmly and briefly. If they flame you, take the fire out of their comment by rewording it - and then ignore it or give a minimal "thanks for your feedback" response. Alternatively, take their flame, cut and paste it onto the /ban page and say "this is not acceptable" - and then proceed to ignoring it. If it's a case of mistaken identity, then this'll become clear in due time, and then you can answer the question. If not, you've lost nothing. == In five words or less == "Ignore trolls, don't ban them" Or "Keep good edits, revert bad" -Martin "MyRedDice" Harper

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The "Young and Innocent" page
by K Forstner 02 May '03

02 May '03

Could someone with sysop powers please permanently delete the "Young and Innocent" page? It redirects to Ernest Hemingway, and there are no links to that page either. The reason is that Hitchcock's movie of the same name (which I'm going to rename "movie" instead of "film") cannot be found otherwise ("database error"). Thanks in advance, KF

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Zog is back as Anti-Zog
by Tony Wilson 02 May '03

02 May '03

Jimbo is right. There are users who make a complete joke of our "enforcement" procedures. Right now, Zog has headed one of his user talk pages with a picture of a Klan ritual, complete with text: "Look out niggers the Klan is getting bigger!!!" Either we figure out a way to deal promptly with scum like this, or we quit pretending that we are trying. Tony Wilson (Tannin)

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Re: [WikiEN-l] Zog is back as Anti-Zog
by Tim Starling 02 May '03

02 May '03

>From: Jimmy Wales <jwales(a)bomis.com> >Reply-To: wikien-l(a)wikipedia.org >To: wikien-l(a)wikipedia.org >Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Zog is back as Anti-Zog >Date: Fri, 2 May 2003 04:33:20 -0700 > >I think we need to revisit having the ability for sysops to ban logged >in users. Maybe the wiki way of doing this is to put the ability into >the software, but all sysops must agree to use it *only* to ban >*certain* variants on a known banned troll. > >In the current case, it seems clear to me that banning Zog, Anti-Zog, >Baboon Mouth, JamesERay, and so on, should be done virtually >instantly, so as to discourage the behavior. I agree. But how do we implement it? We could create the concept of a "trusted user", perhaps defined in terms of number of edits and joining date. If a user is not "trusted", a sysop can ban him/her. But ideally the sysop should be able to also block the IP address. Here's an idea: maybe the IPs of users could be available to sysops, but in encrypted form. So instead of banning 152.163.189.233, we ban 675C4216 (possibly using slightly better encryption than that). -- Tim Starling. _________________________________________________________________ MSN Instant Messenger now available on Australian mobile phones. Go to http://ninemsn.com.au/mobilecentral/hotmail_messenger.asp

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WikiEN-l May 2003