While I find that banning him may be a bit far, I don't think it is
right for him to insert operate this way. It gives his edits an
un-honest air to them. I can only speculate 2 possible reasons for his
actions. 1. He is testing the wikipedia's peer review system. 2. He
is doing this for personal gain. In either case, I would support a soft
ban of him (and any aliases. It occurs to me, that if we make
significant changes to his contributions, he will not be able to stop
the urge to make changes to these articles (if he decides to go against
the ban and make edits anyhow). So it shouldn't be too hard to single
out his new aliases. While I am hesitant to jump into anything, I we
need to discuss options, and then figure out what we are going to do.
--
Michael Becker
-----Original Message-----
From: wikien-l-admin(a)wikipedia.org [mailto:wikien-l-admin@wikipedia.org]
On Behalf Of Tim Starling
Sent: Sunday, June 08, 2003 7.33
To: wikien-l(a)wikipedia.org
Subject: [WikiEN-l] Identity games by Florentin Smarandache
Florentin Smarandache appears to be creating a large number of user
accounts, and using them to support the inclusion of articles related to
his
idiosyncratic theories. The case for this is rather thin, but I hope a
developer will see this message and check the IP addresses of the
various
users.
What I know is this: Smarandache has a history of inventing multiple
personalities. I have three confirmed fake names, invented by him. The
three
personalities are Carol Harlestle, Charles T. Le and George Gregory.
FS = 64.106.24.52 (static line at Gallup)
http://www.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Talk:Neutrosophy&diff=996825
&oldid=989864
CTL = 64.106.24.52
http://www.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Wikipedia:Votes_for_deletion
&diff=989777&oldid=989735
CTL=CH
http://groups.google.com/groups?q=carol+smarandache&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&o
e=utf-8&selm=8rglbo%2413q%241%40nnrp1.deja.com&rnum=2
GG = 64.106.24.52
http://216.239.33.100/search?q=cache:gzDvOQpAK30J:www-gap.dcs.st-and.ac.
uk/~history/Comments/comments.html+%2264.106.24.52%22&hl=en&ie=UTF-8
(google cache of
http://www-gap.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/Comments/comments.html)
Additionally, AxelBoldt has made a case that FS is Dr. Minh Perez, on
[[Florentin Smarandache]].
The user accounts which have been created in the past few days and have
been
used to support Smarandache include johnkamla, Lit-sci, Bigtexas,
Arizonaval. I don't know if that's all of them. There have also been
suspicious anonymous edits under the Gallup IP addresses 64.106.24.51
and
64.106.24.53 -- could be different computers in the same lab.
If my theory turns out to be correct, I suggest we threaten FS with
banning.
Identity games like this should not be allowed.
-- Tim Starling.
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WikiEN-l(a)wikipedia.org
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Florentin Smarandache appears to be creating a large number of user
accounts, and using them to support the inclusion of articles related to his
idiosyncratic theories. The case for this is rather thin, but I hope a
developer will see this message and check the IP addresses of the various
users.
What I know is this: Smarandache has a history of inventing multiple
personalities. I have three confirmed fake names, invented by him. The three
personalities are Carol Harlestle, Charles T. Le and George Gregory.
FS = 64.106.24.52 (static line at Gallup)
http://www.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Talk:Neutrosophy&diff=996825&ol…
CTL = 64.106.24.52
http://www.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Wikipedia:Votes_for_deletion&di…
CTL=CH
http://groups.google.com/groups?q=carol+smarandache&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=u…
GG = 64.106.24.52
http://216.239.33.100/search?q=cache:gzDvOQpAK30J:www-gap.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/…
(google cache of
http://www-gap.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/Comments/comments.html)
Additionally, AxelBoldt has made a case that FS is Dr. Minh Perez, on
[[Florentin Smarandache]].
The user accounts which have been created in the past few days and have been
used to support Smarandache include johnkamla, Lit-sci, Bigtexas,
Arizonaval. I don't know if that's all of them. There have also been
suspicious anonymous edits under the Gallup IP addresses 64.106.24.51 and
64.106.24.53 -- could be different computers in the same lab.
If my theory turns out to be correct, I suggest we threaten FS with banning.
Identity games like this should not be allowed.
-- Tim Starling.
_________________________________________________________________
Get mobile Hotmail. Go to http://ninemsn.com.au/mobilecentral/signup.asp
Stevertigo writes:
> I think this is nonsense. Proper English is a product of
> specialization. English is not the property of English
> speakers, but a lingua franca that everyone owns.
Pseudo-academic, pseudo-egalitarian nonsense. That's the
same kind of talk that has damaged the education of much of
the inner-city youth in America. Only in the last decade
have educators finally had the nerve to attack this point
of view, and to correct the course that our schools were
making.
Frankly, it is also racist in effect. This kind of attitude
has created two generations of poorly educated Hispanic and
Black youth in American cities. I couldn't think of a
better plan for the KKK to promote if they want to keep
racism alive forever.
> Hence, its destined to become simplified phonetic -
> scratch that - fonetic speling iz tha furst thing laikli
> tu hapen tu English - or it should. Someday soon.
This isn't about ownership, racism or colonialism. It is
about writing article in English, for people who speak
English.
And frankly, many of our articles are being damaged by
people with good intentions, but who have poor English
reading or writing skills (or both.)
In Stevertigo's bizarre universe, it is egalitarian to
encourage this illiteracy, which in the end would produce
unreadable articles. In our universe, we are trying to
ecudate an English speaking audience.
It is your choice what kind of encyclopedia we should try
to produce. I know which path I prefer.
Robert (RK)
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I don't understand why Anthere is making personal attacks
towards me. I was disturbed by Entmoot of Troll's
anti-Jewish remarks. Anthere's response to this was to
ignore the content of my post, make a defense of EofT, and
then attack me. What should one conclude from her
behaviour?
Listen: I will make it simple. When you have an
intellectual disagreement with someone, don't descend to
racial or ethnic stereotypes or slurs. If you are unable
to follow this rule, leave Wikipedia. We don't want bigots
here. Is this so outrageous?
Further, if someone is unable to clearly express what they
mean in English, then what they are writing here is almost
useless. I don't understand how people can argue
otherwise. If you really want to fill an encyclopedia with
incomprehenisble, vague and poorly written text, please do
so...but do so elsewhere.
It isn't racist, elitist, "scientist" or colonialist to
wish that articles, and discussions on Talk pages, should
be comprehensible. Is this too hard to understand? Or am
I being "colonialist" again...
Robert (RK)
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Fred Bauder wirtes:
> To crab up and fall into a negative posture is simply
> rude beyond words. In the case of Wikipedia articles
> I can't imagine a more productive situation than
> a free-flowing and respectful relationship with
> the fluent English speaker sometimes editing a bit for
> syntax and the native Chinese speaker grounding material
> in Chinese reality. It's always worth the trouble.
Um, I am totally confused. Why are you rebutting a position
that no one has? I certainly never offered a position
anything like the one Fred is imagining. In fact, I
totally agree with everything Fred has written here. I
think it is *wonderful* that an English speaker would work
with someone to help improve an article.
I just don't like it when someone with poor English skills
is rude to English speakers, and insist on adding material
and phrasings that are vague, incomprehensible, mistaken,
or using non-standard definitions of words that no other
English speakers use.
Is the difference between these two cases clear now?
Sheesh,
Robert (RK)
=====
"I prefer a wicked person who knows he is wicked, to a righteous person who knows he is righteous".
The Seer of Lublin [Jacob Isaac Ha-Hozeh Mi-Lublin, 1745-1815]
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A few weeks ago we had a discussion on this list about the
topic of the [[Knowledge]] article. A few people had been
confused about its purpose, and we clarified it.
This article, as you will recall, is NOT about just any way
that English speakers might choose to use the word.
Rather, this article is specifically about the
philosophical definition of how to ascertain which beliefs
are true, justifiable and actionable. The "Knowledge"
article discusses specifically the philosophical definition
of knowledge, as related to epistemology. Among
philosophers, this topic is widely known as the Gettier
problem.
Sadly, in recent days EntmootOfTrolls has been trying to
pervert this article into a treatise on colonialism, racism
and "SCIENTISM". Sadly, he uses this as an ad-homenim
personal attack against those people who use science and
philosophy.
Both RotenDam and myself have repeatedly tried to explain
to EofT what this article is about, but he keeps ignoring
us, claiming that we are violating NPOV, and he keeps
implying that we are "colonialist", bigoted, and
perpetrators of "scientism" (which in his mind is a form of
hatespeech or bigotry.)
It gets worse. The following anti-Semitic jibe was just
posted on my personal Talk page by EntmootOfTrolls.
*** Begin quote ***
Hmm. It seems clear from the above that you have general
problems discerning racism and colonialism in other
contexts. Likely being an American makes you also prone to
scientism. You should reflect on this cultural bias of
yours. It is now fairly clear why you wish to establish
knowledge as something which derives either from authority
or scientific method, and why other ways to approach
knowledge are degraded by you, as part of your other
beliefs in a hierarchy specific to "your people" (Jews,
Americans, scientists, "settlers"). You will not be
permitted to hijack articles with these views. It is time
for you to reconsider your attempt to do so. EofT
*** End quote ***
I am outraged at his blatant anti-Semitic, anti-Zionist
attack. We have been trying to explain that this article
is about philosophy and the Gettier problem. His reponse?
He responds by slandering my entire people (THE JEWS) as
COLONIALIST, SETTLERS, etc. (Only in a very anti-Semitic
mind could all Jews be seen as Israelis, or settlers, etc.)
This person should be banned, immediately, right? I assume
that Wikipedia does not allow one to use racist slurs
against blacks, Irish, English, etc. I hope that Wikipedia
practice forbids the personal abuse of English contributors
as "occupiers", or the slander of Irish people as
"terrorists", etc! This is not the way to contribute to
articles on philosophy...or anything else.
Racist comments against Wikipedia contributors should not
be allowed. Are we agreed?
Robert (RK)
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To get in on this wonderful debate, can I say that RK and Stevertigo are both full of it?
In particular, phonetic spelling is never going to come and is, in my opinion, not particularly desirable. It would, among other things, make any older book ultimately unreadable. English came to its current (relatively) standardized orthography by a lengthy process of natural development, for the most part. Further, I'd say that spelling is surely one of the least difficult parts of learning a foreign language. The process of foreign language learning (as opposed to learning one's own native language) is geared towards seeing the words in print, and I'd say I'm probably considerably less likely to misspell words in French or German than I am in English, simply because I associate French and German words at least as much with what they look like in print as with what they sound like. And French words are at least as non-phonetically spelled as English words, although the pronunciations associated with the non-phoneticness in French is probably more standard than in English.
In any event, how would any mass spelling revision even come about?
In any event, the issue of spelling really has very little to do with the initial question, which had more to do with grammar (and with wikipedia, even!). And I genuinely don't understand the argument that using correct grammar is somehow cultural imperialism. Like spelling, English grammar rules evolved over centuries, and have, for the most part, been followed in written language (with some variations, as who/whom problems, for instance). The fact that somebody who has learned English as a second language does not know how to properly express an idea in English suggests to me that it ought to be corrected, not that somehow us native English-speakers are exercising our cultural hegemony over non-native English speakers. Personally, I wouldn't mind if a native French speaker exerted their cultural hegemony over a hypothetical effort on my part to write something in French by correcting improper grammar (and word use, perhaps). In fact, I would hope that that would be done. I don't see how having articles written in some kind of pidgin would have any value over being written in proper English. Would the incorrect English written by a native speaker of Chinese be more or less intelligible to a native speaker of Russian than correct English? I don't see why the former would be, at the very least.
In any event, I shall maintain my ridiculously Burkean views on this subject against all you linguistic Jacobins.
best,
John Kenney (jlk7e)
Jimmy writes:
> Sure, and so toward that end, I think we need do no
> more than what google does -- make it a one-click
> easy thing to view the encyclopedia in this way or
> that. If parents want to *enforce* that their
> children take a certain view, they can do so in
> their own way, perhaps in the same way that they do
> with google or other big websites.
Isn't it relevant that we don't know what criteria
google uses to filter things into "safe" and "unsafe"?
I'm guessing that my previous argument was so
fundamentally flawed that it didn't deserve comment.
Since we don't know and won't be borrowing Google's
system, we will have to establish our own. At the
risk of embarassing myself, let me ask again:
[[felching]]: "safe" or not?
[[oral sex]]: "safe" or not?
[[Bill Clinton]]: "safe" or not?
For what it's worth, one of those three articles
disgusts me, *but* I don't think that my disgust is
relevant to wikipedia *in any way*, nor should it be.
Apparently there's a large enough sector of people
that find it perfectly appealing, and so 1) there was
something worth writing about and 2) someone wrote the
article.
At any rate, if any less than three of those articles
are "unsafe" then we are being biased, i.e. POV, in
our application of the filter, and therein lies the
problem.
Similarly, for Julie's benefit, since this is clearly
not only about sex, though sex provides some vivid
examples:
[[murder]]: "safe" or not?
[[infanticide]]: "safe" or not?
[[matricide]]: "safe" or not?
[[genocide]]: "safe" or not?
Would it be ok for children to know about murder, but
not murder of infants, mothers, or entire ethnicities?
If so, why? Isn't that POV? Why should murder of an
infant be considered "less safe" to know about than
murder of an adult? Why should murder of a mother be
considered "less safe" to know about than murder of a
stranger? Why should murder of many be considered
"less safe" to know about than murder of one? Those
are the kinds of issues that will come up in
categorizing articles and establishing the filters.
Deciding what is "safe" to know about carries strong
and undeniable moral connatations. Why should
wikipedia establish, codify, and *display,
prominently* a moral value system? If we filter
*murder*, how is wikipedia of any value whatsoever?
If we don't filter it, but filter other similar
topics, we're exercising moral judgement, which is
incompatible with our goal to be NPOV.
And, while we're on the subject, are we really doing
anyone a service when we forsake our goal of providing
a complete educational resource to implement a system
to allow people to educate themselves only on what
they're already prejudiced towards? That sounds like
a different project altogether--we could have a
felching-pedia, a drug-abuse-pedia, a
sunshine-and-bubbles-pedia.... If that's what people
want, let them fork. That's not our project, those
aren't our goals.
kq
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KQ writes:
>> effort. :-) yet, I think the horse is dead and I
>> should cease to beat it. :-)
Stevertigo writes:
>Yes, you shouldnt beat it too much there, Kq. ;)
You couldn't have invoked [[Godwin's law]] instead?
;-)
kq
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It may not sound politically correct to say this, but we do have a problem
on wiki with the standard of english used in some articles by people who do
not speak english as a first language. While the contributors write serious
and worthwhile articles, their limited knowledge of english can produce
articles that require major rewriting to reach a usable standard.
While that is being done on a case by case basis, some articles can stay on
wiki for ages before anyone notices, or can be found by people who are busy
elsewhere and cannot immediately do a rewrite.
Take this example from [[Chronopia]]:
------------------
The city is the largest city in Ereb Altor. It is said to be ruled by an
great time-mage, but noone has ever seen him. Below the Emperor there is a
huge army of lesser time mages, odinary-but-still-extremly-powerful-mages
and a huge and extremly powerful army of elite-highlanders with necrological
weapons.
it is simply impossible to revolt against the Emperor, but that does not
mean that there is no crimes commited in Chronopia. Despite the ultrahard
goverment with all its time mages and undefeatable, enless legions of elite
warriors there are LOTS of crimes comitted everywhere - The Emperor does not
care for the people that live in his city, all he cares about is time
itself.
------------------
Goatasaur has been doing a lot of work trying to turn this article into
readable english but there are many other articles in a similar vein that
are barely readable. The [[History of China]] has been disastrously written
by one person who continually refuses to accept there is a problem and
reverts attempts to revert the article to a readable version rather than one
littered with dramatically flawed translations of chinese words into
english. Quite a few of our computer programming pages have similar problems
with poor english making it difficult even for the expert, let alone the lay
person, to understand what the article is about.
Most of the contributors to these articles are genuine, sincere and doing
their best, but they are far below acceptable standard in an english
language encyclopædia and risk damaging wiki's credibility as a reliable
source.
My suggested solution: A special page perhaps listed on the Recent Changes
pages at the top, to which people when they find grammatically and
linguistically challenged articles can add them. Users when they have the
time can work through these, rewriting or rewording them. We could even
leave a message as part of the welcome note to new users telling them that
we recognise that not everyone who contributes to wiki may speak english as
a first language and that, if they have any doubts about their own ability
to write a clear article in english, or if they simply want it
double-checked, they can add it to that list.
Pending a rewrite, a tag line could be added (similar to the 'contents is
disputed' line already used) at the start of the article, indicating that
this is a first draft and is being updated and edited to achieve a
comprehendable form of english. That way, someone finding the article on a
google search would not think its standard is reflective of wiki as a whole.
JT
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