In a message dated 04/06/03 18:14:49 GMT Daylight Time, fredbaud(a)ctelco.net
writes:
> Good work, but that still doesn't give you the final word.
>
> Fred
>
>
So who decides?
I assumed there was intended to be some sort of consensus, as when the
present policy was agreed by all who participated. At present, the lineup appears to
be a few people who, pace Vicki, do not make significant contribution to the
fauna articles, whereas Kingturtle, Tannin, Steve Nova and myself are fairly
happy with the present situation. This hardly seems a clear mandate for
changing the current policy.
Personally, I think it will be a sad day if style triumphs over substance,
and I can't help thinking we could all be better occupied creating and improving
articles instead of revisiting a previously agreed policy, with the
inevitable acrimony that tends to creep in.
There are huge numbers of American bird species that have no articles at all.
Wouldn't it be better to write some instead of wasting time on the umpteenth
regurgitation of this topic?
Jim
>Cprompt wrote
>The problem is that what is proper English can be very subjective,
Starting a sentence with a capital letter isn't. Finishing with a full stop
is sort of seen as obligatory, while people do tend to think that verbs are
a good idea. Yet I was told yesterday of an article found by a contributor
that used commas for full stops, full stops for commas and didn't use a
single capital letter. Oh and wrote an entire history article in the present
tense. Those things aren't "very subjective", they are elementary. The
article, BTW was very good. All it needed was correction. But apparently
because it was on an obscure historical fact it never was looked at and
remained un-proofed for months. The person who found it didn't have time to
fix it, forgot about it then weeks later remembered it. It would have been
handier if, had they no time themselves, they could have simply put it on a
special list where whomever had the time could have fixed it. That way, an
article with good content would have become a good article to read, doing
justice to the good work done by someone who simply was not fluent in
english.
>and that pretty much all of the pages on Wikipedia are considered to be
>drafts, subject to later revision.
We may see them as such, but a user who knows nothing of wikipedia and finds
an article through google will presume it is /the/ final text in an
encyclopædia, not some draft.
>Google searches might reveal a poorly-written article, but it could also
>reveal one of those "YEAY JOSH IS GAY" pages. We should just keep our own
>standards up and hope that others realize that the nature of Wikipedia is
>that we'll have some Brilliant Prose, and some articles that are
>sub-Brilliant Prose.
I am not criticising sub-Brilliant Prose. I am pointing out that we /do/
have articles that aren't prose at all. There are users who want to
contribute but need more help than most in terms of being able to express
their knowledge. We need a system that can help them express their knowledge
where they themselves lack the linguistic skills to do so. (I know if I was
contributing to French wiki I would be out of my depth linguistically. I
would welcome being able to put my French article onto a special page with
the message - this may need to be proofread because my french may not be
100% accurate.)
JT
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Erik pointed out that one size doesn't fit all in terms of filtering
content, even when talking about child-appropriate content. I won't
debate that, nor his (kind of) tongue in cheek remark about putting
advisories on the Christianity (and all other religion?) articles.
But here's where I think that argument falls down. The wikipedia is
fortunately unlike almost every print encyclopedia in that one can (or
will be able to, one day, we hope) find information on virtually
anything. I would guess that, when people see "online, open content
encyclopedia", they think in terms of information available in print
encyclopedia - I imagine it this way, laugh if you like: "Hey mom, I
found this really cool site!" "Really? What kind of site? (<subtext of
normal parental concern>)" "It's an encyclopedia - look at this cool
picture of an aardvark!" "Gee, honey, that *is* pretty cool! Useful,
too!" And mom, seeing it's an educational tool, goes back to doing
whatever, only to have her kid come up later and ask about the
information in the Felching article (and by the way, that looks a lot
like a dictionary entry to me), which might not be at all intelligible
to a pre-teen, at least. I think one size does fit all when erring on
the side of caution. In other contexts that same information might be
seen as abusive towards the child.
Sorry - I don't want to sound like a prude or like I'm some right-wing
fanatic. I just know that I live in a society that expects that, as a
society, we protect our children from things they aren't equipped to
handle - we try to refrain from swearing around them, we (except in the
US, it seems) have a sex and violence watershed on TV, etc. If
individual parents want to let their kids see R-rated films, or play
super violent video games, they can (again, I think the US is actually
more liberal about this). But that doesn't let the wikipedia off the
hook from at least letting people know that there is information on the
site that is not found in "normal" encyclopedias and is certainly not
age-appropriate for young children.
By the way, is anybody referring to articles OTHER than the ones with
explicit sexual (in any variety) details? I can see an argument for the
nightly news not being appropriate for young kids, too, but at least
parents have a good idea of what will be shown - I thought I did, till
they showed a cop being murdered by somebody at a routine road stop.
Julie
Right at this moment, Michael is logged in as User:Fuck. He has
cottoned on to two key weaknesses in our security setup.
Either one on its own is a problem, but both together is a gaping hole:
(a) There is no way to block a logged-in user if you can't guess his IP
address.
(b) You can revert and rollback, but page moves are *much* more
difficult to restore. You can't jus rollback a page move, you have to
fiddle about making sure you are restoring the right page and not
losing the history, and so on.
So far as I can see, there are only three possible solutions - no,
make that four, but I don't like the last one much.
(i) Establish a time + number of edits before any new user is
unblockable
(ii) Figure out a way to make the Rollback feature work on page moves
as well as ordinary edits
(iii) Disallow page moves to ordinary users and make that a sysop-only
task
(iv) Pick another half-dozen people, trusted and experienced sysops,
and give them the ability to stand in when Brion and Eloquence are not
around to block the Michaels of this world. Those guys are great, but
they can't be here all the time.
This current vulnerability is a *major* problem, and in my view it
needs action RIGHT AWAY.
In the meantime, Michael is running rampage through the database.
Tony
(Tannin)
At 05:43 PM 6/7/2003, you wrote:
>On Sat, 7 Jun 2003, Dante Alighieri wrote:
>
> > Just in case any of you out there think that Michael is "misunderstood"
> > or reformed or just not getting a fair shake, I'd like to inform you all
> > that Michael has started his death threats again.
>
>Interesting edit summaries he writes! But just as a note of pedantry,
>telling someone to die is not a threat, but a command...
Just picture him shouting "Just die! Alright! Yes! Fucking die! Now! "
while he has his hands around your neck. Now that's pretty threatening.
(and yes, I'm familiar with the imperative mood) ;)
>But seriously, is this really a productive use of anyone's time:
>
>http://www.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Taang%21_Records&action=history
>
>?
>
>To revert one of Michael's edits when you *know* that he's just going to
>revert it straight back again is an exercise in futility. Can anyone put
>forward any cogent argument for doing something that you know perfectly
>well will be undone as soon as you've done it?
>
>Why not do the following:
>1. Leave notes on the developers' talk pages, asking if they could block
>whatever user account he is then using;
>2. Wait until that has been done;
>3. Go to his user contributions page and revert all his edits in one fell
>swoop?
>
>That would save a lot of time.
>
>Oliver
... and then he would create another user account, and another, and another....
This has been discussed COUNTLESS times. The general consensus is that
immediate reversion is the preferred course. Sooner or later he gets tired
and we're Michael-free for a few hours. To paraphrase Curran, the condition
upon which Jimbo hath given liberty to openly edit Wikipedia is eternal
vigilance.
-----
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
kq wrote:
>....
>Is it really so unclear what I'm saying?
>The idea of what is "sexually explicit" has
>at various times included piano legs,
>women's ankles, and Elvis Presley's hips.
>In quite a few places on the planet, it still
>includes women's ankles, and I'm sure it
>would include Elvis Presley's hips as well.
>For an example in the opposite direction,
>Robert Mapplethorpe considered his work
>"erotic," yet many (many) people consider
>it "pornographic." Should I point you to the
>obscenity trials for James Joyce's _Ulysses_?
>Anyway, tagging articles with commentary of
>that sort--"sexually explicit," etc.--is the same
>as imposing your cultural POV onto them; in
>other words, it is the same as declaring the
>wikipedia a developed nation's middle-class
>anglocentric-pedia. Exactly how is that of
>benefit to us?
I tend to agree and think that we shouldn't be the ones doing the flagging but
several to many external "team certification" or "Sifter" projects can do so.
The faint of heart could then access our articles through those separate
projects. At the most we can say in the Wikipedia article that "A previous
version of this article has been certified by X, Y and Z groups."
Let them deal with flagging wars and criteria - we have an NPOV encyclopedia
to write!
-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)
Tannin wrote:
>The Society for the Study of Amphibians
>and Reptiles The American Society of
>Ichthyologists and Herpetologists and
>The Herpetologists League
>.....
>Oh, and they capitalise species names as
>a matter of policy.
I'll take your word for it but a cite or a link would help your case
significantly. None of the above societies, BTW, deal with mammals.
>Royal Zoological Society of New South Wales
One cite that does include mammals (but not specifically). This helps. Any
other general societies out there that are advocating for capitalization? I
have nothing wrong with trying to anticipate where the trends in Biology are
going but I do need to see some evidence for this before we make policy (for
example I helped to successfully advocate for us to move from the 5-Kingdom
system to the more correct 6-Kingdom system even though the 5-Kingdom system
is still more widely taught -- BUT it is obviously beginning to loose out to
the 6-Kingdom system).
>....
>Finally, there is flora. The common names of plants
>are a horrible mess. Within any one geographic area
>they seem to be consistent enough, certainly for the
>larger species (trees, shrubs, wildflowers), but
>*between* areas they often conflict with one another.
>Australian plant common names, for example, do not
>conflict with one another, but *do* conflict with the
>names of other, completely different, plants in Europe
>and America.
I agree - plants are a mess and give me a major headache anytime I try to
properly name a plant article. Cultivars are not nearly as bad but trying to
make a taxbox for a hybrid is an exercise in futility (and should /not/ be
done - the results are gibberish). Plants just don't think it is necessary to
follow our definition of what a species is! So for plants I see no reason to
pretend that common names are anything particularly specific so the downstyle
rules until the botanical societies come together and form international
conventions. We can disambiguate parenthetically for ambiguous names or even
use the botanical names when needed. Of course if a botanical name is in wide
use we should use that over a common name whenever there is an ambiguity. All
that matters is usage and overcoming ambiguity problems in naming so that
people can find what they are looking for. But if somebody else has already
worked out much of the ambiguity problem then we should follow that if and
when it makes sense with the other naming criteria.
>Indeed, I am wondering if, as time goes by and the
>flora sections start to fill up, it might be sensible to
>consider using botanical names for plants more.
>(I'm not convinced that that is the best way to go, but
>it's certainly something that ought to be considered.)
Perhaps - there does seem to be a big enough ambiguity problem to warrent
preemptive disambiguation based on botanical names (which isn't a panacea BTW
- genus and species names /will/ sometimes conflict with the scientific names
of organisms in other kingdoms).
-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)
>Oliver wrote If the majority of experts on fauna call an animal the
>"Aardvark", and the
>majority of non-experts call it the "aardvark", then the majority of our
>potential *readership* call it the "aardvark". So that's what our usual
>naming convention says that *we* should call it, too. We shouldn't make
>special cases just for one particular group of people without a better
>reason than just because that's how they do it themselves.
The thing is, we are an ENCYCLOPÆDIA. (BTW, I am not shouting. I just can't
do italics here!!!) As such we should strive as much as possible for
accuracy and that includes accuracy in capitalisation. We can use redirects
to deal with commonly understood names/titles/use of capitalisation, etc.
But we should as an encyclopædia aim to be an accurate factual source of
information, not aim simply to produce commonly understood but inaccurate
information. For example, millions of people think Queen Elizabeth II is
'queen of England'. In fact she isn't and couldn't be as England ceased to
exist as a separate kingdom in 1707. So we have a redirect page based on the
wrong but commonly understood title, but the actual page is on the correctly
titled page. So someone coming to the page is able to go away knowing the
'correct' facts, including the correct title, knowing more when they leave
than when they came to it.
That is what an encyclopædia is, a source of factual information that
educates people looking for information. If the grey-haired longtail buzzard
is correctly called the Grey Haired, Longtail Buzzard of Ohio, then a person
coming to wiki should be able to find that out and know that leaving wiki.
We aren't a tabloid newspaper that can aim for a general low-brow standard.
Encyclopædias have to aim to produce the highest standard of educational
information. People should come to wiki to get more information than they
possess, not simply to reflect the standard they came with. The very fact
that they are searching for more information means they are not satisfied
they have enough and need more. If wiki gets a reputation for not being
accurate, just being there, what is the point of wiki? Accuracy involves
such basic facts as correct spelling and correct capitalisation. So Tannin
is correct to try to get things as accurate as possible in the area of
capitalisation.
JT
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>Zoe wrote:
>Does anyone know if the US State Department website
>has a list of all of its ambassadors that we can
>either steal^H^H^H^H^Hborrow or link to?
If someone contacts the press office of the State Department and explain why
we want the information, they will no doubt supply all the info. They may
even agree to email us with any changes as they happen in the future.
Having chased up press offices in everything from Buckingham Palace to the
Vatican and the Quirinal Palace for articles in the past, I will leave this
job to another person. :-) There is only so big I can allow my phonebill to
get on wiki work!!!
JT
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Tannin wrote:
>What I posted just now was a DEFENCE against the
>personal attack made on me. And you will note that
>despite considerable provocation, at no point did I
>attack the person who attacked me, simply reported
>his actions factually in the most unemotional way I
>could.
Oh? What do you call this:
>... with a non-contributor who's behaviour in this
>matter has been appalling.
"Non-contributor" is not a nice label.
>....the same objector who recently suddenly took
>it upon himself to start a single-handed campaign
>of what can only be described as vandalism
By direct implication you are labling somebody a vandal - again something that
is not in line with the principle of WikiLove.
>... and an objector who practically never bothers
>to contribute anything to the fauna articles in any
>case, just talks about them at great length, and
>wastes enormous amounts of the time of the people
>who *are* doing the work, and causes a great
>deal of genuine distress to useful contributors.
So by direct implication you are stating that this person (me I guess) is not
a useful contributor?
Pardon me but your statement to Zoe that she is blaming the victim seems
rather disingenuous to me after a read of the above comments by you.
Now instead of more self-righteous indignation how about you list the people
who agreed to the compromise and then offer evidence to support the
capitalization of mammals? I for one quickly dropped my support for extending
the bird capitalization rules to mammals after it was made clear to me that
this is not a standard practice (for some time afterwards I was shell-shocked
from the whole incident - like Zoe - and then I went on vacation).
Do you have logical arguments to back-up this extension or just more
hyperbole?
I guess I have to admit that your scare tactic of threatening to leave the
project over this issue did prompt me to draft the compromise. I won't make
that mistake again.
-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)