> > There has to be a way for people to redeem themselves. For Lir, leaving
> > aside the multiple incarnation issue, the multiple small edit issue, may
> > be an editing style that annoys some people, but looked at alone I would
> > not consider it a banning offence. What are his other '''recent'''
> > offences?
> >
> > Ec
>
>He knows he is banned yet is trying to be here with another phony user
>name.
>He was not patient enough to wait til ban was legitimately lifted.
>(Assuming
>it is Lir).
>
>Fred
>
Fred is quite correct. Remember this is a user who has been hard banned
numerous times. They approached Jimbo and PROMISED that they would not come
on under an assumed identity again. They gave their word. In the
circumstances, they could have got Jimbo's agreement to come on again as
themselves. They could have waited for the specified period then come back.
But they instead went back on their word (yet again) and came on as an
assumed identity, in the process giving the two fingers to Jimbo and the
wiki rules on banning. As to Adam not committing offences - it isn't for the
want of trying. One of Adam/Lir/Vera Cruz/Susan Mason/Dietary Fiber/Shino
Baku etc's standard 'games' has been to provoke rows. One particular stunt
they used to pull was to enter a page where an edit war had been taking
place and just as peace was breaking out say or do something that would
re-ignite it. I have seen 'Pizza Puzzle' try that once so far. (Luckily the
people in question from past experience knew the 'game' and wouldn't play!)
PP placed bizarre messages on talk pages (I got one that said ''Adam
[name omitted for privacy reasons] is a troll'), in a attempt to provoke a reaction. Knowing Adam's
'game' I ignored it.) When that failed a provocative message was left on
PP's user page by PP, proclaiming how they were a troll, again to see could
they start a row. By then people had pretty much worked out PP's identity
and after some emails and AIM messages (used so that Adam could not read
them, which he would do if they were on talk pages) decided to ignore his
latest bit of 'look at me. I'm a troll. Wanna fight?' antics.
So he tried another tried and trusted method. He voted then 'unvoted' on the
dates vote page, in the hope that (as happened when he was 'Susan Mason')
someone would react with a 'what the fuck do you think you are doing'
response; he could then assume victim mode and get a few newbies to rush to
his defence and turn the page into a nasty fight. But only one person
challenged him on that, so that fizzled out.
Next try - remove someone's vote. So far that hasn't resulted in a major row
of the sort that Adam as Lir, Vera and Susan seemed to love starting.
All of which poses the question: so what is next? What stunt with Adam try
next to stir up a row? Going by past experience he will keep trying. Rows
are the one thing Adam in all his identities has contributed to wiki. He
seems to get a kick out of starting them off.
If wiki is to thrive as an encyclopædia, it needs to be able to deal with
the likes of Adam (now back on when he shouldn't be), Michael (though banned
numerous times still coming on daily to vandalise pages) and Ron (aka DW,
Black Widow, Elliot, Jacques Delson, 64.228.30.125, Joe Canuck and now
ChuckM). Ron has been on almost continually, not withstanding constant
hardbans since August 2002. Indeed Ron's contempt for wiki can be seen in
the fact that he often has two 'identities' in use at once, an IP for
editing and a named page for insulting. The fact that ChuckM, which he
created on the 10th of June could suddenly be brought back on the 22nd,
after his previous identity Joe Canuck was banned on the 20th shows his
contempt for wiki - one of his first acts was to remove the ban notice from
Canuck's page, then insult MyRedDice and accuse Wapcaplet, then remove a
note from me on the VfD page urging a quick deletion of Canuck's dodgy
images.
Our 'softly softly . . . maybe they might change' nonsense is not working.
Michael still defaces articles. Ron still downloads dodgy images and Adam
swans back giving Jimbo two fingers again and again and again. As a
hardbanned user, there should be no need for a debate. The rules said
explicitly that Adam should be banned immediately. Whether he writes good
articles is irrelevant. He has no right to be here and as someone who can't
even be bothered to keep his promises to Jimbo, we owe it to ourselves,
Jimbo and Wiki to ban him as soon as possible, as often as needs be. So that
Adam, Ron, Michael and everyone else gets the clear unambiguous message
'wiki is a troll-free zone. All trolls will be barred on sight.', rather
than our current message ' em . . . we'll talk about it and talk about it,
and then talk about it a bit more. And when you are finally banned and come
back, we'll do a lot more talking, not acting. So you have nothing to worry
about.'
JT
_________________________________________________________________
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Unless there are objections, I intend to ban "Pizza Puzzle", who is
another incarnation of Lir. Evidence:
- same editing style (lots of minor edits, lots of sections)
- same language
In this edit, he declares the creation of a "Pizza Puzzle Banking
Consortium" and signs as "The Wiki Proletariat":
http://www.wikipedia.org/w/
wiki.phtml?title=Wikipedia:WikiMoney&diff=1053016&oldid=1052965
- changed his user page to "HAHHAHAAH VANDAL POWER! YOU CANNOT STOP ME!"
- linked a Googlism.com search for "Adam [name omitted for privacy reasons]" (Lir's real name) on
James Duffy's talk page (the Googlism result is: "Adam [name omitted for privacy reasons] is a
troll")
Reasons for enforcing ban:
In spite of repeated warning, persists in his annoying habit to make
dozens of edits per page within an interval of seconds, e.g.:
* (cur) (last) . . M 03:54 22 Jun 2003 . . Pizza Puzzle
* (cur) (last) . . 03:53 22 Jun 2003 . . Pizza Puzzle
* (cur) (last) . . 03:53 22 Jun 2003 . . Pizza Puzzle
* (cur) (last) . . 03:52 22 Jun 2003 . . Pizza Puzzle
* (cur) (last) . . M 03:51 22 Jun 2003 . . Pizza Puzzle
* (cur) (last) . . 03:51 22 Jun 2003 . . Pizza Puzzle
* (cur) (last) . . M 03:49 22 Jun 2003 . . Pizza Puzzle
* (cur) (last) . . 03:48 22 Jun 2003 . . Pizza Puzzle
* (cur) (last) . . 03:46 22 Jun 2003 . . Pizza Puzzle
This is extremely annoying: clutters RC, wastes harddisk space, makes the
generation of meaningful diffs more difficult.
Since Lir is already banned, I believe it should only take very little to
re-ban him. I know some people think he can be reformed, but his
unwillingness to change his behavior here shows otherwise.
Regards,
Erik
I sent out an email about some of my ideas and questions
about textbook development to the new list (Thanks Brion
!!).
One question: has it been discussed the possibility of
having search results from one wiki site turning up
secondary results from the affiliate sites ? Such as, I do
a search for "organic chemistry" on wikipedia and, maybe
down below, the search engine gives me the relavent hits on
the Wiktionary site as well an any other affiliate sites ?
Karl
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This Slashdot article:
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/06/23/217212&mode=nested&tid=137
contains a reference to Wikipedia's article about "Deep Thought" from the
Douglas Adams book trilogy. I don't think it will cause too much traffic,
though, since it is not the focus of the article. It's interesting because
Slashdot for some time used Everything2 links to explain stuff like that
-- apparently Wikipedia is a more valuable resource, at least in the
opinion of the submitter.
Regards,
Erik
This should all be on the Textbook-l mailing list. I'm
sorry I responded. Why don't you join the list, steve?
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Please view my Talk page at
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Zoe, where
information has been moved from the Votes for Deletion
page. Once again, GrahamN (who is on record as saying
"I don't like you"), MyRedDice (who never met a vandal
he didn't like) and anthere (who seems to have
problems with users on every Wiki she works on) are
attacking me for making a sysop decision, and they are
demanding my syspo status be taken away.
Hey, it seems like whatever I do is wrong. If
something gets done by any other sysop, it's perfectly
fine, but if it's me, I'm being considered a vandal
and someone who's plotting a coup to take over
Wikipedia (I'm not exagerrating--that's what's being
said on my talk page.)
Well, so, if you want to remove my sysop status,
please do. Apparently I'm not a trustworthy person
who gives nothing of use to the Wikipedia. It seems
like all I do is go around making these outrageous
decisions. We might want to question some of the
people making these accusations, but then, why should
I do that, since I'm so untrustworthy.
Well, you know what, Martin, Graham, and anthere? I
don't like you, either. And if anyone proposes you
for sysophood, I will vote no.
Zoe
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SBC Yahoo! DSL - Now only $29.95 per month!
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At 12:13 23/06/2003 -0700, Dante wrote:
>I'm not saying that this is a bannable offense, but it certainly is
>quesitonable. PP seems to have singlehandedly removed another user's vote
>from [[Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (dates and numbers)/vote]].
>
>http://www.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Wikipedia_talk:Manual_of_Style_…
>
>Note, the edit comment read: "(should a user with only one edit really get
>a vote? )"
Just for the record, what was meant by the summary was that the person
whose vote was removed had made only one other edit apart from that vote. I
think that Pizza Puzzle had a point here - it would be easy for somebody to
rig a vote by creating lots of new usernames and voting with each of them
(I'm not saying that's what was going on here by the way, this is just a
general observation). People who are interested in voting as a
decision-making process probably need to discuss this and come up with some
sort of policy.
One could say that whatever the case, PP removing the vote in question
without discussion was wrong. Then again, one could argue he was just being
bold in updating pages, and that it's not beyond anybody to reinstate the vote.
Lee (Camembert)
WikiKarma: [[Grimshaw]]
Responses to mav and Steven
>Mav: But the English word for the city is Prague, not Praha. If you present an
average English speaker with the word "Praha" they are not going to know what
that is.
Well, you might consider the notion that people come to an encyclopedia to learn something. And this ignores the fact that a search for Prague will lead to Praha.
>But present the same English speaker with "Prague" and they will
recognize it. Same for Deutschland vs Germany. Why should we needlessly
confuse our readers and make them feel stupid for not knowing the "right"
word for Prauge or Germany?
Only people who are vain about what they know, feel disturbed by what they dont. An Encyclopedia is here to present information - not to simply agree with what people already know.
>They will probably take one look at the foreign
>title and leave thinking they landed in the wrong place (if not the wrong
>language).
Not if they see its redirected from "Prague" below - and boy, what a low opinion of people you must have to think they would be so... confused. Is humanity a 'glass half full' or 'half empty?'
>It is counter to our purpose of being understandable by the largest number of English
>speakers and especially native English speakers (when writing in English, of
>course).
Once again - the argument that people are too stupid and confuseable to understand.
>That will only lead to having misdirected links as English speakers
>can't remember the spelling of a foreign word. We already had a major fight
>with Lir over Cristóbal Colón vs Christopher Columbus - please don't open up
>old wounds. You have already pissed a bunch of people off by having a nick in
>non-English characters because they couldn't read or pronounce it.
Once again - referring to how confused people are. Well, Lir was right. The only people who disagree with that were people stuck in convention. Its certainly will sound like its from Neptune when it defies the typical conventions - but this requires people to be somewhat unconventional. You and I agree on a number of things - among them should be the principle that simply "not pissing people off" - deserves no merits on its own.
(I *do hope you have AC up there in Sac, BTW)
>All that matters is what the majority of English speakers recognize as the
>title and for us to make modifications and compromises where needed to
>overcome ambiguities. Oh, and there is no such thing as a "real name" for
>anything - words play a nominative role and different words are used in
>different languages to mean the same things. This is such an elementary fact
>that I'm embarrassed to have to mention it to you.
Im glad your embarrased. It reveals some altruistic fact I dont have time to go into...
But you do have some strong points to address - however, Im calling for a change of convention - Im not making claim that its *not conventional to simply follow convention. I'm calling to question the *merits of that convention - and whether its a convention from another era - say, 1672. (Before telephones, I might add.)
If you watched John Stossel's piece last night - he showed a neighborhood in Queens destroyed by people bent on ridding foreign language signs from the streets - under the guise of clutter - and other civil codes. The city went along with it - because such laws were on the books - (why argue with the law after awl?) But the city also was fining people three or four digits for just having the awnings there to begin with. The smirks on the faces of the perpetrators - also invoking "America" - and "this is how we do it in America" - was disgusting beyond description. Its a similar attitude.
As for their not being "real names for things" - I suppose if we decided to change the USA to "MeiGuo" or "Estados Unidentes" you would have to face your own statement in reverse. In that case - I would be in favor of calling it the "United States of America" - cause thats its name. The reason why there are "proper" names for things tends to be relative to language. Now - you may want to look like a colonialist and go argue with somebody Chinese over the proper article title for "Yangtze" - see where it gets you.
>Sometimes this means we use words that are very close to or even the same as
>the words used in the country of origin of the thing but other times it means
>we use an Anglicization (which is the process modifying foreign words to make
>it easier for English speakers to use and pronounce them). All that matters
>is what is known and recognized by most English speakers at all familiar with
>the subject (and making sure there are no significant naming conflicts and
>also making sure we aren't just making up Anglicizations).
Well your toughest argument by far is based on a limitation of the En wikipedia to en "native English speakers" - again. As a said before -- being the lingua franca has advantages and disadvantages. Among the disadvantages is that English is no longer owned bu the English ("England for the English")
|This aids in linking for writers and the ability of readers to find what they
|are looking for. That's all. Redirects can and should be used for less common
|forms of the term so that people looking for those forms can find the
|articles too. But leave the terms that are most widely known and used by
|English speakers at the head of their articles - not some form of the name
|that is seldom used by English speakers (especially native ones).
Mav's argument here rests entirely upon his assumption of a unique reason for redirects - and then he somewhat concedes the point with the word "should." Fine! Your opinion - that redirects "should" be limited to one use is noted. Lets see what other people think, shall we?
|And article titles should reflect a strong bias toward what English speakers
|are going to most often write in a sentence when referring to the subject
|(with modifications based on ambiguities). That whole point of doing this is
|to maximize the number of direct links to a title - redirects are a hack used
|for less common terms.
I disagree, again, that the only reason for redirects is a "hack".
As for "reflecting a bias" -- Im not sure this is NPOV. *IS the area of language forever to be an issue where the prime directive of NPOV is undermined?
-SM-
Jimmy Wales wrote:
>I'm pleased to announce the existence of the
>Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., a nonprofit corporation
>organized under the laws of Florida, United States.
>I am transferring to this new corporation the assets
>that follow:
>
>1. All Nupedia.com/net/org/etc. domain names
>2. All Wikipedia.com/net/org/etc. domain names
>3. All copyrights in software or articles that were
>previously owned by Bomis, Inc. and already placed
>under a copyleft license. (This includes work-for-hire
>by Jason, Tim, Larry, Toan, Liz, and myself, as well as
>any other Bomis employees who may have worked on
>these projects as a part of their job, but doesn't include
>any work by thoseparties conducted on their own time
>or while not an employee of Bomis.)
Sweet! Thanks for setting up the Foundation (especially with the name
"Wikimedia"). As the owner of the Wikimedia.org and Wiktionary.org domain
names I hereby transfer ownership and control of these domain names to the
Wikimedia Foundation as soon as it is in the position to receive these assets
(per your personal email to me Jimbo).
I also noticed the Nupedia stuff. Does that mean that Nupedia is also now part
of the Wikimedia family? I'm not certain if the Nupedians (if there are any
left or who care) would be too happy about that.... Oh well, maybe we can
bring some life to that project. I still think Nupedia (perhaps under the
name GNUpedia) should be refactored to be a repository of expert-approved
Wikipedia articles (along the lines of Larry's Sifter project). Thus that
project would be a stable distribution of Wikipedia content but all editing
would still take place at Wikipedia.
Which reminds me that gnupedia.org and gnupedia.com are also owned by Bomis
(IIRC). Are these domain names included with point 1?
Oh, and I'm going to assign copyright to all my edits to Wikimedia as part of
my Will and since I plan on living a very long time it will be awhile before
Wikimedia owns my text. I am still weary about having one entity in control
of so much content (which brings up the possibility of proprietary forks if,
for example, Wikimedia goes bankrupt and creditors try to sell Wikimedia's
assets).
Is there a way for Wikipedia authors to grant Wikimedia the ability to defend
the author's GNU FDLd copyrighted text without requiring the author to
transfer ownership to Wikimedia? Or am I confusing "ownership" and
"assignment"?
-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)
Anthere wrote:
>> The reason why our encyclopedias have to be
>>NPOV is because our audience is a general one.
>>The reason why our textbooks have to be DPOV
>>is because our audience is very focused (the biology
>>student, for example) and we need to bring that
>>student through the material in a logical and efficient
>>way.
>
>No. Wrong. One do not have to throw away
>NPOV just for the reason the audience is more
>focused. That has nothing to do.
No - you are totally wrong (stings a bit doesn't it? In the future it would be
nice if you showed some respect to the opinions of others. OK?)
>Logical and efficient is totally compatible with
>NPOV. What you suggest is "cutting" very
>important information, that students will later
>need to make informed decisions. Removing
>infos is neither logical nor efficient in the long
>term.
You are confusing a completely liberal education with the very real fact that
most courses are designed to get students through a certain /limited/ set of
material as efficiently as possible. In none, not one, of my college
textbooks on biology is there any serious mention of Creationist viewpoints.
That is /irrelevant/ information to have in a college-level biology textbook.
In short; there are /separate/ classes that deal with that subject.
>> Same thing is true for a section of a medical
>> textbook on abortion ; we leave out most of the
>> history and the different political views on the
>> subject and just talk about the procedure itself
>> and maybe have a single paragraph at the
>> end sating something about access to the
>> procedure and that risks doctors face when
>> they choose to specialize in this area.
>I disagree with you Mav.
Now that is a nicer way to disagree. Was that hard?
>By thus doing, we will only propose technical
>books, cold and disincarnated. That is against
>what some people consider education is.
Maybe what /you/ consider to be what education is. You are more than welcome
to write liberal education textbooks that treat each area taught in a
comprehensive, inter-disciplinary way. But don't stop other people from
making more technically-focused works since that is what actually gets used
in most college classrooms (at least in the US).
Also, most people take /separate/ classes in history, science and ethics. So
the history of the how an element has been used is irrelevant to the
chemistry student taking inorganic chemistry; ALL that is relevant to that
student is is the chemical reactions of the element, and its properties and
placement in the periodic table (of course a nice and short intro on why the
element is important would be a good thing to have but not vital to the
subject matter). The other stuff is optional background information that is
easily found in the element's encyclopedia article.
The goal of an encyclopedia is to present a summary of the sum total of all
human knowledge known about a particular subject. The goal of a textbook is
to focus on one particular part of that knowledge so that students can learn
about that aspect in detail.
We /already/ have a comprehensive resource in the encyclopedia for all the
info about a certain element. Let's not confuse encyclopedia articles with
textbook entries or otherwise a textbook project will not be differentiated
enough to exist for long if at all.
-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)