Fred wrote:
>I would suggest you request mediation of him and the mediation
>committee
Let's not forget the other steps in the conflict resolution process that come
before that.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Conflict_resolution
-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)
That's exactly what I'm getting at. The wikipedia should be packed with
clickable citations.The reason why I've always loved encyclopedias so much
is the quality of the information, and the impartial manner in which it was
presented. Citations (particularly linkable) bring with them evidence for
belief, and an option for the reader to learn further, investigate for
themselves (by clicking on it). A basic of polite discourse (and a policy in
my debate club) was to accept another's argument so long as it is logical,
and to accept their premise so long as you could not disprove it (like thru
a citation). What I Don't like about the wikipedia is when the truth (or a
way of interpreting it) is removed from an article, regardless of the
quality of citation, due to overriding majority POV. My suggestions are
meant to address that. JackLynch
>On Fri, 23 Jan 2004, Rick wrote:
>Wikipedia is not a list of citations.
>
>RickK
>Ira Stoll <irastoll at hotmail.com> wrote:
>
>*only replace text that you know to be wrong (inaccurate), and replace it
>with something that has a citation to back it up. If they have a reasonable
>difference, based on citation, allow both POV to be presented
>
>I don't understand your POV, Rick. Are you saying that we should have _no_
>citations or mention of references so readers can verify facts or
>quotations?
>If so, wouldn't that undermine the credibility of Wikipedia?
>Geoff
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> Daniel P.B.Smith wrote:
>
>> I agree completely. Lack of citation and traceability is IMHO a big
>> glaring
>> deficiency in traditional encyclopedias, and it's one that should be
>> remediable
>> in a hypertext encyclopedia. tter Wiki-apparatus for the purpose).
>
> But this seems to assume that the citations will all be to websites,
> which isn't likely to be the case--most respected, reliable information
> is still not available online. So citations of that sort will have to
> be to books or journal articles, which in many cases won't be
> accessible
> through hypertext.
What I meant was that I don't understand why
citations--to books, websites, "personal
communications," what have you--aren't used more often.
I don't personally care so much what the format is, so long
as they're _there_. By "hypertext," I just meant that it
provides possibilities for presenting the text in a way
that doesn't interrupt flow for the casual reader, while
still allowing the references to be visible to the reader
who wants to see the citations.
The way it was done in "Seabiscuit," and which
is becoming very popular for nonscholarly nonfiction,
is a technique for which I don't know a name, which I
will call "invisible endnotes." That is, there are no markers
in the text at all, but at the end of the book the citations
are referenced by chapter number, page number, and
starting phrase of the sentence. This seems to me to
be close to ideal--but it wouldn't work very well in
Wikipedia, at least not without some technical apparatus
that isn't in place yet, because Wikipedia articles don't
have numbered pages and are subject to constant
editing.
--
Daniel P. B. Smith, dpbsmith(a)world.std.com alternate:
dpbsmith(a)alum.mit.edu
"Elinor Goulding Smith's Great Big Messy Book" is now back in print!
Sample chapter at http://world.std.com/~dpbsmith/messy.html
Buy it at http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1403314063/
Sean Barrett wrote:
>So forget having me impeached -- call the Thought Police!
>
The thought of impeaching arbitrators even before the arbitration
process is in place is not very encouraging.
Ec
Hi, I just had a somewhat weird problem with the wiki.
I wanted to see if we had an article on "tin can", so
I typed it in and hit go. On my screen showed up the
article "Ford Model T", redirected from "Tin Lizzie".
Why would this occur? Meelar
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The clarifications on this list of 'WP norms' and 'WP due process' are very
welcome.
There is an ongoing problem, as far as I'm concerned, with [[User:Kevin
baas]]. As anyone who reads his home page can see, he has a certain
research program in mind. As far as I can see, it has no merit; but that's
not really the point.
Comments such as his (on [[Talk:Real computation]]) "don't you guys have a
sense of shame?" cause a deterioration of the atrmosphere. The current
[[Real computation]] page seems to me eminently sensible. I don't think
this kind of bullying comment should be applied, just because the page
content casts doubt on Kevin's research 'proposal'.
A long series of related discussions, going back months, on
[[Talk:Hypercomputation]]and [[Talk:Super-Turing computation]] have left the
pages in reasonably good order - but the latter is vacuous (it is really
'some people say' about super-Turing computation). Kevin has consistently
attacked the good faith of those who clearly know more.
The [[Fractional paradigm]] and [[Fractional probability]] pages are his
'walled garden' pages here. I think they have zero useful content.
Fractional electromagnetics, anyone?
On [[Talk:Fractional probability]] Michael Hardy has patiently been trying
to get some sense out of Kevin, for half a year. [[Fractional calculus]]
and [[Talk:Fractional calculus]] are somewhat different cases, snce the
topic is real rather than bogus. I'm not convinced that they consist of
more than formulae copied out of books, though, without proper
understanding. In case of the Weyl fractional derivative formula, I thought
it was for periodic functions only. I could be wrong, but I've not got an
answer over the course of some months.
At [[Talk:Intermediate treatment of tensors]] there is a backlog of
unresolved stuff about another, more prominent page that looks to me like
Kevin copying half-understood stuff out of books.
Summary:
Kevin Baas is rather clearly trying to use WP space for his own,
non-encyclopedic purposes. I don't find his contributions, apart from the
formulary on the fractional calculus pages to be useful; and I find none of
it authoritative. Some of it is wildly POV and unreliable, which is quite
serious in a maths/computing area.
My conclusions:
Kevin Baas is in mathematical matters a bluffer. When engaged in discussion
he resorts to: profanity; invocations of Socrates, Kant and the Pope;
accusations of snobbery and so on. He is a timewaster, who makes himself
difficult to deal with by retreat into interdisciplinary niches.
Required actions:
Some of the pages he has created ([[Fractional paradigm]] , [[Fractional
probability]] and probably [[Super-Turing computation]]) are vanity pages
beyond saving - the last of these should be merged into
[[Hypercomputation]], against all his protests. His other stuff could be
sorted out, absent his hostility.
I think dealing with this kind of elusive pretentitiousness is something
that ought to fall within the remit of WP recognised procedures. I realise
that this is all on my say-so. I'd be grateful if others would comment on a
way ahead. This sort of contribution saps the authoritative standing of WP.
Charles
http://www.speakingasaparent.com/
Delirium wrote:
>...
>Perhaps it's a personal opinion, but I think we
>ought to strive to be as open and accomodating
>as possible, and avoid banning as much as
>possible, since that's basically a "we give up,
>this person cannot work within Wikipedia" decision.
>...
I hope this will become the general ethos of the dispute resolution process.
If not, then, IMO, we would have failed. However, arbitration is on the tail
end of that process so I imagine that a fair number of arbitration cases will
result in some type of editing sanction period (such as slowdowns, not able
to edit certain articles or kinds of articles, not able to edit in a certain
namespace(s), not being able to edit at all for a short term, and not being
able to edit at all for a long term).
-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)
Sascha Noyes wrote:
>I advocate the enforcement of the agreed-upon rules that are
>specified in [[Wikipedia:Policy]], which happens to include
>[[Wikipedia:No personal attacks]]. Your characterisation of the
>desire of wikipedians that personal attacks should halt as 'Mommy,
>he called me xxx" and "whinging" is both condescending and
>illogical, given that "no personal attacks" happens to be a wikipedia
>policy. I have quoted it before, and I shall quote it again (from
>[[Wikipedia:No personal attacks]]):
I'm in 100% agreement with this. The reason why we have policies like 'no
personal attacks' is because allowing personal attacks drives away good
contributors and creates a hostile working environment where reason is
sacrificed in favor of bullying (thus the most persistant troll wins in
article content disputes). This goes directly against our goal of creating
NPOV and accurate content.
-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)