Fred Bauder wrote:
>As disputes arise, and are decided, we, as participants, can learn the
>consequences. Likewise we can observe the consequences of Jimbo's decisons
>as well as what happens when various actions are taken by the community at
>large. We can consider those consequences and refine our response and make
>an appropriate response to the situation before us. It is not like a court
>making decisions which affect property rights or business investments where
>citizens need to have a reliable guide to action.
Perhaps it would be a good idea to try setting up a separate wiki
specifically for the purpose of discussing and recording policy
decisions, actions and precedents. We could call it a "Wikislature."
--Sheldon Rampton
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Anthere [mailto:anthere8@yahoo.com]
> Sent: 29 January 2004 13:02
> To: wikien-l(a)Wikipedia.org
>
> Seriously, during my 2 weeks taking care of the english list, member
> restricted, I had up to 30 mails per day to check.
> with several ones per days infested by virus or worms.
> We just can't have an open list any more, if a solution to found for
> 1) limit spam
> 2) improve security for the recipiendaries
>
Why not a [[Wikipedia: Ask Wikipedia]] page linked form the Main Page?
Currently a lot of stuff ends up on Village Pump that would naturally go to
an Ask page if it existed. Of course, others may well have already suggested
this.
Billy Mills
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As the Guilty party who answered the question. I have to say that I checked out the wikipedia article on the Gulf stream and found it to be rather lacking. There were no details such as flow rate, average temp, etc. No false colour maps. No history of who discovered it etc.
As a result of answering the child's HW question I've added gulf stream and all the other ocean currents to my to do list and will be improving them shortly. The thing is, has the question not been asked I probably would never have looked at the page. SO although I agree that there is a danger of setting a precedent and I do see your point I have to disagree that allowing HW questions on this list is necessarily a bad thing.
Theresa
-----Original Message-----
From: Robert [mailto:rkscience100@yahoo.com]
Sent: 28 January 2004 21:41
To: wikien-l(a)Wikipedia.org
Subject: [WikiEN-l] A danger of massive homework and research requests
>But there is a great danger
to directly answering questions like these: In a short
amount of time Wikipedia might become known as a place
where people can mail in requests for info, and then we
will be flooded with thousands of requests each month for
help on homework and research. We'd get questions from
people in junior high, high school, and college.
From: <omitted to respect privacy>
Date: Mon, 26 Jan 2004 18:56:22 -0800
To: <jwales(a)bomis.com>
Subject: website error
>From this page:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._presidential_election,_1876
I clicked on the link for David Davis.
I was sent to this page:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Davis
and it says that Davis was born in 1948. This is not the same David Davis who was involved with the 1876 Presidential election.
Thank you,
xxxx xxxxxxxxxx
Let's give it another try
The mediation committee has decided to have a chair.
(The proper terminology should be a chairperson, not a chairman please :-)).
here is the outcome of our considerations :
Mediators are independant in their choice of which case to mediate, and
how to mediate. We want to keep among ourselves, a collegial type
atmosphere, not a hierarchical group with a leader who has veto power.
As a consequence, the role of the chair will be one of coordination and
facilitation, not of supervision. There shall be no hierarchy or
specific superauthority in the group.
We wish that all mediators participate to the best of their ability and
desire, to any task necessary within the committee. <br>
However, we also consider the commitee might benefit both of an
organiser and of a minimum of formality, in particular as regards
decisions or recommendations given by the committee itself. For example :
* The chair should help to make sure that the mediators are trained and
standards upheld
* The chair could help to check each request for mediation is being answered
* The chair should help to check everyone has been consulted for a
decision within the community
* The chair could report for the group, when the group wants to speak
with one voice, for official announcements (for example, to announce the
failure of a major mediation and the transfer of the case to arbitration)
Jimbo' s opinion of a chair role
My thinking is that 'hierarchy' isn't what's important, but rather a
sufficient degree of formality so that we have a way of saying "Here's
the outcome of the mediation" or "Here's where we officially say that
mediation hasn't worked, and that the arbitration committee should
look at it now."
The process needs to be knowable and comprehensible to everyone, so
that it's transparent and positive.
--Jimbo
Any of the mediation member may ask to be the chair, and will have to be
approved by the other members. Appointement to the chair position will
be rotating every couple of months. The current Chairperson is Tuf Kat.
------
well, at least, I hope that this is a correct perception of our
agreement :-))))
Someone writes:
> hi, i need help on my geography homework, i was
> wondering if you could help?
> ''what is the name of the ocean current in the atlantic
> to the west of the uk? and how does it affect our
climate?
We all want to be nice and helpful when someone asks us a
question; it is only natural. But there is a great danger
to directly answering questions like these: In a short
amount of time Wikipedia might become known as a place
where people can mail in requests for info, and then we
will be flooded with thousands of requests each month for
help on homework and research. We'd get questions from
people in junior high, high school, and college.
I think if we get such requests, we should tell them to
read the relevant articles on Wikipedia (as well as suggest
to them that they need to use multiple sources). The only
times we need to answer such questions is when the
questions reveal a gap in Wikipedia articles. (i.e. if
someone asks a good question that interests us, and
Wikipedia has nothing on that topic, then maybe its a good
idea to begin doing a little work on that topic.)
I don't like saying "No" to specific requests for
information, but if the OED and the Encyclopedia Brittanica
usually answered such requests, then they might never have
completed the first edition of their works.
Your mileage may vary,
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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Sascha brought up the fact that we can't always rely on the
Catholic Encyclopedia as an unbiased, or even semi-biased
source. It has an uncritical view of supernatural beliefs.
Good point. The same, of course, would be true of
information from any religious encyclopedia, whether
Christian, Jewish, Muslim, or whatnot.
Yet Ed Poor cautions us that "Both Catholics and
Unificationists believe in the devil and other evil
spirits as Real Beings...Of course, this is in the context
of a whole bunch of other non-atheistic beliefs; it's not
as nutty as it sounds." This too is a good point.
I think we can use such encyclopedias; they contain large
amounts of objective historical statements. They also
contain religious claims which represent a point of view;
we just need to make sure that we distinguish between
objective and verifiable facts ("Saint Robert was a German
man canonized by the Austrian Church in 2003, under Pope
John Paul Ringo George") and religious claims, which by
their nature are unverifiable ("Saint Robert was known to
have healed several blind men through divine miracles; by
praying to Cthulhu their sight was miraculously restored.
Praise Shub-Niggurath and her thousand dark young.")
We can use both kinds of facts. The first we can simply
state as factual; but the second we have to carefully
preface as a belief. (e.g. "According to Cthuhulian
Catholics, Saint Robert is believed to have healed several
blind men..."). Also, it usually is a good idea to leave
out all honorific phrases (e.g. Praise be unto Muhammed;
Baruch Hashem (Praise God); Praise Shub-Niggurath and her
thousand dark young, etc.)
Some religious encyclopedias are more skeptical and NPOV
than others; the "Jewish Encyclopedia" (1906, public
domain) has some traditionally religious points of view,
yet has some other articles that are skeptical and written
in a style that today weight call NPOV (those articles, of
course, are out of date in regards to modern scholarship.)
The same is true of its successor, the 1970 (and more
recent updates) "Encycloepdia Judaica", which is written by
a number of authors, many of whom do not uncritically
present all traditional beliefs as historical facts. I
imagine that their are similar semi-critical/NPOV or
totally critical NPOV Christian and Muslim religious
encyclopedias out there as well.
(I use the word "critical" in the technical sense; as a
form of analysis, not as a synonym for disagreement.)
Robert (RK)
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Martin Harper (MyRedDice) is again censoring the article,
"Palestinian views of the peace process". Instead of
deleting the entire article, Martin Harper has deleted most
of the (verfied) facts and quotes, leaving a skeleton
article with vietually no content!
This specific problem was already discussed in detail a few
weeks ago. It was decided that when Danny mass deleted this
vast amount of information, it amounted to vandalism, or
censorship. It was decided that when Zero did the same
thing, this too was censorship.
Jimbo, some anonymous folk, and myself made many arguments
on simple points: One may not delete verified historical
facts and quotes simply because it makes them
uncomfortable. You cannot push your political agenda by
deletin facts that are inconvenient.
Please re-read Jimbo's many posts on this issue. We cannot
have any kind of encyclopedia at all if we mass delete huge
amounts of facts and quotes to push political agendas.
Jimbo was very clear that the problem was not one of NPOV,
but one of people trying to avoid discussion of certain
points altogether. Instead of improving an article, people
were trying to make it disappear. That is uncalled for.
I am trying to mitigate the damage caused by Martin, but he
is really making a one person censorship campaign his full
time job. I am requesting mediation. However, we require
mediators who are _not_ avowedly anti-Israel and
pro-Arafat, because that is precisely the problem.
We should be discussing _how_ to present facts, not _if_ we
should present them! For shame.
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]
__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free web site building tool. Try it!
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Carl Witty proposes a feature enhancement:
> On Fri, 2004-01-23 at 15:26, Elly Waterman wrote:
> > Indeed, and in addition, I like to switch off the Minor Changes to
> > watch only for the Bigger Changes, by regular users and ALL CHANGES
by
> > anonymous users, among which unluckily are some vandals. If vandals
> > can in some way click this nonexisting box, they can do their hobby
> > unnoticed, at least by me, and other sysops who work in this way.
>
> If people don't like removing the "minor edit" box for anonymous
users,
> how about this?
>
> 1) Put the "minor edit" box back
> 2) Have 3 states for "Recent Changes": show all edits, hide minor
> changes, hide minor changes from logged-in users
>
> This should satisfy everybody at (I assume) a fairly small cost in
> software effort.
>
> (I actually like not having the "minor edit" box as an anonymous user;
> it helps me remember to log in!)
Let's hear some "me too" and/or "no way" posts on this one!
Ed Poor
Developer
I looked at UB1's user contributions and I couldn't find anything
damaging that that user had done. Except for contributing to an edit
war over whether there should be six stars on hir user page or not and
blanking hir talk page. I don't understand why "UnbannableOne" is an
unaccepted username, it's not like hir called itself "Administrator",
"Root" or "JimmyWales" - any name that would actually make you THINK
the user was unbannable!
I also think the ability to ban logged in users should be removed. It
is way to powerful and all uses of that ability so far, has resulted
in controversies.
BL