This is a sensitive human relations issue. It's difficult for
many people to restrain their hostility towards others who have
different moral or political values. We here, however, have made
a working agreement that we will not make personal remarks.
I openly declared myself a member of the Unification Church, a
group which is highly offensive to many people. But I've made it
known that I don't like being called a "Moonie" or a "cult
member", and with few exceptions other contributors have
respected my request.
We /must/ follow the guideline of avoiding personal remarks, or
the process which has brought us so much success will break
down. The place to describe points of view about moral or
political topics is in the articles, and the /way/ to describe
these POVs is Jimbo and Larry's "neutrality doctrine" (see
[[Wikipedia:NPOV]]).
I will talk to user:Annek.
Ed Poor, aka Uncle Ed
All,
I am not traditionally one who posts to this list. I usually watch, read, and watch some more. I do not, typically, edit either, though I will contribute to Talk pages; I simply do not feel my writing skills are up to the task.
However, I am forced to take a stand on this issue, and speak up.
1. I generally am somewhat laid-back when it comes to Wikipedia; I could normally care less. However, as I believe has been recognized, consciously or unconsciously, by the combatants (all of them) in the Middle East articles, WP is becoming, online, a significant source of information.
It is no longer just our plaything, our project. It is a potential part of the information battlespace. The same as TV, as radio, as the newspaper, as paper encyclopedias (which DO have political slants). The same as academic syllabi. The same as any means of disseminating information or opinions. It is no longer just the contributors'...It's a battleground, and will be (heck, probably is already (in far less obvious guises than you may expect)) used as such by communications elements on both sides.
This will not change, and will likely become an issue for other controversial topics as well.
2. That being the case, I've come to the sad conclusion that maybe Wiki should just officially avoid the topic. Stay silent. It'd be sad, but perhaps necessary.
3. On the Jimbo-RK-Danny triangular dispute (including all of the others on all sides)... Cease fire? Agree to disagree. The next time this happens, make it really simple.
Ban both sides. One warning, then down comes Mr. Boot.
4. In terms of audiences: I have to agree with mav here. Wiki-En's primary audience is and must be native English-speakers. That doesn't mean American, European, Indian, Filipino, Martian, Plutonian, or Vulcan. It means people who speak English as their native (and primary) language. Who may well not speak any other language. (In fact, who probably do not. I've found that knowledge of two or more langauges is primarily an attribute only of the intellectual; The average "man-on-the-street" is generally unlikely, anywhere, to speak or understand more than one language. Probably no more than 1 dialect of that 1 language, too.)
Respectfully,
John Penta
I'll make some brief remarks on the responses
to my proposal.
1. Viajero suggested that it needed software changes.
While some software assistance would be nice,
it can all be done with the present software.
The official page would be, say, [[Arafat is fat]],
and the draft page would be [[Arafat is fat
(draft)]]
or maybe [[Arafat is fat/Draft]].
2. Nikola mentioned the partiality of the committee
as an issue. There need not be a committee,
that is just one possible implementation.
Another is that the protagonists agree amongst
themselves when some draft is better than the
official page and ask a sysop to do the copy.
In any case, the current system is that the page
contents are decided by the most persistent fanatic,
and anything has to be better than that.
3. John suggested that Wikipedia should in fact
drop some issues altogether. This is actually
close to the way I really feel about it. My
suggestion for a process change is merely my
best idea on how to avert this step. Whatever
path is taken, the present system is the worst
option.
Zero.
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Anthere wrote:
>Yes, on an article about human, it is perfectly logical to see a human
>in its natural state : nude.
Yes - there should be a photo with a naked man and naked women just standing
side by side. I think Erik mentioned he knew of a public domain photo like
that that was on a one of the gold plates on either a Pioneer or Voyager
mission....
>See http://en2.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human
Yes - some photo is needed. I would suggest a photo of an African tribesman
and a female companion in their traditional clothes since humans looked
pretty much like that for most of our history. That would negate the need for
completely naked photos too.
>In this case, the topic of the article is the *penis*
And as already has been stated, a large number of penises are circumcised -
especially in the United States.
-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)
I want to make a serious proposal about the handling
of problem pages.
As we all know, there are some pages which appear to
be destined to
be battlegrounds forever. Many of the Middle-Eastern
pages are in this
category. Contrary to what we would like, such pages
do NOT eventually
settle into an acceptable state. What actually
happens is that the
current set of contestants get tired then the article
remains dormant
(often in a fairly appalling state) for a while until
a new set of
contestants come along and start the war up again. In
this process,
excellent portions of the article inevitably become
lost or distorted and
there is nearly always some arrant nonsense present.
The article does
NOT steadily get better over time but just oscillates
between several
degrees of poverty.
What I'm saying is that our current model DOES NOT
WORK AND WILL NEVER
WORK for some types of pages. Therefore, we have to
change the model.
I propose that for particularly problematic topics
there are two versions.
One is the "official version" which is
write-protected. The official
version is what readers get when they click on links.
The other is the
"draft version", which can be editted. Then there is
some standard
procedure (a committee?) by which the draft version
can be copied to
the official version.
This is better than the present system of page
protection because it
does not freeze page development. It allows additions
and variations
to be tried out and fought over off-line, then draft
editions achieving
some amount of consensus can be made official. The
average quality
of the article as seen by outsiders would be greatly
improved.
Anyway, please consider it or improve on it.
Zero.
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----- Original Message -----
From: Gareth Owen <wiki(a)gwowen.freeserve.co.uk>
Date: Monday, January 12, 2004 4:31 am
Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Please stop Martin (MyRedDice)'s harassment
> Australian wikipedians no doubt believe that it is a term of
> endearment.
Well, yeah, but they also paint their sheep with lipstick.;-)
<ducks, runs for cover>
John
will probably get hurt by an Australian soon...:-)
>-----Original Message-----
>From: wikien-l-bounces(a)Wikipedia.org
[mailto:wikien-l-bounces@Wikipedia.org] On Behalf Of Jimmy Wales
>Sent: 12 January 2004 20:27
>To: wikien-l(a)wikipedia.org
>Subject: [WikiEN-l] My view on deletions
>
>
>At least one person has privately expressed to me the opinion that my
position on deletions is that nothing should be deleted. That's
absolutely not
>true, and I thought that this misunderstanding might be widely enough
shared that I should speak to it for a moment.
>
>I think that the vast majority of deletions are perfectly fine.
Deletions for vandalism seem to be pretty well not abused. Borderline
cases, with a
>fairly open policy, are sent to VfD now, and that almost always works
out just fine.
>
>But I'm unhappy with some deletions (and redirections) that happen on
VfD. I call the process broken by analogy with hypothetical (and
virtually all
> real!) criminal justice systems that get the right answer most of the
time, but for various procedural reasons sometimes do exactly the wrong
thing.
>
>But in no way am I saying anything even remotely supportive of the idea
that vandals should be given free hand, nor that deletion or redirection
should
>always be avoided at all costs. They are important tools, but we need
to improve how we use them.
In my experience mistakes occur much more frequently over "instant
deletion" pages rather than the VfD page. It's not a coincidence that
VfD decisions are made collectively and instant delete are made
individually. VfD mistakes are so few and far between (I think only the
Palestinian views... article has been cited in this discussion as a VfD
mistake and that is only debatably a mistake - given all our policies on
page-naming) that it is probably not worth your worrying about too much.
Instant deletion mistakes (in the sense that the page should've gone to
VfD or even cleanup rather than instantly deleted) are made on a (I
estimate) daily basis. A timely reminder to work the VfD process rather
than bypassing it by insta-deleting may be in order.
Pete/Pcb21
Since some people will undoubtedly not have read what I said in my posts
previous to the last one, let me clarify:
Different languages often have different traditions on how to best organize
information. This means that what passes for a great article in one language
will not necessarily translate very well into another language (meaning, it
would probably not be viewed as being great and may in fact be viewed as
being poor - even when it is translated well).
Things like dictionaries, encyclopedia, newspapers and other media are not
really the same things across different languages and thus something that
would be good in one language may not be seen as good if translated as-is
into another. For example, what constitutes a textbook - the type of thing
that it *is* - has a different tradition in different languages. Sometimes
that tradition is fairly uniform between two languages, sometimes it is very
different.
This is why having editorially independent Wikipedia versions in many
different languages is a such a great thing. A mere translation of the
English Wikipedia, for example, would not meet the expectations of what an
encyclopedia *is* (the way it should cover topics) by many non-English
speaking people. An *encyclopedia* is really a different thing in different
language traditions.
*That* is what I am talking about when I say that we have primary audiences
(those whose native language is one we are writing in) and secondary
audiences (those whose native language is something other than the language
we are writing in but who still speak in the language we are writing in). It
would be internal balkanization to allow the traditions of one language to be
used in an encyclopedia in another language.
-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)