>If so many people want them, why not make a new project -- WikiHowto?
Either that, or extend the scope of Wikibooks slightly.
It's within the scope of wikibooks.
Theresa
" in which he claimed that the "super smart kids" in his school are planning to bring down Wikipedia"
He didn't say how did he? Because I can't get wikipedia, wikibooks, or meta . There is a note saying servers will be down at 2 -3 tomorrow morning UTC but that's hours away. Could it be DOS attack or am I being paranoid?
Thresa
In a message dated 5/10/2004 9:24:26 PM Eastern Standard Time,
david(a)nohat.net writes:
In the wake of the recent naming policy poll, which was sparked by the
debate on [[Talk:Kiev]] as well as the poll on the New York City talk
page, it cannot be denied that a firm policy needs to be adopted
regarding the naming of articles about places.
Okay, I have a problem with this. The problem is that this is an old debate
that is being rehashed. A long time ago, before Nohat or RickK were active on
Wikipedia, there was serious discussion and debate about this. I am sure that
Mav, Ed Poor, and a few others remember. I wish I could find the debates, but
right now I can't.
Now, it could be that the wrong choice won the vote (and there was a vote).
On the other hand, we are opening up an old can of worms where consensus had
been reached. This in itself is not a problem, so much as the implications are.
In 2 years from now, when the current users are mostly gone, a new generation
of users might well challenge the new naming convention we decide on now and
come up with a new one--or perhaps the old one. It can happen again and again.
When we decided on the naming convention, there may not have been even 50,000
articles on Wikipedia. It happened before Zoe added capitals for all the
countries, because she had to redo many of them manually to meet the new standards
of the naming convention. Wikipedia is much larger now. Bots aside, we have
many times more articles, and we will continue to grow. Reopening this can of
worms will only impede real progress. We have a system. Let's stick to it, and
we can discuss particular instances of potential exceptions on a case by case
basis.
BTW, another example of a convention that was broken and which has exploded
again is the East Prussia series of articles. We had worked out (twice) a
naming standard (with teh help of JHK), which was ignored by new users who knew
nothing about the bitter debates that led to an acceptable compromise.
Essentially, what I am saying is that what newer users might not realize is
that certain conventions that they take for granted were decided after a long
grueling process. Let's not keep redoing that again and again, any time someone
who is not aware of that history joins Wikipedia.
Danny
Wikipedia Historian
Calm down Danny. You are overreacting.
Firstly you don't need quickpolls, and you don't need to go through speedy deletions.
But you don't need to be so harsh either. This is just some kid mucking about. We deal with this kind of thing all the time. (well I do anyway) I go through a procedure
1) Talk page. You must warn them on their talk page first. It's only polite. Tell him he can't take down wikipedia, so give up. Invite him to contribute properly.
2) Talk page again. Stern warning this time
3) delete nonsense articles and protect real ones as necessary, explain what you are doing
4) Block for 24 hours
5) Block for longer if necessary
I rarely get to stage 5
-----Original Message-----
From: daniwo59(a)aol.com [mailto:daniwo59@aol.com]
Sent: 11 May 2004 12:18
To: wikien-l(a)Wikipedia.org
Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] I just blocked someone for 9999 hours 1 more thing
I also propose doing this without pontificating about it for six months. That is six months of potential damage to Wikipedia.
Danny
Couldn't this whole problem be addressed simply by creating a
separate article, with a title such as [[Abu Ghraib/Photos of
abuse]]? The [[Abu Ghraib]] article itself could include one or two
of the photos, plus a link to the separate article where the other
photos appear. Presumably anyone who visits an article titled [[Abu
Ghraib/Photos of abuse]] would know to expect that they will be
viewing disturbing images.
--Sheldon Rampton
Amid the discouragement, and patchy server timeouts, I'd like to point out
the 100+ edits on current [[string theory]] supplied by [[User:Lumidek]], in
the past 48 hours. I have tentatively identified this as [[Lubos Motl]].
Anyway, this is highly interesting stuff and as far as I can see
authoritative.
Charles
http://www.speakingasaparent.com/
That's a sensible idea IMO.
Theresa
-----Original Message-----
From: Timwi [mailto:timwi@gmx.net]
Sent: 11 May 2004 14:37
To: wikien-l(a)wikipedia.org
Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: I just blocked someone for 9999 hours
daniwo59(a)aol.com wrote:
> I am proposing the following radical solutions:
[...]
Most of what you suggest is to combat trolling or vadalism, but one
thing you mention -- duplication of articles -- almost always happens by
accident rather than malice.
To combat that, I think we really should make more redirects when pages
are created. Just the other day, I was going to start an article on
http://www.memory-alpha.org/ and called it [[MemoryAlpha]] without
realising that there was already [[Memory Alpha]]. There should have
been a redirect!
So, I was wondering if the New Pages Patrol (which I think is a good
idea even though I don't have time to participate in it before my exams)
should include the "duty" of creating redirects from alternative names,
titles, spellings, etc.etc.etc.
Timwi
_______________________________________________
WikiEN-l mailing list
WikiEN-l(a)Wikipedia.org
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
<snip>
> Couldn't this whole problem be addressed simply by creating a
> separate article, with a title such as [[Abu Ghraib/Photos of
> abuse]]? </snip>
I dont quite agree with this. By doing that I feel we will be
over-emphasizing these photos and separate from the main article which
in itself will be a crude digression - like a link to the museum of
the grotesque. The current policy of putting a warning message on top
(whether it be for articles on literature, legal terminology or images
and articles of graphic nature) sounds sufficient to me and seems to
serve its purpose.
Theresa,
Thanks for outlining your "disciplinary process". It's completely in
line with what I have been proposing and/or doing for the two years I
have acted as a steward of Wikipedia.
> But you don't need to be so harsh either. This is just some kid
mucking about.
> We deal with this kind of thing all the time. (well I do anyway) I go
through a procedure
>
> 1) Talk page. You must warn them on their talk page first. It's
only polite.
> Tell him he can't take down wikipedia, so give up. Invite him to
contribute properly.
> 2) Talk page again. Stern warning this time
> 3) delete nonsense articles and protect real ones as necessary,
explain what
> you are doing
> 4) Block for 24 hours
> 5) Block for longer if necessary
>
> I rarely get to stage 5
The idea is to begin by assuming good faith. Explain, request, remind.
If that doesn't work, start turning on the heat. Warn, temp block, ban.
It's amazing how many variations of this principle have appeared over
the nearly 3 years Wikipedia has been in operation.
Ed Poor, aka Uncle ED
> From: Anthere <anthere9(a)yahoo.com>
[snippages]
> We censor pictures of clitoris on the english wikipedia.
> We censor clitoris pictures, while billion of humans on Earth have a
> clitoris, and that is something perfectly normal to have.
>
> We censor clitoris for the motive that people could be shocked.
>
> However, we do not censor pictures of torture and humiliation. Forgive
> me, but I am troubled.So, explain to me why we show shocking images of
> human humiliation,
> while we cant display clitoris, because chaste eyes would be shocked ?
It troubles me, too.
If you want an _explanation..._ as opposed to a justification... I'd
say that many Wikipedians seem to implicitly judge the suitability of
pictures in Wikipedia by applying the standards of major U.S.
newspapers. As of today, I can't imagine the Boston Globe printing a
photograph of a clitoris; I _can_ imagine it printing a carefully
stylized diagram of one, although I'm not sure whether they ever have.
And they _have_ printed some of the abuse pictures, with genitalia
blurred.
The New York Times used to, and I believe still does bear the slogan
"All the news that's fit to print." I suspect many people follow the
judgements of the New York TImes. I don't say this is right, I'm saying
I think it's what many of us do.
I don't mean that newspapers specifically are arbiters; I mean that
there is some weird cultural consensus that can be observed by watching
what newspapers do.
--
Daniel P. B. Smith, dpbsmith(a)verizon.net 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/