WikiEN-l July 2004

wikien-l@lists.wikimedia.org

102 participants
187 discussions

Peaceful resolution of religious edit wars (was: Somebody will write a critical article about Wikipedia)
by Poor, Edmund W 26 Jul '04

26 Jul '04

Andries wrote passionately and eloquently about the difficulties of writing a Wikipedia article about a controversial New Religious Movement (or "NRM", as sociologists like to say). The chief problem he mentions is "satisfying the ex-followers" who regard the group founder as a charlatan. I have also tried several times to intervene or mediate between pro-Rawat and anti-Rawat contributors, but I guess the article keeps getting locked due to edit wars. I can only suggest that we continue to try coaching the contributors in the skill of "writing for the enemy". That is, ensuring that the article as a whole, as well as each paragraph and sentence, is organized and worded so that ANYONE, no matter how sharply polarized their opinion, will agree that the article is accurate. I wish the [[Sun Myung Moon]] and [[Unification Church]] articles could be models for this. I have worked hard over the past 2 or 3 years to ensure that they always kept a balance between "raving loony support" and "rabidly adamant denunciation". The mainstay of my strategy has been to EDIT SLOWLY. When someone trashes the article (as I conceive it), I avoid wholesale reversion -- because I am an interested party. Instead, I discuss (most) changes on the talk page and (usually) make one small change at a time. I avoid buzz-words in edit summaries like 'NPOVing the text' in favor of specifics, like "attributing claim of divinity to his right-hand man Bo Hi Pak" or "attributing claim of corruption to Congressman Donald Fraser". Sometimes it can help to mention the controversy in the introduction to the article. Like: * Prem Rawat was called "the perfect spiritual master" by his followers in the 1970s, who gave him the title Guru Maharaj Ji (or Maharaji). Ex-followers criticize him vehemently as a charlatan who has misled thousands of people with [[cult]] propaganda and complain bitterly that many people, deluded by his claims about saving mankind, wasted many years of their lives." Please don't give up! I know it's hard and frustrating, but it really is possible to bring peace to a war-torn article. A prime example is the [[Chilean coup of 1970]]. No action by the Arbitration Committee was needed to settle that, and it's been stable for the last 2 months! Let's keep at it, buddy!! Ed Poor

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IP blocks
by Keith Maxwell 26 Jul '04

26 Jul '04

Folks, I have an IP address 203.166.96.239 with an IP address that has been recently and consistently used for vandalism and has been banned for successive 24 hours by first Dysprosia and then Davidcannon. I am sure that these decisions were fair and reasonable: however I would like some information on the track record of the vandalism and the addresses so I can take it up with my ISP. Alternatively, would the problem end if I changed my ISP. Thanks for any help you can give me. Regards Keith --------------------------------- Find local movie times and trailers on Yahoo! Movies.

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Re: WikiEN-l Digest, Vol 12, Issue 47
by Frank Pinter 26 Jul '04

26 Jul '04

On Fri, 23 Jul 2004 17:12:07 +0000 (UTC), wikien-l-request(a)wikipedia.org <wikien-l-request(a)wikipedia.org> wrote: > Message: 6 > Date: Wed, 21 Jul 2004 17:43:49 +0100 > From: sean.clarke(a)guardian.co.uk > Subject: [WikiEN-l] a proposal: wikigenealogy > To: wikien-l(a)wikipedia.org > Message-ID: <OF0F941193.3D44E948-ON80256ED8.005B988E(a)int.gnl> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii > > hello > > I've long wished there were a genealogical database of European monarchs > etc, where for instance Charlemagne exists as an entry with his wives > listed in one column, his sons in another, his daughters in another, his > known mistresses in another and his mother and father in two more. > > as it grew (wikistyle) you could then see things like: all male descendants > of Charlemagne (or whoever) or choose to display the information in all > sorts of ways. > > but I don't know a) how to do it or b) if wikipedia is the right place for > it > > any thoughts? > > sc Yes, that is a good idea. However, it should not be on Wikipedia, according to [[Wikipedia:What_Wikipedia_is_not]]. Maybe if some big Wikimedia person (like Jimbo, maybe) sees this a consideration for a project may be started. -- [[User:Wikiacc]] ============================================ Encoded with Double ROT13 - circumvention will be prosecuted!

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Researching a new Wikien-l mailing list admin.
by Ronny Raschkowan 26 Jul '04

26 Jul '04

Hello! As far as Jeronim is no longer admin of the list, i would like to know if there is another person who would like to keep up the list and administrate it. I would of course explain the things what a list administrator should do to the user(s?) interested in it. The main - activity is spam-deletion though.. Volunteers? :) Sincerly yours, Fire

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Somebody with a good reputation will write a critical article about Wikipedia and esp. the article [[Prem Rawat]] that is locked now
by Andries Krugers Dagneaux 25 Jul '04

25 Jul '04

I receive an email from somebody who expressed his disappointment with Wikipedia, especially with regards to the article on the controversial inspirational speaker and former guru Prem Rawat http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prem_rawat. The person who intends to write a critical article about Wikipedia is an ex-follower and has a good reputation. I do not like Wikipedia's reputation to get hurt because of his article on his website but I cannot do anything for three reasons. First, the article is locked. Secondly, I will be away from the internet for some time. Thirdly, the situation is still highly polarized as can be read on the talk page. I have to admit that some ex-followers of Prem Rawat will only be satisfied if you start the article with something like "Prem Rawat is a charlatan cult leader who has misled thousands of people with his propaganda and who claimed to God almighty to save mankind. Due to this many people wasted many years of their lives." Though I feel strongly that the ex-followers are partially right due to my own experience with a charlatan guru aka cult leader, I understand that this can never be written down following NPOV guidelines. There is also a recurring, general problem with writing about new religious movements (NRMs) and that is to what extent criticism of the critics of NRMs should be allowed in the articles. I am hoping for general guidelines. Here is what I wrote on the talk page, "I only said that a person who chooses to pose as a guru and teach meditation techniques is open and should be open for public scrutiny. The people who believe and have followed this person and found him wanting and then openly criticize him are open to scrutiny, in so far, their involvement with this guru was serious, genuine and sincere. Their criticism of the guru is, of course, open to scrutiny too. Apart from the authenticity of their involvement with the guru, one could ask whether some of them have an ax to grind but this should not be based on mere speculation or conspiracy theories. There should be some strong documented indication that they had an ax to grind otherwise no suspicions should be mentioned. With regards to the same thing with my former guru, this was a comparison that may give others more insight into my point of view and into the fact that this unfair, insulting character assassination of critics is very common by supporters of controversial new religious movements. The defenders have to resort to ad hominem attacks on the critics because they ran out of reasonable or logical ways to defend their guru. Andries 07:44, 24 Jul 2004 (UTC)" I also wrote a satirical article about Wikipedia being a cult http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Andries/Wikipedia%3Acontroversy See you later. Bye. Andries K.D

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I blocked User:JBOC
by daniwo59＠aol.com 25 Jul '04

25 Jul '04

I have blocked User:JBOC for one year. His harrassment of User:Roozbeh is utterly unwarranted, and should be a warning sign for us. I do not want to discuss this on the mailing list any further. If anyone has a problem with it, i invite you to take it up with me in a personal email. Danny

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Re: [WikiEN-l] The proliferation of article series boxes
by Delirium 25 Jul '04

25 Jul '04

I've been pondering this issue a bit, and briefly looking through articles on Wikipedia, and I agree series boxes are overused, but think they are valuable in some places. The basic crux of the matter seems to be that they are useful when the article is integrally part of a series, but are often used to essentially construct series where no actual series exists, and where things would be better served by a "see also" box. This has some point-of-view implicates as well as simply being irritating, because "claiming" things as part of a particular field or line of work is often not uncontroversial. It's also nearly impossible to do in a clean and universally-agreed-upon way (are articles about the human mind part of a psychology series or a cognitive science series?) and clutters up the articles, so is best not done, I think. Examples where I think a series box is a good idea are the country history articles, which are broken down into periods. These are clearly part of a series, as there is basically one very long article on the history of the country that is broken down largely for convenience. [[History of the United States (1789-1861)]], [[History of Poland (1939-1945)]], and so on. Here are some where I think it is bad: * [[National Rifle Association]] -- This should be a stand-alone article. If you want to link to other pro- or anti-gun groups, that should be at the end, in a "see also" section. * [[Electronic music]] -- Again, this is properly a "see also" matter, as classification of music genera is hardly as straightforward as the box implies. * [[Cultural studies]] -- Arguably large parts of cultural studies aren't even part of [[critical theory]]; at the very least, it's not a clear hierarchical relationship. In short, I think we ought not to use series boxes except in very isolated cases where there is very clearly an unambiguously actually a series of articles. In other cases, the old standby of "see also" links is much better and makes fewer controversial claims of subject hierarchy. -Mark

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Re: [Wikipedia-l] Paper Wikipedia 1.0: a modest rant^W proposal
by David Gerard 25 Jul '04

25 Jul '04

On 07/23/04 16:41, David Gerard wrote: > I've been thinking about it and reading and researching about it and > talking incessantly on IRC about it and writing on the lists about it. > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:David_Gerard/1.0 > This sets out a concise action plan for a paper Wikipedia 1.0, letting > the wiki do the work. It sets out milestones and what is needed for > them. Mark Ryan said on IRC, 'huh, I didn't see the page. I thought the email was a bit short for an action plan ...' So I'm sending it to the list too! - d. User:David Gerard/1.0 From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. We've wibbled on the mailing lists and various wiki pages about Wikipedia 1.0 for over a year now. We now have an actual publisher asking us for a paper version. We need an action plan. The key to success will be to harness dilettantism and let the wiki do the work. That's what got us this far. The plan below includes milestone versions 0.7, 0.8, 0.9 and 1.0. Please think of earlier milestones. To get milestone 0.7, we need a distributed rating system. "We learned from Nupedia that excessive a priori formalization is a killer. Better to start from a very open point of view, and then upon review, if our end product is starting to be bad in some way, make adjustments based on what we've learned." [1] (http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2003-August/005986.html) Note that this plan is concerned with the single-volume paper Wikipedia 1.0, not the possible CD-ROM plan. (The main difference is we don't need to cut subject areas for the CD-ROM — we have a lot more space.) (Feel free to edit this. Discussion to the talk page.) Table of contents 1 Action plan outline 2 Paper Wikipedia will not be a fork 3 Rating systems 4 Selection is the hard part 4.1 Letting the wiki give us milestone 0.7 5 Stand-alone lead sections 6 Non-free images 7 Publisher 8 A paper Wikipedia in every classroom in Africa 9 Links 9.1 1.0-specific (Jimbo) 9.2 Selection process 9.3 Rating mechanisms 9.4 Bringing areas up to scratch 1. Action plan outline * Jimbo has stated that he doesn't want a fork from the current content, except at the last moment before preparing for print. * We have various plans for rating articles or versions of articles, which we can use to see what's up to scratch. * We have various lists of what should be in a single-volume encyclopedia. Completing these lists would be a fine program for volunteer recruitment, by the way. * In a lot of cases, the [[Wikipedia:lead section]] is going to become the print article. We need stand-alone leads. * We have too many articles with images that are fair-use, permission-granted, non-profit or of other non-free status. * We have an interested publisher, one who actually gets it, waiting in the wings. * We want a paper Wikipedia in every classroom in Africa. +------------------------------------------------------------------------+ |Milestone| Result | Work to get | Prerequisites | | | | there | before starting | |---------+----------------------------+---------------+-----------------| | | |Just set a | | | |A book's worth of |minimum rating |A rating system | |0.7 |sufficiently highly-rated |and then pull |running for a | | |articles. |from the |month or two. | | | |database. | | |---------+----------------------------+---------------+-----------------| | | |Writing | | | | |articles of |A plan of space | |0.8 |A more balanced selection of|sufficient |per topic, so we | | |coverage. |quality to fill|know where the | | | |gaps - heavy |gaps are. | | | |lifting. | | |---------+----------------------------+---------------+-----------------| | | |More heavy |Enthusiastic | | |Coverage-complete, with the |lifting. More |determination. | |0.9 |right selection of |polishing than |Grim | | |tolerable-to-good articles. |writing. Fact |determination. | | | |checking. | | |---------+----------------------------+---------------+-----------------| | | |Improve |Good writing. | |1.0 |Polished 0.9. |tolerable |Proofreading. | | | |articles to |Editing. Patching| | | |good. |remaining holes. | |---------+----------------------------+---------------+-----------------| |Paper | | |Precise | |Wikipedia|1.0 prepared for print. |Prepress work. |requirements from| |1.0 | | |the publisher. | +------------------------------------------------------------------------+ 2. Paper Wikipedia will not be a fork Jimbo has decreed that we are to fork for print at the last second, rather than fork now and polish. I suggest we trust his vision. However, consensus approaches the idea of rating particularly good versions of specific articles. 3. Rating systems Various of these are being floated. Current consensus is approaching rating specific versions on four or five criteria; either yes/no, 0-4 points or 0-10 points. This is good because it will be easy and people will do it casually. Harnessing dilettantism, that's the wiki way. (For edit war hot spots, expect vote spamming.) 4. Selection is the hard part [[Wikipedia:List of encyclopedia topics]] gives us some idea of what should go into a single-volume reference. We also need to work out roughly how the Columbia or Concise Britannica break down into space per topic area. (Do we have any work in this area already?) I predict the all-in shitfight will be in turf wars. Selection, as every partisan editorial group tries to get its articles into the final cut. Not at the level of editing the articles themselves — an approval mechanism will handle that — I'm talking about telling people that their area won't get all the articles it might want in. If *any*. The worst thing is that we'll have to cut back the areas we're actually really strong in. 4.1. Letting the wiki give us milestone 0.7 The peer-rating system for article versions (as is mooted on the mailing list) which looks likely to happen anyway, will help 1.0 a lot. Rather than set some poor bastard to rating thousands of articles, we let the wiki do the work for us. 1. Wait till a lot of articles (or a fair few) have been rated. 2. Set a cutoff level that gives you a book's worth of articles. 3. Examine just how imbalanced we are. This will give us Wikipedia 0.7, let's say. 0.8 can be better, 0.9 can be area-selection-complete, 1.0 can be a polished 0.9. What we need is a way to let the wiki do the work for step 3 above. Is there a way to harness dilettantism to achieve consensus on what to cut and what to boost? Bringing areas up to scratch will still be real heavy lifting. How much real work, we can't know until we get 0.7. 5. Stand-alone lead sections These are currently optional (according to the MoS), but will become very important because for long articles, we may just pull the lead section as the print article. [[News style]] and [[Wikipedia:summary style]] are your friends. 6. Non-free images These should be cleared and replaced where at all feasible. Note, by the way, that the publisher would probably have a much easier time getting copyright clearances for a fixed paper volume than we do for a changeable open-content encyclopedia (e.g. [[Tube map]], where not having the map would be ridiculous) — though I don't expect anyone to agree this is a good idea. 7. Publisher We need to know precisely what they require from us, so we know what to aim for. * Size in pages, translate to bytes * How much space for images * Format for publishing A lot of the prepress gruntwork can likely be done by Wikipedia volunteers for free. Also, we should be able to test automated systems on 0.7 onwards. 8. A paper Wikipedia in every classroom in Africa How do we get a list of schools? How many copies is that? How cheaply can we print a usably good book? We can almost certainly hitch a ride with other charities for the distribution. 9. Links (external and internal): 9.1. 1.0-specific (Jimbo) * [[m:Wikimedia#Wikipedia_1.0]] - Jimbo's dream of a copy in every school in Africa * [[User:Jimbo Wales/Pushing To 1.0]] - Jimbo's official page, lots of rambling discussion * [Wikipedia-l (http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2003-August/011384.html) Wikipedia v. Britannica] - ideas about 1.0 * [WikiEN-l (http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2004-February/011045.html) Print edition] (Jimbo, 26 Feb 2004) - first bite from this publisher 9.2. Selection process * [[Wikipedia:List of encyclopedia topics]] — this list is key to giving us balance. Need someone to abstract it. * [[Wikipedia:Topics where Wikipedia is weak]] * [Wikipedia-l (http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2003-August/011402.html) Wikipedia v. Britannica] (Tarquin, 18 Aug 2003) - editors as selectors rather than text editors 9.3. Rating mechanisms * [[m:Article validation]] (current discussion) * [[Wikipedia:Approval mechanism]] - proposed ideas for a review method * [[User:Andrewa/Wikipedia approval mechanism]] - long rambling on approval mechanisms * [[m:Referees]] and [[m:Referees/1]] 9.4. Bringing areas up to scratch * [[Wikipedia:WikiProject Aircraft/Strategy]] * [[Wikipedia:Math 1.0]] * [[Wikipedia:Topics where Wikipedia is weak]]

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Re: issues
by Michael Snow 25 Jul '04

25 Jul '04

Anthony DiPierro wrote: >As for Jimbo's comment (he apparently doesn't know the full story) that I >should have used the mailing list, I have had nothing but trouble with the >mailing list. I'm not even sure if this will go through. The mailing list >is a terrible place to run a wiki. The wiki should be run on the wiki >itself. > >Instead of inserting a conclusion here, I'm going to take another day or >more to think about things first. I'm seriously disturbed by the hypocrisy >of this organisation right now. > Jimbo can't always be expected to investigate every dispute, and there's nothing wrong with his suggestion that people try the mailing list in this kind of situation. It's not the only option, but plenty of options are better than provoking an edit war to make a point. The thing is, trying these options takes time, and apparently some people lack the patience and self-discipline to wait more than a few minutes to accomplish what they want. Part of the problem is that quite a few people (Anthony is certainly not the only one - others have been debated here on the list as well) seem to feel perfectly justified in violating the 3-revert guideline. Not only do they blatantly exceed the limit, but in most of these cases they don't even pause before crossing the line. They make no attempt to get more of the community involved, which is the only way consensus can develop when issues are contested. Instead, they should be trying a number of other options, of which posting to the mailing list is merely one. There is also IRC, contacting other users who are on the wiki at the time (especially those who have edited the article before), mediation, [[Wikipedia:Requests for comment]], etc. I might entertain an argument that more than 3 reverts can be justified, but _never_ if you haven't tried other means of dealing with the situation first. What's really appalling is that in many instances, not even the talk page of the disputed article is being used. The only communication going on is through edit summaries, and since those typically consist of "rv", accusations of vandalism, snide remarks, or the pre-filled edit summary from an admin using the rollback button, it's worse than useless. --Michael Snow

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Russian constitutional crisis of 1993 (some responses)
by Abe Sokolov 25 Jul '04

25 Jul '04

shebs at apple.com wrote: I have indeed compared your wording with the purported sources (not on this article, but on others that we have discussed previously), and there are significant differences. Stan Shebs claims that there is a discrepancy between my work on Wikipedia and my sources, yet he insults the intelligence of mailing list readers by only offering this as evidence, "For instance, there was the episode where Somoza was a dictator but Stalin was not, and then where the Berlin Airlift was mainly a publicity stunt." [I've made over 10,000 edits to Wikipedia, so it's easy for someone with an ax to grind to cherry-pick examples and then throw in gratuitous accusations] (1) Stan Sheb's disingenuous claims of bias on the Berlin blockade and airlift are emphatically refuted by Wikipedia's article on the Berlin blockade (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berlin_Blockade), which I wrote. (2) I shy away from the term "dictator" altogether on Wikipedia (see, e.g., http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Fidel_Castro&diff=4721758&oldid=…) I also changed the reference to Pinochet as a "dictator" to "military ruler" on the in the news box on the main page several days ago. Yet, this matter is more complicated than Stan Shebs is making it out to be (as usual). Notice the following conversation taken from Talk:Fidel Castro: ::Not exactly. Dictator is not a matter of opinion, it's a matter of fact, so it's not POV (though some try to twist the facts). While Batista is called a dictator in Britannica, BSE and probably other encyclopedias, Fidel is not. Fidel is not a dictator, because no matter how popular he is, he doesn't rule Cuba, the party does (and people too). Batista, on the other hand, was clearly a dictator (the second time he was in power) because of the way he ruled. So I think we should call Batista a dictator, but not do the same for Fidel. [[User:Paranoid|Paranoid]] 06:56, 23 Jul 2004 (UTC) :::Good point, Paranoid. Cuba is a single party state, not a personalistic regime. (Not to say that this is mutually exclusive. Ceausescu's Romania and North Korea, where the power of the party was strongly subverted by the leader, are considered "sultanistic" and "personalistic" regimes by a number of prominent comparativists, e.g., Linz and Stepan, who have drawn from Max Weber's concept of personalized power in a "sultanism.") However, many Wikipedians aren't going to grasp these nuances, and will be suspicious that the term is being applied arbitrarily. So, it's best to just shy away from the term altogether, even in obvious cases, like the Somozas, Idi Amin, Papa Doc and Baby Doc, Bokassa, Saddam Hussein, Mobutu, etc. [[User:172|172]] 07:38, 23 Jul 2004 (UTC) Perhaps I might have slipped up a few times and referred to the "obvious cases" (personalistic leaders) as dictators over the past year and a half that I've been working on Wikipedia. Fair-minded users will put this in context, tough, and note my substantial contributions to this site; note that my articles tend to make the best use of references on Wikipedia (e.g., history of post-Soviet Russia has over 30); and note that I have garnered praise even from fair-minded, conservative U.S. users for being able to write neutrally on difficult, controversial topics (e.g., Franco-U.S. relations). In close, Stan is only bringing up these red herrings to distract everyone from the real issue. He launched into a personal attack against me over my work on Russian constitutional crisis of 1993 on the mailing list with no evidence, no command of the facts, and no inclination to do any reading or check the list of sources I added to the article. Once again, his unwarranted defamation is a dishonor only to him, not to me. -172 _________________________________________________________________ Dont just search. Find. Check out the new MSN Search! http://search.msn.click-url.com/go/onm00200636ave/direct/01/

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WikiEN-l July 2004