Could the whole discussion on Erik issues over Mother
Teresa MOVE to the english list where it is relevant
WHILE
The whole discussion on watch list issues move from
the english list to the general list, where it is
relevant
OR
could we just swap mailing list names since
discussions relevant on english matter are on the
general list, while discussions relevant to the whole
community are on the english list ?
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The problem with articles like "Violence against Israelis" is not so
much that the material they contain is false, but that the topic of
the articles is unfixably POV. People like Lance6Wins and
MathKnight who devote many hours to maintaining these lists
do not do it out of a desire to make Wikipedia a fine encyclopedia.
They are on a political mission, and do not consider that the NPOV
rule is relevant to them.
If these people were well-motivated, they would also be including
violence against Palestinians as well. Try to find the following in
Wikipedia, for example (I went to the web site of the Israeli
human-rights organization B'Tselem and entered a random month):
8 February 2003
Mustafa Ibrahim Abu 'Adwan, age 10, died of wounds inflicted by IDF
gunfire in Khan Younis, in the south of The Gaza Strip, on 7 February,
2003. Did not participate in fighting
11 February 2003
Hassan al-Ghoul, age 8, from Qalqiliya, killed by IDF gunfire shot in
response to stones and molotov cocktails thrown at soldiers, in
Qalqiliya,
The West Bank. Did not participate in fighting
And so on for a total of 11 children killed by Israeli forces in April
2003.
The list of adults killed, including both combatants and
non-combatants,
is much longer. April 2003 was not an unusual month.
The reason these are not listed in Wikipedia is that there is nobody
with
the dedication and time to match the efforts of Lance6Wins and
MathKnight.
(Actually, such a person or persons would need several times as much
dedication because several times as many Palestinians are killed as
Israelis.)
Would we want such a competition between lists anyway? From experience
we know that articles like this cannot be deleted. My preferred
solution
would be to kick out the political fanatics, and good riddance, but it
won't
happen. The problem in fact will not be solved and this open sore will
remain. Sorry to bring bad news.
Zero.
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One of our frequently banned users is making a variety of legal and
financial accusations that I wanted to respond to early and firmly
lest any of these things take root in any way shape or form as
reflective of reality in any way.
1. First, the Wikimedia Foundation is currently in full compliance
and more with all legal requirements for filings, etc. It is my
intention that we remain so, and that indeed, we are proactive about
doing whatever is necessary to go above and beyond what is required of
us in terms of organizational transparency, etc.
I am always eager to hear suggestions for improvement in this regard.
2. Second, there are no plans of any kind to release a 'for-profit'
version of the Wikipedia, for the separate benefit of me or Bomis or
any other company that I own, control, work for, etc. We *will* be
working to release Wikipedia on CD-ROM, in paper format, etc., but
these will be projects *of the foundation*, carried out with perfect
consistency with our nonprofit mission.
Such efforts will necessarily and properly involve the work of
for-profit publishers, but of course any contracts entered into will
be to the benefit of the Wikimedia Foundation.
3. There are no current plans for salaries for anyone. In the
future, I do intend that as we grow, we will become a large
organization patterned after the National Geographic Society, the
International Red Cross, and so on. This will eventually necessitate
employees, etc. But for now, any suggestion that I am personally
trying to get money from Wikipedia is beyond ludicrous.
It is commonly thought that I'm a wealthy person, but I'm not really.
I'm a very committed person who drives a 4 year old Hyundai and lives
in an ordinary middle-class American home in an ordinary neighborhood,
while spending far more in the last 5 years on my dream of a free
encyclopedia than I have on my own salary, none of which, of course,
is derived from Wikipedia in any way.
I do this because it matters to me. There are lots of ways to spend
money in life, some frivolous, some meaningful. To me, doing
something meaningful is the best reward.
4. As of June 1, 2004, I am resigning as CEO of Bomis, and my partner
Tim Shell will take over that role. This is primarily to reflect the
reality of the situation, which is that I spend virtually all my time
on Wikipedia and non-Bomis work. But it is also in part to further
emphasize and underscore the fact that the two are unrelated. Bomis's
ongoing provision of free hosting for the Wikimedia Foundation as a
gesture of appreciation of "giving back" to the free software
community whose software has helped us to do so much is not going to
change. But that ongoing gift is the only relationship between Bomis
and Wikipedia, period.
5. One troll has suggested that the Wikimedia Foundation needs to
disclose something about it's relationship to Bomis. This is a
classic propaganda technique: to demand the disclosure of some shadowy
secrets, with ominous overtones, when there is actually nothing to
disclose. I am happy to answer any questions that anyone has about
it, but there's not much to say.
While I was a futures and options trader, I founded Bomis partly as a
sideline hobby. It was eventually successful enough for me to retire
from trading and do it full time. The company rode through the
dot-com boom with good times and bad, and has always prospered enough
to provide me with a decent living.
I eventually became consumed with the passion to create a free and
freely licensed encyclopedia, and started to spend money on it. In
the early days, I thought of it as a possible business venture like
RedHat. Nupedia was an expensive failure, Wikipedia was a big
success.
But through that process, it became apparent that in order for
Wikipedia to achieve it's full potential it needed to be owned by a
non-profit organization. I promised then to give it all away to the
non-profit organization, and I did. I did so fully and completely and
with no regrets. My reward will be a Nobel Peace Prize, ha ha.
Why has Bomis funded Wikipedia? Because my partners in Bomis shared
my vision and let me do it. Bomis had servers, technical employees,
etc., and was the original owner of Nupedia/Wikipedia. The transition
was natural and spontaneous, and that's where things are today.
6. I have said before that although there are no plans for it at the
current time, and no need for it, it would please me greatly to have
the Wikimedia Foundation grow into a large enough organization that it
would be sensible for me to accept a salary for running it. If and
when that time comes, of course my compensation will be decided
according to the standard practices for charitable organizations, i.e.
through a vote of the other members of the Board of Directors, and in
accordance with the advice of an independent outside compensation
agency.
----
In short, if anyone has *any* questions or concerns about legal or
financial matters, I ask you to please write to me privately and
express those concerns openly and honestly, so that I can resolve
anything of this sort to everyone's satisfaction. If, after you've
talked with me privately, you find that you have any remaining issues
that you don't feel I've addressed, then by all means I encourage you
to go public with your complaints.
That's my biggest problem, really, with what this troll is doing.
He's issuing a lot of lies (anonymously of course) and insinuations,
attempting to make a public stink, rather than honestly and simply
raising the issues with me in an appropriate manner. I don't actually
fear any actual legal action, because in order to file a legal action,
he or she would have to reveal his or her true identity, which would
then enable us to finally take legal action to permanently ban them
from the website, as well as providing an opportunity for me to file a
libel claim against him.
Anyhow, really, I wanted to say all this because I want you you all to
know my keen interest in openness, transparency, fairness, etc. I
want to do whatever I need to do to make sure that the Wikimedia
Foundation is looked to as a shining example of how a nonprofit should
be run, with tight attention paid to expenses, good stewardship of
donor money, etc.
--Jimbo
When we passed 100,000 , 200,000 , 300,000 etc articles there was a fair
bit of fanfare.
I think it is only right therefore to announce that en passed the
100,000,000 word mark earlier this month.
This is about the same size as Columbia, Encarta Deluxe and EB put
together, and if printed would weigh about the same as George Bush.
Across all languages we reached this milestone back in January, and are
now up to 220,000,000 words.
Qualitätsoffensive, anyone?
Pete/Pcb21
Christiaan complained:
> Just to clarify, I never argued that these people died and suffered
> _because_ of these ideals. My argument is that our culture has
> extensively used and abused such ideals simply to make its membership
> feel good about itself when collectively implementing the opposite
> (imperialism, intolerance of other economic models, war, etc.).
> Cognitive dissonance often being the outcome when actuality comes to
> light.
If you think Western Civilization has not lived up to its ideals, please
write a Wikipedia article comparing and contrasting Western ideals with
Western actions. I am not suggesting you do original research, but that
you summarize the extensive body of writings on this very topic. You
could start with Chomsky, easily the best known critic of the West. But
don't forget Toynbee (you wouldn't want to write a biased, unbalanced
article, would you?)
Along the same lines, if you interested in non-Western civilizations,
you might want to do a similar compare and contrast for East Asian,
Hindu, Islamic or other great civilizations. How well do these live up
to their own ideals (or compare to Western ideals, for that matter?)
This project ought to keep you busy, and I'd be happy to help.
Ed Poor
Christiaan claimed:
> I don't know about lists, but what you mention is an interesting
> problem, and not just for Wikipedia, but for all societies in
> regard to
> the internet. Our economic system, and the plight of people
> such as the
> Palestinians, means that access too and creation of
> information on the
> internet is an extremely unequal affair.
This is incorrect, as far as societies that don't censor Internet access
go. Now, maybe in Islamic countries it's hard to get online due to
national restrictions. But in every part of the English-speaking world
that is not a problem.
Also, the cost barrier is much lower than you may realize: 4 hours of
minimum wage labor will pay for one month of Internet service, in the
US, for example. If someone has 30 hours a week of free time, okay,
maybe if he's wealthy it only costs him 30 to 60 minutes of labor time
to pay for Internet, and he can spend the other 29 hours surfing or
(better yet) writing Wikipedia articles; while the other guy has only 26
hours. That's only a 12% advantage: admittedly unequal, but not
extremely so. More like moderately or slightly...
If people have plights, and you want to write about it for Wikipedia,
please do so. Not having a homeland is a plight, so you can write about
Kurds as well as Palestinians. Not having a safe place to live is a
plight, so you can write about any of 2 or 3 dozen insurgencies and/or
civil wars dragging in recent decades. Not having a country that's free
from the threat of foreign invasion is a plight, so you can write about
Taiwan and Israel, et al. Not having freedom of religion or the right to
emigrate is a plight, so you can write about Cuba, North Korea, et al.
There are lots of plights, and Wikipedia has LOTS of disk space. Go to
it!
Ed Poor
Crotchety old middle-aged Wikipedian
RickK wrote:
> Unfortunately, even though the class assignment required that the
> articles created by the students meet Wikipedia requirements, now that
> most of them have been listed on VfD, the instructor is trying to
> claim that they do meet our requirements. It seems if the vast
> majority of the articles have made it to VfD, then not only has the
> majority of the class failed the assignment, but the instructor
> doesn't understand the nature of Wikipedia. If the majority of a
> class fails an assignment, that has to say something about the
> instructor, as well.
I phoned the instructor a couple of days ago.
I am almost certain that RickK is wrong in saying that "most of [the
articles created by the students] have been listed on VfD." I checked
out one or two that the instructor happened to refer to indirectly, and
they're fine. They're almost models of what we'd like to see on
Wikipedia. Since they're a) not obviously connected to Dartmouth and b)
first-rate articles, they never got listed on VfD, and I don't believe
they ever will be.
One purpose of the exercise is to give nonprogramming students hands-on
experience in a collaborative an open-source project is like.
The persona he projects in private emails and on the phone is so
different from the uncooperative persona he projects in Wikipedia VfD
discussions that at one point I actually wondered whether it was the
same person. It is. When I commented on the apparent personality
difference he said something to the effect that he'd been on USENET for
years, knows a flamewar when he sees one, and was just determined to
defend his students.
The instructor's perception is that there is actually an anti-Dartmouth
animus among WIkipedian. I would have said both were wrong, but after a
recent "second wave" I am actually starting to perceive such an animus.
Many Wikipedians' perception is that a group of Dartmouth students are
systematically and deliberately spamming Wikipedia with a flood of
Dartmouth-boosting promotional pieces.
The well-written assignment directs students to all the places you'd
want them to be directed, such as "What Wikipedia is not."
Unfortunately they call for creating entire articles. The instructor
commented that he didn't know how you could give an objective grade to
"improving an article."
The pieces that are starting to arouse such irritation are not all that
terrible. In most cases, what seems to me to have happened is that some
feature of campus life that should have been a line or a short
paragraph in the Dartmouth College has become the subject of a
full-page article that uses the sort of breezy, promotional language
that is appropriate to a college's website, or a campus freshman
resource guide. We should patiently cut 'em down, clean 'em up, and
stick 'em in the Dartmouth College article and make the articles
redirects. No big deal, except that people resent having to do the
work. There's not even any big rush about it. Who cares if there's a
page up for a month or so lauding the wonders of the Nelson A.
Rockefeller Center? These article all fall squarely in the "borderline"
category. Get them cleaned up, but we don't need to drop everything and
do it right away.
Not that it matters, but the instructor personally seems to fall
somewhere in between the extremes of the deletionist/inclusionist
spectrum. He cited "Internet is shit" as a good example of an article
that needed deletion. (And I hadn't mentioned it. He knows more about
Wikipedia than I had thought). But he's uncomfortable with measuring
"notability" and would set the bar lower than today's VfD community
consensus would set it.
I'm getting Wikistressed about all this, by the way. Here's a lovely
opportunity for what should have been a positive interaction. It all
has a beautiful tragic Rashomon-like quality to it. I wish people would
just cool down instead of piling on. If you've dealt with too many
Dartmouth articles and your patience has run out, then deal with
something else and stay away from them. Come back in a month and if
they're not all cleaned up by then, start cleaning them up.
And I think we really need to ask whether something about VfD is
actually _inducing_ the demeanor shown by User:Pcw in VfD discussions.
Just for the record, so there's no misunderstanding, I think every
Dartmouth article placed on VfD by RickK is royally VfD-worthy, and
sparkling examples of article meriting "ruthless editing" (or what some
editor called a "POVectomy"). I just happen to think that the right
resolution for most of them is trim them down to 5 to 20% of their
current size, merge into Dartmouth College, and redirect.
Sir, as I have said, it is a small college, and yet there are those of
us who are starting to see it as a PITA. But, personally, if I can't
judge an article on the basis of the content of the article, rather
than on the presumed organizational affiliations of the article's
authors, then I don't think I should be discussing that article's
deletion.
--
Daniel P. B. Smith, dpbsmith(a)verizon.net
"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/
> You could ask the uploader about it, or you could decide that the
> image is {{fairuse}} following the guidelines at
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image_description_page#Fair_use_rationale.
> Angela.
The {{fairuse}} message currently says: "The individual who uploaded this
work and first used it in an article, and subsequent persons who place it
into articles, assert that this qualifies as fair use ..." As that is
something impossible for a third party to determine, this message should be
changed. Personally I use {{fairusein}}, which says: "This work is
copyrighted. The person who added this tag asserts that the use of this work
in {{{1}}} qualified as fair use of the material under United States
copyright law."
Anthony
Rick answered Chris:
> > The deletionist attitudes are pretty dumb - they don't give
> > articles the chance to become good.
>
> Please don't post ad hominem attacks on the mailing list.
But Chris was not making an ad hominem argument, nor was he making a
personal remark. He was calling an idea or practice "dumb", and that is
permitted by the rules of this mailing list.
Now, if he had said that trolls like Michael or Wik advocate
deletionism, so it must be dumb -- that would be an ad hominem argument,
and therefore fallacious (although not against the list rules).
Or, if he had said that Chris or I was dumb, because we advocate
deletionism, that would be a personal remark -- and not permitted on
this list.
Pedantically,
Ed Poor
List Admin Emeritus <-------- and keeper of the Flame
Two responses to my earlier email have left me puzzled. While I admit
it not the best thing I have ever written, I can't help but feel that
I have somehow been misunderstood.
>From Jens Ropers <ropers(a)ropersonline.com>
> I'm not trying to get into a political argument here, but I would like
> to note my objection to the above assumptions in the strongest possible
> terms. I believe they are:
>
> - historically untrue,
> - (on balance) also absurdly false as regards the present,
> - anachronistically missionaristic and
> - the positive aspects favoured in this paragraph are the very
> ANTITHESIS of how occidental civilization has historically conducted
> and continues to conduct itself.
You have your opinion, & I have mine. There is a great deal in the
history of Western Civilization that is offensive & shameful -- but I
believe that there are some things worthy of praise. If you cannot
accept that there is at least one or two redeeming things to Western
Civilization, then I don't know what I could say that you'd care to hear.
And because it seems to be a point of anger here, let me explain _precisely_
what I mean by the term "Western Civilization": it is the common heritage
of Europe, the Americas, Australia & New Zealand. One tradition that can
be found amongst all of these people is the struggle towards tolerance,
pluralism, & unfetered speech; I am unaware of any serious argument
that this tradition of thought was introduced from Africa, India, or China.
And from my long reading of history, I know that Western Civilization
hardly has a monopoly on violence, oppression, ignorance & hatred.
And Christiaan Briggs <christiaan(a)yurkycross.co.uk> wrote:
> > Bah! If I don't recognize the contributor -- or even more clearly, if
> > that person is editting from an IP number -- I'll just consider
> > her/him/it a troublemaker, list the articles that person produces on
> > VfD & revert all of her/his/its edits as "vandalism".
> So who the hell do you think you are???
My above passage is an example of a rhetorical technique known as
irony. Unfortunately tone of voice does not always successfully transmit
across the Internet for some reason, & obviously it failed in this case.
I apologize for that failure here.
>
> > And if I may allowed to be chauvanistic for a moment, I think this
> > ideal is a valuable part of Western Civilization that needs to be
> > taught to the rest of the world. We should respect other people's POV,
> > we should be willing to explain our own POV, & that there should be a
> > fair & beneficial
> > exchange between them
>
> *groan* spare us your offensive ethnocentric colonialist views, please.
I assume that you, too, misunderstood what I meant by "Western Civilization".
If not, then I am puzzled why you reject an ideal that the land you
appear to be writing from -- the United Kingdom -- has struggled to promote.
While the struggle may not have always been praiseworthy, orderly, or even
successful, many people in that land have worked to perpetuate the ideal
I talked about.
If you inadvertently thought that by "Western Civilization", I merely meant
the United States of America, I think I may understand part of your
reaction, but I still am left with one question. If there is nothing good
that comes from the United States, then why do you bother to contribute to
Wikipedia, which is a creation of the US?
> A positive purchase maybe:
> Lies My Teacher Told Me:Everything Your American History Textbook Got
> Wrong http://www.uvm.edu/~jloewen/liesmyteachertoldme/liesmyteacher.html
>
> A book for everyone of the American Empire.
Sorry, but my reading time is currently spent on teaching myself the immense
amount of knowledge that was not covered -- if even alluded to -- in
my school years.
While I should appreciate your concern for my educational backgruond, I
find myself somewhat upset that you made sweeping assumptions about what I
learned in school. From what I've since come to know, my education differed
in many respects from other people that I have known. I won't bore you
with all of the details, but I consider myself substantially self-taught
despite my college degree, & still unfinished.
And in reference to your comment about "the American Empire", not everyone
in the US agrees with the views of the current President: a majority of
voters cast ballots for his opponent in the last election, & I would be
surprised if he received as many votes in this coming election. The US
has been far more conflicted -- if not schizophrenic -- about the its
imperial role than other nations.
Wow. All of this verbage just because I tried to express (& again, I admit
I did so badly) the hope that despite all of the crimes, objectionable
behavior & just plain shit that has been done, it would nice if there was
one positive ideal we in the west could pass on to not only the rest of
the world, but also those who come after us. And the means this could be
passed on is thru how we run Wikipedia. I guess I've learned that this
ideal of pluralism, tolerance, & mutual respect isn't even that strongly
held within the Wikipedia community.
Geoff