In Europe, we were taught in school that Australia ''was'' a continent.
Thus:
North America
South America
Europe
Africa
Asia
Australia
Antarctica
So that's 7 continents -- which, incidentally, is the number of Olympic
rings (they represent the 7 continents). Commonly, New Zealand and
sometimes all of the Pacific Ocean islands were seen as being part of
Australia. Then again, as far as the "Pacific islands problem" is
concerned, maybe they don't ''have'' to be grouped with any continent
at all: The word "continent", after all, derives from Latin ''(terra)
continens'', meaning a combined land mass (as opposed to islands). Thus
(some) island can happily be regarded as not being part of any
continent.
It was actually quite a surprise to me to see that there appear to be
different definitions in the U.S. I thought the above was universal and
I had never heard of "Austalasia". Then again, in the end of the day
it's a matter of arbitrary definition isn't it?
Luckily, [[Continent]] already appears to have the gist of this info. :)
As long as we can all contain ourselves there should be continental
consensus.
-- Jens
On 9 Sep 2004, at 18:05, wikien-l-request(a)Wikipedia.org wrote:
> Message: 8
> Date: Thu, 9 Sep 2004 16:35:17 +0100
> From: Rowan Collins <rowan.collins(a)gmail.com>
>
> On Thu, 9 Sep 2004 06:14:48 -0700, Poor, Edmund W
> <edmund.w.poor(a)abc.com> wrote:
>> There are seven traditional continents in geography. In no particular
>> order, they are:
>>
> ...
>> * Australia (the "island continent")
> ...
>> This leaves two issues:
>> 1. Where do the various islands go?
>
> I think, generally, they go with the nearest continent, with special
> treatment given to Australia and its surroundings: since there isn't
> really a 'continent' nearby (in pedantic terms), but Australia is the
> largest land mass, the term "Australasia"
> [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australasia] is sometimes used to group
> these as a "continent". In other contexts, "Oceania" is used, although
> according to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oceania these two terms are
> sometimes more or less the complement of each other, one including
> only Australia and New Zealand, while the other includes the lesser
> islands between there and Asia.
>
> In other words, Australia isn't generally treated as a continent, but
> part of an imaginary continent that mops up the islands that aren't
> near enough a real continent to belong. I think everything else is
> just about near enough to 'belong', although how 'American' some of
> the more distant mid-oceanic islands would consider themselves, I'm
> not sure!
>
> --
> Rowan Collins BSc
> [IMSoP]
There are seven traditional continents in geography. In no particular
order, they are:
* North America
* South America
* Europe
* Africa
* Asia
* Australia (the "island continent")
* Antarctica (no inhabitants but penguins and a handful of researchers)
This leaves two issues:
1. Where do the various islands go?
2. What about geographical vs. cultural/political distinctions?
To answer the second question first: as a matter of GEOGRAPHY, the North
American "continent" consists of 10 major countries:
* Canada
* United States (excluding Hawaii)
* Mexico
* The 7 Central American countries: Guatemala, Belize, El Salvador,
Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica & Panama
The South American "continent" begins with Columbia, Venezuela & Peru
and has several more (sorry, can't list 'em off the top of my head).
HOWEVER:
Culturally or politically, Latin America crosses continental boundaries
and adds Central America and Mexico to South America where there is a
primarily "Latino" population (Spanish & Portuguese speakers) who refer
to citizens of Canada & the US as 'norteamericanos' (i.e., 'North
Americans').
Obviously, this means that [[North America]] can be either a "continent"
or a linguistic/cultural/political region.
BUT:
This leaves the first question unanswered, and I now yield the floor to
my betters...
Ed Poor
Hi all,
I just saw this on /.:
http://www.defensetech.org/archives/001096.html
U.S. government is proposing to exempt satellite images from the Freedom
of Information Act (FOIA), meaning that it wouldn't have to release them
to the public.
If this law gets passed, this could be the end of a great source of PD
satellite images: http://visibleearth.nasa.gov
What do you think? Something we should do? Stockpiling nasa images? Or
am I just panicking? :-)
Regards,
Stephan Walter
--
Stephan.Walter(a)epfl.ch -- http://lart.info/~stw/ -- PGP: B2421799
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benutzer:Stw
Dear Sir or Madam,
On that link to the rayleigh scattering coefficient ks is a mistake in
the power of pi. Pi should be to the power of five and not to the power
of six.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rayleigh_scattering
Please check this again. Thank you.
Best regards,
Daniel Ploss
______________________________
Daniel Ploss
CSEM
Jaquet-Droz 1
CH-2007 Neuchâtel
Switzerland
Tel: +41 32 720 5542
Fax: +41 32 720 5740
daniel.ploss(a)csem.ch
Gentlemen, wishing you a fine day.
Wikipedia overwhelms me. Thanks.¡
Please, on your page for The United States of America, at the very end of it, "Countries in North America" you do mention all of them: but, how about Colombia, Venezuela, Guyana, Surinam and French Guayana.? This Countries are all located above the Ecuatorial line and
we are more subject to the North Hemisphere Winter than to the Southern one. So, are we
South Americans or North Americans.?
Thanks.
JAIRO BETANCOURT ÁLVAREZ.
CARRERA 73 # 41-16 APT. 202
MEDELLÍN, COLOMBIA
¿SOUTH AMERICA?
In one day, I've been called dishonest, a fundamentalist and a censor by
Robert, and dishonest and a censor by an antisemitic vandal who decided to
change my userpage. For some reason I've stuck my arm in the crate with
velociraptors, haven't I?
I have stated my real concern with Robert's "critical historical" quotes in
my original post to this list. However, Robert is in fact turning my views
inside out. I do *not* want to eliminate or suppress historical
interpretations, but I'm annoyed that Robert doens't research the
traditional (or Haredi, if you want) take on things. I cannot stand by idly
to see him overwhelm Judaism-related articles with critical-historical
material without making serious mention of the traditional interpretations
(which are not all too hard to find in English-language literature). On
[[Talk:Maimonides]] I asked Robert to reproduce a particular quotation from
the scholar Ibn Tibbon, something that Robert refused to do despite having
photocopies of the article from which the quote could be taken. This would
have immediately settled the argument from my point-of-view; it was the
hinge around which the debate was raging with [[User:Jayjg]],
[[User:Danny]], RK and myself.
I truly regret not being able to offer alternatives whenever Robert gives
his treatment to a page. Frankly, my time is limited, and I prefer to work
on medical articles, especially when every attempt to work on Judaism
articles leads to edit wars with Robert.
My rant on [[Talk:Artscroll]] on Jewish unity was aimed at Robert's
persistent attempts to insert the most base of allegations about an
(Ultra-)Orthodox Jewish publisher into Wikipedia. Robert may not like their
religious publications, but this random repeating of conspiracy theories
from internet mailing lists is not conducive to any Wikipedia article.
I regret Robert fails to get my point. As he mentions, we have worked very
constructively in the past, and it is my solemn intention to keep doing
this. Sometimes, however, the discussion reaches boiling point, and the
postings become nasty.
I call upon Robert to heed Jimbo's posting and end this discussion. The
mailing list is not the right forum to complain about other users. For this
purpose we have RfC, RfM and RFAr. Robert must also be aware of Danny's
hard work on behalf on Wikimedia projects, and the fact that any attack on
him will likely meet with resistance.
-- Jfdwolff
------------------------------------
jfdwolff(a)doctors.org.uk
------------------------------------
The relevant policy is at
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Blocking_policy#Disruption>, which
says in part:
"Sysops may, at their judgement, block IP addresses that disrupt the normal
functioning of Wikipedia. Such disruption is to be objectively defined by
specific policies, and may include changing other user's signed comments or
making deliberately misleading edits. Users should be warned that they are
violating policy before they are blocked."
And, BTW, the warning has now become a discussion. See:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Netoholic#Warning_re:_refactoring>
and
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Netoholic#refactoring> for the
previous discussion that led up to this.
Thanks,
Brian (BCorr)
Phil Sandifer wrote
>What portion of the blocking policy are you invoking in this warning?
>
>-Snowspinner
We already have the technical means to indicate that an article has
passed peer review by people with serious academic credentials. This was
discussed at the First Annual English Wikipedia Meeting this summer in
Boston.
Magnus Manke even made a working copy of the software to support this
plan, and Larry Sanger described in detail how it could work (Sanger
called it "sifter").
Basically, reviewers with academic credentials can add a mark (or
"flag") to a specific version of an article, indicating that they
approve of it.
Readers can see these marks. For example, they can see that Prof. Chaim
Tahm approved version #382 of [[History of Israel]].
Importantly, any change at all to a reviewed article DOES NOT carry the
flag of approval forward! Let's explore what this means:
* the current version will often not be "peer reviewed"
* user has the option of going back to the "peer reviewed" version
** Some users might want to set their Wikipedia browsing options to show
"only the peer reviewed version" of articles
* when viewing a version which is "peer reviewed" (but is not the latest
version) a notice is displayed pointing out that there are subsequent
versions.
* Clicking "Edit This Article" when viewing an old "peer reviewed"
version brings up the standard "You are editing an old version" warning.
We might decide that a hard-copy or DVD of Wikipedia would contain:
(a) only the peer-reviewed version of articles (when available); or,
(b) only the latest version; or,
(c) both the peer-reviewed and latest versions
I realize there are unresolved questions of identifying reviewers:
1. Who is a "qualified" academic?
2. How can we be sure that someone logging in to Wikipedia is "really"
the person they say they are? (We don't want a troll pretending to be
Stephen Hawking and reviewing a physics article.)
But I think these questions are resolvable. We might establish a
Credentials Committee, who could e-mail and/or talk to prospective
reviewers on the phone. If I look up "Professor Warren Pease" at
Columbia University, by calling the school's main switchboard and asking
for the History Department, isn't that good enough? If the guy who
answers the phone says he's Professor Pease, that's good enough for me.
Ed Poor
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Robert [mailto:rkscience100@yahoo.com]
> Sent: Tuesday, September 07, 2004 7:45 PM
> To: wikien-l(a)Wikipedia.org
> Subject: [WikiEN-l] A future for Nupedia?
>
>
> >>> Having an article only gives the impression to readers
> >>> that we tolerate junk.
>
> >> Which is good. If we give the impression to readers
> >> that we tolerate only full-grown complete articles,
> >> we will detract contributors who are perhaps not quite
> >> as good a writer as they would like to be.
>
> > Exactly. This is why Nupedia failed.
>
>
> That may be one of the reasons why the early attempt at
> Nupedia failed, but the idea behind Nupedia still lives.
> Haven't many of us discussed some form of stable Wikipedia
> 1.0, which has some form of peer-review above the usual?
> And perhaps Nupedia was a bit premature, as we were asking
> volunteers to start from zero.
>
> Wikipedia has grown immensely in the last few years. The
> number of people with serious academic credentials who have
> some favorable opinion of it has probably grown by an order
> of magnitude as well. Now that a huge amount of open-source
> material is already available here, it should be easier to
> re-kindle the Nupedia project today. The idea would be much
> more attractive this time around, as (on many
> subjects) people wouldn't have to start from scratch.
> Contributors could take a series of Wikipedia articles (if
> they wished) and use this text as a launching pad for their own work.
>
> Like Larry Sanger, I am still concerned about the long-term
> prestige of Wikipedia. As long as many contributors don't
> reference their claims, and don't rely on published
> authorities (at least to some extent), then many people in
> academic won't take our articles seriously. But using
> Wikipedia as an open-source feeder for growing Nupedia
> articles leverages everyone's efforts; the whole could be
> much greater than the sum of its parts.
>
> Nupedia might not have worked then. But one or two years
> from now it might be the perfect idea.
>
> Robert (RK)
>
>
> =====
> I'm astounded by people who want to "know" the universe when
> it's hard enough to find your way around Chinatown. - Woody Allen
>
>
>
> __________________________________
> Do you Yahoo!?
> Yahoo! Mail is new and improved - Check it out!
http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail
>Like Larry Sanger, I am still concerned about the long-term
>prestige of Wikipedia. As long as many contributors don't
>reference their claims, and don't rely on published
>authorities (at least to some extent), then many people in
>academic won't take our articles seriously. But using
>Wikipedia as an open-source feeder for growing Nupedia
>articles leverages everyone's efforts; the whole could be
>much greater than the sum of its parts.
>
>Robert (RK)
That's not a bad idea. I'd like a name change though to make sure it's
connection to wikipedia is known about. "Wikipedia stable" "Wikipedia
1.0" Wikipedia reviewed/approved or some such thing. But apart from that
I think it might work.
Theresa
Actually, Rick, everytime you block these chunks of vandals, I end up being
blocked as well. Face it, the blocks are doing more harm than good. Frankly, I
am fed up being blocked literally every day. I also want to participate in
Wikipedia, and your attitude is not helping.
Danny