WikiEN-l September 2004

wikien-l@lists.wikimedia.org

97 participants
176 discussions

Lance vs. Zero = Rather vs. Bush
by Poor, Edmund W 21 Sep '04

21 Sep '04

Why does this remind me of Dan Rather claiming that the admittedly fake memos contained true information? ... Or of Clinton saying "the answer I gave was untrue but legally correct?" We have to start banning people who put accurate information in Wikipedia, if we can't prove they copied it correctly from the source. Or that they wrote it themselves, or that the prunes are in the shinbone, or -- arrrgh! It's all too weird for me, man.... Cousin Eddie

1 0

Attempts to ban me by Raul654, Zero and Simonides
by Robert 21 Sep '04

21 Sep '04

I just found out today that there was a formal arbitration case against me, yet I had no idea such a case was going on. It is grossly improper to do this without me being part of it. The arbitrator of this case against me, Raul654, refuses to read any of the Talk sections of the articles in question, and is accepting without question charges against me made by Zero, Simonides and a handful of others. Raul654 was unaware that Simonides was himself nearly banned for his non-stop damage of several Wikipedia articles. Simonides launched into abusive polemics against nearly everyone on the [[Philosophy]] and [[Anti-Semitism]] articles. (Many people are upset with the way that Simonides's kept hurling ad homenim attacks at so many people, so many times.) Since I was one of the many people who did not allow him to unilaterally rewrite all of our articles to match his own peculiar POV, he tried to ban me. When I merely asked the arbitator, Raul654, to check on this, he refused to do so, and shockingly accused me of making an ad homenim attack. That is just too much. It seemed a clear indication that the facts do not matter to him, the history of the people in question do not matter, and that he is just going to try and get me banned regardless. That alone is reason to recuse him from his role. The case with Zero is both puzzling and disappointing. We rarely have any conflict. Zero does have a great deal of anger, and I am sure that he is a sockpuppet for another user. So what did I do? Fight? No. Argue? No. I instead did the following: * I requested that in the one area we have a significant difference, we mediate (i.e. the [[Israel Shahak]] article.) For whatever reason, nothing occured. For this I should be banned? * I've thanked Zero a number of times for good suggestions he has made. * As for many other articles that we could have had disagreements on (relating to the Arab-Israeli wars), I unilaterally removed nearly all of those articles from my Watchlist! I let him have his way on over a dozen articles, no matter how I may disagree. I did this of my own accord; if this is not a sign of compromise and good faith, then nothing is. What was Raul654's response to learning this? He accused me of making ad homenim attacks! Such a response is indicative of imparital hostility to me. Raul654 makes it clear, further, that Jimbo is supporting these efforts to ban me, which is news to me! (Simonides is claiming that Jimbo is on his side, which Raul654 unquestioningly accepts.) At this point, I have to formally make a request for arbitration against Raul654, Zero and Simonides. Given the way that I am being harassed and threatened, I don't see much option. But isn't this a huge waste of time? For the good of Wikipedia, and to save everybody's time so we can actually work on articles, please stop this nonsense. It is hard to move forward when two people get an arbitator to bring progress to a halt based on their personal animosity. In distress at this time-wasting nonsense, Robert (RK _______________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Declare Yourself - Register online to vote today! http://vote.yahoo.com

8 10

Re: [WikiEN-l] A future for Nupedia?
by Jens Ropers 21 Sep '04

21 Sep '04

> Message: 6 > Date: Thu, 9 Sep 2004 23:30:32 +0100 > From: Rowan Collins <rowan.collins(a)gmail.com> > Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] A future for Nupedia? Folks, I would PLEAD with everyone to '''not''' go the road of requiring academic certifications for approval (or even to value them excessively). Granted, I agree there is some need for an approval/review mechanism, but once again GNU/Linux/BSD lead the way: We should IMHO simply adopt the current common Open Source software development practice of having '''stable''' and '''current/unstable''' branches -- ''of each article'', in our case. Periodically, articles would be subjected to similar processes like Peer review and/or Featured article candidates. They would then (if successful) have a certain version declared stable (ie. promoted to the stable branch). (The criteria for "stable" should however not be "brilliant prose" but "factual correctness and NPOV".) This would greatly extend review activity as contributors would be motivated to have their contributions approved for stable and would thus increasingly participate in review processes. Once a sufficient number of articles have stable versions, the respective Wikipedia's default user setting could be switched to "display stable branch". But we should not, definitely not, ''require'' academic accreditation in any way -- or even attach substantial value to it. Let contributions, not certificates be our decisive factors. Accepting something because A says it and A is academically accredited as xyz is the reverse of an [[ad hominem]] attack -- and it's equally flawed logic, IMHO. There are a lot of reasons why under the "academic model" of a knowledge economy a lot of potentially good ideas are lost and wasted. One example of this might be that an otherwise brilliant head may just not be capable of concentrating for hours and months on end and thus might never have a chance of becoming academically recognized. I thought our core strength was just the very fact that we are able to merge each and every bit of input from each and all comers. As I recently wrote to one of our detractors: >> Many of us believe that it is beneficial to make it as EASY as >> possible to contribute to our encyclopedia. >> >> The traditional approach to writing encyclopedias, to aggregating >> human knowledge, has been to make it as DIFFICULT as possible to >> contribute. You have to obtain formal certifications and undergo >> formal training to be even allowed to contribute. This is done in the >> hope of reaching and maintaining high standards. >> >> Many of us believe that this however stifles progress as it excludes >> all knowledge and knowledge-based skills obtained in any other way >> (than formal accreditation). >> >> We put a process in place that will accept all comers in the first >> instance -- and combine and distill these collective contributions to >> reach high standards. >> Our daily growth and quality improvement shows that the traditional >> approach -- only allowing very few select individuals to contribute >> -- wastes enormous talent, potential and opportunity for progress in >> all fields of human knowledge. Thus, one of our core operating >> principles is to lower any bars to entry as much as possible, if not >> to outright abolish them. Anyone can contribute. You don't need to >> provide certifications. You don't need to show ID or a credit card. >> You don't need to give an email address. You don't even need to log >> in or create an account. You can edit. Because you have UNIQUE >> knowledge skills. Dr. Pyotr Anokhin calculated that the number of >> possible combinations in the human brain was 10 to the power of 799 >> (seven hundred ninety nine). In short, NO ONE on this planet will >> ever have the same thoughts as you. It thus makes sense for us to be >> as inclusive as possible. We would be honored to welcome your >> contribution to our modest but growing record of human knowledge. I would be very disappointed to say the least if this community now turned around to go the "traditional academic" way and proved my view of things wrong. -- Jens [[User:Ropers|Ropers]] www.ropersonline.com

8 10

A few common sense suggestions for election day
by Mark Pellegrini 21 Sep '04

21 Sep '04

I was trying to imagine what [[template:In the News]] is going to look like come election night, and my mental projections are not good. I'd like to suggest a few common sense things that we should agree upon *now* while we still have plenty of time to agrue about it: 1) Template:In the News should have a single link to [[2000 election in progress]] or a page to that effect. Rather than having people in a deathmatch to edit the main page template, they can fight there instead. 2) Absolutely no one is allowed to call any states until 24 (or more) hours after the polls close. 3) I also suspect there's going to be a lot of vandalism to the main page templates (especially in-the-news), so we might consider protecting it in advance (or at first sign of trouble) for the duraction of the election. --Mark

5 4

RE: [WikiEN-l] Clear and obvious harssment: This case has neverhappened before
by Poor, Edmund W 21 Sep '04

21 Sep '04

Robert, I don't believe that Jimbo (or the Arbitration Committee) would ever give any single Wikipedian "the authority to ban". If you find access to Wikipedia blocked, please e-mail me privately, and I'll simply un-block you. (And if that results in me getting de-bureaucrated, de-sysopped, or even banned myself -- so be it.) Every mediation I've been involved in, has been successful. And as a member advocate, everyone who agreed to follow my advice has managed to avoid being banned. So if you want my help, you are welcome to it. Ed Poor

1 0

Millionenth article
by Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason 20 Sep '04

20 Sep '04

Would it be possible to know which article was number one million?

1 0

Clear and obvious harssment: This case has never happened before
by Robert 20 Sep '04

20 Sep '04

> That said, if this case has been going since August 1st, > why didn't anyone leave a note on RK's talk page until > a month into the case? Because Zero, Simonides and their sockpuppets want me banned for good. In a court of law, when someone says, "What is your defense?", and you say "Here it is", and they respond "Well, I refuse to listen to what you ask me to hear" that is a clear sign that the court is rigged. Apparently, Zero and Simonides have dug up every quote they could find in the last year to make it look like Jayjg, Jimbo and the entire Wikipedia community want me banned. Funny, though, how they never say any such thing themselves. Worse, they take entire discussions, and cut sentence fragments out-of-context. More disgustingly, Raul654 admits that he will refuse to read the actual articles, and admits that the context of the sentence fragments means nothing to him. That is not merely wrong, it is mean-spirited and unjustifiable. When I look at the "evidence" presented against me, all I find are sentence fragments, out of context, usually in which I am asking other people to stop being abusive, and to stop censoring pages. Further, many of those are about old disagreements WHICH HAVE LONG BEEN RESOLVED, and with people that I now HAVE FRIENDLY RELATIONS WITH. If these facts mean nothing, then the entire process is obviously a dishonest farce. Raul654 again let me know that Jimbo has given him the authority to ban me, and that he is probably going to do so unless I spend hour after hour rebutting each comment, one at a time. As far as I can tell, this entire arbitration process is a set-up meant to have me banned no matter what I do. These three people (Raul654, Simonides and Zero) are treating me like a troll or vandal, and this is totally outrageous. In the meantime, real trolls and vandals get unbanned as long as they pester this list with multiple e-mails. Even Jimbo admitted that the process is broken, and he allowed back a real troll just because he was tired of arguing. In the meantime, I might be banned any moment now, for absolutely no reason at all: 1* I am not involved in any flame wars. 2* I am not involved in any revert wars or edit wars. 3* The supposed problems are in articles in which the articles HAVE ALREADY BEEN RESOLVED. 4* I repeatedly take week-long (or longer) Wiki-breaks (like the last 10 days) to let things cool down and allow other people to have their say without any problem. 5* I have taken many contentious articles OFF of my Watchlist, and simply let others do what they want, rather then engage in multiple arguments. 6* I have asked for and successfully used mediation when necessary. 7* I have been successfully working with a large group of others on potentially acrimonious articles, without revert wars, and with great progress being made on many articles. And in this situation Raul654 is threatening to ban me? This has NEVER happened to anyone else in this situation before. There is no reason for a ban, and the current situation is clear and obvious harassment. The Request for Arbitration process does not work if the arbitrator is dishonest, which he must be if he ignores the seven critical facts listed above. Robert (RK) _______________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Declare Yourself - Register online to vote today! http://vote.yahoo.com

2 1

Criticism on Prem Rawat, formerly called Guru Maharaj Ji
by Andries Krugers Dagneaux 19 Sep '04

19 Sep '04

Ed Poor wrote: >Anybody remember Guru Maharaj Ji? >Well, there's a long running controversy at Wikipedia over how to >characterize him. Apparently, it's the single biggest edit war we've >ever had. >One scholar has spent over 8 months researching the man, and a group of >several dozen ex-followers is reverting like crazy. >I think the way we handle this has important implications for our future >credibility. >Ed Poor >Bureaucrat and NPOV Maven I do not think that there is a need to worry about Wikipedia's reputation. User Gary D is doing excellent work on the articles [[Criticism on Prem Rawat]] and [[Prem Rawat/temp1]]. For everybody's information, I am the most vocal critic of [[Prem Rawat]] here in Wikipedia. It is not true that ex-followers are reverting like crazy. This has never been the case with this article. I became a member of the university library, just to get more reference about him and I even went to a meeting of his students/followers. I regret that one contributor received emails with threats because of his edits on this article. I also regret that some ex-followers discontinued contributing to the article because their edits were reverted, sometimes without good reason. Andries K.D.

1 0

I just had a *REALLY BAD IDEA*
by Daniel P.B.Smith 19 Sep '04

19 Sep '04

It's really, really bad. Everyone's going to hate it. 1) Take the fact that people create vanity pages and prank pages about their friends. Often when they come up in VfD they will even say "Sure, remove it, I just wanted my friend to see it." 2) Add a dash of the International Star Registry and a soupçon of Google sponsored links, and you have my really bad idea. *** Put your friend in the encyclopedia for a week! For just $X.00! *** Make your PayPal or credit card donation here, then email to this address (that of a responsible sysop), giving your friend's name and whatever you want the article to say, as long as it's decent and not insulting. Feel free to submit as Wikimarkup if you happen to know it. If your is unacceptable for any reason, your money will be promptly but grumpily refunded. Otherwise, within three business days, your friend will have a handsome article about them in Wikipedia, complete with a garish and un-missable banner that explains that this is a Paid Article, that the information in it is not to be trusted, and that it will be removed by thus-and-such-a-date. But wait, there's more! Act today, and you can also attach a .jpg image of up to 240x320 pixels in size! NOW how much would you pay? But email today! Sysops are standing by! Yes, I know. I'm ashamed of myself for even thinking about it. -- 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/

2 1

RFC - Diderot WikiWriter Project - Pre-Release Announce
by nospam＠mussenbrock.de 19 Sep '04

19 Sep '04

### ANNOUNCE ### ANNOUNCE ### ANNOUNCE ### ANNOUNCE ### The '''Diderot''' WikiWriter alpha is soon to be released. '''Diderot''' is going to become the first full-featured, offline-online Wikipedia Editor with * Source Coloring * Source Folding * integrated Browser Window * Category Browser * Asynchronous Put and Get of Wikipedia Pages (you dont have to wait until a page is saved) * Parallel Editing of Multiple Articles In the future, we plan to add a variety of new features: * Recent Change Agent with Notification Function, able to process RegEx * Search & Replace with RegEx * Integrated Watchlist with automated update * Automatic resolving of Redirects * and many other ... participate and submit a Feature Request on our Project Summary Page at http://wikiwriter.sourceforge.net! On the Project Homepage at http://wikiwriter.sourceforge.net you can find some Screenshots. The package will currently only run under WinXP, but in the future we will try to support unix platforms as well. This will depend on volunteers to tackle some developement tasks. Any pythonists are welcome to participate. The project is based on python and comes with a PSF licence. Sources can be found on the project page on http://sourceforge.net/projects/wikiwriter. ==IMPORTANT== This announce is in some way a test on how many interest there is in such a tool. So please put your vote on http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Dedicated Dedicated Wikipedia editor/Diderot. If there is positive feedback from the community, the project should soon grow into some stable beta release. Please use the sourceforge trackers to submit your feature requests or mailto:wikiwiki(at)vr(dash)web(dot)de. The final alpha release announce will be posted in the next days. Enjoy! Shannon

3 2

← Newer
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
...
18
Older →

Jump to page:

2024

2023

2022

2021

2020

2019

2018

2017

2016

2015

2014

2013

2012

2011

2010

2009

2008

2007

2006

2005

2004

2003

2002

2001

WikiEN-l September 2004