Geoff Burling wrote:
>On Mon, 10 Oct 2005, Kelly Martin wrote:
>> On 10/10/05, actionforum at comcast.net <actionforum at comcast.net> wrote a
>> bunch of stuff about Castro, forgetting that this is wikien-l, not
>> bitchaboutcommunistdictatorsofcarribeanislands-l.
>I've stopped reading his emails here a day or two ago myself -- about
>the time I realized that he was repeating himself. Would the list
>moderators do us a favor & start reviewing his postings?
We don't like the big stick 'cos we're really nice, and anyway it
resembles work. But I'd certainly ask him to avoid it except as direct
examples of the issues to hand, and even then if possible. I don't
expect anyone here to particularly agree with anyone else on political
or other POVs, but being able to discuss examples without seeming to
snap at each other - or edit-warring - is probably essential to
writing an NPOV encyclopedia.
- d.
Mgm wrote:
---If incremental changes mess up the page's organization the way to fix
it is to implement the changes into the organization, not to revert
and remove them altogether.
I'm also wondering why uninvitedcomany thinks an edit with great
improvements would require him to become a revert warrior. If the
changes are really that good you'll be able to get others to revert
for you.---
I think I described the edits we're talking about here as "unremarkable
-- neither helpful nor
especially detrimental to the article."
Probably the best example is an accurate, though perhaps poorly worded
and misplaced summary of a fact that already appears elsewhere in the
article. Such prose can't be improved or rewritten, because it already
exists in the article in the proper place with the appropriate wording.
There is nothing useful to be done but revert the change, even though it
was done in good faith and was factually sound, and even perhaps
well-referenced.
One of the things I've learned about Wikipedia is that the editing
experience differs considerably among subject areas. There are many
areas of the project that aren't controversial, and that are edited
primarily by disinterested Wikipedians. It is in these subject areas
-- which include the vast bulk of the articles -- where MGM's
statements are absolutely true. In other more controversial areas,
such laudable civility does not hold. There are parts of Wikipedia
where you can change "a" to "the" and have it seem as though you have
detonated a land mine, so fragile is the editing truce that prevails.
The Uninvited Co., Inc. (a Delaware corporation)
On 8/8/05, jjleahy(a)umich.edu <jjleahy(a)umich.edu> wrote:
> This mailing list often serves the purpose of allowing "old timers" to discuss
> Wikipedia policy, but it gets its share of newbies asking things like
> requesting article changes (which if they knew what Wikipedia was they could do
> themselves). [...]
> One idea is to make a new mailing list specifically for newcomers to Wikipedia,
> which would be manned by a group of people that respond to newcomers and lead
> them places where they could learn more
Since this is a great idea and there were no objections to it over the
last month, Jeronim has created this list. It is called helpdesk-l
I would like to encourage anyone interested in helping newbies to join
this list and answer questions there. You can subscribe at
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/helpdesk-l
If anyone would like to be the list admin, please let me know.
Angela.
> On 10/10/05, uninvited(a)nerstrand.net <uninvited(a)nerstrand.net> wrote:
> > The problem is that people come along and make incremental changes
> > each of which, taken alone, is unremarkable -- neither helpful nor
> > especially detrimental to the article. In aggregate, such changes
> > destroy the organization of the article and compromise any
> stylistic
> > unity that may be present.
> What are we supposed to do when editors cause the writing in
> an article to deteriorate, if not revert? Are a bunch of
> people who care about good writing supposed to be on hand
> constantly to carefully tidy up after others, just so that we
> can avoid wholesale reverting?
>
> Sarah
I agree with both Uninvited and Sarah (SlimVirgin) about piecemeal
revisions. It simply doesn't work, much of the time.
The only solution is a periodic full re-write of the article. The
[[cult]] article is a good example. I've given it a full rewrite once or
twice already. The last time, I made sure I found a definition of "cult"
which all sides could agree on and stuck in the intro. The last time I
checked, the definition had survived the test of time: no reverts by ANY
parties in over 6 months. (The article might have been renamed to [[list
of purported cults]] or the like.)
The key is to come up with an intro (in a paragraph or two) which
provides a theme that unifies the remainder (body) of the article.
Anyway, this is the approach that the peace foundations EP is using. I
believe Britannica uses the same approach.
Ed Poor
I was reading Scott Burnside's article,
http://sports.espn.go.com/nhl/preview2005/news/story?id=2172427
about top NHL rivalries, and I discovered that some passages appear to
have been directly lifted or slightly edited from The Sporting News and
Wikipedia articles. Who do I contact to address these concerns?
Thanks
-Bob
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Some examples are provided below:
From the Sporting News
"Claude Lemieux, for instance, became Public Enemy No. 1 in Detroit
when, while playing for Colorado, he crashed Kris Draper facefirst into
the boards in the 1996 conference finals."
http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1208/is_35_224/ai_65014730
From Wikipedia:
"the Battle of Quebec intensified two seasons later with the "Vendredi
Saint" brawl. The following season, the two teams battled for the Adams
Division title, and the Habs won by three points. But the Nordiques
would get revenge in the playoffs with a seven-game victory, clinched by
Peter Stastny's overtime goal."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qu%C3%A9bec_Nordiques
Also from Wikipedia:
"While the teams played each other often, the teams became pronounced
rivals in the 1970s, when both were yearly contenders. The seminal
moment in the history of the rivalry was probably Game 7 of the 1979
<http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=1978-79_NHL_season&action=edit>
Wales Conference finals. After a rough and tumble series, the Bruins
were ahead in the closing minutes. However, after the Boston bench was
charged with a minor penalty for "Too Many Men on the Ice
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penalty_%28hockey%29>," Guy LaFleur
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guy_LaFleur> scored the tying goal on the
ensuing power play, and Montreal won in overtime
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overtime>. The win allowed Montreal to
advance to the Stanley Cup <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanley_Cup> finals
The Bruins were defeated in both the 2002
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2001-02_NHL_season> and the 2004
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2003-04_NHL_season> Stanley Cup Playoffs
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanley_Cup> in the first round by the
hated Canadiens"
[...]
"The traditional rivals of the Maple Leafs had always been the Montreal
Canadiens <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montreal_Canadiens>, but after
decades of not meeting in the playoffs and during a period when Toronto
failed to ice competitive teams for many years, that /rivalry began to
fade/."
"Many Senators fans were ex-Leaf supporters who had turned strongly
against their old team, while many Ottawa Valley hockey fans remained
loyal to the Leafs."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Hockey_League_rivalries
-------------- Original message --------------
> On Mon, 10 Oct 2005, Kelly Martin wrote:
>
> > On 10/10/05, actionforum(a)comcast.net wrote a
> > bunch of stuff about Castro, forgetting that this is wikien-l, not
> > bitchaboutcommunistdictatorsofcarribeanislands-l.
> >
> I've stopped reading his emails here a day or two ago myself -- about
> the time I realized that he was repeating himself. Would the list
> moderators do us a favor & start reviewing his postings?
>
> Geoff
I assume a hasty "review" would suit your purposes better
than a careful one based on your incorrect assessment
above.
I believe I only repeated myself once, and that was in
response to Kelly Martin's dismissive comment, which
was as wasteful of bandwidth as yours here. My other
emails were good faith clarifications or elaborations
that were responsive to comments.
-- Silverback
Kelly wrote:
> On 10/10/05, actionforum(a)comcast.net wrote a
> bunch of stuff about Castro, forgetting that this is wikien-l, not
> bitchaboutcommunistdictatorsofcarribeanislands-l.
>
> Kelly
And you appear to have written this:
Please note that the purpose of the 3RR is as a tripwire
to stop edit warring; it is not punitive.
I therefore recommend against blocking him.
Kelly Martin 14:27, August 7, 2005 (UTC)
forgetting that you really think this:
I'm not inclined to care a whole lot. People who hit the
3RR have already gone beyond reasonable editing. Whether
they get blocked for 24 hours or a week is not that great
of a concern to me.
------------- Original message --------------
> >Really? Integrity and character, fairness, tolerance
> >and equality under the rules matter on little things
> >such as wikipedia articles too. When a clique, gets
> >ahold of a page, the wikipedia rules no longer apply,
> >they make the rules. Sometimes you can shame them
> >a bit with their hypocrisy, sometimes they are shameless.
> >But being a clique or a "consensus" doesn't make them
> >right.
> >
> Leave it to the anti-Castro clique to declare that principles should
> only be applied when to do so would be of minimal consequence.
No, but applying them in small things is good practice. For instance,
the police and prosecution in the OJ Simpson case knew from
the beginning that the media glare would be on them because
of Simpson's involvement, yet they were so out of practice
that even knowing their every move was watched they couldn't
behave correctly.
Similarly police officers that lie in a traffic case will have no qualms
about doing so in a murder case also.
> >Guantanamo is an embarrassment, but wars are messy,
> >I'm probably a pacifist myself (I'm not quite sure), but
> >what seems plain is that the non-pacifists who oppose
> >the war in Iraq and who somehow have supported some
> >other war and how that war was fought, are probably
> >among the worlds greatest hypocrits. The U.S. has
> >liberated Iraq without using conscript/slaves, with careful
> >targeting to avoid unnecessary damage to civilians and
> >civilian infrastructure, with no territorial ambitions, and
> >without using "allies" that are beneath contempt such
> >as Stalin, certain warlords in Afghanistan or the U.N.
> >
> So you would have us believe that the warlords with whom the U. S. has
> allied itself in Afghanistan are more virtuous than the ones it
> opposes! That may be the case on your planet, but not on earth.
I was referring to the warlords that were US allies, it was as immoral
for the US to associate with them as it was to aid Stalin in WWII,
and as it was to conscript innocent US civilians in WWII and the
Vietnam war.
> Some of us do believe in respecting the views of others, and I do know
> that there are others here who might share some of your POV. The point
> is that this started off with your, "What matters is what is right." As
> much as I may disagree with that position, I can recognize it as being
> relevant to writing an encyclopedia. But what do Fidel Castro and the
> Iraq War have to do with it? Do these topics represent your extension
> of Goodwin's Law? If you have nothing better to do than attempt to
> inflame passions maybe you should just go away.
No more than your mention of Guantanamo was. Goodwin's Law hasn't
been proven yet any way. Sorry I inflame your passions, I meant to
stimulate you to question your assumptions, since you seemed so
sure that your moral relativism would be accepted without question.
-- Silverback
The Arbitration Committee elections are coming along, and the
candidates are putting up statements already:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Arbitration_Committee_Elections_Dece…
All the candidates so far are good editors and sincere candidates,
which is nice - Lir, Plautus, MARMOT and Enviroknot haven't thrown
their hats into the ring. But I think we need some more.
I was more or less drafted onto the AC - people saying "X is running.
Could you please run so we have someone to vote for." What I want you
reading this to do is to look at the above page, think of who *should*
be running and isn't, and ask them to. That's all. (And there are a
few I'll be approaching ...)
Also, consider yourself in the job. Necessary attributes are
significant clue about the Wikipedia community, a level head,
unflappability and a skin like a rhinoceros.
- d.