You're welcome. I post with gmail, I don't usually write my posts in it in
case it crashes on refresh. I usually get the quotes mixed up, copying text
from wordpad into gmail does strange things, apperently (this time with
stars). Good thing I post so infrequently.
>Thank you for your comments, how did you manage to get the quoted text so
mixed up tho? I see your using gmail, as I am...
>Jack (Sam Spade)
Material incentive is not a fixed concept, for all times & eternity, even
if at this stage of history, and under any possible system, it needs to
remain the basis for economic activity for a very long time, but not
necessarily the driving force in people's lives. Question, as always, is
consider with whom, how. Regardless, even now, with material gain being
propogated above all other things as part of human nature for all times,
there are still those activities where it is unsuited, and Wikipedia in
general and a payed Wikipedia adminship specifically, clearly falls within
that category.
El_C
>Since when is doing things by volunteer effort rather than by paid staff
"communist" in nature? Does that make all nonprofit activities done without
pay "communist"?
>== Dan ==
Jorge Oliva wrote to helpdesk-l:
> To whom it may concern:
>
> I am a student at Westwood College in Los Angeles trying to get a
> bachelor degree in Video Game Art and Design. We were told to do a
> poster in one of our favorite video games. I chose to do it in the
> diffrence between StreetFighter, and I would like to ask for permision
> to borrow some of the pictures that are in your website. This poster
> would be only used for educational purposes.
>
This is where allowing "Fair use" images is getting us... what do I tell
them? "Sorry, that's actually a copyright infringment which we can use
via a legal loophole, but nobody else is allowed to"?
I thought the idea was to allow "maximal reuse" and "free content", not
"copyright situations so complicated that nobody can understand them"!
--
Alphax - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax
Contributor to Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia
"We make the internet not suck" - Jimbo Wales
On 20 Nov 2005 at 4:39, Jack Lynch <jack.i.lynch(a)gmail.com> wrote:
> I wasn't talking about people doing what they believe, I was talking
> about refusing to consider taking on paid employee's due to
> philosophical or political predispositions. Its rather a non-issue
> however, since their doesn't seem to be any interest in the idea.
[top-posting snipped]
Since when is doing things by volunteer effort rather than by paid
staff "communist" in nature? Does that make all nonprofit activities
done without pay "communist"?
--
== Dan ==
Dan's Mail Format Site: http://mailformat.dan.info/
Dan's Web Tips: http://webtips.dan.info/
Dan's Domain Site: http://domains.dan.info/
On 19 Nov 2005 at 23:37, Matt Brown <morven(a)gmail.com> wrote:
> On 11/19/05, Tom Cadden <thomcadden(a)yahoo.ie> wrote:
> > If you want to create a credible encyclopdia and not a
> > semi-literate, semi-credible, semi-accurate joke. YES.
>
> This is rather disproportionate, don't you think? I am rather
> surprised that a little debate of which of two names for a small
> African country should be used, either of which would be quite IMO
> acceptable as an article title, is creating this much heat. Wikipedia
> will not seem more or less literate, credible or accurate because we
> use [[Cote d'Ivoire]] instead of [[Ivory Coast]], or the other way
> round.
...but it *will* seem less professional and more childish if
outsiders find out about all the silly bickering that has gone on
regarding this name dispute.
--
== Dan ==
Dan's Mail Format Site: http://mailformat.dan.info/
Dan's Web Tips: http://webtips.dan.info/
Dan's Domain Site: http://domains.dan.info/
-------------------------------------
Paid adminship: a non issue
-------------------------------------
Correct, no interest whatsoever (may I speak for everyone?) in the
impractical, backwards idea of a corporate-types, *Right*eous (so-called
non-political) payed admins, bureaucrats and arbitrators idea.
> *I wasn't talking about people doing what they believe, I was talking
about refusing to consider taking on paid employee's > due to philosophical
or political predispositions. Its rather a non-issue however, since their
doesn't seem to be any interest in the idea. *
> *Jack (Sam Spade)*
--------------------------------------------
Trustworthy appeal: higher power
-------------------------------------------
To a higher power: Jimbo's wife (or possibly even the Wikipedia community)!
> > *To Who? *
> >* Jack (Sam Spade) *
>* Jimbo wouldn't have appointed them to the arbcom if he didn't
believe*>* them to be trustworthy. If you believe he was mistaken, dig
up the*>* evidence and appeal his decision.*>**>* --Mgm*
-----------------------------------------------------------
Cite sources? Yes, we can help you with that:
-----------------------------------------------------------
Same in my uni and any uni. I'd also grade lower those students who cite
Wikipedia as I have in the past for other unreliable internet sources (if
they use diffs, though, they'd get bonus marks).
But of course, students gain insights from Wikipedia articles all the time
without needing to cite them directly, especially when those articles are
carefuly sourced thereby easily leading to more in-depth works, while at the
same time, providing a basic, encyclopedic orientation with the given
material.
The point is that knowledge (free or otherwise) is far from limited to
manifesting itself in such a linear, rigid way. Good students (not to
mention researchers) are able to adopt creative research methods without
losing their focus, opportunities which Wikipedia offers in abundance.
As for the "professional" or mildly offensive amateur/wannabe academics,
they also are deep within our midst. As of course are the violently
offensive commies. Now that's a lot of food for thought!
El_C
>* > The academics at my uni think the wikipedia is mildly offensive,
in*>* > the sense that they enjoy being paid to write*>* >
books/journals/whathaveyou, and don't enjoy seeing amateurs giving
it*>* > away for free. Because of this, and our noticable failings,
students*>* > are penalised if they attempt to cite the wikipedia as a
source at my*>* > uni.*>* >*>* > I just now returned from an 8 hour
seminar wherein we were repeatedly*>* > informed that free,
non-governmental information on the internet is*>* > dubious at best,
and should be avoided for anything other than*>* > commercial or
general knowledge queries. Instead, the online*>* > university
database was praised (it includes a subscription to*>* > britannica,
btw ;)*>* >*>* > Jack (Sam Spade)*
>* Well, I'd've gotten penalized for citing Wikipedia too, but I'd
also*>* have gotten penalized for citing Britannica. However, various
features*>* of Wikipedia made it much better as a quick study aid than
the more*>* academically respectable references, and no one was ever
the wiser.*>* And it is good as a study aid -- but most university
students I know*>* *need* to be cautioned that not everything they
read on the internet*>* that looks legit is true. (I love Wikipedia,
and I am an optimist,*>* but, well...)*>**>* -Kat*>*
[[User:Mindspillage]]*>* wannabe academic*>**>* --*>* "There was a
point to this story, but it has temporarily*>* escaped the
chronicler's mind." --Douglas Adams*
> They follow their own MoS. We follow ours. Ours is not business based but
> based exclusively on the most common name principle.
Well, not exclusively. There are quite a few subject areas where
Wikipedia quite explicitly spells out that something other than the
"most common name" is the naming convention in that particular case.
Television and radio stations in North America, for example, are
required by policy to be titled by their official W---, K---, C--- or
X---- callsigns, even though a strict application of "most common
name" would require that they be titled with things like "Fox 25",
"CTV Toronto" or "The Beat 94.5".
It's quite common to disambiguate people with the same first name and
last name by adding a middle name to the title even if that middle
name isn't in particularly common use. (And it would be impossible or
excessively confusing, in some cases, to use another point of
disambiguation -- frex, there's been more than one Canadian politician
named Angus Macdonald, so the typical dab format, "Angus Macdonald
(Canadian politician)", would *still* have to be a dab page.)
It's patently obvious that in general day-to-day use, Laura
Schlessinger and Phil McGraw are *vastly* more commonly referred to to
as "Dr. Laura" and "Dr. Phil" than by their full names, and yet their
articles are located at their full names.
We use Inuit rather than Eskimo, Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day
Saints rather than Mormon Church, on the stated grounds that "we need
to temper common usage when the commonly used term is unreasonably
misleading or commonly regarded as offensive".
And a very real case could be made that in day-to-day English
conversational usage, "Holland" is still technically a more common
name for the country than "the Netherlands", but for obvious reasons
nobody who valued their reputation as a Wikipedia editor would even
*think* of suggesting anything other than "the Netherlands" as that
article's title.
And on and so forth. Most common name is not an inviolable rule; it's
a *guideline*, and one which is already *not* regarded as the final
word in every single situation.
There are already a *lot* of circumstances in which other
considerations trump "most common name", so can we *please* stop
pretending that "Côte d'Ivoire" somehow represents some unprecedented
blasphemy against Wikipedia's Great Unbreakable Commandment?
Craig
On 11/19/05, Bryan Derksen <bryan.derksen(a)shaw.ca> wrote:
> >Merge and delete is not a possible vote. People should not have to
> >vote in such a specific way to prevent vote-hijacking.
> *'''Merge''' [[Poisonous influences of fruit]] into [[Kumquat]] and
> delete. Good content, but it doesn't stand alone well and it's at a
> misleading title.
Actually, GFDL quite specifically *requires* that if an article is
merged into another one, the old title has to be kept as a redirect in
order to preserve the edit history.
This is what's meant by "merge and delete is not a possible vote". We
can all *imagine* situations where it's the preference we would *want*
to express, but that's a moot point: it's quite explicitly not a
*permissible* vote under the terms of GFDL.
Craig
> > > The article should be put at the policy-determined place (which
> > > happens to be "Ivory Coast")
> >
> > In your opinion. ;=)
> >
> > Sam
>
> No really. Any halfway objective examination of the evidence
> shows that "ivory coast" is used more widly. Anyone who
> thinks otherwise is ignorant of the evidence or acting illogicaly .
>
>
> --
> geni
My point is not that "Ivory Coast" is the proper name of the country.
Nor is it that I insist on making "Ivory Coast" the title of the
article.
1. What I *AM* saying is that the English-name POLICY has already passed
consensus: country articles are given the title of the most commonly
used English-langugae name of the country. (Like "Germany" or "Italy")
This is a procedural question: shall we set aside the policy and make an
exception here? And by voting on it, or what?
Policy should be the default, and an exception should be made only if
there is consensus for an exception.
What some people are trying to do is call the status quo the default
(lots of people ganging up to thwart policy by using the French name)
and requiring a supermajority vote to PERMIT ENFORCEMENT of the policy.
2. I am *ALSO* saying that letting a government tell Wikipedia what to
do is a dangerous erosion of our editorial independence. We can simply
say in the article that Ivory Coast's government "forbids" anyone -
inside or outside their jurisdiction - to translate the country's name
(if this is really so). But since our servers are in Florida, I think we
can safely assume we are outside their jurisdiction.
If "Ivory Coast" ever lose currency - as it no doubt will in years to
come - then of course we'll reflect this.
3. People seem to think that the TITLE of the article makes a statement
about the "true name" of the country. This is ridiculous. The article
itself even says so - or would, if partisans didn't keep removing this
statement.
The article keeps saying that the offical name of the country is Cote
d'Ivoire, and that the government has gotten other governments to use
the French name. That should be enough.
Ed Poor
If something is mandatory on Wikipedia, that means that if you want people to
follow it you need to _convince_ them that a) it is mandatory, b) they should
follow things that are mandatory.
Just like absolutely everything else on Wikipedia.
How can you "enforce" anything like that except by jawboning?
A "mandate," the dictionary says, is "An authoritative command or
instruction." But what, exactly, does "authoritative" mean on Wikipedia?
Who's going to enforce these "mandates?" Is Jimbo Wales is personally going
to micromanage discussions on talk pages? Are we going to restrict the "move"
button to Bureaucrats?
To riff on Mark Twain (or perhaps it was Oscar Wilde, or Dorothy Parker):
How many mandatory policies do we have if we call the Manual of Style
mandatory?
Answer: We have none, because calling a policy mandatory doesn't make it one.