WikiEN-l May 2005

wikien-l@lists.wikimedia.org

118 participants
211 discussions

Re: [WikiEN-l] 'block' considered too harsh a word?
by Rick 11 May '05

11 May '05

> Maybe it should be a requirement of adminship that > admins list a > public email address on their user: page. > > -a Or not. I had my email address public, until I got fed up with the abusive emails (I get enough of that on my Talk page) and deleted it. RickK Discover Yahoo! Get on-the-go sports scores, stock quotes, news and more. Check it out! http://discover.yahoo.com/mobile.html

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Reactions to blocking
by Leif Knutsen 10 May '05

10 May '05

> Timwi wrote: >Yes, but isn't that all the more reason to assume that we won't de-admin >two long-time trusted contributors just to save one contributor whom we >don't even know? I just don't get why so many newbies instantly think >that they're the most valuable Wikipedian ever born and that established >admins must leave to make room for them. I don't believe I ever expressed or implied that I was the most valuable wikipedian ever born, nor that everything will fall apart as a result of my departure. But I would submit that the entire enterprise depends on people like me, and that it's not a good idea to piss us off unnecessarily. As for being a newbie, I have 2400 edits under my belt - a tenth of yours but still respectable, if I may say so myself. I'll admit it was the first time I was ever blocked, so in that sense I am new to the experience. It would have taken you a couple of minutes to find out who I was and what I'd done, so don't complain that you don't know me. I do think that complaints against admins should be taken seriously. Nobody should be de-admined because of one editor's grievances, but if there's a pattern of bad and borderline abusive behavior, action should be taken.

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Re: [WikiEN-l] Usernames advertising websites
by Rick 10 May '05

10 May '05

--- blankfaze <blankfaze(a)gmail.com> wrote: > I have just noticed > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:GordonWattsDotCom > ... > It seems to me to be somewhat inappropriate to > create a username advertising > a personal website, but I didn't see anything in the > Wikipedia username > policy ( > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Username ) > that says > anything about adverts... > > So I thought I'd pose the issue to the mailing list, > see what you all think. Mr. Watts HAS been inserting links to his personal website in the [[Terri Schiavo]] article, but his personal website is a geocities page, and not gordonwatts.com. I don't know if there realy is a gordonwatts.com, I haven't bothered to find out. RickK __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Make Yahoo! your home page http://www.yahoo.com/r/hs

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RE: [WikiEN-l] "block" considered too harsh a word?
by Roger Wesson 10 May '05

10 May '05

How about 'suspended'? Equally accurate and less terminal-sounding than block. Hi everyone, by the way. As you might guess from my e-mail address, I am User:Worldtraveller. -----Original Message----- From: Asbestos [mailto:asbestos999@gmail.com] Sent: 10 May 2005 17:29 To: English Wikipedia Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] "block" considered too harsh a word? If users can't be bothered to read the part of the message where it says they've been blocked for just 24 hours, they're going to throw a fit no matter what the word is. "Blocked" itself is a neutral word: it accurately describes the fact that they can no longer edit. This reminds me of the idea that some schools are now requiring their teachers to grade papers in purple pens, because a red F apparently distresses some students... Sam -- Asbestos http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Asbestos On 5/10/05, Timwi <timwi(a)gmx.net> wrote: > > As we have seen numerous times in the past, users who are new to the Wikipedia tend to vastly overreact to being blocked. Some people throw quite a fit even when they're blocked for a mere 24 hours. > > A friend of mine suggested that perhaps the word should be changed to something more euphemistic and something less harsh than "block". I can sympathise with this thinking, because if I saw a page telling me I'm "blocked", not knowing what it means I would probably interpret it to mean "blocked indefinitely", and as we know people don't tend to read the entire message and hence don't notice where it mentions the time limit. > > Unfortunately, he didn't have any ideas what to call it instead. So I'm wondering what everyone else here thinks? > > _______________________________________________ > WikiEN-l mailing list > WikiEN-l(a)Wikipedia.org > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l > -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Asbestos _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l(a)Wikipedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l PLEASE NOTE: THE ABOVE MESSAGE WAS RECEIVED FROM THE INTERNET. On entering the GSi, this email was scanned for viruses by the Government Secure Intranet (GSi) virus scanning service supplied exclusively by Energis in partnership with MessageLabs. Please see http://www.gsi.gov.uk/main/notices/information/gsi-003-2002.pdf for further details. In case of problems, please call your organisational IT helpdesk

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Re: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia widget for new Macintosh OS release
by Fastfission 10 May '05

10 May '05

On 5/7/05, Sheldon Rampton <sheldon(a)prwatch.org> wrote: > Unfortunately, the WikityWidget only supports the CamelCase link > style, and I think Wikipedia's syntax is much more powerful and > flexible. > > It would be great if someone could develop a WikityWidget-like tool > that supports the Wikipedia syntax. I've been using a local > installation of MediaWiki on my laptop to keep various notes for my > personal use, but it would be easier to have the same functionality > available on my dashboard. Also, it would help to further popularize > the Wikipedia syntax, which I'd like to see become the basis for a > standard wiki syntax even outside of MediaWiki. No kidding. I find myself taking notes in text editors and separating new sections with =='s and bolding things with apostrophes. I think if someone made a robust and simple personal database creator of this sort -- which one could also store files in and categorically index -- it would be a great boon to us all. I wonder how hard it would be? The most difficult time would be putting something together that did a good job of blending the coding and viewing aspects of it -- in a personal environment I think a program that made you "submit" a form would be tedious. You could get around it with simple tabs, I suppose, but it would be even more amazing if one could both apply and code in Wiki syntax in realtime. Oh, but to dream... FF

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Re: [WikiEN-l] Abuse of your services
by Rick 10 May '05

10 May '05

--- slimvirgin(a)gmail.com wrote: > On 5/6/05, Sean Barrett <sean(a)epoptic.org> wrote: > > Just for the record, where is the policy stating > that Usenet /cannot/ be > > used? I'm not being sarcastic; I genuinely don't > know. > > The relevant policies state that Wikipedia sources > must be published > sources, and that the publishers must be, in some > sense, reputable, > authoritative, and credible. These terms are > impossible to define, but > they boil down to relying on publishing houses that > have some form of > fact-checking procedure, or peer-review if it's an > academic subject. > Sometimes the degree of fact-checking will be > minimal, but there > should be some infrastructure within which > information is checked, > complaints are responded to, and obviously authors > are usually not > anonymous. > > None of these things applies to Usenet. It is pretty > much the > definition of a source that should not be used > (except in very limited > circumstances as primary-source material). See > [[Wikipedia:No original > research]] for more details. > > Sarah Then all of the information about Sollog has to go, all of the information about any Usenet celebrity (Kibo?), all information about any Usenet news group, unless there is '''''published''''' verification? Does this mean we can't use links to newspaper websites? Those aren't published, after all. RickK __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Make Yahoo! your home page http://www.yahoo.com/r/hs

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Re: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia widget for new Macintosh OS release
by ultrablue＠gmail.com 09 May '05

09 May '05

Speaking of widgets, has anybody tried coding a Wikipedia panel for the equivalent Deskbar thing in the upcoming release of Windows Longhorn? I doubt Microsoft would be so happy to promote it on their sites though, considering the renewed competition from Encarta. ~Mark On 5/8/05, Sheldon Rampton <sheldon(a)prwatch.org> wrote: > I see that someone has already written a Wikipedia widget for the > dashboard on the new OS X 10.4 ("Tiger") release for the Macintosh: > > http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/dashboard/wikipedia.html > > In a related development, someone else has written "WikityWidget," a > widget that lets Mac users create their own personal wiki that runs > locally on their computer: > > http://inkspotting.com/wikity/ > > Unfortunately, the WikityWidget only supports the CamelCase link > style, and I think Wikipedia's syntax is much more powerful and > flexible. > > It would be great if someone could develop a WikityWidget-like tool > that supports the Wikipedia syntax. I've been using a local > installation of MediaWiki on my laptop to keep various notes for my > personal use, but it would be easier to have the same functionality > available on my dashboard. Also, it would help to further popularize > the Wikipedia syntax, which I'd like to see become the basis for a > standard wiki syntax even outside of MediaWiki. > > --Sheldon Rampton > _______________________________________________ > WikiEN-l mailing list > WikiEN-l(a)Wikipedia.org > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l >

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What's wrong with a dodgy source, properly identified?
by dpbsmith＠verizon.net 09 May '05

09 May '05

I don't get it. Journalism follows one practice, academic research another. I think Wikipedia follows a modified version of latter. In journalism, stories are published with no indication of the source other than the reporter's name (or the name of the wire service). _Sources are not cited_. We rely on the newspaper's editorial staff, the newspaper's reputation, and the reporter's responsibility to the profession of journalism to follow appropriate standards to insure that most of what we read is true. We usually have no way of directly evaluating what's behind any story. In academic research, every source is cited in a way that allows the reader to verify it personally. Every fact that appears in a paper is either the personal testimony of the author of the paper, we did thus and such, we saw thus and such, we concluded thus and such. _Or, it is a source citation._ These source citations are usually journal references, but may occasionally be "personal communications." The journals and sources are simply _named._ Sez who? Sez Frotz and Glotz 1989, Zeitschrift für Krankschaft und Geerschift, 22(6):116-122. In most cases the reader can easily verify that the Zeitschrift exists and that pages 116-122 of that number have that article and that it says what the paper's author says it says. _It is left completely up to the reader to know whether or not the Zeitschrift is a peer reviewed journal or not, what its reputation is, and whether Frotz and Glotz are competent_. I completely fail to see _any problem in general_ in citing USENET as a source, provided an actual citation is given so the reader can verify that the posting says what the article says it says. That does not mean that a statement citing USENET should necessarily go in an article, or that citing USENET, or The New York Times, or _Nature_, waves a magic wand over a passage that protects it from criticism, discussion, replacement, or deletion. A good example of what I think to be an entirely appropriate use of USENET is in tracking the approximate time when phrases or neologisms or memes became current in the Internet community. Conversely, The Boston Globe might carry a story quoting sources criticizing a judge. That would be a very reliable source. That does NOT mean that it would automatically be appropriate for a Wikipedia article to say ANY of these things: *Judge so-and-so lacks proper judicial demeanor. *Judge so-and-so was criticized for lacking proper judicial demeanor. *On day so-and-so, page so-and-so, the Boston Globe quoted so-and-so as saying Judge so-and-so is "a very passionate woman, and is not afraid to go and dance and have a couple of glasses of wine and have a good time. She's not your typical judge." The third form is a valid citation, but may or may not be appropriate to the context of an article. -- 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/

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Mediation Committee Overhaul
by W. Guy Finley 09 May '05

09 May '05

There have been some recent comments in Arbitration regarding the lack of any meaningful mediation going on and that cases that do go to mediation seem to be abandoned or loiter there without any attention. After discussion with a lot of people it appeared to me that this was the time for a new proposal on overhauling mediation. Inter did a good part of the initial work on this but I added the informal mediation portion which I think is a key part of the proposal. I have the proposal up and active but it is very much under construction. Comments are encouraged!! The proposal can be found at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Mediation_%282005%29 Thanks! --Guy (User:Wgfinley)

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Abuse of your services
by El C 08 May '05

08 May '05

In this case, though, this private individual has chosen to speak publicly (i.e. within the public realm that is usenet) and it was his choice to face all the potential vicissitudes therein. Yes, I think we need to be careful with usenet entries, but I reviewed the record of the individual in question and I do not believe his protests should be taken into account, as per WP/Usenet notability. Next time (heh, next time), he should stick to posting anonymously (and he's been using premium usenet services, plural - it's not as if he could'nt do that), or refrain from even touching that send message button in his newsreader. El_C >I was only concerned about actually naming the award winner because that person is a >private individual who seems to be upset about the whole thing.

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WikiEN-l May 2005