I am working on an Intranet where we are spinning off many wiki's per
project. In the forseeable future we might have 5-10 separate
instances of the Wiki's.
Because of this I would like to make it easy for people to move
between the Wiki's without having to login each time.
A simple mod I just wrote will grab the REMOTE_USER which is their
NTACCOUNT on our intranet and use that instead of IP.
I set a flag in LocalSettings to allow me to turn this on|off.
My questions are: is this a good way to do this? Are there better
ways? Will this break anything?
Thanks,
Chris McIntosh
Sarah wrote:
> All I'm arguing here is that we shouldn't try to exercise
> publishing power without responsibility; in other words, we
> shouldn't be bullies. If this were some newsworthy public
> figure trying to delete accurate, relevant, well-referenced,
> notable material about himself and threatening us with legal
> action, I might agree that we should revert him, argue with
> him, and ignore the threats. But this person we're ganging up
> on here is a non-notable, private individual who has done no
> harm other than to make a fool and a nuisance of himself on
> Usenet. Weve inserted his real name into an article; we've
> attached it to a slur; we've reverted him trying to delete
> it; we've protected the page so he can't delete it; we've
> ridiculed him when he contacted this mailing list for help;
> we've reverted the deletion that an admin tried to make; and
> now we're going to ban him for making legal threats. Which
> part of this exactly isn't bullying?
I'm against anything that smacks of bullying. We can afford to be
gracious.
But it's difficult to write an article which is ABOUT people who label
others with a slur - WITHOUT ourselves repeating or endorsing that slur
(or seeming to).
I'm giving this matter so much attention, because it strikes at the root
of Wikipedia's credibility. To really be taken seriously, we've get to
start getting serious about making corrections that stick. There's no
other way to unsure that articles have a "stable, accurate version".
The "kooks" newsgroup is only a notch or two above the holocaust deniers
and anti-Semites. (They get one notch merely for not taking themselves
seriously :-) We take great pains to distance Wikipedia from ENDORSING
the claims of holocause deniers and anti-Semites; while, also, due to
our neutrality policy, we also managed to avoid condemning them.
A really neutral article, which is also a well-written one, would NOT
generate any doubt in the reader's mind about whether the contributor(s)
to that article were for or against any particular point. This is the
touchstone of neutrality. (Can you tell my position on the Holocaust
from reading the above paragraph? If so, then my bias has leaked out -
which is okay HERE, but would not be okay in an article.)
The situation is also parallel to some of the "damaging quotations"
lists that pop up in political articles. Like Bushisms. It's really hard
to write about Bushisms without adopting the POV that the type and
number of malaprops PROVE that "Bush is an imbecile". (Which is exactly
why anti-Bush folks like to publicize them.) The trick is to quote the
Bushisms, describe / analyze them, but NOT endorse the anti-Bush POV.
This is especially hard because the chief reason for listing them is to
INSINUATE the idea that these verbal mis-steps are typical and
representative - and thus sufficient in themselves to condemn the
persone. (The Ann Coulter article consists MOSTLY of damaging
quotations.)
We need to re-think Wikipedia policy. We're getting big; let's not get
grumpy. People will look up to us, because we tower over all the rest:
we have more articles than anyone else, and we're still growing fast.
But to earn their respect, we must be accurate AND fair.
In many places we must take a step back, discover the bias inherent in
an article, and DESCRIBE it as a point of view INSTEAD of leaving it in
a condition which makes it look like Wikipedia was endorsing it. (Same
problem with global warming, the truth of one side is taken as a given.)
Sorry to ramble. I'm short on time this month. Please don't just pick
this apart, but try to find the essence of what I'm saying. Help me to
help you.
In haste,
Uncle Ed
> To make matters worse, the only reason you don't take his
> legal threats seriously is that he's made them before and
> nothing came of them. In other words, you're not taking him
> seriously because he's ineffectual and powerless. That's
> exactly when we should back off, not put the boot in further.
>
> There's nothing worse than a powerful journalist who uses his
> or her position in the manner described above, and we've all
> become people who have, in many ways, just as much power (but
> without any of the infrastructural restraints journalists
> have), which means we have to exercise self-restraint and be
> decent. What's wrong with being decent all of a sudden?
>
> Sarah
>
>
--- Sean Barrett <sean(a)epoptic.org> wrote:
> Leave it to the Kook of the Millennium to get me to
> agree with RickK.... ;->
Scary, isn't it? :)
RickK
Yahoo! Mail
Stay connected, organized, and protected. Take the tour:
http://tour.mail.yahoo.com/mailtour.html
--- slimvirgin(a)gmail.com wrote:
> On 5/5/05, Astrological Consulting
> <arcturianone(a)earthlink.net> wrote:
> > If it is not removed I will file a lawsuit for
> damages and MAKE you remove it.
>
> It has been removed, Edmond.
>
> Sarah
Please restore it.
RickK
Yahoo! Mail
Stay connected, organized, and protected. Take the tour:
http://tour.mail.yahoo.com/mailtour.html
--- Astrological Consulting
<arcturianone(a)earthlink.net> wrote:
> If it is not removed I will file a lawsuit for
> damages and MAKE you remove it.
Time to block him now.
RickK
Discover Yahoo!
Stay in touch with email, IM, photo sharing and more. Check it out!
http://discover.yahoo.com/stayintouch.html
Wikipedia is a real-life Hitchhiker's Guide: huge, nerdy, and imprecise.
By Paul Boutin
Posted Tuesday, May 3, 2005, at 2:37 PM PT
It's too bad Douglas Adams wasn't able to see his vision brought to
life. I don't mean the so-so movie version of The Hitchhiker's Guide to
the Galaxy. I'm talking about Wikipedia, the Web's own don't-panic guide
to everything.
The parallels between The Hitchhiker's Guide (as found in Adams'
original BBC radio series and novels) and Wikipedia are so striking,
it's a wonder that the author's rabid fans don't think he invented time
travel. Since its editor was perennially out to lunch, the Guide was
amended "by any passing stranger who happened to wander into the empty
offices on an afternoon and saw something worth doing." This anonymous
group effort ends up outselling Encyclopedia Galactica even though "it
has many omissions and contains much that is apocryphal, or at least
wildly inaccurate."
Adams actually launched his own onlin guide before he died in 2001, but
it was, he wrote, "still a little like the fossil record in that it
consists almost entirely of gaps." Wikipedia is a colossal
improvement—it's just like the fictional Hitchhiker's Guide, only
nerdier. Wikipedia is the Web fetishist's ideal data structure: It's
free, it's open-source, and it features a 4,000-word exegesis of Dune.
For decades, software-makers competed to build complex collaboration
systems. These high-end tools, like Lotus Notes, let companies specify
who can edit which documents and establish complex approval procedures
for changes. In 1995, software researcher Ward Cunningham destroyed the
hierarchies by designing a site, the WikiWikiWeb, that anyone could dit.
(Wiki-wiki means "quick quick" in Hawaiian. Cunningham saw it on a
Honolulu Airport bus.)
Wikipedia, with more than 1 million entries in at least 10 languages, is
the mother of all wikis, but there are also wikis devoted to quotations,
the city of Seattle, and Irish politics. (Check out this wiki of wikis,
which lists more than 1,000 sites.) Instead of enforcing rules, wikis
trust that groups can behave. Anyone can edit or reorganize their
contents. If you realize something's missing, incomplete, or incorrect,
you can fix it yourself without asking permission. "People told me that
the experience changed their lives," Cunningham said via e-mail.
Don't expect Wikipedia to change your life, though, unless you've
secretly longed to be an encyclopedia editor. Just because you give
everyone read and write permissions doesn't mean everyone will use them.
Wiki lovers argue that they are collaborative, self-correcting, living
documents that evolve to hold the sum of all the knowledge of their
users. But, like blogging, editing the Net's encyclopedia appeals to a
small, enthusiastic demographic.
Like the Guide's lengthy entries on drinking, Wikipedia mirrors the
interests of its writers rather than its readers. You'll find more on
Slashdot than The New Yorker. The entry for Cory Doctorow is three times
as long as the one for E.L. Doctorow. Film buffs have yet to post a page
on Through a Glass Darkly; they're too busy tweaking the seven-part
entry onTron.
But excessive nerdiness isn't what's keeping Wikipedia from becoming the
Net's killer resource. Accuracy is. In a Wired feature story, Daniel
Pink (kind of) praised the hulking encyclopedia by saying you can
"[l]ook up any topic you know something about and you'll probably find
that the Wikipedia entry is, if not perfect, not bad." But don't people
use encyclopedias to look up stuff they don't know anything about? Even
if a reference tool is 98 percent right, it's not useful if you don't
know which 2 percent is wrong. The entry for Slate, for instance, claims
that several freelance writers are "columnists on staff" and still lists
Cyrus Krohn as publisher months after the Washington Post Co.'s Cliff
Sloan took over.
Just because the Wikipedia elves will probably fix those errors by the
time you read this article doesn't mean that the system is inherently
self-healing. Not everyone who uses a wiki wants to hit from both sides
of the plate. The subset of enthusiastic writers and editors is orders
of magnitude smaller than the group of passive readers who'll never get
around to contributing anything.
Bashing Wikipedia is nearly as risky as bashing Scientology. I know that
I'm going to get barraged by the Wikivangelists—"If an entry's wrong,"
they'll say, "stop complaining about it and fix it." But if I were truly
conscientious, I'd have to stop and edit something almost every time I
use Wikipedia. Most people are like Douglas Adams' characters—we
resolvefirmly to stay and fix it after work then forget the whole
episode by lunchtime. Wikipedia is a good first stop to get the basics
in a hurry, especially for tech and pop culture topics that probably
won't ever make it into Britannica. I'm just careful not to use it to
settle bar bets or as source material for an article. I made that
mistake exactly once.
Wikis are a great way to collect group knowledge, but not every
reference book in the galaxy will turn into one. A couple of weeks ago,
online reports claimed that Microsoft's Encarta decided to wikify its
paltry 42,000 entries. Encarta's Editorial Director Gary Alt told me
that the truth is prosaic. Readers will be able to submit suggested
corrections or improvements to existing entries, but Encarta is not
looking for new entries, and the editors will still decide what's worth
including.
An elitist encyclopedia like Encarta will never be able to match the
breadth or speed of a user-edited reference library, but it's smart to
coax readers into helping stretch its inherent advantage—reliability.
Alt told me he's hiring all of six people to review and research reader
submissions. Unlike the editor of The Hitchhiker's Guide, they'll
probably be eating lunch at their desks.
Related in SlateLast year, Clive Thompson asked if an online crowd could
write a novel. In January, Jack Shafer said that blogs need a little
time to catch up to the hype.
Paul Boutin is a Silicon Valley writer who spent 15 years as a software
engineer and manager.
http://slate.msn.com/id/2117942/
You OBVIOUSLY haven't a clue about the law:
Defamation= Injuring someone's character or reputation by making false and malicious statements about him to other people. The law recognizes a difference between defamation and mere criticism of an individual. Criticism deals only with matters that legitimately invite public attention or call for public comment. In contrast, defamation usually involves a person's private life and domestic affairs. Calling a woman a prostitute or a banker an embezzler, or an astrologer or consultant a fraud on a television, radio or usenet public forum are examples of defamation. The term defamation includes both libel and slander.
Black's law dictionary-Defamation="The offense of injuring a person's character, fame or reputation by false and malicious statements."
The "offense" is in the publication of the matter, so you are not "covered" just because you read it somewhere else first. You are safe ONLY if the statement is true. The best advice is to never say anything nasty about anyone.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
-----Original Message-----
From: Astrological Consulting <arcturianone(a)earthlink.net>
Sent: May 5, 2005 3:56 PM
To: "Poor,Edmund W" <Edmund.W.Poor(a)abc.com>,
"Poor,Edmund W" <Edmund.W.Poor(a)abc.com>,
English Wikipedia <wikien-l(a)Wikipedia.org>,
Seth Ilys <seth.ilys(a)gmail.com>, slimvirgin(a)gmail.com
Subject: RE: Corrected (was: Abuse of your services)
Do not mail me again or you will be reported to your ISP. I will be suing you and your so-called "information" crap website and force you to remove your worthless bullshit.
-----Original Message-----
From: "Poor, Edmund W" <Edmund.W.Poor(a)abc.com>
Sent: May 5, 2005 2:04 PM
To: Astrological Consulting <arcturianone(a)earthlink.net>,
"Poor, Edmund W" <Edmund.W.Poor(a)abc.com>,
English Wikipedia <wikien-l(a)Wikipedia.org>,
Seth Ilys <seth.ilys(a)gmail.com>, slimvirgin(a)gmail.com
Subject: RE: Corrected (was: Abuse of your services)
> I demand that my name be removed immediately. This is your
> last chance to explain why you choose to defame my companies.
I see nothing in the article that defames you or your companies. The
fact that some anonymous idiot labelled you a "kook" means nothing. And
it's not an offense for Wikipedia to report that fact.
Note carefully the distinction:
A. Wikipedia is NOT calling you a kook (that would violate our policy,
and I personally won't tolerate that).
B. Wikipedia *MAY* report that those jerks on Usenet have branded you a
kook. (Read the part about Wikipedia NOT endorsing that label.)
I think I've said enough about this.
Ed Poor, aka Uncle Ed
Edmond H. Wollmann P.M.A.F.A.
(C) 2005 Altair Publications, SAN 299-5603
Astrological Consulting http://www.astroconsulting.com/
Artworks http://www.e-wollmann.com/http://home.earthlink.net/~arcturianone/
Edmond H. Wollmann P.M.A.F.A.
(C) 2005 Altair Publications, SAN 299-5603
Astrological Consulting http://www.astroconsulting.com/
Artworks http://www.e-wollmann.com/http://home.earthlink.net/~arcturianone/
-----Original Message-----
From: David Gerard <fun(a)thingy.apana.org.au>
Sent: May 5, 2005 12:58 PM
To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l(a)Wikipedia.org>
Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Abuse of your services
Astrological Consulting (arcturianone(a)earthlink.net) [050506 05:46]:
> I would like to respectfully ask that you remove my name from all references to "kooks" and other abusive and defamatory maligning propaganda posted to your website specifically to damage my business and profession of 30 years+.
> Edmond H. Wollmann P.M.A.F.A.
> (C) 2005 Altair Publications, SAN 299-5603
> Astrological Consulting http://www.astroconsulting.com/
> Artworks http://www.e-wollmann.com/
> http://home.earthlink.net/~arcturianone/
Actually famous Usenet crank. More coherent than Sollog. Lots of material
on skeptictank.com .
- d.
Which is a website that will be facing a lawsuit from my publishing company. You don't really believe these websites do you? I debated this nutcase on usenet (Fredrick Rice), 9 years ago--his arguments amount to bigotry. How is it that you determine otherwise that I am a "crank"? Because I have knowledge you don't agree with?
This is simple bigotrfy, not critical thinking. I have a degree in psychology from SDSU and 30 years of counseling people.
Edmond H. Wollmann P.M.A.F.A.
(C) 2005 Altair Publications, SAN 299-5603
Astrological Consulting http://www.astroconsulting.com/
Artworks http://www.e-wollmann.com/http://home.earthlink.net/~arcturianone/
Do not mail me again or you will be reported to your ISP. I will be suing you and your so-called "information" crap website and force you to remove your worthless bullshit.
-----Original Message-----
From: "Poor, Edmund W" <Edmund.W.Poor(a)abc.com>
Sent: May 5, 2005 2:04 PM
To: Astrological Consulting <arcturianone(a)earthlink.net>,
"Poor, Edmund W" <Edmund.W.Poor(a)abc.com>,
English Wikipedia <wikien-l(a)Wikipedia.org>,
Seth Ilys <seth.ilys(a)gmail.com>, slimvirgin(a)gmail.com
Subject: RE: Corrected (was: Abuse of your services)
> I demand that my name be removed immediately. This is your
> last chance to explain why you choose to defame my companies.
I see nothing in the article that defames you or your companies. The
fact that some anonymous idiot labelled you a "kook" means nothing. And
it's not an offense for Wikipedia to report that fact.
Note carefully the distinction:
A. Wikipedia is NOT calling you a kook (that would violate our policy,
and I personally won't tolerate that).
B. Wikipedia *MAY* report that those jerks on Usenet have branded you a
kook. (Read the part about Wikipedia NOT endorsing that label.)
I think I've said enough about this.
Ed Poor, aka Uncle Ed
Edmond H. Wollmann P.M.A.F.A.
(C) 2005 Altair Publications, SAN 299-5603
Astrological Consulting http://www.astroconsulting.com/
Artworks http://www.e-wollmann.com/http://home.earthlink.net/~arcturianone/
> >Wikipedia is a real-life Hitchhiker's Guide: huge, nerdy, and
imprecise.
>
>My advice: don't panic.
I think that should be, "Don't panic"
You were being imprecise, and I'm being a huge nerd about it.
eD pooR, a reversE capitalisT (and kook-in-the-making)