On 6/25/05, Chris Jenkinson <talrias(a)gmail.com> wrote:
> Fine, this wasn't a necessary part of the proposal. The reason I added
> it was mainly due to time concerns for the Arbitration Committee - a
> decision appears to take a long time, and in that time the "bad" admin
> could do more damage.
This is still a solution desperately in search of a problem. We have
one incident in recent times where this *did* occur, and the admin
involved was very quickly desysopped by consensus to protect the
content they were deleting, in the similar manner to the way Mr.
Treason was hardbanned by general agreement. If, god forbid, such an
incident occurred again, it could very easily be dealt with by the
same measures. And if it is not that urgent, then it hurts none to go
through due process.
-- ambi
Fred - let me clarify the position as far as the English and Welsh national curriculum is concerned.
In 2002 the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority, which sets the English and Welsh National Curriculum for state schools, for the first time added into the history curriculum that children should be taught what BCE/CE means. Nothing more than that - just what it means. That in itself caused angry letters to be written to some newspapers, and the Evening Standard article to which someone else has already provided the URL to.
The QCA (no doubt aware of the public outcry that would occur if they did anything different) made clear that this does not mean they are introducing BCE/CE notation - they themselves continue and will continue to use BC/AD notation. They did note that children could, if they wished, use BCE/CE notation. Despite the QCA continuing to use BC/AD notation itself, a very very small number of renegate "right-on" teachers have insisted their pupils use BCE/CE - only for an angry response from parents to follow.
In summary - the English and Welsh national curriculum requires children to be taught what BCE/CE means. The QCA continues and will continue to use BC/AD notation, which remains the form of notation used throughout the QCA's syllabuses. Wherever there have been attempts by a small number of teachers acting on their own initiative to require BCE/CE notation in UK, they have normally been met by an angry response.
Jon
Fred Bauder wrote:
It seems to have been adopted as part of the curriculum in the UK.
Fred
On Jun 21, 2005, at 10:12 AM, David Gerard wrote:
> Fred Bauder (fredbaud(a)ctelco.net) [050621 23:45]:
>
>
>> My proposed decision simply stated what is true, that common era
>> notation is finding favor in the scholarly community.
>>
>
>
> That's a bit US POV-centric. It's certainly not true outside the US.
>
>
> - d.
>
>
>
>
---------------------------------
How much free photo storage do you get? Store your holiday snaps for FREE with Yahoo! Photos. Get Yahoo! Photos
en:User:UninvitedCompany has a user page which contains text with a
form much like a standard copyright grant, which makes the claim that
because wikipedia or it's articles are a collective work by many
authors that any contributor, no matter how minor (as his less than 3k
edits are quite minor compared to the size of wikipedia as a whole
which he lays claim to), is entitled to relicense the work as a whole
under any license they see fit. He then goes on to use this to grant
the entire wikipedia under CC-BY-SA because he has issues with the
GFDL. Although he has been careful to pad his words with the
expected IANALs, it is pretty clear his intention is to circumvent the
licensing of Wikipedia and, failing that, to encourage others to
disregard our licensing.
When the issue of User:Pioneer12's non-article edits came up ... I
didn't care too much because the issue was the licensing of his work,
not mine. In this case UninvitedCompany is making an effort to
circumvent the licensing on my work that I have chosen, by attempting
to relicense that work against my wishes. I consider this to be
profoundly anti-social.
Although uninvitedcompany has been more than polite in my discussion
with him on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:UninvitedCompany
(more polite than I for sure), he refuses to stop attempting to
relicense my work via the text on his user page.
I understand that UninvitedCompany dislikes the GFDL and that he is
not alone in that position. I, however disagree with his position on
the GFDL and his idea of what other people think of the GFDL. For
example, the position of debian legal is not as strongly negative as
he implies, because the license is setup to only have teeth against
distribution so the 'encrypted storage' issue is generally a strawman
argument. I specifically prefer the GFDL over the CC-BY-SA because
the DRM restriction would make life hard for someone distributing my
content using a device which involuntarily locks the content with DRM
(http://www.theregister.co.uk/2001/01/10/everything_you_ever_wanted/).
The GFDL's strong DRM terms contain an intentional side effect that
may help slow the market penetration of devices which subjugate the
users of the technology, and I strongly support this protection
because it is certan that since I use Free Software I would be unable
to access content given to me by users of CPRM devices no matter their
good intentions, and because only through creating 'licensed
publishers' can the mass-media companies completely close the hole
that allows the illegal distribution of their work. Such a future
would likely deny me the effective ability to publish altogether, as
long as you define effective to mean not providing a special playing
device with my work and publish as covering a wider audience than some
free software geeks.
... but the arguments for and against the GFDL really don't matter
here: My work is licensed under the GFDL and only the GFDL. It is
almost certainly not possible for User:UninvitedCompany or anyone else
to change that, but it is terribly impolite for him to use space on
Wikipedia (userpager or otherwise) to make such claims that disagree
with our license text and the wishes of (at least) some of the
editors. The argument UninvitedCompany is advocating would allow any
editor to distribute wikipedia under any license he wishes no matter
how more or less restrictive. Judging by the small number of people
who dual license their work as PD or BSD, I suspect many would
disagree.
So I'd like to ask the community at large to please ask uninvited
company to revise his user page. I don't think his claim has any more
merit than pioneer12's disagreement with the form he submitted all his
talk text through, but I think it's all the more negative because it
purports to effect the licensing of work by authors other than him
rather than just his own.
JAY JG wrote:
>> > For how long would these individual article blocks remain?
>>
>> Just like current user blocks, the duration can be set by the
>> blocker/admin. I would assume that a 24 hour block for a 3RR violation
>> could for just the article in question, not for the entire Wikipedia.
>
> I fail to see the advantage then; they would likely just move on to
> revert-warring on some other article, and then return to the original
> after 24 hours.
The advantage is that it gives the antisocial more rope to hang
themselves with, while simultaneously taking a lot of the sting out of
being blocked, for those who aren't simply on Wikipedia to push an
agenda. Yes, the battlefields may shift occasionally, but the process of
building a case for arbitration against serious offenders can move much
more rapidly. Then you won't have to wait as impatiently to get a
sanction that lasts longer than 24 hours, in situations where this
proves necessary.
Back in the day when the three-revert rule was only a guideline, I
brought an arbitration case against three of the most prolific revert
warriors of the time. I think the arbitrators found the evidence
persuasive in part because I could point to a long list of pages that
had to be protected due to their revert wars. This is straightforward
and a lot easier to deal with than wading through diffs to figure out
who said what personal attack to whom. The same principle would apply to
somebody who gets blocked from 10 different articles on closely related
topics in short succession. With this kind of track record established,
I'm confident that arbitration would quickly consider hearing such a case.
--Michael Snow
ArbCom, unfortunately, but at least now with good intentions, is making another mistake on the BCE/CE arbitration. It appears to be about to declare that the MoS (or at least an extract of it) is policy. My understanding is this is not the case, and that the MoS is just a non-binding guideline.
This understanding comes from a recent discussion, initiated by SlimVirgin, who argued that the MoS had never followed the correct procedure to become policy. I argued that it had - as it was followed generally by WPians and had been effectively accepted as such by the community. However, SlimVirgin, supported by others, argued that it would need a consensus vote. I didn't persevere in countering this argument for too long, and the designation of the MoS as "policy" was removed.
It seems the ArbCom is about to reverse the effects of that discussion and declare a basic guideline as policy. As there is nothing in the general wording of the MoS to separate out the bits on BCE/CE notation from the rest, it leaves open the possibility that users not complying with the MoS (and most don't from time to time at least in some respects) are leaving themselves open to complaints.
Kind regards
Jguk
---------------------------------
Yahoo! Messenger NEW - crystal clear PC to PCcalling worldwide with voicemail
In a message dated 6/23/05 3:32:40 PM, wikien-l-request(a)Wikipedia.org writes:
> Excuse me - I get the last word here. Use of BC/AD is evil and causes
> cancer.
>
That caveman comic strip with the funny ants used "B.C."....
is Johnny Hart a reasonable authority on this matter?