Ahh...(!?)
>Hi Ruy.
>You're perfectly right. I had you confused with another mailing list
>contributor entirely. I apologise for any confusion this may have
>caused.
>~Mark Ryan
You missed the point, Pete Skyring. Deserving, perhaps, but no, that
was meant for everyone else; I don't hold myself to the same standards
as I expect others to adhere to. As in the hypocricy you have for long
cited me in being guilty of. As in the interchangeability between
vanity and humility. Linking self-aggrandizement to sophistry. And
other nonsensical jibberings: those who actually thrive on animosity
and pain. Bad poetry.
>Nevertheless, it is one deserving of your embrace.
>Peter in Canberra
>>On 7/10/05, El C <el.ceeh at gmail.com> wrote:
>>I, myself don't know either way--assume good
>>faith is indeed a harsh mistress
The purpose of Wikipedia is to create an encyclopedia. Period. Everything
else is tangential to that. We have been fortunate in seeing that a strong
community has emerged as a result of this common goal, but that is precisely the
point. The community emerged because a bunch of people around the world are
trying to create something together. People who are not interested in that goal
have all the rights in the world not to be involved in it.
Nevertheless, we have recently seen quite a bit of game-playing on
Wikipedia. If it is not stopped now, it will continue to grow. We already have chess,
checkers, hangman, N degrees of separation, and I am sure that there will be
more to come.
Not only does this clog up an already overburdened Recent Changes page. It
is an insult to the many people who have given of their time and money so that
Wikipedia can become the world's greatest encyclopedia. It detracts from the
serious nature of the project, and has the potential to turn it into yet
another gaming site. As for referring to the people who oppose these games and
tournaments as "killjoys," this is a very upsetting ad hominem attack. In
essence it means that the people who keep Wikipedia's goals in mind are
"killjoys." I hardly see how that helps Wikipedia.
Jimbo has offered a place on Wikicities for people to play. He has even
suggested on mIRC that it might be ad-free. I hope that these games are moved
their immediately. I am still astounded that this is even a matter for a vote.
Danny
I'm not sure if this is the right place to share this report,
seeing how it does not concern alleged misbehavior of admins,
or directly applies to any other topic recently covered here,
but I'd like to confess that I gave a presentation on Wikipedia
last night to the local Linux Users' Group here in Portland
(aka, PLUG) that was quite warmly received. The entire
audience, about 30-40 in number, who I feel are a reasonable
sampling of the technical elite of this town (with one very
obvious exception), were all very familiar with Wikipedia,
& quite interested to learn more.
I tried to cover the basics of Wikipedia: the software, the
hardware, how Wikipedia works, all of the projects associated
with it -- & the eternal problem of being sure that its content
was reliable. I also tried to cover the community angle of
Wikipedia, comparing it to the communities that have evolved
with various Open Source software projects, Linux in particular,
but at that point I felt I had been talking too long & forced
myself to be very brief.
Some feedback from the audience I thought people here might
be interested in:
* A lot of questions about copyright, & how we make sure people
do not slip copyright violations in.
* Everyone wanted to see the Klingon Wikipedia Front Page.
* The issue of sex-related content came up, which led to a
review of a number of existing Wikipedia articles, including
[[autofellatio]]. (I told an Intel employee who wanted me to
show that page, "I'll let you take a look at it tomorrow at
work.")
* People were impressed in the fact that the emphasis at Wikipedia
is not on regulating content, but in regulating the behavior
of its contributors.
* One person asked if the goals of Commons & Wikisource don't
overlap the goals of the Gutenberg Project. I'm not sure I
gave the right answer to his question.
* Another person afterwards buttonholed me, & proposed Yet
Another Method of stablizing Wikipedia content for the 1.0
release. I tried to assure him that David Gerard had the issue
well in hand, & was working towards a workable implementation that
would likely be released in 12 months' time.
I was also asked some in depth technical questions about how
the servers handle the load on Wikipedia, something I know
very little about -- but would be of immense interest to a lot
of people. I also know that SysAdmin & Linux Journal pay money
for articles they publish, so if someone who knows would make
the effort to write an account, it would help subsidize their
Wikiholicism. ;)
If anyone is interested in the slides to this presentation (I
created 9 html files with links to selected pages), I'd be happy
to share my work.
Geoff
My post wasn't exclusively directed to you, and I'm not interested in
responding to that.
El_C
>No I didn't. I was making a point for you, but I don't think you've
worked it out yet. I'm >not a troll, I'm not a vandal. I speak the
truth as I see it. I accept that I can make errors >and I accept
correction when it is valid. If I have a major flaw it is that I am
far too quick >to point out the flaws in others, and to take pleasure
in doing so, the amount of my >pleasure in direct proportion to their
level of arrogance.
>The Prime Minister of Australia sees the Governor-General as
Australia's head of state. >That's not my opinion, it's the opinion of
the head of government, and it's not up to you >or any other editor to
deny it. Furthermore, it's not just the Prime Minister of this
>country, it is senior members of both parties. Simon Crean, during
his time as Leader >of the Opposition also called the Governor-General
the head of state. You have the >leaders of both of the major parties
in Federal Parliament saying the same thing.
>That doesn't make the Governor-General the undisputed head of state,
but one point >you don't seem to have grasped is that there IS a
dispute. Not between you and me and >any other editor; our opinions
don't matter a damn. There is a diiference of opinion at >the highest
levels of national leadership.
>And now, if you look at [[Government of Australia]] we see that
someone else has stuck >his head up and pointed out what I've said for
the past six months, and they have >provided verifiable sources, as I
did. And surprise, surprise, we see the same mindless >reverts and the
same threats coming from the same editors.
>I say that you should assume good faith, Mister Admin. That's my point.
> Mark, the goal of the project is to make a free encyclopedia. When we
> speak of free we speak of freedom and not price.
> There are already many good unfree encyclopedias, and you can even
> obtain access to them at no cost.
Wikipedia has passed the stage of being comparable
to other encyclopedias you can access at no cost.
> Often the images we have appropriated from the internet are poorly
> suited to our needs. In many cases they have other distracting objects
> in the image, or otherwise fail to clearly illustrate the point which
> needs to be made. Wikipedia would be much better off if the majority
> of our images were created with the intention of illustrating an
> encyclopedia.
This argument is getting a bit tired. Do you have an
[[IBM 360]] in your backyard? Do you have a [[Z machine]]?
> If Wikipedia isn't getting enough photographs, we should reach out and
> encourage more photographers to join our community. A lack of content
> isn't an excuse to break the law.
No-one is suggesting we do.
> Every non-free image we incorporate potentially puts many people who
> use our content in the intended fashion in a legally precarious
> position. This risk is not only extends to our users, but also puts
> the Wikimedia Foundation that runs our servers in danger. Thus every
> nonfree image and every insufficiently tagged image we incorporate
> reduces the freedom of Wikipedia. This is simply unacceptable because
> in a large enough scale it defeats the purpose of our project.
It is a simple matter for downstream users
not to include images tagged used-with-permission.
Wikipedia articles very rarely rely on the images
in their main text.
And I can sympathise with people who don't give a
rat's toenail for the current downstream users,
much as I believe in the GFDL.
> There are places where the law in most of the world will permit us to
> use some images which are mostly free because of the nature of our
> use. However since this use is only permissible in a very limited
> scope and in a way which applicable world wide, this use also reduces
> the freedom of Wikipedia and should be avoided even though it is
> permitted by the law where our servers are operated. Because in some
> cases we can not adequately do our job without borrowing some
> copyrighted content in a way which is legally permissible, we continue
> to permit these images but they must be tagged as such and they should
> be replaced should a replacement become available.
This is confusing to me. It's *fair use* that's currently
allowed - and *that* only works in the US. It's
*used-with-permission* that's forbidden and that
will work anywhere in the world. I'd argue fair-use
is much more dangerous to world wide publication
than used-with-permission is.
And, sadly, it seems that Jimbo's fatwah against UWP has
increased the number of far-fetched rationalizations for
fair use on Wikipedia.
Regards,
Haukur
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1
Hi,
Perhaps, when doing moves, there could be a checkbox which would
automatically fix any double-redirects which would arise as a result of
the move?
This would save time, as the person doing the move wouldn't have to go
through all the redirects created and update them, as the software could
automatically do that, attributing it to the person who did the move.
What are people's thoughts on this?
Chris
- --
Chris Jenkinson
chris(a)starglade.org
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.1 (MingW32)
Comment: Using GnuPG with Thunderbird - http://enigmail.mozdev.org
iD8DBQFC0DaPEq6+ijeBrJ8RAsfgAKCv34GuK005wy31KrET0w/+iP0kjgCghFu8
cOLDyIQWA2jTnEz76YwXUsc=
=m/Ah
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
I'm dissapointed in you, Ruy. This sort of agitation serves no
producitive purpose (even though Mister Wales did hurt your feelings),
on the contrary, it takes away from your valid points and allows the
rest of the list to discard them with far greater ease.
>"those of you not coming to this list to kiss the ass of Ayn Rand
reading porn magnate Jimbo Wales"
>I do regret that Jimbo was not more sensitive to your feelings. I
don't know why Adam Carr can do no wrong in his eyes.
Fred, everything else aside, I am positively impressed with your post.
Wow, I did not expect that.
El_C
/There/ Well, it always comes down to the actual material, at any
given instance, only from these can correct generalizations can be
arrived at --a difficult task-- where conjecture is inevitably easy.
Random generalization.
As an aside, Fred may only have enough time to *read* Wikipedia
articles and do arbitration work rather than *write* articles, but he
may still retain a strong attachment and commitment to the well-being
of the encyclopedia --I, myself don't know either way--assume good
faith is indeed a harsh mistress:
I suspect there will be more hurtful by time this thread is concluded.
Unavoidable? Perhaps so.
El_C
>Everything else aside, I have to say I'm pretty disappointed with Fred
>there. Perhaps this is an inevitable consequence of having an
>arbitrator who doesn't actually write articles - they get out of touch
>with what we're actually here for - to write an encyclopedia.
>-- ambi
>Thanks for providing an excellent example of exactly the kind of editor
>RickK spend much of his time dealing with.
>Jay.
Which is to say, massively, and with great precision and efficacy.
At the expense of (potential) 'social work' on his part? Yes; good.
El_C
I echo that, strongly. Thank you, RickK, for everything (which is A LOT).
El_C
>I object strongly to the characterisation of RickK as an unstable
>administrator. He was one of the best we've had, he worked long and hard,
>and he finally decided he'd had enough. I wish he would come back, but if
>he's had enough then we should be thanking him for his long and faithful
>service. Which I do gladly. Thank you RickK.