For those who are unaware, there was recently a high profile (and, IMO, very shady) attempt in Australia to trademark the term Linux. In order to receive a trademark, the applicants had to demonstrate the term Linux is generic. While reading the article, this caught my eye:
"The applicant used Wikipedia and Google to back its claim but IP Australia dismissed the examples. 'The entry from the Wikipedia encyclopaedia indicates 'Linux is a computer operating system and its kernel' ... demonstrating generic use rather than trademark use.'"
- http://www.zdnet.com.au/news/software/soa/Linux_trademark_bid_rejected/0,20…
Ok, I admit, I smiled a bit.
Oh great, now someone has gone to the undeletion policy talk page and
described taking content into account as "absurd" and proposes to remove
reference to content, and replace it with a reference to proper procedure
being performed.
This is utterly bonkers!
My attempt to restore the head of the VFU page to correctly quote the
undeletion policy has been reverted. I have edited the "purpose" section of
the VFU page to state solely that the authoritative description of the
purpose of the page is in the undeletion policy.
What does one do in a case where some editors insist on replacing a correct
citation of official policy with a form of words which is directly contrary
to it?
On 9/16/05, geni <geniice(a)gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> There are over 500 admins. If you can't find an admin to support you I
> suggest that people should stop and think why.
Absolutely. I think more editors should use this method of appeal, since
listing an article that can be seen and edited on a forum that requires a
consensus to delete stands a far, far better chance of success than
appealing for the undeletion of an article that most people cannot see and
nobody can edit, and that requires a quorum and a majority vote to undelete.
However this only highlights the absurdity of the extremely onerous VFU
requirements. Taken alongside the worrying trend on VFU to deprecate the
function of reconsidering the merits of neglected arguments, anyone would
think we were trying to *avoid* remedying mistaken deletions.
Ed Poor wrote:
> Can users simply:
> (1) Tag any article as "unmergeable" for a five-day period, to
> (2) Force a vote on whether it should be kept or deleted?
You are quite correct. I've removed ", merge" from [[template:vfd]].
Whoever put it there was on crack.
- d.
Hello,
My user name is 'Brian Brockmeyer' and my IP address is 66.254.232.219.
I am writing because I have been the victim of an unfair block by Phroziac
over edits relating to the University of Miami article page.
User:Arigold reported me on the Wikipedia:Administrators' Noticeboard/3RR
for alleged violation of the 3-revert rule, which was not the case.
Phroziac, who handled Arigold's complaint, readily acknowledged that there
had been no 3RR violation, writing:
"Maybe I'm blind, but i don't see any four reverts from him that fall into a
24 hour period. However, that is gaming the system, and I have blocked him
for 24 hours. In the future, please sign posts on pages like this with ~~~~
--Phroziac (talk) 15:20, 15 September 2005 (UTC)"
By Phroziac's own admission, I did not violate the 3RR, yet he proceeded to
block me anyway with no basis in Wiki's Blocking Policy.
His claim that I was "gaming the system" amounts to nothing more than an
affirmation that I did NOT violate the 3RR. Even still, it lacks all merit,
since there were merely 4 reverts in a 5 day span (19:36 September 9 to
19:54 September 14, the date of my last reversion that precipitated
Phroziac's block), which hardly evinces any kind of intent to manipulate and
exploit the 3RR. The 3RR prohibits 3 reverts within a 24-hour window. I
made 4 in 100+ (interestingly enough, the same # as AriGold, who was NOT
blocked). Neither the 3RR was violated, nor its spirit, was violated. Not
even close. That a block was issued is an eggregious abuse of
administrative power on the part of Phroziac.
Furthermore, even after being blocked in violation of Wiki's Blocking
Policy, Phroziac failed to follow the suggested procedures for informing a
blocked user in the Policy, specifically: "It is helpful to leave a notice
of the block, with links to the differences that demonstrate the violation,
on the user's talk page."
No such notice was ever rendered on my talk page. I did not learn that I
had been blocked until I attempted to make edit. The reason is quite
obvious: Phroziac did not have any grounds for invoking a block that he
could point to on my talk page--he knew he could not demonstrate any
violation, so he neglected to provide notice altogether.
In sum, I request that the block be lifted and that Phroziac be made aware
of proper Wiki Blocking Policy.
Thank you for your attention,
Brian Brockmeyer
_________________________________________________________________
Dont just search. Find. Check out the new MSN Search!
http://search.msn.click-url.com/go/onm00200636ave/direct/01/
From: "Tony Sidaway" <minorityreport(a)bluebottle.com>
>Actually on "one-line articles", my preference
>is for articles (or at least article intros)
>that can fit into the first screen. This is an
>internet encyclopedia and if you can't say
>something useful in the first
>paragraph then the reader will wander off
>to another site. If an article
>can be written well as a single sentence,
>I think that's a good
>thing--indeed an ideal to aim for.
"Article intros that can fit into the first screen." Oh, absolutely, by all
means.
Now I'm going to pretend that I didn't read that key qualification and tear
off onto a rant.
ARTICLES that can fit into one screen? No, no, no. That's not an
encyclopedia, that's the Britannica MICROpaedia.
An encyclopedia is not about data, it's about knowledge.
An encyclopedia's job is to make knowledge _accessible_. An encyclopedia
explains. An encyclopedia _instructs_. That's what the "-pedia" part is all
about. An encyclopedia is supposed to synthesize and make sense of topics.
Why on earth does my public library's reference room even have an
encyclopedia in it? (Several, in fact).
Why would anyone look up something in a twenty-volume encyclopedia when the
library as a whole contains fifteen hundred times as many volumes? There
probably isn't a single topic in the encyclopedia that isn't better dealt
with in some standalone book. And it's just as easy for me to find that book
in the library's computerized catalog as it is for me to open the
encyclopedia's index.
So why do I use the library's encyclopedia?
Because the encyclopedia is selective, and because it synthesizes. Because
when I don't want to read all the way through a 1,000 page book about the
Bounty mutineers, it tells me about as much as I need and want to know.
Also, I know that the encyclopedia is going to present some broadly accepted
mainstream view of the Bounty mutiny. If I just go to the history shelves,
unless I first spend some time looking up book reviews, I won't know whether
I'm reading a "standard" account or whether it's some kind of revisionist
account with an axe to grind.
After I get _oriented_ by reading an encyclopedia article on the Bounty, or
quadratic equations, or the history of jazz, then I'm ready to move on to the
rest of the library.
(Now, the Micropaedia is about a third of the Britannica's total content. And
a Micropaedia article is typically about, well, one screen. So, OK if someone
wants to suggest that an appropriate balance for Wikipedia is for about a
third of its content to be one-screen articles, OK).
Keith Old writes:
"After all, one of the reasons for Speedy Deletion is that an article has not
established notability of the subject."
No. Lots of our articles don't *establish* notability, and they're not
speediable at all. The A7 CSD is for articles that don't *assert*
notability. If an article contains a (reasonably credible) claim of
notability, that is enough to take it out of the category. The criterion
is somewhat elastic, but there is apparently some ongoing work to tighten
it, by providing illustrative examples or otherwise. So if you write an
article "Bobby Moore, a player for West Ham, was the captain of the 1966
World Cup winning England football team", it stop far short of
establishing notability (no references) but it does undeniably *assert*
notability.
I'd support that position. How could having unencyclopaedic articles not
damage the credibility of an encyclopaedia?
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Kelly Martin [mailto:kelly.lynn.martin@gmail.com]
> Sent: 14 September 2005 4:37 PM
> To: English Wikipedia
> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Why changing the deletion process is a bad idea
>
>
> On 9/14/05, JAY JG <jayjg(a)hotmail.com> wrote:
>> It reduces the credibility of the project.
>
> That's a highly disputable claim for which I doubt you can produce
> much in the way of support.
>
> Kelly
So being the noob, what guidance would you or the list give about this? Should I just edit it? I could post on his Talk page but I have a feeling he is not a "team" player as he has told another user I know to never post on "his" Talk page(s) (he has another user account as well). I just think he is going to be difficult and not being verse in all that is wiki would rather ask here for guidance.
~Terry
----------------------------------------
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Terry Bader wrote:
> Referring to this user page - User:Matt von Furrie; is his statement
> at the top of the page allowed on Wikipedia? I thought all content
> was supposed to be at a minimum GDFL which includes user spaces?
>
Well, it was based on [[User:Halibutt]], which says "This content is
meaningful only on Wikipedia.org". [[User:Matt von Furrie]] says "This
content is restricted to Wikipedia.org", which is clearly not allowed.
--
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