zero 0000 wrote
> I agree 101%. Deletionism seems to be a sort of mental disease.
More radical incivility.
Charles
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Marc Riddell wrote
>I have been
> doing minor editing in WP for a year now and, time permitting, would like to
> participate more actively in the project. And, like anything a person is
> considering becoming a part of, I want to get a sense of its beliefs and
> values.
>
> My work and passion has been, is now, and probably always will be, persons
> and their interactions. That is why this issue is so important to me.
An argument I have produced before, is that bad language and aggressiveness as a routine form of interaction appeals mostly to the young and male. It happens that males 20 to 25 might be the most significant group here. I think it is also the case that such forms of verbal interaction and self-assertion are likely to put off many other demographic groups. So civility policy is one way of trying to broaden the base of contributors, or to retain people who profile is not a good match to those who think freedom of speech is mostly about the right to be f****** rude all the time.
Charles
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In Jimbo's 2005 "Wikipedia is an encyclopedia" post, he described the
purpose of the project:
Wikipedia is first and foremost an effort to create and distribute a
free encyclopedia of the highest possible quality to every single
person on the planet in their own language.
Does this still hold true? There have been a lot of major changes in
policy in the months since, which, we all hope, are supportive of our
fundamental goals. I think almost everyone who contributes to the
project agrees completely with this mission and wants to maintain it.
But if you think about it, the statement actually contains several
goals:
* free
* (create an) encyclopedia
* of the highest possible quality
* (distribute) to every single person on the planet
* in their own language
In fact, these goals occasionally conflict. For instance, machine
translations are considered "worse than nothing" because of their poor
quality, so it would seem that "of the highest possible quality" is
more important than "in their own language".
If Jimbo's statement is still valid, which objectives override the
others? Can they be arranged (preferably by Jimbo) in order of
priority?
Can this statement or the principles it represents ever be repealed or
changed? Who has the power to change it? Is this simply a top-down
authoritarian mandate that can't be challenged, or do regular
Wikipedians have a say when changes are made to the ultimate goals and
priorities of the project?
> From: Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman(a)spamcop.net>
>
> On Wed, 17 Jan 2007 14:48:44 -0800, Ray Saintonge
> <saintonge(a)telus.net> wrote:
>
> >This sounds sensible. Perhaps what we need some where is a list of
> what
> >would be "standard" information in a biographical article.
> Essentially
> >we would be looking at the kind of boring data that would be found
> in a
> >"Who's Who" that chose to include the individual: date and place of
> >birth and marriage, where they went to school, etc. Any of ths
> stuff
> >could still be disputed, put it would be presumed valid unless that
> happens.
>
> Actually I think this is a good litmus test for whether an individual
> is encyclopaedically notable. If there are no sources for basic
> biographical data other than the individual themselves, in other
> words
> if there has never been a reputably published biography or profile,
> then I don't believe we can have an article.
This would include minor actors and exclude famous scientists.
Even scientists who have a large number of scientific achievements
are rarely the subjects of published biographies. Being famous
enough to get a mention in newspapers doesn't help either, since
such articles rarely provide information like place of birth.
Zero.
____________________________________________________________________________________
Food fight? Enjoy some healthy debate
in the Yahoo! Answers Food & Drink Q&A.
http://answers.yahoo.com/dir/?link=list&sid=396545367
I'm amazed.
I'll be writing in-depth responses to a few people shortly, but I'm amazed
at everything that happens when I just go away for a few days.
Parker
For novices i think it is difficult to read these mailing lists.
I think that it would be an idea to have the mailing lists
archived to google groups (which i believe is possible)
If you are worried about the possibility of spam etc we could
set the group to announce, so it is viewable on google groups
but to reply users must sign up in usual way. It would then just
be like a mirror of this groups messages but more easily viewed.
Just a suggestion
Thanks
George
According to Simetrical:
"It is now possible for wikis to require a certain number of edits, as well
as a certain registration time period, for users to become autoconfirmed.
Thus, for instance, accounts that have existed for several weeks but have
made fewer than five edits might be prevented from moving pages or so on. If
a particular wiki would like this enabled for them, it can file a bug report
after community agreement."
I think we should enable this with a threshold of 10 edits. 10 edits is
reasonable for a vandal to go through the whole warning system and get
blocked, while at the same time not too much so as to discourage new
contributors.
--Mets501
I see a problem case for our "Mediation Cabal" here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Mediation_Cabal/Cases/2006-12-08_Bei…
Mediator's result:
"Pursuant to the First Amendment, the photos are allowed.
Wiki<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Wikizach>
e <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:EA>Zach|
talk<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Wikizach>19:20, 26 January
2007 (UTC)"
There are two main problems with this:
#1 - the dispute was never about the "First Amendment", but about whether
the photos and quotations in question were violations of NPOV standards (and
for that matter, whether they were genuine or not). This is not looked at at
all by the mediator's result, nor commented on anywhere by the mediator.
#2 - As referenced by another thread on this mailing list, Wikipedia is not
bound by the US Constitution nor the First Amendment thereof. Therefore, the
"result" of the Mediation has no basis in policy.
I find it to be a bad mediation.
Parker
Hello,
Recently the Mayor of a small town in Texas tried to pass an ordinance
making it against the law to use the ³N² word within the city limits. Fine:
$500 for each offense.
He went into this believing the ordinance¹s passage would be a slam dunk
it wasn¹t. The vast majority of the multiracial citizens of the town
protested to such a degree that he finally gave up and abandoned the idea.
The citizens' basic argument: what word is next?
I bring this up because, when I first came to WP, the one policy I found
most disturbing was the one concerning ³incivility². Most especially the
practice of banning (punishing) members of the WP community for using words
and phrases considered by whoever made up the policy to be ³offensive².
This, to me, made WP free in every thing but speech.
I know this issue has been touched upon several times in this Mailing List
just since I started participating in it, but I wanted to speak directly to
the policy and its practice at this time.
If a particular word or phrase offends you hit delete and move on.
What are your thoughts and feelings about this?
Marc Riddell