WikiEN-l March 2007

wikien-l@lists.wikimedia.org

181 participants
397 discussions

Re: [WikiEN-l] Accountability: bringing back a proposal I made nearly 2 years ago
by charles.r.matthews＠ntlworld.com 06 Mar '07

06 Mar '07

Sheldon Rampton wrote >During the course of > his rise within the project, however, he would have become familiar > with the policy and would have been more likely to bring himself into > compliance with it before it blew up on him. Actually the right thing to do, in case of a false start as editor, is a 'chrysalis move', if I could call it that. Shed the old account while bringing in a new one, dropping a note to the ArbCom about what you're doing and why. Not good for the edit count, maybe, but much better for the soul. Charles ----------------------------------------- Email sent from www.virginmedia.com/email Virus-checked using McAfee(R) Software and scanned for spam

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Re: [WikiEN-l] Study finds that Wikipedia has evolved from an
by wikipedia2006＠dpbsmith.com 06 Mar '07

06 Mar '07

> From: Andrew Cady <andrew.cady(a)gmail.com> > Plato's Republic was not essentially dissimilar to Soviet Communism; > the main difference is that the Soviets at least payed lip service to > democracy and the value of the working class. And the Soviets didn't insist that the Soviet Union's population be (somehow!) be maintained in such a way as to always constitute exactly 5040 citizens.

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Re: [WikiEN-l] Rename admins to janitors
by charles.r.matthews＠ntlworld.com 06 Mar '07

06 Mar '07

Erica wrote > > You know, many people do not live in the USA. About 95%, really. Why not > > just cite [[Walter Reed Army Medical Center]]? > > > Good grief, give him a break. He already apologized. (a) Email lists aren't synchronous; 'already' carries relativity in time. Don't assume I had read the mails you have. (b) Marc posts here in terms of his wish to understand WP culture more fully (AFAICS). I thought it was indicative of something relevant to that, that he referred to American media rather than WP to make a point. Charles ----------------------------------------- Email sent from www.virginmedia.com/email Virus-checked using McAfee(R) Software and scanned for spam

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Re: [WikiEN-l] Rename admins to janitors
by charles.r.matthews＠ntlworld.com 06 Mar '07

06 Mar '07

Marc Riddell wrote > If you live in the United States, and have seen or heard any national news > reports in the last week or so, you would. You know, many people do not live in the USA. About 95%, really. Why not just cite [[Walter Reed Army Medical Center]]? ----------------------------------------- Email sent from www.virginmedia.com/email Virus-checked using McAfee(R) Software and scanned for spam

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Re: [WikiEN-l] Is editing for payment a fundamentally problematic conflict of interests?
by charles.r.matthews＠ntlworld.com 06 Mar '07

06 Mar '07

"Mercenary Wikipedian" wrote > Let's judge edits by their content and editors > by their contributions, not by their motive. I think we tend to judge editors, on the downside, by their handling of conflicts. Being paid by results may hinder someone's perspective, as far as resolving disputes goes. It certainly is likely to increase sheer persistence. Charles ----------------------------------------- Email sent from www.virginmedia.com/email Virus-checked using McAfee(R) Software and scanned for spam _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l

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[Crosslist] [Press] Press list
by Guillaume Paumier 06 Mar '07

06 Mar '07

[Crossposted on many lists] Hello, The press team of the Foundation is currently building a press list file and gathering contact information of journalists and editors of all the major media (newspapers, magazines, radio, tv) around the world. The aim is to improve our communication and be able to reach people from all over the world (not only people from the US and not only people from English-speaking countries). We are requesting help from the whole community to gather this information. We have the chance to have a global community of users and volunteers and we need to take advantage of this chance. Please help us by sending contact information of journalists and editors you know or from your country. The basic information are : Name of the journalist: First name: Email: Name and type of the media: (for instance "CNN, worldwide news TV channel") Any other information about each contact is welcome (area of concentration, coverage, schedule...). Please send the information you have got to: press at wikimedia dot org and *do not answer this email*, I will probably not get the emails since I am not subscribed to all lists I have posted to. Thanks for your help! -- Guillaume Paumier [[m:User:guillom]] http://www.wikimedia.org

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a final word on Essjay
by daniwo59＠aol.com 06 Mar '07

06 Mar '07

It is my sincere hope that people will just stop discussing this whole Essjay episode ad nauseum. Here is someone who made a mistake. You may even say a big mistake. For that mistake he lost his credibility, he lost his community, he lost his job at Wikia, and he is the subject of disparaging articles and opinions both online and in print. Apart from a public lynching, what else do people want from him? Let him go in peace. There is no need to stomp on every last shred of dignity he still has. Danny <BR><BR><BR>**************************************<BR> AOL now offers free email to everyone. Find out more about what's free from AOL at http://www.aol.com.

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Re: [WikiEN-l] Conservapedia "Commandments"
by charles.r.matthews＠ntlworld.com 06 Mar '07

06 Mar '07

"Thomas Dalton" wrote > > It really takes an American conservative to imply that Noah Webster changing spellings to make them incompatible with the Brits was acting 'conservatively'. > > Actually, I think the American spellings are closer to the originals. > (I hate to admit it, though, since I'm British.) Yes, but that's not a Tory argument (as in Burke good, Rousseau bad). Charles ----------------------------------------- Email sent from www.virginmedia.com/email Virus-checked using McAfee(R) Software and scanned for spam

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Re: [WikiEN-l] Conservapedia "Commandments"
by charles.r.matthews＠ntlworld.com 06 Mar '07

06 Mar '07

"Daniel P. B. Smith" wrote > IMHO there's nothing totally crazy about Conservapedia saying "_our_ > house style is American Usage," although making it one of the > "Commandments" seems... amusing. It really takes an American conservative to imply that Noah Webster changing spellings to make them incompatible with the Brits was acting 'conservatively'. Charles ----------------------------------------- Email sent from www.virginmedia.com/email Virus-checked using McAfee(R) Software and scanned for spam

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Re: [WikiEN-l] Conservapedia "Commandments"
by Daniel P. B. Smith 06 Mar '07

06 Mar '07

> From: "Steve Bennett" <stevagewp(a)gmail.com> > Not sure if I've seen any discussion of this, but this was > interesting: > > http://www.theage.com.au/news/web/wikipedia-foes-set-up-right-site/ > 2007/03/02/1172868789933.html > > Their "Conservapedia Commandments" are intetresting too: > # Everything you post must be true and verifiable. > # Always cite and give credit to your sources, even if in the > public domain. > # Edits/new pages must be family-friendly, clean, concise, and without > gossip or foul language. > # When referencing dates based on the approximate birth of Jesus, give > appropriate credit for the basis of the date (B.C. or A.D.). "BCE" and > "CE" are unacceptable substitutes because they deny the historical > basis. See CE. > # As much as is possible, American spelling of words must be used.[1] > # Do not post personal opinion on an encyclopedia entry. > > I find it bizarre that the CE/AD thing is so important that it rates a > mention in the Commandments. And the "true and verifiable" is a cute > reference to our "verifiable, not true" :) I haven't bothered to check edit histories and so forth, but I'd surmise that some Conservapedian may have been swept up in the BC/AD BCE/CE wars that went through here like a forest fire a year or so ago. Any silly dispute tends to be important to you if you're involved in it. We all know the pattern. You made what you know darn well is a tendentious but, you think, supportable edit. Someone reverts it in a curt way. Soon you're involved in an edit war with someone unreasonable. Next thing you know you've been blocked for 3RR, and a sysop has protected The Wrong Version, and it's censorship... The site is a strange mix of material written by Andrew Schlafly, material that really was developed by high school kids, and, in the past week or so, Wikipedia-style collaborative editing projects that are more like nostalgia.wikipedia.org than Wikipedia As We Know It. The "commandments" were partly developed by the kids. Well, actually (cough) I guess I helped develop one of them myself. How on earth do I explain that? Well, there was a discussion at some point about what the "commandments" should spell out as the _penalty_ for using British spelling. I suggested that since there hadn't been any cases of virulent Anglophilia yet maybe it wasn't too important. I noted that authors normally expect someone else to do the copy-editing, and that when (say) a British author submits a manuscript to an American publishing house or vice versa, they aren't expected to conform to the house style, the publisher just changes it (as witness the title of the first Harry Potter book). So I suggested that the appropriate thing to do was, if a British spelling was noticed, was simply to change it with an edit comment like "Conservapedia style is to use American spellings." No fuss, no warnings to the author. Reserve any chiding/yelling/blocking for editors who were obviously systematically changing American to British spellings in existing articles. People thought this was a good idea and someone, one of the kids I think, explicitly added it as "You will only be blocked for violating command 5 if you repeatedly change words from American spelling to another spelling." By the way... I need to see if anyone has responded to my proposal at Village Pump (technical)... I think we may be a little insensitive to issues that can arise from the fact that _redirects do not explain the reason for the redirect_. Probably most users don't even notice them, but if you don't understand them they can seem like magic... and _if_ it's a case where you're _sensitive_ on the topic they can, I think, send an unintended message. For example, if you type in "phonograph record" and suddenly, pow!, you see "gramophone record," you wouldn't have to be unimaginably sensitive to think Wikipedia was saying "Dummy! It's _gramophone,_ not _phonograph._" It is not at all impossible to misinterpret redirection as "correcting my spelling." One could imagine someone who thinks Presidential dignity requires full names to type in William J. Clinton and blink at the informality of "changing" it to Bill. Some redirects are corrections of e.g. spelling errors. Some represent semi-conscious decisions about which of several alternatives is preferred or common. (Why should "Lady Mendl" become "Elsie de Wolfe" when there are probably more references to her under the former designation? Because she was famous before she became Lady Mendl, and because most biographies use the name Elsie de Wolfe). Some are almost totally arbitrary choices because a choice had to be made (a lot of the U. S./British choices are that way). IMHO there's nothing totally crazy about Conservapedia saying "_our_ house style is American Usage," although making it one of the "Commandments" seems... amusing.

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WikiEN-l March 2007