Posted on behalf of Daniel Brandt, at his request:
I feel that Jimmy Wales made the wrong decision when he unbanned
me a couple of days ago. I had asked that my article be deleted,
along with the Talk pages, and my User and User_talk pages too.
I am not interested in editing Wikipedia, and never have been,
apart from my desire and need to comment on why I objected to that
article on me, in whole and in part.
I ask that Mr. Wales reconsider. If the article still exists
several weeks from now, I will formally appeal to the Wikimedia
Foundation Board of Trustees. Since Erik is a trustee (at least
until June), he may have a chance to cast his vote on this issue at
that time. If the Board declines to get involved, then this will
introduce an additional level of confusion over the distribution
of power and responsibility within Wikipedia.
Since the structure of Wikipedia has a direct bearing on the
content offered by Wikipedia, this distribution of power has legal
implications. Let me put it bluntly: While it may be true that the
Foundation Board of Trustees does not seek to shape content apart
from its control over moderation privileges through the software
it develops and the servers it owns, it is still true that the
Board has the power to summarily delete content. Failure to do so
is actionable if the content is illegal, assuming that the Board
is made aware of the situation. I don't think anyone seriously
disputes this. If it is a matter of dispute, then this is what
I hope to clarify someday in a court of law.
Erik thinks very highly of Wikipedia's mission, and feels that
the topics it chooses to cover should enjoy sanctuary from outside
interference -- Wikipedia exists in the wonderful world of
cyberspace, where real-world laws don't apply. The only concession
he makes is that the subject's wishes are "one factor": the victim
gets to say some final words before execution.
That is not a realistic point of view. It is especially unrealistic
given the fact that hordes of anonymous editors, many of them
underage, are creating Wikipedia's content, and can change it
at any time.
It was pointed out by another that I'm neither powerful enough
nor rich enough to give Wikipedia any trouble, and therefore it
follows that Wikipedia should ignore me. As pathetic and immoral
as this viewpoint may be, it is the logical extension of Erik's
position. If Erik is wrong, it's the death of Wikipedia in the
short-term. And if Erik is right, it's still the death of
Wikipedia, but now perhaps in the longer-term.
I think Mr. Wales should delete my article, with the understanding
that in this case he is acting for the Board. It would save
everyone a lot of trouble.
-- Daniel Brandt
I've added this to [[Wikipedia:Autobiography]] as a hazard of writing
your own article - that if no-one is interested enough to create an
article about you, no-one may be watching it in case of vandalism.
- d.
> Upon searching for a term, a number of tags are presented (each with
> given a different weight which represented by fontsize) along with
> search result (e.g. the following is the search result for search term
> 'Jesus'
http://www4.wiwiss.fu-berlin.de:8800/search/search.aspx?QueryString=Jesus&Q…)
It's interesting that, for the sample search on "Jesus" as shown above,
one of the biggest-print tags is "Fictional character".
There seem to be character-set problems; Wikipedia is served under
UTF-8, and so is DBpedia, but something in between seems to be mangling
the non-ASCII characters in search results so you end up with random
garbage.
--
Dan
You can now search and browse dbpedia online. dbpedia is a project
which has extracted structured information from English Wikipedia (and
another of other languages, I think) and each entry is links back to
the Wikipedia article.
Upon searching for a term, a number of tags are presented (each with
given a different weight which represented by fontsize) along with
search result (e.g. the following is the search result for search term
'Jesus' http://www4.wiwiss.fu-berlin.de:8800/search/search.aspx?QueryString=Jesus&Q…)
Link: http://dbpedia.org/search/ or
http://www4.wiwiss.fu-berlin.de:8800/search/
Credit: Georgi Kobilarov developed this tool and posted a link to [dbpedia-l]
--
Oldak Quill (oldakquill(a)gmail.com)
After pondering the concept a bit more, I went ahead and created
[[Wikipedia:Admin buddies]]. It's a rather low-key concept, doesn't need
to be elevated to policy or even a guideline. If it seems reasonable, we
can recommend it to new and existing admins, advertise it around (not
sure where).
I'm sure there's room for tinkering, feel free. One obvious idea is to
generalize to "editor buddies" in general, but it seems like something
that mostly makes more sense for heavily-involved editors - since this
isn't mentoring, newbies and occasional editors aren't likely to get
much benefit.
Stan
> Date: Tue, 24 Apr 2007 18:09:49 -0700
> From: Stan Shebs <stanshebs(a)earthlink.net>
> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] You Really Don't Get It
> To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
> Message-ID: <462EAA5D.1020803(a)earthlink.net>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed
>
> George Herbert wrote:
> > It might also make sense to create some sort of structure for an
> > organized effort on that account. Anything from a "Stressed admin
> > noticeboard" to a "This admin pledges to take a Wikibreak
> if 5 admins
> > or 10 users ask them to in any 24 hr period" pledge and template.
> > Those ideas occurred to me but I haven't had bandwidth to
> follow them
> > up.
> >
> Or it could be as simple as every admin having an "admin buddy",
> somebody who maybe doesn't normally get involved with your
> same areas,
> but takes a look to see how you're doing every once in a
> while, and can
> speak up objectively if things are not going well. It
> wouldn't be much
> of a time imposition to look over one other person's contribution
> history once a week, plus if the areas of specialty are different,
> there's opportunity for broadening one's admin outlook. This
> would be a
> peer relationship, not any kind of mentoring - totally random
> pairing of
> admins would suffice even (and hopefully allay paranoia about cabals).
>
> Stan
Neat.
I could use an "admin buddy". I could be an admin buddy too... How to get
started? Hm... Write me if you want to pair up? Start a page somewhere?
Larry Pieniazek
Work mail: lpieniaz at us.ibm.com
Hobby mail: lar at miltontrainworks.com
On 24 Apr 2007 at 22:38:05 -0700, Blu Aardvark
<jeffrey.latham(a)gmail.com> wrote:
[top-posting fixed; long line rewrapped]
> Daniel R. Tobias wrote:
> > Apparently, taking out that link really pissed Brandt off.
> > (OK... sometimes bad policy decisions can have good effects.)
> Why is "pissing Brandt" off considered to be a "good effect"? A step
> towards escalating a conflict is never a step in the right direction.
OK, I was overly flippant... we should never purposely try to piss
anybody off, as enjoyable as it might be and as much as we may feel
the person deserves it. On the other hand, trying to de-escalate the
conflict by giving in to some of his demands seems pointless given
that he says he just might sue anyway no matter what we do.
--
== Dan ==
Dan's Mail Format Site: http://mailformat.dan.info/
Dan's Web Tips: http://webtips.dan.info/
Dan's Domain Site: http://domains.dan.info/
Hello,
I've been using Wikipedia for awhile now, and try to contribute information
when I can. Lately I've edited the "External Links" section for a couple of
bands that I listen to. I added links to their MySpace pages, which provide
a great place to play their music and see what they sound like.
However, all of these edits get deleted quite soon thereafter. What's the
deal? Does Wikipedia have a policy about removing links to MySpace? If so,
what's the motivation?
I feel that links to websites where you can sample music are important and
educational and don't understand why the links keep getting deleted. Could
someone enlighten me?
Thanks,
-Matt
--
View this message in context: http://www.nabble.com/Links-to-Myspace-in-External-Links-section-tf3642719.…
Sent from the English Wikipedia mailing list archive at Nabble.com.
I just saw that the JavaScript wizards at Wikimedia Commons came up
with an impressive new tool - if you look at an image description
page, you will now see "Nominate for deletion" link in the bottom
right corner. If you follow that link and give a deletion reason,
everything - the tagging of the image, the listing on the Deletion
requests page, and the notification of the uploader - is done
automatically using JavaScript.
This is quite impressive. I'd love to see more of this kind of
automation enabled by default, at least for users in the
"autoconfirmed" group. Think about it:
* Deletion, peer review, featured article status nominations
* Speedy deletion with auto-notification to the affected users
* updating news pages & portals with important announcements
...
I'm sure there are countless scenarios where this might come in handy.
I can see the dangers, but I think the benefits justify some more
experiments. Any takers & other examples of similar semi-automated
tools?
--
Peace & Love,
Erik
DISCLAIMER: This message does not represent an official position of
the Wikimedia Foundation or its Board of Trustees.
"An old, rigid civilization is reluctantly dying. Something new, open,
free and exciting is waking up." -- Ming the Mechanic
More stuff has happened in the fight over linking to Brandt's site in
a Wikipedia Signpost article on him. Apparently, taking out that
link really pissed Brandt off. (OK... sometimes bad policy decisions
can have good effects.) Writing on one of those infamous Attack
Sites, Brandt threatened to bring back his Hive Mind 2 page (the one
with admins, not regular editors) unless Wikipedia (or whoever has
final authority over Signpost) reinstates the link right away. (Bad
move on Brandt's part... if he kept his mouth shut, there'd be plenty
of pro-free-speech, anti-silly-link-policy editors like me around to
fight for putting back the link as relevant and reasonable for that
article... but some of us aren't nearly so eager to fight for giving
in to a Brandt Ultimatum.)
And, following this, somebody wrote about it on [[WP:AN/I]], giving a
link to Brandt's comments on the other site (reasonable... how is
anybody supposed to know what he said, and in what context,
otherwise?), and some of the succeeding comments criticized this
insertion of yet another Link To An Attack Site (though, as of now,
nobody has actually removed the link).
--
== Dan ==
Dan's Mail Format Site: http://mailformat.dan.info/
Dan's Web Tips: http://webtips.dan.info/
Dan's Domain Site: http://domains.dan.info/