On 29/01/2008, Kurt Maxwell Weber <kmw(a)kurtweber.us> wrote:
> On Tuesday 29 January 2008 02:41, you wrote:
> > Consistency is the something-or-other of foolish minds, as the saying
> > goes. We make these rules for ourselves; they don't have to be
> > consistent
>
> Way to completely misinterpret Thoreau's dictum.
>
> He wasn't referring to logical consistency--in fact, he understood that
> LOGICAL consistency was essential.
>
> Rather, he was talking about "consistency" in the sense of a stubborn refusal
> to change one's mind in the face of superior evidence or arguments.
>
> Please, from now on make sure you actually understand what people mean when
> they say something before you invoke it to support your own arguments.
Well, I was invoking it as a handy bon mot, because, you know, that's
what we do with nice flip phrases from the common cultural heritage
when we are debating unrelated things. It's not being "invoked as
support"; if it was, I'd have actually explained why I was invoking
it, and probably named the grand authority, rather than saying "as the
saying goes" and moving on.
Anyhow, I hate to be snotty in response to a snotty email, but I think
you might find you seem a lot more erudite if you attribute it to
Emerson, not to Thoreau...
Regardless, It seems to me perfectly reasonable to invoke that as an
argument against the slavish worship of Everything Must Be Just So,
Just Because (and god knows we have enough trouble with people trying
to insist on precedent as a guiding principle anyway...) Deviate from
our "past act" when it suits us to? That's just the issue here.
--
- Andrew Gray
andrew.gray(a)dunelm.org.uk
The Oxford English Dictionary has the same problem:
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/05/magazine/05cyber.html
"So anyone can be an O.E.D. author now. And, by the way, many try.
"What people love to do is send us words they've invented," Bernadette
Paton says, guiding me through a windowless room used for storage of
old word slips. Will you put the word I have invented into one of your
dictionaries? is a question in the AskOxford.com FAQ. All the
submissions go into the files, and until there is evidence for some
general usage, that's where the wannabes remain.
"Don't bother sending in FAQ. Don't bother sending in wannabes.
They're not even particularly new. For that matter, don't bother
sending in anything you find via Google. "Please note," the O.E.D.'s
Web site warns solemnly, "it is generally safe to assume that examples
found by searching the Web, using search engines such as Google, will
have already been considered by O.E.D. editors." "
- d.
On 1/28/08, oscar van dillen <oscarvandillen(a)wikimedia.org> wrote:
> being a composer, i will give it a go this week at writing an original
> specially for the purpose, which i will then upload and release under a free
> license (which ones do you recommend in this case erik?)
Wow, that's a very nice offer. :-)
CC-BY would be my preference - we could play the attribution after the song.
> *does it have to have a text, or can it also be just nice music?
It's up to you - I think it would be cool to have something that
_somehow_ relates to Wikipedia/Wikimedia.
> *how long should it be?
We can play as many songs as we want on the phone system, but I would
say that any individual song should probably be longer than a minute.
:-)
Thanks again,
Erik
--
Erik Möller
Deputy Director, Wikimedia Foundation
Support Free Knowledge: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate
Sorry if this has been through here already. I just found this:
http://www.flickr.com/groups/cdcovermeme/pool/
where I found this (note the "meme rules" in the image description):
http://www.flickr.com/photos/creativejuice/2219924668/in/pool-cdcovermeme
which led me to this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1230_in_Ireland
which led me to the question:
WtF? Talking of memes, are we now going to create stubs for every single
distinguishable topic, i.e. as long as it isn't some NN/COI case? This
one has been there since April 2007, which means there is a
"long-standing consensus" not to delete, right? Because the decade
1230-1239, in Ireland, is a plausibly circumscribed article subject, right?
Adrian
Our IT manager, Rob Halsell, came over to San Francisco this weekend
to set up the phones in the new Wikimedia Foundation offices. We're
switching to an open source telephony solution based on Asterisk.
Obviously, every phone system needs "on hold" music.
So far, we are using "The RfA Candidate's Song" by User:Bucketsofg. If
you want to shoot to international fame by having your own
Wikipedia-related song used while people are waiting for someone to
answer their call, this is your chance. ;-)
Feel free to add new free content songs to:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Song
(Meta would also be a good place to organize this.)
And no, this post is not indicative of our current priorities. :-)
Things have been quite hectic and busy as we're setting up and
starting to use our new space. We'll continue to update
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation/offices with
pictures, and a detailed report of recent Foundation activities will
be forthcoming shortly.
--
Erik Möller
Deputy Director, Wikimedia Foundation
Support Free Knowledge: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate
Theresa McKnott and her friends have conspired to keep me banned, for more
than a year since my original ban expired; now, that I am not banned in any
way at all, they still persist in maintaining their petty vendetta against
me and my supporters. How can this ridiculous situation be brought to an
end?
Even though I am not banned, they have changed my password and thus
prevented me from logging in; meanwhile, they routinely delete any and every
comment I make anywhere on Wikipedia, no matter how civil or reasonable I
try to be, which thus prevents me from addressing and/or rectifying the
situation. It is time for the heavy-handed administrators to adopt basic
rules of procedure, for which they are punished when they violate them; my
latest edits were clearly not trolling, nor were they disruptive or of a
vandalizing nature -- therefore, to block my IP is obviously unwarranted.
User making a choose-your-own-adventure under their userpage:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:PrincessKirlia/Shop/The_book
Probably should be politely discouraged, and pointed at a free web
hosting company that offers wikis, but I'm tempted to let them alone
and see what they do with it.
--
-george william herbert
george.herbert(a)gmail.com