If your hosting provider (like mine) lets you create unlimited free
subdomains, you can go with reckless abandon pointing them at
Wikipedia pages. For instance, in honor of my infamous ArbCom case
proposal, I've set up http://rutabaga.dan.info/ to point at the
Wikipedia article "Rutabaga". Should that article now be brought up
for deletion because I've made it into a free-hosting extension of my
personal web space? (As far as I recall, I've never actually edited
that article.)
--
== 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/
I just sent this to the NYT Magazine Letters to the Editor. I doubt it will
be published, but it's a discussion I'd like to have, so here it is:
In response to:
Virginia Heffernan's *My Wired Youth*
<http://www.nytimes.com/glogin?URI=http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/03/magazin…>
in the Sunday, Feb 3rd edition of the magazine.
Virginia Heffernan's response to the PBS Documentary "Growing Up Online"
immediately made me consider the impact of the community surrounding the
online encyclopedia Wikipedia. On Wikipedia, unlike so much of the web,
youth are simultaneously welcomed, protected and encouraged to contribute in
equal measure with adults. The accounts of predatory adults are blocked
indefinitely and without question. The site's founder, Jimmy Wales, has been
quoted as saying,"I don't care if they're a high school kid or a Harvard
professor; it's the work that matters." In contributing content, the voices
of minors are given equal weight with adults, and age discrimination is
considered inappropriate. This is exactly the kind of "growing up online"
that needs to be recognized as wholly beneficial. It amazes me that whenever
the media speaks on child participation in online communities, they neglect
one that is 75,000 members strong.
- VanTucky
The point of the logs wasn't that this was a fluke taken out of context. It's a pretty regular occurence.
When you say "Flameviper is a notorious troll", I don't know whether to laugh at the stupidity or cry at the idea that people actually believe it.
A troll? Wow, that's rich. When have I ever trolled anything? Never. I've annoyed people from time to time, but guess what? If you don't like someone, that doesn't mean you have to ban them. Ignore them and get on with life. The only reason I discuss my ban on IRC/mailing list/etc is because I'm banned. What a great self-fulfilling prophecy! Ban someone and then complain when they get pissed off because you banned them!
Maybe, just maybe, if I wasn't banned, I wouldn't complain about being banned.
And secondly, "notorious"? What the fuck does that mean? It's not like you're talking about WoW, ED, the GNAA, or Blu Aardvark. On-wiki, I got a bad reputation and some people decided that I was evil. Same thing happened on IRC. Of course, everyone simply ignores the fact that I have >2,000 mainspace edits, wrote multiple articles, and wade through backlogs on a regular basis. If you acknowledged the fact that I was a legitimate contributor, you would no longer be able to label me as a "troll" and ostracize me!
The fact is, I've come back under a couple different names, and haven't done any "trolling" with either. If I'm so notorious, wouldn't I get blocked for disruption without the help of a checkuser? If someone's a perfectly normal, productive contributor, why block them?
The fact is, just because I got a bad name a while ago, a few people have taken it upon themselves to man a crusade against me, and put their personal grudges before the project.
Wikipedia is a fucking encyclopedia. If someone is editing productively and not disrupting, there is no reason to block them. Instead of bitching about pointless shit, how about we actually try *doing something*?
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Philip Sandifer wrote
> Despite a number of objections, consensus seems to be forming on WP:V
> to include the line "If no reliable, third-party sources can be found
> for an article topic, Wikipedia should not have an article on it." in
> the policy. This line may be familiar in its more-cited form, "A topic
> is presumed to be notable if it has received significant coverage in
> reliable sources that are independent of the subject," from WP:N.
Despite the already-long thread, it may be worth pointing out the simple lack of logical equivalence here.
Charles
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I've arrived late to the discussion of "just deleting" uncited
statements in articles. However, I believe that when Jimbo suggested
this, he was talking specifically about biographies of living
persons, which for legal reasons must follow a stricter standard.
Allan Crossman
Well, my personal favorite way to improve the 'pedia is orphaning articles. Just go to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Orhpaned_articles_from_July_2006 or [[WP:ORPHAN]], and then go to a page. Search for linked or linkable terms in the article, go to those pages, and insert links back to the orphan. After you've gotten 3 or 4 links (birthdates can always be good, because you can link back from the "births" section of the date page), remove the {{orphan}} tag.
There's a huge backlog, but not because of difficulty; rather, nobody seems to notice it. Two and a half years' worth of orphans should keep you busy for a while.
;)
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On Fri, 1 Feb 2008 16:42:02 -0800 (PST), Ken Arromdee
<arromdee(a)rahul.net> wrote:
> This is susceptible to troublemakers being able to cause trouble by
> following the rules.
That sounds like what the Dungeons & Dragons community calls "Lawful
Evil", referring to those who follow the rules to the letter but do
it with evil ends, or at least without any sense of goodness; this is
contrasted with "Chaotic Evil", where one has no respect for the
rules and doesn't let them get in the way of their evil ends.
--
== 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/
JohnReaves, whatever happened to "catalysts" and "catalyzing" and ops
having to be on good behavior? That log seems to me to be an example
of shockingly poor behavior. Why are we allowing the Wikipedia name to
continuously be associated with this sort of behavior?