<<In a message dated 1/29/2009 10:31:33 A.M. Pacific Standard Time,
saintonge(a)telus.net writes:
> I had sent him a scathing email denigrating him for not allowing direct
user
> edits.
>
> For some time, they allowed you to *email* them additions and corrections,
> and I pointed out how ridiculously last decade that was. And how if they
> don't shape up ...like now dude.... they would be history. Buried by
Wikipedia.
>
> I notice they didn't mention my name in that article however. Shameless!
>
It's hard to see what will be accomplished by taunting them in this way.
Rubbing dirt in the faces of the losers is not particularly dignified.
If we really are the winners we need to be more gracious about it.>>
Then you're not understanding what occurred.
What was accomplished is that they *now* allow contributors to make direct
edits to the articles.
They didn't before.
Will
**************From Wall Street to Main Street and everywhere in between, stay
up-to-date with the latest news. (http://aol.com?ncid=emlcntaolcom00000023)
Hi George,
> Is there a secure / https server available for the project?
To the best of my knowledge, we don't yet have a https server set up.
I'll ask Richard (Austin) about it—he's been responsible for pretty
much all of the site's technical (= shell) configuration so far.
Hopefully we can have a secure server up and running soon.
Thanks,
—Thomas Larsen
Hi all,
I, with Richard Austin, would like to announce the public launch of
"Epistemia", a new Internet-wiki-based encyclopedia project which may
be found on the Web at http://epistemia.org/. Some of the project's
distinguishing features include:
- users are required to log in before being permitted to edit;
- civil and polite conduct is required, and no tolerance is shown for
those people whose intention is to cause disruption or damage;
- people with administrative privileges are required to use their real
names as their account names, with few exceptions;
- the project places a high emphasis on developing and maintaining
content according to established scholarly standards; and
- policy (content, community, and project standards), which is still
in development, is outlined clearly and simply on a single page.
Wikipedia has undoubtedly proved the value of the wiki content
production model, but it suffers from a number of damning flaws. Most
serious is the negativity of the participatory culture that has
developed on Wikipedia—incivility is rampant in discussions, logical,
reasoned arguments are commonly ignored, and people acting maliciously
or disruptively are tolerated far in excess of common sense.
Governance is another issue, with the project led, not by the most
knowledgeable people, but by the people with the most spare time and
the loudest voices. Also of much concern, especially to academia, is
the lack of consistent adherence to the conventional quality
expectations associated with professional scholarship—indeed, many
contributors reject established scholarly standards in favour of their
own conception of what an encyclopedia should be like. These problems
can be traced to two primary causes: firstly, an unprofessional
culture, and, secondly, overly complex and inconsistently enforced
rules. Epistemia aims to correct both these issues, without
implementing the overly-restrictive mechanisms that Citizendium has.
Raymond Arritt once summed it all up neatly—"[Citizendium] ... would
be great if it were more similar to Wikipedia (easier to contribute,
less bureaucratic) and ... [Wikipedia] ... would be great if it were
more similar to Citizendium (less hostile to competence, more willing
to act against troublemakers and those with an agenda)." Epistemia
aims to be easy to contribute to, unbureaucratic, welcoming of
competence, and intolerant of disruptive and malicious people.
Well, Richard Austin and I would like to invite you to check it out
yourself and formulate your own opinions—see http://epistemia.org/.
Best and friendly regards,
—Thomas Larsen
G'day Luna,
> I do think it's worth pointing out that literally every time I've
> mentioned
> dislike of infoboxes to non-WPians, the reply has been along the
> lines of
> "Why not? They're AWESOME!" I try to explain the objections, but
> usually the
> person is so set on the accessibility front that they can't see why
> anyone
> would want to avoid the boxes.
> It's not just bots that want information in an easily parsed format.
I think my perspective as (let's face it) an ex-Wikipedian is pretty similar to that of the common or garden-variety non-WP reader these days. (This may be why I've become significantly more of an inclusionist since I stopped creating --- and deleting --- articles). I tend to find the infoboxes alternately annoying and silly or practical and awesome, depending on my frame of mind and purpose. If I'm after specific information --- e.g. a recent case where a colleague and I were arguing over the population breakdown of the UK --- the infoboxes save me time and prevent confusion. If I'm just reading for the heck of it (cf. xkcd's "hours of fascinated clicking") they tend to be distracting. This is especially jarring in the case of subjects whose details don't break down easily into infoboxes, like real people.
As a reader, it's cool to quickly find the national motto of Burundi or the height of Centrepoint Tower without having to read through paragraphs of text. I love infoboxes! But also as a reader, it's distracting to have a professional wrestler's "coach" or actress's bust size floating in the corner of the screen. I hate infoboxes! I guess you can break that down to say: it's nice when there is a consensus view of what a given infobox should say; it's less nice when the people who populate the infoboxes have different interests and values from you.
Cheers,
--
Mark Gallagher
0439 704 975
http://formonelane.net/
"Even potatoes have their bad days, Igor." --- Count Duckula
I reported Grawp to Verizon earlier this week and got the following response, I'm circulating it here so that others reporting vandals to ISPs can follow their format. But more importantly can anyone tell me how to work out Destination IP address & Destination port(s)?
Jonathan (WereSpielChequers)
--- On Tue, 20/1/09, abuse(a)verizon.net <abuse(a)verizon.net> wrote:
> From: abuse(a)verizon.net <abuse(a)verizon.net>
> Subject: Re: [AB-C24281409F] Threats by one of your customers to rape and bugger a Wikipedia user
> To: dahsun(a)yahoo.com
> Date: Tuesday, 20 January, 2009, 8:43 PM
> Thank you for writing.
>
> Your report contained no log file excerpt, or incomplete
> information, and therefore cannot be investigated.
>
> In order to investigate your report, please submit a new
> report with a log file excerpt providing the specific
> details for the malicious traffic specific to a Verizon
> Online customer only.
>
>
> Log file excerpts must be in plain text format, and
> include:
>
> - Source IP address
> - Source port(s)
> - Destination IP address
> - Destination port(s)
> - Date
> - Specific time
> - Time zone (in which the log file time stamp is
> recorded)
> - Brief synopsis
>
>
> Additionally, please note that due to the number of reports
> we receive, reports with log files containing extraneous
> information not pertinent to the specific report cannot be
> accepted.
>
> Verizon Internet Services Security can only take action in
> response to traffic initiated by Verizon Internet customers.
> Traffic from non-Verizon sources must be reported directly
> to the appropriate owner of the IP space that is initiating
> the traffic.
>
> The following web site may be helpful in determining the
> owner of the originating IP space:
>
> http://www.arin.net/whois
>
> We hope this provides the necessary information in order to
> re-submit your report with the data needed, so that an
> investigation may be initiated.
>
>
> Sincerely,
>
> Verizon Online Abuse
> http://www2.verizon.net/policies
> http://www.verizon.net/security
> Abuse(a)verizon.net
>
>
> ==== Original Message ====
> 1. Threats by one of your customers to rape and bugger a
> Wikipedia user
> Added by system at Monday, Jan 19 2009 09:17 am
> X-MailFrom: dahsun(a)yahoo.com
> X-RcptTo: security(a)abuse.mailsrvcs.net
> Received: from [172.18.169.123] by [172.18.45.30] (abacus)
> for <security(a)abuse.mailsrvcs.net>; Mon Jan 19
> 09:17:21 2009
> Received: from web54109.mail.re2.yahoo.com
> ([206.190.37.244])
> by vms169123.mailsrvcs.net
> (Sun Java System Messaging Server 6.2-6.01 (built Apr 3
> 2006))
> with SMTP id
> <0KDQ009N854X2XE0(a)vms169123.mailsrvcs.net> for
> security(a)abuse.mailsrvcs.net (ORCPT security(a)verizon.net);
> Mon,
> 19 Jan 2009 09:17:21 -0600 (CST)
> Received: (qmail 55849 invoked by uid 60001); Mon, 19 Jan
> 2009 15:17:16 +0000
> Received: from [82.44.83.239] by
> web54109.mail.re2.yahoo.com via HTTP; Mon,
> 19 Jan 2009 07:17:15 -0800 (PST)
> Date: Mon, 19 Jan 2009 07:17:15 -0800 (PST)
> From: Dahsun <dahsun(a)yahoo.com>
> Subject: Threats by one of your customers to rape and
> bugger a Wikipedia user
> X-Originating-IP: [206.190.37.244]
> To: security(a)verizon.net
> Reply-to: dahsun(a)yahoo.com
> Message-id:
> <462123.55297.qm(a)web54109.mail.re2.yahoo.com>
> MIME-version: 1.0
> X-Mailer: YahooMailWebService/0.7.260.1
> Content-type: text/plain; charset=utf-8
> Content-transfer-encoding: quoted-printable
> DomainKey-Signature: a=rsa-sha1; q=dns; c=nofws; s=s1024;
> d=yahoo.com;
>
> h=X-YMail-OSG:Received:X-Mailer:Date:From:Reply-To:Subject:To:MIME-Version:Content-Type:Content-Transfer-Encoding:Message-ID;
>
>
> b=UCdIgtiXRsWAhvhf8NKxKxQ9vYZAubqs6qyz0NrAB/pmKuh9smtFqntcNLZlMn3JogFojttb5+1kt4vSpTuY3PRM/U7tKsL9V9SAfZbeWRWmaDZPYCrZ+4Pr4u4vkUSesUqSsiIeEaDbqMsMXcpQeVmdt+XY7HoPRdENdijxXWI=;
>
> X-YMail-OSG:
> QZ3aUWQVM1nhCP1GFxfRrYCzIxcq6z0yNEov_Km_Tf4Ld5FhTFk-
>
> MIME element (text/plain)
> Dear Verizon,
>
> According to ARIN 71.167.96.32 is one of your IP addresses.
> If so were you aware of this edit:
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Juliancolton&diff=prev&oldid…
>
>
> One of a series of vandalisms on Wikipedia by that IP, and
> looking very similar to other vandalism on Wikipedia by
> various Verizon IP addresses.
>
> I expect that as a socially responsible company you have
> policies to deal with such incidents; however if you do
> decide to continue supplying Internet services to that
> particular customer would it be possible for you to assign
> them a permanent IP address so we can indefinitely block
> that particular address from editing Wikipedia?
>
> Yours Sincerely
>
> Dahsun
<<In a message dated 1/29/2009 3:26:04 A.M. Pacific Standard Time,
carcharothwp(a)googlemail.com writes:
On Thu, Jan 29, 2009 at 11:20 AM, <wjhonson(a)aol.com> wrote:
> On another note...
> Oh... my.. god becky!
>
> Thomas you look just like that one guy from Ferris Bueller's day off,
> his sidekick who I don't know what the guy's name was.
Cameron?>>
That's it. Thomas Larsen looks like that guy. In a way of course.
Will
**************From Wall Street to Main Street and everywhere in between, stay
up-to-date with the latest news. (http://aol.com?ncid=emlcntaolcom00000023)
In a message dated 1/21/2009 8:04:30 PM Pacific Standard Time,
keithold(a)gmail.com writes:
New features enabling the inclusion of this user-generated content will be
rolled out on the encyclopedia's website over the next 24 hours, *
Britannica's* president, Jorge Cauz, said in an interview today." (More in
story)>>
-----------------
I had sent him a scathing email denigrating him for not allowing direct user
edits.
For some time, they allowed you to *email* them additions and corrections,
and I pointed out how ridiculously last decade that was. And how if they
don't shape up ...like now dude.... they would be history. Buried by Wikipedia.
I notice they didn't mention my name in that article however. Shameless!
Will Johnson
**************From Wall Street to Main Street and everywhere in between, stay
up-to-date with the latest news. (http://aol.com?ncid=emlcntaolcom00000023)
In a message dated 1/21/2009 9:17:31 PM Pacific Standard Time,
larsen.thomas.h(a)gmail.com writes:
* free—as in the sense of freedom, not necessarily in the sense of beer;
* reliable—in other words, accurate, coherent, and neutral; and
* global—that is, multilingual and written by a diverse, broad group of
people.
Britannica might be reliable, and it might become slightly global, but
it is not yet multilingual and it isn't free.>>
-------------
What evidence do you have that an encyclopedia must be free?
Society has existed for a few thousand years without a free encyclopedia.
**************A Good Credit Score is 700 or Above. See yours in just 2 easy
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Jussi-Ville Heiskanen wrote:
> Gwern Branwen wrote:
>> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
>> Hash: SHA512
>>
>> On Thu, Jan 22, 2009 at 12:20 AM, wrote:
>> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
>> Version: GnuPG v1.4.9 (GNU/Linux)
>>
>> iEYEAREKAAYFAkl4kr4ACgkQvpDo5Pfl1oKbEQCcC5i02/SXa2EgSuncpVydj+h2
>> 9jkAniovyrPUW4o0MW5Xl1kCvy50afRD
>> =hWcx
>> -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
>>
>>
>>> In a message dated 1/21/2009 9:17:31 PM Pacific Standard Time,
>>> larsen.thomas.h(a)gmail.com writes:
>>>
>>> What evidence do you have that an encyclopedia must be free?
>>>
>>> Society has existed for a few thousand years without a free encyclopedia.
>>>
>>
>> A statement trivially true. Society has also existed for a few
>> thousand years without copyright, period.
>>
>>
>
No, not period. There is much more to be said on this
subject.
For instance that simian society has always had ways
of restricting access to intellectual property, not
limited to intentional obfuscation, initiatory methods
of knowledge access, and going all the way to the level
of intentionally making the information transmitted
faulty, just so you would have to make the leap of
intellectual discovery as to what precise way the
mechanism in question worked. Copyright *did* in fact
enable people to spell out in full detail what they had
discovered, because they had a reasonable expectation
that even if they didn't only pass on their knowledge to
their apprentices, somebody would protect their ability
to milk it for all it was worth...
Not arguing the ethics at all, but look at what you are
doing at the moment. Are you willing to give all you have
...
Yours,
Jussi-Ville Heiskanen
