An open letter to Jimbo:
We really need your help.
These messages from Ed and KQ are really disturbing to me:
http://www.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2002-November/000018.htmlhttp://www.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2002-November/000038.html
They and I suspect others are feeling weariness at having to deal on the
list (now wikien-l; see:
http://www.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2002-November/date.html ) and
on the website with a small but tiresomely droning cadre of what can
probably most accurately be described as anarchists. They've basically
taken over Wikipedia-l and drone on and on, engaging in what I think is
really offensive political posturing and forcing old hands to defend
policies long decided. At this point, it probably isn't necessary or
helpful to name names, but the people reading this will be able to guess
who I'm talking about.
Jimbo, many of us have put in many hours on the project, and who have
left, want clearly enforceable standards--I think I'd be speaking for
Julie Hoffman Kemp and Michael Tinkler, who are long gone, as well as Isis
and many others who had less patience than they had. We, and many people
who *haven't* left but who have toyed with the idea, are fed up with
constantly having to deal with vandals, trolls, and idiots, and for that
matter with the anarchists who defend and embolden them.
I know you strive very hard to be fair, to be slow in making potentially
damaging decisions, and you rightly want to keep this project open and
free. I totally agree that this is an excellent management policy. I
also know that you're busy with money-making activities. But you really
could help, I think, if you took a public stand on a few things.
For both of us and for most people reading this, these things should go
without saying; but because they're constantly being hammered away at by
the anarchists and some newbies, those of us who are defending these
policies need your moral support. It would help if you somehow conveyed
such things as the following:
* We will not tolerate biased content. The neutral point of view is not
open to vote; it's decided. If you don't like it, go somewhere else.
* There are certain other policies as well that basically define us as a
community. We have arrived at them by broad consensus, and they should be
respected. Wikipedians working in good faith should feel empowered to
enforce those policies. They shouldn't have to apologize for doing so!
* We will not stop banning vandals. We should seek out the best ways we
know how to make sure that non-vandals are not lumped in with the vandals,
but please stop talking as if we'll just stop banning them, because it
ain't gonna happen.
* We try to help newcomers who want to contribute but don't quite
understand the body of good habits (and rules) we've built up. But we
should not and *will* not tolerate forever people who are essentially
attempting to undermine the system. See below.
* To whatever extent we are or are not, or should be, a democracy, the
following is also true. We are a benevolent monarchy ruled by a
"constitution" or, anyway, a developing body of common law that is not
open to interpretation, but not vote. This has been the case from the
beginning, and we aren't going to change that.
Again, you might think these things shouldn't need saying. You might not
want to say all of them. But I really think these points need
reiteration, and from *you*.
In addition to this, it would help a LOT for you to solicit draft
statements of policy regarding clear circumstances in which people can be
banned for being really egregiously difficult. There has to be a
*reasonably* clear line drawn that distinguishes difficult but
on-the-whole useful contributors, on the one hand, from contributors so
egregiously difficult that the project suffers from their continued
presence. The policy should codify, for example, the reasons why we did
ban 24 and Helga, and the reasons why we might ban Lir. Let's have a
discussion about this, bearing in mind that one option that is *not* on
the table is that we might decide *not* to ban people for their trollish
behavior at all. We definitely will, so let's make the policy clearer.
You could start the discussion and make it clear that at some point soon,
we *will* determine a policy.
I don't mean to put words in your mouth of course. I'm just saying that,
IMO, Wikipedia is really suffering, and even losing people. You're in a
position to help embolden the most productive members of the project, who
it seems to me are, in at least some cases, getting very discouraged.
Larry
P.S. Folks, if you agree with me, maybe it would help to say so publicly
or privately to Jimbo.
--
"We have now sunk to a depth at which the re-statement of the obvious is
the first duty of intelligent men." --George Orwell
As per Jimbo's request, the user account "Throbbing Monster Cock" on the
English wikipedia has been renamed to "TMC". TMC, you may need to
re-login under the new name.
-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
Lir wrote:
>Ðiên Biên Phú was a battle between the French and the Vietnamese and a name
>which is not in common usage. It is a disgrace for the Americans to think they
>can rewrite this otherwise. This name must be rendered in either French or
>Vietnamese, being a Vietnamese sympathizer I vote for Vietnamese, but I am
>willing to compromise, however this was certainly not an American battle.
It's not about sympathy; it's a Vietnamese town, not a French town.
And we currently normally include diacriticals on foreign proper nouns
that can be written in Latin-1, as in [[Poincaré conjecture]].
Or is the idea to be consistent within Vietnamese
and drop all diacriticals in that language
since it also includes some non-Latin-1 diacriticals?
We could still agree to mark the letters but not the tones
(as is the case in "Ðiên Biên Phú", in fact,
which has some tonese too that aren't marked here).
It seems to me that it should be [[Ðiên Biên Phú]] under *current* rules.
-- Toby
PS: Lir, this is going to <wikiEN-l>! Go there too!
<http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l>!
On Wednesday 20 November 2002 04:27 am, Danny wrote:
> Going over last night's work, I notice that Angstrom has been redone to
> include all the various diacretics. Is that common usage in English?
Not to my knowledge. Taking out the diacritic flare it is still recognizable
as Angstrom so I don't think it is /that/ bad. Opps! Looks like Ed fixed it.
> Oh, and Lir, I also noticed on your page that you refer to Jesus Christ as
> Yehoshua of Nazareth. A very cute attempt to go back to the Hebrew/Aramaic,
> but there are so many mistakes in that transliteration, it really makes it
> useless.
>
> 1. There is no "ho" in the name. Yehoshua is Joshua, Yeshua is Jesus. In
> fact, in Deuteronomy, Joshua's name was changed from Jesus--you are just
> changing it back.
> 2. You're forgetting the gutteral ayin after the final a in Yeshua (though
> in Hebrew/Aramaic writing it appears as if it would be before, the proper
> pronunciation places it after).
> 3. Nazareth is just so far off the mark, it's not even worth explaining.
> 4. "Of" would "me" in Hebrew or "de" in Aramaic, without distinguishing
> between the different vowels (tzeireh and shewa).
>
> In other words, here your "attempt at accuracy" is just confused gibberish,
> i.e., it is wrong. Stick to languages you know something about.
>
> Danny
Well said. We needn't go down that road; it is far more complicated than our
current system (since it absolutely requires redirects). Newbies simply don't
know about or use redirects so using transliteration or native forms is not
an answer.
Above all else we should strive to be useful to the reader and user by using
the most widely used title in English. Redirects are supposed to catch
non-common forms and the most common form should be the article itself.
Also in many cases, several different scholars throughout history have come up
with several different transliteration for any given term. Which one should
we use? In addition Lir has expressed an interest in having article titles in
their original non-Lain text which would be completely unreadable by the mass
majority of the English world.
A Wikipedia that uses the some pedantic, more scholarly "correct" system of
naming articles gives me the creeps. This is one of the reasons why I have
moved so many organism articles from the Latin to common English forms. Under
the Latin people have tended to write to a more technical audience but now
under the common English forms people tend to write in more inclusive
language. There have also been more edits (many people were probably put-off
by the foreign titles).
I for one wouldn't want to be a part of a Pedanticpedia but anyone wanting to
do so is more than welcome to start your own encyclopedia someplace else. And
don't be surprised if it is a very lonely place.
-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)
pedantic
adj : marked by a narrow focus on or display of learning
especially its trivial aspects
On Wednesday 20 November 2002 12:59 pm, wikipedia-l-request(a)wikipedia.org
wrote:
> The biggest fallacy with this is what we mean by "most widely used".
> Some are fairly obvious. No-one would reasonably that an article in
> English about Rome, Italy should appear under "Roma". Still, the entire
> set of these obvious cases is only a small subset of the entire body of
> articles that could have this problem.
Then lets use the obvious cases without argument and focus on the less than
obvious cases. Searching only pages in English on Google is a useful mostly
objective tool that can be used in these situations. BTW, my understanding is
that Lir et al. /are/ arguing for having the article on Rome at [[Roma]].
This is just following their logic.
> When you try to translate everything the very real risk is that you end
> up using a form that nobody recognizes. If a name is not widely known,
> we should be favouring the original language form, with standard
> transliterations when that is applicable. With novels and movies we
> should be favouring the original language title; there is no way that we
> should be attempting the translation of titles that have never been
> produced in English translations. Whether the title of Camus's novel
> "L'Étranger" should be the literal "The Stranger" or the metaphorical
> "The Outsider" is a matter of literary debate that is well beyond the
> scope of this encyclopaedia. Using the original title for the main
> entry avoids that problem completely.
>
> I use the word "favour" carefully since a one rule fits all policy will
> never work. Nobody has ever used the English title for "La Dolce Vita"
> while the movie "Wo hu cang long" is only known by its English name.
>
> Eclecticology
Eh? The current Anglicization naming convention does not at all in any way
require translation when the native form is most widely used in English.
It would be totally wrong and stupid to have the article about Les Misérables
at [[Poor wretches]] because English speakers would not recognize the
translated title as the book/film title.
So if a native form is the one most widely know and used by English speakers
then by all means lets use the native form. All that matters is what is most
useful to the greatest number of English speaking users.
-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)
Ortolan88 wrote:
>Stranger in a Strange Land, is, of course, from the Book of Exodus in
>the Old Testament, and should only be rendered in ancient Hebrew.
I'll pretend that you're serious for a moment to make a point.
If we have an article about the phrase from Exodus,
which discusses the uses that this phrase has been put to
over the millennia (in any language, variously translated),
then it should have a Hebrew title.
If we have an article about the phrase in the King James Bible,
which discusses the uses that this phrasing has been put to
over the centuries (in English, using King James' words),
then it should be at [[Stranger in a strange land]].
But our article about Heinlein's book should be at
[[Stranger in a Strange Land]], the title that he originally gave it.
All of these examples follow the same sort of logic,
once you get used to it.
-- Toby
On Wednesday 20 November 2002 23:49, Zoe wrote:
> 63.229.80.161 has vandalized [[Timeline of medicine and medical
> technology]] four times now. I've reverted him four times, but how long am
> I supposed to keep doing it?
Blocked.
phma
Eclecticology wrote:
>Toby Bartels wrote (to Lir):
>>Have you signed up for the new English mailing list <wikiEN-l>?
>>You can go to <http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l>
>>if you want to subscribe to it; else you might miss some responses.
>Another mailing list!!!!!!! I'm already getting 100 e-mails a day.
>Should I want more?
Except for some crossposting while we make the transition,
I don't think that you'll get more email, just email with
a different little blurb in the bracket at the front of the Subject.
>From a purely practical POV, if you're not reading <wikiEN-l>,
then you're not participating fully in the Anglicisation debate.
-- Toby