How do those on list suggest dealing with contributors like FWappler?
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Fwappler
See our current game of ping-pong:
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Curve
He's polite, he's not a vandal, but (for those not mathematically minded) he's really not contributing here. Although he's using mathematical language, the result is basically gibberish.
Two thoughts come to mind:
(1) Ever terser reverts. (2) Wait a few days, and ''then'' revert.
I figure if I do (2), he'll lose focus and play somewhere else; but there's certainly no guarantee. In the meantime, we have incorrect material in the 'pedia. Furthermore, it seems to "spread"; for example, I notice that's he's also added incorrect material to the similar topic
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Line
which I hesitate to revert lest it stimulate ''another'' flurry of gibberish.
Any advice?
Cheers - Chas
I have no advice. The curve article talk page is mostly over my head right now. (I'm more intelligent in the mornings, though, so I'll clear my head and look at it then.)
I think his change to the line article, whether true or not, made it too specialized. His information could be added (if true) as a more techincal exposition, but the stuff that was there should have remained.
Chas Brown wrote:
How do those on list suggest dealing with contributors like FWappler?
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Fwappler
See our current game of ping-pong:
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Curve
He's polite, he's not a vandal, but (for those not mathematically minded) he's really not contributing here. Although he's using mathematical language, the result is basically gibberish.
Two thoughts come to mind:
(1) Ever terser reverts. (2) Wait a few days, and ''then'' revert.
I figure if I do (2), he'll lose focus and play somewhere else; but there's certainly no guarantee. In the meantime, we have incorrect material in the 'pedia. Furthermore, it seems to "spread"; for example, I notice that's he's also added incorrect material to the similar topic
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Line
which I hesitate to revert lest it stimulate ''another'' flurry of gibberish.
Any advice?
Cheers - Chas _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@wikipedia.org http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Chas Brown wrote:
How do those on list suggest dealing with contributors like FWappler?
...
He's polite, he's not a vandal, but (for those not mathematically minded) he's really not contributing here. Although he's using mathematical language, the result is basically gibberish.
Two thoughts come to mind:
(1) Ever terser reverts. (2) Wait a few days, and ''then'' revert.
I asked this list pretty much the same question, also about Fwappler, some months ago. IIRC we concluded at the time that he was either: * slightly strange * a mental patient * on a different plane of reality * or a very, very original troll.
Every question you put to Fwappler gets an ever-more cryptic reply, with that REALLY annoying way of writing "as to: [quoted fragments]", and making daft links to irrelevant pages. on the other hand, s/he has made useful edits (though still a little strange sometimes).
if this were a real-life volunteer project, Fwappler would be the old lady who smells of cat pee, who we frequently don't understand, who we have to clean up after she's gone, but can't bring ourselves to tell to get lost ;-)
Tarquin wrote:
Chas Brown wrote:
How do those on list suggest dealing with contributors like FWappler?
Every question you put to Fwappler gets an ever-more cryptic reply, with that REALLY annoying way of writing "as to: [quoted fragments]", and making daft links to irrelevant pages. on the other hand, s/he has made useful edits (though still a little strange sometimes).
This answer is based more on my experience with him on Usenet than here, since he has yet to get to any of the math articles that I work on:
I think that we should insist that he provide sources for his explanations. (The key thing is the explanations, not the opinions as such, since it's in explaining things to others that W~O)r fails.) For example, that stuff on [[Curve]] didn't really hang together, but it seems to me to be a garbled version of something sensible. It might be a garbled version of something that W~O)r read, in which case citing a source will let us get it straight. Or it might be a garbled version of something that he's coming up with, in which case we don't have to use it if we can't get him to explain it sensibly (and if we can, then great). The downside is that we must have ready sources for the "ordinary" stuff.
And BTW, what's on [[Line]] *now* doesn't make much sense either. I may come back to work on that myself.
-- Toby