This is in regards to the article on "Israelites".
Danny writes "I don't frequently post on this list, but I do read it and have been following the discussions taking place here. I am on the verge of getting into a major flame war with RK. Rather than do that, I have decided to follow Ed's example and leave Wikipedia for a while."
I am puzzled and astonished to read this. The flame war is coming from Danny alone.
I have been trying to talk to him and work with him, but Danny refuses to talkm literally. I have tried to make peace with him, and have repeatedly requested that he contribute to the article, instead of making personal attacks. I have added new material, and explicitly asked Danny to comment on this material, and offer any constructive criticism he would like to. But Danny refuses to contribute to any articles, and simply writes ad homenin attacks.
For whatever reason, Danny simply fills the Talk pages with implications that I am ignorant, he attacks the beliefs of mainstream scholars, he refuses to clarify his statements, and he makes unilateral deletions without explaining what the problem is.
Worse, he also now claims that he, and apparently he alone, has the right to decite what is NPOV, and has repeatedly implied that the views of any scholar other than him are not worth describing in the article And all this is despite my repeated requests for conversation and discussion. These remarks are still on the Talk page in the Israelite article.
Frankly, I am terribly confused. These recent actions by Danny are not like him at all, and until two days ago we had a good relationship! But after he saw just one sentence he disapproved of (I said that Jews are descendents of the Israelite tribe of Judah, and refugees from some of the other tribes.) he begain fixated on some imaginary claims that have to with "racial purity" or something, and never let go of this idea.
Danny then refused to speak to anyone about the issue, and simply implied that Jews were lying about their heritage. Since this particular Biblical minimalist position is used on the Internet by anti-Semitic groups on a daly basis, I was extremely concerned, and I told him so. NO ONE ACCUSED HIM of being an anti-Semited. Rather, I asked him to clarify precisely what he meant. Yet instead of writing clarifications, he made personal attacks. (In later days he did make some clarifications, but he still refuses to bring forth any sources at all to back up his position.)
Ironically, the ONLY person on Wikipedia in recent days to offer any support for Danny's claims has been ME. I went out of my way to add material, in the article on the "History of ancient Israel and Judah", on both Biblical minimalism and Biblical maximalism, with sources, bibliography and weblinks. Danny, mysteriously, refuses to give any support for his own position.
Danny's most recent remarks about me are, to put it charitably, incomprehensible. He attacked me by claiming that I was writing nonsense, that literally every proposed addition I had offered was wrong...and then he admits that almost every proposed change I made was, in fact, correct! He then concludes that I am totally wrong. In a word, "Huh?".
He has continually attacked me for beliefs that I don't have, and keeps imagining that someone is trying to prove that Jewish people are some sort of "racially pure" group, whatever that means. Yet no one is making such a claim. And its not just my point of view; other people have joined in on the Talk pages, trying to explain this to Danny, but he insists that his mis-reading of the material is correct. I went through his comments one at a time, and explained to him that he was attributing many beliefs to me that I don't have, and that he was attacking claims that I was not making. Further, I explained that some of his beliefs I actually agreed with! Yet all he gave in return was silence.
All of this disturbs me greatly, as this is not like Danny at all. I just can't explain why he refuses to talk, why he refuses to explain his position, why he refuses to back up his own position, or why he is making up all sorts of attacks on non-existent beliefs, and attacking me personally.
This is not right, folks. This is justplain wrong.
Robert (RK)
===== "I prefer a wicked person who knows he is wicked, to a righteous person who knows he is righteous". The Seer of Lublin [Jacob Isaac Ha-Hozeh Mi-Lublin, 1745-1815]
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You characterise Danny as being "obsessed with racial purity" on a public mailing list, and say "the flame war is coming from Danny alone" and then you wonder why he doesn't see any point in talking to you?
Perhaps you could benefit from reading a few books, and they would make your time here go much smoother. "Games People Play", by Eric Berne and "Rules for Radicals", by Saul Alinsky are good for starters.
Jonathan
I'm calling a timeout here.
RK wrote:
But after he saw just one sentence he disapproved of (I said that Jews are descendents of the Israelite tribe of Judah, and refugees from some of the other tribes.) he begain fixated on some imaginary claims that have to with "racial purity" or something, and never let go of this idea.
Jonathan Walther wrote:
You characterise Danny as being "obsessed with racial purity" on a public mailing list, and say "the flame war is coming from Danny alone" and then you wonder why he doesn't see any point in talking to you?
Jonathan, you've mischaracterized what RK said. He did not say that Danny was "obsessed with racial purity" but that he was "fixated on some imaginary claims that have to [do] with 'racial purity' or something".
I encourage anyone who wants to get involved in this dispute to first, try not to do so. And barring that, please be exquisitely careful not to loosely characterize what people are saying based on your emotion when you read it.
So here's the timeout -- everyone try to relax about anything relating to Israel, Jews, Moslems, anti-Semitism, and Jehovah's Witnesses and any other related topics until _Friday_. Then hit me with your best shot.
I think that a timeout to let tempers cool would be helpful. If you REALLY think, based on a full understanding of the history, goals, etc., of bans, if you REALLY think someone should be banned, then raise the issue with me privately, including actual page references, and I promise to read everything over carefully and make comments or take actions accordingly.
But, that's Friday. Today is Tuesday. Wednesday and Thursday we're all going to take a vacation from bickering and have a virtual beer.
--Jimbo
Ray Saintonge wrote:
But, that's Friday. Today is Tuesday. Wednesday and Thursday we're all going to take a vacation from bickering and have a virtual beer.
Then you'll need to watch out for the virtual drunks. :-)
I seriously think we should start thinking about organizing some road trips and get-togethers. This could be done informally or formally.
We could do a few of these -- one on the east coast, one on the west coast, and one in a central location in Europe. Or they could be smaller, regional things with only a few people.
--Jimbo
Jimmy Wales wrote:
I seriously think we should start thinking about organizing some road trips and get-togethers. This could be done informally or formally.
We could do a few of these -- one on the east coast, one on the west coast, and one in a central location in Europe. Or they could be smaller, regional things with only a few people.
I hesitated to answer this because I didn't want to give the impression of being the first one to the bar. I guess it says something when people are no longer enthused about getting together to settle the world's problems over a beer. So far it looks like Jimbo and I are ready to have the east and west coast meetings as meetings of 1. If we each do this at our local pubs we'll save on travel expenses, and buying a round for everybody that shows up won't be costly either. :-)
Eclecticology
Ray Saintonge wrote:
I hesitated to answer this because I didn't want to give the impression of being the first one to the bar. I guess it says something when people are no longer enthused about getting together to settle the world's problems over a beer. So far it looks like Jimbo and I are ready to have the east and west coast meetings as meetings of 1. If we each do this at our local pubs we'll save on travel expenses, and buying a round for everybody that shows up won't be costly either. :-)
Hell, I work from home, so I just have to walk to the fridge...
Seriously, Larry and I used to be bitter email and Usenet enemies until we met in person. Then we realized, uh, we're very similar and like each other. I think meeting people in person does wonders to defuse email flame wars.
--Jimbo
On Thu, Dec 19, 2002 at 02:39:54PM -0800, Ray Saintonge wrote:
people are no longer enthused about getting together to settle the world's problems over a beer. So far it looks like Jimbo and I are ready to have the east and west coast meetings as meetings of 1. If we each do this at our local pubs we'll save on travel expenses, and buying a round for everybody that shows up won't be costly either. :-)
Since Ray is in Vancouver, I second that motion, and suggest we hold one in some Vancouver bar. Anyone up for a few drinks together in a secret, hidden, radical activist bar in a residential neighborhood?
Jonathan
Jimmy Wales wrote:
I seriously think we should start thinking about organizing some road trips and get-togethers. This could be done informally or formally.
We could do a few of these -- one on the east coast, one on the west coast, and one in a central location in Europe. Or they could be smaller, regional things with only a few people.
There will be at least three[1] Esperanto Wikipedians at the 'Esperanto che Interreto'[2] conference in Boston this coming April. If any east-coaster English Wikipedians are interested, we can probably have a joint Wikipedia event and cultural exchange. ;)
Meanwhile, Wikipedia Day 2003 is less than a month away (and Magnus Manske Day not long after!) -- a west coast get-together for the occasion might be entertaining.
[1] Assuming this starving college student can scrape up airfare. Donations welcome! [2] An organization promoting the use of Esperanto on the Internet and the Internet in Esperanto; http://www.ikso.net/echei/
-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
I would like to propose that we make filling out the summary field mandatory on ever edit. Reasons:
* it makes the job of vandals and vandal bots harder, since they have to come up with a meaningful summary each time. * it makes the history page of an article vastly more useful; now I often find myself employing the bisection method to find out when a particular bit of information was inserted.
Edits without summaries are like emails with empty subject line: not nice.
I posted this to wikien-l, since this feature would best be implemented as an option that other language wikis could switch on if desired.
Happy holidays everybody, Axel
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I would like to propose that we make filling out the summary field mandatory on ever edit.
This has been brought up before and rejected, don't bother us again.
Just kidding, to let you know what a warm, fuzzy feeling this kind of reaction creates :-). It actually was debated earlier either on one of the mailing lists or policy pages and considered harmful for several reasons. It's not necessarily a bad idea, but I suggest the following modifications:
- allow an empty summary line for minor edits - disallow minor edits for users who are not logged in.
Also, I believe we should keep our policies as consistent as possible over all Wikipedias. If other Wikipedias don't want it, we should ask why and try to find a solution they can agree to (or hold a vote ;-).
All best,
Erik
On Tuesday 24 December 2002 16:53, Axel Boldt wrote:
I would like to propose that we make filling out the summary field mandatory on ever edit.
I agree. The most frequent contributor to the mispeeling page, for instance, has been an IP who never leaves a summary, and I have to diff the page to figure out what he did.
phma
On Tue, Dec 24, 2002 at 09:28:30PM -0500, Pierre Abbat wrote:
On Tuesday 24 December 2002 16:53, Axel Boldt wrote:
I would like to propose that we make filling out the summary field mandatory on ever edit.
I agree. The most frequent contributor to the mispeeling page, for instance, has been an IP who never leaves a summary, and I have to diff the page to figure out what he did.
I prefer to diff peoples changes anyway; a vandal isn't going to voluntarily put in the summary "I VANDALIZED THIS PAGE!", so I don't see how requiring a summary will change anything. A vandalbot could easily put "various spelling fixes" or some such in the summary. Unless those issues are addressed, I can't endorse any change of the sort proposed here.
Jonathan
version-to-version diff like on Meatball would be useful in working out who did what. (see it in action here: http://wiki.beyondunreal.com/wiki?action=history&id=Door )
Pierre Abbat wrote:
On Tuesday 24 December 2002 16:53, Axel Boldt wrote:
I would like to propose that we make filling out the summary field mandatory on ever edit.
I forget sometimes. It wouldn't be wise to trust what an unknown IP writes in the summary -- any vandal could write "spelling correction" to fool us.
tarquin wrote:
I would like to propose that we make filling out the summary field mandatory on ever edit.
It wouldn't be wise to trust what an unknown IP writes in the summary -- any vandal could write "spelling correction" to fool us.
In fact, most of the newbie experiments and "mini-vandals" I found due to an empty subject line...
Magnus
Rule or no rule, an empty summary field is bad manners.
You can always cut and paste something from your change. The statement that writing a summary can be more onerous than making the change is ludicrous.
Tom Parmenter Ortolan88
tarquin wrote:
Pierre Abbat wrote:
On Tuesday 24 December 2002 16:53, Axel Boldt wrote:
I would like to propose that we make filling out the summary field mandatory on ever edit.
I forget sometimes. It wouldn't be wise to trust what an unknown IP writes in the summary -- any vandal could write "spelling correction" to fool us.
I like the summary line too, but I also often forget. Making mandatory entries could just as easily lead to people entering useless entries like "comment" or a single random key stroke, just for the sake of fulfilling the requirement.
Eclecticology
[to:wikien-l, to:wikitech-l] Axel Boldt wrote:
I would like to propose that we make filling out the summary field mandatory on ever edit. Reasons:
- it makes the job of vandals and vandal bots harder, since they have
to come up with a meaningful summary each time.
- it makes the history page of an article vastly more useful; now I
often find myself employing the bisection method to find out when a particular bit of information was inserted.
Filling in the summary field is in general a good thing to do, but sometimes I find it stupid because the work it put in writing the notice for the summary field is more work than the change of the article.
A pulldown menu whit some default comments seems a good way.
More options to follow close the actions of not registerd users would be very nice. So that you can put a namelabel to a IP-adress, for those IP-users who you can trust be have the bad idea to not login. You can also use it to label proxyservers, so you see directly in RC that a ip-adress is a proxyserver. Now you have to look every ip up, but it are mostly the same who come back and give trouble.
I posted this to wikien-l, since this feature would best be implemented as an option that other language wikis could switch on if desired.
I think all Wikipedia's would like more options to better view what is happening.
Giskart
Axel Boldt wrote in part:
- it makes the job of vandals and vandal bots harder, since they have
to come up with a meaningful summary each time.
No, they don't -- unless you know of an algorithm that we can used to detect whether a summary is meaningful. UseModWiki's "*" default isn't empty, after all -- and "mispeeling" must always work, so they can just use that (and look like long-time users that know the inside jokes while they're at it).
- it makes the history page of an article vastly more useful; now I
often find myself employing the bisection method to find out when a particular bit of information was inserted.
How about when I just write "Much." in the summary?
-- Toby
|From: Toby Bartels toby+wikipedia@math.ucr.edu |Content-Disposition: inline |Sender: wikien-l-admin@wikipedia.org |Reply-To: wikien-l@wikipedia.org |Date: Fri, 27 Dec 2002 09:40:39 -0800 | |Axel Boldt wrote in part: | |>* it makes the job of vandals and vandal bots harder, since they have |>to come up with a meaningful summary each time. | |No, they don't -- unless you know of an algorithm |that we can used to detect whether a summary is meaningful. |UseModWiki's "*" default isn't empty, after all -- |and "mispeeling" must always work, so they can just use that |(and look like long-time users that know the inside jokes |while they're at it). | |>* it makes the history page of an article vastly more useful; now I |>often find myself employing the bisection method to find out when a |>particular bit of information was inserted. | |How about when I just write "Much." in the summary? |
How about spending five seconds and twenty keystrokes putting in what you did?
Tom P. O88
| |-- Toby |_______________________________________________ |WikiEN-l mailing list |WikiEN-l@wikipedia.org |http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l |
Toby Bartels wrote:
it makes the history page of an article vastly more useful; now I often find myself employing the bisection method to find out when a particular bit of information was inserted.
How about when I just write "Much." in the summary?
Yes. If I've made several unrelated and substantive changes to an article, I certainly do something like that.
Eclecticology
|From: Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net |X-Accept-Language: en-us |Sender: wikien-l-admin@wikipedia.org |Reply-To: wikien-l@wikipedia.org |Date: Sun, 29 Dec 2002 09:56:35 -0800 | |Toby Bartels wrote: | |>>it makes the history page of an article vastly more useful; now I |>>often find myself employing the bisection method to find out when a |>>particular bit of information was inserted. |>> |> |>How about when I just write "Much." in the summary? |> |Yes. If I've made several unrelated and substantive changes to an |article, I certainly do something like that. | |Eclecticology |
How about listing substantive changes, or at least saying "substantive changes" in the summary?
Tom P. O88 |
Ortolan88 wrote:
Eclecticology wrote:
Toby Bartels wrote:
How about when I just write "Much." in the summary?
Yes. If I've made several unrelated and substantive changes to an article, I certainly do something like that.
How about listing substantive changes, or at least saying "substantive changes" in the summary?
I was hoping that Axel would reply, since in my case it will affect him more than anybody else.
In any case, I thought that "Much." would get across the idea of substantive changes, but if "Many substantive changes" is necessary, then I can do that. As long as I don't have to list them individually.
-- Toby