Hi all,
I am being forced to take recourse to this list, as a final option.
I am trying to bring out some technical and other issues w.r.t. Kannada Wikipedia, and I have opened up a discussion in this regard in the Kannada Support page.
Before this happened, there was a flame war; ultimately, we resolved to make a fresh start.
The problem: (1) Somebody had inserted "guidelines" that clearly showed his personal issues with the past discussion (2) I substituted this with the link to official Wikipedia Guidelines document, which is neutral and also encompasses specific issues in 1. (3) This was reverted (4) When I re-inserted the link, it was again reverted. (5) I was sent warnings for "vandalisation", and finally my IP address was banned. Moreover, the page has been moved to "protected" status. (6) As a result, I am not able to edit that page or contribute to the discussion. Also, the link at the beginning still carries the biased text written apparently out of personal vengeance.
I have been accused of "vandalisation", whereas clearly, I was doing something against it -- installing NPOV text. Also, this same user has nothing to say on the discussion I have initiated, and while installing his version, has failed to incorporate one point I had raised.
When I pointed out the issue in the user-talk page of this user, I have not received a helpful reply.
Concerned users of Wikipedia, please look into this abuse of power, and use of Wikipedia for personal gains, and abuse of democratic setup. Please mediate and resolve this dispute.
http://kn.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Kannada_Support (Version history) http://kn.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia_talk:Kannada_Support&... (My version) http://kn.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia_talk:Kannada_Support&... (Original version) http://kn.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia_talk:Kannada_Support&...
Thanks, Deepak
On 4/6/06, Deepak N n.deepak@gmail.com wrote:
Hi all,
I am being forced to take recourse to this list, as a final option.
I am trying to bring out some technical and other issues w.r.t. Kannada Wikipedia, and I have opened up a discussion in this regard in the Kannada Support page.
I have opened a request in English Wikipedia's Mediation Cabal. Here is the case page:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Mediation_Cabal/Cases/2006-04-06_Kann...
A member from the cabal has responded: http://kn.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:HPNadig#en:Mediation_Cabal
He has requested assistance from Kannada Wikipedia members. *****If any of you are willing to mediate and help achieve compromise, please respond and do so now.*****
If this does not happen, I have asked mediation from English Wikipedia, since both (1) disputed text, and (2) substitute text, are in English.
As a reminder, the problem description follows below.
Regards, Deepak
Before this happened, there was a flame war; ultimately, we resolved to make a fresh start.
The problem: (1) Somebody had inserted "guidelines" that clearly showed his personal issues with the past discussion (2) I substituted this with the link to official Wikipedia Guidelines document, which is neutral and also encompasses specific issues in 1. (3) This was reverted (4) When I re-inserted the link, it was again reverted. (5) I was sent warnings for "vandalisation", and finally my IP address was banned. Moreover, the page has been moved to "protected" status. (6) As a result, I am not able to edit that page or contribute to the discussion. Also, the link at the beginning still carries the biased text written apparently out of personal vengeance.
I have been accused of "vandalisation", whereas clearly, I was doing something against it -- installing NPOV text. Also, this same user has nothing to say on the discussion I have initiated, and while installing his version, has failed to incorporate one point I had raised.
When I pointed out the issue in the user-talk page of this user, I have not received a helpful reply.
Concerned users of Wikipedia, please look into this abuse of power, and use of Wikipedia for personal gains, and abuse of democratic setup. Please mediate and resolve this dispute.
http://kn.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Kannada_Support (Version history) http://kn.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia_talk:Kannada_Support&... (My version) http://kn.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia_talk:Kannada_Support&... (Original version) http://kn.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia_talk:Kannada_Support&...
Thanks, Deepak
Hi,
I am being forced to take recourse to this list, as a final option.
I am trying to bring out some technical and other issues w.r.t. Kannada Wikipedia, and I have opened up a discussion in this regard in the Kannada Support page.
I don't know if you have ever thought about this. But, the points on what you are fighting, i.e, technical support issues is not at all concerned to the Wikipedia. And those technical points merits discussions elsewhere ( kannada.sourceforge.net, for eg.)
Before this happened, there was a flame war; ultimately, we resolved
to make a fresh start.
The problem: (1) Somebody had inserted "guidelines" that clearly showed his personal issues with the past discussion (2) I substituted this with the link to official Wikipedia Guidelines document, which is neutral and also encompasses specific issues in 1. (3) This was reverted (4) When I re-inserted the link, it was again reverted. (5) I was sent warnings for "vandalisation", and finally my IP address was banned. Moreover, the page has been moved to "protected" status. (6) As a result, I am not able to edit that page or contribute to the discussion. Also, the link at the beginning still carries the biased text written apparently out of personal vengeance.
I have been accused of "vandalisation", whereas clearly, I was doing something against it -- installing NPOV text. Also, this same user has nothing to say on the discussion I have initiated, and while installing his version, has failed to incorporate one point I had raised.
When I pointed out the issue in the user-talk page of this user, I have not received a helpful reply.
What I observe is that the issue is simply "bloated ego", maybe on both the sides. I would rather suggest you people bury the hatchet and contribute in terms of articles, community building etc.
Concerned users of Wikipedia, please look into this abuse of power,
and use of Wikipedia for personal gains, and abuse of democratic setup. Please mediate and resolve this dispute.
No mediation is ever going to work, if you people remain intransigent. It's better you put both the content (Anyway the content put/restored by the other person is NOT his own, but links to the Wikipedia guidelines again.)
- M
On 4/8/06, Mankuthimma mankuthimma@gmail.com wrote:
I am being forced to take recourse to this list, as a final option.
I am trying to bring out some technical and other issues w.r.t. Kannada Wikipedia, and I have opened up a discussion in this regard in the Kannada Support page.
I don't know if you have ever thought about this. But, the points on what you are fighting, i.e, technical support issues is not at all concerned to the Wikipedia. And those technical points merits discussions elsewhere (kannada.sourceforge.net, for eg.)
I believe it is concerned, because Wikipedia has a document that deals with Unicode/Kannada Support.
I have said this innumerable times, but I will repeat it again:
(1) Mozilla Firefox has issues with Indic fonts on Linux. This was not mentioned in the document. (I added a workaround yesterday.) The doc had some instructions -- to be fair -- but when you followed them, you would still see garbled text. The doc did not say anything about that. In fact it did not even say "Look, you may face issues with Firefox even after following these instructions". (Does this mean nobody knows about this bug, or does nobody care? I don't know.)
Here are two screenshots from my out-of-the-box Xandros, for sampige and kedage fonts: http://www.ndeepak.info/tmp/kedage.png http://www.ndeepak.info/tmp/sampige.png
This has happened to me on Ubuntu as well. http://www.ndeepak.info/.ljdeepix/wikipedia_linux.jpg
And I am not alone. I have colleagues with similar issues.
(2) When I tried to bring it up, I have received severe hostility, all along, in return (including the latest "Sampada" entry by HPN).
I believe Firefox is an important browser to be supported. There is a statistical bias here: Linux users tend to be more interested in free/open source software, and if we can make the encyclopedia accessible to them, we can expect a good deal of publicity and contributions. Unfortunately, currently a majority of them (who use Firefox) cannot see the content, and the doc suggested no alternatives.
Also note that this is only a minute fraction of the problem. Linux/Unix has maybe around 8% desktop market share (? -- I am making this up), the rest is Windows and Mac. Of all the Windows, only XP has good support for the present Kannada Wikipedia. 98/Me don't support it at all, 2000 has partial support (when I installed built-in Indic font support on Windows 2000 and visited Kannada Wikipedia, the text looked garbled -- if I missed something, please let me know). I don't know anything about Mac support status, let us hope we have no issues there.
So at this moment, only Windows XP users are problem-free. All the rest, or shall we say a majority of them, have issues. Liberally, I would say only about 30-40% of all visitors to Wikipedia can see the content correctly and contribute.
There, now we have the picture. We are creating a lot of content, and 2-3 out of 5 guys cannot even see it, let alone contribute. Is it not high time that we became aware of this, and tried to fix where we can? Let us ignore 98/Me as they are getting antiquated, but can we not do something about Firefox and Linux, at least?
This is why I have been obstinate about it, and trying all that I can to see that the doc is helpful. I will also submit a bug report to Firefox developer community soon.
When I pointed out the issue in the user-talk page of this user, I have not received a helpful reply.
What I observe is that the issue is simply "bloated ego", maybe on both the sides. I would rather suggest you people bury the hatchet and contribute in terms of articles, community building etc.
Ego is what has put in POV text in place of NPOV text. Ego is what has accused me of "vandalising" and banned me, and protected that page. Ego is what has refused requests for mediation, or compromise offers. Ego is what has created a new Sampada entry, just as it did in Pariveshana before. :) I am tempted to go to Wikipedia Arbitration Committee, but I won't. This is not a war-zone, and I'm not gaining anything by winning it. I don't want to polarize a community and weaken it -- I don't want to be the villain. It is unfortunate that a text that is so blatantly biased and vindictive has stayed that way, even 2 days after it was made so, and what was meant to be a discussion page has been fettered and chained by one person, and justice is a long-drawn battle.
So yes, I will spare HPN of future Sampada/Pariveshana entries, and tension to the rest of the community. I will look into the Firefox matters myself; I have already edited the Support document for the time being. If you can, please look at the other points I have raised in the Support:Talk page, and carry the dialogue forward. Or you are free to delete it all.
No mediation is ever going to work, if you people remain intransigent. It's better you put both the content (Anyway the content put/restored by the other person is NOT his own, but links to the Wikipedia guidelines again.)
Nope. It also works if one person chooses to leave. You are free to call me an escapist, defeatist, rabble-rouser, "stupid geek", or anything else, in whatever blog you deem good. I have brooked hostilities for more than a week now, and I have tried all that I could. I am leaving with no regrets: I *can* work for the cause of Kannada in many other ways.
Good luck, Regards, Deepak