The original intent of the UX team, as I understand it, was to help readers find essential (frequently clicked) elements in the navigation more easily by collapsing less essential ones.
It has been legitimately argued that the language links are essential for many users, even if the click rate is lower than that of some other elements, and that they are also key to surfacing our value of language diversity. The reasonable hypothesis has also been presented that the click rates are higher in other languages than English.
The legitimate counterargument is that the naïve link list does not necessarily do the best job at this: by presenting the one or two links that may be relevant to the user within a potentially (and hopefully) very long column of foreign words in sometimes foreign scripts, it's a reasonable hypothesis that users will not in fact discover or understand the availability of -their- language, but rather simply glance over the list.
Howie has presented the outlines of a new compromise approach: that by presenting a limited number of links by default, we increase the discoverability of the feature, while also limiting overall page clutter. That's also just a hypothesis.
I would suggest the following approach:
1) That we return to the default-expanded state for now. If we want to default-collapse again, we'll need some more compelling metrics that demonstrate the actual benefits of doing so.
2) That we prototype the system above, or some variant thereof, define key metrics of success, and A/B test it against the existing one, provided the idea doesn't turn out to be obviously flawed.
I agree that this isn't the highest priority issue on the list of UX fixes and changes, so by implementing 1), we can do 2) on a timeline that makes sense without a false urgency.
The BlackBerry issue is indeed of greater importance. It only affects a subset of BB models, apparently older ones from what I've seen. Hampton, Tomasz and Ryan Lane have been working on getting VMs with the BB simulators set up, so that we can a) debug Vector on different BB versions, b) test the mobile redirect and mobile site on BB before we enable a redirect. This was delayed by ops issues on the mobile site, but I hope we'll get It sorted out next week.
For the record, I agree entirely that read-breakage of this type is a critical, high priority bug.
Erik
On 6/5/10, Gregory Maxwell gmaxwell@gmail.com wrote:
On Sat, Jun 5, 2010 at 3:37 PM, David Levy lifeisunfair@gmail.com wrote:
Sue Gardner wrote:
Feedback is great, but it irritates me when people start using words like "stupid" -- that's what I was responding to.
Perhaps you misread the context. Austin wrote the word "stupid" as a hypothetical example of nonconstructive commentary that should be avoided. No one has hurled an insult.
Moreover "feedback" can itself be perceived as an insult.
Imagine that someone cleaning your office took your important paperwork and dumped it in a bin. You complain— "Hey we need that stuff to be accessible!" and they retort "Thank you for your _feedback_. We'll consider it during our future cleaning plans".
We're not just providing feedback here. We're collectively making a decision, as we've always done, thank you very much.
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On Sun, Jun 6, 2010 at 1:07 AM, Erik Moeller erik@wikimedia.org wrote:
The original intent of the UX team, as I understand it, was to help readers find essential (frequently clicked) elements in the navigation more easily by collapsing less essential ones.
This is wrong approach of reworking sidebar. To do it correctly, you have to prioritize existing things. Add icons to most important items and move them to the top (random article is far more popular than current events). Move toolbox to the bottom and, ensuring youself before that most users don't use it, hide it for anonymous users only. Move most probably used interwikis to the top (I'd volunteer for coding this if I was sure I had enough spare time this summer). Add language codes, they are much easier to understand and to look for in a long list than a language name in language itself. Add more icons, so things are distinguishable.
Oh, and no wonder that IW links are used less in Vector than in Monobook. Monobook sidebar has clear division between blocks. Vector has some loosy line between them. Also, in Vector sidebar elements are on the grey background, so most people don't notice them. Honestly, the set of blue links on the grey background is one of the worst thing you may introduce to improve the usability of the sidebar.
--vvv
I can't believe that with all the complains no one has yet brought up the fact that the 'watch' has been replaced by a star that turns blue instead of yellow.
I always think I don't have the page in my watchlist!!!
Now, that's a reason to complain (Lynch the usability team!)
MarianoC.-
--- El dom 6-jun-10, Victor Vasiliev vasilvv@gmail.com escribió:
De: Victor Vasiliev vasilvv@gmail.com Asunto: Re: [Foundation-l] hiding interlanguage links by default is a Bad Idea, part 2 Para: "Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List" foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Fecha: domingo, 6 de junio de 2010, 17:40 On Sun, Jun 6, 2010 at 1:07 AM, Erik Moeller erik@wikimedia.org wrote:
The original intent of the UX team, as I understand
it, was to help
readers find essential (frequently clicked) elements
in the navigation
more easily by collapsing less essential ones.
This is wrong approach of reworking sidebar. To do it correctly, you have to prioritize existing things. Add icons to most important items and move them to the top (random article is far more popular than current events). Move toolbox to the bottom and, ensuring youself before that most users don't use it, hide it for anonymous users only. Move most probably used interwikis to the top (I'd volunteer for coding this if I was sure I had enough spare time this summer). Add language codes, they are much easier to understand and to look for in a long list than a language name in language itself. Add more icons, so things are distinguishable.
Oh, and no wonder that IW links are used less in Vector than in Monobook. Monobook sidebar has clear division between blocks. Vector has some loosy line between them. Also, in Vector sidebar elements are on the grey background, so most people don't notice them. Honestly, the set of blue links on the grey background is one of the worst thing you may introduce to improve the usability of the sidebar.
--vvv
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On 6/6/2010 2:57 PM, Mariano Cecowski wrote:
I can't believe that with all the complains no one has yet brought up the fact that the 'watch' has been replaced by a star that turns blue instead of yellow.
I always think I don't have the page in my watchlist!!!
Now, that's a reason to complain (Lynch the usability team!)
I trust that at least the last part of this was meant as a joke, but I think it's worth a comment anyway. This is not so much related to usability or interlanguage links, but the larger issue some people have been highlighting about communication and culture.
If you don't know the history of racial issues in the US, you might not realize just how serious a subject lynching is. In that cultural context, it is not something to be joked about. For African-Americans online, talk about lynching is arguably more offensive than violations of Godwin's law. For me, this highlights some of the issues that make our culture much more closed than it should be.
I think we are often far too careless in the tone and language we use with each other. We need to both be more careful in how we communicate, and more forgiving of those who inadvertently make mistakes in this area. I'm happy to forgive a comment about lynching made in ignorance of its connotations. In this discussion, there's been quite a bit of consternation about the attitude of the usability team, which seems to have grown largely out of a comment attached to the debated piece of code. I imagine the author may well regret it, but I don't think it should be seized upon in isolation from the productive dialogue I've seen. An administrator on the wiki might be a bit grumpy in an edit summary, too - that's not a good thing particularly, but not necessarily worth indicting the entire community, as some critics try to do. It happens, people are human, hence both fallible and capable of improving.
Because of the race aspect, this is also a good opening to talk about diversity and cultural awareness. As a community, we are overwhelmingly white (to use the racial constructs of the US; to express it another way, of European ancestry). We manage to have a smattering of Asian people, of various ethnic groups. But some groups are effectively not involved at all, and the European and American flavor is very dominant. Because of how that shapes our interactions, is it any wonder that black people might not feel welcome among us? We may be perfectly innocent, as exemplified here, yet our culture can appear hostile to people of African descent.
Similarly, we know that the community population skews young and male. That has important consequences, and some of those unfortunately reinforce our lack of diversity. It's been pointed out what a male-centric approach we sometimes have, in the enthusiasm and manner with which certain subjects are covered, and the oblivious attitude toward potential offensiveness of various images. This comes across to all too many women as a hostile culture. Most large online communities do not have the kind of gender imbalance we have. This is a serious issue we need to address. The foundation could do targeted outreach forever to recruit underrepresented groups (whether it's ethnicity, age, gender, or other factors), and it would accomplish very little without significant improvements in our culture.
--Michael Snow
Michael Snow wrote:
Similarly, we know that the community population skews young and male. That has important consequences, and some of those unfortunately reinforce our lack of diversity. It's been pointed out what a male-centric approach we sometimes have, in the enthusiasm and manner with which certain subjects are covered, and the oblivious attitude toward potential offensiveness of various images. This comes across to all too many women as a hostile culture. Most large online communities do not have the kind of gender imbalance we have. This is a serious issue we need to address. The foundation could do targeted outreach forever to recruit underrepresented groups (whether it's ethnicity, age, gender, or other factors), and it would accomplish very little without significant improvements in our culture.
Well, yes and no.
Historically the first time the offensiveness of images on wikipedia first came to a head (so to speak), was the images on [[Clitoris]]. At least in that instance the contributors who feigned the images as being offensive to viewers -- while in many cases claiming *they* personally weren't at all offended (!!) -- were predominantly male. My recollection was/is that the defenders of a photographic image on that page, instead of a schematic drawing, were mostly female.
I don't deny the general point about the testosterone-laden atmosphere in some areas of our community, but I do want to note that even in the latest controversy over images, the person on the Board of Trustees who came strongest in defense of a unfettered retention of sensual images of educational value was its (single?) female member. It would be a serious mistake to claim that she was doing so only to "fit in" with the lads.
Yours,
Jussi-Ville Heiskanen
On 6/6/2010 9:03 PM, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen wrote:
Michael Snow wrote:
Similarly, we know that the community population skews young and male. That has important consequences, and some of those unfortunately reinforce our lack of diversity. It's been pointed out what a male-centric approach we sometimes have, in the enthusiasm and manner with which certain subjects are covered, and the oblivious attitude toward potential offensiveness of various images. This comes across to all too many women as a hostile culture. Most large online communities do not have the kind of gender imbalance we have. This is a serious issue we need to address. The foundation could do targeted outreach forever to recruit underrepresented groups (whether it's ethnicity, age, gender, or other factors), and it would accomplish very little without significant improvements in our culture.
Well, yes and no.
Historically the first time the offensiveness of images on wikipedia first came to a head (so to speak), was the images on [[Clitoris]]. At least in that instance the contributors who feigned the images as being offensive to viewers -- while in many cases claiming *they* personally weren't at all offended (!!) -- were predominantly male. My recollection was/is that the defenders of a photographic image on that page, instead of a schematic drawing, were mostly female.
There have been a lot of red herrings brought up on all sides of that issue. Use of images in a context that is on-topic and educational is clearly one of those, although I would suggest that we can do better at supporting reader choice, because it's really the reader we should be putting in control of their own quest for information.
I don't deny the general point about the testosterone-laden atmosphere in some areas of our community, but I do want to note that even in the latest controversy over images, the person on the Board of Trustees who came strongest in defense of a unfettered retention of sensual images of educational value was its (single?) female member. It would be a serious mistake to claim that she was doing so only to "fit in" with the lads.
(I assume you mean Kat, but she is not the only female board member.)
I'm certainly not suggesting that. Sometimes it's easier to strongly argue positions that are counterintuitive to the role people might expect of you, because people are unlikely to suggest your convictions are skewed by your personal characteristics. I also think the focus on simple retention or deletion is almost a red herring sometimes, despite the conduct of another board member which basically framed the debate that way. The board's initial statement about educational images is kind of stuck there too, but we've been working on something a little more nuanced to come soon. In the meantime, I would encourage people to look at the discussion that's been happening on the Commons village pump regarding educational image use more generally.
--Michael Snow
Michael Snow wrote:
There have been a lot of red herrings brought up on all sides of that issue. Use of images in a context that is on-topic and educational is clearly one of those, although I would suggest that we can do better at supporting reader choice, because it's really the reader we should be putting in control of their own quest for information.
I am bound to disagree on the last point there. Our mission is not to make choices or to enable choices by any party, in terms of what is available. We make things available, and they should *be* available. If people want to provide subsets of what we provide, that is their affair. It isn't any part of our mission.
Yours,
Jussi-Ville Heiskanen
Hoi, The WMF has as its strategy to invest in what has the highest impact. Given limited resources that makes sense. It also means that while philosophically as volunteers we do not have to make such choices, the WMF will and does.
It is obvious that depending on your point of view, the choices made by the WMF can be fortunate or less so. You are right that it is not in our mission to make choices, but reality is different. The question is what choices to make and what their likely impact is. This brings you to two competing fundamentals; what has the most effect and what is the period to measure those effects. Thanks, GerardM
On 9 June 2010 09:12, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen cimonavaro@gmail.com wrote:
Michael Snow wrote:
There have been a lot of red herrings brought up on all sides of that issue. Use of images in a context that is on-topic and educational is clearly one of those, although I would suggest that we can do better at supporting reader choice, because it's really the reader we should be putting in control of their own quest for information.
I am bound to disagree on the last point there. Our mission is not to make choices or to enable choices by any party, in terms of what is available. We make things available, and they should *be* available. If people want to provide subsets of what we provide, that is their affair. It isn't any part of our mission.
Yours,
Jussi-Ville Heiskanen
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Gerard Meijssen wrote:
Hoi, The WMF has as its strategy to invest in what has the highest impact. Given limited resources that makes sense. It also means that while philosophically as volunteers we do not have to make such choices, the WMF will and does.
It is obvious that depending on your point of view, the choices made by the WMF can be fortunate or less so. You are right that it is not in our mission to make choices, but reality is different. The question is what choices to make and what their likely impact is. This brings you to two competing fundamentals; what has the most effect and what is the period to measure those effects. Thanks, GerardM
You are as always, as pellucid as a brick of coal, and totally off topic to boot. Please feel welcome to not post comments like that again.
Yours,
Jussi-Ville Heiskanen
Hoi, Using words like "pellucid" I am afraid that the average Brit or Yank will have to look up what you are trying to say, let alone most people for whom English is a second or third language.
If you are not able / willing to understand what my message to you was, I am happy to clear things up for you off list. Thanks, GerardM
On 9 June 2010 12:01, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen cimonavaro@gmail.com wrote:
Gerard Meijssen wrote:
Hoi, The WMF has as its strategy to invest in what has the highest impact.
Given
limited resources that makes sense. It also means that while
philosophically
as volunteers we do not have to make such choices, the WMF will and does.
It is obvious that depending on your point of view, the choices made by
the
WMF can be fortunate or less so. You are right that it is not in our
mission
to make choices, but reality is different. The question is what choices
to
make and what their likely impact is. This brings you to two competing fundamentals; what has the most effect and what is the period to measure those effects. Thanks, GerardM
You are as always, as pellucid as a brick of coal, and totally off topic to boot. Please feel welcome to not post comments like that again.
Yours,
Jussi-Ville Heiskanen
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-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1
On 09/06/2010 12:01, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen wrote:
You are as always, as pellucid as a brick of coal, and totally off topic to boot. Please feel welcome to not post comments like that again.
The fact that you don't understand, don't agree with, or don't like someone doesn't justify to be rude. I think this kind of remark has no way to be constructive. Not only it cannot help reaching a consensus, but it could be offending and start a dispute.
Something is happening in Wikipedia that is new and rare in the history of mankind: community decisions through global consensus at a huge scale. We have the responsibility to make this model work, because I think it is seen, and will be seen more and more in this 21st century, as a proof-experiment of whether humans can govern themselves without the traditional authoritarian leadership, at least under certain conditions.
Our discussions in this mailing-list must be succesful, and this means keeping the tolerance and patience high and the agressivity low. For the same reason, it is my opinion that we must be bold about keeping the power of decisions in the hands of the community. Our goal is one of the noblest I have ever felt with my mind: let's forget the anger and other futile acts of our egos, and keep focused on what is at stake.
On Wed, Jun 9, 2010 at 3:01 AM, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen cimonavaro@gmail.com wrote:
Gerard Meijssen wrote:
Hoi, The WMF has as its strategy to invest in what has the highest impact. Given limited resources that makes sense. It also means that while philosophically as volunteers we do not have to make such choices, the WMF will and does.
It is obvious that depending on your point of view, the choices made by the WMF can be fortunate or less so. You are right that it is not in our mission to make choices, but reality is different. The question is what choices to make and what their likely impact is. This brings you to two competing fundamentals; what has the most effect and what is the period to measure those effects. Thanks, GerardM
You are as always, as pellucid as a brick of coal, and totally off topic to boot. Please feel welcome to not post comments like that again.
I adore the word "pellucid." But Gerard is right: simply put we can't and don't do everything. We don't make every piece of information available to every single person in the world -- yet. So what do we include in our collection, and why, and how do we make it possible for people to access the stuff we do have?
These are the seemingly simple questions that we've spent 5000943945 F-l messages on discussing this month. And we will doubtless spend 67834920 more in discussing whether future policy on these points should necessarily derive from past practice, and who gets to decide.
-- phoebe, who is repressing her opaque sarcasm
phoebe ayers wrote:
I adore the word "pellucid." But Gerard is right: simply put we can't and don't do everything. We don't make every piece of information available to every single person in the world -- yet.
I do admit that many actors in the wikimedia universe have been forced to retreat into more comfortable positions to defend, the front line contributors are quite happy to fight the good fight, and total informational availability. You or no specific contributor need not be in the front line, but I do say to every body in the front line, personally I am shoulder to shoulder with you. Back to back.
Yours,
Jussi-Ville Heiskanen
On 6/9/2010 12:12 AM, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen wrote:
Michael Snow wrote:
There have been a lot of red herrings brought up on all sides of that issue. Use of images in a context that is on-topic and educational is clearly one of those, although I would suggest that we can do better at supporting reader choice, because it's really the reader we should be putting in control of their own quest for information.
I am bound to disagree on the last point there. Our mission is not to make choices or to enable choices by any party, in terms of what is available. We make things available, and they should *be* available. If people want to provide subsets of what we provide, that is their affair. It isn't any part of our mission.
My point has nothing to do with making things unavailable. There are other ways of supporting reader choice. As for the pretense that it's possible to sidestep value decisions about making or enabling choices, just by adopting "availability" as a default, that's simply wrong. The present situation involving interlanguage links is a perfect illustration of that. Regardless of which interface approach we adopted, the links were going to remain available, there was no thought that they would be deleted or that feature eliminated. The question is how they are going to be available, at what point we are going to present the reader with the choice, and what mechanisms will be used to enable those choices. Those are crucial questions to confront in our work, and they apply to much more than just interlanguage links, important as those are.
--Michael Snow
Michael Snow wrote:
On 6/9/2010 12:12 AM, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen wrote:
Michael Snow wrote:
There have been a lot of red herrings brought up on all sides of that issue. Use of images in a context that is on-topic and educational is clearly one of those, although I would suggest that we can do better at supporting reader choice, because it's really the reader we should be putting in control of their own quest for information.
I am bound to disagree on the last point there. Our mission is not to make choices or to enable choices by any party, in terms of what is available. We make things available, and they should *be* available. If people want to provide subsets of what we provide, that is their affair. It isn't any part of our mission.
My point has nothing to do with making things unavailable. There are other ways of supporting reader choice. As for the pretense that it's possible to sidestep value decisions about making or enabling choices, just by adopting "availability" as a default, that's simply wrong. The present situation involving interlanguage links is a perfect illustration of that. Regardless of which interface approach we adopted, the links were going to remain available, there was no thought that they would be deleted or that feature eliminated. The question is how they are going to be available, at what point we are going to present the reader with the choice, and what mechanisms will be used to enable those choices. Those are crucial questions to confront in our work, and they apply to much more than just interlanguage links, important as those are.
You are precisely accurate in terms of the reason why people are so offended by the collapsing of interlanguage links, is just because that is against our mission.
And that is just a minor way of going against our mission. I would suggest nobody even encompass going more directly against that mission.
Yours,
Jussi-Ville Heiskanen
On Sun, Jun 6, 2010 at 9:03 PM, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen cimonavaro@gmail.com wrote:
Michael Snow wrote:
Similarly, we know that the community population skews young and male. That has important consequences, and some of those unfortunately reinforce our lack of diversity. It's been pointed out what a male-centric approach we sometimes have, in the enthusiasm and manner with which certain subjects are covered, and the oblivious attitude toward potential offensiveness of various images. This comes across to all too many women as a hostile culture. Most large online communities do not have the kind of gender imbalance we have. This is a serious issue we need to address. The foundation could do targeted outreach forever to recruit underrepresented groups (whether it's ethnicity, age, gender, or other factors), and it would accomplish very little without significant improvements in our culture.
<snip>
person on the Board of Trustees who came strongest in defense of a unfettered retention of sensual images of educational value was its (single?) female member. It
Uh... much as I like Kat (and she's not the only female member, there's also Bishakha), singling out her view as representative of all women on the projects is, arguably, part of the problem. Are there so few women speaking up as part of the community discussion that this is really necessary?
(One interesting exercise is to count the number of posts by women on this very list. Even controlling for pseudonyms and unknown variability, it's still around 1/10 or lower, a good number of which are from me. Many of the rest are from WMF staffers. Did you notice? I do, every time I post, and not just because I try to not excessively spam the list.)
-- Phoebe
phoebe ayers wrote:
Uh... much as I like Kat (and she's not the only female member, there's also Bishakha), singling out her view as representative of all women on the projects is, arguably, part of the problem. Are there so few women speaking up as part of the community discussion that this is really necessary?
Point taken. Thank you.
Yours,
Jussi-Ville Heiskanen
--- El dom 6-jun-10, Michael Snow wikipedia@verizon.net escribió:
I always think I don't have the page in my watchlist!!!
Now, that's a reason to complain (Lynch the usability team!)
I trust that at least the last part of this was meant as a joke, but I think it's worth a comment anyway.
Michael, that was really off-topic, unnecessary, and a complete waste of bytes.
When you write something sarcastically, the social connotations have zero relevance. I was ridiculing the excess of violence in the thread, that leads to nothing constructive. But then, perhaps the level of aggressiveness has reached a point where obvious sarcasm is taken literally?
MarianoC.-
PS: And to be fair; taking the lynching thing as a sensitive issue in USA is badly US centric; the term is used worldwide and in hundreds of languages, and has no necessary connection with black people.
On Mon, Jun 7, 2010 at 5:42 AM, Michael Snow wikipedia@verizon.net wrote:
If you don't know the history of racial issues in the US, you might not realize just how serious a subject lynching is. In that cultural context, it is not something to be joked about.
Your post is a brilliant example of agressive disrespect of other cultures where lynching is merely a verb which means "execution by mob" (I think if you told someone in Russia that "lyniching" is an offensive verb, he would most probably belive you said something silly). Bear in mind that only 0.55 % of the world population are sensitive about lyncing.
--vvv
--- On Mon, 6/7/10, Victor Vasiliev vasilvv@gmail.com wrote:
From: Victor Vasiliev vasilvv@gmail.com Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] hiding interlanguage links by default is a Bad Idea, part 2 To: "Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List" foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Date: Monday, June 7, 2010, 8:55 AM On Mon, Jun 7, 2010 at 5:42 AM, Michael Snow wikipedia@verizon.net wrote:
If you don't know the history of racial issues in the
US, you might not
realize just how serious a subject lynching is. In
that cultural
context, it is not something to be joked about.
Your post is a brilliant example of agressive disrespect of other cultures where lynching is merely a verb which means "execution by mob" (I think if you told someone in Russia that "lyniching" is an offensive verb, he would most probably belive you said something silly). Bear in mind that only 0.55 % of the world population are sensitive about lyncing.
That post can only being seen as an example of "agressive disrespect of other cultures" by people who think happening to be born in the USA is an agressive disrespect of other cultures. Americans are people too!
Birgitte SB
On Mon, Jun 7, 2010 at 10:30 AM, Birgitte SB birgitte_sb@yahoo.com wrote:
--- On Mon, 6/7/10, Victor Vasiliev vasilvv@gmail.com wrote:
From: Victor Vasiliev vasilvv@gmail.com Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] hiding interlanguage links by default is a Bad Idea, part 2 To: "Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List" foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Date: Monday, June 7, 2010, 8:55 AM On Mon, Jun 7, 2010 at 5:42 AM, Michael Snow wikipedia@verizon.net wrote:
If you don't know the history of racial issues in the
US, you might not
realize just how serious a subject lynching is. In
that cultural
context, it is not something to be joked about.
Your post is a brilliant example of agressive disrespect of other cultures where lynching is merely a verb which means "execution by mob" (I think if you told someone in Russia that "lyniching" is an offensive verb, he would most probably belive you said something silly). Bear in mind that only 0.55 % of the world population are sensitive about lyncing.
That post can only being seen as an example of "agressive disrespect of other cultures" by people who think happening to be born in the USA is an agressive disrespect of other cultures. Americans are people too!
Birgitte SB
This post can be seen as furthering an OT fork of this (otherwise productive) thread. Can everyone who wants to discuss the cultural sensitivities surrounding lynching please take it offlist? Thanks.
-Chad
On Mon, Jun 7, 2010 at 4:46 PM, Chad innocentkiller@gmail.com wrote:
On Mon, Jun 7, 2010 at 10:30 AM, Birgitte SB birgitte_sb@yahoo.com wrote:
--- On Mon, 6/7/10, Victor Vasiliev vasilvv@gmail.com wrote:
On Mon, Jun 7, 2010 at 5:42 AM, Michael Snow wikipedia@verizon.net wrote:
If you don't know the history of racial issues in the
US, you might not
realize just how serious a subject lynching is. In
that cultural
context, it is not something to be joked about.
Your post is a brilliant example of agressive disrespect of other cultures where lynching is merely a verb which means "execution by mob" (I think if you told someone in Russia that "lyniching" is an offensive verb, he would most probably belive you said something silly). Bear in mind that only 0.55 % of the world population are sensitive about lyncing.
That post can only being seen as an example of "agressive disrespect of other cultures" by people who think happening to be born in the USA is an agressive disrespect of other cultures. Americans are people too!
Birgitte SB
This post can be seen as furthering an OT fork of this (otherwise productive) thread. Can everyone who wants to discuss the cultural sensitivities surrounding lynching please take it offlist? Thanks.
This post can be seen as the list administrator asking everyone to be cool, don't go looking for things to be offended by, and try to keep what's already an obscenely long thread on-topic.
Thanks!
Austin
(not pointing to anyone specifically)
could we please stop this side track now? I think everybody knows what the other person means, and it doesn't really matter after all... at least not to this discussion.
Lodewijk
2010/6/7 Birgitte SB birgitte_sb@yahoo.com
--- On Mon, 6/7/10, Victor Vasiliev vasilvv@gmail.com wrote:
From: Victor Vasiliev vasilvv@gmail.com Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] hiding interlanguage links by default is a
Bad Idea, part 2
To: "Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List" <
foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org>
Date: Monday, June 7, 2010, 8:55 AM On Mon, Jun 7, 2010 at 5:42 AM, Michael Snow wikipedia@verizon.net wrote:
If you don't know the history of racial issues in the
US, you might not
realize just how serious a subject lynching is. In
that cultural
context, it is not something to be joked about.
Your post is a brilliant example of agressive disrespect of other cultures where lynching is merely a verb which means "execution by mob" (I think if you told someone in Russia that "lyniching" is an offensive verb, he would most probably belive you said something silly). Bear in mind that only 0.55 % of the world population are sensitive about lyncing.
That post can only being seen as an example of "agressive disrespect of other cultures" by people who think happening to be born in the USA is an agressive disrespect of other cultures. Americans are people too!
Birgitte SB
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On 7 June 2010 14:55, Victor Vasiliev vasilvv@gmail.com wrote:
On Mon, Jun 7, 2010 at 5:42 AM, Michael Snow wikipedia@verizon.net wrote:
If you don't know the history of racial issues in the US, you might not realize just how serious a subject lynching is. In that cultural context, it is not something to be joked about.
Your post is a brilliant example of agressive disrespect of other cultures where lynching is merely a verb which means "execution by mob" (I think if you told someone in Russia that "lyniching" is an offensive verb, he would most probably belive you said something silly). Bear in mind that only 0.55 % of the world population are sensitive about lyncing.
Michael's post, by claiming inflammatory content that was not actually present at all, is the sort of thing that someone would post attempting to derail a discussion. I don't think that was his intent, but he still should have known better.
- d.
On Sun, Jun 6, 2010 at 5:40 PM, Victor Vasiliev vasilvv@gmail.com wrote:
Oh, and no wonder that IW links are used less in Vector than in Monobook. Monobook sidebar has clear division between blocks. Vector has some loosy line between them. Also, in Vector sidebar elements are on the grey background, so most people don't notice them. Honestly, the set of blue links on the grey background is one of the worst thing you may introduce to improve the usability of the sidebar.
I totally agree. That's why I prefer Monobook.
Well.. that and the stupid "favorite/rate/bookmark" star on the button "watch."
-- Fajro
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