Jimbo Wales has agreed to work with all interested participants on a page
that describes the different types of process that can be used to make
decisions about Wikipedia policies and their interpretations. When we agree that the
page is more or less finished, Jimbo will announce a decision based on the
arguments presented there.
If you have particular ideas about how decisions should or should not be
made, please present them on this page. There isn't too much there yet, but it
will hopefully grow as others weigh in:
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia%3ADecision_Making_Process
The current options are voting and consensus-finding. Please add arguments
for and against these options in an NPOV-style, and try to add other options
or variants as well.
This is something, I think, every Wikipedian should be interested in to help
us avoid stagnation and endless debates.
Regards,
Erik
--
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I set the terse phrase identifying the wikiEN-l list to
"Discussion list for English-language Wikipedia"
You can see this on the http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo page.
P.S. That's the 2nd admin thing I've done to wikiEN-l and either one can be reverted on request.
Ed Poor
WikiEN-l Administrator (de facto and provisional)
I added the following to the WikiEN-l Info page at http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
> This list is about the English-language Wikipedia only.
> For issues relating to the Wikipedia project as a whole,
> please use Wikipedia-l mailing list.
Ed Poor
WikiEN-l Administrator (de facto and provisional)
an english list to reduce traffic at wikipedia-l
some guys from the de.wikipedia want to discuss the project
without hearing about TMC and related stuff in 95% of the mails...
there are a lot of us that think that such a list should exist,
and should take most of the traffic from <wikipedia-l>
Please try to decide if your message is of concern for wikipedia as a
whole (all language wikipedias) or if it concerns the English Wikipedia
only (problems with users or articles, projects, internal organization
etc.) and send your message accordingly.
You will help the foreigners a lot, who are struggling with the English
language and desperately trying to filter out the relevant stuff for them
on wikipedia-l ;-)
wikipedia-l should be about the
"project as whole", while wikien-l is specifically about the English
wikipedia.
Since the list is not moderated, it's just normal list-administration -
choosing taglines, settings and so on, but it is better if a
native-speaker does them.
All we need are the language-specific lists and a meta-list for
coordination. The meta-list should be wikipedia-l. Oh, and of course
wikitech-l.
Traffic on wikipedia-l is currently high because stuff related to the
English wiki only, esp. admin requests, goes there as well as policy
discussions. If we separate the two, traffic should be manageable.
I will stay on the en.list btw. I strongly support
this change to help the international ones to get more
involved, plus to make it clear what is a english
concern, and what should be a whole community concern.
The question was about administration, not moderation. Choosing
taglines, defining welcome greetings and all the technical stuff.
Erik wrote:
> Wikipedia doesn't need any warning labels. What it does need is a decision
> making process.
I've been asking all week for one -- a decision-making process, that is.
Ed Poor
I don't know how to the attention of 217.168.172.132.
He has made 37 edits to [[List_of_common_misspellings]] since his arrival on November 9th.
You might try this, although it sounds severe:
* Each time he makes an edit, revert it.
* Include an attention-getting comment on each revert.
* Put the same comment, or a longer one in the talk page.
Beware, this might drive away an otherwise good contributor.
Ed Poor
Words, Mouth. I am capable of putting A into B myself, thank you.
You'd be a fool to think that I was saying that people who have different sensibilities than mine, are fools.
And you'd be an idiot to think that I just now called you either a fool or an idiot.
To clarify:
* The article entitiled [[goatse.cx]] sounds like the English phrase "goat sex".
* Anyone who wants to avoid descriptions of sex, should be wise enough not to visit that article.
* Those who read an article clearly (or even vaguely) labeled "sex" have no grounds to complain that the topic actually described sex -- or something related to it.
Same argument for clicking on an image link labelled, "Warning".
Get it now, Ant?
Ed Poor
-----Original Message-----
From: Anthere [mailto:anthere5@yahoo.com]
Sent: Friday, November 15, 2002 11:19 AM
To: wikipedia-l(a)wikipedia.org
Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] goatse (was F.A.)
"Poor, Edmund W" <Edmund.W.Poor(a)abc.com> wrote:
We have a [[goatse.cx]] article, and I don't like it. But anyone who's foolish enough to click on the link for it will be able to read it. And anyone who's foolhardy enough to click on the external image link will see it.
So ?
You might - perhaps - avoid saying people who have different sensibilities than yours, are fools.
_____
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Excuse me, Erik, but discussions of what end users want need not be neutral. Only Wikipedia articles must follow the NPOV.
If parents or any other group with strongly held values want to sift out what they regard as antithetical to their values, why should we thwart them?
A handbook on sexual practices might sift *in* only those articles pertaining to belching (sic). It could go in the campanion CD-ROM for 'Our Bodies, Our Selves'.
An Islamic state might decide to filter out any info on Israel or Christianity -- but might decide that NPOV is just fine for the Arab-Israeli articles. Hey, you never know.
Why not come to sifter-l and discuss your team certification proposal there?
Ed Poor
We don't need some warning on the Main Page for "protecting" sensitive eyes -
that is just plain silly. As somebody already mentioned the vast majority of
hits we get are through external search engines that bring viewers to
individual articles. Also if the viewer has parental controls on while using
the external search engine then they won't land on any "objectionable"
Wikipedia articles.
How about this; Have a link in the footer area of each page that simply says
"Disclaimer and Copyright Notice"
Then we could have a general disclaimer (as most large websites do) that can
say several things;
1) We could warn people not to depend on Wikipedia for data that will be used
to design intergalatic probes, find cures for cancer or operate on kittens
because we can't make any promises as to the accuracy of the information we
present in spite of the fact that most of us try our best to write excellent
and correct material (also a disclaimer of legal liability would be nice).
2) We could also state that part of our mission is to describe works of art in
a comprehensive mannor so we will be giving away plots and the endings of
stories.
3) In addition we would also state that our intention to to cover all human
knowledge of encyclopedic value and this includes material that some people
may find to be objectionable or even offensive for various reasons.
No need for meta-tag based filters and no need for a message on the main page
that hardly anybody who might need it would ever see.
-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)
TMC also wrote:
> It appears that from now on calling oneself "Sweet
> Pussy", "I Love Hitler", or "George Bush is a Weenie"
> will all be bannable offenses.
I didn't conclude that from Jimbo's ruling.
But a precedent might have been set that users calling themselves by offensive names might be required to change them to something "nice".
Ed Poor