On Tuesday 09 April 2002 12:01 pm, Jimbo wrote:
> I'm trying to see if I can raise him via private email. Perhaps I can talk
> sense into him.
On three separate occasions I have either told 24 about the mailing list or
invited him/her to join in --- if for no other reason than to see what we are
up to with policy and other discussions. Each time, I even included a link to
the mailing list wikipedia page for his/her convenience.
FYI here is something 24 has recently wrote in response to a statement I made
about contacting the mailing list about his/her actions
(from [[Talk:Military fiat]]):
"you are quite welcome to have a "party" or "clique" discussion on what your
mailing list clique wishes to do about the Governance of this project. I
will proceed as I am until someone writes a [[m:Status quo]] that identifies
some action of mine as a problem, or until someone else achieves consensus on
a means of [[m:Governance]] on the project now that Larry is gone. -24" (I of
course had to sign 24's comment for him/her -- still doesn't get that
convention either...)
If I read this right, then this person is purposely trying to force us into
joining his "wikipedia governance" project! And if we don't, 24 will continue
doing the same darn things in the same way as he/she is already doing them.
I don't know about ya'all, but I don't like being coerced.
Some more stuff 24 has been up to:
(you might want to check out the meta Jimbo)
I see that 24 is very upset about the people who are in favor of the
Singularity. (Eliezar Yudkowsky, for example). I think this is very
odd. I mean, it's odd to be _upset_ by a very small group of people who
are basically not having any particular impact on the world. I mean, he's
upset about people who are interested in "downloading" their consciousness
into computers, which is basically a science fiction concept at the moment.
Why be upset about it?
Many of his other comments are very odd, as well.
I think that the word "troll" is very overused. To my way of
thinking, it refers to a person who is "trolling" as a joke or
something. Sincere people with strange ideas are not trolls. Even
sincere people who are hostile, argumentative, uncooperative are not
trolls. A troll is _insincere_, that is, they say things only for the
shock value, only for the purpose of upsetting people.
But consider this statement:
Someone wrote:
>24: "the people" don't need you to speak for them. They're capable of speaking for themselves,
24 responded:
>several classes of people apparently do - Great Apes, those in
>Developing nations without much net access or English vocabulary, and
>even those Anti-globalization movement types who don't participate in
>net or Global Greens top-down games. If they come here and say
>anything, they will soon be driven away by LDC, Axel Boldt, yourself,
>and other white trash.
Great apes (bonobos, gorillas, etc.) are a class of people for whom 24
alleges to speak? "white trash"? To me, these don't sound like
positions sincerely held, but positions chosen simply to generate more
heat than light.
--Jimbo
On Monday 08 April 2002 09:08 pm, Brion wrote:
> Okay, crazy idea time:
>
> What if we had the ability to include multiple wikis in the
> RecentChanges list? e.g., English AND meta and perhaps French and
> Esperanto wikipedias all together in one list? It would make my life
> more convenient, anyway.
>
> Yes. Yes, it's madness, I know. Besides, I'd probably be the one who had
> to figure out how to make it work cleanly. (ugh)
>
> -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
What an excellent idea! However, we would probably have to set up user
preferences a bit differently -- perhaps have options on which namespaces
and/or languages to display in RecentChanges. If we do this craziness, then
we should probably set the default NOT to show meta:namespace or its
equivalent ("meta" is not very intuitive for me, and I'm not sure if it is
the best name for the function it will serve) or any other languages beyond
the user's/visitor's native one (which can be determined by them choosing
their language on the Main Page).
maveric149
> I think that the word "troll" is very overused. To my way of
> thinking, it refers to a person who is "trolling" as a joke or
> something. Sincere people with strange ideas are not trolls. Even
> sincere people who are hostile, argumentative, uncooperative are not
> trolls. A troll is _insincere_, that is, they say things only for the
> shock value, only for the purpose of upsetting people.
Agreed. I think the word is slung around a little too freely.
1. The Cunctator is not a troll. He sincerely cares about the project and has contributed a lot of valuable material, including our current logo. He is also a shit-disturber (I say that with some affection) and got into a personal feud with Larry Sanger. That doesn't make him a troll.
2. Mirwin is not a troll. He came into Wikipedia and, like many newcommers, brought up what he considered to be major issues, but most people disagreed with his assessments. He has some unusual ideas, has a rather rambling style of expressing himself, and seems to be quite fond of the idea of forking the project, but I haven't seen him do any intentional trolling.
3. I'm not sure whether 24 means to troll or not. He has been downright prolific on the meta, pumping out his ideas on what he sees as the major problems of Wikipedia, and the possible solutions. He seems intelligent, but very narrowly focused, and desires to change the basic nature of Wikipedia. He ignores community standards, and gets upset that we even call ourselves a community. He also has extensive insults for people that don't want to play his game by his rules. Strange? Yes. Troll? Not sure. Ban him? No way. It would set a dangerous precident, and wouldn't be very effective anyway. It's trivial to alter one's apparent IP address over the web.
-- Stephen G.
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> JHK writes
>
> The problem here is that 24 makes assertions that words mean what IT
> says they mean, and often denies that common usage is legitimate. The
> purpose of any encyclopedia should be to let people know what is
> GENERALLY meant and agreed-upon, and then other views or
> interpretations.
Couldn't agree more. This person has some VERY idiosyncratic definitions for
obscure terms I have never seen used. Many of his entries seem leftist/Green
and yet I have many friends that are leftist and/or Green and they are not
aware of most of 24's terms. In addition, almost everything he/she writes is
discoherent and at first glance at least, nonsense.
>....
> JHK:
> I think [Jimbo is] right on one level -- banning is very extreme. However,
> I think we need to consider whether community standards and etiquette
> play any part. There have been lots of situations where peer pressure
> has helped to tone down disagreements between Wikipedians -- but even in
> cases where there was clear animosity, I've never seen it get so bad
> that the disputants wouldn't put common goals first (given encouragement
> ;-) ). With 24, we see a person who denies that there is a community,
> and therefore has no obligation to work within the standards we've set
> for ourselves. Moreover, one of 24's aims is to change the goals of the
> project and tell us what we 'should' (in his twisted world-view) be
> writing about. In my opinion, he IS vandalizing the project by creating
> tons of pages that are really indefensible from a NPOV-encyclopedia
> standpoint. Banning him would certainly result in tirades of "those
> people/that clique doesn't like what I say, so they're oppressing me",
> but this may be the point where we have to make a call on policy. I'm
> all for peer pressure and heavy editing, but I just don't know if it
> will be effective against someone who considers us all less than his
> peers.
>
> JHK
>
Much of my rant was based on the fact that 24 does not follow community
standards and etiquette -- even after being made aware of them. 24 is
willfully defying NPOV, capitalization and pluralization wikipedia standards.
What is worse, is that this person literaly is able to spew out massive
amounts of text in very little time. It is nearly IMPOSSIBLE to keep up with
him/her -- let alone write about what I want to write about. It wouldn't be
that terrible if this person simply was making new articles and leaving
established ones alone. But 24 is injecting his/her seemingly idiosyncratic
views into many other articles.
I am a very patient person who allways tries to give people the benefit of
the doubt (and have been doing so with 24 up to this point). I have often
chided other wikipedians for calling a newbie a VANDAL just because they were
doing what newbies do best -- make honest mistakes or do something bad like
delete a single article because they do not understand what wikipedia is.
Almost all of these newbies either begin to understand and learn how to work
on the 'pedia, or they drop out. 24 is very different and continues to do
things the way he/she wants to after being introduced to what wikipedia is,
our NPOV policy, how to best contribute to existing articles and how to best
create new ones.
I really hate to say it, but I think it is time to at least consider voting
24 off the island. Maybe give him/her one more chance to reform.
maveric149
On Saturday, April 6, 2002, at 03:58 AM, wikipedia-l-
request(a)nupedia.com wrote:
> Please have a look at
> http://www.ds.fh-koeln.de/~marian/wikipedia/template.html and test it
> with
> all browsers on earth.
It looks OK in
1. Microsoft Explorer 5.1 on Mac.
2. Opera 5.0 Mac
3. Netscape 6 Mac
The blue is a bit dull compared with the current "Cologne Blue" which I
was enjoying. In fact, I prefer the current version.
One suggestion: There appears to be no link back from a 'talk:blah' page
to the 'blah' page provided automatically on the current "Cologne Blue"
For example if I am looking at "Talk:Differential equations" how do I
get back to "Differential equations" without doing a search?
>Any chance we could just give 24 his own wiki to play
>on?
>
>Chuck
It's not that hard to set up your own--we can point to
mine as an example. But I wouldn't want to actually give
him any help.0
Hmmm...
Any chance we could just give 24 his own wiki to play
on?
Chuck
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> Those who contribute often and really care do form a kind of a
> group -- at the very least. I never really understood the total
> aversion against an administrating body (especially one that is
> based on meritocracy).
It's odd that 24 brings up this point frequently--that there is
no "system of governance" as he puts it. But there is--his name
is Jimbo. This is a very effective form of governance called
"monarchy". Jimbo owns the box, and what he says goes. The
balance to that is the open content license; if a bunch of us
really hate what he's doing, we can take all of the content to
another site and do it ourselves--but we're not likely to, because
Jimbo knows what he's doing. That also makes me inclined to be
less tolerant of destructive kooks, because in the end, there's
nothing preventing Mr.24 from forking the project off onto his
own site and getting all his green buddies to edit it--and the
marketplace will decide which site is more useful.
0
I'm a new user and I didn't even know the meta wikipedia was there... I
was about to write my own page of 'questions about the wikepedia' to try
and get some answers. As it is I hadn't done it yet and now I know it
doesn't belong in the main wiki-space at all... I've also found answers
to some of my questions just by browsing, so I don't feel the need to
ask them anymore!
But since I didn't know about the meta-wp, the odds are that nor will
any other newbie, and newbies are just the sort of people with questions
and queries about the nature of the wikipedia... given the nature of the
project I can see a hundred newbies coming in over a period of time and
making pages entitled 'Things I want to know about the Wikipedia' or 'My
Questions I want answered' etc... either that or I'm just wierd! I've
never been one to lurk and wait - if I think something's a good idea I
tend to jump in with both feet :)
Anyway, to get to the point, my suggestion is that there should be a
clear statement on the front page of the Wikipedia directing people to
the meta-wikipedia for discussions ABOUT the Wikipedia, like the link
sending people back to the main page from the front page of the meta.
Karen Johnson
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