[Note: The post that I'm replying to wasn't sent to <wikipedia-l>. Or perhaps it was sent separately; I'm not sure.]
Anthere wrote:
That also depends on exactly what *others* mean by "consensus".
Please, try http://fr.wikipedia.com/wiki.cgi?Consensus
Ah, so if I'm willing to trust Wikipedia as a dictionary, it seems that there *is* a French/English difference in meaning. If only we spelled it differently from each other, then we could keep track! In the meantime, the French sense of "consensus" can be described in English as "unanimous consent", I think. And since I can't write in French in the first place, I don't have to worry about how to express English "consensus" in that language ^_^!
OK, so clearly we have two ideas, each with its own word, in fact apparently the same word, albeit in different languages. We can talk about whether we should have consensus or unanimous consent (or voting, or the autocratic dictatorship of Jimbo, or ...). I myself would suggest consensus (whatever that may be called in French).
The sad thing is that we seemed to have a longstanding consensus in favour of decision making by consensus, although that consensus was breaking as people started to advocate voting more and more. But now it appears that we may never have had such a consensus; we had a consensus that we made decisions by a method called "consensus", but unfortunately that word has different meanings in different languages, so there was consensus only on the word but not on the thing itself.
That's the problem with foreign languages; everybody should just use English the way that God intended, which to be quite specific is the way that it's used by me. (I hope that it's obvious that this last sentence is a joke.)
-- Toby
Just a quick note:
I have given the page Wikipedia:Disambiguation a bit of a rewrite. I'm not changing policy, I'm updating the article to reflect what has previously been discussed here, and what is current behaviour (eg [[Newton]], [[Cream]])
I hope it is now clearer.
Well, I *would* be rewriting the article, but for the last 5 mins I get a "refused connection" or "timed out".
--- Toby Bartels toby+wikipedia@math.ucr.edu wrote:
Ah, so if I'm willing to trust Wikipedia as a dictionary, it seems that there *is* a French/English difference in meaning. If only we spelled it differently from each other, then we could keep track! In the meantime, the French sense of "consensus" can be described in English as "unanimous consent", I think. And since I can't write in French in the first place, I don't have to worry about how to express English "consensus" in that language ^_^!
ahum, cough, cough. Well, when you look in a wonderful Larousse 84200 articles (is 84200 articles enough for a decent langage speaking ?), and...well...okay...consensus does not exist in french.
Clarification : it does not exist for the Acad�mie.
Don't repeat it to the french *Acad�mie* please. For once, we have our chance...
I'm willing to trust Wikipedia as a dictionary here :-))) More than the academy, for the notion of consensus *does* exist in french.
OK, so clearly we have two ideas, each with its own word, in fact apparently the same word, albeit in different languages. We can talk about whether we should have consensus or unanimous consent (or voting, or the autocratic dictatorship of Jimbo, or ...). I myself would suggest consensus (whatever that may be called in French).
May I add a point here, for the lines below are really head spinning.
It seems the final blocking vote must be made (that's personal self control) only if the blocker deeply believe the potential decision is gonna be *very harmful* to the project/community. A bloking vote over the feeling the decision is stupid or useless is wrong. Likely, the certainty that the decision is going to have destructive consequences, can be supported with good arguments. If the blocker is in a good community where people listen to the others, good arguments are listened to, and the blocker will not appear unreasonable.
If the blocker just block because he thinks it is useless, then his block is probably not to be considered.
Theory !
The sad thing is that we seemed to have a longstanding consensus in favour of decision making by consensus, although that consensus was breaking as people started to advocate voting more and more. But now it appears that we may never have had such a consensus; we had a consensus that we made decisions by a method called "consensus", but unfortunately that word has different meanings in different languages, so there was consensus only on the word but not on the thing itself.
It sure is the case on the fr.wiki. We agree on the word. Not on the way :-)
And from an international point of view, if we are all to work together, we must share *some* values. How do we know we share them ? How do we know we are talking of the same thing ? When even in english you may not be ?
That's the problem with foreign languages; everybody should just use English the way that God intended, which to be quite specific is the way that it's used by me. (I hope that it's obvious that this last sentence is a joke.)
uh, no, your way is ok. But imho God has nothing to do with that ;-)
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The question of TeX markup for equations & obscure symbols has cropped up a few times -- consider it bumped again :)
It's a complex issue with all sorts of technical considerations, which could clog up this list. So rather than do that, I've compiled all past discussion I could find on it on Meta:
http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Math_Markup
It needs a good clean-up by someone aware of the technical issues (ie not me, I've never even used TeX)
why not MathML? its a standard, its already supported by mozilla/netscape, and their derivatives, and sooner or later MS will have to add it to IE.. i just think this is the way to go...
Lightning
The question of TeX markup for equations & obscure symbols has cropped up a few times -- consider it bumped again :)
On Tue, Oct 29, 2002 at 04:00:35PM -0600, Lightning wrote:
why not MathML? its a standard, its already supported by mozilla/netscape, and their derivatives, and sooner or later MS will have to add it to IE.. i just think this is the way to go...
MathML only works together with XHTML, which is not compatible to HTML. MathML is not easy to edit, TeX is much easier (Sic!). It is possible to create MathML from TeX-input if we plan to go that way any time in the future.
JeLuF
The question of TeX markup for equations & obscure symbols has cropped up a few times -- consider it bumped again :)
why not MathML? its a standard, its already supported by mozilla/netscape, and their derivatives, and sooner or later MS will have to add it to IE.. i just think this is the way to go...
As markup used for *input*???
HTML: 2 + 2 = 4
PediaWiki: 2 + 2 = 4
LaTeX: $2+2=4$
MathML: <math><mrow><mrow><mn>2</mn><mo>+</mo><mn>2</mn></mrow><mo>=</mo><mn>4</mn></mrow></math>
HTML: <pre> −<i>b</i> ± √(<i>b</i><sup>2</sup> − 4<i>a</i><i>c</i>) <i>x</i> = ---------------- 2<i>a</i> </pre>
PediaWiki: −<i>b</i> ± √(<i>b</i><sup>2</sup> − 4<i>a</i><i>c</i>) <i>x</i> = ---------------- 2<i>a</i>
LaTeX: $$x=\frac{-b\pm\sqrt{b^2-4ac}}{2a}$$
MathML: <math><mrow><mi>x</mi><mo>=</mo><mfrac><mrow><mrow><mo>-</mo><mi>b</mi></mrow><mo>±</mo><msqrt><mrow><msup><mi>b</mi><mn>2</mn></msup><mo>-</mo><mrow><mn>4</mn><mo>⁢</mo><mi>a</mi><mo>⁢</mo><mi>c</mi></mrow></mrow></msqrt></mrow><mrow><mn>2</mn><mo>⁢</mo><mi>a</mi></mrow></mfrac></mrow></math>
-- Toby
This is a useful analysis. Is Toby being fair to each method?
It strikes me that we should be liberal about what we accept, and conservative about what we print. There are many complications, of course.
Toby Bartels wrote:
why not MathML? its a standard, its already supported by mozilla/netscape, and their derivatives, and sooner or later MS will have to add it to IE.. i just think this is the way to go...
As markup used for *input*???
HTML: 2 + 2 = 4
PediaWiki: 2 + 2 = 4
LaTeX: $2+2=4$
MathML: <math><mrow><mrow><mn>2</mn><mo>+</mo><mn>2</mn></mrow><mo>=</mo><mn>4</mn></mrow></math>
HTML:
<pre> −<i>b</i> ± √(<i>b</i><sup>2</sup> − 4<i>a</i><i>c</i>) <i>x</i> = ---------------- 2<i>a</i> </pre>
PediaWiki: −<i>b</i> ± √(<i>b</i><sup>2</sup> − 4<i>a</i><i>c</i>) <i>x</i> = ---------------- 2<i>a</i>
LaTeX: $$x=\frac{-b\pm\sqrt{b^2-4ac}}{2a}$$
MathML: <math><mrow><mi>x</mi><mo>=</mo><mfrac><mrow><mrow><mo>-</mo><mi>b</mi></mrow><mo>±</mo><msqrt><mrow><msup><mi>b</mi><mn>2</mn></msup><mo>-</mo><mrow><mn>4</mn><mo>⁢</mo><mi>a</mi><mo>⁢</mo><mi>c</mi></mrow></mrow></msqrt></mrow><mrow><mn>2</mn><mo>⁢</mo><mi>a</mi></mrow></mfrac></mrow></math>
-- Toby _______________________________________________ Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@wikipedia.org http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
Anthere wrote:
It seems the final blocking vote must be made (that's personal self control) only if the blocker deeply believe the potential decision is gonna be *very harmful* to the project/community. A bloking vote over the feeling the decision is stupid or useless is wrong. Likely, the certainty that the decision is going to have destructive consequences, can be supported with good arguments. If the blocker is in a good community where people listen to the others, good arguments are listened to, and the blocker will not appear unreasonable.
If the blocker just block because he thinks it is useless, then his block is probably not to be considered.
So, if the rest of the people, with their consensus opinion, don't believe that the potential vetoer has a good argument, then there is no veto? OK, sure, that's plain old consensus.
And from an international point of view, if we are all to work together, we must share *some* values. How do we know we share them ? How do we know we are talking of the same thing ? When even in english you may not be ?
Well, what you apparently don't realise is that, due to an obscure English grammatical construction, when you say "How do we know we are talking of the same thing ?", you actually mean the same thing as "I agree with you completely from now on, no matter what.". That is our little secret, in order to trick French people into doing our nefarious will. ^_^ ^_^ ^_^
-- Toby
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