These are the times when I wish I'd be in the States again, and have some turkey :)
While most of you are celebrating, I uploaded the November 16 tarball from wikipedia to the http://wikipedia.sourceforge.net/fpw/wiki.phtml test site. This will give all of us a realistic impression of how the script behaves under current conditions. If we really switch over in late December/early January, this is how it will be!
Please keep in mind: - The sourceforge server is a little slow. The speed will be better on the bomis sever. - The sourceforge server limits the memory for the script. If a command dies with "allowed memory size exceeded", don't worry, this won't happen on the bomis server. It even works on my local machine. - Remember, subpages are deactivated. That also means the "freestyle" subpage links ("/Subpage") are broken.
Some features might already be helpful for today's work under the UseModWiki! Just try the "Stub articles" function (on the QuickBar or the "Special Pages"). Most of these stubs are probably stubs on the current wikipedia as well!
This was the last major update for about a month. I'll try to fix serious bugs when you write them on the bugs page, but I probably won't be adjusting screen colors or the like ;)
Happy Thanksgiving, Magnus
Hello everybody!
I think the German Wikipedia is more and more reaching a point, were there are enough people to start discussions about controversial topics. I'm thinking especialy about articles with an esoteric/mystic/religious theme.
Is there some kind of procedure that has been established in the international Wikipedia? Do you stop working on the article and start a discussion? Or do you fight on an article until you come to a consensus (or enough people have given up ;-) )?
I think in scientific articles it is not such a big problem to specify the different opinions and state which one is more and which is less accepted. But I have my problems to declare that ghosts, clairvoyance, etc. do exist/work, or do not, and that both opinions have the same possibility. But maybe that's a just lack of my democratic, pluralistic engagement and an excess of my scientific believing emotions. (BTW: is parascience a science?)
Am I too afraid of fanatic esoterics/christs/etc that are flooding wikipedia with totally biased articles and not willing to discuss about their opinions?
Bye, Kurt
On Sat, Nov 24, 2001 at 02:56:51AM +0100, Kurt Jansson wrote:
Hello everybody!
I think the German Wikipedia is more and more reaching a point, were there are enough people to start discussions about controversial topics. I'm thinking especialy about articles with an esoteric/mystic/religious theme.
Cool!
Is there some kind of procedure that has been established in the international Wikipedia? Do you stop working on the article and start a discussion? Or do you fight on an article until you come to a consensus (or enough people have given up ;-) )?
We just plug right along, writing.
I think in scientific articles it is not such a big problem to specify the different opinions and state which one is more and which is less accepted. But I have my problems to declare that ghosts, clairvoyance, etc. do exist/work, or do not, and that both opinions have the same possibility. But maybe that's a just lack of my democratic, pluralistic engagement and an excess of my scientific believing emotions. (BTW: is parascience a science?)
Am I too afraid of fanatic esoterics/christs/etc that are flooding wikipedia with totally biased articles and not willing to discuss about their opinions?
My opinion, and of course take it for what it's worth, is that a certain amount of argument and controversy is inevitable. At first it bothered me. I wanted to get along with everyone, even the people I thought were crackpots.
Now I just write what I think is appropriate. I am very careful to try to stay npov, and in my experience 9 out of 10 others do the same. When an individual insists on being npov, I have stopped arguing. I just walk away and let them "win". My opinion is that in the long run, they will get tired and the npov view will win out. With only one or two exceptions, that has shown to be true.
Kurt Jansson schrieb:
possibility. But maybe that's a just lack of my democratic, pluralistic engagement and an excess of my scientific believing emotions. (BTW: is parascience a science?)
I remember when we first wrote the presentation of Guglielmo Marconi (http://www.wikipedia.com/wiki/Guglielmo_Marconi) and I stated that he was the inventor of radio. Uh-uh. Someone else (LDC?) was very eager to point out that this was only a myth with no truth at all, and that everybody else in the universe had invented radio before Marconi (ok, so I might exaggerate just a bit to make my point). After a long discussion we wrote that for various reasons, Marconi "is often credited as the 'father of radio'." We could all agree on this.
So, the final text in Wikipedia is not just the correct truth, but also the result of a negotiation process between conflicting minds. It's an evolution - only the fittest texts will survive. :-)
Hi Kurt,
This is a perfect topic for intlwiki-l--that's why the list was set up.
I think it would be a good idea to translate parts of the [[neutral point of view]] article, or to write such an article yourself based on that, auf Deutsch. There are many philosophical objections to such a policy, but as far as I can tell, they are all based on misunderstandings or pointless semantic quibbling about the policy. In any case, as a pragmatic matter, it certainly does make it easier for people of radically different viewpoints to work together. It also makes the task of writing an encyclopedia article *considerably* clearer and more focused than it would be otherwise.
We haven't yet really discussed what sort of general policies we can expect non-English Wikipedias to follow. It's not even *completely* obvious to me that anybody ought to try to make sure that they follow a nonbias policy; but, of course, I do think they *should* follow such a policy, self-consciously. That is, I distinguish between policies I think the non-English Wikipedias should self-consciously adopt, and policies that I think we ought, somehow, actually to try to enforce. The latter is likely to be a subset of the former.
I obviously haven't caught up with my recent mail to the point where I can comment on the suggestion that we find some sort of "editors" for the non-English Wikipedias...that would be relevant here...
Larry
On Sat, 24 Nov 2001, Kurt Jansson wrote:
Hello everybody!
I think the German Wikipedia is more and more reaching a point, were there are enough people to start discussions about controversial topics. I'm thinking especialy about articles with an esoteric/mystic/religious theme.
Is there some kind of procedure that has been established in the international Wikipedia? Do you stop working on the article and start a discussion? Or do you fight on an article until you come to a consensus (or enough people have given up ;-) )?
I think in scientific articles it is not such a big problem to specify the different opinions and state which one is more and which is less accepted. But I have my problems to declare that ghosts, clairvoyance, etc. do exist/work, or do not, and that both opinions have the same possibility. But maybe that's a just lack of my democratic, pluralistic engagement and an excess of my scientific believing emotions. (BTW: is parascience a science?)
Am I too afraid of fanatic esoterics/christs/etc that are flooding wikipedia with totally biased articles and not willing to discuss about their opinions?
Bye, Kurt
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Kurt Jansson wrote:
Is there some kind of procedure that has been established in the international Wikipedia? Do you stop working on the article and start a discussion? Or do you fight on an article until you come to a consensus (or enough people have given up ;-) )?
Does there exist in the German wikipedia the custom of /Talk pages?
I think we generally tend to simultaneously work on the article while also discussing (on the /Talk page) the changes that are being made.
I think that the most important thing is that all parties have a commitment to the NPOV. This doesn't always solve all arguments, but it does solve most of them.
One of the most effective techniques for avoiding controversy is to shift the article from "what is true" to "what people say". It is controversial, perhaps, to say that ghosts exists, or ghosts do not exist. But it is not controversial to say that some people believe in ghosts, but that the vast majority of scientists point to the lack of credible scientific proofs as a reason not to believe.
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