Dear Mark,

This morning I came back to my computer after only 11 hours of absence and my mail box was filled with 29 new messages of which no less than 13 were yours. I have to warn you: you are flooding this mailing list, as 40% of all messages are yours. Imagine every subscriber being as active as you are: I would either end my life or my subscription to this list. It took me more than half an hour only to read your messages. Unlike you, most people have other things to do than writing to this mailing list, learning languages and mingling into whatever Wikipedia attracting your intention, such as work, study, and friends other than those you me(e)t on the internet. Any discussion topic attracting more than 10, 15 e-mails contains your contribution. You are streching those topics to a really undesirable length, often changing the subject radically and to a point where it becomes quite irrelevant for this mailing list (though I have to admit a few other posters occasionally also behave that way).

I remind you, once again, that intlwiki-l and wikipedia-l were merged by choice. People not interested in languages would do well to request the split of the two if they are annoyed by a volume, or to just deal with it.

Many of your contributions are relevant, and often I can second them. But very often you are quite trolling, not only here but also on Wikimedia or some Wikipedias. WHenever it comes to anything concerning languages, you jump onto it, and always you are right and the others are wrong. It is not your vision itself, but your apparent belief that you are always right that brings you in trouble. I would, as well as you, abhor any regional language being corrupted by people who want to speak it, and I think English content on non-English Wikipedias is intolerable. But no other well-intending (or so I suppose) contributor but you would ever achieve being blocked at two Wikipedias of which the languages are spoken at almost perfectly antipode places in the world. Perhaps you are getting too deep in Wikipedias where an adolescent boy from Arizona (or a student from the Netherlands, for that matter), unable to speak the language normally has no business. You blamed Gerard in the interwiki matter to speak for the Italians: he could not do so because he was not one himself. Then a logical conclusion would be that you stay away at least at some places, wouldn't it?

So, if an adolescent boy from Arizona unable to speak the language normally has no business editing at the Maori Wikipedia, what business does a white New Zealander who is unable to speak the language normally doing as a sysop?

I emphasise that I have never been banned at a Wikipedia (save once or twice on en.wiki for breaking the 3RR once, and the other time against regulations for... i don't recall what) except these where the people do not speak the language. In fact I am not banned at nds.wiki, just threatened. To their credit, the sysops at nds.wiki obviously speak Platt much better than Robin Patterson speaks Maori.

In addition, I was banned from yi.wiki by Danny a long time ago, but that's a different story for another time. Actually, the majority of the content on yi.wiki now is my contribution, using either the acc't [[User:Node ue]] or [[User:Nod]] (transliterated from the Yiddish alefbeys), or various others I racked up due to banning.

If I was banned for scaring away native speakers, and this ban was agreed to afterwards by Jimbo, perhaps Robin Patterson should be banned from mi.wiki for 'scaring away' my Maori friend?

I cannot emphasise enough how much I appreciate your sense-making contributions, but I have to warn you that many of your contributions are not so positive and that the trolls are gradually overshadowing your good actions. I know there are many more, both on this list and elsewhere, who have similar views. Yann made a similar, albeit briefer, remark on your meta talk page. A member of the Wikimedia Foundation answered, when asked what they would do if they got a $2 million donation, that "we should use it to pay trolls like Mark Williamson to go away". A prominent contributor e-mailed to me, when I mentioned our personal discord originating in the Requests page matter: "Don't take it to heart. Mark is constantly boasting around and pretends the languages are all his. Most people have quitted to take him seriously for a long time." Another prominent user siad to me in personal communication: "one of the reasons I haven't joint the Wikipedia mailing list (so far) is that I do not want to receive five (or more) e-mails by Node every day".

Rather than sticking up for somebody, the thing I would do is forward all such messages to the object of the attack and remind the person that it is extremely rude to talk about people behind their backs. I have only once talked about someone behind his back, and I think he already knew very much my opinion of him (this is "Raul" from en.wiki). If you look at usage statistics for the ML, you'll find that prior to the nds.wiki discussion/argument/war, my posts were rather infrequent.

I would, however, like to remind people that records of foundation chats are public, and I have read some things people have said about me that they may or may not have wished to conceal.

I recommend to people who are annoyed by even five e-mails in their inbox each day from one person to use g-mail. It uses a threaded e-mail system whereby you will not see each new response as a separate message, but rather as part of a thread. If this doesn't suit you, you can subscribe to the digest where you will get all the messages in one single e-mail, and ignore those you choose to.

When saying things like these, I usually defend you by pointing at your good contributions. I do not share the view that you be a troll. That's why I urge you to take this council: Stop trolling, just because you aren't one!

While I do appreciate that some of the things I've said are perhaps a bit overboard, I think that sheer volume is not trolling, and as stated at the en.wiki article [[Internet troll]], people often label controversial opinions as trolling when in fact they're actual opinions.

People (especially Walter) have claimed that I am bossy and dominant regarding languages. This is because I feel they are an area I know a lot about. Similarly, Tim and Brion will talk more about a matter involving programming than I will, because they have a higher level of expertise.

I certainly do not believe that I am right and everybody else is wrong... well, I do, but it is an opinion easily changed by solid evidence -- Boris did a very good job of presenting real evidence, and convinced me partially. I still haven't been able to sort out: 1.Differences caused by the use of Patentplatt, 2.Differences caused by orthography, and 3.Genuine differences between linguistic varieties. Servien, Boris, and others have tried to untangle this, but it is a very finely-woven web and the only way out is to see what happens if we fix the first two problems. See, http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Test-wp/nds-nl/Katt -- it is Real Platt (as fixed by Ron Hahn), originally using German orthography, which I used my beta-version orthographic converter to make into Netherlands-orthography. If this page doesn't make sense to, say, a speaker of Achterhoeks, then I can certainly reconsider my opinion. But it is extremely unclear at the moment, and it does not help when people like Walter say nasty things and others say "You don't know the language. Go away" or similar things, rather than engaging in intelligent, logical discourse.

Mark

Wouter Steenbeek wrote:

Imagine every subscriber being as active as you are: I would either end my life or my subscription to this list.

Why would you need to read every single message that is sent to the list? If you think Mark is writing too many e-mail messages, it's simple to skip and not read them.

It is not your vision itself, but your apparent belief that you are always right that brings you in trouble.

Well, if someone defends a point of view, it's natural that he/she believes to be correct. I don't think he/she would defend the point of view if this was not the case.

regards, Gerrit.