Hi all --
First, I'm not actually back -- just jumping in. I've been popping in every couple of weeks to lurk, but even if I were inclined to rejoin the fray on a permanent basis, I've got four courses this quarter, one totally new, and I'm somewhat swamped.
Second, I've been watching this whole Lir thing develop, and finally feel I should throw in my $.04.
Regarding banning Lir or not. If Lir can't be bothered to speak with Jimbo, stop behaving childishly (name-calling, whinging, and making guerilla edits that result in non-NPOV articles), and work in a cooperative, collegial, manner, then a ban is in order. The community has certain standards, and from what I've seen, Lir is as guilty as Helga ever was of flouting them. By the way, Helga is back, adding in stuff about the genocide of the Heimatvertriebene, but somewhat more neutrally.
Regarding Americanization being genocide. First, Lir's belief in this (more to that later) is his choice. The argument has, however, unfortunately gone off on a tangent and not addressed the real point -- Lir's belief is very POV. Articles he renames or redirects in furtherance of that belief are therefore infected with that non-neutral POV. Second, Lir, what is your point? I mean this in a historical sense. Although I personally agree that the McDonaldsization of the world is a tragedy, and that the ubiquity of American culture may (and probably is) damaging to other cultures, the process is not itself unnatural or new. As an historian, I can't honestly name one culture that had not been dramatically changed once it came in contact with another, especially in cases of technology. Moreover, without the fusion of different cultures (for example, barbarian and Roman), many of the things that make up distinctive European cultures would not exist -- in fact, there's a good chance we'd all be Muslims now.
As to correct language and the evils of americanization -- bullshit, pure and simple. The idea that using English-language norms in and English-language encyclopedia is in anyway related to forcing English-speaking culture on other cultures is simply ridiculous. While it is deplorable that most English speakers are not bilingual, that fact does not make it in any way sensible to change place-names, etc., to their "original" form. By the way, I'm not even sure what that means -- is it Strassburg, Strasbourg, or, as it was called before there was a clear definition between French and German, Straziburgensis? London, or Londinium? Should Paris have a note in the title that says "pronounced Paree, you morons"?
Some while back, those of us most interested and most learned in these things worked together to come up with a nomenclature policy. We agreed that it made the most sense to use the most common English-language version of a name (different forms of English notwithstanding) for the title BUT, because we all felt it very important to let people know that other cultures and language-speakers had different names for the same thing, so we listed alternate names in the article itself. This means that English-speakers, arguably the largest audience, could search for articles in the way most natural to them, but the articles would still appear in searches by speakers of other languages searching in those languages. I can't see that Lir's political beliefs are valid reasons to change this policy.
That's all I can think of for now. Hope lir talks to Jimmy and gets a clue. Otherwise, it seems to me that normally productive members of the community should be allowed to get on with the project and stop having to deal with this type of nonsense.
Cheers, all!
Regards,
Julie Hofmann Kemp
I must protest!
I know that I'm just a newbie here, and you're a terribly important sysop person, but Lir doesn't seem to be around right now, and I'm not going to let that attack go undefended...
Regarding banning Lir or not. If Lir can't be bothered to speak with Jimbo, stop behaving childishly (name-calling, whinging, and making guerilla edits that result in non-NPOV articles), and work in a cooperative, collegial, manner, then a ban is in order. The community has certain standards, and from what I've seen, Lir is as guilty as Helga ever was of flouting them.
Judging by what I've seen, Lir is an intelligent person with much to contribute. Childish, of course, but then I've seen just as childish behaviour from some of the regulars and even (perhaps more so) from the sysops. It seems that Lir is just more vociferous about it. There seem to be a lot more complaints about Lir's attitude and over-the-top pronouncements than about any actual edits, which surely should be what we are most interested in here. If Lir's actions are to be the subject of public debate, could we establish details of specific bad edits, rather than just ranting?
Lir's belief is very POV. Articles he renames or redirects in furtherance of that belief are therefore infected with that non-neutral POV.
This is just plain nonsense. *Everyone's* political beliefs are POV: that's the whole point of them! But an editor's renaming an article to give it a different version of its name doesn't somehow magically invest that article with the editor's point of view. Of course, one *can* insert a point of view into an article title, by inserting a qualifying adjective such as "Excellent" or "Rubbish" into it, but as far as I'm aware we're only talking about exchanging one version of a name (used by one set of people) with another (used by another set of people). This has no effect on the point of view whatsoever.
As to correct language and the evils of americanization -- bullshit, pure and simple.
Now, now, let's not descend into that sort of language. Lir has a point. I personally would be quite offended if English-speaking people were to rename *me* "Oliver Peartree", simply to make it more "English". I would consider it to be arrogance: who are they to decide my name? This was my name at birth, and always will be, no matter what anyone else decides to call me! Of course, I am exaggerating to make my point: no-one is trying to call *me* by any other name. We are mostly talking about inanimate locations and dead people, who are in no position to object. But the principle is the same. I think it smacks of arrogance to rename other people and places without the consent of the people and inhabitants of the places, even if the people and places are distant in time or space, and even if their renaming has now become widespread. And I am offended on their behalf, even if they're not. :)
But all this talk of emotions is just a side issue. The main point is not about what offends whom, or anything like that. This is an encyclopaedia. We're after facts. And the fact of the matter is that anglicisations of names are simply distortions (or replacements) of foreign names. Calling Jo~ao "John" is just an *approximation* to the truth in the same way that calling a Jean Claude van Damme "French" is. It's sort of *nearly* right, but not quite. The job of an encyclopaedia should be to correct these sorts of approximations!
While it is deplorable that most English speakers are not bilingual, that fact does not make it in any way sensible to change place-names, etc., to their "original" form. By the way, I'm not even sure what that means -- is it Strassburg, Strasbourg, or, as it was called before there was a clear definition between French and German, Straziburgensis? London, or Londinium?
I don't think anyone was arguing for *original* names of places, so you are attacking a straw man here. In the case of a place which still exists, I would argue that it makes most sense to call it whatever the people who live there do. It is, in a sense, *theirs*, after all. If there are several official versions of the placename locally, one could simply use the one that the largest number of locals use. We should aim to be most familiar with whatever is on the signposts, so that we don't get lost when we get there. ;)
Should Paris have a note in the title that says "pronounced Paree, you morons"?
I'd quite like to see that, actually. :)
We agreed that it made the most sense to use the most common English-language version of a name (different forms of English notwithstanding) for the title BUT, because we all felt it very important to let people know that other cultures and language-speakers had different names for the same thing, so we listed alternate names in the article itself. This means that English-speakers, arguably the largest audience, could search for articles in the way most natural to them, but the articles would still appear in searches by speakers of other languages searching in those languages.
Eminently sensible, of course. Which is why nobody is proposing the removal of any of these alternative names. As I understand it, the argument is simply about swapping one name round with another. Both names would still be there, but just in different places.
I can't see that Lir's political beliefs are valid reasons to change this policy.
It's not about political beliefs; it's about giving articles (arguably) more accurate titles. I hope I've laid out some of the arguments clearly enough. I probably haven't, but it'll do for now. Oh, and I should add that the language thing applies to all languages equally; I'm just using anglicisation as the example I'm most familiar with. Just thought I'd add that so that I'm not told to post this on the English language mailing list (which I haven't quite got round to subscribing to yet)...
Phew. That's enough of that for one day. I think I really *will* go to bed now... :)
Oliver
+-------------------------------------------+ | Oliver Pereira | | Dept. of Electronics and Computer Science | | University of Southampton | | omp199@ecs.soton.ac.uk | +-------------------------------------------+
As long as "Oliver" tries to stick to the collegial spirit of mutual respect, that is fine. But I find it odd his user account appears right after Lir is banned, and then he jumps in and makes edits in a fashion that indicates he is anything but a newbie. Not to mention him joining the list and "defending" himself. Lir is fast and loose with his online identity. So far he has just been using this as a role-playing "playground"... seeing what kind of personas he can get us to believe are really him. This is fun, and I don't deny anyone the right to go through this phase of their lives, but it can lead to difficulties on the Wikipedia when that is a persons main reason for being there.
If he can play nice, I'm happy about that. But if he acts up, as this post from Oliver seems to indicate he wants to do later on, I hope that we won't take as long to act this time around.
Who knows, maybe "Oliver" is a real person and not yet another alter-ego, and he is now ready to be accountable and deal with us on equal terms. That is a definate positive step forward.
Cheers!
Jonathan
On Sun, Nov 24, 2002 at 05:51:00AM +0000, Oliver Pereira wrote:
I must protest!
I know that I'm just a newbie here, and you're a terribly important sysop person, but Lir doesn't seem to be around right now, and I'm not going to let that attack go undefended...
Regarding banning Lir or not. If Lir can't be bothered to speak with Jimbo, stop behaving childishly (name-calling, whinging, and making guerilla edits that result in non-NPOV articles), and work in a cooperative, collegial, manner, then a ban is in order. The community has certain standards, and from what I've seen, Lir is as guilty as Helga ever was of flouting them.
Judging by what I've seen, Lir is an intelligent person with much to contribute. Childish, of course, but then I've seen just as childish behaviour from some of the regulars and even (perhaps more so) from the sysops. It seems that Lir is just more vociferous about it. There seem to be a lot more complaints about Lir's attitude and over-the-top pronouncements than about any actual edits, which surely should be what we are most interested in here. If Lir's actions are to be the subject of public debate, could we establish details of specific bad edits, rather than just ranting?
Lir's belief is very POV. Articles he renames or redirects in furtherance of that belief are therefore infected with that non-neutral POV.
This is just plain nonsense. *Everyone's* political beliefs are POV: that's the whole point of them! But an editor's renaming an article to give it a different version of its name doesn't somehow magically invest that article with the editor's point of view. Of course, one *can* insert a point of view into an article title, by inserting a qualifying adjective such as "Excellent" or "Rubbish" into it, but as far as I'm aware we're only talking about exchanging one version of a name (used by one set of people) with another (used by another set of people). This has no effect on the point of view whatsoever.
As to correct language and the evils of americanization -- bullshit, pure and simple.
Now, now, let's not descend into that sort of language. Lir has a point. I personally would be quite offended if English-speaking people were to rename *me* "Oliver Peartree", simply to make it more "English". I would consider it to be arrogance: who are they to decide my name? This was my name at birth, and always will be, no matter what anyone else decides to call me! Of course, I am exaggerating to make my point: no-one is trying to call *me* by any other name. We are mostly talking about inanimate locations and dead people, who are in no position to object. But the principle is the same. I think it smacks of arrogance to rename other people and places without the consent of the people and inhabitants of the places, even if the people and places are distant in time or space, and even if their renaming has now become widespread. And I am offended on their behalf, even if they're not. :)
But all this talk of emotions is just a side issue. The main point is not about what offends whom, or anything like that. This is an encyclopaedia. We're after facts. And the fact of the matter is that anglicisations of names are simply distortions (or replacements) of foreign names. Calling Jo~ao "John" is just an *approximation* to the truth in the same way that calling a Jean Claude van Damme "French" is. It's sort of *nearly* right, but not quite. The job of an encyclopaedia should be to correct these sorts of approximations!
While it is deplorable that most English speakers are not bilingual, that fact does not make it in any way sensible to change place-names, etc., to their "original" form. By the way, I'm not even sure what that means -- is it Strassburg, Strasbourg, or, as it was called before there was a clear definition between French and German, Straziburgensis? London, or Londinium?
I don't think anyone was arguing for *original* names of places, so you are attacking a straw man here. In the case of a place which still exists, I would argue that it makes most sense to call it whatever the people who live there do. It is, in a sense, *theirs*, after all. If there are several official versions of the placename locally, one could simply use the one that the largest number of locals use. We should aim to be most familiar with whatever is on the signposts, so that we don't get lost when we get there. ;)
Should Paris have a note in the title that says "pronounced Paree, you morons"?
I'd quite like to see that, actually. :)
We agreed that it made the most sense to use the most common English-language version of a name (different forms of English notwithstanding) for the title BUT, because we all felt it very important to let people know that other cultures and language-speakers had different names for the same thing, so we listed alternate names in the article itself. This means that English-speakers, arguably the largest audience, could search for articles in the way most natural to them, but the articles would still appear in searches by speakers of other languages searching in those languages.
Eminently sensible, of course. Which is why nobody is proposing the removal of any of these alternative names. As I understand it, the argument is simply about swapping one name round with another. Both names would still be there, but just in different places.
I can't see that Lir's political beliefs are valid reasons to change this policy.
It's not about political beliefs; it's about giving articles (arguably) more accurate titles. I hope I've laid out some of the arguments clearly enough. I probably haven't, but it'll do for now. Oh, and I should add that the language thing applies to all languages equally; I'm just using anglicisation as the example I'm most familiar with. Just thought I'd add that so that I'm not told to post this on the English language mailing list (which I haven't quite got round to subscribing to yet)...
Phew. That's enough of that for one day. I think I really *will* go to bed now... :)
On Sun, Nov 24, 2002 at 12:44:20AM -0800, Jonathan Walther wrote:
As long as "Oliver" tries to stick to the collegial spirit of mutual respect, that is fine. But I find it odd his user account appears right after Lir is banned, and then he jumps in and makes edits in a fashion that indicates he is anything but a newbie.
Eh? Oliver's account existed well before Lir was banned. It seems unlikely that Lir would have acquired an email account at a British university. If you look at Oliver's list of edits, you'll find they're perfectly sensible and restrained.
Why on earth would you think he is Lir?
Not to mention him joining the list and "defending" himself.
I haven't seen him defending Lir (is that what you meant?). He's just taking the same side which Lir did on the question of anglicised article names, which is certainly an issue on which reasonable people can differ.
-M-
On Sun, Nov 24, 2002 at 11:45:06AM +0000, Matthew Woodcraft wrote:
On Sun, Nov 24, 2002 at 12:44:20AM -0800, Jonathan Walther wrote:
As long as "Oliver" tries to stick to the collegial spirit of mutual respect, that is fine. But I find it odd his user account appears right after Lir is banned, and then he jumps in and makes edits in a fashion that indicates he is anything but a newbie.
Eh? Oliver's account existed well before Lir was banned. It seems unlikely that Lir would have acquired an email account at a British university. If you look at Oliver's list of edits, you'll find they're perfectly sensible and restrained.
How long before? When I looked at Olivers "User Contributions" page, it showed no entries earlier than November 22 of this year.
As I said in my email, "If Oliver continues to play nice, I don't mind" and "I like his Oliver persona better than the Lir persona". Those aren't the words of someone accusing Oliver of being anti-social, in the style of Lir.
Oliver, in his defense of Lir, has been putting up straw men and ignoring legitimate problems with Lirs behavior. That seems at odds with his previously reasonable personality.
I haven't seen him defending Lir (is that what you meant?). He's just taking the same side which Lir did on the question of anglicised article names, which is certainly an issue on which reasonable people can differ.
He took Lirs side to "defend" Lir. Previously, he was taking the opposite side. Very usenetish behavior.
Jonathan
Jonathan Walther wrote:
On Sun, Nov 24, 2002 at 11:45:06AM +0000, Matthew Woodcraft wrote:
Eh? Oliver's account existed well before Lir was banned. It seems unlikely that Lir would have acquired an email account at a British university. If you look at Oliver's list of edits, you'll find they're perfectly sensible and restrained.
How long before?
Two weeks.
When I looked at Olivers "User Contributions" page, it showed no entries earlier than November 22 of this year.
That's because it only shows the last 50 edits by default. Bump up the number to 500 and the days to 30 and you'll see edits back to November 7/8 (depending on your timezone setting).
-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
On Sun, Nov 24, 2002 at 06:34:15PM -0800, Brion VIBBER wrote:
That's because it only shows the last 50 edits by default. Bump up the number to 500 and the days to 30 and you'll see edits back to November 7/8 (depending on your timezone setting).
Thanks Brion. Your Wikifu is great! :-)
Jonathan
Sorry folks, I got paranoid. I went back in the mailing list, saw Olivers previous posts, and am not as sure sure as I was, but Olivers last post seems pretty strong evidence. Oliver previously seemed to take the opposite stance to that of Lir on the anglicization issue. Lir being the role-player that he is, that doesn't necessarily mean anything. But I much prefer this more intelligent and reasonable Oliver persona to the Lir persona.
The email I reply to below is like the old Lir come back, expressing his disregard for community standards in his nihilistic desire to be able to "do whatever he wants, and screw what anybody else thinks".
Lir stated, ON THE WIKIPEDIA that the Wikipedia is just a dumping ground for information. However much a few others may leap to his defense, the truth his, his ungrammatical edits filled with junk information have caused more work for other people than was saved by his "contributions". And that is entirely aside from the social costs of the people he burned trying to help him.
My reply below is a blow by blow account of why I think Oliver is Lir. I also refute the points he thought he raised.
On Sun, Nov 24, 2002 at 05:51:00AM +0000, Oliver Pereira wrote:
I know that I'm just a newbie here, and you're a terribly important sysop person, but Lir doesn't seem to be around right now, and I'm not going to let that attack go undefended...
If you are a newbie, how do you know the person you are replying to is a sysop?
Why do you feel you have to defend Lir, given that you are a newbie and thus not familiar with the long-running history of this case and all it's particulars?
If you are really a newbie, then you have no idea of the ones of work Wikipedians put into trying to help Lir become a productive member of our community, only to be slapped in the face time and time again, and our well-meaning advice not only ignored, but denigrated.
Regarding banning Lir or not. If Lir can't be bothered to speak with Jimbo, stop behaving childishly (name-calling, whinging, and making guerilla edits that result in non-NPOV articles), and work in a cooperative, collegial, manner, then a ban is in order. The community has certain standards, and from what I've seen, Lir is as guilty as Helga ever was of flouting them.
Judging by what I've seen, Lir is an intelligent person with much to contribute. Childish, of course, but then I've seen just as childish
You haven't seen much. That childish behavior vastly outweighs whatever intelligence Lir has shown.
And your claim of his "intelligence" is overrated. His edits show him to have a reckless attitude toward the work of others; they show him to have no grasp of what properly belongs in an encyclopedia and what does not; and they appear calculated to frustrate others who wish to make the Wikipedia, not some random "dumping ground" of information, but a great encyclopedia! This hasn't even mentioned his poor grammatical skills.
behaviour from some of the regulars and even (perhaps more so) from the sysops. It seems that Lir is just more vociferous about it. There seem to be a lot more complaints about Lir's attitude and over-the-top pronouncements than about any actual edits, which surely should be what we are most interested in here. If Lir's actions are to be the subject of
Lirs edits, taken together as a body, are bad enough. It may take us a year to recover.
This is just plain nonsense. *Everyone's* political beliefs are POV:
That's why we leave our political beliefs at home when we work on the Wikipedia.
Lirs edits to Sumer are illustrative; why the hell did he insist that it was important to mention that "In Sumer, women did the weaving"? In many societies at the time, women did weaving. What was so unique about that fact that it is justified to be included in an encyclopedia article on Sumerians? Lir refused to answer any such question, merely maintaining that his edits were proper.
Someone took a quick look at the "Wealth of the Nations" article and pronounced it "fine". Excuse me. Go look at any REAL encyclopedia. None of them have an article on a book that consists of a series of short quotations from the book in question, and NOTHING ELSE. Interesting as the quotes were, they were NOT an encyclopedia article, and illustrate Lirs attitude that the wikipedia isn't a thing of quality, but a mere dumping ground for information.
Lir is like a magpie of information; he picks up cheap shit information as well as some real gold sometimes, and inserts it into the wikipedia on an equal opportunity basis.
Now, now, let's not descend into that sort of language. Lir has a point. I personally would be quite offended if English-speaking people were to rename *me* "Oliver Peartree", simply to make it more "English". I would
Go to the Philippines. Try as you might, you won't be able to stop them from calling you "Joe". "Hey Joe!". Whatcha gonna do about it? Guess you'll just have to learn to cope, huh?
You seem to be arguing that one language cannot modify the things it borrows from other languages to suit it's own needs. Now THAT is an arrogant, paternalistic attitude.
even if their renaming has now become widespread. And I am offended on their behalf, even if they're not. :)
With that attitude you'll always be offended; you can find offense wherever you look, if that is your desire. But if that is your desire, I fear you won't be a very good Wikipedia editor.
names are simply distortions (or replacements) of foreign names. Calling Jo~ao "John" is just an *approximation* to the truth in the same way that calling a Jean Claude van Damme "French" is. It's sort of *nearly* right, but not quite. The job of an encyclopaedia should be to correct these sorts of approximations!
Sure, we agree. Except to succeed in our work, we need to convince people to listen to us. Lirs silly anti-Americanism doesn't help the cause one bit.
I don't think anyone was arguing for *original* names of places, so you are attacking a straw man here. In the case of a place which still exists,
It wasn't a straw man at all. qv Dien Bien Phu. I think you are trolling.
Should Paris have a note in the title that says "pronounced Paree, you morons"?
I'd quite like to see that, actually. :)
And thus I conclude that you are Lir. You are showing a similar lack of taste.
It's not about political beliefs; it's about giving articles (arguably) more accurate titles. I hope I've laid out some of the arguments clearly
Don't be a twit. No matter how much HTML may have advanced, and browsers now support Unicode, URLS are NOT unicode, they are ascii, and many browsers break if the urls are anything BUT ascii. Making the Wikipedia unusable over some obscure and unsatisfying point is the height of lunacy. Not to mention your idea of "accuracy" really is not.
Phew. That's enough of that for one day. I think I really *will* go to bed now... :)
Yes, you do that Lir. For a few minutes I had started to think you were prepared to share in the collegial spirit of mutual respect. Alas...
Jonathan
Greetings,
Well, I must admit that I'm quite perplexed! In just one day, I have been transmogrified from a British student of Computer Science into an Iowan anarchist! Did my British accent not come across in the message? ;)
Seriously, though, perhaps I did get a bit overheated in my response last night, for which I apologise. Since Lir did not immediately post a defence, I guessed that perhaps he had left the mailing list, and I don't like the idea of attacking people who are not around to defend themselves. You know, fair play and all that. :) As it turns out, Lir is still on the list, but even so, I still think he means well (even if he goes about things the wrong way), and deserves a bit of a defence. I don't like the idea of writing people off.
Now it seems that in defending Lir and some of his points, I have become a valid target for abuse. *sigh*
I won't go into a point-by-point defence of my arguments again right now, as perhaps I didn't express them very well, and it would be better to plan them in my own time with a cool head. I have no intention of getting into a flame war. Perhaps I will put some of my points on my user page later, if that's all right with everyone. For now, I would prefer to concentrate on doing some university work and doing my bit to improve (hopefully!) the Wikipedia itself.
In the meantime, if anyone thinks that I may be doing Bad Things to the Wikipedia, please feel free to check through my user contributions. They go back to 8th November, which was when I first registered a user name - I was using the term "newbie" relatively. If anyone has any problems with any of my edits (and as far as I am aware no-one has made any specific complaints, apart from one or two minor edit skirmishes), please feel free to let me know about them, either by e-mail or in my Talk page. Similarly, I would be interested to know (preferably off-list) where I ever hinted that I might want to "act up" or that I might not be "prepared to share in the collegial spirit of mutual respect". You've got me quite baffled there. Oh yes, and as for my grammatical skills, I'm always happy to hear how I can improve them. :)
Oh, perhaps I should point out that my agreement with the "pronounced Paree, you morons" thing was a joke, of course.
Two points to close with:-
(1.) Could we please not use this mailing list for personal attacks on people, whether they are here to defend themselves or not. I know that this list is not subject to the NPOV rule, but calling people "twits" and so on is simply not constructive.
(2.) Could we please not make assumptions about people that are based on little or no evidence. Such disregard for the need for evidence casts serious doubt on one's standards of scholarship, and hence on the reliability of any information one might contribute to an encyclopaedia.
Thanks,
Oliver
+-------------------------------------------+ | Oliver Pereira | | Dept. of Electronics and Computer Science | | University of Southampton | | omp199@ecs.soton.ac.uk | +-------------------------------------------+
Oliver wrote
Oh, perhaps I should point out that my agreement with the "pronounced Paree, you morons" thing was a joke, of course.
Ah, this is too bad, because, well... I thought it was an interesting proposition...
Not the reference to morons of course :)
But the idea to indicate the native pronounciation of a name or of a city could be a good one.
Say...some 20 years ago, we were told not to say (and write) P�kin any more but to replace it with Beijing (same with Mao Z�dong, Jiang Jieshi, Changzhou...).
These changes were strongly enforced in France, maybe because we were under a socialist/communist government. It seems we are slowly drifting again toward P�kin :-)
The fact is that change could not really be said to be to "look" (read) more like the "real" (native) words, since it is in no way written that way. What really mattered was not so much we wrote it that way, but we *learn to pronounce* it a way that sound more like the native word.
And maybe is that education also to learn how to pronounce place names and people names properly ?
And maybe an encyclopedia is JUST the perfect place to acquire that kind of knowledge. Especially in cases such as these ones where there is also a nice historical point to develop.
There's a international code for prononciation no ? And what about sound later ?
-----
Annihilation of opposition through body-unification of dissenting voices ???
I agree with some of Lir points of views, but likely, I will not be confused with him/her :-)))
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Oliver wrote:
Oh, perhaps I should point out that my agreement with the "pronounced Paree, you morons" thing was a joke, of course.
Anthere wrote:
Ah, this is too bad, because, well... I thought it was an interesting proposition...
Not the reference to morons of course :)
Quite right! I only meant that the bit about morons was a joke. :) Indications of native pronunciations would be very useful. Is there support for displaying all the standard IPA characters...? And I like your idea of linked sound files, too. (It would be quite a task, though!) I often read about things in works of reference, but find that I have to guess how to pronounce the words. I might eventually find out how to pronounce them if they come up in conversation (although the person I'm talking to might be guessing too) or on the radio or television.
The fact is that change could not really be said to be to "look" (read) more like the "real" (native) words, since it is in no way written that way. What really mattered was not so much we wrote it that way, but we *learn to pronounce* it a way that sound more like the native word.
I agree. When I was arguing for native words in article headings, I didn't mean in the original orthography, if the languages don't use the Roman alphabet. (Those which use the Roman alphabet with diacritics seem to be contentious, but I'll go into that later...) I'm all for logical and consistent transliteration systems: these, in conjunction with the pronunciation guides, would allow the reader to read the words in the native way. And of course, the original orthography should be included in the article body - as an image if necessary. It would be good education, I think.
Annihilation of opposition through body-unification of dissenting voices ???
I know, it's a funny tactic to use, isn't it? I've seen it used a lot on Internet forums and so on, but fortunately it rarely works, and it only makes the one who used it look silly! :) Oops, am I ignoring my own advice about not insulting people? I'm terribly sorry... ;)
Oliver
+-------------------------------------------+ | Oliver Pereira | | Dept. of Electronics and Computer Science | | University of Southampton | | omp199@ecs.soton.ac.uk | +-------------------------------------------+
Sorry, just to clarify one point:
In my last message, for "original orthography", read "native orthography". I'm not trying to claim that *earlier* versions of the writing system are more correct!
Oliver
+-------------------------------------------+ | Oliver Pereira | | Dept. of Electronics and Computer Science | | University of Southampton | | omp199@ecs.soton.ac.uk | +-------------------------------------------+
The very word diacritic is Anglocentric.
The Spaniards don't put diacritical tildes on some of their N's, they have two separate letters in their alphabet, one identified with the same Roman N as our letter N and another (that looks like an N with a squiggle over it) identified with the Iberian pronunciation of Latin words with NN in them.
The Norwegians don't have an A and another A with a little diacritical degree sign on top, an O and another O with a diacritical slash through it, an A and and E and then an AE diacritically stuck together, they have three letters in their alphabet that we don't have in ours.
I mention this only to point out that this whole banal eliminate-English-from-the-English-encyclopedia movement is doomed due to the incredible complexity of determining the "right" way as opposed to the basic simplicity of dealing with the issues using the tools provided by our own language, combined with a decent respect for the sensitivities and sensibilities of those who don't speak English.
It was most interesting to see on [[Talk:Dienbienphu]] that there is a controversy in Viet Nam over which Vietnames orthography should be used.
Tom Parmenter Ortolan88
Tom Parmenter wrote:
The very word diacritic is Anglocentric. [...] I mention this only to point out that this whole banal eliminate-English-from-the-English-encyclopedia movement is doomed due
Maybe we need a simple "the English Wikipedia is in English" page, to make this point just as natural as the NPOV?
I think the problem is that Lir is young and has more energy to question authority, than patience to listen before he speaks. This makes it hard for him to engage in a dialogue. He questions his peers, with whom he should cooperate, instead of knowing his enemies and where he should direct his energy. Been there, done that, got the T-shirt. I think his homepage indicated he was 21. I'm 36. I have no idea how old or young or energetic or lazy everybody else is. I'm lazy enough, not to bother very much in all the detail. But I know that after Lir we will still have the same problem with the next of the same kind. So what is our conclusion, and what tools will we have prepared for the next time this happens?
Lars Aronsson wrote:
I think the problem is that Lir is young and has more energy to question authority, than patience to listen before he speaks. This makes it hard for him to engage in a dialogue. He questions his peers, with whom he should cooperate, instead of knowing his enemies and where he should direct his energy. Been there, done that, got the T-shirt. I think his homepage indicated he was 21. I'm 36. I have no idea how old or young or energetic or lazy everybody else is. I'm lazy enough, not to bother very much in all the detail.
The issue of using diacritical marks is not about Lir. Lir may have been the one to raise the matter, but that does not alter the objective question of diacriticals. At 59 I'm much lazier than a 36-year old kid. I know that people with a poor credibility occasionally make worth while contributions, and that highly respected people are not immune from stupidity.
If anything, the debate so far has shown that we are far from unanimous in our opinions about how non-English names should be treated. A rule that "the English Wikipedia is in English" seems trivial at first glance. It works well as long as we stick to common nouns and concepts of English language origin. There's a whole non-English speaking world out there with many interesting ideas that are worth incorporating into Wikipedia. A dictionary is about words; an encyclopedia is about ideas, and, in the absence of direct neural interfaces, an encyclopedia needs the words to communicate its ideas. The diacritics of another language enhance communication, and often are the distinguishing feature between dissimilar words. The poetics of another language can suffer badly in translation, yet such a small concession as allowing foreign words to be fully accented is worth doing if it enhances the understanding of the other culture. Yes, I know that Spanish considers "n" and "ñ" to be separate letters which follow each other in alphabetical order, and that Swedish considers "a" and "å" to be separate letters with the latter put in a group of special letters at the end of the alphabet. I would never propose that we adopt the hodge-podge of aphabetical orders from other languages. Algorithms can be established to link these letters to their unaccented counterparts. The French certainly have no trouble treating "e", "è", "é" and "ê" as the same letter for alphabetical purposes, and that's just fine for English. It also allows for users who just don't know what the correct accent is in a given circumstance including native speakers. What I really oppose is having English as the foundation for a modern Tower of Babel.
But I know that after Lir we will still have the same problem with the next of the same kind. So what is our conclusion, and what tools will we have prepared for the next time this happens?
Indeed we will! I very strongly agree that we should have objective procedures for dealing with these. Those procedures should help us not only to deal with "guilty" parties, but also safeguard users from being overwhelmed by the mob instinct..
Eclecticology
Ray Saintonge wrote:
The issue of using diacritical marks is not about Lir.
To some extent, though, it is. Lir is very alone in suggesting that Germany should be called Deutschland in an English text. There are other foreign places where the English use is unstable, e.g. both the English spelling Gothenburg and the Swedish spelling Göteborg are used for the same city in English texts. I think the NPOV policy is sufficient to address this. For most smaller cities there never was an English name, and the use of diacritics might be justified. But the name Germany never was in any of these categories.
My remarks about Lir was about the "Deutschland" cases. It was my interpretation that this was the result of independent thinking (which I admire) in combination with lack of interest in the opinion of others (which might come with more experience - it did for me).
Lars Aronsson wrote:
Ray Saintonge wrote:
The issue of using diacritical marks is not about Lir.
To some extent, though, it is. Lir is very alone in suggesting that Germany should be called Deutschland in an English text. There are other foreign places where the English use is unstable, e.g. both the English spelling Gothenburg and the Swedish spelling Göteborg are used for the same city in English texts. I think the NPOV policy is sufficient to address this. For most smaller cities there never was an English name, and the use of diacritics might be justified. But the name Germany never was in any of these categories.
My remarks about Lir was about the "Deutschland" cases. It was my interpretation that this was the result of independent thinking (which I admire) in combination with lack of interest in the opinion of others (which might come with more experience - it did for me).
I know that Lir was at the far end of the scale on this issue. I too would find it unwarranted to refer to Germany as Deutschland in an English text. Continuing to discuss the issue in terms of Lir only serves to keep alive an extreme POV that nobody else supports. Once we remove the Lir factor we may find that our opinions are not that far apart.
For Gothenburg/Göteborg I see the issue as more in transition than unstable. I just looked at a popular work: "The World Almanac and Book of Facts, 1998" and it uses "Göteborg". This seems to reflect a modern trend. My 1906 Encyclopedia Americana lists it under "Gottenburg".adds both alternatives and show "Götheborg" with the extra "h" as an alternative Swedish spelling..
Eclecticology
Ray Saintonge wrote:
For Gothenburg/Göteborg I see the issue as more in transition than unstable. I just looked at a popular work: "The World Almanac and Book of Facts, 1998" and it uses "Göteborg". This seems to reflect a modern trend. My 1906 Encyclopedia Americana lists it under "Gottenburg".adds both alternatives and show "Götheborg" with the extra "h" as an alternative Swedish spelling..
I doubt that "Götheborg" was used in Sweden after 1860. It was in use earlier, when Swedish spelling was more random and before "foreign elements" like "th" were weeded out.
Yes, this is probably in transition. Today, the non-Swedes who discover Göteborg do so on the web or as tourists. They *read* the name and it is spelled "Göteborg" on Swedish street signs and maps. These tourists seldom need to learn how to pronounce the name.
The city was founded as a sea port in 1621 after Sweden got access to the west coast, which used to be Danish/Norwegian. Many of the people who "built" the new city were merchants from England and Scotland with names like "Chalmers" (see www.chalmers.se), resulting in English often being *spoken* in the city, both by visiting sailors and the locals who catered to them.
The same transition might happen to Hanover/Hannover and Munich/München, but hardly to Germany/Deutschland or Sweden/Sverige. Hanover used to have strong ties with England, but that is not the case anymore, and Swedes who write English texts about the CeBIT expo don't know there is an English spelling that differs from the German/Swedish one.
(How long will it take for the spelling in my .signature to catch on?)
| |What I really oppose is having English as the foundation for a modern |Tower of Babel. |
Hilsen, Gruess, Hola, and Hi,
I think you have it backwards. English is a lingua franca.
First, everybody spoke Latin, then they spoke French, now they speak English.
Until the next one comes along, English it is. That said, we can still do a lot to accommodate and show respect for all the other languages. And we can also push the Wikipedia in every language that has an interest in having a Wikipedia.
That nearly multilingual guy, Tom Parmenter Ortolan88
Oliver Pereira wrote:
Indications of native pronunciations would be very useful. Is there support for displaying all the standard IPA characters...?
You can use HTML-style character references with the Unicode numbers for IPA chars, but not everyone will be able to read them. (If someone wants to put up mini images, it may be worthwhile.)
In some articles, SAMPA is used, which is an ASCIIfied IPA, but this is somewhat controversial as no one knows how to read it even though it appears right on everyone's screen. ;) If you use a SAMPA transcription in an article, you'll probably want to link [[SAMPA]] for reference.
Pseudo-English pronunciation guides (Paris->"pah-REE", Goethe->"GER-ta") are generally not recommended, as the results may vary widely for native English speakers, be useless for non-native English speakers, and often do a poor job at reproducing the necessary sounds. They remain somewhat popular largely because native English speakers are often not familiar with IPA.
And I like your idea of linked sound files, too. (It would be quite a task, though!)
Yes, by all means make and upload sound files of pronunciations of names! Please do! (Preferably OGG format at a lower bitrate.)
-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
Anthere wrote:
Say...some 20 years ago, we were told not to say (and write) Pékin any more but to replace it with Beijing (same with Mao Zédong, Jiang Jieshi, Changzhou...).
These changes were strongly enforced in France, maybe because we were under a socialist/communist government. It seems we are slowly drifting again toward Pékin :-)
Here in the U.S., Beijing became standard some years ago, and Peking is never heard. But, as there is no central authority on such things at all, I'm not sure how this happened. Perhaps by mutual agreement by the news networks, or perhaps by virtue of some standard reference work that news anchors all use.
And maybe an encyclopedia is JUST the perfect place to acquire that kind of knowledge. Especially in cases such as these ones where there is also a nice historical point to develop.
It is true that the encyclopedia is a great place to learn about these things. But I think that the general consensus is that it is not our role to be activists in pushing changes for obscure terms.
--Jimbo
Sure. Just convince Lir to quit calling people who disagree with him/her racist. Zoe Oliver Pereira omp199@ecs.soton.ac.uk wrote:(1.) Could we please not use this mailing list for personal attacks on people, whether they are here to defend themselves or not. I know that this list is not subject to the NPOV rule, but calling people "twits" and so on is simply not constructive.
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Oliver Pereira wrote:
(1.) Could we please not use this mailing list for personal attacks on people, whether they are here to defend themselves or not. I know that this list is not subject to the NPOV rule, but calling people "twits" and so on is simply not constructive.
I agree completely, and urge others to practice similar restraint.
(2.) Could we please not make assumptions about people that are based on little or no evidence. Such disregard for the need for evidence casts serious doubt on one's standards of scholarship, and hence on the reliability of any information one might contribute to an encyclopaedia.
Yes!
--Jimbo
p.s. You should throw in some British slang. Better yet, some American slang that Americans *think* is British, whether it is or not. Lots of references to tea, old chap. :-)
It seems that Jonathan's obsession about Lir has now turned into a criminal slander of Oliver.
His so-called evidence that they are the same is nothing but speculative bullshit. So was his previous accusation that Lir might somehow be responsible for a slowdown in the entire system.
Jonathan Walther wrote:
Sorry folks, I got paranoid. I went back in the mailing list, saw Olivers previous posts, and am not as sure sure as I was, but Olivers last post seems pretty strong evidence. Oliver previously seemed to take the opposite stance to that of Lir on the anglicization issue. Lir being the role-player that he is, that doesn't necessarily mean anything. But I much prefer this more intelligent and reasonable Oliver persona to the Lir persona.
The email I reply to below is like the old Lir come back, expressing his disregard for community standards in his nihilistic desire to be able to "do whatever he wants, and screw what anybody else thinks".
Lir stated, ON THE WIKIPEDIA that the Wikipedia is just a dumping ground for information. However much a few others may leap to his defense, the truth his, his ungrammatical edits filled with junk information have caused more work for other people than was saved by his "contributions". And that is entirely aside from the social costs of the people he burned trying to help him.
My reply below is a blow by blow account of why I think Oliver is Lir. I also refute the points he thought he raised.
On Sun, Nov 24, 2002 at 05:51:00AM +0000, Oliver Pereira wrote:
I know that I'm just a newbie here, and you're a terribly important sysop person, but Lir doesn't seem to be around right now, and I'm not going to let that attack go undefended...
If you are a newbie, how do you know the person you are replying to is a sysop?
Why do you feel you have to defend Lir, given that you are a newbie and thus not familiar with the long-running history of this case and all it's particulars?
If you are really a newbie, then you have no idea of the ones of work Wikipedians put into trying to help Lir become a productive member of our community, only to be slapped in the face time and time again, and our well-meaning advice not only ignored, but denigrated.
Obviously Oliver felt that an injustice was being done, and saw fit to speak up. It is not clear from the quote who the sysop involved was or if the person even was a sysop, but that really doesn't matter. Sysops are people who have been around for a while longer, and perhaps should be held to a higher standard of behaviour than the rest of us. They should be putting out fires, not exacerbating the arguments. Sometimes a newbie is able to bring a fresh perspective on a debate.
Regarding banning Lir or not. If Lir can't be bothered to speak with Jimbo, stop behaving childishly (name-calling, whinging, and making guerilla edits that result in non-NPOV articles), and work in a cooperative, collegial, manner, then a ban is in order. The community has certain standards, and from what I've seen, Lir is as guilty as Helga ever was of flouting them.
Judging by what I've seen, Lir is an intelligent person with much to contribute. Childish, of course, but then I've seen just as childish
You haven't seen much. That childish behavior vastly outweighs whatever intelligence Lir has shown.
I too have expressed concerns about the way Lir has been treated, but when Jimbo replied that he has been trying to work things out with Lir that satisfied me. From that point I was willing to let well enough alone.
behaviour from some of the regulars and even (perhaps more so) from the sysops. It seems that Lir is just more vociferous about it. There seem to be a lot more complaints about Lir's attitude and over-the-top pronouncements than about any actual edits, which surely should be what we are most interested in here. If Lir's actions are to be the subject of
Lirs edits, taken together as a body, are bad enough. It may take us a year to recover.
Exaggeration for dramatic effec!
Lirs edits to Sumer are illustrative; why the hell did he insist that it was important to mention that "In Sumer, women did the weaving"? In many societies at the time, women did weaving. What was so unique about that fact that it is justified to be included in an encyclopedia article on Sumerians? Lir refused to answer any such question, merely maintaining that his edits were proper.
I can't see why the women's role as weavers is such a major issue. If you say it happened in many societies anyway, where's the beef?
Someone took a quick look at the "Wealth of the Nations" article and pronounced it "fine". Excuse me. Go look at any REAL encyclopedia. None of them have an article on a book that consists of a series of short quotations from the book in question, and NOTHING ELSE. Interesting as the quotes were, they were NOT an encyclopedia article, and illustrate Lirs attitude that the wikipedia isn't a thing of quality, but a mere dumping ground for information.
If you're so concerned about this article, and it's so important to you go ahead and fix it instead of whining about Lir's quotes from the book.
Lir is like a magpie of information; he picks up cheap shit information as well as some real gold sometimes, and inserts it into the wikipedia on an equal opportunity basis.
Sometimes we all engage in such practices. Why single out Lir?
Now, now, let's not descend into that sort of language. Lir has a point. I personally would be quite offended if English-speaking people were to rename *me* "Oliver Peartree", simply to make it more "English". I would
Go to the Philippines. Try as you might, you won't be able to stop them from calling you "Joe". "Hey Joe!". Whatcha gonna do about it? Guess you'll just have to learn to cope, huh?
Nothing in Oliver's post suggests he plans to visit the Philippines. The baiting sounds like a little kid saying "You can't make me do it."
You seem to be arguing that one language cannot modify the things it borrows from other languages to suit it's own needs. Now THAT is an arrogant, paternalistic attitude.
What he says and what you interpret that he "seems to be arguing" are not the same thing.
Should Paris have a note in the title that says "pronounced Paree, you morons"?
I'd quite like to see that, actually. :)
And thus I conclude that you are Lir. You are showing a similar lack of taste.
The conclusion is a non-sequitur.
It's not about political beliefs; it's about giving articles (arguably) more accurate titles. I hope I've laid out some of the arguments clearly
Don't be a twit. No matter how much HTML may have advanced, and browsers now support Unicode, URLS are NOT unicode, they are ascii, and many browsers break if the urls are anything BUT ascii. Making the Wikipedia unusable over some obscure and unsatisfying point is the height of lunacy. Not to mention your idea of "accuracy" really is not.
The discussion was about article titles. How do you get from that to URL's
Phew. That's enough of that for one day. I think I really *will* go to bed now... :)
Yes, you do that Lir. For a few minutes I had started to think you were prepared to share in the collegial spirit of mutual respect. Alas...
More unfounded sarcasm.
Eclecticology
(this is a general feature suggestion, BTW, though it's a case on En that's reminded me of it)
Someone on En: is adding pages on actors with just dates of birth. it's not vandalism, but admins have deleted many of these, because they're such tiny stubs they're basically worthless. it's not the first time that we get users who make many well-meaning edits, but make mistakes that leave us a lot to clean up.
This reminds me of something I suggested ages ago -- we need a way to contact unregistered users to politely point of where they're putting a foot wrong. My suggestion was this: * on the IP contributions page, add a "alert this user" dialog box, or a link to one * that user will then see the message text above above every edit box
This could save us a lot of cleaning up work. I also worry that these people may get discouraged and leave when they find we've deleted their additions -- we may be losing potentially valuable contributors.
Criminal? Zoe Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote: It seems that Jonathan's obsession about Lir has now turned into a criminal slander of Oliver.
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Er also it's only slander if it's spoken. Libel is written.
From: Zoe To: wikipedia-l@wikipedia.org Sent: Monday, November 25, 2002 8:46 PM Subject: Re: Oliver is Lir II (Re: [Wikipedia-l] This whole Lir and Americanization thing)
Criminal?
Zoe
Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
It seems that Jonathan's obsession about Lir has now turned into a criminal slander of Oliver.
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Steve Callaway wrote:
Er also it's only slander if it's spoken. Libel is written.
From: Zoe mailto:zoecomnena@yahoo.com
Criminal? Zoe Ray Saintonge <saintonge@telus.net <mailto:saintonge@telus.net> > wrote: It seems that Jonathan's obsession about Lir has now turned into a criminal slander of Oliver.
My apologies, I should have said libel, consider my comment thus corrected.
Eclecticology
But you haven't addressed my objection to your claim that it's criminal. Zoe Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:Steve Callaway wrote:
Er also it's only slander if it's spoken. Libel is written.
From: Zoe
Criminal?
Zoe
Ray Saintonge > wrote:
It seems that Jonathan's obsession about Lir has now turned into a criminal slander of Oliver.
My apologies, I should have said libel, consider my comment thus corrected.
Eclecticology
_______________________________________________ Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@wikipedia.org http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
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On 11/26/02 12:14 AM, "Zoe" zoecomnena@yahoo.com wrote:
But you haven't addressed my objection to your claim that it's criminal.
Please, let sleeping dogs lie.
Zoe wrote:
But you haven't addressed my objection to your claim that it's criminal.
Zoe
I took your comment as rhetorical, and failed to realize that you expected an answer. The following are extracted from the Criminal Code of Canada
Defamatory Libel
Definition http://laws.justice.gc.ca/fr/C-46/17288.html#article-298
- (1) A defamatory libel is matter published, without lawful
justification or excuse, that is likely to injure the reputation of any person by exposing him to hatred, contempt or ridicule, or that is designed to insult the person of or concerning whom it is published.
Mode of expression
(2) A defamatory libel may be expressed directly or by insinuation or irony
(a) in words legibly marked on any substance; or
(b) by any object signifying a defamatory libel otherwise than by words.
R.S., c. C-34, s. 262.
Publishing http://laws.justice.gc.ca/fr/C-46/17288.html#article-299
- A person publishes a libel when he
(a) exhibits it in public;
(b) causes it to be read or seen; or
(c) shows or delivers it, or causes it to be shown or delivered, with intent that it should be read or seen by the person whom it defames or by any other person.
R.S., c. C-34, s. 263.
Punishment of libel known to be false http://laws.justice.gc.ca/fr/C-46/17288.html#article-300
- Every one who publishes a defamatory libel that he knows is false
is guilty of an indictable offence and liable to imprisonment for a term not exceeding five years.
R.S., c. C-34, s. 264.
Punishment for defamatory libel http://laws.justice.gc.ca/fr/C-46/17288.html#article-301
- Every one who publishes a defamatory libel is guilty of an
indictable offence and liable to imprisonment for a term not exceeding two years.
Oliver Pereira wrote:
We're after facts. And the fact of the matter is that anglicisations of names are simply distortions (or replacements) of foreign names. Calling Jo~ao "John" is just an *approximation* to the truth in the same way that calling a Jean Claude van Damme "French" is. It's sort of *nearly* right, but not quite. The job of an encyclopaedia should be to correct these sorts of approximations!
"Jo~ao" contains characters that do not exist in English. This is not materially different from words like "Tokyo" or "Osaka". They can not be written in English in the same way that they are written in their native language, because they use characters that do not exist in English.
I would argue that it makes most sense to call it whatever the people who live there do. It is, in a sense, *theirs*, after all. If there are several official versions of the placename locally, one could simply use the one that the largest number of locals use. We should aim to be most familiar with whatever is on the signposts, so that we don't get lost when we get there. ;)
Until people are willing to give concrete examples, it's very difficult to imagine what is being advocated. Japanese people do not call Japan "Japan". It's either "Nihon" or "Nippon". They don't call Mount Fuji "Mount Fuji", they call it "Fuji-san".
There are perhaps cases in which we should prefer something closer to the original than what is most common. In English, the name of Beijing is now "Beijing" where it was "Peking". Good.
-------
None of this really gets at the problem with Lir's behavior. It isn't so much that Lir was wrong about anglicization, although that's true too. It's that Lir was obnoxious about it, calling people who disagreed "racist". (And, by the way, Lir/Bridget/Adam continues to strongly assert that her opponents are racist in our conversations about possible reinstatement, which grows less likely each day, I'm afraid.)
It's quite possible for people to disagree on these matters in a collegial and intellectual way, respecting that other people have reasons for their opinions, and to work together to formulate a more sophisticated policy that appeals to all parties.
--Jimbo
I'm tired of this debate. No, what someone calls a place is not what is "theirs". Every language has certain place names in other countries that are not the same as the way the natives of that place call it. And again, we run into the situation of whether we call such places as Liege as, well, Liege, or Leuk, or whatever. The English wikipedia is designed for people for whom English is the native language, by and large. The people who speak English say Munich, not Muenchen. Zoe Oliver Pereira omp199@ecs.soton.ac.uk wrote:I must protest!
I know that I'm just a newbie here, and you're a terribly important sysop person, but Lir doesn't seem to be around right now, and I'm not going to let that attack go undefended...
Regarding banning Lir or not. If Lir can't be bothered to speak with Jimbo, stop behaving childishly (name-calling, whinging, and making guerilla edits that result in non-NPOV articles), and work in a cooperative, collegial, manner, then a ban is in order. The community has certain standards, and from what I've seen, Lir is as guilty as Helga ever was of flouting them.
Judging by what I've seen, Lir is an intelligent person with much to contribute. Childish, of course, but then I've seen just as childish behaviour from some of the regulars and even (perhaps more so) from the sysops. It seems that Lir is just more vociferous about it. There seem to be a lot more complaints about Lir's attitude and over-the-top pronouncements than about any actual edits, which surely should be what we are most interested in here. If Lir's actions are to be the subject of public debate, could we establish details of specific bad edits, rather than just ranting?
Lir's belief is very POV. Articles he renames or redirects in furtherance of that belief are therefore infected with that non-neutral POV.
This is just plain nonsense. *Everyone's* political beliefs are POV: that's the whole point of them! But an editor's renaming an article to give it a different version of its name doesn't somehow magically invest that article with the editor's point of view. Of course, one *can* insert a point of view into an article title, by inserting a qualifying adjective such as "Excellent" or "Rubbish" into it, but as far as I'm aware we're only talking about exchanging one version of a name (used by one set of people) with another (used by another set of people). This has no effect on the point of view whatsoever.
As to correct language and the evils of americanization -- bullshit, pure and simple.
Now, now, let's not descend into that sort of language. Lir has a point. I personally would be quite offended if English-speaking people were to rename *me* "Oliver Peartree", simply to make it more "English". I would consider it to be arrogance: who are they to decide my name? This was my name at birth, and always will be, no matter what anyone else decides to call me! Of course, I am exaggerating to make my point: no-one is trying to call *me* by any other name. We are mostly talking about inanimate locations and dead people, who are in no position to object. But the principle is the same. I think it smacks of arrogance to rename other people and places without the consent of the people and inhabitants of the places, even if the people and places are distant in time or space, and even if their renaming has now become widespread. And I am offended on their behalf, even if they're not. :)
But all this talk of emotions is just a side issue. The main point is not about what offends whom, or anything like that. This is an encyclopaedia. We're after facts. And the fact of the matter is that anglicisations of names are simply distortions (or replacements) of foreign names. Calling Jo~ao "John" is just an *approximation* to the truth in the same way that calling a Jean Claude van Damme "French" is. It's sort of *nearly* right, but not quite. The job of an encyclopaedia should be to correct these sorts of approximations!
While it is deplorable that most English speakers are not bilingual, that fact does not make it in any way sensible to change place-names, etc., to their "original" form. By the way, I'm not even sure what that means -- is it Strassburg, Strasbourg, or, as it was called before there was a clear definition between French and German, Straziburgensis? London, or Londinium?
I don't think anyone was arguing for *original* names of places, so you are attacking a straw man here. In the case of a place which still exists, I would argue that it makes most sense to call it whatever the people who live there do. It is, in a sense, *theirs*, after all. If there are several official versions of the placename locally, one could simply use the one that the largest number of locals use. We should aim to be most familiar with whatever is on the signposts, so that we don't get lost when we get there. ;)
Should Paris have a note in the title that says "pronounced Paree, you morons"?
I'd quite like to see that, actually. :)
We agreed that it made the most sense to use the most common English-language version of a name (different forms of English notwithstanding) for the title BUT, because we all felt it very important to let people know that other cultures and language-speakers had different names for the same thing, so we listed alternate names in the article itself. This means that English-speakers, arguably the largest audience, could search for articles in the way most natural to them, but the articles would still appear in searches by speakers of other languages searching in those languages.
Eminently sensible, of course. Which is why nobody is proposing the removal of any of these alternative names. As I understand it, the argument is simply about swapping one name round with another. Both names would still be there, but just in different places.
I can't see that Lir's political beliefs are valid reasons to change this policy.
It's not about political beliefs; it's about giving articles (arguably) more accurate titles. I hope I've laid out some of the arguments clearly enough. I probably haven't, but it'll do for now. Oh, and I should add that the language thing applies to all languages equally; I'm just using anglicisation as the example I'm most familiar with. Just thought I'd add that so that I'm not told to post this on the English language mailing list (which I haven't quite got round to subscribing to yet)...
Phew. That's enough of that for one day. I think I really *will* go to bed now... :)
Oliver
+-------------------------------------------+ | Oliver Pereira | | Dept. of Electronics and Computer Science | | University of Southampton | | omp199@ecs.soton.ac.uk | +-------------------------------------------+
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--- Zoe zoecomnena@yahoo.com wrote:
The English wikipedia is designed for people for whom English is the native language, by and large.
I hope not.
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Anthere wrote:
--- Zoe zoecomnena@yahoo.com wrote:
The English wikipedia is designed for people for whom English is the native language, by and large.
I hope not.
It's for all people who comprehend English well enough that they think they'll get something useful out of an English-language encyclopedia. Note that:
a) a large portion of those people will be native English speakers, living in a country where English is the common language, or working in a field where high English competency is demanded
b) whatever their origin and language competency, anyone looking up stuff in one English-language resource is likely to look stuff up in other English-language resources too, and/or use/discuss their new knowledge in an English-language context. Using the language as she is spoke instead of making up conventions ex nihilo ensures that we are "compatible". To present rarely used terms as if they were standard and standard terms as if they were errors would be a great disservice to our readers.
-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
Exactly.
I had to have a good long laugh at the spelling (and the concomitant breast-beating surrounding the word) of 'anglicization', however, which was almost (but not quite) a self-defining oxymoron. If ever there was a word which needed spelling according to standard the English orthography, that was it.
Many non-native English speakers, amongst whom I count myself, are troubled by assertions such as the one below: it is as unfortunate a position as a C++ programmer suggesting that a Java programmer should stick to only looking at and writing Java code (or vice versa). We are either creating an encyclopaedia or we are creating an organ of linguistic propaganda. Let us hope we attain the latter.
Steve Callaway
----- Original Message ----- From: "Anthere" anthere5@yahoo.com To: wikipedia-l@wikipedia.org Sent: Monday, November 25, 2002 12:47 PM Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] This whole Lir and Americanization thing
--- Zoe zoecomnena@yahoo.com wrote:
The English wikipedia is designed for people for whom English is the native language, by and large.
I hope not.
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