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: -- Geek House Productions, Ltd. Providing Unix & Internet Contracting and Consulting, QA Testing, Technical Documentation, Systems Design & Implementation, General Programming, E-commerce, Web & Mail Services since 1998 Phone: 604-435-1205 Email: djw(a)reactor-core.org Webpage: http://reactor-core.org Address: 2459 E 41st Ave, Vancouver, BC V5R2W2

On Sun, Nov 24, 2002 at 11:45:06AM +0000, Matthew Woodcraft wrote: 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. He took Lirs side to "defend" Lir. Previously, he was taking the opposite side. Very usenetish behavior. Jonathan -- Geek House Productions, Ltd. Providing Unix & Internet Contracting and Consulting, QA Testing, Technical Documentation, Systems Design & Implementation, General Programming, E-commerce, Web & Mail Services since 1998 Phone: 604-435-1205 Email: djw(a)reactor-core.org Webpage: http://reactor-core.org Address: 2459 E 41st Ave, Vancouver, BC V5R2W2

On Sun, Nov 24, 2002 at 06:34:15PM -0800, Brion VIBBER wrote: Thanks Brion. Your Wikifu is great! :-) Jonathan -- Geek House Productions, Ltd. Providing Unix & Internet Contracting and Consulting, QA Testing, Technical Documentation, Systems Design & Implementation, General Programming, E-commerce, Web & Mail Services since 1998 Phone: 604-435-1205 Email: djw(a)reactor-core.org Webpage: http://reactor-core.org Address: 2459 E 41st Ave, Vancouver, BC V5R2W2

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(a)ecs.soton.ac.uk | +-------------------------------------------+

Oliver wrote: Anthere wrote: 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. 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. 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(a)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

Lars Aronsson wrote: 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. 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

Lars Aronsson wrote: 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

| |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

Anthere wrote: 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. 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

Oliver Pereira wrote: I agree completely, and urge others to practice similar restraint. 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. :-)

(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.

Er also it's only slander if it's spoken. Libel is written. From: Zoe To: wikipedia-l(a)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(a)telus.net> wrote: It seems that Jonathan's obsession about Lir has now turned into a criminal slander of Oliver. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Mail Plus - Powerful. Affordable. Sign up now

But you haven't addressed my objection to your claim that it's criminal. Zoe Ray Saintonge <saintonge(a)telus.net> wrote:Steve Callaway wrote: My apologies, I should have said libel, consider my comment thus corrected. Eclecticology _______________________________________________ Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l(a)wikipedia.org http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l --------------------------------- Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Mail Plus - Powerful. Affordable. Sign up now

Zoe wrote: 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

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(a)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... 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? 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. 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! 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. ;) I'd quite like to see that, actually. :) 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. 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(a)ecs.soton.ac.uk | +-------------------------------------------+ _______________________________________________ Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l(a)wikipedia.org http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l --------------------------------- Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Mail Plus - Powerful. Affordable. Sign up now

Anthere wrote: 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)