Oliver is Lir II (Re: [Wikipedia-l] This whole Lir and Americanization thing)

[Jonathan Walther]

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

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