| Revision as of 02:41, 21 February 2010 view sourceFDT (talk | contribs)7,708 edits I never heard this before, so darned sure nobody's going to hear about it ever← Previous edit | Revision as of 02:42, 21 February 2010 view source FDT (talk | contribs)7,708 editsm I never heard this before, so darned sure nobody's going to hear about it everNext edit → | ||
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| :Editor Likebox raises a perfectly legitimate query. | :Editor Likebox raises a perfectly legitimate query. | ||
| :Editor Finell enters the thread with an attempt to undermine the credibility of Likebox by drawing attention to Likebox's block record, and accusing Likebox of edit warring. I observed the edit war in question and noted that the edit war began because editor Headbomb erased material that had been inserted by Likebox close on the heels of an arbitration hearing in which Headbomb was the chief opponent of Likebox. Finell did not accuse Headbomb of edit warring, but rather he attempted to vilify Likebox for having dared to have made accusations against Headbomb, as if to make accusations against Headbomb is a serious crime in its own right. | :Editor Finell enters the thread with an attempt to undermine the credibility of Likebox by drawing attention to Likebox's block record, and accusing Likebox of edit warring. I observed the edit war in question and noted that the edit war began because editor Headbomb erased material that had been inserted by Likebox close on the heels of an arbitration hearing in which Headbomb was the chief opponent of Likebox. Finell did not accuse Headbomb of edit warring, but rather he attempted to vilify Likebox for having dared to have made accusations against Headbomb, as if to make accusations against Headbomb is a serious crime in its own right. | ||
| :One issue that wikipedia needs to tackle is the deletionist culture of "I never heard this before, so nobody's going to hear about it" ] (]) 02:41, 21 February 2010 (UTC) | :One issue that wikipedia needs to tackle is the deletionist culture of "I never heard this before, so nobody's going to hear about it ever" ] (]) 02:41, 21 February 2010 (UTC) | ||
| == creating ] == | == creating ] == | ||
Revision as of 02:42, 21 February 2010
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Request for disclosure
As evident from this edit, ru:user:DR who is a checkuser at ruwiki, was promoted to the ombudsmen commission. In addition to an obvious conflict of interest (ombudsmen are supposed to independently investigate checkuser actions), this action is very questionable because previously DR was under investigation by the ombudsman commission for an alleged violation of privacy. DR violated ru:user:Serebr's privacy by publishing the information about his wiki-mail usage. The ombudsmen commission confirmed that DR published private information, but did not impose any actions on DR on a pretense that his disclosure of private information did not constitute a disclosure of personally identifiable information. This was a curious decision. Now, after DR was assigned to the ombudsmen commission, it appears that DR may have had secret connections to that commission from the very beginning and possibly influenced it to make a decision in his favor. Assigning a violator of privacy to the commission that is supposed to ensure the users' privacy is of great concern. Therefore, I request that you disclose the secret decision making process that led to this very questionable assignment of a privacy violator to the position of a privacy guard. Who decided that? Were you a part of this decision? SA ru (talk) 12:58, 17 February 2010 (UTC)
- I know nothing about this particular decision. I am not part of the Ombudsman commission and play no role in their selection nor operation.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 13:28, 17 February 2010 (UTC)
- Thanks a lot for the clarification. I am not an independent party here because DR harassed me pretty badly. Nonetheless, at the very least it does not make any sense to assign a checkuser to the ombudsmen commission which is supposed to inspect the checkusers. This is a conflict of interests. I will request a disclosure at meta.wikimedia. SA ru (talk) 13:47, 17 February 2010 (UTC)
- In case you are interested in what is going on in your project, in response to my whistle blowing, the authorities on meta consulted with a secrete source who preferred to remain unidentified but is presumed to be trustworthy on ruwiki affairs, then threatened me with a global ban for whistle blowing and finally falsified the record. Pretty interesting behavior on part of the authorities who are supposed to protect users' privacy. SA ru (talk) 14:13, 20 February 2010 (UTC)
Is this a subliminal message?
Hi Jimbo
I saw your picture from france on your user page here and I have discovered a subliminal message:
http://i47.tinypic.com/2dv7tqa.jpg
Hope this was still in the realm of your sense of humor :) Ich sehe gerade, dass ich das alles auch auf deutsch hätte schreiben können...^^
Schöne Grüße, --62.206.45.26 (talk) 23:15, 18 February 2010 (UTC)
- Misplaced Pages has an article on this: Pareidolia. --Carnildo (talk) 01:18, 19 February 2010 (UTC)
- And that's why you should get your public photos through a Photoshop expert before releasing them. To remove all the little details that can be misinterpreted. --Enric Naval (talk) 15:43, 19 February 2010 (UTC)
- Calling Durova, Durova to Jimbo's talk page please... – ukexpat (talk) 16:27, 19 February 2010 (UTC)
Chess
Thank you for your comments about chess. Learn the fundamentals - there are good articles about the rules of chess and several other topics, such as Chess tactics and chess strategy (although the strategy article isn't as good as it should be). Those will link you to many other good articles. You don't have to start learning chess by learning the openings. Bubba73 , 19:08, 19 February 2010 (UTC)
- It should be mentioned that Bobby Fischer invented a set of rules for chess960 which avoids the need for memorizing many opening moves by randomizing the position of the main pieces on the back row. Fischer predicted that one day we would all be playing chess with a random initial set-up. The rules are such as to maintain the flavor of the original game: i.e. the two bishops must be on opposite-color and the king must start between the rooks. Castling rules are extended to work with all the new positions. It really is a wonderful version of chess - it means you can focus on playing pure chess rather than spending great amounts of time on memorization. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.148.249.201 (talk) 19:47, 19 February 2010 (UTC)
An old quote
I am sorry to contact you. But you have been quoted in this discussion regarding the importance of sources, and I believe that you did not intend you comments to be put to use in this way. The comments are used by nonspecialists to justify deleting deep mathematical content which is difficult to verify and source, because it is hard to understand.
The technical material at the page infraparticle (which is of the highest quality, and was written by a great physicist many years ago), has been deleted. Your opinions about sourcing anecdotes were brought up. What is your view regarding mathematical content with equations and so on? Do you feel that it is incumbent upon editors to understand mathematical content that they delete? This debate has been happening in the encyclopedia, and the essay WP:ESCA was written by one editor to promote the view that mathematical paraphrase is OK, even when it is difficult to verify that it is paraphrase.
I am asking you if you can chip in, because I am a technical editor, and I will leave this project (along with most others who left already), if there is no protection for technical content from uninformed deletion by editors that don't follow it well enough to read the sources. I hope you take time to understand the issue, because mathematical text is unlike any other text.Likebox (talk) 19:31, 19 February 2010 (UTC)
I think you are asking two questions in one. Should mathematical/technical content, for example in physics, be sourced? Absolutely, it must be sourced, and this is one of the most important areas where sourcing has to be taken seriously, because we are not the right place for original research. (And as I'm sure you are aware, physics is one area where crackpots on the Internet are numerous.) Should editors without a technical background tread lightly in areas where they don't have much expertise? Yes, of course. But that doesn't mean that these editors can't insist quite firmly on quality, and quality means (among other things) making specialist material comprehensible to thoughtful nonspecialists (this is an encyclopedia, after all, not a journal of physics). It can be challenging yes, but it should be clear and should serve as a beacon of light to the reader.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 15:09, 20 February 2010 (UTC)
- I wasn't asking should it be sourced, nor was I asking about the desirability of simple explanations--- sure both are nice. I was asking about the following: there is material on this encyclopedia, at infraparticle, at BKL singularity which is of extremely high quality, written by experts, which is as clear as the best review articles. The articles follow the sources they cite, in that the ideas are the same, but the equations are not copied from the source, the discussion is mathematically paraphrased. It's the same ideas, with different language.
- A nonexpert reader encountering the equations which are not 100% the same as the source can say "This is OR!", while an expert reader would say "No, no OR here." The issue is that when the source is difficult, the article can look like OR to a nonexpert reader, in the same way that a paraphrased Chinese text would look completely different from the original to a non-Chinese speaker.
- In particular, the technical content of infraparticle was deleted, and would not be introduced even after a source was provided, because the editors did not understand the concept well enough to see that the article followed the source. This is a big risk for the best text in the encyclopedia.
- The material on infraparticle is of the highest quality, and I hope that you can make a statement about sourcing: it is important that mathematical paraphrase be allowed, so that hard work of writing mathematical expositions will not be in vain.
- I don't know if you are the best person to contact regarding this, since I don't know how much you follow technical discussions here. The problem seems to be sorting itself out. Thank you for you patient response, and I won't bother you again.Likebox (talk) 17:18, 20 February 2010 (UTC)
- Jimbo's response is exactly what I have been arguing in this instance. And yes, he is the best person to explain the statement of his that Likebox asked about. Now, Likebox doesn't like the answer.
- Infraparticle was the subject of an AfD due to insufficient sourcing and poor quality; the result was to stubify the article, to permit expansion of the article with proper, sourced content. Likebox (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log), who has been blocked several times for edit warring, restored the challenged, unsourced content, and since then has been edit warring (with a couple of allies) to keep the unsourced content in. This has been discussed on the article's talk page and is the subject of three current threads at Misplaced Pages talk:WikiProject Physics, where the consensus is that the material should be sourced. Likebox also charged User:Headbomb, the coordinator of WikiProject Physics, with violating 3RR for reverting repeated insertions of Likebox's unsourced material, at Misplaced Pages:Administrators' noticeboard/Edit warring#User:Headbomb reported by User:Likebox. Now he shows up here, the last resort of wili FORUMSHOPpers.—Finell 19:40, 20 February 2010 (UTC)
- I am not forum shopping--- I am searching for a clear answer. If Misplaced Pages cannot handle mathematical content, I will just stop contributing. Misplaced Pages is not doing me a favor by letting me contribute.Likebox (talk) 21:16, 20 February 2010 (UTC)
- You've been given a clear answer, many times, by many people: Per WP:V, all content that remains here has to be properly sourced. By all means write about mathematical content, but collect sources while doing so. After several days of complaining that this was impossible, you eventually did it for infraparticle. To quote your own words (diff) (emphasis added):
| “ | Everything in that article can be sourced directly to Buchholz. It took some reading to find that article, but this could have been done and spared us this debate. | ” |
- Please, do this first, rather than starting massive numbers of threads complaining that this shouldn't be necessary. --Christopher Thomas (talk) 22:25, 20 February 2010 (UTC)
- I didn't say it shouldn't be necessary to source the material--- I asked that editors patiently try to source dense mathematical material before deleting it. Accurate mathematical text is extremely valuable content, and it must be treated with respect--- it is very hard to write, very hard to proofread, and very hard to reproduce once deleted.
- The problem is that even after I found the source for the argument, the argument is still getting deleted, without any discussion of the source, which is very advanced. The only editors that read the source are unanimous that the source appropriately contains the substantive content, but other editors do not address the source at all and argue that the material is OR. This is what will happen to all mathematical text if there is no careful special protection for text such as this. At the very least, editors should understand the text before deleting it, and understand the sources, or discuss them, before deleting the content.Likebox (talk) 22:31, 20 February 2010 (UTC)
- observation
- Editor Likebox raises a perfectly legitimate query.
- Editor Finell enters the thread with an attempt to undermine the credibility of Likebox by drawing attention to Likebox's block record, and accusing Likebox of edit warring. I observed the edit war in question and noted that the edit war began because editor Headbomb erased material that had been inserted by Likebox close on the heels of an arbitration hearing in which Headbomb was the chief opponent of Likebox. Finell did not accuse Headbomb of edit warring, but rather he attempted to vilify Likebox for having dared to have made accusations against Headbomb, as if to make accusations against Headbomb is a serious crime in its own right.
- One issue that wikipedia needs to tackle is the deletionist culture of "I never heard this before, so nobody's going to hear about it ever" David Tombe (talk) 02:41, 21 February 2010 (UTC)
creating Africa
Last month you commented that, back in the day, an editor could feel good about having just created Africa. That would feel nice; +one for the encyclopedia. I've not looked at who did create that, but I did just start a stub on The Zen of CSS Design, which is a book that has had a lot of influence on how websites are built, including this one. This properly should be taken to one of the tiers such as good or featured. I was quite surprised that there was no article until today.
I think a great question for this project to ask and answer would be why we have such omissions when we are so many years into this work, yet we have so many articles that are, honestly, of quite dubious notability and quality. Simply put, a large number of people have poor priorities. Cheers, Jack Merridew 20:20, 19 February 2010 (UTC)
- We will never know who created the Africa article, because many of the earliest edits to Misplaced Pages are lost. The earliest available edit to the Africa page is at the CamelCase title "AfricA", and can be found here. Most people like to write about what interests them, and that has always been the case. The oldest edit that survives in the history of an article is this edit to the page on the American philosopher William Alston, which was made two days after Misplaced Pages went public. No disrespect to the man intended, but I do not think that an article for him would be a high priority in a fledgling encyclopedia. However, someone obviously thought otherwise, so the William Alston article was created 10 months before the article about the ant. Graham87 07:35, 20 February 2010 (UTC)
- Thanks, Graham, for your comments on the restorations to the database. I don't know that far back. This post is really about unbalanced coverage and poor priorities. I'm looking at the overall goal, here; we're getting stuff backwards a lot of the time. Now — after all these years. Cheers, Jack Merridew 08:17, 20 February 2010 (UTC)
Regarding a Sock
An email was sent to you at jwales@wikia.com, title: Important please read it carefully. Thank you. 202.23.184.248 (talk) 21:08, 19 February 2010 (UTC)