User talk:-- April

April, this link (http://www.renaissoft.com/april/ ) is not accessible.

little guru

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Your home page doesn't work. There is nothing in your talk section either!

• Now there is. :) The homepage is down due to system problems on their end, and should be back up shortly. -- April

--- April, there was discussion about the appropriateness of essay material on wikipedia, which led to the creation of http://meta.wikipedia.com especially for this type of thing. You might want to put any essays you write about wikipedia there. By the way, I love your work on opera plot summaries! --Robert Merkel

• Thanks... if I ever have anything worthy of being called an "essay", I'll definitely throw it on the meta page. I tend to run out of steam quickly, though - my Wikipedia articles tend to run two to three paragraphs, with me hoping others will flesh them out later. :) As a result, I can end up with a stray paragraph or three that isn't worth an article of its own - I'm storing them on the user page as samplers until I can figure out what to do with them. As for the opera plot summaries, can't claim much credit - found an expired-copyright source (cited), and am doing much cut'n'pasting with a few extraneous additions and copyediting. I plan to go back and add more details later... I hope. Thanks for the input! -- April

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April, wrt your thoughts on consensus, I would disagree that Wikipedia articles try and reach one consensus opinion. Rather than trying to achieve *one* consensus opinion, the neutral point of view policy indicates that, instead, we should try and characterise *all* opinions on topics where there is serious debate, and then try and reach a consensus on a fair summary of those opinions. Not all articles reflect this, but it's what is aimed for. This idea works well for Wikipedia - it may not be appropriate for other wiki projects (for instance, if you were working on writing a political manifesto using a Wiki it'd be a very bad idea).

The other point that might have some resonance for your textbook project is that, whilst most wikipedians agree on the NPOV policy, the policy was imposed at the very beginning of the project by its originators (though it has been refined and expanded since with the participation of other Wikipedians). You may need to do the same for some principles you consider fundamental to your project. --Robert Merkel

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Many thanks for your input... on consensus versus, uh, multi-dimensional view, I have to admit it's an extremely good point. I hadn't quite thought about it from that angle, and will have to do so. :) I can still cling to the idea that what results is a consensus opinion on what is a proper multi-dimentsional view. :)

On the textbook project - thanks again for the suggestion. I've laid out a few guidelines based on the concept that this is aimed at a textbook rather than an encyclopedia or other work. I'm definitely going to have to expand on that, though. -- April

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Hi April, Your science project looks like an excellent project. I really like your essay on consensus. Robert made points with me regarding the npov and multiple views but you rallied well with the multipoint consensus. 8)

I am wondering whether you have placed this lovely concise (yes) essay into a wikipedia article. I would like to point to it when 'wikifying"/tweaking a new stub article social contract. I will go check when I finish here. Addendum: Finished Thanks for your support! Cut my work in half pre-empptively. Lovely Wikipedia!

Irregardless of its applicability to Wikipedia's article development process, I think it is highly applicable to building a healthy community of volunteers (free associating netizens -- A universal human right there somewhere maybe). The reason I wish to wikify the social contract is to point out that much conflict arises from misunderstandings inherent in unarticulated social contracts. This will come up in some discussions at http://meta.wikipedia.com I am trying to get restarted about our own community charter.

I am curious, have you considered asking the development team here at wikipedia for a download utility that would port good articles for your science book and all attribution data (if this required by the FDL?) or the top page and 5 most prominent authors by line count? I am sort of laboring under the impression that this is part of the purpose of a free encyclopdia if it is helpful. Anyway hope to see you around occasionally. --user:mirwin

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Hey, thanks April! Yes, that's exactly what I mean (re redirecting pages). One thing that might make it real pain (if you decide to do it) would be to redirect the associated talk pages, too.  :-( If you don't bother to move them, I don't think any serious harm will be done, though. --Larry_Sanger

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Thanks for editing diversity. Your version comes closer to the elusive NPOV than mine. Ed Poor

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Hi April,

Have you ever looked into Formal Consensus? A whole set of best practices for using consensus. user:DanKeshet

We use the recommendations from that book more and less in my local green party group, and when we use them more, it helps a lot. :)

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Hi,

Your recent comment to Ed Poor in the Sex Ed peice should have been directed towards me -- it was I who characterized the issue in terms of individual versus society.

I appreciate the point you make. I agree that "individualism" is often a cornerstone of conservative ideology, just as I believe that leftists have a social conscience.

Nevertheless, I do not think this is the case here. After all, there are different kinds of conservatives, and the split between economic (market/bourgeois) conservatives and the religious right is significant. My sense is it is the former that promotes individualism as an ideological stance, and the latter which is leading the struggle against sex ed. Conversely, without getting into a huge discussion of liberal or leftist politics, I do think that one of the key arguments for sex ed is a persons right to control their own body, and the right to choose. It was these positions I was trying to capture, more abstractly, with the notion of "individual."

My main concern was to prevent the article from turning into an article about "left" and "right," while adding more nuance and perspective to the characterization of the the debate that Ed had introduced

I hope you see now where I was coming from -- and I invite you to develop the sex ed article in a way that responds to my intentions while developing the valid point you have made. SR

• I see what you're saying, I think, and I tend to agree. My own feeling is that I'd prefer that the article not become as divided into "liberal" and conservative" argument as that of the left/right divide you also want to avoid. I do think that the principal, opposed camps don't fall neatly along the liberal-conservative divide, though I'll concede the genearl tendency. I'll see if I can refine this idea into the article. -- April

Thanks. I think we basically agree. The fact remains, this article is going to present a "conservative' position, no matter what I (or you) think. But I do think that it therefore must also present other posions, as well as provide some framework for making the differences between these positions intelligible. I made a preliminary stab at it, and it wasn't easy! I am glad you will help, SR

If I may chime in here, I want to thank you both for keeping me honest. It's not easy for a passionate advocate to adhere to NPOV, and I appreciate all the help I can get. Ed Poor

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Thanks for Bill of Rights catch, I forgot about that page (sound of hand slapping forehead). Ed Poor

• No problemo - I just happened to remember seeing it. Thanks in turn for the 1001 Arabian Nights plot summary! -- April

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You thanked me for the Ching Shih article, so seems only fair I express appreciation for your depiction of another female pirate Granuaile O'Malley (Grace O'Malley). Nicely done and interesting. Rgamble

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April, if you'll look at reproduction you'll see a tangle of REDIRECTS that don't seem to go anywhere. Since you're good at "disambiguating", would you please fix this? I find it frustrating. -- Ed Poor

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April, Saw your comment on talk:domestic violence and tried to follow the news link you included. Unfortunately, the link seems to be broken. Could you either fix it, or leave a note in my User_talk:pgdudda area with the URL? Thanks! --pgdudda

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RE: the Wikipetiquette redirect
Your welcome. BTW I hear you have been in contact with Bomis regarding your wiki. In your contact with them, did you get an idea about when Bomis is going to make wikipedia into an independent non-profit? There really needs to be a couple of people working on the 'pedia each day with sysop abilities and nobody at Bomis seems to care about performing basic maintainance (such as deleting incorrect pages, stopping people from uploading copyrighted material and, of course, blocking the IPs of vandals). If we were an independent non-profit then we could elect sysops and all would be grovey. --maveric149

• Alas, I don't know the answer to that, other than what's on the http://meta.wikipedia.com/ discussions. You could possibly send an inquiry to the mailing list - responses from Jimbo Wales seem to come quite quickly on the list (within a day or two). -- April

Will do (probably this weekend -- since I managed to destroy my Linux installation on my primary computer and am now relegated to sharing time on my spouse's Windows machine...). --maveric149

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Hi, I liked your Wikipetiquette article and your focus on consenus, cooperation and courtesy. sfmontyo

• Oh my goodness, I can't take credit for that! The article was first conceived by the project heads, I beleive, and collaboratively developed after that. I'm just a newbie trying to do my part to uphold it. :) -- April

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Moving all the planets to Name (planet) pages seems like the proper thing to do, since they're all named after other things that should have entries of their own. However, you might want to wait until Wikipedia's "pages that link here" database gets fixed; as it currently stands only a fraction of the actual links are included, and so we'd have to fix all the planet links a second time once the rest get listed. Bryan Derksen

April, I'd like to see all the planets on one page, so I can click each article one by one and read about each planet. Also, we need disambiguating pages (your specialty?) for each planet whose name is also the Roman name of a mythological god. Any organizing scheme you come up with, has my support in advance. Ed Poor

• Thanks for the input. Bryan - eh, I'll probably go ahead and do it anyhow. I can do some searches to pick up the ones I missed, and I'll recheck after the bugfix and do the rest then. It's nice, mindless work for my lunch hour. :) Ed - they're all listed on the planet page, and at the bottom of all the solar system pages, which is why I have so many links to update... -- April

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April, you know about science. What do you think the wikipedia should include about the hypothesized CFC-cancer link? Some wikipedians believe that science has proven the link, but I would like to see proof of this. Ed Poor

• The UV-cancer link is well established; see my comments on user talk:Ed Poor and talk:Ultraviolet. The increase in UV radiation due to an ozone hole is also well established. So, there's excellent evidence for the concept that ozone depletion causes increases in UV incidence which increases the risk of skin cancer.

• What is the topic of argument is whether CFCs cause ozone depletion. I have not, myself, studied the topic extensively. I have seen some articles that make a fairly convincing case that CFCs do substantially affect atmospheric ozone levels; however, I don't know the most current status of the point-counterpoint discussion in scientific circles. -- April

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Thank you thank you thank you, SR

• Quite welcome, and thank you for some of your points in other discussions. We have, I think, the simpatico of those with similar opinions... ;) -- April

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Regarding the recent Household Encyclopedia posts, thanks for qualifying them.. Made me wonder, should Wikipedia have an 'Outdated Resource' page? I don't like the term, since some of the info could be useful, but hopefully the idea is clear enough. A listing of pages using old resources that need to be checked over by people knowledgeable about the topic? --Rgamble

• Actually, that might be very useful, given the incorporation of 1911 Britannica, 1911 Catholic Encyclopedia, 1881 Household Cyclopedia, etc. articles. Perhaps wikipedia: articles reqiring modernization? Though there is already a Wikipedia utilities/Pages needing attention article. -- April

• Ah, hadn't remembered that page. What you did dovetails nicely with what I had in mind when you mentioned that page existed. Rgamble

I'm curious about why "outdated sources" matter to you. Are you worried that their information will be incorrect, possibly even injurious?

I myself am not so careful about providing sources. I've even (hold on, while my face turns red) copied the occasional sentence or short paragraph verbatim from a website -- without any attribution at all!

Perhaps a review on sources, attribution, plagiarism, public domain and all that is in order -- at least for me.

You've put me in my place before. I don't mind if you do it again :-)

Ed Poor

• No, it's a good question! My reason is that much of the information that was "current" a hundred years ago is now known to be wrong, or has been supplanted by better information. Take the thrashing machine article (sounds sadomasochistic, doesn't it?). Those critters haven't been used in a century or so, having been replaced by more modern harvesters. Or the old Club article - do we really care what clubs were hot in 1880's England?

• Copying from public domain sources is fine and dandy and legal, even whole paragraphs or chapters. However, whether it's relevant or correct information should also be a factor, for our purposes, I'd think!

• Copying from web sites is a bit trickier. If the information is public domain, it's legal; it's not even plagarism, unless you represent the material as your own work. Since these articles are unsigned, that's not really a factor. It's the copyrighted material you have to watch out for. A sentence here and there, properly quoted and referenced, can constitute "fair use" under US law; reporting the same facts in different words is generally acceptable; but pulling verbatim chunks from copyrighted works is Bad News - and probably illegal.

• Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer and I don't speak for Wikipedia. :) -- April

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Ummm, I just checked the History of the slashdot page. "Penis Bird" was created by somebody with the IP of 62.98.140.140 as was the recent rash of Household Cyclopedia pages... Kinda hit me while looking at a tray of plankton that I thought I'd seen that IP before... and this influx of 'useful' material seems on the sarcastic/vandalistic side... just more subtly so. Whoever it is _is_ referencing the articles now though... --Rgamble

So, what do we do about it? Read (and possibly copyedit or delete) every article? Sounds like a lot of work. Maybe we can get Mr. 62 to talk to us.

We've engaged "vandals" in conversation before and broken them to harness, er, enlightened them to our cooperative and mutually helpful ways! Ed Poor

• Good luck... I doubt I'll participate in any attempts to break and harness 62. I get too annoyed, too quickly on here unless I just do minor copy-editing or articles on relatively non-controversial (and that I don't have strong opinions on) topics. :) Which means I'll probably fix up photosynthesis, call it a week on Wikipedia again, and see what it looks like in April. --Rgamble

ps: --April, apologies if this conversation isn't something you want in your talk page. Seemed like we were the two who had the most immediate contact with 62.98.140.140 last two days. Feel free to move this anywhere more appropriate.

• No worries. I just encourage people to do regular searches for this character and his, er, phallic fixation, and delete it every time it comes up. If the person is recalcitrant enough, an IP ban will see to it; and if they're willing to come 'round (and read the pages on Wikipedia policy!), the problem solves itself. -- April

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I like your term "data-dump vandalism"; right to the point. For the most part, I don't have much problem with a short stub article that has "And here's some text from the 1881 Household Cyclopedia..." in it, as long as it is introduced as such. But when I can't identify the text as either from EB11 or HC, I think moving it to talk is probably the right thing to do. --Lee Daniel Crocker

• Thanks. I'm starting to think we may need an IP ban on this character - one of the pages I moved to talk had an intro (probably copyrighted) that I would guess is from a webpage somewhere. The user's contributions aren't really helpful, and are taking up far more time than they're worth; further, he/she shows no inclination to stop and talk, or moderate the behavior in any way. -- April

I traced the Caesar translation to http://www.publicbookshelf.com, which contains old public domain history books, so I think we're safe there.