User:Dbachmann

Infobox
Infobox
	I do not necessarily believe that "Infoboxes must burn in hell", but I appreciate the problem:; A box promises to contain, and things that can't be neatly contained can't be put in boxes. A box suggests "this is the real deal," and if the real deal could be put in a box, then there would be no need for articles. A box says, "Here is your PowerPoint bullet point list, so you can find all the world reduced to a reductive summary; please do not strive to understand complexity, for that is for suckers." A box says, "Wikipedia is just like your primary school text book: full of colors and 'bites' of infotainment." A box says, "I, the box maker, have just pissed all over this article and written a counter-article, and it's short, so read it instead." A box may be found useful by some people, indeed. We call those people "non-readers." (Utgard Loki, at Giano's Talkpage, 16:47, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia: "free" as in freedom, "free" as in beer, but not "free" as in free-for-all.

"I have a feeling there are very responsible people out there who are making sure this doesn't become a free-for-all," Denny said. Denver Post 04/30/2007

the Moon

1st quarter, 41%

Template:MayCalendar

curriculum wikis

This user has been on Wikipedia for 19 years, 9 months and 23 days.

my Username is Dbachmann. My signature is dab;

I am Dieter A. Bachmann of Zürich [5].

log of my image uploads, blockings, and deletions.
editing statistics: [6][7]

My wikistatistics in a nutshell: I have joined Wikipedia on 21 July 2004 [8], and was made an admin on 11 November 2004. My 5,000th edit to article space was on 10 March [9], my 10,000th edit to any namespace on 7 April [10] 2005. My watchlist reached 1,000 entries on 5 August 2005. My 10,000th edit to article namespace was on 6 September [11], my 20,000th edit to any namespace was on 24 November 2005 [12]. I passed the 35k mark some time in June and the 40k one on 4 October 2006.

123,456+

I have made more than 123,456 changes to English Wikipedia since July 2004^[1]

70,000+^[2]

I have made more than 60,000 changes to English Wikipedia articles since July 2004

my own vectorized monogram, by Miljoshi

Wikipedia and nationalism

Nationalismus ist eine Kinderkrankheit, sozusagen die Masern der Menschheit (Albert Einstein Mein Weltbild, 1934) "Nationalists of all Countries, Unite!"^[3] As so often, I am struck by the lengths nationalists will go to create their own version of history. (Wiglaf, 29 June 2005 [34])^[4]

Wikipedia's policies of WP:NPOV and WP:ATT (and WP:UNDUE, which is a corollary of the two combined) allow any two editors even in fundamental disagreement to work together productively, provided they are intelligent and have a certain minimal social competence.

In most cases where fruitful collaboration breaks down, except for patent silliness, at least one party is strongly motivated either by an irrational sentiment of either religion, nationalism, or, psychologically probably related, the cranky (nerdy, ADHD^[5]) mind caught in pseudoscience^[6]

Religion, nationalism and pseudoscience overlap:^[7]

Religion and pseudoscience in topics like Creation science;
religion and nationalist feelings in ethnic nationalism (including supremacism and irredentism or national mysticism), such as Hindutva, Islamism, Zionism or "America and Christianity".
Nationalism and pseudo-scholarship, finally, in various topics surrounding Historiography and nationalism (in particular ancient history) and historical revisionism.

An excellent illustration of what sane editors have to continually put up with is provided, for example, here:

Sanskrit, an indic language's ethymological understanding for Saraswati by Western linguists is more proper than Indians ! And, then telling Indian ethymology as painted with `Aryan Invasion' or OIT meaning is really laughable.
— WIN (talk • contribs) 23 March 2007

on Wikipedia

It works

Wikipedia works: the childish graffitti is no problem (thanks to the heroic members of the RCP), and the bulk of the well-meaning but uninformed or sub-standard additions get ironed out over time: from the rubble, encyclopedicity emerges. Of course, a large percentage of our 400M or so words are still rubble (or cruft), and this should be kept in mind in comparisons of size (let alone numbers of "articles").^[8] The only cases where this synergetic effect breaks down is when the editors adding sub-standard material are extremely motivated, mostly due to religious or nationalist reasons (often both combined), or more rarely because of a strange obsession with a specific field (kooks). For these cases, Wikipedia has developed an impressive system of checks and balances, which do work out in the end, but at the cost of efficiency. While most articles achieve a high standard as it were by themselves, topics suffering from such dedicated disruption take a lot more investment than would be required of a closed board of editors. For this reason, the more content Wikipedia has to defend, it will become more and more important that disruption is unceremoniously dealt with (i.e. that offenders are blocked quickly), for the protection of the sane and fruitful editing process. Increasingly, evolved articles are also semiprotected. This doesn't require some great paradigm shift in Wikipedia's core principles. It should be addressed pragmatically and case-by-case, and a more defensive attitude of the community regarding evolved articles with year-long histories of controversy will grow naturally.

Anti-elitism

The Wikipedia philosophy can be summed up thusly: "Experts are scum." For some reason people who spend 40 years learning everything they can about, say, the Peloponnesian War -- and indeed, advancing the body of human knowledge -- get all pissy when their contributions are edited away by Randy in Boise who heard somewhere that sword-wielding skeletons were involved. And they get downright irate when asked politely to engage in discourse with Randy until the sword-skeleton theory can be incorporated into the article without passing judgment.
— Lore Sjöberg [35]

on the arbcom

the arbcom has always been an irregularity in the "consensus system", but as long as it was run by dedicated and competent people, it was a necessary irregularity with a stabilizing effect. Not today. The arbcom is broken. Its decisions too often are sloppy, unwise, unintelligent and small-minded. The arbcom has driven away some of the best editors Wikipedia has ever had, instead of protecting an environment where they can work constructively.[36]
Wikipedia:Dispute resolution is designed to work for disagreements between editors that are both (a) honest and (b) intelligent. Such editors can agree to disagree and write a brilliant and balanced article between them, no arbitration necessary.
Editors that are blatantly disruptive or obviously in violation of policy can be tackled by administrators routinely, no arbitration necessary.
Arbitration will only ever be necessary in disputes where at least one side is either dishonest or not capable (for lack of intelligence or education) to grasp Wikipedia's fundamentals.
the arbitration committee needs to recognize this situation
arbitration can only have the purpose to resolve such disputes to the benefit of the project, that is, towards encyclopedicity.
in general, this will mean that the arbcom will need to judge which user has presented a better case in terms of representation of academic mainstream. This does not mean the arbcom needs to research a topic on their own, but it does mean they need to familiarize themselves with the topic sufficiently to be able to make such a judgement. From this it follows that arbitrators should have some minimal academic background.
resolving a dispute for the benefit of the project has two aspects: (a) Wikipedia:Expert retention and (b) maintenance of a sane and friendly editing atmosphere. These aims will often, but not always co-incide. An expert who does not respect basic Wikipedia procedures may need have sanctions imposed on them. Conversely, sanctions will need to be taken against a pusher of a minority pov or ideology who makes semblance of adhering to policy but is in fact found to misuse policy to draw out a dispute ad infinitum long after it has been shown that they have no substantial case, even if they are not in blatant violation of policy (if they were, admins would have tackled the case before arbitration, see above).
Experts throwing temper tantrums will mostly be handled at admin level. The arbcom needs to recognize that most cases that land on their desk require an effort to recognize wikilawyering and filibustering, viz., dishonest editors or bona fide ideologists who abuse Wikipedia procedures as a substitute for their not having a case. In this sense, the arbcom does need to review content. It is in fact their main task.
Arbitrators just lazily reviewing "evidence" presented by filibustering partisans without bothering to establish the actual context are not fulfilling their function, and may in some cases have a counter-productive effect, viz. (a) driving away experts and (b) enabling trolls and forum-shoppers.
many arbitration cases are not brought to a satisfactory conclusion because the arbcom restricts itself to point out the obvious (things that could very well be handled by the community on WP:AN without arbcom involvement) but shuns away from uncovering the actual background of a case. This is understandable, because it would increase the workload on each arbitrator per case.
an amelioration could be achieved by the arbcom accepting fewer cases (rejecting those that can be handled on admin / community level), and instead investing more time in each case they do accept.

in a nutshell: Wikipedia evolves by collaboration of dissenting editors. Liberalism can and should be written by collaboration between liberal and conservative Wikipedians. Christianity can and should be written by collaboration between Christian and non-Christian Wikipedians. WP:TIGERS says that Nazism should not be written via controversial debate between Nazis and non-Nazis, any more than Penguin should be written via a debate between Penguins and non-Penguins. It is the arbcom's job to distinguish one case from the other. Obviously there will be borderline cases: nobody said the task was easy, but we need to be clear that this is the job we are asking them to do.

so why does it work?

Quality control is broken[37]. RfA is broken. The arbcom is broken. And yet Wikipedia thrives and prospers. That's a bit of a mystery, and part of why I am still in love with the project. Synergy in motion. It doesn't work in theory, only in practice (User:CatherineMunro). I suspect that's at least as much of a challenge to stability theory than the solar system or the ecosystem.

on the 21st century

Academic hacks announcing the "end of history" are just examples of the universal tendency to over-estimate the long-term significance of the events in one's own lifetime. What is true is that of the past five centuries, each has been more dramatic than any preceding century in human history (where by "dramatic", we mean "bloody") and the 21st century shows good promise of continuing that trend. We do however, for the first time since the Paleolithic, expect that world population will curb, at around 10 billion people, in the 2050s. This "curb" that looks like a nice and comforting thing when drawn on a piece of paper, represents of course the fate of millions, for whom to "curb" will mean starvation, epidemics, and bitter war. This isn't some futurologist's speculations, the protagonists of this "drama" are being born as we speak, and most of us will likely be around to watch it live on the internet. By this I mean that the "West" (and China, by other means) have their population growth slowing down already. They will be struggling to accommodate their old in the 2040s and 2050s, but by the 2060s, they will have a normal population pyramid again, with population density decreasing at an agreeable rate. They will not be a position to intervene in the conflicts of those regions that are less lucky like some benevolent advanced alien race, as this decade is teaching a USA showing the same signs of decadence that are familiar from late Imperial Rome (and others of history's superpowers). "The West" will be more than happy to shut themselves in splendid isolation, or be glad if they can just keep out of the worst bits. The regions that will bleed for this "curb" or "Great 21st Century Turnaround" are those that show a Youth Bulge now, that is, Africa, Southwest, South and Southeast Asia.^[9] These regions are already full of angry young men, and they will be even more so in 25 years' time. Angry young men are quick to embrace religion, nationalism and ideology, but these are essentially interchangable rationalizations (or 'spiritualizations', as the case may be) for their anthropological impetus to fight until the population pyramid is back in shape. The crisis of the mid-century is not a speculation, it is a straightforward projection, and the wiser governments have long begun anticipating it. What we do not know is how it will turn out: we have a clear idea of what the world will look like in 2040, but we have no idea whatsoever of what it will look like in 2080. The worst-case scenario is, as always, a total cataclysm, with the biosphere bombed back to the Paleozoic. But our hope should be that the "great turnaround" succeeds, and that after much suffering, the 21st century ends in emerging stability, with a true new world order and a steadily decreasing population of some 9 billion. If this happens, the "modern" 16th to 21st centuries will in retrospect appear as a catastrophic final stretch, culminating millennia of population growth, before for the first time a truly stable human society (and economy) that has overcome its dependence on growth and expansion could emerge.

Tolkien on English

Fortunately modern (modern literary, not present-day colloquial) English is an instrument of very great capacity and resources, it has long experience not yet forgotten, and deep roots in the past not yet all pulled up. It can, if asked, still play in modes no longer favoured and remember airs not now popular; it is not limited to the fashionable cacophonies. I have little sympathy with contemporary theories of translation, and no liking for their results. In these the allegiance is changed. Too often it seems given primarily to 'contemporary English', the present-day colloquial idiom as if being 'contemporary', that most evanescent of qualities, by itself guaranteed its superiority. (ca. 1960, quoted in Companion and Guide, p. 770)

The bigger things get the smaller and duller or flatter the globe gets. It is getting to be all one blasted little provincial suburb. When they have introduced American sanitation, morale-pep, feminism, and mass production throughout the Near East, Middle East, Far East, U.S.S.R., the Pampas, el Gran Chaco, the Danubian Basin, Equatorial Africa, Hither Further and Inner Mumbo-land, Gondhwanaland, Lhasa, and the villages of darkest Berkshire, how happy we shall be. [...] Col. Knox says 1/8^[10] of the world's population speaks 'English', and that is the biggest language group. If true, damn shame - say I. May the curse of Babel strike all their tongues till they can only say 'baa baa'. It would mean much the same. I think I shall have to refuse to speak anything but old Mercian. But seriously : I do find this Americo-cosmopolitanism very terrifying. ... I am not really sure that its victory is going to be so much better for the world as a whole and in the long run than the victory of-----.^[11] (9 December 1943, Letters, p. 65)

notes

^ [1] this puts me in the top 20 or at 529 mBearcats (September 2008); accounting for 433 ppm (71k out of 165M as of September 2007) of the project;438ppm (54k out of 123M) as of March 2007; 460 ppm (46k out of 100M) as of Christmas 2006
^ Edit counts do not accurately reflect on the quality of a user's contributions to Wikipedia. Adding punctuation or fixing a typo and clicking 'Save' 50 times when one edit will suffice, craps up the database just as much as 50 instances of vandalism or spam. Saving frequently to avoid losing work is one thing, but a tally of the the number of letters & characters which are still live in the database (minus cut & pasted templates) would be more accurate than padding edit-counts.[2]
^ traceable to H. Rogger's 1964 The New Right, where the patently "nonsensical" nature of such a slogan illustrates a weakness of the pre-WWI Rightist movement, compensated for by Hitler's racist "vision of [...] an international elite of blood". Staggeringly, the slogan has since been used in earnest, by Le Pen advocating his Euronat, in 1995 explained as a "parody of our enemies"[3], in 1996 without irony markers (Identité, No. 23)
^ apparently, the same holds for communists, and probably lots of other -ists; I just haven't come across them so often, on Wikipedia.
^ more detailed statement
^ the only difference being that religion and nationalism are recognized by society as super-individual causes, while the crank experiences the same feelings with regard to his chosen topic, but is perceived as an eccentric loner by society.
^ These connections show that religion and ethnic pride are probably identical at a fundamental level (human group behaviour, development of religion).
^ About one third of articles are longer than 2k; on average, an article has some 4k or 300 words. [4] I estimate that with a reasonable mergist approach, the number of articles on the English Wikipedia would be reduced by about a third; see also WP:ʃ
^ see list of countries by population growth rate; sustained growth rates around 1.4%, that is, a doubling time within two generations, should be considered critical.
^ still fairly accurate: estimates as of 2007 range between 10% and 15%.
^ written in 1943, this cannot be considered an instance of Godwin's law, but a reference to what at the time was a very real and present danger.

		The Tireless Contributor Barnstar
		Though I may agree or disagree I posted this barnstar for an editor with a heart toward sobornost. Which is an honorable thing. Matthew 5:9 LoveMonkey (talk) 02:44, 20 June 2009 (UTC)