Mailing List Archive

--- Pieter Suurmond <pieter@kmt.hku.nl> wrote:
Greetings Pieter,

Personal essays are also serious stuff
Wikipedia is not only built on software
An empty house, even with no holes in the roof, is
still an empty house

Have a good day


> Hi Anthere,
>
> I very much appreciate these 'personal essays'.
> They should be given a proper place (don't remove!).
> They should however be separated from 'development'.
>
> Software-development and maintainance is a very
> serious business, please don't call it 'hacking'
> any longer because Wikipedia is reaching adulthood.
> :-)
> (Grown-up software-developers don't call themselves
> 'hackers': It's all about thinking and
> mathematics!)
>
> Please keep the 'personal essays', but not mixed
> with serious development stuff.
>
> Thanks,
> Pieter Suurmond
>
>
> Anthere wrote:
> >
> > --- Erik Moeller <erik_moeller@gmx.de> wrote:
> > > > I agree with Anthere and strongly disagree
> with
> > > eliminating personal essays
> > > > from meta. If POV material isn't allowed on
> meta
> > > then where should it go?
> > > Um .. how about just getting rid of it? Why is
> it
> > > within Wikipedia's
> > > mission to somehow provide storage space for
> > > personal essays? We're an
> > > encyclopedia, not a hosting provider.
> > >
> > > Taku is correct in that this only makes Meta
> hard to
> > > use, especially for
> > > other people who want to help working on the
> > > Wikipedia software. While it
> > > is possible to better organize meta, the Recent
> > > Changes list is cluttered
> > > by this stuff. There are literally hundreds of
> > > entries like this:
> > >
> > > ...
> > > # diff) (hist) . . MN Meta-symbiosis; 15:25 . .
> > > Saprtacus
> > > # (diff) (hist) . . M User talk:Saprtacus; 15:43
> . .
> > > Saprtacus
> > > # (diff) (hist) . . M User talk:Saprtacus; 15:39
> . .
> > > Saprtacus
> > > # (diff) (hist) . . M User:Saprtacus; 15:38 . .
> > > Saprtacus
> > > # (diff) (hist) . . MN Meta-etiology; 15:33 . .
> > > Saprtacus
> > > # (diff) (hist) . . M User talk:Saprtacus; 15:31
> . .
> > > Saprtacus
> > > ...
> > >
> > > Now try to find the critical "How Wikipedia can
> be
> > > really, really fast"
> > > development proposal hidden deep within this
> > > idiosyncratic nonsense.
> >
> > Meta is not only about software development, so
> don't
> > try to restrict his use for that matter.
> >
> > Besides, you'll have to define what a "personal"
> essay
> > is. So not only would we need a consensus for
> removal
> > of pages from the meta, but we'll need a consensus
> > about what a personal essay is, and we'll need to
> > decide whether each and other page a personal
> essay
> > is.
> >
> > All that to make a couple of articles more visible
> > (some on software development) or rather some less
> > visible (those you think are trashing meta).
> >
> > A simpler way could be to implement a little
> something
> > which would allow a user to hide changes made by
> > another given user.
> >
> > This was asked on the french wiki btw (not by me).
> I
> > think it would for example make sense to hide all
> the
> > automatic generation of bots (after it is checked
> > these are correct). That option sounds to me
> feasible,
> > and more desirable than just arbitrarily removing
> > other people stuff and upsetting them.
> >
> > (oh crumbs, another feature to reject...)
> >
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> They should be given a proper place (don't remove!).
> They should however be separated from 'development'.

> Software-development and maintainance is a very
> serious business, please don't call it 'hacking'
> any longer because Wikipedia is reaching adulthood. :-)
> (Grown-up software-developers don't call themselves
> 'hackers': It's all about thinking and mathematics!)

Insulting nonsense. There are plenty of "grown-up" software developers who
call themselves hackers. Ask the people at

http://zgp.org/mailman/listinfo/p2p-hackers

or the folks working on the Linux kernel:

http://www.kernelhacking.org/

for example. I wouldn't say that these people are not capable of thinking
or do not understand mathematics.

Wikipedia is an open source project, and in the open source community, the
term "hacker" has a much different tradition from other development
groups. It is a perfectly appropriate term for the development process,
unless you see open source itself as "unprofessional" and "not for grown-
ups" (in which case you should don your asbestos suit..)

Regards,

Erik