It seems that Jonathan's obsession about Lir has now turned into a
criminal slander of Oliver.
His so-called evidence that they are the same is nothing but speculative
bullshit. So was his previous accusation that Lir might somehow be
responsible for a slowdown in the entire system.
Jonathan Walther wrote:
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.
Obviously Oliver felt that an injustice was being done, and saw fit to
speak up. It is not clear from the quote who the sysop involved was or
if the person even was a sysop, but that really doesn't matter. Sysops
are people who have been around for a while longer, and perhaps should
be held to a higher standard of behaviour than the rest of us. They
should be putting out fires, not exacerbating the arguments. Sometimes
a newbie is able to bring a fresh perspective on a debate.
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.
I too have expressed concerns about the way Lir has been treated, but
when Jimbo replied that he has been trying to work things out with Lir
that satisfied me. From that point I was willing to let well enough alone.
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.
Exaggeration for dramatic effec!
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.
I can't see why the women's role as weavers is such a major issue. If
you say it happened in many societies anyway, where's the beef?
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.
If you're so concerned about this article, and it's so important to you
go ahead and fix it instead of whining about Lir's quotes from the book.
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.
Sometimes we all engage in such practices. Why single out Lir?
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?
Nothing in Oliver's post suggests he plans to visit the Philippines.
The baiting sounds like a little kid saying "You can't make me do it."
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.
What he says and what you interpret that he "seems to be arguing" are
not the same thing.
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.
The conclusion is a non-sequitur.
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.
The discussion was about article titles. How do you get from that to URL's
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...
More unfounded sarcasm.
Eclecticology