I suppose if commercial shipping starts putting 25mm cannons on the deck the pirates then show up with 5 inch cannons?
No, they'll show up with twice as many speedboats and take the casualties. And when they've boarded you, they'll make you regret the decision. Oh, and they'll also take the 25mm cannons for their next attack.
What else are they to do besides piracy you ask? That is what my brother calls an "NMP". It's Not My Problem. They did something before piracy, I suggest they return to it.
Maybe you should try reading the comments you're replying to.
They did something before. It's called fishing (well, not all to be precise, but many of the pirates are ex-fishermen). They can't return to it, because international fishing fleets exploited the fact that their home country has no effective government nor navy and destroyed the fish population by overfishing.
And it is your problem, at least if you're a sailor in that area.
Consider the armed shipping vessels killing a few pirates a "teachable moment" to the pirates that survive.
Consider what the pirates who manage to capture a ship despite the artillery will do to the crew on that vessel. If they are really desperate, they'll not kill them, only chop off both their hands or such.
Escalating violence sounds so easy a solution - only if you're not personally involved. Go and become a sailor, then say that again. No, I'm not a sailor myself, but a friend of mine is. I don't know much about the trade, but a little, and probably more than most here.
They still have speed and numbers on their size. If the alternative is starvation, they'll simple send twice as many boats after you, taking into account that half of them will die in the attempt.
And then they'll take your guns so they can use them in the next attack.
They'll also massacre you, and make sure it's painful and very graphic, in an attempt to send a message to other merchant vessels that they can be taken hostage or slaughtered, depending on whether or not they shoot back.
Hello? Is everyone in here asleep? It's not like piracy is a new invention. We've been through all of this before several times in history.
If everyone had always assumed that "it hasn't be done before so it must not be viable", we would still be eating raw meat from animals killed by our bare hands. Google wouldn't exist. Microsoft wouldn't exist. IBM wouldn't exist. Well, you get the idea...
No, I don't. Your argument is bullshit on wheels. We are not in a situation where everyone is saying your quote and you're the one genius who rebels against the consensus. Truckloads of people are working full-time on reducing piracy, covering all angles, minimizing the risk. I'm very certain all the simple ideas posted here on/. were discussed and discarded by them... two years ago.
The problem isn't that nobody has any ideas on what to do about it.
The problem is that most of the ideas are so expensive that they cut considerably into the margins, or have unintended consequences the people in charge don't want to take.
Oh yeah, and we all remember that putting cannons on merchant ships stopped piracy dead back in the 17th century, don't we? Whole problem instantly gone. No more piracy once you had a few cannons on those merchant vessels...
On-call duty is to be paid, end of story. Anyone trying to sell you otherwise is trying to save money at your expense.
That said, of course it isn't paid at the same rate as a regular work hour. After all, you can spend it dozing, surfing the web for porn, fighting with your loved one or going shopping.
The alternative for the company to having someone on call is to have someone there, on the clock. Obviously, that's a lot more expensive. Since they're a company and trying to make a profit, they'll try to get things as cheaply as possible, and free if at all possible. That doesn't mean you have to give it to them for free. Next they'll be asking for free overtime, and then if you'd mind not being paid at all.
Really, I'm not being sarcastic. They are essentially asking you to work for nothing. It's not much work (carrying a cell phone and picking it up if it rings), but it's work.
And don't let them fool you with examples of other jobs. There are some jobs where being on call is so standard that it's figured into the regular salary. That doesn't mean it's free, it's just not explicitly listed on the paycheck. And of course firemen get paid for the time they're waiting for an emergency. After all, that's why we have professional firefighters - to have someone ready to come at a moments notice. And if you check their contracts, they certainly don't say "a work week consists of 3,5 hours inside burning buildings and 1,5 hours rescuing lost cats", but much more likely something like "a work week consists of 40 hours".
There are millions in shipping. Not a few, a whole lot. Don't you think if it really were that easy, someone who does this stuff for a living all day long would've had the idea long ago?
Occam's Razor tells me you are vastly underestimating the problem.
Pay the Danegeld and you don't get rid of the Dane.
Except that you're in Denmark in this case.
Their government is nonfunctional. International fishing fleets have depleted their fishing grounds so fishers - until recently one of the few professions in the area that was good even when everyone else was starving - now can't feed their families anymore.
It's not quite that simple. Putting bigger guns on the ships will only mean the pirates use bigger guns, too. They don't have many other choices. What other job opportunities are there for them?
Make it too difficult to be worth their time and the piracy will stop.
You're assuming that there's something else they can do. If there isn't, they will go on, no matter how difficult it is.
when word gets around the piracy doesn't pay, the pirates will forced to give up or be killed.
Or not.
Some of these pirates are just the filthy pirates the media make them out to be. But a whole lot more are fishers who're pissed at 1st world fishing factories emptying the fishing grounds (because there's no effective government down there to stop them) so they and their families starve.
And buying better weapons easily solves the equation for the pirates. Do you think you're the only one who can get an M2?
He's more concerned about his view than that of the audience.
It's ok to give the audience context, or respond to a question that's too narrow with a wider remark. However, if you are even halfway capable of public relations (and he should be, right?) you start by picking up the questioner from where he stands. I think the set phrase is "to explain this, I have to point out the wider contest".
So, we've now established that people in charge of Wikipedia consider themselves more important than their audience. Yes, I can confirm that from my own experiences and feelings. You know, it may be the problem.
If someone starts off saying "it ain't so" by listing half a dozen facts that have nothing to do with the question, he's either terribly stupid, or trying to pull a fast one on you. It's called misdirection and confusion. Yes, it's actually a named trick in the arsenal of con artists.
I'm going with Sagan on this one: "The suppression of uncomfortable ideas may be common in religion or in politics, but it is not the path to knowledge and there is no place for it in the endeavor of science."
There's uncomfortable ideas, and there's lying and ignoring evidence that you're wrong.
The whole ID thing was taken seriously by scientists for a short time, examined, found to be wanting, and discarded. End of story among intelligent people. Only that the ID defenders continue the trolling. That's really all there is to it.
The point about "giving them credibility" is that they don't have any otherwise. I agree with Dawkins, with the extension that people with credibility should have a place at the table, no matter how uncomfortable their ideas. But people who have long lost their credibility deserve a ridicule and a kick out the door.
Your definition of "illegal tracking" is nonexistant and about as clear as "don't be evil".
Agreed. However, a legal definition does exist, and it's the courts job to sort out whether or not it applies to a given specific case. Which is exactly what's going on here, right?
Define what you mean.
What I mean doesn't mean much in the end. What's important is whether or not the courts rule that privacy laws are applicable here.
you compare logging http requests is the same as shooting people?
No, I don't. I am comparing the legality of these items, same as you can compare the colour of a car to the colour of a dress without implying that the dress runs on gass and the car has a nice lady inside.
The fact of the matter is you can build a surveillance system with *any* tracker or logging system.
And the point is? There's a million ways to kill people. We don't need a million laws for that, all we need is the one that says "killing someone is illegal".
Same for the tracking systems. The technical details are irrelevant. All we need is a law that says "it's illegal to track someone".
Of course, you can go into legal details about each of them, e.g. add "without their consent" to the 2nd, or "unless in self-defense" to the first. The point still is that the technical details don't matter. The law doesn't care much if you stab, shoot or strangle someone. Likewise, the law doesn't care if you use Javascript, web-bugs or a statistics script.
I hear that all the time and it's time to stop this lie by the surveillance fanatics once and for all.
Of course we all have something to hide! It's called our private life. You have no business snooping around in it. Not if you're a cop, not it you're an ISP, not if you're god.
So you want a doctor to examine him? Fine. It sounded like you wanted politicians to give up their privacy.
Not any more than they ask everyone else to do so. In fact, if anyone deserves to have his privacy violated, it's Schäuble, because he's done more to harm privacy than anyone else in recent history in Germany.
But no, the problem is that a doctor has examined him, and they've sealed the results. I don't care about the details, but they aren't even telling us whether the guy is sane or insane, and as he's a member of the government, I think that does matter a little.
> Just because it is technically possible to defeat a surveilance system doesn't make it legal.
Trust me, modifying your hosts file and not connecting to a server is perfectly legal. Or has that already changed with "Vorratsdatenspeicherung"?"
I didn't mean the defeating is legal. I meant the surveilance system. Other example: The fact that kevlar exists doesn't make it legal to shoot people. See what I mean? That you can bypass online tracking does not in itself make online tracking legal.
But hey, all in the name of fighting Big Brother. Soon you'll have to get a license for your webserver and government regularly controls that you don't have any logfiles. For a few euros, of course.
That's got nothing to do with the argument, and at least AFAIK nobody has proposed something like that. This is not about government control, and never has been. It's about the government telling you that shooting people is illegal. Yes, even though kevlar exists. And yes, even if they actually wear a kevlar vest. And yes, even if you're a corporation.
I don't see government controls for guns on every street corner, even though gun ownership is largely illegal in Germany (there are exceptions, but very few). I also don't see them handing out "this citizen has no guns" license cards for a fee.
I think you're blinded by ideology and have been missing the point for a while now.
No, but a lot of the people who are subject matter experts and able and willing to prove it are still treated like shit when they edit articles about the subject they are experts about.
Citations are more valuable than expert knowledge.
The problem is that citations are rarely checked. They can be utter nonsense, and it'll rarely get noticed, especially if the field is a bit esoteric and it requires some knowledge with the subject to even understand what the cited source is saying.
but you won't even say which article you are talking about? It's usually just one word.
Yes. Sorry, but I've had these discussions too often before to not have a Deja Vu. The usual continuation is "ah, yes, that article. Well, there were these and those valid reasons for deletion..." - completely ignoring the point. I don't want to have the delete discussion again. That is the point - why is it even necessary to have these discussions multiple times?
And that is a generic claim you can easily verify yourself. Look into the current delete discussions and you will find enough articles in there who are on their 2nd round.
>His medical records are sealed by the government. You say it as if it was a bad thing.
Yes, I do. I believe we have a right to know whether or not the people who rule us are sane. There are serious medical experts who have doubts about Mr. Schäubles sanity.
The crazy thing is that all this is done in the name of fighting "Big Brother", which is supposedly google. How did I miss the chapter "How Winston Smith defeated the televisors by entering echo 127.0.0.1 www.google-analytics.com >>/etc/hosts"?
Just because it is technically possible to defeat a surveilance system doesn't make it legal. There are various ways to defeat CCTV cameras (infrared laser pointers used to work great, no idea about details on the current systems). But still there are laws regulating the installation of CCTV.
Google is a privacy concern due to the sheer amount of data they collect and use. Even the majority of/. readers agree on that. The difference is that most of us can help ourselves - as your example shows. Most of the non-tech people can't. They need the government to stop in.
I don't believe tom's story, and I'm not surprised to see that he never linked to his example despite several requests for one.
Because I don't want to have the same discussion about the individual details again. It distracts from the fact at hand. I refuse to give you and your kind fodder to tear apart the main argument by ripping into one example case.
And frankly, I don't care if you believe me or not. I'm posting my opinion and why I hold it. I'm not telling you to change yours. I'm listening to what you have to say, but I don't feel like I have to prove anything to you. Neither do I ask for any prove from your side.
Because this isn't about proof. This is about how people feel about Wikipedia. Because contributors aren't leaving Wikipedia in droves because flag A has been toggled to value B. They leave because they don't feel as good about Wikipedia anymore as they did when they joined.
That's a fact. But you can't link to it, or provide a citation. You can only listen to the people who tell you at the exit gate why they're going away.
...which article you are talking about? It sounds pretty unusual that a dozen contributors lose interest in one article at the same time.
Because most of us have a life that doesn't revolve around one Wikipedia article? I have a dozen forums that I check once a month or so. I have a hundred or so bookmarks to sites that I visit every now and then. I have about 20 sites like/. that I visit every day. Then there's e-mail, not to even start with real life.
Frankly, the problem about Wikipedia is that the destructive people put more energy into it than the constructive ones. Wait, doesn't that sound like something we've all seen before? Like in... before there even was an Internet? You would've thought they'd considered it when they set up Wikipedia.
Perhaps you can provide a link to the delete discussion?
Sorry, can't be bothered. That was two years ago and I don't feel like digging through the pile. If that means you don't believe me, maybe you'll believe the many other people who've posted similar experiences here and elsewhere, or the examples that were posted in other replies.
The problem is real. Stop arguing about its existence and start thinking about how to solve it.
Most of the people who attack Wikipedia for being deletionist don't understand its purpose: Wikipedia seeks to be a reliable source of information before it seeks to be a complete source of information.
Most of the people who defend deletionism don't understand the purpose of an encyclopedia, it seems. That's a book where I look up terms that I don't already know. In other words: The less familiar, the less obvious, the less - oops - notable.
Sure, it's nice to read a good summary of what the USA is or who Alexander the Great was on Wikipedia - but I could easily Google that and with or without Wikipedia, the first page of search results would likely include the info I was looking for.
So long as you don't come to the attention of a serious troll or deletionist and his clique, yes - reliable sources are adequate. But if you do, heaven help you - as you often find yourself wearing nothing but Speedo's in the middle of a thermonuclear blast.
Worse, yet. I've seen the same guy first edit the article, including the removal of references and citations, and then request its deletion.
I've seen citations removed because they referenced a book, with ISBN number, because "it can't be verified" since it's not available online.
I'm calling your bluff - please link to your old account or the article in question.
You know, the funny thing about the article is - it's gone. That's what I was talking about the whole time.
But you don't have to believe me. Or the dozens of other people who post similar experiences in their blogs and increasingly even print magazines. You don't have to believe the official Wikipedia people, either, and their conferences, where deletionism and other criticism was the main topic just recently in Berlin for the german Wikipedia, for example.
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I suppose if commercial shipping starts putting 25mm cannons on the deck the pirates then show up with 5 inch cannons?
No, they'll show up with twice as many speedboats and take the casualties. And when they've boarded you, they'll make you regret the decision. Oh, and they'll also take the 25mm cannons for their next attack.
What else are they to do besides piracy you ask? That is what my brother calls an "NMP". It's Not My Problem. They did something before piracy, I suggest they return to it.
Maybe you should try reading the comments you're replying to.
They did something before. It's called fishing (well, not all to be precise, but many of the pirates are ex-fishermen). They can't return to it, because international fishing fleets exploited the fact that their home country has no effective government nor navy and destroyed the fish population by overfishing.
And it is your problem, at least if you're a sailor in that area.
Consider the armed shipping vessels killing a few pirates a "teachable moment" to the pirates that survive.
Consider what the pirates who manage to capture a ship despite the artillery will do to the crew on that vessel. If they are really desperate, they'll not kill them, only chop off both their hands or such.
Escalating violence sounds so easy a solution - only if you're not personally involved. Go and become a sailor, then say that again. No, I'm not a sailor myself, but a friend of mine is. I don't know much about the trade, but a little, and probably more than most here.
They still have speed and numbers on their size. If the alternative is starvation, they'll simple send twice as many boats after you, taking into account that half of them will die in the attempt.
And then they'll take your guns so they can use them in the next attack.
They'll also massacre you, and make sure it's painful and very graphic, in an attempt to send a message to other merchant vessels that they can be taken hostage or slaughtered, depending on whether or not they shoot back.
Hello? Is everyone in here asleep? It's not like piracy is a new invention. We've been through all of this before several times in history.
If everyone had always assumed that "it hasn't be done before so it must not be viable", we would still be eating raw meat from animals killed by our bare hands. Google wouldn't exist. Microsoft wouldn't exist. IBM wouldn't exist. Well, you get the idea...
No, I don't. Your argument is bullshit on wheels. We are not in a situation where everyone is saying your quote and you're the one genius who rebels against the consensus. Truckloads of people are working full-time on reducing piracy, covering all angles, minimizing the risk. I'm very certain all the simple ideas posted here on /. were discussed and discarded by them... two years ago.
The problem isn't that nobody has any ideas on what to do about it.
The problem is that most of the ideas are so expensive that they cut considerably into the margins, or have unintended consequences the people in charge don't want to take.
Oh yeah, and we all remember that putting cannons on merchant ships stopped piracy dead back in the 17th century, don't we? Whole problem instantly gone. No more piracy once you had a few cannons on those merchant vessels...
I'm the CTO of a small software company.
And you can stop there. Your job doesn't compare with the job of a regular IT guy. I'm fairly sure neither does your salary.
Yes, some jobs come with extra obligations. In this case, however, they apparently want to add a new obligation to the old job. For free.
On-call duty is to be paid, end of story. Anyone trying to sell you otherwise is trying to save money at your expense.
That said, of course it isn't paid at the same rate as a regular work hour. After all, you can spend it dozing, surfing the web for porn, fighting with your loved one or going shopping.
The alternative for the company to having someone on call is to have someone there, on the clock. Obviously, that's a lot more expensive. Since they're a company and trying to make a profit, they'll try to get things as cheaply as possible, and free if at all possible. That doesn't mean you have to give it to them for free. Next they'll be asking for free overtime, and then if you'd mind not being paid at all.
Really, I'm not being sarcastic. They are essentially asking you to work for nothing. It's not much work (carrying a cell phone and picking it up if it rings), but it's work.
And don't let them fool you with examples of other jobs. There are some jobs where being on call is so standard that it's figured into the regular salary. That doesn't mean it's free, it's just not explicitly listed on the paycheck. And of course firemen get paid for the time they're waiting for an emergency. After all, that's why we have professional firefighters - to have someone ready to come at a moments notice. And if you check their contracts, they certainly don't say "a work week consists of 3,5 hours inside burning buildings and 1,5 hours rescuing lost cats", but much more likely something like "a work week consists of 40 hours".
Not hard. Why do people make this so hard?
There are millions in shipping. Not a few, a whole lot. Don't you think if it really were that easy, someone who does this stuff for a living all day long would've had the idea long ago?
Occam's Razor tells me you are vastly underestimating the problem.
Pay the Danegeld and you don't get rid of the Dane.
Except that you're in Denmark in this case.
Their government is nonfunctional. International fishing fleets have depleted their fishing grounds so fishers - until recently one of the few professions in the area that was good even when everyone else was starving - now can't feed their families anymore.
It's not quite that simple. Putting bigger guns on the ships will only mean the pirates use bigger guns, too. They don't have many other choices. What other job opportunities are there for them?
Make it too difficult to be worth their time and the piracy will stop.
You're assuming that there's something else they can do. If there isn't, they will go on, no matter how difficult it is.
when word gets around the piracy doesn't pay, the pirates will forced to give up or be killed.
Or not.
Some of these pirates are just the filthy pirates the media make them out to be. But a whole lot more are fishers who're pissed at 1st world fishing factories emptying the fishing grounds (because there's no effective government down there to stop them) so they and their families starve.
And buying better weapons easily solves the equation for the pirates. Do you think you're the only one who can get an M2?
He's more concerned about his view than that of the audience.
It's ok to give the audience context, or respond to a question that's too narrow with a wider remark. However, if you are even halfway capable of public relations (and he should be, right?) you start by picking up the questioner from where he stands. I think the set phrase is "to explain this, I have to point out the wider contest".
Thanks.
Yes, correct all you say.
So, we've now established that people in charge of Wikipedia consider themselves more important than their audience. Yes, I can confirm that from my own experiences and feelings. You know, it may be the problem.
If someone starts off saying "it ain't so" by listing half a dozen facts that have nothing to do with the question, he's either terribly stupid, or trying to pull a fast one on you. It's called misdirection and confusion. Yes, it's actually a named trick in the arsenal of con artists.
So much for that.
I'm going with Sagan on this one: "The suppression of uncomfortable ideas may be common in religion or in politics, but it is not the path to knowledge and there is no place for it in the endeavor of science."
There's uncomfortable ideas, and there's lying and ignoring evidence that you're wrong.
The whole ID thing was taken seriously by scientists for a short time, examined, found to be wanting, and discarded. End of story among intelligent people. Only that the ID defenders continue the trolling. That's really all there is to it.
The point about "giving them credibility" is that they don't have any otherwise. I agree with Dawkins, with the extension that people with credibility should have a place at the table, no matter how uncomfortable their ideas. But people who have long lost their credibility deserve a ridicule and a kick out the door.
Your definition of "illegal tracking" is nonexistant and about as clear as "don't be evil".
Agreed. However, a legal definition does exist, and it's the courts job to sort out whether or not it applies to a given specific case. Which is exactly what's going on here, right?
Define what you mean.
What I mean doesn't mean much in the end. What's important is whether or not the courts rule that privacy laws are applicable here.
you compare logging http requests is the same as shooting people?
No, I don't. I am comparing the legality of these items, same as you can compare the colour of a car to the colour of a dress without implying that the dress runs on gass and the car has a nice lady inside.
The fact of the matter is you can build a surveillance system with *any* tracker or logging system.
And the point is? There's a million ways to kill people. We don't need a million laws for that, all we need is the one that says "killing someone is illegal".
Same for the tracking systems. The technical details are irrelevant. All we need is a law that says "it's illegal to track someone".
Of course, you can go into legal details about each of them, e.g. add "without their consent" to the 2nd, or "unless in self-defense" to the first. The point still is that the technical details don't matter. The law doesn't care much if you stab, shoot or strangle someone. Likewise, the law doesn't care if you use Javascript, web-bugs or a statistics script.
Of course, most of us have nothing to hide
I hear that all the time and it's time to stop this lie by the surveillance fanatics once and for all.
Of course we all have something to hide! It's called our private life. You have no business snooping around in it. Not if you're a cop, not it you're an ISP, not if you're god.
So you want a doctor to examine him? Fine. It sounded like you wanted politicians to give up their privacy.
Not any more than they ask everyone else to do so. In fact, if anyone deserves to have his privacy violated, it's Schäuble, because he's done more to harm privacy than anyone else in recent history in Germany.
But no, the problem is that a doctor has examined him, and they've sealed the results. I don't care about the details, but they aren't even telling us whether the guy is sane or insane, and as he's a member of the government, I think that does matter a little.
> Just because it is technically possible to defeat a surveilance system doesn't make it legal.
Trust me, modifying your hosts file and not connecting to a server is perfectly legal. Or has that already changed with "Vorratsdatenspeicherung"?"
I didn't mean the defeating is legal. I meant the surveilance system. Other example: The fact that kevlar exists doesn't make it legal to shoot people. See what I mean? That you can bypass online tracking does not in itself make online tracking legal.
But hey, all in the name of fighting Big Brother. Soon you'll have to get a license for your webserver and government regularly controls that you don't have any logfiles. For a few euros, of course.
That's got nothing to do with the argument, and at least AFAIK nobody has proposed something like that. This is not about government control, and never has been. It's about the government telling you that shooting people is illegal. Yes, even though kevlar exists. And yes, even if they actually wear a kevlar vest. And yes, even if you're a corporation.
I don't see government controls for guns on every street corner, even though gun ownership is largely illegal in Germany (there are exceptions, but very few). I also don't see them handing out "this citizen has no guns" license cards for a fee.
I think you're blinded by ideology and have been missing the point for a while now.
No, but a lot of the people who are subject matter experts and able and willing to prove it are still treated like shit when they edit articles about the subject they are experts about.
Citations are more valuable than expert knowledge.
The problem is that citations are rarely checked. They can be utter nonsense, and it'll rarely get noticed, especially if the field is a bit esoteric and it requires some knowledge with the subject to even understand what the cited source is saying.
but you won't even say which article you are talking about? It's usually just one word.
Yes. Sorry, but I've had these discussions too often before to not have a Deja Vu. The usual continuation is "ah, yes, that article. Well, there were these and those valid reasons for deletion..." - completely ignoring the point. I don't want to have the delete discussion again. That is the point - why is it even necessary to have these discussions multiple times?
And that is a generic claim you can easily verify yourself. Look into the current delete discussions and you will find enough articles in there who are on their 2nd round.
>His medical records are sealed by the government.
You say it as if it was a bad thing.
Yes, I do. I believe we have a right to know whether or not the people who rule us are sane.
There are serious medical experts who have doubts about Mr. Schäubles sanity.
The crazy thing is that all this is done in the name of fighting "Big Brother", which is supposedly google. How did I miss the chapter "How Winston Smith defeated the televisors by entering echo 127.0.0.1 www.google-analytics.com >> /etc/hosts"?
Just because it is technically possible to defeat a surveilance system doesn't make it legal. There are various ways to defeat CCTV cameras (infrared laser pointers used to work great, no idea about details on the current systems). But still there are laws regulating the installation of CCTV.
Google is a privacy concern due to the sheer amount of data they collect and use. Even the majority of /. readers agree on that. The difference is that most of us can help ourselves - as your example shows. Most of the non-tech people can't. They need the government to stop in.
I don't believe tom's story, and I'm not surprised to see that he never linked to his example despite several requests for one.
Because I don't want to have the same discussion about the individual details again. It distracts from the fact at hand. I refuse to give you and your kind fodder to tear apart the main argument by ripping into one example case.
And frankly, I don't care if you believe me or not. I'm posting my opinion and why I hold it. I'm not telling you to change yours. I'm listening to what you have to say, but I don't feel like I have to prove anything to you. Neither do I ask for any prove from your side.
Because this isn't about proof. This is about how people feel about Wikipedia. Because contributors aren't leaving Wikipedia in droves because flag A has been toggled to value B. They leave because they don't feel as good about Wikipedia anymore as they did when they joined.
That's a fact. But you can't link to it, or provide a citation. You can only listen to the people who tell you at the exit gate why they're going away.
...which article you are talking about? It sounds pretty unusual that a dozen contributors lose interest in one article at the same time.
Because most of us have a life that doesn't revolve around one Wikipedia article? I have a dozen forums that I check once a month or so. I have a hundred or so bookmarks to sites that I visit every now and then. I have about 20 sites like /. that I visit every day. Then there's e-mail, not to even start with real life.
Frankly, the problem about Wikipedia is that the destructive people put more energy into it than the constructive ones. Wait, doesn't that sound like something we've all seen before? Like in... before there even was an Internet? You would've thought they'd considered it when they set up Wikipedia.
Perhaps you can provide a link to the delete discussion?
Sorry, can't be bothered. That was two years ago and I don't feel like digging through the pile. If that means you don't believe me, maybe you'll believe the many other people who've posted similar experiences here and elsewhere, or the examples that were posted in other replies.
The problem is real. Stop arguing about its existence and start thinking about how to solve it.
Most of the people who attack Wikipedia for being deletionist don't understand its purpose: Wikipedia seeks to be a reliable source of information before it seeks to be a complete source of information.
Most of the people who defend deletionism don't understand the purpose of an encyclopedia, it seems. That's a book where I look up terms that I don't already know. In other words: The less familiar, the less obvious, the less - oops - notable.
Sure, it's nice to read a good summary of what the USA is or who Alexander the Great was on Wikipedia - but I could easily Google that and with or without Wikipedia, the first page of search results would likely include the info I was looking for.
So long as you don't come to the attention of a serious troll or deletionist and his clique, yes - reliable sources are adequate. But if you do, heaven help you - as you often find yourself wearing nothing but Speedo's in the middle of a thermonuclear blast.
Worse, yet. I've seen the same guy first edit the article, including the removal of references and citations, and then request its deletion.
I've seen citations removed because they referenced a book, with ISBN number, because "it can't be verified" since it's not available online.
I'm calling your bluff - please link to your old account or the article in question.
You know, the funny thing about the article is - it's gone. That's what I was talking about the whole time.
But you don't have to believe me. Or the dozens of other people who post similar experiences in their blogs and increasingly even print magazines. You don't have to believe the official Wikipedia people, either, and their conferences, where deletionism and other criticism was the main topic just recently in Berlin for the german Wikipedia, for example.
We're all probably just sock puppets.
btw, are deletions final? Isn't the metadata kept around somewhere?
Yes, and no.