And? We're supposed to hold Scientology to the same standards that we held Christianity hundreds of years ago? Because religions did bad stuff in the past, Scientology gets a pass on doing bad stuff in the present? Or are you saying that all religions are equally as bad? Are the current practitioners of religions responsible for events that happened before they were born?
Scientology has been extremely terrible in modern days, and thus they get criticized. Likewise, the Catholic church still receives criticism for harboring child-molesting priests. The whole claim of a double standard is tired.
I don't see why its inevitable that you'll argue within their framework. The people who would debate with me would make it clear that they had no intention of attacking my (formerly) religious beliefs. If you don't take the bait and stick to the facts (in other words, the science) then I can't see why its a problem. The problem is that most people take an accusatory or combative stance when doing this sort of thing, which leads to "Your religion is stupid and you're dumb," sort of statements.
In my personal experience, the most effective way to handle religion is to simply not discuss it, and to bring the discussion back onto the side of science. Make the religious argue on your turf, and bite your tongue concerning their beliefs where the evidence and science are not applicable, and you'll come off in a much better light.
Man, you're talking to a formerly religious person. I group up in a fairly fundamentalist family. I was pretty big into it until college. Most religious people, believe it or not, are perfectly capable of being rational if you let them. Humans are neither entirely rational or entirely irrational, they have a mix of both in equilibrium.
I find your position that I and my friends are somehow fundamentally broken because we were once (and in some cases, still are) religious completely and utterly insulting. You've just written of something like 90 percent of the population, and completely closed off discussion. Thanks for proving my point.
They raise their voices all the time. I see them a lot here on Slashdot. They're usually belittled by at least one evangelical atheist, but they're there. Hell, back when I was still in religion at my university, I heard lots of complaints about an ID vs Evolution "debate" that was held at the university? Most of the complaints were along the lines of, that the evolution side didn't present much of the really strong evidence, instead preferring to try and take pot shots at religion. Noone there bought into young earth creationism.
You'll also note that in the case with the Dover Area School District Board, the board was voted out after trying to push Intelligent Design.
They're there, and they do speak out. Of course, that isn't sexy enough to sell newspapers, so it doesn't make headlines.
If you want to get rid of religion, then you're not going to be able to do it by being combative. I lost my religion by simply being exposed to facts and evidence, and being questioned by people who didn't appear to be condescending. If you force people to choose immediately by being combative, then they're going to just pick what they're comfortable with, and you've closed off any avenue for debate or real exploration of the topics.
Look at it this way. Humans are social animals, and we form groups for our mutual benefit. Religions are just another form of these groups. If you look down on them, call them stupid and superstitious, then you are setting your social group, whether you want to call it athiesm or science, against theirs. They're going to take a combative position. If you take a political approach and appear accepting of them, then they will feel welcomed in your group. It removes a lot of the mental blocks they have with accepting your position.
Thats why being political is important. You're going to get nowhere by telling someone they're superstitious and wrong. You'll get everywhere by swallowing your pride, acting respectful towards their beliefs, but attempt to steer them (gently) towards another conclusion.
There certainly are people who you'll never be able to convince, ever. Those aren't the people you should care about. They've already closed off their minds. There are, however, a lot more people who are moderate with their beliefs, and will listen, if you present the evidence and arguments in a way that doesn't seem to belittle them.
Its far too common for people to go "You believe God created the earth? Well you're a drooling moron and here's why." If that person was a moderate, you just blew your chance. If that person was a fundamentalist, then he wouldn't have believed you anyway, but you still end up looking like an ass to the other moderates. And when you look like an ass to your audience, the other guy has a much much lower bar to reach for his message to get out.
I would say that a lot of the problems we have with fundamentalism and young earth creationism in America are simply because there are a lot of people out there who are belittling the other side. When that happens, all the YEC people have to say is, "Hey we just want our side heard too," and they already appear, to the common man, far more reasonable than people who have evidence, but are being dicks about it.
I think that things like the Flying Spaghetti Monster do far more to damage efforts than help it. And I think that the message would be far more effective if people said "We won't teach ID because it doesn't meet these standards of science," instead of what usually is said "We won't teach ID because you're just trying to push your religion." Both are accurate, but one comes off as accusatory, while the other one comes off as balanced.
But I think its also that a lot of people are generally uneasy with the idea that there does not exist a "you" outside of the chemical reactions in your brain. I'd say a great deal of people believe that each person has an existence outside of the physical, a spirit if you will. People who are in a depression, who cannot will themselves out of them, but rather treat it with a medicine designed to address the chemical imbalances is evidence of the opposite.
I'm ok with my love, sadness, happiness, etc. being nothing more than a chemical reaction in my noggin. A lot of people aren't.
It can be hard to get real experience when all the jobs out there want several years of experience in the field. Of course you can do personal projects, but its coin toss whether or not the company will consider that actual experience. Most HR departments I've dealt would consider 1 year of embedded experience, plus 3 years of embedded experience through personal projects as 1 years of "real" experience.
I certainly would have liked to do embedded programming. I really enjoyed my OS and Embedded Systems classes in college. As a result, when I was in the market for a new job, I was specifically looking for embedded systems work.
The problem was that any job pretty much wanted several years of experience, and greatly preferred a EE or Comp E degree. I had a CS degree and no formal experience in embedded. Any experience I had was through my classes, as my personal projects tended to focus in other areas.
Not that it matters anyway. My first job was doing.Net applications. Now, if I look for a new job, the only companies that would call me back are.Net jobs, with maybe a Java job once in a while. It doesn't matter how proficient in C++ I am, it seems.
I'd like to do some embedded projects personally, but I wonder if any employers would care. It always seems like the HR goons only care about professional experience, unless your informal experience and personal projects catch the eyes of a techie.
What can I do? I understand that they need qualified people, but its not as if all of us CS guys can't work outside of a VM.
I wish I could jump on something like that too. As it is, I have a CS instead of EE, and no real embedded experience. I did want to pursue embedded systems early on, but as my first job was a.Net related job, I'm pingeon-holed into.Net jobs.
As it is, I'm looking at doing an English-teaching-in-Japan stint. I wholeheartedly agree with your sentiment.
Maybe the people complaining here should learn how to ignore stuff that offends them. If you're offended by something as banal as a picture, then you're way too sensitive. Its not our responsibility to be sensitive to your beliefs and religion. Sorry, but thats how freedom works.
On a side note, if you're so unsure in your faith that you need people to side-step around it just to comfort you, then you need to do some serious examination of your belief. For people who claim to be following the Ultimate Truth, they sure seem to need a lot of encouragement from us lost sheep. And if your god really gives a shit about printing pictures of a guy that he talked to hundreds of years in the past, then your god is a humongous pussy, and you probably shouldn't be worshiping him anyway. I have a feeling that, if god exists, he doesn't give a shit about what pictures we upload onto a website.
If you're offended by someone badmouthing your religion, then you need to stop being a crybaby.
Slashdot posted an article done by a tech site that benchmarked different RAM latencies, and they basically found that you're getting some very low performance benefits. I think it was something like 2%, and 1 or 2 FPS. Can't find the article with a quick search, sorry.
In the original article, Joel explicitly states that refactoring is fine and may even be needed. What he's opposed to is rewriting, which is an entirely different thing than refactoring (and, to disagree with Joel, may be completely necessary in certain fringe cases).
Good programmers can deal with ugly code, but if your code base takes two months to make a developer marginally productive and breaks in unpredictable ways from simple code changes, then you probably need to refactor. If you're spending tons of man hours treading water because the code is such an unbelievable mess that its nearly impossible to make a solid change without breaking something, then you're going to get better productivity if you bite the bullet and come up with a plan for refactoring.
Also, I always have to laugh at the whole "well a great developer can work with messy code..." Unless you're working in a small, tight team, its completely impossible to make sure that you're working with a good developer, much less a great one. A lot of developers out there are poor or average, and companies, despite their best efforts to avoid doing so, do hire these people.
Are you saying I needed to cite my claims (if so, which ones), or that its wrong to ask him to source claims. Claims like "Reform may be one way to try and make someone not re-offend, but for sexual predators, this is almost-never possible," which are pretty crucial to his argument. If we're arguing that we're making these lists because of high recidivism, its certainly pertinent to the argument that he proves that claim, instead of making an appeal to the masses ("everyone knows").
I like how it's "vengeance" and not "removing a proven criminal from society to minimize his ability to hurt someone else".
There's vengeance, reform, and protection. Protection and reform should play a role, vengeance should not.
When they say things like "bleeding hearts" they mean you. You seem to think that rehabilitation is a universal possibility (so wrong it hurts) and that the penal system shouldn't, at least in some cases, be used as a repository for those people unable to conduct themselves in a civilized manner. Permanently.
And where did I say that rehabilitation was a universal possibility? You're projecting your own stereotype on me. If reform isn't a possibility, then that person shouldn't be let out of jail. Letting them out and then putting them on a harassment list just makes our society more dangerous.
No, because I'm not the one making unsourced claims. I haven't said anything about recidivism, other than his claim isn't cited. The onus is on the person making the claims.
Please cite a source for high recidivism in sexual crimes. This is frequently stated, but only common knowledge is used as a source. If you can't cite a source for this, we have to throw that argument out.
Furthermore, my point of view is that the lists are not making children safer. Rather, they seem to be aimed to exact punishment far after the criminal has paid his or her dues.
Finally, if there is a risk of recidivism, then we need to keep the person in jail and therapy. Releasing them and placing them on a "harass this person" list just encourages criminal behavior. After all, we are releasing people who are still dangerous (after all, high recidivism, right?) and then promptly removing any chance for them to integrate with normal society and develop a support network.
We're letting out dangerous people and encouraging them to recommit!
Because the point of a penal system should be reform, not vengeance. Nothing can undue what was done to the victim. If there's a chance to reform the criminal and make him or her a contributing member of society, that should be done. Continuing to punish a reformed criminal because his or her victim has not healed provides less benefit to society than forgiveness.
Otherwise, why not just put rapists to the death too?
Can you cite a study for the "notorious recidivism?" It seems to be one of those "but everyone knows that...!" things.
Furthermore, child molestation isn't the only thing that can get you on one of these lists. Hell, in some areas being caught urinating in public can get you on the list. In this case, while the list did state the charges, they used ambiguous phrasing ("oral copulation with a person under 14 or by force.") which caused confusion. That means that, even if your trivial charge is stated, you can still get lumped in with the child rapists.
Finally, there's no evidence that these lists make people safer. The only reason for the lists seems to promote ostracism and vigilantism.
In a perfect world where we could use such a list justly, and only if the perpetrator deserves it, then I'd be all for it. In our current world, the existence of these lists means that, if you're accused of a crime that gets you on this, you should seriously consider killing yourself. Once you get out, you're branded for life, and the public at large isn't going to give you a fair chance to rebuild your life.
1) It appears I'm wrong. Thanks for pointing that out. 2) Thanks for posting actual factual information, instead of a Wikipedia administrators opinion on the matter.
No, I didn't, that's clearly a lie as by the time you wrote the above I'd already responded to your comment.
I was writing my comment at the time you posted that one, so no I didn't read your comment before I wrote mine. And no, it isn't a lie, its my interpretation of what you were saying.
he story suggests that a secretive Wikipedia cabal censored WordBomb. There's nothing apparently secret about it, the alleged "cabal"'s de-facto leader is clearly acting in good faith, so the story is dubious.
Its not clear from the quotes you posted that he was acting in good faith. There was nothing in the posts other than Jimbo's word that the bans were appropriate. It appears that I'm misinformed about the legitimacy of the ban as pointed out by other posters, but those posters put forth information, not opinion based on authority. They also didn't call me a liar.
You're in the business and you don't understand how modern PR works?
I used a poor turn of phrase, sorry. I'm not in the business of writing.
I agree, there's some useful information in there, but it is tinged with so much connotation of conspiracy and sinister control that it can have a rather marked affect on how the reader will interpret the seemingly reasonable material. It could even make them accept it without question if the job is done well enough.
Yep, I mentioned that I thought that they were hyperbolic, and I agree with your point. To call the admins "totalitarian" is excessive.
This is how you get anyone to accept a poor, evil interpretation of reasonable events. You hit them with emotional words ("creative" writing), and then you "back them up" with facts that aren't sinister at all, if you gave any context.
I agree.
Really, it goes a bit beyond a "joke." That's a very lame excuse for some rather provocative PR work aimed at coloring opinions on Wikipedia.
From my limited reading of the site in question, I had the impression that this kind of stuff is normal for them. I guess my point of view was more that they were trying to be witty and not malicious. But, see my previous post and above comments. I do agree that the article is too hyperbolic to be informative. There may be legitimate complaints, but they're tainted by the way they're stated, which leads me to...
The only reason I used hyperbole was because it's rather hard to condense the above into something someone is willing to read. That article is poorly written, and it seeks to assault Wiki, as many of the other articles at the Register do.
See, thats the thing, you did kind-of the same thing as the article.
And to be honest, I really like Wikipedia, but every time there's a controversy, instead of saying "Well yeah, we'll have to fix that. Nothing is perfect," Wikians come out of the woodwork to scream, "How dare you sir! There's absolutely nothing wrong with Wikipedia, and if you insist there is then you just want to bury the project!" At least thats how it seems to me. Anthropomorphizing the situation, you go from a likable guy who you can give you really great, if maybe a bit flawed, information, to a perfectionist prick who starts screaming at you at the first hint of criticism.
Framing the argument to say that agreeing with what the article is saying amounts to killing off Wikipedia smacks of the latter person. Based on what you've written, thats not at all what you were trying to say. But I also apply that logic to the article at hand.
I'm quite sick of it.
You and me both. I guess thats what I was trying to point out, but I stated my point poorly. Communication is a bitch.
Slashdot Mirror
And? We're supposed to hold Scientology to the same standards that we held Christianity hundreds of years ago? Because religions did bad stuff in the past, Scientology gets a pass on doing bad stuff in the present? Or are you saying that all religions are equally as bad? Are the current practitioners of religions responsible for events that happened before they were born?
Scientology has been extremely terrible in modern days, and thus they get criticized. Likewise, the Catholic church still receives criticism for harboring child-molesting priests. The whole claim of a double standard is tired.
I don't see why its inevitable that you'll argue within their framework. The people who would debate with me would make it clear that they had no intention of attacking my (formerly) religious beliefs. If you don't take the bait and stick to the facts (in other words, the science) then I can't see why its a problem. The problem is that most people take an accusatory or combative stance when doing this sort of thing, which leads to "Your religion is stupid and you're dumb," sort of statements.
In my personal experience, the most effective way to handle religion is to simply not discuss it, and to bring the discussion back onto the side of science. Make the religious argue on your turf, and bite your tongue concerning their beliefs where the evidence and science are not applicable, and you'll come off in a much better light.
Man, you're talking to a formerly religious person. I group up in a fairly fundamentalist family. I was pretty big into it until college. Most religious people, believe it or not, are perfectly capable of being rational if you let them. Humans are neither entirely rational or entirely irrational, they have a mix of both in equilibrium.
I find your position that I and my friends are somehow fundamentally broken because we were once (and in some cases, still are) religious completely and utterly insulting. You've just written of something like 90 percent of the population, and completely closed off discussion. Thanks for proving my point.
They raise their voices all the time. I see them a lot here on Slashdot. They're usually belittled by at least one evangelical atheist, but they're there. Hell, back when I was still in religion at my university, I heard lots of complaints about an ID vs Evolution "debate" that was held at the university? Most of the complaints were along the lines of, that the evolution side didn't present much of the really strong evidence, instead preferring to try and take pot shots at religion. Noone there bought into young earth creationism.
You'll also note that in the case with the Dover Area School District Board, the board was voted out after trying to push Intelligent Design.
They're there, and they do speak out. Of course, that isn't sexy enough to sell newspapers, so it doesn't make headlines.
If you want to get rid of religion, then you're not going to be able to do it by being combative. I lost my religion by simply being exposed to facts and evidence, and being questioned by people who didn't appear to be condescending. If you force people to choose immediately by being combative, then they're going to just pick what they're comfortable with, and you've closed off any avenue for debate or real exploration of the topics.
Look at it this way. Humans are social animals, and we form groups for our mutual benefit. Religions are just another form of these groups. If you look down on them, call them stupid and superstitious, then you are setting your social group, whether you want to call it athiesm or science, against theirs. They're going to take a combative position. If you take a political approach and appear accepting of them, then they will feel welcomed in your group. It removes a lot of the mental blocks they have with accepting your position.
Thats why being political is important. You're going to get nowhere by telling someone they're superstitious and wrong. You'll get everywhere by swallowing your pride, acting respectful towards their beliefs, but attempt to steer them (gently) towards another conclusion.
There certainly are people who you'll never be able to convince, ever. Those aren't the people you should care about. They've already closed off their minds. There are, however, a lot more people who are moderate with their beliefs, and will listen, if you present the evidence and arguments in a way that doesn't seem to belittle them.
Its far too common for people to go "You believe God created the earth? Well you're a drooling moron and here's why." If that person was a moderate, you just blew your chance. If that person was a fundamentalist, then he wouldn't have believed you anyway, but you still end up looking like an ass to the other moderates. And when you look like an ass to your audience, the other guy has a much much lower bar to reach for his message to get out.
I would say that a lot of the problems we have with fundamentalism and young earth creationism in America are simply because there are a lot of people out there who are belittling the other side. When that happens, all the YEC people have to say is, "Hey we just want our side heard too," and they already appear, to the common man, far more reasonable than people who have evidence, but are being dicks about it.
I think that things like the Flying Spaghetti Monster do far more to damage efforts than help it. And I think that the message would be far more effective if people said "We won't teach ID because it doesn't meet these standards of science," instead of what usually is said "We won't teach ID because you're just trying to push your religion." Both are accurate, but one comes off as accusatory, while the other one comes off as balanced.
I agree with the fair world bias.
But I think its also that a lot of people are generally uneasy with the idea that there does not exist a "you" outside of the chemical reactions in your brain. I'd say a great deal of people believe that each person has an existence outside of the physical, a spirit if you will. People who are in a depression, who cannot will themselves out of them, but rather treat it with a medicine designed to address the chemical imbalances is evidence of the opposite.
I'm ok with my love, sadness, happiness, etc. being nothing more than a chemical reaction in my noggin. A lot of people aren't.
It can be hard to get real experience when all the jobs out there want several years of experience in the field. Of course you can do personal projects, but its coin toss whether or not the company will consider that actual experience. Most HR departments I've dealt would consider 1 year of embedded experience, plus 3 years of embedded experience through personal projects as 1 years of "real" experience.
:)
Maybe I'm just unlucky.
I certainly would have liked to do embedded programming. I really enjoyed my OS and Embedded Systems classes in college. As a result, when I was in the market for a new job, I was specifically looking for embedded systems work.
.Net applications. Now, if I look for a new job, the only companies that would call me back are .Net jobs, with maybe a Java job once in a while. It doesn't matter how proficient in C++ I am, it seems.
The problem was that any job pretty much wanted several years of experience, and greatly preferred a EE or Comp E degree. I had a CS degree and no formal experience in embedded. Any experience I had was through my classes, as my personal projects tended to focus in other areas.
Not that it matters anyway. My first job was doing
I'd like to do some embedded projects personally, but I wonder if any employers would care. It always seems like the HR goons only care about professional experience, unless your informal experience and personal projects catch the eyes of a techie.
What can I do? I understand that they need qualified people, but its not as if all of us CS guys can't work outside of a VM.
I wish I could jump on something like that too. As it is, I have a CS instead of EE, and no real embedded experience. I did want to pursue embedded systems early on, but as my first job was a .Net related job, I'm pingeon-holed into .Net jobs.
As it is, I'm looking at doing an English-teaching-in-Japan stint. I wholeheartedly agree with your sentiment.
Maybe the people complaining here should learn how to ignore stuff that offends them. If you're offended by something as banal as a picture, then you're way too sensitive. Its not our responsibility to be sensitive to your beliefs and religion. Sorry, but thats how freedom works.
On a side note, if you're so unsure in your faith that you need people to side-step around it just to comfort you, then you need to do some serious examination of your belief. For people who claim to be following the Ultimate Truth, they sure seem to need a lot of encouragement from us lost sheep. And if your god really gives a shit about printing pictures of a guy that he talked to hundreds of years in the past, then your god is a humongous pussy, and you probably shouldn't be worshiping him anyway. I have a feeling that, if god exists, he doesn't give a shit about what pictures we upload onto a website.
If you're offended by someone badmouthing your religion, then you need to stop being a crybaby.
Slashdot posted an article done by a tech site that benchmarked different RAM latencies, and they basically found that you're getting some very low performance benefits. I think it was something like 2%, and 1 or 2 FPS. Can't find the article with a quick search, sorry.
Linus Torvalds created a microkernal based OS? Which one?
In the original article, Joel explicitly states that refactoring is fine and may even be needed. What he's opposed to is rewriting, which is an entirely different thing than refactoring (and, to disagree with Joel, may be completely necessary in certain fringe cases).
Good programmers can deal with ugly code, but if your code base takes two months to make a developer marginally productive and breaks in unpredictable ways from simple code changes, then you probably need to refactor. If you're spending tons of man hours treading water because the code is such an unbelievable mess that its nearly impossible to make a solid change without breaking something, then you're going to get better productivity if you bite the bullet and come up with a plan for refactoring.
Also, I always have to laugh at the whole "well a great developer can work with messy code..." Unless you're working in a small, tight team, its completely impossible to make sure that you're working with a good developer, much less a great one. A lot of developers out there are poor or average, and companies, despite their best efforts to avoid doing so, do hire these people.
Are you saying I needed to cite my claims (if so, which ones), or that its wrong to ask him to source claims. Claims like "Reform may be one way to try and make someone not re-offend, but for sexual predators, this is almost-never possible," which are pretty crucial to his argument. If we're arguing that we're making these lists because of high recidivism, its certainly pertinent to the argument that he proves that claim, instead of making an appeal to the masses ("everyone knows").
There's vengeance, reform, and protection. Protection and reform should play a role, vengeance should not.
When they say things like "bleeding hearts" they mean you. You seem to think that rehabilitation is a universal possibility (so wrong it hurts) and that the penal system shouldn't, at least in some cases, be used as a repository for those people unable to conduct themselves in a civilized manner. Permanently.And where did I say that rehabilitation was a universal possibility? You're projecting your own stereotype on me. If reform isn't a possibility, then that person shouldn't be let out of jail. Letting them out and then putting them on a harassment list just makes our society more dangerous.
No, because I'm not the one making unsourced claims. I haven't said anything about recidivism, other than his claim isn't cited. The onus is on the person making the claims.
Cite please.
Reform may be one way to try and make someone not re-offend, but for sexual predators, this is almost-never possible.Cite please.
Please cite a source for high recidivism in sexual crimes. This is frequently stated, but only common knowledge is used as a source. If you can't cite a source for this, we have to throw that argument out.
Furthermore, my point of view is that the lists are not making children safer. Rather, they seem to be aimed to exact punishment far after the criminal has paid his or her dues.
Finally, if there is a risk of recidivism, then we need to keep the person in jail and therapy. Releasing them and placing them on a "harass this person" list just encourages criminal behavior. After all, we are releasing people who are still dangerous (after all, high recidivism, right?) and then promptly removing any chance for them to integrate with normal society and develop a support network.
We're letting out dangerous people and encouraging them to recommit!
Paraphrased: You're just not arguing from emotion enough.
Because the point of a penal system should be reform, not vengeance. Nothing can undue what was done to the victim. If there's a chance to reform the criminal and make him or her a contributing member of society, that should be done. Continuing to punish a reformed criminal because his or her victim has not healed provides less benefit to society than forgiveness.
Otherwise, why not just put rapists to the death too?
Your argument is one of emotion, not logic.
Can you cite a study for the "notorious recidivism?" It seems to be one of those "but everyone knows that...!" things.
Furthermore, child molestation isn't the only thing that can get you on one of these lists. Hell, in some areas being caught urinating in public can get you on the list. In this case, while the list did state the charges, they used ambiguous phrasing ("oral copulation with a person under 14 or by force.") which caused confusion. That means that, even if your trivial charge is stated, you can still get lumped in with the child rapists.
Finally, there's no evidence that these lists make people safer. The only reason for the lists seems to promote ostracism and vigilantism.
In a perfect world where we could use such a list justly, and only if the perpetrator deserves it, then I'd be all for it. In our current world, the existence of these lists means that, if you're accused of a crime that gets you on this, you should seriously consider killing yourself. Once you get out, you're branded for life, and the public at large isn't going to give you a fair chance to rebuild your life.
1) It appears I'm wrong. Thanks for pointing that out.
2) Thanks for posting actual factual information, instead of a Wikipedia administrators opinion on the matter.
I was writing my comment at the time you posted that one, so no I didn't read your comment before I wrote mine. And no, it isn't a lie, its my interpretation of what you were saying.
he story suggests that a secretive Wikipedia cabal censored WordBomb. There's nothing apparently secret about it, the alleged "cabal"'s de-facto leader is clearly acting in good faith, so the story is dubious.Its not clear from the quotes you posted that he was acting in good faith. There was nothing in the posts other than Jimbo's word that the bans were appropriate. It appears that I'm misinformed about the legitimacy of the ban as pointed out by other posters, but those posters put forth information, not opinion based on authority. They also didn't call me a liar.
I used a poor turn of phrase, sorry. I'm not in the business of writing.
I agree, there's some useful information in there, but it is tinged with so much connotation of conspiracy and sinister control that it can have a rather marked affect on how the reader will interpret the seemingly reasonable material. It could even make them accept it without question if the job is done well enough.Yep, I mentioned that I thought that they were hyperbolic, and I agree with your point. To call the admins "totalitarian" is excessive.
This is how you get anyone to accept a poor, evil interpretation of reasonable events. You hit them with emotional words ("creative" writing), and then you "back them up" with facts that aren't sinister at all, if you gave any context.I agree.
Really, it goes a bit beyond a "joke." That's a very lame excuse for some rather provocative PR work aimed at coloring opinions on Wikipedia.From my limited reading of the site in question, I had the impression that this kind of stuff is normal for them. I guess my point of view was more that they were trying to be witty and not malicious. But, see my previous post and above comments. I do agree that the article is too hyperbolic to be informative. There may be legitimate complaints, but they're tainted by the way they're stated, which leads me to...
The only reason I used hyperbole was because it's rather hard to condense the above into something someone is willing to read. That article is poorly written, and it seeks to assault Wiki, as many of the other articles at the Register do.See, thats the thing, you did kind-of the same thing as the article.
And to be honest, I really like Wikipedia, but every time there's a controversy, instead of saying "Well yeah, we'll have to fix that. Nothing is perfect," Wikians come out of the woodwork to scream, "How dare you sir! There's absolutely nothing wrong with Wikipedia, and if you insist there is then you just want to bury the project!" At least thats how it seems to me. Anthropomorphizing the situation, you go from a likable guy who you can give you really great, if maybe a bit flawed, information, to a perfectionist prick who starts screaming at you at the first hint of criticism.
Framing the argument to say that agreeing with what the article is saying amounts to killing off Wikipedia smacks of the latter person. Based on what you've written, thats not at all what you were trying to say. But I also apply that logic to the article at hand.
I'm quite sick of it.You and me both. I guess thats what I was trying to point out, but I stated my point poorly. Communication is a bitch.