text:
View Biz Bluetree's Comments BY TICKER:
Latest | Highest rated
I think the patient is still critical.
You know as well as anyone that the spin is spun until it no longer resembles yarn. We're hard pressed to know if up is down or down is up. The inherent complexities here only serve to further confuse.
Nothing resembles normal to me any more except what we've come to accept as normal, which in itself is not normal. I now tread with extreme caution and only hope I don't miss an opportunity being too defensive.
Wait! Has anyone seen my lunch?
Very best,
bizNov 23, 2013. 12:04 PM | 0 Likes |Link to Comment
I'm not alone believing the ravage of continued and accelerated QE will start taking its toll next year, no taper, the petrodollar is going to be out of a job which is to say world reserve currency status is in real trouble, nations holding US bonds and dollars could dump those dollars on the exchanges at the same time real interest rates start moving up on their own - Fed loosing control of that tool - a reliable source says at 4% its game over for bonds, I say that seems low Volcker went three times higher than that - he says Volcker was in control of his rate. These are interesting times. The stock markets start to smell like toast. Then, at what point during all of this chaotic change does the quadrillion dollar derivatives bubble explode like stepping on a pregnant spider?
It is likely this unravel will start to show itself during 2014 (after Q1) and continue into 2015 while silver and gold respond favorably.
But, please don't get me started :-)
-Actually thanks for offering the space for me to vent.
Very best,
bizNov 20, 2013. 11:59 PM | 0 Likes |Link to Comment
..one thing I'm confident about in 2014 is the price of PMs rising significantly. Everything else is anybody's guess. I have no doubt a massive market correction is coming. But the question is when. However I do not see business as usual in 2014, though it will be presented as such.
Best regards to all.Nov 20, 2013. 08:18 PM | 0 Likes |Link to Comment
hahaha, IT - but the review is still preliminary... I hope it is not being conducted by the CFTC... maybe in five years they'll determine nothing!
Nov 19, 2013. 11:15 PM | 0 Likes |Link to Comment
Thanks Missiondweller,
Just what we need, huh? More monied elite.
Thanks for sharing links to your observations. Indeed, with the migration of gold from west to east - which is perplexing in itself - the west is committing to fiat currency. Unbelievable.
Very best,
bizNov 15, 2013. 02:48 PM | 0 Likes |Link to Comment
Nov 14, 2013. 07:26 PM | 0 Likes |Link to Comment
I think your blog is great! A portal for info, opinion and more, I've found. Keep up the good work my friend. And you've done a good thing treating it like a town hall meeting.
Very Best,
bizNov 14, 2013. 07:24 PM | 1 Like |Link to Comment
Nov 14, 2013. 03:00 PM | 0 Likes |Link to Comment
Thanks, IT, this is golden!
Nov 14, 2013. 02:32 PM | 0 Likes |Link to Comment
solarcircle... thank you very much for the link. FOFOA is always a good read. Detailed and deep. I am grateful for this lesson in Forex trading and by virtue finding more puzzle pieces. I'll come back to it after dinner.
His main point however is that what determines the spot price is paper trading which is completely detached from physical supply or physical demand. Neither have anything to do with spot. Gold and silver contracts are hypothecated and rehypothecated over and over again. Each time the same (paper) metal moves to another's account eventually becoming infinite layers deep. Imagine the mess that will one day ensue.
I'll be back.
Thanks again.
Very best,
bizNov 13, 2013. 07:16 PM | 2 Likes |Link to Comment
Ronald, thank you for your very informed insights. Price vs Value should be the determining factor, but, you are right - it is almost always NOT differentiated and so often confused.
Thanks again.
Very best,
bizNov 13, 2013. 07:01 PM | 0 Likes |Link to Comment
Thank you, Andy. Very pleased you liked the article and appreciate your saying so. And thanks for the link above - the Maloney piece? Yes, indeed, everyone should see it.
Here's more for you from the good Doctor. [audio] http://bit.ly/1aFhi6Y
Very best,
bizNov 13, 2013. 06:54 PM | 0 Likes |Link to Comment
Thank you, dbest1.
Very best to you,
bizNov 13, 2013. 05:44 PM | 0 Likes |Link to Comment
Thank you, wolfolsc.
Very Best and good luck,
bizNov 13, 2013. 05:43 PM | 0 Likes |Link to Comment
Thanks for your continued support of this article. But I ask, why would you need the statistics your talking about when the writing is on the wall?
And I appreciate your suggestion about my studying finance. But I ask, why would I do that when I have your tutelage? Isn't that your investment strategy above? In the paragraph directly under the sub heading - "What's an investor to do?" ..good stuff.
So I thank you again for all your helpful suggestions...
May I suggest that we have some more fun? Please read the above article again, then read this one, below, from Sprott in the link, and notice the dates on each then recall which you read first. Thanks.
I hope you enjoy. And remember, I won't try to tell you what route to take to where you're going, but I will yell, LOOK OUT FOR THE BUS! if you're about to step in front of one.
Very Best,
bizNov 13, 2013. 05:35 PM | 0 Likes |Link to Comment
307 Comments


text:
Michelle Obama to Participate in Cartoon Network's HALL OF GAME AWARDS, 2/20
First Lady Michelle Obama will make a special taped appearance at Cartoon Network's upcoming Hall of Game Awards (HallofGame.com). Mrs. Obama founded Let's Move! two years ago to solve the problem of childhood obesity. The First Lady will appear onscreen to speak about the importance of getting active and to congratulate "Let's Move L.A." on the work they've done to get people moving.
Hosted by basketball legend and TNT NBA analyst Shaquille O'Neal, the second annual Cartoon Network Hall of Game Awards, premieres Monday, Feb. 20 at 7 p.m. (ET/PT) and is a high-energy, off-the-wall, multi-platform experience that lets viewers vote and honor their favorite sports stars and sports moments of the year.
In addition to musical performances by Hot Chelle Ray and Flo Rida viewers can tune in to see Los Angeles Galaxy star David Beckham as well as Nick Cannon (America's Got Talent), Drew Brees (New Orleans Saints quarterback), Victor Cruz (New York Giants wide receiver), Cam Newton (Carolina Panthers quarterback), Hope Solo (Pro and World Cup soccer goalie), Rico Rodriguez (Modern Family), Zachary Gordon (Diary of a Wimpy Kid), Jennette McCurdy (iCarly) Clayton Kershaw (Los Angeles Dodgers pitcher), Matthew Stafford (Detroit Lions quarterback), Maya Gabeira, (Pro surfer), Tony Gonzalez (Atlanta Falcons tight end), Hakeem Nicks (New York Giants wide receiver), Terrell Suggs (Baltimore Ravens linebacker), Torii Hunter (Los Angeles Angels right fielder), Jimmy Graham (New Orleans Saints tight end), AJ Green (Cincinnati Bengals wide receiver), Calvin Johnson (Detroit Lions wide receiver), Matt Kemp, (Los Angeles Dodgers outfielder), Steve McCann (BMX rider) and The Miz (WWE Superstar).
Also appearing are the cast of Cartoon Network's Dude, What Would Happen - C.J. Manigo, Jackson Rogow and Ali Sepasyar - as well as the cast from Cartoon Network's newest live-action comedy Level Up - Gaelan Connell, Connor del Rio, Jessie T. Usher, Aimee Carrero and Lonny Ross, and the 2011 SI Kids SportsKid of the Year.
Voting on HallofGame.com has passed 92 million. Fans can log on to HallofGame.com and vote for their favorites in 11 different categories.
The nominees are:
He's Got Game
(The award for the best male athlete.)
Dirk Nowitzki, Dallas Mavericks (NBA)
Aaron Rodgers, Green Bay Packers (NFL)
LeBron James, Miami Heat (NBA)
Derek Jeter, New York Yankees (MLB)
She's Got Game
(The award for the best female athlete.)
Maya Moore, Minnesota Lynx (WNBA)
Maria Sharapova (Tennis)
Hope Solo, U.S. Team (Soccer)
Lindsey Vonn, U.S. Team (Skiing)
We Got Game
Dallas Mavericks (NBA)
Boston Bruins (NHL)
Green Bay Packers (NFL)
St. Louis Cardinals (MLB)
(Top alternative sports high flyer.)
Ryan Sheckler (Skateboarding)
Shaun White (Snowboarding)
Kelly Slater (Surfing)
Steve McCann (BMX)
Captain Clutch
St. Louis Cardinals third baseman David Freese (MLB)
World Cup soccer forward Abby Wambach
Denver Broncos quarterback Tim Tebow (NFL)
Dallas Mavericks power forward Dirk Nowitzki (NBA)
Dynamic Duo
Dwayne Wade and LeBron James of the Miami Heat (NBA)
Clayton Kershaw and Matt Kemp of the Los Angeles Dodgers (MLB)
Matthew Stafford and Calvin Johnson of the Detroit Lions (NFL)
Blake Griffin and Chris Paul of the Los Angeles Clippers (NBA)
Most Awesome Mascot
Sacramento Kings "Slamson" (NBA)
Jacksonville Jaguars "Jaxson de Ville" (NFL)
San Jose Sharks "S.J. Sharkie" (NHL)
Cleveland Indians "Slider" (MLB)
About Author
- Casting Roundup: Sarah Chalke, Kim Raver Headline New Pilots
- ADVENTURE TIME Headed to the Big Screen?
- Pilot Season Roundup: Colm Feore, Daniel Stern, Dave Annable to Star in New Shows
- James Franco to Star in New Fox Comedy, WHY HIM?
- Christopher Meloni to Star in WGN America's Slave Drama UNDERGROUND
- Check Out Alex Dunphy's Full College Essay from Latest MODERN FAMILY Episode
- Photo Flash: HBO Reveals Key Art for GAME OF THRONES Season 5
- Syfy to Honor Leonard Nimoy with Special Programming This Sunday
- Grammy Winner Kelly Clarkson Exclusively Premieres New Music from New Album on MTV, VH1 & CMT First
- CONSTELLATIONS' Jake Gyllenhaal and Ruth Wilson Set for THEATER TALK This Weekend

subset: commoncrawl


text:
Book your room at Days Inn Alta Vista
Double Room, 2 Double BedsMax Occupancy: 4 guests (up to 3 children)
Standard Room, 1 King BedMax Occupancy: 4 guests (up to 3 children)
Standard Room, 1 King Bed, AccessibleMax Occupancy: 2 guests (up to 1 child)
Double Room, 2 Double BedsMax Occupancy: 4 guests (up to 3 children)
Upgraded, Standard Room, 1 King BedMax Occupancy: 4 guests (up to 3 children)
Standard Room, 1 King BedMax Occupancy: 4 guests (up to 3 children)
Get an overview of this hotelHotel in Altavista with free breakfast and fitness center
Situated in Altavista, this hotel is 0.6 mi (1 km) from Avoca Museum and 2.4 mi (3.9 km) from Altavista Town Hall. Liberty University and Candlers Station are also within 20 mi (32 km).
Hotel Features
This hotel features a fitness center, a spa tub, and a business center. Free continental breakfast and free self parking are also provided. Additionally, dry cleaning, laundry facilities, and a 24-hour front desk are onsite.
Room Amenities
All 66 rooms offer satellite TV, coffee makers, and free local calls.Information missing or incorrect? Tell us!
Hotel Amenities
Hotel Amenities
Days Inn Alta Vista features a spa tub and a fitness center. A business center is on site. A complimentary breakfast is offered each morning. This Altavista hotel also offers multilingual staff, gift shops/newsstands, and complimentary newspapers in the lobby. Complimentary self parking is available on site.
- 24-hour front desk
- Business center
- Free newspapers in lobby
- Dry cleaning/laundry service
- Fitness facilities
- Free breakfast
- Free self parking
- Gift shops or newsstand
- Laundry facilities
- Multilingual staff
- Number of floors - 2
- Safe-deposit box at front desk
- Spa tub
- Total number of rooms - 66
- Use of nearby fitness center (discount)
Free self parking
Room Amenities
- Coffee/tea maker
- Daily housekeeping
- Free local calls
- Satellite TV service
- Shower/tub combination
Where to Eat
Guests are offered a complimentary continental breakfast each morning.
Nearby Things to Do
Recreational amenities at the hotel include a spa tub and a fitness center.
- Golfing nearby
To make requests for specific accessibility needs, complete the "Special or Accessibility Requests" section of "Trip Preferences" when you book your hotel.
- Accessible path of travel
- Accessible bathroom
- Roll-in shower
- Accessible parking
- In-room accessibility
- Accessibility equipment for the deaf
- Braille or raised signage
Hotel Policies
Check-in time starts at 3 PM
Check-out time is 11 AM
Payment types
Children and extra beds
- Children are welcome.
You need to know
Extra-person charges may apply and vary depending on hotel policy.
Government-issued photo identification and a credit card or cash deposit are required at check-in for incidental charges.
Special requests are subject to availability upon check-in and may incur additional charges. Special requests cannot be guaranteed.
We should mention
Guests can arrange to bring pets by contacting the property directly, using the contact information on the booking confirmation.


text:
Featured Slideshow
View All Slideshows
Special Features
New Times / Special Issue
MENUS Fall/Winter 2009 - Virtual Publication
Ryan Miller
That's the word of the day. It means something to savor, knowing that area chefs are taking the bounty of the Central Coast and transforming it into delicious feasts for the senses. New Times is proud to provide a guide to the tastes of the restaurants, shops, and cooks who make this region such an amazing place to eat, drink, and be thankful for the view. Enjoy.
Click the above cover to view MENUS Fall/WInter 2009 edition.
Record algal bloom producing neurotoxin that affects ocean shellfish Isla Vista victim sues Sheriff's Office, UCSB Keep it brief: 28th annual 55 Fiction Political Watch 7/2/15 Community Notebook 7/2/15 - 7/9/15 Clinically underserved: Guadalupe is slowly losing medical services Oil bills engendered by Refugio spill pass out of committee


text:
Microwave Marinated Lamb Roast
20 Nov 2011
|Leg of lamb
|7 Pound, rolled and tied
|For marinade
|Olive oil
|1⁄2 Cup (8 tbs)
|Dry white wine
|1⁄4 Cup (4 tbs)
|Lemon juice
|1⁄4 Cup (4 tbs)
|2 Clove (10 gm)
|1 Teaspoon
|1⁄2 Teaspoon
|Mixed herbs
|1⁄4 Teaspoon (Rosemary, oregano and thyme)
|For mint sauce
|White wine vinegar
|1⁄4 Cup (4 tbs)
|1⁄4 Cup (4 tbs)
|Fresh mint leaves
|1⁄4 Cup (4 tbs)
|1 Dash
1. Take a heavy plastic bag and mix all marinade ingredients in it.
2. Add a lamb to the bag.
3. Marinate for about 4 hours or keep it overnight.
4. Place the bag in microwave roasting rack such that fat side is turned down.
5. Cook on a setting of MEDIUM (5) for 45 - 60 minutes; turn the fat side up through half of the cooking time after (30 minutes) of the cooking time.
6. Keep it covered with foil for 10 -15 minutes before serving.
7. Prepare mint sauce by combining ingredients in a 2- cup glass measuring cup.
8. Place the cup in a microwave and cook on a setting of MEDIUM (5) for 5 to 6 minutes thereby allowing it to boil.
9. Cool the sauce to room temperature.
10. Serve the lamb with mint sauce.
Recipe Summary
Difficulty Level:Easy
Course:Main Dish
Rate It
0 Comments
Microwave Marinated Lamb Roast Recipe


text:
"We are here to build an encyclopedia, not sing Kumbaya, and this is a shop floor."
::::::::::—Wehwalt, July 30, 2014.:::::::::
The problem with Wikipedia is that it only works in practice. In theory, it can never work.
::::::::::("The Øth law of Wikipedia, Author unknown, nicked from Raul's Laws.):::::::::
- 1 Talk to me, baby!
- 2 Paid editing notice
- 3 Some of the pages to which I've made measurable contributions
- 3.1 Political biographies
- 3.2 Organizational Histories
- 3.3 Specific histories
- 3.4 Publications and media
- 3.5 Terminology
- 3.6 Sports stuff
- 3.7 Music stuff
- 3.8 Cigars
- 3.9 Oregon and Washington history
- 3.10 Native American history
- 3.11 Pumpkin farmers, peanut vendors, and other miscellaneous stuff
- 3.12 Lists
- 3.13 Technical pages and templates
- 3.14 Localities to which I included local history book links
- 3.15 Mississippi Delta High Schools
- 4 Footnotes
- 5 Others who sometimes work in my field
- 6 Great wisdom
- 7 Timbo's Rules
- 8 Timbo's GNG for Beginners
- 9 For Jargon Translation
- 10 Touché!
- 11 The method by which POV Warriors fight at Wikipedia
- 12 The reasons people don't edit at WP
- 13 Ben Kovitz on the origins of Wikipedia
- 14 The original name of Wikipedia was "Nupedia's Wiki"
- 15 On the origins of the concept of "Neutral Point of View"
- 16 On the origins of the concept of "No Original Research"
- 17 A perspective on the emergence of notability doctrine
- 18 A couple tidbits from 2001
- 19 The history of copyright enforcement at WP
- 20 My new favorite ArbCom member
- 21 Jorge Stolfi on Deletionism and other failings of WP
- 22 A dissident view of Crowdsourcing
- 23 Wikipedia's political situation, simply put
- 24 Also quotable
- 25 Jimmy Wales: "Voting is Evil..."
- 26 Comedy Department
Talk to me, baby![edit]
Here's my email in case anyone wants to get in touch with me about anything: email@example.com Don't be afraid to write if you have a comment or a question — direct contact is probably quicker and easier than the Wikipedia discussion pages.
My website is http://www.marxisthistory.org/
My short-lived journal, which dealt to a great extent with my work at Wikipedia was http://carrite.wordpress.com/
I'm also a volunteer with Marxists Internet Archive, whose website is http://www.marxists.org/
I collect books, pamphlets, and other radical ephemera and am engaged in book research for a volume on American political radicalism in the early 1920s.
I'm a member of the Organization of American Historians, Historians of American Communism, and stay up with the HOAC newsgroup on H-Net and the Socialist Party History list on Yahoo.
I'm a fan of punk rock, the Portland Trailblazers, beer, cigars, and golden retrievers.
Tim Davenport
5010 NW Shasta
Corvallis, OR 97330 (USA)
Paid editing notice[edit]
Attention one and all. I've never (previously) accepted money for editing at Wikipedia, but I do have an ad up now on oDesk and will eventually do a total of three (3) "paid" jobs, with any money made to be donated to the Heartland Humane Society of Corvallis, Oregon. I'm am being very selective and am only going to do jobs which (a) meet notability guidelines, (b) improve the encyclopedia, (c) are written in accord with NPOV, (d) which have a COI declaration on the talk page, and (e) which are scrutinized by at least one long-term Wikipedian with no financial conflict of interest. Afterwards I'm going to write about my experiences as a "paid editor." The political point I am making is this: yes, it can be done. Carrite (talk) 18:55, 23 January 2014 (UTC) Amended: Carrite (talk) 17:58, 4 March 2015 (UTC)
|Number 1 of 3...
|The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
After more than 13 months I'm about ready to take on my first paid piece of an eventual three — looking to improve Wikipedia and write about my experiences as a "paid editor" down the road. The piece will be CyberArts International, employer R. Gelman via oDesk, rate $20/hr. capped at two for a rewrite of a standing WP article on a notable topic under GNG to get to WP style, improve sourcing, and satisfy flags that have been bombed on top of the established piece. Hike. —Tim. Carrite (talk) 01:27, 4 March 2015 (UTC)
Permalink to the first stable version, passed through Articles for Creation is HERE.
What anti-paid editing hardliner OrangeMike had to say about the original version of the article is HERE. (He left this very bitey message on the talk page of a new editor, for what it's worth).
Permalink to the state of the article before I touched it is HERE.
Permalink to prereview "finished" state of the article after I fixed it is HERE.
Request for independent review for any potential NPOV violation: HERE.
Version after independent review is HERE.
Some of the pages to which I've made measurable contributions[edit]
- The 259 pages which I started marked with *
- Complete rewrites marked with †
- Those to which I only contributed a graphic marked with #
- Those for which I received compensation marked with $
- Future article topics marked with x.
Political biographies[edit]
Organizational Histories[edit]
Specific histories[edit]
Publications and media[edit]
Sports stuff[edit]
Music stuff[edit]
Oregon and Washington history[edit]
Native American history[edit]
Pumpkin farmers, peanut vendors, and other miscellaneous stuff[edit]
- List of Canadian socialist parties *
- List of cigar brands
- List of employer associations
- List of Fourierist Associations in the United States *
- List of members of the House Un-American Activities Committee *
- List of members of the League of American Writers *
- List of newspapers in Oregon
- List of organizations described as Communist fronts by the US government *
- List of members of the Oregon Territorial Legislature
- List of Owenite communities in the United States *
- List of Socialist Mayors
- List of state Libertarian Parties in the United States
- List of World War II prisoner-of-war camps in the United States
Technical pages and templates[edit]
- Ben Davis (disambiguation)
- Donald Duncan (disambiguation) *
- Forty-Eighters (disambiguation) *
- Hector Macpherson (disambiguation) *
- Michael Nash (disambiguation) *
- Nationalist (disambiguation) *
- Template:Communist Party USA
- Template:In creation
- Template:Marx/Engels
- Template:Soviet-type economics
- WP: AfD Outcomes
- WP: USA File copyright tags
Localities to which I included local history book links[edit]
Mississippi Delta High Schools[edit]
- ...I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.... —Martin Luther King, Jr., August 1963.
The Mississippi Delta has been called "The Most Southern Place on Earth." In terms of public education, that's not a good thing — mass exodus to segregation academies and systemic underfunding of public education in the state seem to have left secondary education as separate-and-unequal as it ever was. Wikipedia is a mass of redlinks for the public high schools of the region. Here are a few that I've started and others that need to be started.
Mississippi has more school districts with greater than 30% of their student body below the poverty line (63) than any other state in the country.[1] According to a report published by the Education Law Center, Mississippi's state and local spending per pupil is the lowest of any state in the union ($7,102).[2] Even this amount has been the subject of additional cuts by the state's conservative government.
- ^ Bruce D. Baker, David G. Sciarra, and Danielle Farrie, Is School Funding Fair? A National Report Card. Newark, NJ: Education Law Center, Sept. 2010; pg. 3.
- ^ Baker, Sciarra, and Farrie, Is School Funding Fair? pg. 17.
School list[edit]
I also basically wrote a new version for Germantown High School (Madison) in Madison County, which is not part of the delta.
Stuff needing remedial attention which I haven't worked on yet[edit]
- 1894 Pullman Strike
- American League Against War and Fascism
- Americanism (ideology)
- Black Friday (1869)
- Henry F. Bowers —Founder of American Protective Association.
- Edwin J. Brown
- Bureau of Labor Statistics
- Civil Rights Congress
- Civil Rights in South Carolina x —Needs to be state-by-state histories, there are multiple books out on the Civil Rights struggle in SC, for example.
- Cominform — really important topic and really terrible article
- Daily Worker
- Eduard David
- Defense-adjusted Value Over Average (DVOA) x
- End Poverty in California movement
- Roger Garaudy
- Harrison George
- German exile cinema (1933-1950) x
- Laurence Gronlund
- Charles H. Kerr
- Labor Party (United States, 19th century) --> change to List of 19th Century American labor parties
- Machine and Tractor Station
- Homer Martin
- Menshevik Internationalists (currently a bad redirect)
- National Association of Manufacturers
- Kate Richards O'Hare
- Grigory Ordzhonikidze
- Amos Pinchot
- John A. Roche —Chicago mayor during Haymarket.
- Shakhty Trial
- Specialist-baiting
- Nikolai Sukhanov
- Supreme Soviet of the National Economy (Vesenkha)
- Arne Swabeck
- Ukrainian Social Democratic Party (Canada)
- Valparaiso University
- Thomas Van Lear
- Emile Vandervelde
- Benjamin Wade - —Radical Republican from Ohio that would have been President if Andrew Johnson had been impeached (vote failed by one vote). Needs to be sourced out and expanded.
- William English Walling
- George Washington Williams
- Winnipeg General Strike
- Workers' Opposition
- Tim Yohannan
- Zimmerwald Left
- Sergei Zubatov
And a shout-out to the coolest motherfucker on the planet[edit]
|This user is a member of the Association of Inclusionist Wikipedians.
The motto of the AIW is conservata veritate, which translates to "with the preserved truth".
Others who sometimes work in my field[edit]
Specialized graphics licenses[edit]
For Soviet stamps and banknotes : { {PD-RU-exempt} }
Great wisdom[edit]
Antandrus' observation No. 59[edit]
"When an editor ceases to contribute to articles, but instead writes only in the Wikipedia space, on talk pages, and arbitration cases, and when more than half of that editor's contributions are in conflicts, either beginning or prolonging them: then that editor is very close to departure. As with stars on the main sequence, some departures are shrinkings into dwarf states, with ever diminishing contributions, giving little light, and with a long decay; and other departures are violent supernova explosions, spewing waste matter and hot gas in all directions."
- For the complete list, see User:Antandrus/observations on Wikipedia behavior.
Liz's Law of Longevity[edit]
"Longevity on Wikipedia is 40% not pissing people off, 20% having friends come to support you when you are in a dispute, 30% having reliable sources on your side and 10% just plain dumb luck." Liz at AN/I, 01:53, 6 June 2015 (UTC)
Timbo's Rules[edit]
Inspired by Antandrus, here are a few observations about Wikipedia of my own.
Rule 1. The more important the topic of a Wikipedia article, the higher the probability of conflict over content. (Feb. 2012)
Rule 2. So-called "anti-canvassing" rules are a mechanism by means of which a narrow clique can avoid broad discussion and decision by a larger and more inclusive group. (Feb. 2012)
Rule 3. The slogan "The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth..." is an Orwellian idiocy. The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is actually verifiability and veracity. (Feb. 2012)
Rule 4. Starting articles on Wikipedia is like building sandcastles on the beach. Down by the surf the sand is nice and wet and the building is easy, but your work will soon be wiped out by an incoming wave. For your work to last, build farther up the beach. (Feb. 2012)
Rule 5. There are five basic types of participants at Wikipedia: content creators, copy editors, vandal fighters, problem solvers, and people who are just there for the perpetual soap opera. The first four of these groups are useful, the fifth is not. (Feb. 2012, modified June 2013)
Rule 6. Wikipedia says of itself that it is "not a democracy" and "not a bureaucracy." That is half right. (Feb. 2012)
Rule 7. Honest people may differ about matters of interpretation. Dishonest people are unable to admit this. (Feb. 2012)
Rule 8. Everyone has bias, both conscious and inherent. The doctrine of Neutral Point of View doesn't legislate human nature away, it simply requires that one be fair and proportionate to all sides of a debate and dispassionate in the delivery. (Feb. 2012)
Rule 8-1/2. In the long run Neutral Point of View will always triumph over the tendentious distortions of the moment. (Feb. 2012)
Rule 9. Without the doctrine of Neutral Point of View Wikipedia would have disintegrated long ago. It is the glue that holds The Project together and as such it is the single most important creation of Messrs. Sanger and Wales. (Feb. 2012)
Rule 10. Anyone who says "Wikipedia is not censored" has never paid particularly close attention to the way talk pages are treated by third parties. (Feb. 2012)
Rule 11. Starting an article at Wikipedia is like raising a kid. You try to set them up on a good foundation and hope they'll develop and progress in the right way, without getting mixed up with the wrong people and getting themselves killed. Ultimately, however, all you can do when you post a piece is wave goodbye and hope for the best. (Feb. 2012)
Rule 12. Most vandalism is caused by anonymous IP editors. The only reason IP editing is allowed at all is that it makes vandalism easier to spot. (Feb. 2012)
Rule 13. Since such a high percentage of anonymous IP editors are vandals, they are all treated like shit. Trying to make serious edits to Wikipedia as an IP editor is like blindly blundering through the countryside on the first day of hunting season dressed like a moose. (Feb. 2012)
Rule 14. Whenever you see multiple stacked footnotes in a lead to document a subject phrase as encyclopedic, it probably isn't. (March 2012)
Rule 15. There's unnecessary confusion about how a paid Conflict of Interest editor can edit successfully at WP. It's actually as easy as one-two-three... 1. Declare your COI on the talk page. 2. Commit no spam — stick to uncontroversial, sourced content. 3. Invite scrutiny. (April 2012)
Rule 16. The slogan of "Adminship is No Big Deal" needs to be reestablished. Currently RfA is a 7 day proctological exam, conducted by a tag team of 150 people of differing intentions — some of whom wish to subject the patient's rectum to blunt-force trauma during the process. Only people who REALLY like proctologists would be advised to run. (July 2012)
Rule 17. Then again, proctological exams do help ward off certain types of cancer. (Oct. 2012)
Rule 18. Content should be content, in accordance with established policies — factual accuracy, verifiability, neutrality of tone. The desires and whims of biographical subjects should be completely separated from this; their concerns may be voiced and taken into consideration in debate, but content absolutely needs to be independently derived. (June 2013)
Rule 19. Having underwent the RFA process through no fault of my own (trying to get temporary reading rights for deleted material in connection with an ArbCom case) I can say this with authority: "Yes, Virginia, there is a cabal." (July 2013)
Rule 20. Nobody ever accused the cabalistas of being active builders of Wikipedia, speaking as a caste, just like nobody ever accused John D. Rockefeller and his cronies of being oil workers. (June 2014)
Rule 21. The wise slogan "Don't feed the trolls" has a corollary: Don't feed the grouches. (Sept. 2014)
Rule 22. There will always be drama at Wikipedia. Whereas writing articles, correcting grammar, tagging new submissions, and rolling back vandalism can be boring, drama is usually fun and people like to have fun. (Dec. 2014)
Timbo's GNG for Beginners[edit]
"A topic meets the General Notability Guideline if it is substantially covered in multiple, independently published sources of presumed accuracy."
- a. SUBSTANTIAL coverage, not a mere passing mention — more than a couple words.
- b. MULTIPLE instances — minimum two (Ignore All Rules), generally a minimum of three.
- c. INDEPENDENTLY — not a house publication or personal blog.
- d. PUBLISHED — newspaper, magazine, book, even a video of a documentary or TV show with time notation made (not an email etc.)
- e. PRESUMED ACCURACY — not the fucking Daily Mail, Sun, or Enquirer.
It's not that difficult a concept and works well if honestly applied by AfD closers...
(Jan. 2015)
For Jargon Translation[edit]
Some on-point comments from the feedback section of the Aug. 13, 2014 Signpost, taking aim at Jimmy Wales' Wikimania Civility-Purge rumblings...
- Re: "kindness, generosity, forgiveness, compassion", - that effort would convince me more had it not been accompanied by the phrase "incredibly toxic personalities" which I believe expresses a way of thinking about other people or a group of people that contradicts the goal. I learned that the phrase was already used in 2009, see my talk. Room for improvement. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 11:02 pm, 17 August 2014 (UTC−7)
- Gerda, you need to readjust your priorities: we are no longer interested in creating an encyclopaedia, full of ("allegedly") high-quality content. Instead we are now more interested in a nice fluffy environment when we spend so much time stroking each others egos or drawing up a Black Book of people who don't think fluffy thoughts, that nothing ever actually gets written. I felt decidedly uncomfortable watching the [Wales speech] video stream: despite intentions, or the claims to the contrary, it does create a climate of fear, a toxic environment for people to work in. Incivility I can ignore or laugh at: a reign of fear whereby good editors are "encouraged to leave" is a depressing and worrying development. - SchroCat (talk) 9:41 am, 18 August 2014 (UTC−7)
The method by which POV Warriors fight at Wikipedia[edit]
The basic steps of disruptive POV pushing on Wikipedia when faced with well sourced material one doesn't like are:
1. Try to delete it.
2. If that fails try to delete it again.
3. Try to hide it — this works with text in articles where you stick the stuff you don't like in the most obscure corner of the article where no one will see it.
4. If you can't hide it, try to rephrase it in a way which is favorable to your side.
5. If you can't rephrase it, slap it up with tags to make it look "dubious" and "controversial" and "fringe."
6. If it's shown tags are unwarranted then make it seem controversial by "attributing" the text. I.e., every piece of text you don't like starts with "According to (if you can put something dubious here do it) X, ..." whereas every piece of text you agree with is given in Wikipedia voice.
7. If possible try to insert just plain ol' bad grammar, bad writing edits into the section you disagree with so that it will "look like" it was written by a 7 year old, i.e. not credible.
8. Wait a month or two and then try to quietly do 1 again. At worst you just go through the list again and "correct" anything you missed.
At each step of the process, ensure as much as possible that "your" version is the actual one, while discussion over each step gets bogged down in the, ahem, "dispute resolution process" (which of course has to be renewed at each point). That way "your version" slowly becomes the 'status quo' version which means you can start reverting people per "no consensus to change" or "stable version". And those who disagree with you will become tired and bored and you might win. Then wait a little bit and try to go up the steps backward. If you've hidden it, now try to delete it again, etc.
All the steps, and the algorithm as a whole, are actually intended to frustrate the person who is disagreeing with you, bore them, annoy them, irritate them, provoke them, until they get fed up and... "say something incivil." At which point you can go running to the drama boards screaming "OMG! This person is uncivil!" It's even better if the article is under "discretionary sanctions" so you can bring it to WP:AE and then it's more or less guaranteed that some banhammas come down.
There's a couple of other tricks that I'm forgetting right now, but that's basically how it works. I'd like to thank User:Skapperod for his help, over many years, in compiling/establishing the above checklist.
- Posted by User:Volunteer Marek at Wikipediocracy, April 24, 2013.
The reasons people don't edit at WP[edit]
Reasons why editors lose interest: One of the user surveys confirmed the problems in editor retention are mainly due to the common-sense reasons. So, answer the basic question: What factors would cause more people to drift away the fastest? Answers:
- Not knowing where help would be most valuable, as no priorities given.
- A feeling that contributions would be discarded, or not needed.
- Disputes with people who quarrel over edits or details.
- Not knowing the techniques to edit (lowest of reasons, as 9% of concerns).
Many people expected WP to be run as an organized system, which called for participation and directed efforts into specific areas, as might be common practice in a workplace. Because of the lack of positive reception to contributions, people obviously felt their work was dropped into a vacuum, or bottomless pit. That could be the result of posting to forums where many messages are rarely displayed, and without seeing a tangible response, people imagine the text goes into the "bit bucket". We often have people request the pageviews or search-counts of pages they write.
Meanwhile, the level of hostility in disputes has been cited as a reason why many female editors leave soon, as they preferred to chat about several subjects rather than fight endlessly about one pointless issue. Imagine what many university-educated people think when they read the disputes. Considering all the big factors where people lose interest, no wonder the new users rarely consider the editor-tool technology much of a concern, especially since over 95% of text is easily edited in some form, or ask for help to update 99.9% of pages.....
- —Wikid77 on Jimbotalk, 9:47 pm, October 13, 2013.
Ben Kovitz on the origins of Wikipedia[edit]
The conversation at the taco stand[edit]
There's been a fair amount of talk about the conversation between me and Larry Sanger that led to the creation of Wikipedia. Here is my memory of it.
Larry had been working for a while on Nupedia, a free on-line dictionary written by credentialed experts and following a strict review and certification process to ensure that every article was high quality and, above all, factually reliable. A lot of Larry's thought since I first got to know him back in 1994 had been devoted to how sources of knowledge can be reliable and unbiased. I believe he was always looking for foundational knowledge: something solid to build on, or at least as close to that as we can practically achieve. Nothing much had come of Nupedia, though. There were hardly any articles completed.
The previous several months, I had been participating heavily on two wikis: Ward Cunningham's original wiki and one called "Why Clublet", run by Richard Drake and Keith Braithewaite. I'd become interested in the way wiki pages would grow in directions that none of the contributors had anticipated, and sometimes with writing clearer and better than any one contributor was capable of. I was especially interested in how conflicting ideas could be explored in depth by separating discussion of them to different places. No back-and-forth head-on "debate", just parallel exploration of opposing ideas. I saw it work especially well when people focused on improving the quality of the writing and poorly when people tried to make the wiki officially declare their preferred view as the correct one. I had also been experimenting with Extreme Programming at work, and had discovered amazing synergy in pair programming. I liked how these structures enabled people working together to actually be smarter than people working alone--the exact opposite of "committee"-style collaboration, and also opposite from the kind of collaboration where each person "owns" a sectioned-off piece of the whole.
That night[edit]
On January 2, 2001, Larry and I ate dinner at the taco stand at 1932 Grand in Pacific Beach, San Diego. I believe this taco stand had no name, just the words "MEXICAN FOOD" written on a window. (I have a picture of it.)
The conversation started with Larry telling me about Nupedia's progress since the last time we'd talked. Not many articles had been completed, but he was optimistic about Nupedia's future. He wanted to speed it up, though, and said he'd been looking at technological ways to speed up editing. I said that I knew of a really neat tool for fast collaborative editing: a wiki. Larry hadn't heard of wikis, so I told him all about them at great length.
I suggested that instead of just using the wiki with Nupedia's approved staff, he open it up to the general public and let each edit appear on the site immediately, with no review process. Instead of preventing error and bias, I said to openly invite error and bias and make it very easy for people to correct them. My exact words were to allow "any fool in the world with Internet access" to freely modify any page on the site. Also, I said that on wikis, there are no "completed" articles, there is just endless chaos and conflict. I suggested that this might actually lead to better reliability and richer content than the careful, circumspect approach.
Larry raised some objections and we debated a bit. Couldn't people just vandalize the site? I said yes, and other people could then repair the vandalism. Couldn't total idiots put up blatantly false or biased descriptions of things, to advance their ideological agendas? I said yes, and other idiots could delete those changes or edit them into something better.
I told Larry about some of the conventions on Ward's Wiki, like running words together to indicate a page name. I mentioned that this required me to give the Ward's Wiki page about Aristotle the name "MrAristotle." Larry cringed at that.
Larry was not completely convinced by my answers to his objections about quality, but he definitely liked the way the wiki concept enabled a great increase in editing speed, and he was eager to try it. We went over to his apartment, and he tried to call his boss at Bomis, Jimbo Wales. Jimbo didn't answer, so Larry left voicemail. Larry and I talked about philosophy for a while, and roughly half an hour later Jimbo called back. They talked for ten or fifteen minutes. After the conversation, Larry had a big smile on his face. Larry said that he felt very optimistic that the idea would proceed, and that Jimbo was quite open to it.
Within a couple weeks, Wikipedia had gone live, and Larry had posted the WikiPedia page on Ward's Wiki, inviting people to come contribute.
It's a rare thing to tell someone to do something exactly the opposite of what he's been doing and get a fair hearing. It almost never happens that someone actually takes the suggestion. But Larry listened to what I had to say, let his imagination engage, and ran with it. Back then, wikis were a very hard concept to "get", but Larry's mind began percolating immediately, and he got things started that very night.
It was extraordinarily fortunate that Larry was working for Jimbo. Jimbo had both the means and the vision to get Wikipedia moving. Jimbo had stoked my interest in the power of collective knowledge years earlier in a post to the MDOP discussion list about sports betting and how it sets the "line" more reliably and accurately than any individual bettors.
I'm not one of the founders[edit]
Some folks, aiming to criticize or belittle Jimmy Wales, have taken to calling me one of the founders of Wikipedia, or even "the true founder". I suggested the idea, but I was not one of the founders. I was only the bumblebee. I had buzzed around the wiki flower for a while, and then pollinated the free-encyclopedia flower. I have talked with many others who had the same idea, just not in times or places where it could take root.
In my opinion, Larry Sanger most certainly is a co-founder of Wikipedia. Larry came up with the perfect name and got the word out. He found people who were eager to contribute and got them writing articles a matter of weeks. Larry crafted the policies that converted Wikipedia from a cool idea into a practical success: Neutral Point of View, No Original Research, and Verifiable Sources. He wrote most of the original help and policy files, showing people how to get started and what the project was all about. He did the day-to-day political work of persuading people to participate in accord with those policies, both in letter and in spirit (and took a lot of abuse for it). Without these and much more, Wikipedia might have ended up a chaotic jumble of people shouting each other down, like many pages on Ward's Wiki. It is the only case I know of where a philosopher applied his knowledge of philosophy to a practical problem to get great results, benefiting millions of people.
You have Larry to thank for "Be Bold". You have Larry to thank for getting Wikipedia started, no less than Jimmy Wales. The only people you have to thank more are the tens of thousands of people who actually wrote Wikipedia and are still writing it every day. —Ben Kovitz, Nov. 23, 2006; as last modified Aug. 25, 2009.
Response from Larry Sanger[edit]
Hi Ben, I hope you don't mind if I respond on your page; we can move it to mine, if you prefer.
You have certainly remembered some more of the details than I do, and there is one point where your memory diverges significantly from mine. You say, "I suggested to Larry that he make Nupedia into a wiki." But I don't actually recall any such actual suggestion. What I do recall is that you talked on for quite a while about wikis. I then said something like, "Wow, that's really interesting — that sounds like a piece of cheap (free), available software we could use to solve this problem with Nupedia." And then, I think, I described the problems we were having with Nupedia. And then I am very sure we talked at great length about how a wiki could be used to build an encyclopedia. I also remember that you explained and defended the idea of a wiki very well!
Also, you say, "Larry was skeptical at first." This is probably true, because I am skeptical of everything at first, even my own ideas. But you did not have to persuade me to think about it; what I distinctly recall is that the realization that "a website anyone could write on" could be applied to the encyclopedia problem was nearly instantaneous, and I was nearly instantly excited by the idea. So I might have been skeptical at first, but I was very excited, and you didn't need to persuade me to think it through.
I remember laughing at "MrAristotle." I still do!
Now, you say that I called Jimmy Wales when I got home, but to be perfectly honest, I don't recall you stopping by my apartment, and I don't recall calling Jimmy Wales, either. But if you have a clear recollection of that, then it must have happened. Perhaps I do have some vague inkling of that. Anyway, what I do very distinctly recall is that I wrote a document, one or two pages long (I think it was just one page long), describing how a wiki encyclopedia would work. I believe I sent it to Wales that very night, and he had a wiki set up for me to play with either Jan. 3 (the next day) or Jan. 4. I forget; might have been two days. I was never told who actually set up the wiki software. There was a sysop who could have done it, but Jimmy has claimed responsibility for it — whatever. It was very easy to set up UseModWiki, I understand.
Finally, let me comment on this:
- It's a rare thing to tell someone to do something exactly the opposite of what he's been doing, indeed the exact opposite of how he's been thinking and investing mentally for most of his life, and get a fair hearing. It almost never happens that someone actually takes the suggestion. But Larry listened to what I had to say, let his imagination engage, and ran with it.
This is disappointing, Ben, because there is apparently a few things about me that you do not understand, even though we have talked so much. :-) First, I had hoped that Nupedia would be more efficient. In fact, that was one of the aims I set myself with it; when it turned out not to be efficient, I again set myself to fix the problem. So, while Wikipedia was much more efficient than Nupedia, it was always part of the plan to create a truly efficient, productive system. Second, as anyone who observes me working knows, I am constantly trying to think of ways to make things work better. I "let [my] imagination engage"? Good lord, I have to restrain my imagination. In that regard, I am what people call (loosely) a "pragmatist": I am always thinking up and trying out new things. Moreover, I don't think that that is in any contradiction, or even any interesting tension, with my desire for a solid foundation for knowledge. Having reliable knowledge is one value; having lots and lots of knowledge is another important value, one that I have always held up. Besides, I think that imagination is one of the most important keys to knowledge, both theoretical and practical: that is the faculty we use to generate hypotheses and solve problems. With the Citizendium, I have retained what worked with Wikipedia, and gotten rid of some of what didn't work. In the long run, I expect that we will have more articles than Wikipedia, more content, and better content. If I didn't believe that was possible, I wouldn't have started the project.
And as far as this goes — "It was extraordinarily fortunate that Larry was working for Jimbo. Jimbo had both the means and the vision to get Wikipedia moving" — this does me a disservice, I think, Ben. You weren't actually present when it happened, but as those who were generally attest, I was the one who got Wikipedia moving in its first year. At the time, Wales was (as far as I know) working full-time as CEO as Bomis, and had relatively little to do with Wikipedia's actual origins. He was pretty hard to get a hold of, and didn't do that much work on or off the wiki. He, with his partners, had the means to get it going: Bomis could pay me and could pay for the servers and technical support. But Wales' "vision" was sketchy at best, limited to a very few, and vague, guidelines. The basic principles of the project were articulated by me, and I pushed them, day in and day out. Of course, many of the regulars also reinforced these principles very well — many of them rather more than Wales himself did. Of course, again, I don't mean to criticize you, Ben — I'm just tired of Wales getting so much credit for work, and "vision," he did not do or have.
Anyway, interesting write-up, Ben, and mostly true! —Larry Sanger (talk) 05:55, 20 January 2008 (UTC)
The original name of Wikipedia was "Nupedia's Wiki"[edit]
On Jan. 17, 2001, 'dhcp058.246.lvcm.com' (presumably Larry Sanger) wrote:
Welcome to Nupedia's wiki! This might become the "WikiPedia" since some Nupedia members have reservations about associating a wiki with the Nupedia name.
You might have some questions; explore the links to find answers:
- WhatIsaWiki?
- WhatsaWikiFor?
- WhyDoesNupediaHaveaWiki?
- WhyOnEarthWouldIWantToContributeToaWiki?
- HowDoesOneEditaPage?
- CanWeAddNupediaArticlesToTheWiki?
And of course,
- HowCanIExploreNupediasWiki?
- What are your NewTopics?
If you have other questions, just ask on the NupediaWikiFaq.
This wiki is an experiment. But, for those who might be confused about this point, it is not Nupedia. Nupedia is a serious encyclopedia project found at http://www.nupedia.com . This wiki is a proposed "fun" supplement to Nupedia!
The name "WikiPedia" seems to have been adopted that same day.
The name had previously been first used in public by Larry Sanger on Jan. 11, 2001. LINK
On the origins of the concept of "Neutral Point of View"[edit]
Wikipedia began in January 2001 as a parallel Web 2.0 offshoot of a more conventional expert-written-and-peer-reviewed internet encyclopedia called Nupedia. Both of these were projects of Jimmy Wales' Bomis (originally a search engine company) under the administration of editor-in-chief Larry Sanger. Sanger wrote the guidelines for Nupedia, which trickled over to Wikipedia. Here is Sanger's earliest preserved take on what we know today as the doctrine of NPOV:
NUPEDIA.COM STATEMENT OF EDITORIAL POLICY (Version 2.1, May 10, 2000)
Nupedia articles are to be unbiased. There may be respectable reference works that permit authors to take recognizable stands on controversial issues, but this is not one of them.
This question is a good (albeit not infallible) test of a lack of bias: "On every issue about which there might be even minor dispute among experts on this subject, is it very difficult or impossible for the reader to determine what side the author falls on?"
This requires that, for each controversial view discussed, the author of an article (at a bare minimum) mention various opposing views that are taken seriously by any significant minority of experts (or concerned parties) on the subject. In longer articles, of course, opposing views will be spelled out in considerable detail. In a final version of the article, every party to the controversy in question must be able to judge that its views have been fairly presented, or as fairly as is possible in a context in which other, opposing views must also be presented as fairly as possible. Moreover, if objections to any particular views are offered (which will be an essential component to certain articles, e.g., those on philosophy and public policy), the most serious or relevant objections to other, opposing views must be offered as well. The reader should, ideally, be given the tools for deciding the issue; or, failing that, the reader should be introduced to the problems that must be solved in order to decide the issue.
On a controversial issue, it is usually important to state which views, if any, are now (or were at some time) in favor and no longer in favor (among experts or some other specified group of people). But even this information can and should be imparted in such a fashion as not to imply that the majority view is correct, or even that it has any more presumption in its favor than is implied by the plain fact of its popularity.
To present a subject without bias, one must pay attention not just to the matters of which views and arguments are presented, but also to their wording or the tone in which they are mentioned. Nupedia articles should avoid describing controversial views, persons, events, etc., in language that can plausibly be regarded as implying some value judgment, whether positive or negative. It will suffice to state the relevant facts, to describe various views about those facts, and then let readers make up their own minds about what the correct views are.
This policy does not mean that you may not, to a large extent, speak with your own voice in terms of writing style (certainly you may; and see below). Writers should avoid use of the first person, however; the third person will be expected, and if thefirst person is used, it will require editorial approval (it will have to be for a very good reason).
The earliest extant statement of Neutral Point of View on Wikipedia itself was saved on Feb. 16, 2001. Later versions intimate this was written by Jimmy Wales. It reads in full:
A general purpose encyclopedia is a collection of synthesized knowledge presented from a neutral point of view. To whatever extent possible, encyclopedic writing should steer clear of taking any particular stance other than the stance of the neutral point of view.
The neutral point of view attempts to present ideas and facts in such a fashion that both supporters and opponents can agree. Of course, 100% agreement is not possible; there are ideologues in the world who will not concede to any presentation other than a forceful statement of their own point of view. We can only seek a type of writing that is agreeable to essentially rational people who may differ on particular points.
Some examples may help to drive home the point I am trying to make.
1. An encyclopedic article should not argue that corporations are criminals, even if the author believes it to be so. It should instead present the fact that some people believe it, and what their reasons are, and then as well it should present what the other side says.
2. An encyclopedia article should not argue that laissez-faire capitalism is the best social system. (I happen to believe this, by the way.) It should instead present the arguments of the advocates of that point of view, and the arguments of the people who disagree with that point of view.Perhaps the easiest way to make your writing more encyclopedic, is to write about what people believe, rather than what is so. If this strikes you as somehow subjectivist or collectivist or imperialist, then ask me about it, because I think that you are mistaken. What people believe is a matter of objective fact, and we can present that quite easily from the neutral point of view.
Note both NPOV as a mechanism for ameliorating disagreements between those holding divergent views on controversial issues on the one hand and the kernel of the unfortunate doctrine of "Verifiability Not Truth" on the other.
On the origins of the concept of "No Original Research"[edit]
"The phrase ["original research"] originated primarily as a practical means to deal with physics cranks, of which of course there are a number on the web. The basic concept is as follows: it can be quite difficult for us to make any valid judgment as to whether a particular thing is true or not. It isn't appropriate for us to try to determine whether someone's novel theory of physics is valid; we aren't really equipped to do that. But what we can do is check whether or not it actually has been published in reputable journals or by reputable publishers. So it's quite convenient to avoid judging the credibility of things by simply sticking to things that have been judged credible by people much better equipped to decide. The exact same principle will hold true for history..."
— Jimmy Wales, WikiEN-l, December 3, 2004.
A perspective on the emergence of notability doctrine[edit]
"Wikipedia started without any notability guidelines. It started with a list of what WP was not and after a while guidelines grew up to codify what it was that it wasn't. Reporting by external sources was eventually agreed to be the basis for deciding which topics should have articles rather than a subjective assessment by editors of what they thought was important. This led towards some objectivity at the cost of favouring populist topics that are all too often (in my view) based on unsatisfactory journalism. So, although I would give weight to an argument "the topic passes GNG but we should delete the article because ...", the "because" has to have some cogent reason relating to our general approach. Reasons such as "from our personal knowledge we know these reports are unreliable" absolutely will not do. We surrendered our personal judgements on importance to those of people who get themselves published. Balance is achieved by referring to diverse sources, not by omitting what we happen to think is unimportant."
— Thincat, at Deletion Review, July 7, 2014
A couple tidbits from 2001[edit]
In this WPO thread.
The history of copyright enforcement at WP[edit]
Start of a document I was planning on making part of the evidence at the RAN Arbcom case. LINK.
Carrite (talk) 19:33, 14 February 2013 (UTC)
My new favorite ArbCom member[edit]
@Fæ - as regards the Speedo account. I've looked at the edits and can see how they may be mistakes - though there are a number of them. Looking at your edits on 22 November 2009, you were editing in the morning as Ash until 12.33, then logged into the Speedo account to edit Ironmonger Row Baths at 12.56 returning to the Ash account at 12.59 to continue editing Ironmonger Row Baths. Possibly you paused for coffee, then when you went to log back in you typed the name and password of Speedo by mistake, and as soon as you realised you logged out and back into Ash. On 17 November 2009 you'd had a day editing swimming pool articles as Speedo and other stuff as Ash, crossing to and fro from one to the other. You finished the day as Speedo, crossing into the 18th where you edited Guildford Lido at 00.36, then at 00.51 edited Bude Sea Pool using AutoEd as Ash, realised your mistake, logged in as Speedo and made another edit on that article, again using AutoEd. On 7 October 2009 you were editing as Ash only - you hadn't used the Speedo account since 1 October. You edited Brockwell Lido as Ash at 18.42, then logged into the Speedo account at 19.02 to make another edit to the article before resuming your edits as Ash. That one is harder to account for, and now we have three mistakes with you not taking appropriate measures to prevent these mistakes occurring. On 21 September 2009 you edited as Ash until 9.24, then you created the Speedo account at 9.45, requesting a name change to Clifton Lido and The Victoria Public House at 10.12 - logged into the Ash account to make the name change at 10.15 to return to the Speedo account at 10.18 to resume editing. Perhaps you were thinking that someone might query how a new account would know how to move a page, so you constructed a situation in which the new account asks for the name change and an experienced account (Ash) then makes the name change.* [Can newly created accounts move pages? Was it that you couldn't move the page, so you had to get the Ash account to do it?] Whatever it was, this doesn't appear to be a mistake so much as poor judgement. I don't think, however one looks at it, that the use of these accounts was malicious - simply unwise or sloppy or both. And the use of these accounts was in the past, belonging to a previous account. The Wikipedia community dislikes people using multiple accounts in a secret manner, especially when there are edits on the same articles, so this doesn't reflect well on you, but by itself I don't think is a major sin. It's when this situation is put together with the circumstances of the CleanStart and the less than clear statement in the RfA that you need to think seriously about how you explain these matters. The community do appreciate and respect complete openness and honesty and admissions of mistakes. The more you embrace and trust the community the more the community will embrace and trust you. SilkTork 22:58, 19 June 2012 (UTC)
Jorge Stolfi on Deletionism and other failings of WP[edit]
I have a small collection of Wikipedia commentary by Jorge Stolfi on a subordinate page located HERE.
A dissident view of Crowdsourcing[edit]
"It must be said that Wikipedia does not make it easy to play nicely. Its basic set-up is a bit like having people try to draw a copy of the Mona Lisa in the sand, while herds of children and strangers walk through the emerging picture, leave their footprints, or try to blank or improve bits. And you're required to assume they are all doing so in good faith. It would drive anyone mad."Received wisdom is, too many cooks spoil the broth. Crowdsourcing wisdom is, the more cooks, the better. But in practice, every featured article in Wikipedia is the work of one writer...or a small team. Crowdsourcing does not result in excellent articles." —JN466, on Wikipediocracy, July 2012.
Wikipedia's political situation, simply put[edit]
"Much as a stagnant pond is an ideal breeding ground for mosquitoes and other disease-transmitting insects, so Wikipedia's governance structure promotes the cancerous growth of mini-cabals composed of POV warriors, editors using ArbCom for political advantage, abusive administrators, and anyone who has come to this encyclopedia and stayed here for the conflict and policymaking. As much as Wikipedia prides itself on having minimal bureaucracy, it only has minimal public bureaucracy — private bureaucracies are alive and well, subverting those of true value to the encyclopedia for their own ends. Unfortunately, the content builders of the encyclopedia can no longer bear this burden. Centralized governance with authority, including hiring, sanctioning, and firing of admins by an Admin Review Committee, as well as content review committees for contentious topics such as Israel, Iran, and Alternative medicine, need to be created urgently..." —Wer900 • on Jimbotalk, 6:15 pm, April 19, 2013.
Also quotable[edit]
"In five years I haven't noticed a sexist culture here at all but I don't go looking for it. I have noticed pov pushers, coi editors, editors who can't write a sensible sentence, editors who don't/won't/can't comprehend what they read, overlinkers and triviamongers. Perhaps that is because I usually concentrate on content not talk pages. I find it difficult to tolerate talk-page politicians, long-winded, droning-on arguments about who is and isn't civil or what is and isn't right. I don't much care for dragging up past history or picking over old wounds, settling old scores, snivelling about perceived wrongs, folks who attack others without even noticing they're doing it, pages and pages of rehashing arguments and having the last word. I can/could do/probably have done some/all of those things and more but I am not perfect and am aware when I do it. This project should be trying to retain editors who contribute decent content for the reader, not those who persist in looking for the worst in others, making assumptions and telling others how to behave. As far as attracting new editors I'd steer them right away from talk pages and encourage them towards content. Content beats politics anyday in my book and if the balance swings towards politics that's when I'll look for the exit." —J3Mrs (talk) 2:16 pm, 11 October 2014.
Jimmy Wales: "Voting is Evil..."[edit]
I believe in democracy myself... Carrite (talk) 07:14, 16 January 2012 (UTC)
He's also in favor of a purge of productive but obnoxious contributors. Carrite (talk) 20:51, 11 August 2014 (UTC)
Then again, we do agree on some things...[edit]
- (1) "You know what? I fucking love motherfucking South Park." (Feb. 7, 2012)
- (2) "Everyone who thinks it is better to have an error in Wikipedia rather than correct information is always wrong at all times. There is nothing more important than getting it right. I'm glad that we're finally rid of the "verifiability, not truth" nonsense - but it's going to take a while before people really fully grasp what that means." (Sept. 25, 2012)
- (3) "...I don't like the term 'canvassing', even on-wiki. I think it's more often used by people who want to shut down an open dialogue than people who have a righteous cause for concern. Another word for 'canvassing' is "engaging more people in the discussion" — it's open to all sides. The idea that it's bad to go out and recruit editors when you see a problem in Wikipedia is problematic. That isn't to say that some kinds of approaches to that aren't annoying — they are — but in general, this paranoia about it is not justified." (Jan. 31, 2013)
- (4) "I think that Commons policy is enforced inconsistently and also needs some revision. I think that some of the people who are admins at Commons are among the weakest admins that we have in all the projects, and that this is a core part of the problem." (May 8, 2013)
- (5) "I have personally been frustrated in the past many times with the disastrous product roll-outs that we've seen (I am not talking about MV, but I'm sure we all remember Flagged Revisions and the Visual Editor). And I want that to change." (Aug. 28, 2014)
Comedy Department[edit]
Warning template for WP vandalism coming from the IPs of Christian schools[edit]
...And for those whose IP addresses indicate that they're editing from a Christian church or parochial school, we would want to display this warning:
AttentionYour IP address 22.214.171.124 will be logged by the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc and disseminated publicly. Violators of our Terms of Use can and will offend THE LORD, who takes defacement, knowingly providing false information, and/or uploading copyrighted material without permission from rights holders very seriously. Ephesians 4:29 commands that you refrain from such corrupt communication. Failure to repent of these sinful actions can result in everlasting destruction (2 Thessalonians 1:9), with the smoke of your torment ascending up for ever and ever (Revelation 14:11), after you are cast into Hell, where your worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched (Mark 9:44, 46 and 48). Submit to the powers that be (Romans 13:1) and pray that you not be led into such temptation, but be delivered from evil. As irrevocably as your soul may be condemned to eternal punishment for violating the sanctity of this encyclopedia, you agree to release your contributions under the CC-BY-SA 3.0 License and the GFDL.
Tisane (talk) 18:13, 8 May 2010 (UTC)
Another one that needs to be used..[edit]
|An editor says that something's wrong with this page. That editor can't be troubled to fix it, but can sleep easy knowing that they stuck on a tag.
Please allow this tag to languish indefinitely at the top of the page, since nobody knows exactly why it's there.
Stolen from Gigs' user page, it would seem.
Interview subpages[edit]
- Jimmy Wales keynote on civility at Wikimania, Aug. 10, 2014
- IRC interview with Damon Sicore, Oct. 9, 2014


text:
ASUS GeForce GTX 980 Ti STRIX Review
Samsung 850 EVO 2TB SSD review
Zotac GeForce GTX 980 Ti AMP! Extreme Review
PowerColor Radeon R9 390 PCS+ 8GB review
MSI GeForce GTX 980 Ti Gaming OC Review
Guru3D Rig of the Month - June 2015
AMD Radeon R9 Fury X review
Corsair RM750i power supply review
MSI Radeon R9 390X Gaming 8G OC review
ASUS Radeon R9 380 STRIX review
Corsair Carbide 330R review
by Hilbert Hagedoorn on: 10/22/2013 12:06 PM | Source | 0 comment(s)
The latest in the Carbide series of PC cases from Corsair would be the 330R, also known as hero. The new model is aimed at a more audiophile tense segment as it has sound dampening materials all over the place. These chassis remain to be good looking but really are feature rich products. Keywords here would be an okay design chassis, tool free, lots of space, nice airflow and prepped for liquid cooling. Have a peek at we'll review today, the Corsair Carbide 330R.
Read our full review right here.
« Dell E2214H 21.5-Inch Full HD Monitor · Corsair Carbide 330R review · Cooler Master Glacer 240L CPU Liquid Cooler »
Corsair Force LS 240GB SSD tested and reviewed - 10/16/2013 11:59 PM
In this review we'll look at the Corsair Force LS 240GB SSD. This new comer is absed on 19nm Toggle NAND based LS series for consumers is aimed to be a more affordable product series within Corsair...
Corsair Graphite Series 230T PC Case - 10/15/2013 05:22 PM
Corsair today announced the new Graphite Series 230T mid-tower PC case. Available in three colors, Battleship Grey, Rebel Orange, and Black, the new case combines dramatic, angular styling and the bui...
Corsair Air Series LED fans - 10/02/2013 09:51 AM
Corsair announced the immediate availability of the Air SeriesTM AF120 LED Quiet Edition and Air Series AF140 LED Quiet Edition high airflow PC case fans. The new fans are the only LED fans to use Cor...
Corsair Obsidian 750D tested and review - 09/24/2013 06:25 PM
In this article we take the all new Corsair Obsidian 750D chassis for a test-spin and review it. The chassis is of course based of its bigger brother the 900D which was recently released and embraced ...
Corsair Ultra-Quiet RM Series Power Supplies - 09/12/2013 04:22 PM
Corsair today announced the immediate availability of the new ultra-quiet RM Series power supplies (PSUs). The RM Series PSUs replace the TX Series line while adding improved 80 PLUS Gold level energy...
Click here to post a comment for this news story on the message forum.


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—By Kiera Butler
Rejoice, ye Laura Ingalls Wilder wannabes.
People have called the Yearning for Zion ranch members a lot of names since their compound was raided in April, but "fashionable" has never been one of them. Until now.
The New York Times reports that members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter Day Saints (FLDS) have begun peddling their prairie-chic children's couture online.
Modesty, it turns out, is totally affordable. The Jr. Teens girls' underwear, which, with long sleeves and pants, is the ultimate anti-thong, costs between $25 and $32, depending on size. The Teen Princess Dress will set you and your flesh-concealing daughter back $60 to $73.
The bummer is that so far, the FLDSdress.com only sells clothes in kids' sizes. Which leads us to the real question: Where does Chloe Sevigny's character on Big Love get her weird duds?
Photo courtesy of fldsdress.com.
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—By David Corn
For two days in a row, The Washington Post has front-paged bad news on Afghanistan. First, the paper reported,
June was the deadliest month for U.S. troops in Afghanistan since the war there began in late 2001, as resilient and emboldened insurgents have stepped up attacks in an effort to gain control of the embattled country.
Defense officials and Afghanistan experts said the toll of 28 U.S. combat deaths recorded last month demonstrates a new resurgence of the Taliban, the black-turbaned extremists who were driven from power by U.S. forces almost seven years ago. Taliban units and other insurgent fighters have reconstituted in the country's south and east, aided by easy passage from mountain redoubts in neighboring Pakistan's lawless tribal regions.
Then, it noted,
The nation's top military officer said yesterday that more U.S. troops are needed in Afghanistan to tamp down an increasingly violent insurgency, but that the Pentagon does not have sufficient forces to send because they are committed to the war in Iraq.
It appears that the war in Afghanistan is going less well than the war in Iraq these days. And that is bad news in particular for John McCain.
Barack Obama, of course, has argued that invading Iraq was a profound error and distracted the U.S. government and military from finishing the job in Afghanistan. The above-referenced testimony from Admiral Michael Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, supports that argument. With Mullen saying that the Iraq war has undermined the Afghanistan effort, how might McCain's respond to the charge that he and other supporters of the Iraq war undercut the mission in Afghanistan?
[Read more]
—By Mother Jones
Earlier this week MoJo writer Laura Rozen asked an Israeli intel correspondent, an Iranian American activist, an arms expert, a former peace negotiator, and an anti-war intellectual:
How likely is a scenario in which the US or Israel strikes Iran before Bush leaves office? (Or is the Left falling for the hawks' propaganda?)
Read the original conversation here.
Now for a follow up question:
There have been hints of potentially momentous shifts on policy to Iran this past week. Final thoughts on what promises to be a long hot summer?
The first thing I would say would be to caution against expectations of a dramatic breakthrough in either direction—either imminent attacks or an imminent deal—when hearing the latest developments, which is good news in the case of the former, but not so much in the case of the latter. I would also be careful about drawing what some may see as an obvious causal relationship: Israel and American heightened the threat; Iran climbed down—longer and more complicated processes are at work.
If one were to be mischievous, one could even pose the opposite speculation: Namely, that in anticipation (or with advance information) of a greater Iranian willingness to demonstrate flexibility on the enrichment freeze, the threats were escalated in order to allow the claim that chest-thumping was working. If indeed we have inched closer towards negotiations, then the key thing will be to give those negotiations a chance to make progress and to demonstrate patience. Naturally, all sides would have to justify a change in approach to their respective domestic audiences.
The challenge will be to do this in a way that does not undermine the process itself. So keep any clucking and "they blinked first rhetoric" to a minimum. My own sense is that one of the significant factors in play here is that Iran, similar to other regional powers, is already looking beyond the Bush administration and beginning to choreograph it signals and messaging with the next administration in mind. Syria's resumption of negotiations with Israel probably comes from a similar place.
Hard diplomatic bargaining is not only the best option, but also the option most likely to address legitimate concerns on all sides in ways that the other parties can live with (limitations and transparency of any enrichment/civil nuclear energy program, Iranian regime security, cessations of Iranian provision of material assistance to groups deploying violence against Israeli civilians, etc.); and the new Trita Parsi-Shlomo Ben-Ami op-ed is well worth reading on this. But note—negotiations entail brinksmanship and moments of crisis that require very skillful management, which makes me worry given the current actors on the scene.
There have been some posts and questions on this thread regarding the relationship between the Israeli-Palestinian issue and the Iranian issue. In shorthand, I would say the following:
—By Party Ben
You'd think, in this exciting Age of the Intertubes, that the music album, freed from physical constraints, would have expanded like American waistlines. No longer tied to the 56-minute-ish limit of the vinyl LP or the 80-minute cutoff of the CD, you'd expect our self-indulgent, uncontrollably nutty musicians to start putting out 3- or 4-hour albums, with, say, 60 or 70 of their newest compositions. But no, just the opposite seems to be happening: albums are getting shorter. Take this Beck thing that just leaked out onto the aforementioned internet: it's 32 minutes long. That's ten quick songs. I thought I'd give it a spin today while I was working on other stuff; I'd barely sat down when it was already over, and the next thing up in my alphabetical iTunes library, a Bee Gees remix by the Teddybears, thundered out incongruously. I had this experience all day, starting Modern Guilt from the beginning, only to have it slip by without me really noticing it, and then, blam: Bee Gees. There it goes again. This album has probably run through at least six times by now here at Party Ben HQ, and I keep trying to pay attention, but it keeps melting into the background, and I'm starting to think it's not me that's the problem.
—By Gary Moskowitz
Here at the Riff, we're not above dusting off obsolete items with a high awesomeness/cheesiness quotient. I wouldn't call Zach de le Rocha, politically outspoken front man for Rage Against the Machine old and dusty (his awesomeness/cheesiness is debatable), but he has been mostly off the radar since Rage's heyday (and some more recent reunion performances). Until now.
Together with drummer Jon Theodore (formerly of the Mars Volta), de la Rocha's got new music coming out under the moniker One Day As A Lion on July 22 (Anti- is releasing). Their press statement about the music is a mouthful:
America: We're Cleaning Up our Act! Or maybe just dangling shiny trinkets in front of the complainers? The FCC reports (pdf link) that indecency complaints against broadcasters to the agency have fallen dramatically, from 4,368 in the second quarter of 2007 to only 368 in the third quarter, the most recent time period for which data is available. The agency recorded an even more ridiculous drop from the first quarter of 2007, when 149,457 complaints were received. Wait, nearly 150,000 to 4,000 to 300? What gives? It turns out this kind of roller coaster of complaints isn't new at the FCC: as Mother Jones has covered before, the numbers jump around a lot. In 2003, complaints went from 351 in the second quarter to over 272,000 in the third. Ars Technica posits that activists like the Parents Television Council (whose campaigns may be responsible for a majority of complaints) have been distracted by Grand Theft Auto, but I'd say they're probably out there forwarding e-mails about Barack Obama being a secret gay Muslim terrorist. Isn't Q3 2007 about when that got started? I've included a handy graph (above right) to help us see if there's any connection.
—By Jonathan Stein
Sad news, folks. Brian Beutler, the Washington correspondent for the Media Consortium and a frequent contributer to this site and this blog, was shot three times yesterday in a failed mugging in Northwest Washington DC. Brian is in the hospital and is expected to make a full recovery. Brian's editor, Adele Stan, wrote this after visiting Brian in the hospital:
Funny thing about being a journalist: your job is to write about people and mayhem and trauma, but let any of those touch you directly, and it becomes a different game. With that caveat, allow me to recount my brief visit today with my colleague, Brian Beutler, whose sign-off is a familiar one on this site, and has come to define the reporting of The Media Consortium's syndicated reporting project.
I was just about to leave the house this morning to meet with Brian
when I got word this morning, through a mutual colleague of ours, that he had been shot last night in Washington, D.C., in an aborted mugging.
—By Julia Whitty
Think green energy isn't going to happen? Well, despite financial market turmoil, more than $148 billion was sunk into the global sustainable energy sector last year. That's up 60% from 2006.
According to the UNEP report, Global Trends in Sustainable Energy Investment 2008, climate change worries, growing support from world governments, rising oil prices and ongoing energy security concerns fueled another record-setting year of investment in renewable energy.
Wind attracted the most investment ($50.2 billion in 2007). Solar power grew most rapidly ($28.6 billion of new capital, at an average annual rate of 254% since 2004).
The first quarter of 2008 looked sluggish. But investments rebounded in the second quarter, even as global financial markets remained in turmoil. Venture capital and private equity for sustainable energy was up 34% above the second quarter of 2007.
"Just as thousands were drawn to California and the Klondike in the late 1800s, the green energy gold rush is attracting legions of modern day prospectors in all parts of the globe," says Achim Steiner, UN Under-Secretary General.
There's tons of gold waiting in the bottom of the oil barrel.
Julia Whitty is Mother Jones' environmental correspondent, lecturer, and 2008 winner of the Kiriyama Prize and the John Burroughs Medal Award.
We may be underestimating extinction risks by as much as 100-fold. The problem is that current extinction models treat all individual members as the same. You know, one polar bear is more or less a behavioral, programmed clone of the next polar bear.
Ooops. Not so. A new model finds that random differences—male-to-female sex ratios, size differences, behavioral variations—affect individuals' survival rates and reproductive success. These differences don't just ripple outward. They tsunami outward into the overall population. Consequently, extinction rates for endangered species can be orders of magnitude higher than conservation biologists previously believed.
The model developed by Brett Melbourne of Colorado University Boulder and Alan Hastings of the University of California Davis monitored populations of beetles in lab cages. "The results showed the old models misdiagnosed the importance of different types of randomness, much like miscalculating the odds in an unfamiliar game of cards because you didn't know the rules," says Melbourne.
Some high-profile endangered species like mountain gorillas are already tracked individually. But for many others, like stocks of fish, biologists only measure abundance and population fluctuations. "It's these species that are most likely to be misdiagnosed," says Melbourne. "We suggest that extinction risk for many populations
need to be urgently re-evaluated with full consideration of all factors contributing to stochasticity, or randomness."
The IUCN Red List tallies more than 16,000 species threatened with extinction worldwide. One in four mammal species, one in eight bird species and one in three amphibian species are teetering on the brink. The new study in Nature, "Extinction risk depends strongly on factors contributing to stochasticity," makes those numbers look tame.
News of the Weird: The gravestone marking the final resting place of Joy Division singer Ian Curtis has been stolen, reports the BBC. The singer committed suicide in 1980. Officials say that the memorial, inscribed with the words "Ian Curtis 18-5-80 Love Will Tear Us Apart," was taken from Macclessfield Cemetery in Cheshire, England sometime late Tuesday or early Wednesday. A police spokesman told the BBC that the lack of area security cameras means they have "no apparent leads." Okay, stop just a minute. This is a singer whose stature just keeps rising, with two movies about him in the last couple years, and whose short, troubled life and self-inflicted death means he's one of the great cult figures of our time; his gravestone features the title of his band's biggest hit, and nobody was watching it? Plus, doesn't England have CCTV cameras trained on everybody at all times? Where are they when you need them? Boy, this is making me depressed. I need to watch a Joy Division video. Join me in despair, won't you, after the jump.
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Who Wants Kentucky Fried Chicken Jewelry?!
So if you are having a tough time figuring out what to buy for Christmas, look no further than Kentucky Fried Chicken jewelry.
Huge Bucket Of KFC Ends Up In Woman's Yard [Video]
If this ever happened to me I would be excited, but a woman from the small town of Waynesboro, Georgia stumbled across a bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken in her yard. Not just any normal size bucket of chicken, but a 7 FOOT TALL bucket of KFC.


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Musica Sacra Presents New Choral Works Plays Alice Tully Hall 5/13
Continuing a proud history of commissioning and performing new music, Music Director Kent Tritle leads the renowned Musica Sacra Chorus in Messages to Myself, a program of new works for a cappella chorus on Friday May 13, 2011 (8pm) at Alice Tully Hall, Lincoln Center. An essential part of Musica Sacra's mission is to provide a forum for contemporary composers through important premieres. Accordingly, its concerts have included first New York performances of works by Benjamin Britten, Dave Brubeck, David Diamond, Aaron Copland, Aram Khatchaturian, Vincent Persichetti, and Daniel Pinkham. Musica Sacra has commissioned compositions by Ned Rorem, Richard Danielpour, Ricky Ian Gordon, Alan Hovhaness, Libby Larsen, Meredith Monk, McNeil Robinson, and Alessandro Cadario. Musica Sacra was one of only three choral organizations in the country (with San Francisco's Chanticleer and St. Paul's Dale Warland Singers) to have been awarded a Reader's Digest/Meet the Composer commissioning sponsorship, arranged in conjunction with a project coordinated by the National Endowment for the Arts. These funds made it possible for Musica Sacra to present New York premieres by composers such as Peter Schickele (aka P.D.Q. Bach), Anthony Davis, and Bernard Rands.
Mr. Tritle, in his fourth season as music director of Musica Sacra, says, "It has been a real joy pulling together these selections from the young musical voices of today. The music is lush and intense and vibrant and transcendent, and comes from an emotional place deep within."
The titular work, Christopher Theofanidis's Messages to Myself, sets poems by Whitman, Rumi, Kirsten and Yeats, and receives its New York premiere with this performance. Also receiving New York premieres are We Are One by Iranian composer and Juilliard faculty member Behzad Ranjbaran, and Magnificat, Amen. by new voice Zachary Patten. Musica Sacra performs the world premiere of Michael Gilbertson's Three Songs After Dowland, featuring two movements commissioned by the ensemble; and also Daniel Brewbaker's Mother, Father, on texts of E. E. Cummings. Robert Convery's The Lamb, Aaron Jay Kernis's Effortlessly Love Flows (from his Ecstatic Meditations), and another E.E. Cummings setting, i thank You God, by Elliot Z. Levine are featured, as is Christina Whitten Thomas's enchanting Choral de Bêtes (The Creatures' Choir), winner of the Sorel Organization's 2007 Medallion.
Ticket prices range from $25-110 and are available through Lincoln Center online (www.lincolncenter.org), by phone (CenterCharge, (212)721-6500); or in person (Alice Tully Hall Box Office, 1941 Broadway at 65th Street). For additional information on the program and composers, please visit www.musicasacrany.com.
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