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Systemic and Cultural Bias fixed. New Article Posted


I've waited about a month since I wrote my original comments about the level of linguistic and cultural bias in this article. While it is evident that some changes have taken place to try and address the issues that were highlighted, nowhere near enough has been done and so, unfortunately, drastic action had to be taken. However, as these changes had already been proposed in my original comments and disagreement was, by and large, not forthcoming, they should not have been wholly unexpected.

Before anyone starts flaming me and attempting to unwind these changes, I ask everybody to do me the courtesy of doing the following three tasks (for the benefit of people have not read my previous comments, the first two tasks are repeated from my original post):

  1. Consider which country you are from and ask yourself "Does English have the same meaning everywhere in the world where it is used?"
  2. Read the ongoing Wikipedia project about the amount of inherent bias in Wikipedia articles
  3. Ask yourself "As a lay person, what did the (previous) article teach me to broaden my existing understanding about hackers and hacking?"

Finally, I hope that the new article is considered both informative and interesting.

Thank you.


Andrew81446 (talk) 17:34, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

Sources Used in the Disputed Article

A look at the currently disputed article sees Paul Graham being cited as a source, with the article "Great Hackers" being referenced with respect to the section on the Open Source movement. Mr. Graham appears respected in the US (where he grew up and was educated) academic and hacking communities, which is why I am curious that more of his views on this subject have not been cited. In particular, a very thorough insight into the US word "hacker" itself. What could be more pertinent to the focus of the current article?

If a source is going to be cited, then wouldn't it be better that a full balance of a source's opinions that are pertinent to the subject being documented be put into the article? Quoting only one half (or one side) of someone's opinions means effectively manipulating a living person's point of view to suit one's own and amounts to misquotation. And Mr. Graham holds nothing back as he states that hacking, in the sense documented in the currently disputed article, is purely a facet of the United States, and he offers no words about the "hacker scene" in terms of any other country. I won't quote him - read the "entire" article for yourselves.

In a similar vein, the Swedish source Jonas Löwgren, who is cited for writing the article "Hacker Culture(s)" (at the untitled URL: http://webzone.k3.mah.se/k3jolo/HackerCultures/sources.htm in the article itself), writes an article that looks pretty similar to the one being disputed, and this is borne out with a look at the sources for his article which show that his sources have exactly the same scope as, and in some cases are identical to, this article. Meaning that not only is Mr. Löwgren's document US-specific as his sources are only US-specific, but on a verifiability level it puts his article on the same level as this Wikipedia article, effectively meaning that it is Questionable as it does not appear to draw on any sources that are better grounded than the ones appearing the Wikipedia article that references it. Having said that, quite by accident, I do notice that his interpretation of the first hacker is the same as the new proposed article, citing the 1960s and a programmer on the (ex-military) computing project that went on to form the heart of the MIT AI laboratory.

Which returns me to the entire crux of this debate: if the "hacker scene", as observed by a prominent and respected insiders, is US-specific, what is it doing taking up the majority of an article that is for the entire of English Wikipedia's intended audience? Quite by accident, his observations on the history of the word "hacker" mirror the description that is documented in the various parts of the proposed new article, showing that the new proposed article documents, not defines, what as been independently observed by both US and non-US IT-related people in different parts of the world.

Andrew81446 (talk) 11:12, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

Previous Article


Even though Wikipedia is a resource for everybody, the vast majority of whom are non-technical, the entire focus of the previous article was geared at US-educated, technical people and to expanding their insight into trying to solve the US-centred Hacker Debate. Wikipedia is an encyclopaedia for the benefit of everybody, not just a US-based technical minority and, where IT-related articles are involved, the understanding of and adherence to this concept is particularly important given the phenomenally global nature of the industry. Therefore, a more comprehensive article which documents the current notion of a hacker (as opposed to trying to redefine it) and broadens general understanding in line with current world interpretation of a "Hacker" is absolutely required.

So given this, what exactly did the previous article teach the lay person to broaden their understanding about hackers and hacking?

Answer: virtually nothing.

From the start, the article rapidly descends to a medium level of detail and, from there, it spirals off into a discussion that bears virtually no relevance to the majority of the total audience. People who only have a very basic understanding of the meaning of the term "hacker" and want to know more will be lost from the start. For example, the article does not attempt to define, in neutral, unambiguous terms, what a hacker actually is or how a hacker goes about their business (e.g. the tools that they use). It also doesn't attempt to explain the impact of the hacker on either the IT industry, industry in general, or the lives of individuals (e.g. digital security, data protection, DRM, DMCA, etc.). Most importantly of all, it does not document any media-reported cases of famous hackers and why these people are considered important in the history of hacking and life of the lay person; the most fundamental and important step in bridging the gulf in the lay person's understanding between the huge volume of detail surrounding hacking and the miniscule amount of fact actually reported in the media. Instead, the reader is swamped with information regarding issues that only a small section of the total audience can actually relate to, making it virtually incomprehensible to everybody else.


New Article


The new article structure sets out to document in a broad, and comprehensive manner, the facets of the hacker as the world knows and currently understands it. At the same time, it primes the reader for making their own decision as to whether to read, in more detail, the many separate and minority areas of discussion. I have attempted to be both informative and, above all, interesting so that the reader is encouraged to read those additional areas of discussion. However, most importantly, the article now documents current understanding as opposed to trying to define or bend current understanding which is against Wikipedia official policy.


Specific Points Addressed


1) Documentation, not Definition Wikipedia, aspiring to be a world resource (and therefore striving to maintaining neutrality) state that the attempted definition of a term is considered a "neologism", and the use or attempted definition of neologisms are strongly discouraged. The primary reason is that such terms are not globally accepted and attempts to verify such terms constitutes original research which is banned under official Wikipedia policy. The majority of the previous article was a debate about, not a documentation of, the globally-understood term "hacker", and was therefore biased and in violation of Wikipedia policy. Thus, all but the briefest explanations of the other issues in the Hacking Debate have been removed instead being replaced by references to the disambiguation page or existing separate articles.

2) English as a Global Language English is not the native language of a single nation; it is the native language of a considerable number of nations whose culture and word usage does not revolve around the United States. Therefore, it is imperative that articles written in English purporting to represent or document global understanding:

  1. never assume that all readers whose mother-tongue is English are of just one nation,
  2. never assume that all readers whose mother-tongue is English understand everything about the culture and language of other English-speaking nations,
  3. never assume that all readers whose mother-tongue is not English, but who can read English, learnt English in a specific English-speaking country or within a specific cultural context,
  4. never assume that all foreign people understand the cultural nuances between the different English-speaking nations as people of those English-speaking nations are able to.

Imperative (1) ensures that English used in articles is neutral (e.g. not just purely American English) or correctly documented (where use of regional dialect is impossible to avoid), ensuring all English-speaking people understand the content. Imperative (2) ensures that articles written by (for example) US citizens do not misrepresent to other US citizens that the rest of the world is identical to America in its use of the terms or notions being described. Imperative (3) ensures that foreign people who learnt English in a country that is not based on (for example) US culture or American English (e.g. those people who learnt English the within The British Empire or the British Commonwealth) understand the article without heavy additional investigation. Finally, Imperative (4), the most important, ensures that articles culturally anchored in the English-speaking world are free of ambiguity and nuance so that they may retain their factual and presentational correctness when translated by a foreign person into their native tongue; even when the translator does not understand, or has never experienced first hand, the notions the article is describing.

The IT industry is a global industry that grew out of the United States. This means that the majority of the world's non-US IT-related people have had to learn English in order to be able to participate in the industry's development. It therefore follows that as a sizeable number of people reading or quoting this article (as opposed to those editing it) are probably not native English speakers, articles MUST NOT rely heavily on culturally-specific language, nuances in terminology, subtle arguments or heavy exposition to get their points across. The reason why the IT industry is a world-wide phenomenon is because its accessibility is built on scientific terminology and specifications, both of which are largely unambiguous and easy to understand. Therefore, to avoid possible misinterpretation by people whose mother-tongue is not English, articles about the IT industry like this one should also be written using unambiguous and easy to understand English.

3) The Legalities of Hacking "Hacking", "Hacker", and similar terms are not pejoratives, or anything else that has been coined to unfairly give hackers a bad reputation. They are terms that are used in the context of factually documenting the criminal activities of the people who call themselves "hackers". As a result, the criminal notion of hacking is enshrined in the laws of numerous countries including the United States, where even the US Department of Justice uses the words as normal vernacular in their offical case summaries and press releases. These points have been deliberately not mentioned and their previous omission was grossly misleading almost to the point of trying to con readers into thinking that hackers have been unfairly given a bad reputation. If the governments of the world think that the hacker deserves specific laws and imprisonment terms then the hacker MUST be documented as such (i.e. a criminal), regardless of people's personal opinions or any debates that may be currently ensuing. Therefore, the phrase "commonly in use as a pejorative" ("pejorative": Oxford University PressMerriam Webster), and similar misleading phrases, were stripped in accordance with Imperatives (2) and (4).

4) Discussion Scope Nowhere is it stated that the non-criminal meaning of the word, and the subsequent debate regarding the conflict with the generally understood criminal meaning, are only understood within the US. Generalised terms like "in academia" (which, to a non-US reader, implies global academia) are absolutely untrue and purposefully mislead readers as to the scope of the discussion. Furthermore, there are people even within the US who don't know about the non-criminal sense of the word and it is especially important these people are not misled into thinking that the rest of the world is currently debating this issue when they are absolutely not doing so. Therefore, disambiguation of concepts with additional regional-specific notes were used in accordance with Imperatives (1) and (2).

5) Language Usage The word "enthusiast" in English in terms of its usage and its generally understood notion is that it is used to describe good people, or people who do good deeds (c.f. similar meaning words: Roget's Thesaurus). Terrorists may enthuse about their actions, but they are not known as "enthusiasts", they are known as fanatics, fundamentalists, or zealots. Serial criminals may enthuse about their crimes, however they are not known as "enthusiastic", they are known as calculating, expedient and even Machiavellian. Hackers may enthuse about their work, however they often commit crimes and so "enthusastic" cannot, and should not, be used to describe the activities of a hacker where the global notions of the words "hacker" and "enthusastic" are to be understood. As references to the word "enthusiast" were deliberately ambiguous (and therefore possibly misleading to a non-US person or, furthermore, a non-native English speaker), they were stripped in accordance with Imperative (4).


Andrew81446 (talk) 17:34, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

Are you aware there is already an article for Hacker (computer security)? Your edits would be better suited to that article. Or you should look at merging the articles. —Pengo 01:19, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for your cleanups, and thanks for pointing that out. I was aware and a merge might not be necessary due to the level of detail in the separate "Security Related" hacking article. The idea of this article was to keep the explanations at a much broader level so I left all the detailed articles in tact (including the hacker "debate") so that they could continue to expand the notion of the hacker without clogging the overview (something that happened before). Some links to those articles might be handy although they naturally would hang off the Hacker Debate article, already referenced from this article.
As outside of the US, the term "hacker" only has a single, undebated meaning (that of criminal), talking about "Computer Security Hackers" to everyone but non-US people represents a tautology (incorrect word usage repetition) so any merged article must keep the current title of just "hacker". Andrew81446 (talk) 11:13, 23 December 2007 (UTC)
Your whole basic point is wrong, namely that there is something like an authoritative use of words, or that the plurality of uses of the word hacker is any different outside of the US than it is inside the US. Your article is spreading myth as fact, is incompetently written with many suggestive but incorrect statements, tries vehemently to push POV and conducts original research by building a whole theory of international uses of the word hacker just based on barely a few dictionary entries. A few of the things you write might be fine as an extension of Hacker (computer security), but the purpose of this article is not to claim that any view on hacking is somehow privileged but to only present the different views and guide people to the article they are looking for. --rtc (talk) 15:32, 23 December 2007 (UTC)
I'm agreeing with rtc, above. Andrew81446, your basic premise is wrong. 1. Hacker does not mean a criminal. Ever. If you look at how it is used even by the media, someone who is a hacker working for a large company to help them with their security (a whitehat) is still a hacker, even when there is no criminal element. Secondly, the other meanings of hacker are not only used in the US. I am in Australia, and I have heard Australian open source developers refer to themselves as hackers on plenty of occasions. I'm sure it is the same in many parts of the world. Thirdly, we do not have separate articles simply to make one more technical than another, and I don't see how Hacker (computer security) is significantly more or less broad than what you've written. I appreciate that you've put work into the article, but unfortunately if you push a POV too hard, it looks likely to all be reverted. [actually it already has been]. You realise that you've only made the introduction "less clogged" by narrowing the definition to that of Hacker (computer security). —Pengo 04:57, 24 December 2007 (UTC)
I am going to answer both of you in a single post. You may say that there are Open Source hackers, except that if you're not in the IT industry, the meaning of the phrases "Open Source" and "Hacker" as you are both advocating have absolutely no connection with what the other 90% or so of the world (non-IT related and non-US-English IT related) currently understands. Therefore, your reversion of my edits constitute pushing personal opinions as opposed to documenting current facts, and it also shows ignorance (unintentional or otherwise) for what is going on inside IT in other countries, let alone outside IT in any country.
Any term that attempts to distinguish good hackers from bad ones has absolutely no validity within a context (e.g. a country) where the word "hacker" already has only one, undebated, understood meaning: criminal (UK: Oxford University Press). Being able to put different names on the different meanings of the word "hacker" (e.g. Computer Security Hacker) is only valid where the meaning of the word "hacker" is generally understood to have more than one meaning. That context is currently limited to the just the United States with regard to general word usage, or a section of IT-related people who choose to specifically adopt the English that is used within the United States; the maximum who make up a small minority of the whole. Therefore, the phrase that I, and most other people in the world want to find a documented article about is "hacker" and not the phrase "Computer Security Hacker" which, as the evidence laid before you unambiguously shows, mean one and the same outside of the United States and outside of IT.
Wikipedia is about documenting the current situation as it is generally known. It is not about documenting a minority point of view or attempting to redefine history based on a personal preference which is what you are both attempting to do. Both of you especially take note of point (3) in my evidence above which shows that the governments of the world, who are directly elected by their people's, must (and do) use language that is universally understood among the peoples that elect them. When they change the terms which are used then that change should also be documented here. However, until that time, evidence is what is required. I have provided hard-core, unequivocal evidence of how the entire English-speaking world, not a privileged few you were born and educated in the United States, and not the minority of those who work in the IT industry, evidence of how everybody talks about and referes to the hacker, and now YOU must do the same. Reversing edits without providing evidence in support of your edits is also in violation of Wikipedia policy and something that shall not be going unnoticed for much longer should it continue. You should start providing evidence; hard, solid, evidence that what I am saying in points (1) to (5) above is wrong, as Wikipedia is a resource for documenting, not pushing or furthering minority debates on the world stage. Until you provide the evidence as I have done, I shall be here for as long as it takes. For while you have been able to push this debate with just loud words and reverse edits until now, from now on you will have to start backing up your arguments with hard-core evidence to document your actions.Andrew81446 (talk) 20:40, 24 December 2007 (UTC)
So basically you're annoyed that "Hacker (computer security)" has a disambiguation phrase in the title, and that Hacker (the more general, but less used term) does not? How to name articles where there is ambiguity is not something you generally need "hard-core evidence" to back up, as it is stylistic. Rewriting an article, as you have, to conform to the definition of another, existing article is not the solution. Please do not reapply your edits to Hacker. Save them for Hacker (computer security). Perhaps 90% of the world does use the word "hacker" with the more narrow meaning, and I'm not arguing with you there, but that's why the opening paragraph addresses that meaning and why I created an article a long time ago specifically for that meaning -- And that article is Hacker (computer security). If you want to talk about how these two articles are named, please go ahead. But please don't shout about cultural imperialism. It's not helpful. The fact is both, overlapping meanings exist and there is no reason for Wikipedia not to document them both. Having two articles is how we have addressed it. Perhaps you'd like to see the article Hacker moved to Hacker (enthusiast) and Hacker (computer security) take its place. If that's the case, then there should be some consensus, and then the articles can be moved. But they have not yet been moved, so please kindly edit Hacker (computer security) until that time. I'm sure your edits will be appreciated. Also you may wish to see Editing help (there is a link on every edit page) for how to format using bold and italic without using HTML elements, as we don't use HTML formatting on Wikipedia. Please realise that I'm replying to you here not because I want to argue with you or prove you wrong, but because I don't want to see someone who actually has the ability write articles disappear, with his edits all reverted, simply because of a misunderstanding. —Pengo 22:00, 24 December 2007 (UTC)


English Wikipedia is used as 'The Bible' when it comes to learning about the English-speaking world culturally and linguistically and it is imperative that Wikipedia in this regard documents, in a verifiable manner with evidence, the terms being explained. Therefore, ambiguity is the one thing that MUST be avoided in order to make sure that people of the world, especially those for who English is not their native language, are not misled. You can't just ignore it. Ignoring it is tantamount to permitting all kinds of ambiguous and nuance-ridden propaganda that even the English-speaking world would probably find questionable, let alone everybody else. The previous article, with its categorisations of "Open Source hackers" and "Computer Security hackers" was a US-centric debate; it was not a documentation of the more widely used and global term "hacker". Wikipedia is not a debating forum. The issue at hand has nothing to do with conforming to one definition or another, nor has it anything to do with "cultural imperialism" as you put it. It is about documenting what is understood in the world at the moment, and the previous article was unacceptably biased towards the ideology and culture of a single nation. The bias problem is a problem that Wikipedia themselves acknowledge but, unfortunately, without the backbone to fix the problem, it is left to people like myself to try and correct the situation (where we can) and that is what I am endeavouring to do.
Title change or no title change, outside of United States IT and academia there is predominantly one generally understood meaning of the word "hacker" and this meaning is "criminal". Wikipedia's fundamental, non-negotiable policy on articles is that they are NEUTRAL, stating all significant points of view without bias. Therefore, I would ask you not to attempt to tell another person what to do on Wikipedia in order to get them to conform to your point view when you clearly are not in favour of documenting all aspects of the situation. Everybody has a right to edit and speak, especially when attempting to impartially document a term, and especially when making sure that everybody is properly informed as opposed to, for example, being misled or misinformed by a minority who are bent on trying to change world interpretation because they are annoyed with being associated with criminals. Talking about hackers under the general keyword "hacker" without mentioning in any way the legalities or history of criminal hacking is absolutely biased (and misleading) and fixing this is what I achieved with the new proposed article. The general term "hacker" deserves a general description, and that is what I gave it. My new article gives adequate mention, and even praise, to those original US academia and homebrew hackers and, in the context of documenting the current world situation, I gave them space and time proportional to their presence in the overall discussion. However, descriptions of criminals as "enthusiasts" (you think the 9/11 terrorists should be called "enthusiasts" even though they enthused about plotting that dastardly crime?) is absolutely biased towards the hacker debate and has no place in this kind of article.
If you think that, in the global context of the term "hacker", my documentation of the US-centric hacker debate is insufficient, then I challenge you to provide verifiable evidence that both IT and non-IT related people outside of the US are talking about "Open Source" hackers (for example). Then we can fix that problem. That is why, even this time as I fix this article again, I have made sure that my new proposed article contains even more verifiable evidence that my new article is documenting the general term "hacker"; not debating it, nor acting as a form of propaganda to redefine it. I recommend you step outside of IT just for a second as, even in Australia, a "hacker" is known as a criminal so attempts to categorise, document, or redefine the general term "hacker" as anything else is just plain lying.
Andrew81446 (talk) 20:20, 26 December 2007 (UTC)
We have an article already for hackers in computer security and that article is Hacker (computer security). Please try using incremental edits, rather than bulldozing. —Pengo 04:48, 27 December 2007 (UTC)
It is very dissappointing that now you too have taken to reverting people's changes without providing any verifiable sources or evidence to backup your actions. Such actions in any other field (for example, politics) amount to propaganda, or worst still, brainwashing. Please don't use Wikipedia to push the "anti-criminal-hacker" lobby as that's not what Wikipedia is for. And by the way, in case you hadn't noticed, I didn't just bulldoze the changes. I made a formal proposition, backed up with tangible evidence and ample justification, on this very chatboard over six weeks ago. As the only person who disagreed could not provide any verifiable evidence to support their arguments, I went ahead with my proposal.
As an example of how to revert changes properly, I've expanded my references section with more evidence of usage of the term "hacker" according to it's most widely used and understood meaning. In addition, I have even added the term "Open Source Hacker" (taken from the previous article) and added it to the table describing the different types of hacker, linking it to the academic hacker article as the original article did. An oversight on my part rather than any attempt to be magnanimous as it appears to be a term in use within the US and without it the article could not claim to be WP:neutral.
Andrew81446 (talk) 13:53, 29 December 2007 (UTC)
Your edits have long been rejected. Please accept this. You are bulldozing since you know that your edits are strongly disagreed with. This article does not do "anti-criminal-hacker" pushing; it describes all views fairly and it also mentions criminal hackers prominently. Please contribute to Hacker (computer security) instead. Your additions are certainly welcome there. Wikipedia seeks no "verifiable evidence" to "support" claims in articles; in fact, "evidence", if it exists (which it doesn't) can only countersupport a claim – this is a basic fact of logic (Nature 302 (21 April 1983), p. 687–688). "justification" does not exist either; these are all notions of the authoritarian theory of justification, which is in basic contradiction to logic: a consequence of logic is that justification is impossible (see Münchhausen Trilemma). Wikipedia requires only sources where I can read about the relevant views described in the article more in detail. Without doubt, you could find much more "evidence" to "support" your claims, but a lack of "evidence" is not the objection against your version. That it is taking sides, violating neutrality, pushing POV, not being balanced etc. is the objection. --rtc (talk) 18:54, 29 December 2007 (UTC)

Just because you have an issue with the general term "hacker" being associated with criminals (a situation that those 'Homebrewers' and US Academia hackers brought upon themselves), that does not give you a right to reject what is actually going on in the rest of the English-speaking world and, more importantly, to brainwash the non-English speaking world into thinking that criminals are "computer enthusiasts". Your empty and irrelevant theoretical arguments about logic and justification will not change the inescapable truth that the previous article does not unambiguously mention the general term "hacker" as a criminal, the most widely understood and documented situation in the world today. Using vague and ambiguous language like "commonly used as a pejorative" is propaganda for the pro "anti-criminal-hacker" debate and Wikipedia is not a forum for propaganda. If you want to argue, go and argue with Universities outside of the United States who document and define the English language in other countries, and in the United States go and argue with the Cybercrime Department at the United States Department of Justice who define laws and legal terminology surrounding the general term "hacker". Please don't argue with me as I am merely documenting the current situation in the entire of the English speaking world, not just a single part of it.

You stated to me that "Wikipedia seeks no verifiable evidence to 'support' claims". Do you actually read Wikipedia policy? Well, it's pitifully obvious that you don't, otherwise you would acknowledge that "verifiable sources" are the cornerstone of writing on Wikipedia. If Wikipedia doesn't seek such evidence then why did you go to the trouble of conjuring up all those US-only references in the previous article? By your own statement, your references are actually unnecessary as Wikipedia articles don't require evidence to support them.

Wikipedia is not a democracy, it is not about majorities or minorities among the opinions or views those who contribute, and its contributors are not an elected board of people. It's about neutrally documenting the present in all corners of the English speaking world. Wikipedia policy explicitly states that it is there to document information, not to define or redefine it. Please read Wikipedia policy before contributing in future. Therefore, while it is blatantly obvious that you're satisfied with a culturally and linguistically biased article (am I to take it that your "couldn't give a damn about the rest of the world" attitude is indicative of most contributors from the United States?), I am not satisfied. Start accepting the fact that while there is at least one person in the world who proposes (and provides ample amounts of verifiable sources) that there is information missing from this article, this article will eternally be edited until all people are satisfied. Just a suggestion but, if you want to get rid of me, co-operate with me.

Welcome to the real world; a world of diversity over and above that which is culturally and linguistically anchored within a single nation.

And if you don't like it, don't contribute.

Andrew81446 (talk) 13:47, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

your premise is true ("Wikipedia articles don't require evidence to support them"), but your conclusion is false ("By your own statement, your references are actually unnecessary.") References are necessary, but not because they "verify" anything (which they don't). They are necessary for the readers to be given the opportunity to read about the described views more in detail. And they are necessary for the editors to check whether the view is correctly described. You must give sources to describe a view. But having a source does not mean that you may ignore all other sources and delete all other views. Even if the understanding of hacker were any other outside of the US than inside the US, which is not true, and despite the cracker meaning of hacker being very popular, that does not mean you may erase the other views from the article (or mention them only in passing). NPOV is exactly opposed to what you do. If you have a problem with that "the previous article does not unambiguously mention the general term "hacker" as a criminal", go ahead and feel free to improve that. If you have a good solution that works without the "computer enthusiast" you are uncomfortable with, I'll be the last to refuse it. But completely replacing the whole article is simply bulldozing. (My arguments about logic and justification are not theoretical at all, by the way, and they are also not irrelevant. You should better take them serious.) --rtc (talk) 10:23, 6 January 2008 (UTC)
Firstly, you stated it "is not true" that "the understanding of hacker were any other outside of the US than inside the US". In my country the word hacker does have a meaning that is different from the United States, so don't ever tell me how to speak my own language, or try to tell me how language should be spoken in my country. Wikipedia is not a forum for the sole promotion of the United States - take that kind of ignorance and arrogance elsewhere. Outside of the areas where US English is used, the computer-related word "hacker" has only a single meaning as opposed to the United States which has two meanings. You have no right to redefine my language. That's what I trust Oxford University Language Scholar's to do, as they have been doing for around 150 years. Any attempt by you to define, or sub-define, new definitions of the word "hacker" over and above the scholars (who I think know English usage outside the US slightly better than you do) is biased and such bias is absolutely unacceptable. However, documentation of usage of regional-specific sub-definitions of the word "hacker" is acceptable where such usage is given with an appropriate regional-specific explanation. For example, the term "Computer Security Hacker" is tautology outside of the US ("hacker" equals "one who breaches computer security") and so the term "Computer Security Hacker" needs an explanation for those outside of the US as it is word repetition. US-specific terms hardly occur outside of US-specific contexts in comparison to the general term used in non-US contexts (Search Google on the UK-, Canadian-, and Australian-specific websites to confirm this), therefore the space used for describing these terms must be cut down to reflect this. My new article fixes this problem by keeping all the main information from the previous article but all US-only usage has been clearly labelled. As most of the usage is currently predominantly US-only, redirection to separate articles has been inserted for explaining the detail surrounding those terms.
Secondly, Wikipedia policy states that verifiability of information in an article is required "where material is challenged or is likely to be challenged" (Why don't you just READ the policy as you were requested? It's wasting space having it repeated here). References are not just for additional information so that "readers can read about described views in more detail". References are there to substantiate information (i.e. provide information that verifies a claim). That is why your arguments about justification and logic were irrelevant because this is not an argument about points of view. This is an argument about providing sources that verify what is being stated (or the situation being described) can be substantiated as being such in all parts of the English-speaking world, not just a single part of it. As the previous article's references do not substantiate the claims it is making about usage of the the general term "hacker" outside of the US, sections citing those US-only references must be removed as they constitute bias. My new article fixes this problem as my references come from sources all over the world, not just from sources within the United States, therefore my article can rightly claim to document the entire English-speaking world.
Thirdly, all other views are not being deleted from the previous article as you stated. As the article mostly mentions US-only usage, documented use outside the US must be added, and explanation of US-specific usage must be proportionally reduced to make space for the documented cases from other parts of the English-speaking world. Most references to the "hacker" in the whole of the English-speaking world document the criminal meaning of the word "hacker" so the majority of article must document this. The majority of all documented cases squashed into 25% of article space constitutes bias, and does attempts to represent the minority of US-specific documented cases as 75% of the current situation. My new article fixes this problem.
Those three points explain how information in the previous article was re-used when fixing the article. Now for the information that was completely missing from the original article.
1) The fact that hacking is illegal in law, and why (i.e. what a hacker in the global context actually does) was missing. Whilst in the United States, ONE meaning (not all meanings) of "hacker" may equate to "building programs with a sense for aesthetics and playful cleverness", that US-specific definition does not even slightly overlap the globally documented meaning of "criminal" that has resulted in anti-piracy laws and anti-terrorism laws (¶16) being created to jail people for being "enthusiastic" about causing criminal damage. This lack of information was fixed by neutrally documenting the hacker's activities in four concise points in the first paragraph. The legal aspect was added in the second half of the introduction. Most importantly, to maintain neutrality, the existence of US-specific terms is also mentioned in the first paragraph. References to "enthusiast" and vague language like "pejorative" were removed. The new definition of a hacker is now both in line with the currently documented situtation and is easy to understand.
2) The previous article did not explain any history about the hacker at all, which goes back over 40 years. Instead, it concentrated on the US-specific hacker debate, particularly the last 10 years or so. Just because the last 35 years of hacking happens to be documented as mostly criminal, and you may disagree with that, that does not give you the right to redefine history by omitting it. The history must be included and I included it. I documented the history using approximately one section per decade.
3) The previous article did not explain anything to do with the hacker's techniques, which apply to ALL hackers regardless of whether those techniques are being used for "playfull cleverness" or criminal activity. I neutrally listed common methods of hacking and gave a verifable, documented source for those techniques. This fixed the problem.
The general word "hacker" must be documented in a general method which is why US-specific only descriptions are unacceptable and constitute both linguistic and cultural bias. Therefore, after these problems were fixed, it was unfortunate that only a small amount of the original article remained and so new content was inserted. In fact my bulldozing (as you put it) just showed the extent of the previous article's sickening level of propaganda pushing the "anti-criminal-hacker" debate, and that was absolutely unacceptable. If the original article had attempted to neutrally document all its claims by citing sources from all over the English-speaking world (as the new one does), and had given a proper historical account of the hacker, my changes would have been far less than were necessary.
Andrew81446 (talk) 09:46, 7 January 2008 (UTC)
Do you have a source that says that the usage is different outside of the US than inside the US? Or do you only have sources from which you think you can infer that, together with your personal knowledge of your language? And apart from that, don't you think you have an Anti-US-bias; a bias against the significance of the US? In your own style of thinking, you should see that the US must be taken as something like an imperial authority on the issue, because hacking originated in the US and is still most significant there. --rtc (talk) 02:25, 8 January 2008 (UTC)
"Do I have any sources?". Do do understand the meaning of source? If you don't know what a source is then you should not be contributing to Wikipedia. But, seeing as you ask if I have any sources, I shall again show that my modifications to this article are full of sources. There are three types of source: Primary, Secondary, and Tertiary and you should read the Wikipedia policy about sources as I am not going to repeat it here.
1) My Primary source was Oxford University Press, language documenters for about 150 years, who define that outside of the United States the English word "hacker" does not mean a "good hacker", a "non-criminal hacker", or an "academic hacker". They define that outside of the United States the meaning of the word "hacker" is "criminal". If this source is not good enough for you, then you will find me a more respected non-US primary source in the definition of the English Language outside of the United States. Incidentally, I don't have to infer anything about my language as I use my language in accordance by the way it is defined in the country(ies) where it is used. However, I also respect how English is used in US territories which is why my article is neutral, mentioning all used definitions in those territories, particularly within the US itself.
2) My Secondary sources were definitions of the word "hacker", "hacking", or the concept of "hacking" in a non-lingual context, which I cited to you on this very talk page when I originally proposed the changes to this article. For example, news articles, security bulletins and historical summaries from Symantec Corporation, IBM, Microsoft, Computer Associates, Hewlett Packard, and Dell Computers. Most of the articles defined hackers and hacking while teaching their users about protecting their PCs which was not relevant to the article. Therefore, only one of these companies, Symantec Corporation, remained in the links section at the end.
3) My Tertiary sources were reliable sources (not Wikipedia) who referred to those primary or secondary sources or used the information in the same way as was defined in those sources. The tertiary sources included Cable News Network (US), The British Broadcasting Corporation (UK), The Globe and Mail (Canada), The Sydney Morning Herald (Australia), and many others. All of these tertiary sources are English-speaking, National Publications and are well respected in their own countries by own people, both IT-related and non-IT related.
The previous article did not provide any verifiable sources or reliable sources (primary, secondary, or tertiary) that verify that information in the previous article is defined, talked about, used, or quoted in the rest of the English-speaking world the way it is written. That is why the previous article is biased. You provide me with the sources that show me the definition of "hacker" in non-US English dictionaries (for example) is non-criminal in a computing context, and you show me that phrases like "Computer Security Hacker" and "Cracker" are mostly used non-hacker context in (for example) British academic and news publications, and especially dictionaries, and I will take back my modifications to this article. Until that time, I shall have to apply the changes necessary so that the world has an opportunity to read fair and un-biased global account of a "hacker" on Wikipedia.
I don't hate the United States, but I hate the ignorance of people who tell me that "a word does not have any other meaning outside of the United States" when it does. Accept the fact the English-speaking world is not just the United States and I will stop complaining.
Andrew81446 (talk) 10:17, 9 January 2008 (UTC)
See, you have misunderstood the function of sources in wikipedia. sources must be "verifiable", but they may not be used as evidence or to verify claims you want to put into the article. You may only use the source if the source says so. So it is not enough that some dictionary or other source does not contradict what you insert into the article; it is necessary that it explicitly says what you want to insert into the article. So, after all, you don't have a source that says that the usage is different outside of the US than inside the US. --rtc (talk) 11:06, 9 January 2008 (UTC)
If other countries don't know about something, how on earth can documentation exist in those countries about the "anti-definition" of it? Your claiming that people can document that "the hacker debate didn't happen" when they don't even know that it happened in the first place? What are people? Magicians? I demand documented examples of this "theory" in other cases. As your claiming it is the correct interpreation of Wikipedia poilicy, explain to me how all other Wikipedia articles cites sources in this manner. And, by the way, I'm going to repeat your claim in a section all of it's own so everybody else can read just how ridiculous it sounds.
Please find the non-US sources confirming the actual occurrence of events in the previous article in non-US locations to prove that the previous article is not biased towards one country, but that the events were known about, and occurred, in all English-speaking countries. As that is the only way to advance this debate, I'm politely calling and end to this thread until you have found the documentation I am asking you for.
Andrew81446 (talk) 05:53, 10 January 2008 (UTC)
Wikipedia does not do original research; what you are demanding is exactly original research. Your inductivistic thinking reworded in non-authoritarian terms: You are creating an original theory to explain why the definition of hacker in this dictionary and that dictionary differ, while both happen to be from different countries. You give no relevant source that holds this theory of yours. Although it could be refuted with ease, I am not going to do that, because it is not the purpose of Wikipedia to do this kind of original research. Why "all other Wikipedia articles cites sources in this manner"? First, they hardly do, second, they should not do. Clearly, you are not the only one who misunderstands the function of sources. The description of points of view is guided by their relevance. You misunderstand the concept of relevance. Relevance is not what I can perhaps measure in terms of numbers of people who understand words this way or that way. Relevance can perhaps be measured in the number of people who consciously agree with this point of view plus the number of people who consciously oppose it. The former article did not hold any highly speculative original research thoery about the word use, as your new version does. It merely attempted to describe the different views in a neutral manner. It could be improved, sure. Your objections may contain some grain of truth, sure. However, your version is not an improvement, it spits many people in their face and hence people won't cease to criticize it. Apart from that, it contains many factual errors which you could have avoided by carefully reading the previous version. --rtc (talk) 13:58, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

More Accurate Definition

The definition of "hacker", as written, doesn't match my experience in 24+ years programming and growing up around programmers. As a kid, I've known programmers working in the aerospace industry since the early 70's. The term "hacker" back then meant someone who could program, but either had only enough skill to write small "hack" programs, was doing so without proper training, and/or who did things in an unorthodox way. The term shifted only slightly in the late 70's/80's to mean programmers who did things they shouldn't; not just unorthodox in method, but perhaps unethical. When you broke into a BBS system in the 80's, you "hacked" into it. "Hack" meant to chop your way into an account or system. The media still uses "hacker" in this way because this is the genuine definition. Usage of "hacker" to mean "computer enthusiast" and the new term "cracker" seem to be an attempt to control the usage of language. "Hacker" does, and always will, mean someone who breaks into an account or system. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.231.200.128 (talk) 18:54, 28 December 2007 (UTC)

Much of this article refers to crackers. Hackers, as a whole, hate crackers and everything they stand for. They are two very different groups. Hackers create and modify programs, usually for free, for use by the hacker community. They may also build or modify computers and other electronics. They are a community that values new ideas and wasy to make those ideas happen above all else. Crackers, on the other hand, attack other computers either just for the fun of it or for personal gain. In my opinion, this article should be redone and a seperate article for crackers should be made. It should be made clear at the beginning of this article what the difference is between a hacker and a cracker. Wikipedia was made by hackers, so I'm surprised that this article is so poorly done. 67.141.215.252 (talk) 21:51, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

RFC: Claims of severe bias towards United States culture and language in a general article


Before continuing, please MAKE SURE that the article being disputed is actually being shown. The article being disputed has the following opening line:

Hacker has several common meanings. It is most commonly used by the mass media to refer to a person who engages in illegal computer trespass...

The article being disputed can be viewed by clicking the following link:

In order to make a comparison, the new article being proposed can be viewed by clicking the following link:

Please read both articles, but do not attempt to edit them as they may not be current.

Synopsis

An editor has claimed that this general article presents views that are anchored solely to the language and culture of the United States, and that it therefore breaches at least three core Wikipedia policies (Neutral Point of View, Reliable Sources, and No Original Research). Points of contention include the include the evolution of English in the US compared to outside of the US, as well as the reliability of the article's sources, amount of technical jargon, and governmental leglisation. The editor has proposed and applied changes but those changes are being reversed without any attempt to disprove the claims being made. Other contributions are invited.

Due to the claims being made, editors from one or more of the following three groups are especially sought to help resolve this dispute:

  1. People whose mother-tongue is English (from any country, but especially from the United States) and who do not work in the IT industry.
  2. People whose mother-tongue is English in a non-US country or non-US-governed territory (United Kingdom and Ireland, Canada, and Australia/New Zealand and other non-US territories) from all industries, not just the IT industry.
  3. People whose mother-tongue is English who work in the IT industry who were not brought up or educated in the United States or a US-governed territory.

All Wikipedia account holders are welcome. Contributions from non-account holders (i.e. edits are marked with an internet address only) might be queried as an individual can give the impression of mulitple contributions as their internet address could change every time they connect to the internet (call Sock Puppetry in Wikipedia). Therefore, you are encouraged to login to Wikipedia before contibributing. If you wish, it might also be a good idea to include your internet address anyway in your posts so others can confirm your country; this will make the entire debate more productive. We thank you for your co-operation in this matter.

As this English Wikipedia, any counter-claims must also be verifiable for all countries throughout the English-speaking world, and for all people in those countries, in order to be able to satisfy the original claims being made. Counter-claims should not be just verifiable within a single region (e.g. the United States), and should not be just verifiable for just a single type of person (e.g. IT professionals).

Andrew81446 (talk) 04:51, 10 January 2008 (UTC) (edited: Andrew81446 (talk) 11:41, 21 January 2008 (UTC))

Just a comment on this from an IT professional in Canada: hacker is widely used here in the sense you claim is US-only. My own experience is that, in fact, the pejorative usage of hacker meaning "criminal" is not the definitive international meaning, among IT professionals and amateurs. It's primarily the media, the US media included, who have propagated the "criminal" meaning. It's understandable that someone might be confused into thinking that the non-pejorative meaning is US-only because the term was born in the US, and is defended by works authored by Americans (the Jargon File/the New Hacker's Dictionary. et cetera), but as far as I can tell (from travel and correspondance with other amateurs and professionals) it has had international usage, at least within the Commonwealth. Also, the non-pejorative connotation is the original, far predating the conflation with "cracker". Also, I note that you state that "enthusiasts" could not also be "criminals", but in fact that was the case at least into the late 80s. Books like "Masters of Deception" might be worthy references here.

216.144.119.132 (talk) 20:17, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

The new proposed article documents the non-criminal origin of "hacker" within the general context and documents the events that led to the change of the meaning from "non-criminal" into "criminal". The article documents; that's it. It documents the change in such a way so as not to state an opinion on whether the change in language usage was considered right or wrong, or which "definition" is the "correct one". It also deliberately does not state that "hacking is bad" or that "hackers are always criminals", and such claims have little relation to the claims being made about bias in the article.
The reference you mentioned "Masters of Deception" would be a worthy reference for inclusion in the article with regards to the mentioning of the US "hacker debate" and the history in the article regarding the "non-criminal" image of hackers before they created their own criminal reputation. Do you know which pages are actually relevant?
Andrew81446 (talk) 10:00, 15 January 2008 (UTC) (edited: Andrew81446 (talk) 12:07, 24 January 2008 (UTC))
I have done some research into Canadian Universities offering IT courses and tried to establish the terms they were being used to talk about, and teach, hacking and its "ethics". Research of the Maclean's University Guide led me to two top-ranked Universities: University of Waterloo, and Carleton University, both have well-reputed Computer Science courses and both have ranked as the #1 university in Canada in the Maclean's University Guide in the last 2-3 years.
This years' prospectus for Carleton University Computer Science Courses explicitly mentions about hacking in its courses and it does not use the term "Computer Security Hacker", or even the term "Computer Security". It uses the term "hacker" in a criminal context. As this is the university's prospectus we must assume that this is the way it is taught, and talked about, within the IT academic community at that establishment.
The prospectus for the University of Waterloo does not appear to be online. However, if you visit their Faculty of Engineering, Software Engineering Undergraduate Department and type the word "hacker" into the search box, you will get snippets of graduation theses, bulletin boards, chatrooms, etc. that have been made available for online search. It was plain to see when I did a search that people did not talk about "computer security hackers", or "open source hackers". The majority of people talked about just "hackers" explicitly within about a criminal context.
After people enter into a professional IT career, they are free to use whatever terms they choose. However, this initial (but not comprehensive) research definitely shows that top-ranked universities in Canada do not talk or teach about "Open Source hackers" or "Computer Security Hackers" the way the United States universities are reported to be doing. They talk about just plain (criminal) hackers. Therefore, the disputed article is wrong in the way it claims that "hacker" is a term used mostly by the mass media, and it also wrong in its implication that IT academia in all countries discusses "Computer Security Hackers" or "Open Source Hackers" the same way that some IT academia in the United States does. Thus, the new article fixes that bias by documenting the term "hacker" and in a way that is reflective of how it is taught and talked about in all English-speaking countries.
Andrew81446 (talk) 12:07, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

Additionally, in terms of non-purely-IT, non-US references, what about the book The Hacker Ethic by Pekka Himanen? (ISBN 037575878X)

216.144.119.132 (talk) 20:41, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

Does this book specify an opinion or document facts? It might be worth mentioning, providing that doing so doesn't constitute undue weight.
Andrew81446 (talk) 10:00, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

Andrew81446's revision

I could not even read it.

Words have multiple meanings. Sometimes they have multiple meanings within one geographic area. I don't care. The "fixed" article was badly written.

It was full of rambling paragraphs that showed little relevance to the topic. Why would a "difficulties in prosecuting hackers" spend all its time talking about a legal reverse engineering project? And "techniques of the hacker"? A virus is not a technique, nor is it unique to hackers. And giant gray tables duplicating the information in the standalone articles? What the hell.

It removed most of the links. What is the point of a hypertext system if you're going to try to stick all the information into one article? Why is it using plain-formatted end notes to define terms instead of just linking to the articles?

And on top of all that, completely replacing an existing (non-trivial) article is considered extremely rude. Work with people, don't declare them hopelessly biased and edit war against them. Arguments over the meaning of the word "hacker" are old, predating Wikipedia. There's no point wasting everyone's time rehashing them all here. -- Cyrius|✎ 03:03, 8 January 2008 (UTC)

You couldn't read the changed article, or you didn't want to read it because it didn't agree with your point of view? Before you comment any further you will do me, and everyone else involved in this debate, the basic and fundamental courtesy of reading my proposal on my changes on this talk page in full (with responses) before commenting again. The first rule of "working with people" is to read all available opinions fully, so don't attempt to lecture me on "working with people" until you have proven that you are reading, and considering, everyone's opinions and not just your own.
While you're reading that, you should do also do some other reading; that of inherent bias in Wikipedia articles and Wikipedia Policy on Article Neutrality, which contains sections on Article Naming, Undue Weight, Balance, and Fairness of Tone. However, as you have already shown yourself to be skimming over everyone else's opinions except those favouring your own, I shall save you the extraordinary effort of actually going to the Wikipedia Neutrality Policy page by quoting the opening the Undue Weight section of the policy here:
The article should fairly represent all significant viewpoints that have been published by a reliable source, and should do so in proportion to the prominence of each. Now an important qualification: Articles that compare views should not give minority views as much or as detailed a description as more popular views, and may not include tiny-minority views at all. For example, the article on the Earth doesn't mention modern support for the Flat Earth concept, a view of a distinct minority.
We should not attempt to represent a dispute as if a view held by a small minority deserved as much attention as a majority view. Views that are held by a tiny minority should not be represented except in articles devoted to those views. To give undue weight to a significant-minority view, or to include a tiny-minority view, might be misleading as to the shape of the dispute. Wikipedia aims to present competing views in proportion to their representation among experts on the subject, or among the concerned parties. This applies not only to article text, but to images, external links, categories, and all other material as well.
Now that you've read and understood that, I will answer the points that you raised.
1) Words do have a different meaning in different parts of the world. You're absolutely right, and the previous article did not respect that fact. It's references (US only), tone (criminals are not "enthusiasts" and so "enthusiast" is not a unifying phrase), language (in non-US English: "hacker" means just criminal), and content (by word count, "hacker" is not a criminal: 84% coverage, "hacker" is a criminal: 16% coverage) were all based on the definition of "hacker" as defined within The United States only. I therefore fixed the article so it reflected proportionally all understood meanings in the English-speaking world (especially the meaning that is documented (and therefore understood) the most. Most of the links in the previous article were links that supported, or were in reference to, only a single point of view. Therefore, most of them were removed and the ones that remained were the ones that lead to disambiguation pages where the other links could be found.
2) Wikipedia is not a Technical Reference manual. It is aimed at everybody, for the benefit of everybody, both IT and non-IT related, of all English-speaking abilities. The article does not ramble, it speaks in clear, unambiguous, and easy to understand language. Please read my four proposed imperatives about Wikipedia English on this talk page, posted at the time I first changed this article, before commenting to me in future. As non-IT people make up the majority of the English-speaking world (and non-native English speakers are even more numerous), the article is geared for these people because that way it is not biased towards technical people. I field tested the article on completely non-IT technical people before I posted it because I am neutral and wanted to make sure it was not confusing and it was fixed according to their feedback so that they found it easy to read and informative. The previous article is full of jargon, and uses more jargon to explain the original jargon. That kind of article is wholly unacceptable and so I fixed that problem.
3) Propaganda non-US US. The previous article was written by people in the United States (or US cultural terrotory, like you) and documented only US points of view without displaying balance or fairness to the rest of the English-speaking world. The United States, and more importantly, US-English, does not consitute the entire of the English-speaking world. Outside of IT in the United States, "Computer Security Hackers", "Hobbyist Hackers", and "Open Source Hackers", "crackers", "phreakers", are not known about and therefore must not hog 84% (by word count) of an article that is claiming to document the situation in the entire English-speaking world.
4) Explaining why hackers are difficult to prosecute is extremely important as hacking is illegal. Even in the United States. As many hackers do not go to jail for breaching Copyright, Anti-terrorist, and other laws, it is important to say why they don't go to jail as "hacking" outside of the United States has only the single meaning of "criminal". In fact, my explanation about the difficulties in prosecuting hackers actually helps the "anti-criminal-hacker" debate by showing hackers as 'co-operating for the benefit of the common good' which, in itself, constitutes bias as reverse engineering is still a crime under law and people who reverse engineer are prosecuted. However, I sought to be neutral therefore I included the section.
5) The previous article ommitted 35 years of history surrounding hackers. Of course, this was absolutely deliberate as documenting the facts surrounding the history of hackers would be letting the facts speak for themselves and would potentially turn the reader against the "anti-criminal-hacker" debate. Such history is not "rambling" as you put it; it is factual content to ensure that the article is unbiased, neutral, and above all interesting and informative to everybody, the majority of whom are not American and are not internet- or computer-savvy. Most of the history surrounding famous hackers does NOT exist in a documentation context on Wikipedia - it exists in a biographical context and so cannot be used (c.f. Kevin Mitnick, Joe Engressia, John Draper, etc.). I fixed this problem by researching the activities of these people as observed from everywhere in the English-speaking world, not just from the United States, and documented it accordingly. My sources included Cable News Network (US), The British Broadcasting Corporation (UK), The Globe and Mail (Canada), The Sydney Morning Herald (Australia), as well as many others.
You say there was a debate about "hacker" and that the debate is "old"? Answer me, In which which country was that?. I don't care if the debate about "hacker" started at the beginning of time and goes on until the end of time: that debate was, and still is, United States specific. And do you know what the result of that debate was? The result of that US-specific debate was that English Language in the United States only changed to include the "non-criminal" use of the word "hacker" (compare: US English vs. non-US English). However, Wikipedia is not your personal sounding board for bending the rest of the world round to your way of thinking. If you think my changes are not representative of the entire English-speaking world then you must prove it. Provide documentation from internationally-known figures, and from reliable and respectable internationally-trusted sources, both US and non-US, that the debate happened throughout the whole English-speaking world. Until you do, the current article is biased and I will continue to change it, of course providing verifiable primary sources about the fact that a "hacker" means a criminal (and is mostly referred to as such) in non-US English countries.
I don't declare everyone as "hopelessly biased". The article is "hopelessly biased" and "hopelessly neutral" people don't write biased articles. But don't worry, not everyone who writes a biased article writes one on purpose and that is why I proposed and debated the necessary changes for six weeks before I implemented them (of course, if you don't bother to read other people's contributions you wouldn't know). It happens that so much of the previous article was biased that by the time I had removed all the bias from it there was virtually nothing left. So, before you go shooting your mouth off that people are "rude", don't "work together", and "replace (other people's) articles", you go back and learn what those phrases actually mean and, while your at it, show me some verification that shows that the previous article applies to everyone in the English-speaking world, not just the United States.
You might just then have points that are fit for world debate, and then your contributions to this debate might be taken seriously.
Andrew81446 (talk) 10:17, 9 January 2008 (UTC)
Addressing the extended conversation since late 2007; I agree strongly with rtc, Pengo, Cyrius, and others. The oxford definition you link is a limited definition, and incomplete based on modern published usage -- in multiple languages and continents. Checking with german hacking culture and the Chaos_Computer_Club is enough to satisfy my need for international reflection of alternate definitions... but more examples are aplenty. No one agreed with your proposed changes, not 6 weeks back, and not now. ∴ here…♠ 03:13, 14 January 2008 (UTC)
On that note, the new revision contains some good material. Both the new and old revisions contain information worthy of inclusion. The prosecution section seems excessive and overly recent, and the removal of links to other existing related articles should be corrected. ∴ here…♠ 03:32, 14 January 2008 (UTC)
Thanks for your comments. To address each of your points in turn:
1) A dictionary documents language within the regions for which it is purporting jurisdiction. I'll repeat: it documents language. That's what dictionary companies like Miriam-Webster exist to do: document modern published usage within their regions of knowledge. Therefore, anybody from outside of those regions does not really have any right to question whether such documentation of language inside a region is correct or not, because they are not from within that region. For example, Miriam-Webster does not carry the United Kingdom definition for "pint (the measurement of volume)" which means "a pint of beer", but then Miriam-Webster is not claiming to be an authority, or comprehensively documenting language, outside of the United States. However, the lack of the definition for "pint" meaning "a pint of beer" in Miriam-Webster's dictionary does not mean that the dictionary is wrong, that Miriam-Webster's documentation of English usage is wrong, nor that the meaning itself is wrong. I should make accusations (like you did) about Miriam-Webster's dictionary being incomplete, and display an arrogance tantamount to proclaiming that all English spoken by Americans is wrong. However, I choose not to. Instead, I appreciate and accept that inside the United States the word "pint", meaning "a pint of beer", is not modern vernacular and therefore is not understood. In the same way, the word hack1 2 is not documented has having meanings other than "criminal" outside of the United States and therefore such meanings are not widely understood outside of the United States. This fact must be reflected in the article.
2) Wikipedia is not a democracy. I shall list here for your benefit the official policy on what Wikipedia is not: It is not a dictionary, not a publisher of original thought, not a soapbox or propaganda vehicle, not a (reference) manual, guide, or textbook, and it is not a democracy. Therefore, it doesn't matter if everybody who comments on Wikipedia disagrees with me. Wikipedia official policy states that it is not based on votes or numbers. If the people who disagree with me are predominantly from one region and one culture (which in this case they are), or are purely within the IT sector (which in this case they are), then I have rights enshrined in Wikipedia Official Policy to fight for neutrality of this article so that it represents facts and events as they are documented in all parts of the English-speaking world and does not give undue weight to any one particular meaning.
3) This dispute is about the native English-speaking world. It is not about Germany. German Wikipedia exists for the benefit for the documentation of German culture and events, and events that happen in Germany are absolutely irrelevent to this discussion. English Wikipedia primarily exists to document events and culture in the English-speaking world. Please provide your examples within the realms of the English-speaking world only, as I have done. In any case, referring to English Wikipedia as a tertiary source is not considered reliable so you'll need a better source than that. If German Wikipedia contains verifiable primary sources concerning the native English-speaking world for which there is no English equivalent, then translations of those German sources are welcome (in line with Wikipedia policy on non-English sources, of course). Therefore, while you might be satisfied that events that happen in Germany can be considered reflective of what was going on in the English-speaking world, I will only be satisfied when I am presented with something originating from an English-speaking country that documents the English-speaking world. You say that "such examples are aplenty", so please provide those examples here. Such examples are extremely relevant to the bias claims being made.
4) Wikipedia is there to document all aspects of a subject, not just specific parts of it. Claims that information should not appear because "it is too recent" are simply unfounded and could be interpreted as an attempt to hide facts as opposed to inform (i.e. propaganda). Documentation of the general term "hacker" must start at the beginning and must end at the end (i.e. the present), otherwise such documentation is not complete and can be challenged as not neutral.
5) Links have been removed. The removed links were removed because the United States specific content to which they apply was removed from the article. To keep the links without any explanatory context is pointless - it would involve reinserting the explanatory context which would reintroduce bias into the article. The removed links appear in context on the Wikipedia pages about the US-specific hacker meanings (where sufficient context exists to support them) so, as links to those pages exist in the new article, there was no need to reproduce the removed links in the new article as well.
If you, in your wisdom and expertise about English language and usage, want to make claims regarding the completeness of dictionaries from world-respected dictionary compilers, then take the issue up with the dictionary compilers themselves, or publish your own dictionary that people of your chosen jurisdiction can all peer-review and subsequently choose to cite or ignore. Do not state to people that their English is wrong or incomplete, or that dictionaries upon which those people's education and culture is based are wrong or incomplete, just because you think a word should be in a dictionary when it isn't. It displays ignorance, arrogance, and a bias that immediately expells you from any kind of debate about neutrality. Besides, seeing as Wikipedia is not a vehicle for creating new definitions, nor is it a forum for opinions or original thought, you need to provide sources to backup your claims that Oxford University Press is wrong in their documentation of the usage of the word hack1 2 outside of the United States. That way, your evidence can be documented in the true style of an unbiased Wikipedia article, and I'm sure Oxford University Press would be more than happy to use your findings to update their very well respected dictionaries.
Andrew81446 (talk) 09:08, 15 January 2008 (UTC)
It is enough now; you are repeating yourself. I have reverted the article to the old version. You are welcome to add your material to the appropriate section (Hacker#Computer security hackers) or to the correct article (Hacker (computer security)), but you should by now have seen that your general view on how the article should look like has been rejected at large. The article is open for improvement and revision, and we can talk about passages such as "who is an avid computer enthusiast". However, your continued ranting gives me no other choice than to conclude that you are interested mainly in trolling, not in improvement of the article. Apart from that, you are a busybody, as your pompous tone in both your reformulation of the RFC as well as in your rants clearly shows. PS: It is complete nonsense that "English Wikipedia primarily exists to document events and culture in the English-speaking world." or that "German Wikipedia exists for the benefit for the documentation of German culture and events" English/German Wikipedia merely means that it is written in the English/German language. In fact, this is what WP:BIAS is all about! PPS: I already made clear above: "you have misunderstood the function of sources in wikipedia. sources must be 'verifiable', but they may not be used as evidence or to verify claims you want to put into the article. You may only use the source if the source says so. So it is not enough that some dictionary or other source does not contradict what you insert into the article; it is necessary that it explicitly says what you want to insert into the article." What do you fail to understand about this? Your version of the article is massively violating the very policies you are citing. Your attempt as a newcomer to try to teach other experienced users the rules you have neither understood nor you obey yourself leaves me with the impression that the tolerant attitude towards you as a new editor should be rethought. --rtc (talk) 11:17, 15 January 2008 (UTC)
Thanks rtc. -- Andrew, please try suggesting some smaller edits -- ideally on a different article -- before returning to this issue. This article will still be here ;), and still warranting improvement! ∴ here…♠ 19:08, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

Request For Official Arbitration Will Be Filed

It appears that the people on this discussion page think that Wikipedia is a place where everybody agreeing which each other constitutes a neutral representation of the facts, regardless of the fact that they all come from the same minority stance and background and that there are other, more prevalent , viewpoints that are in existence.

Well, I have news for every last one of you.

Seeing as you all like to think in terms of majorities, all contributors to this page had better start reading the policy that defines what Wikipedia stands for. As that policy was decided by a majority in the first place, you have absolutely no excuse for ignoring it.

1) English Wikipedia is primarily aimed at people in the English-speaking world. That is why all verifiable sources must be given in English unless where possible, and that is why all official policy only has jurisdiction on English Wikipedia with every policy stating in the first line, in a highlighted fashion, that it only applies to English Wikipedia. Other Wikipedia's have their own policies that apply to their people, culture, and their content, and their policies have no jurisdiction on English Wikipedia. That is why articles on Wikipedia must document all corners of the English-speaking world, not a single part of it because that is what English Wikipedia was established for.

2) Wikipedia is not a democracy. Nearly all contributors so far have come from the same country or same background. That doesn't make them correct. English Wikipedia is a place for everybody in the English-speaking world and the contributors in favour of the disputed article do not constitute everybody in the English-speaking world. Therefore, they don't rule it. Furthermore, length of editing time or number of edits is absolutely no guage of wisdom at all. Only fools think like that. A fool will always think everything they ever do is right until someone says it's wrong. Then the fool learns. Children are just like that - they think that they're always right, no matter how long they've been doing something. Until, that is, a parent says their wrong and corrects them. "Experienced editors" means nothing when such editors display an ignorance of, and a lack of respect for, other country's cultures and languages. Wikipedia is not a democracy relying on votes and it stipulates that all views must be documented neutrally.

3) Wikipedia demands sources that are verifiable within context. The context being claimed by the disputed article is that of the entire English-speaking world (if not the whole world) as deliberately no disambiguation is made. And yet while everybody repeatedly cites United States specific sources that claim to verify the content in the article, those sources do not verify the context in which they are being quoted, because they do not verify that what is being claimed was, or is, true throughout the entire English-speaking world (or, for that matter, the entire world) as the context suggests. Therefore those sources are not verifiable.

4) All articles on Wikipedia must be neutral. Deliberately refusing to include all information in an article represents |bias and is violation of neutralilty policy. Hacking spans over 40 years, but the disputed article only covers around 10 years, and choose to exclude the first 25 years and the last five years claiming it's "not relevant" or "too recent". Failing to start at the start and end and at the present is direct violation of undue weight neutrality policy, not to mention the common sense lack of balance and fairness of tone.

5) Claims within the article's context that cannot be verified constitute original research. As the disputed article's sources do not verify what they are claiming throughout the entire English-speaking world, the total intended audience for English Wikipedia, this article is attempting to spread propaganda for the United States specific "anti-criminal-hacker" debate.

The previous article violates all five core Wikipedia policies as outlined above. Then, on top of that, a Request For Comments was made using language only those inside the group of "anti-criminal-hacker" supporters could relate to which meant that even the RFC was biased. So, the RFC was rewritten so that if reflected the actual situation. That situation being that claims of bias were made and that those claims were not legitimately answered.

The situation as it stands now is as follows:

1) RFCs should remain for at least one month but a person reverted the proposed changes in just 5 days (at the time of writing). You have to wait at least another 25 days, and longer while there is continuing activity. RFCs are not a request for a vote count. It doesn't matter how many votes there are, it is about neutrality which is enshrined in policy.

2) Even though the RFC remained, the RFC was edited so that links to both articles were removed on purpose, making the chance of fair comparison impossible and rendering the RFC biased to the previous article. This was deliberate attempt to hijacking the RFC system and constitutes propaganda, violation of Wikipedia Core Policy.

3) Claims of bias have been made and nobody has provided any counter-claims whatsoever. The claims being made are that this article applies only to the United States. Nobody has even attempted to counter the claims of "victory" are being made. It's not about right and wrong; it's about fairness, and it is your responsibility to disprove those claims by showing that the disputed article applies to all countries implied by the context neutrally. As the article context does not state that it is United States only, or United States academia only (which is all the sources actually verify), then this article is claiming that it applies to the entire English-speaking world when, actually, it doesn't.

Example
The article in disupte states in "Home Computer Hackers" that:
The home computer hacking subculture relates to the hobbyist home computing of the late 1970s, beginning with the availability of MITS Altair. An influential organization was the Homebrew Computer Club.
The disputed article implies that the Homebrew Computer Club was influential everywhere. There is no disamibiguation that the Homebrew Computer Club was only within the United States, and the sources do not show that the club was even known about outside of the United States as is being stated, let alone being influential. Furthermore, there is no source that shows that the MITS Altair was popular outside of the United States, and that people who bought the Altair outside of the United States even used the Altair for "hobbyism" (as opposed to running businesses or other non-hobby-related activity).
Claims of bias have been made against this statement (amongst others). Nobody has provided a counter-claim. No source has been put forward that shows that the MITS Altair was used outside of the United States by "Home Computer Hackers". No source has been provided that shows that people outside of the United States were influenced by the United States Homebrew Computer Club as the article is implying, or even that the Homebrew Computer Club was known about outside of the United States as the article is implying. In fact, given this, the term "Home Computer Hackers" itself, which is displayed in an non-disambiguated, universal context is now defunct as the verifiability of the entire section is questionable. Therefore, the section should be removed, or retitled/rewritten to establish the context as the United States only.

4) None of the points raised in the last three months have been addressed at all. No fixes have been made. Instead, the same disputed article is rolled back into position with claims of "bulldozing". Volumes have been written about how it should be fixed and a proposed article as even been put in place and yet the previous article has not been fixed at all. Not even in the slightest. Therefore, no "discussion" is taking place; one person is making valid claims and everyone else is simply ignoring them.

On top of those points, the article attempts to define a hacker when Wikipedia is not a dictionary, it uses jargon and speaks like a reference manual when Wikipedia is not manual, and attempts to hijack and redefine the common language word "hacker" using nuance-ridden English and without any deference to all meanings (or lack of meanings) of the word as exist in the world today.

Most people in this discussion in favour of the previous article have not attempted in the slightest to counter the claims being made. Until those claims have been answered on a point-by-point basis, the article will eternally be picked apart one point at a time (as in the example above) until none of it is left. If you think there is an unjustice here then go to arbitration. The majority of people on this talk page were in favour of removing the article links (and hence the neutrality) from the RFC and effectively biasing the debate. Why stop at the RFC? Go to arbitration immediately and the finish the job. Or, on the other hand, if you think that someone is being unreasonable, or that obscene comments are being made, then make a user report to Wikipedia administrators. Do it now. What is there to lose, seeing as the consensus is that the majority are "right" and that the minority are "wrong"?

I myself shall file an arbitration claim after I have deemed that the proper Dispute Resolution process has run it's natural course and failed.

Everybody on this talk page has attempted to give lectures about not adhering to policy. And yet, through the repeated reversal of people's proposals without any justification or counter-argument of the claims being made, they have shown themselves to be arrogant, ignorant of foreign culture, and above all sickenly pathetic at backing up their own arguments with any sources or evidence at all. This farce can, and will, continue forever. If you want it to stop then you can go to arbitration (you seem to think you have a cast-iron case so it should be easy), make a user report, or best of all, you can start to make changes in line with the claims being made. However, issuing threats against another Wikipedia editor ("the tolerant attitude towards you as a new editor should be rethought") is the epitome of the kind of nauseating contempt for other people's opinions that contributors to this discussion have repeatedly demonstrated in the last three months. If you think that allowing the world just five days to respond to an RFC is considered "discussion" (when the system alone suggests at least one month), or that people can be made to succumb through calls of "pompous", or through threats and force, then I have to say that that is the most depressing, impotent attempt at "discussion" that has ever had the miserable misfortune of seeing the light of day.

Andrew81446 (talk) 14:53, 17 January 2008 (UTC). Edited: Andrew81446 (talk) 03:47, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

Comment - You can call for arbitration, that is your right as a wikipedian. From where I'm sitting, as someone who came into this discussion from the outside, you appear to have been attempting to force your views onto the other editors. I am someone who works in the IT industry in the UK, I have come across all the terms "White Hat", "Black Hat", "Hacker", "Hacking" etc. It appears that you have been asked to integrate your changes into the article by User:here, yet have decided to instead try to force your re-write onto the article.
It also appears you are are starting to get very heated and angry: please step back for a second, and stop using derogatives such as "impotent", "nauseating". You will find that most people here, are actually very understanding of your view, however, starting to use these words will not make them think better of you, or of your case. More they make you think of a child having a tantrum, because he didn't get his way; better to stay neutral - that way you keep the moral high ground. The Dispute Resolution process has not yet finished, please await for it to do so before making up your mind on further actions. Kirrus (talk) 12:49, 23 January 2008 (UTC)
Thanks for your comment. The issue that is being debated isn't about whether one has come across the terms or not; a vast number of people have probably "come across" the term at some stage or another. It's about Wikipedia documenting the current situation with regard to what people read, talk about, and use. If people in the UK, especially non-IT related people who are prime candidates for looking up the word "hacker" on Wikipedia, use "White Hat" and "Black Hat" in their every day conversations, then the article should reflect this. However, I know this is absolutely not true and so the article should not document that they do, or even imply that they do (through deliberate non-disambiguation of which region the article is actually documenting).
In regards to heated debates, I kindly ask that you read the entire discussion before commenting about the style of debate. Arbitration was called for because the normal Dispute Resolution process was being hijacked by other members. For example, it was other members who effectively cancelled the RFC after only five days (instead of one month - please read the preceding posts). Also, before it got "heated", threats were made against me purely in response to a persistently and comprehensively-argued case. In addition, one US citizen said that any English word used outside of the US, that it is used with a meaning that is different from the meaning that is defined within the US, is incorrect (they actually said that), effectively stating that the only culture and language in the English-speaking world is the United States. My own words on this talk page have also been altered by other editors so that they pandered more to the arguments being made to keep the disputed article, particularly the RFC (see this page's edit history). And above all this, the very people who did these acts made accusations of me "not wanting to discusss". Therefore, given this fairly drastic dirty tricks campaign, I think words like "nauseating" and "contempt" were not out of order. All that had to be done to advance the debate was to answer the claims being made with sufficiently supported counter-claims. However, to argue a case to contributors who have little knowledge about the rest of the world, who purposefully choose to ignore the rest of the world, or who don't want to answer well-seated claims, is exceptionally tough and therefore requires a tough line.
Neutrality has been maintained through the absense of defamatory remarks, nationalist comments, or any other kind of personal attack. Those are the typical signs of "child tantrums". However, talk pages are for expressing opinions and allegations of non-cooperation and not being open to discussion, when my claims have been outstanding for three months, are serious allegations and serious allegations require an equal response.
As stated before, coming across a word and a word being common vernacular are two different things. Wikipedia (as I'm sure you know) is about documenting the past to the present, not about defining new words or promoting jargon into general vernacular. Common sense, and Wikipedia Policy, dictate this. Arbitration was mooted because claims being made have never been answered and my suggestions, followed by my edits, were being overruled and sabotaged with no counter-arguments at all. If the claims were being answered then there may be grounds to end the debate and fix the article in a manner acceptable to all.
Andrew81446 (talk) 12:46, 24 January 2008 (UTC)
The point where your changes were rolled back was when you re-wrote the entire article. It is not necessary to scrap a lot of people's work and start again from scratch. Better to edit slowly and evolve the article slowly, rather than make a huge change all in one go, as it has been suggested you do. That way you will also reach consensus a lot more easily than with making big changes, and you won't insult all the authors of the previous version by, basically, determining it rubbish in your opinion. Try not to insult people, they don't like it.
Ok, lets put it another way. I do not consider your language involving the words "impotent" and "nauseating" acting in a responsible, calm, manner. I consider that sort of language to be extremely offensive. Please cease its use. If you can't make your point without resorting to insults, don't make your point.
I must admit, I have not read the entirety of the discussions here, mainly, because your comments have been too long. You have repeatedly been asked to post more concisely, and less verbosely. I would suggest you do so, if just so that people like me, new to the discussion don't skip large portions of your argument, therefore risking missing your point.
Wikipedia is not just for lay people, but also for those techies / IT people who DO regard hacking in a different light. Yes, tone down references to black hat / white hat, but do not remove them totally. For example, upon coming across the term "black hat" in a forum or chatroom, many people will put that into wikipedia to find out what it means.
Kirrus (talk) 14:21, 24 January 2008 (UTC)
The point where changes were starting to be rolled back was the point where people couldn't not be bothered to actually refute the claims being made, instead considering it easier to just roll back the changes and stick their heads in the sand. All changes were proposed ridiculously ahead of time, and I explicitly invited comments during that period. Nobody did anything; everybody just arrogantly sat back thinking "they'll probably go away after they've had their rant". Everybody is entitled to an opinion, including (for example) all those you want to state that all English that is not US English is wrong. Fair and constructive debate isn't about whether one can be bothered or not to read another person's opinion because it's too long or doesn't say what you like. That only shows disrespect and contempt for other contributors. Fair debate is about taking the time to read and respect everybody's opinion as everybody's opinion is important, no matter how long or short. Furthermore, some subjects require explicit disambiguation and terse language in order to remove potentially (albeit accidental) racist, defamatory, or other such statements regarding another person's culture, language, or national identity.
The article may appear to be re-written but if you actually read it it retains all of the definitions for all of the terminology from the original article plus those other statements that were re-usable. Furthermore, the additional information regarding the original "good" hacking paints a fairly glowing history (thus maintaining fairness) and brings the total US-IT/Academic "good hacker" content to around 27% of the article's body text (counted using a word processor). Therefore, it is not a "re-write" at all. Instead, the original 84%:16% bias that promoted just the language and culture of a small group of professionals within one nation has now been rebalanced to 73%:27% in favour of non-US Academia and non-IT individuals, thus being coherent with Wikipedia Official Policy on neutrality and fairness.
If people want to wilfully ignore the opinions of others in the vain hope the people and the points being made will just "vanish" then those people deserve to be rebuked in suitably appropriate tones regarding the disrespect and contempt for other people's opinions, as failure to do so would be tantamount to condoning the behaviour and succumbing to it. So, when you've been threatened or had your own words (not article) repeatedly edited to conform to another person's opinion, then I may listen to what you have to say about what constitutes appropriate language to use in those situations. In the mean time, instead of using your energy on purely subjective opinions about my posts, could you please help by objectively countering the claims being made (or supporting them if you're so inclined), and in doing so help to bring this debate to an end a little quicker.
Andrew81446 (talk) 11:57, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

Back to the RFC

  • It seems easy to dispose of this. Andrew81446 says above, You will note that in the UK dictionary, of which the Oxford series is an authority, the "good" meaning of the word "hack" does not exist at all. It is not even acknowledged as having been imported from the US as is cited in a number of other cases (like this one, for a college "prom"). He is mistaken because he seems to just be using the Concise version. In the full version of the OED we have the following entries which do show both positive and negative connotations:

hacker, n. 

 3. a. A person with an enthusiasm for programming or using computers as an end in itself. colloq. (orig. U.S.).   
    b. A person who uses his skill with computers to try to gain unauthorized access to computer files or networks. colloq.

Now Andrew has a point in that the second usage is now dominant and the article should reflect that. But he is clearly being too heavy-handed in insisting that the other usage should be expunged. It seems that he is still trying to win the argument with his boss. Amending the article to support a personal argument is a conflict of interest and so Andrew should not expect his edits to be accepted without challenge.

Colonel Warden (talk) 11:59, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

You're absoultely right. The full OED says exactly what you state it does; that meaning (a), where hacker means a person showing enthusiasm for programming, is of US ORIGIN. That is the material point. The dictionary entry quoted does not indicate which phrase is more commonly used as the dictionary was never compiled with that objective. The official product discription on Oxford University Press's website for the full OED verifies this by clearly stating:
The OED covers words from across the English-speaking world... [and] As the OED is a historical
dictionary, its entry structure is very different from that of a dictionary of current English,
in which only present-day senses are covered.
So, instead, the Oxford Concise version was deliberately used as the Concise version defines current usage by stripping the phrases that are not in common use (clearly stated in its synopsis and in its official product description). And so my original comment about it not existing in English outside of the United States was absolutely correct within the stated context: i.e., that of current usage outside of the United States.
I assume that the people claiming knowledge about what consitutes the common vernacular of the majority of people outside the United States do actually live or come from outside of the United States, as a dictionary definition is barely worth the paper it is written on unless the appropriate regional and cultural contexts are being fully respected. That is why the full OED, which was designed to document the history of words in all variants of English, emphasises in definition (a) the fact it is of US origin. That is also why there is a separate American English OED available that specifically documents current English usage within the United States, differing from the Concise OED that documents current word usage outside of the United States (and governed territories).
Thus your dictionary quotation verifies what I have been stating from the start. That is that the disputed article, through deliberate non-disambiguation of the region to which it applies, is biased and gives hefty undue weight to the United States Academia/IT-professionals by not documenting what is understood and used by people (especially non-IT people) throughout the entire English-speaking world. As further verication of this point, please read my comments in the RFC itself about common vernacular in top Canadian Universites in response to the anonymous comments of a Canadian software professional. It was blatantly obvious that academia outside of the US is not using the term "hacker" in the US-academia sense, as is implied by the sweeping, unqualified statements of the disputed article.
And so the original claims still stand that the disputed article is rooted in the culture and language of a single country and does not fairly document all countries in the English-speaking world. On the other hand, the proposed new article does address those issues by documenting all interpretations with balance that reflects the situation in the entire English-speaking world. It has never been suggested to "expunge" the US-origin documented interpretation, and the proposed changes retain the US-origin interpretation with the weight it deserves (read it!). There is a raft of other issues regarding the disputed article that have still not been addressed and the proposed changes fix those too.
The RFC makes a number of claims. I absolutely expected from the start that all claims would be challenged, and have invited such challenges most times a case has been put. Other members should address all claims and not just the ones they find easiest to rebuke. This debate will continue until all claims have been addressed.
Andrew81446 (talk) 11:36, 28 January 2008 (UTC)
  • The OED's most recent examples of usage for meaning 3.a are:
1984 Which Micro? Dec. 17/3 A hacker might spend more time playing his own version of PacMan than on useful program development.
1986 A & B Computing Nov. 16/3 The on-screen help is for the casual user but there's plenty for the hacker who wants to tinker with the software and tailor it for special purposes.
These both seem to be British magazines and so this indicates that the favourable meaning has long since crossed the Atlantic. My impression is that the unfavourable usage is more common now because of its frequent use in journalism and popular culture. It's not so much the region as the context which matters. Colonel Warden (talk) 18:55, 28 January 2008 (UTC)
With all due respect, the claim being it is about whether the disputed article documents how hackers are talked about throughout the entire English-speaking world. You talked about context but haven't yet stated whether you counter or admit the claim being made that the disputed article's portrayal of the notion of "hacker" is biased to the United States (16%:84% by word count in favour of the US-Academic only portrayal) through it not stating the context as being predominantly US. Please state whether you admit the claim or wish to continue to counter it.
If you to want to counter the claim you're going to have to provide sources that justify the disputed balance. The two 20-year-old sources you quoted are not enough to justify that 84% of the English-speaking world are currently doing, especially given that the fixed article quotes plenty of references spanning almost 60 years from all over the English-speaking world, including the US. In addition, the fixed article's references weren't just from the media (as is so frequently blamed), but also from the judiciary, and actual interviews where individuals were mentioned, with some references being only a month or two old. The disputed article's references are mostly only verifiable within a US context and this is not in balance with the current documented usage throughout the whole of the English speaking world, so violating Wikipedia's policy on neutrality and fairness. That is what the claim is about.
Please also try to address the other claims about jargon, missing 35 years of information (including the last 20 or so years to the present day), and the fact that there documentation of the fact that hacking is illegal even though the majority of people in the English-speaking world (especially non-IT related people) only understand that meaning and laws exist in most countries to reinforce that meaning (for example, Digital Millenium Copyright Act).
Andrew81446 (talk) 12:37, 29 January 2008 (UTC)
Please get this simple fact: Your whole approach is wrong. Description of points of views in Wikipedia articles is not weighted according to which people in what part of the world understand the word in which way. Relevance is given by the overall cultural impact. The Open Source/Free Software community may not be known so much, and even where it is known may not be associated so much with the word hacker in the general public. But it had a huge impact on our society; the connection between hacking and Free Software/Open Source is there; the hacker culture is still very much there and still very much a part of the Free Software/Open Source community, and hence this article has to describe that. You are using dubious argumentation, including citing policies you have not understood, to justify censorship of the article. You have ignored what I have said to you concerning sources and what they are good for and when you may use them; you are dismissing all counterarguments, you are not taking any of the the numerous people disagreeing with you serious. You are not interested in improvement of the article, you are merely interested in pushing your own article. You will be blocked sooner or later if you continue like that. Not because you have this opinion, but because of the way you try to force it into the article. --rtc (talk) 19:24, 29 January 2008 (UTC)
The Undue Weight policy is clear, particularly with the example about the Flat Earth concept. Impact on local culture within a wider context is absolutely not a prerequisite for inclusion when documenting the events as they have happened. "Impact" is a subjective word and has no reliable measuring scale, which is why Wikipedia is there to 'document events, not to give opinions, or spread propaganda, based on an individuals interpretation of how "significant" something is.
The relevance and impact you talk about is with respect to your culture; not all culture in the English-speaking world, and that is the context that the disputed article is written in. If you want to counter the claim (which I assume you are) then you need to provide sources that substantiate the disputed article's context as applying to the entire English-speaking world. All sources provided so far (and you have not provided any additional ones despite repeated requests) substantiate what your saying only within the context of the United States. The Undue Weight policy clearly states that If a viewpoint is in the majority, then it should be easy to substantiate it with reference to commonly accepted reference texts. So, I ask you again, substantiate your counter-claim with sources from the entire English-speaking world, the context that the disputed article is claiming.
You talk of "our culture" and "our society" but your society does not represent all societies. When will you recognise that? Your society is not my society, nor is it the society of the millions and millions of people who live in the same society. For one, our languages are different and that has already been proven through the dictionary discussion.As I still cannot believe that you think that there is only one culture and language in the English-speaking world, I shall not reply to you again until I have clarified a few basic points. Will you kindly do me the courtesy of answering me the following questions. Only Yes or No answers are acceptable:
1) Do you believe that language is used to describe and communicate about the things around us? [Yes/No]
1) Do you believe that all countries in the English-speaking world have exactly the same culture (e.g. education systems, goverments, policies, currencies, taxation systems, judiciary systems, etc.)? [Yes/No]
3) Do you believe that all countries in the English-speaking world speak exactly the same English? [Yes/No]
Andrew81446 (talk) 10:42, 30 January 2008 (UTC)
WP:UNDUE is talking about controversial minority views. This article is of a completely different nature. It is talking about different subcultures, not about questions with different answers and controversial views. I already told you that I disagree strongly with your authoritarian, justificationist views on culture and the world. You ignored that. There is no such thing as reliability or measuring scales or whatever; and these things have nothing whatsoever to do with objectivity. There can be no question about the relevance of the open source/free software hacker culture; basically half the Internet runs with software created by hackers and almost all companies, governmental organizations, and a growing number of individuals in all parts of the world use software created by hackers. I answer to your questions by using your style of thinking: The United States is the ultimate, imperial authority on the English language. It is the defining culture of the English speaking world. It provides a verified, proven, authoritative and definitive understanding of words that you and your inferior country are obliged to accept. The United States is the most significant country in the world, by means of language, education system, government, policies, currency, etc. Your country, and other English speaking countries, or other countries in general are insignificant, unimportant and irrelevant compared to that. How the word is understood in the United States hence has priority; and how it is understood in other countries is relevant only when it comes to nuances. As already said, this would be the answer using your style of thinking. Not the style of thinking that I prefer. --rtc (talk) 13:40, 30 January 2008 (UTC)
You didn't answer the questions. Please answer the questions. Yes or No answers are sufficient.
Andrew81446 (talk) 01:28, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

To Andrew81446

Would you kindly stop replacing the entire article with your preferred version? It's highly disruptive, and makes it absolutely impossible for other editors to do their work.

I understand that you have issues with the current article. Let's address them one at a time, in small doses, so we can achieve consensus. Let's start by discussing one claimed problem with the article. I suggest we limit the discussion to the opening paragraph. I respectfully request that you keep your initial description of the problem to less than about 100 words -- you tend to make extremely long arguments, when a shorter, simpler argument would suffice. You have said above that "no one has addressed your arguments". That is because your writing on this talk page has been wandering and unclear. Keeping your points short will help ameliorate this.

Thanks in advance for cooperating. Nandesuka (talk) 14:33, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for your comments. My posts are not wandering and unclear; they are comprehensive. People should take the time to read them the first time, then I wouldn't have to repeat myself over and over again. For example, have you read the opening entries in chapter 17 and chapter 19 of this talk page? If you haven't, please do so now as they give full pre-coverage (the proposal) and post-coverage (the implementation) of what is being talked about. Please don't start asking about things that are explained in those two chapters otherwise I will just start repeating everything inline like I have had to do with everybody else so far.
As for other editors "not being able to do their work", the work at hand is to fix the claims being made. All other edits made out of that context show blatant disregard for, and attempts to purposefully ignore, the claims being made and so reinforce the bias in the disputed article. They can make their changes to the fixed article as it represents a properly neutral base from which to do so.
Now let's proceed. There are four claims being made, the first of which is shown below:
1) The article is not neutral. The cultural references, and the language used to describe those references, are all anchored within a single nation. i.e. the United States. However, the article does not disambiguate this fact and therefore is deliberately misleading as it is purporting to represent all nations across the English-speaking world. This consitutues bias and violation of Wikipedia policies neutrality policy. Furthermore, the article's sources then go on to verify what is written but only within the context of the United States when the article's context is clearly claiming to be the entire English-speaking world. This violates Wikipedia's source verifiabililty policy.
Every paragraph is affected, therefore every paragraph must be fixed. The claims being made cannot be satisfied by spot-fixing a paragraph at a time when all encompassing problems exist. Of course, the fixed article removes this bias, which you will see if you read it with the above claim in mind. To counter this first claim is simple: find sources that verify that what is written was being talked about or happened across the entire English-speaking world as is being claimed. If sources can't be found then all content verified by those sources (currently 84% by word) must be removed, or disambiguated so it explicitly states that it is known that it is applicable only within the United States.
I will list all the points affected by this claim shortly, whether people think its rambling or not, as it is absolutely necessary. However, here's one to get you started. The "Hobbyist Hacker" section relies on the existence of the Homebrew Computer Club and the MITS Altair machine to define the term hobbyist hacker. Sources should be found that verify that the Homebrew Computer Club existed outside of the United States and that "hobbyists" outside of the United States, who were members of the non-US branches of the Homebrew Computer Club, were using their MITS Altairs predominantly for hobby-related activity (as opposed to, for example, work/running a business/etc.).
Do you have such sources?
Andrew81446 (talk) 11:29, 1 February 2008 (UTC)
Hacker, as it should be stated in this article talks about what as formed as a worldwide "hacker" community. This definition started locally because the movement, initially, was local. Just because a movement began in single location, doesn't make it insignificant. --Andrew81446: your tone, your approach and your attitude has stalled development of this article. Even though your main point might have some validity: bring a world perspective to what may have a pro-US tone: the wholesale change of the article is too strong, in my opinion. I concur with those that suggest that you should make your changes piecemeal, so it is easier to discuss them rather than all at once. I am unconvinced the new version of the article is superior to the previous one. leontes (talk) 12:54, 1 February 2008 (UTC)
The statement that the "hacker community" is worldwide, and the statement that the "hacker community" use and understand the same United States based English regardless of which local region they are in, are not the same thing. Do you understand this fact? That is why the famous linguistic "hacker debate" only occurred within the United States while the "hacker community" members in the rest of the English-speaking world hardly noticed. Furthermore, the result of that debate was that language evolved only within the United States. Go to Canada, the United Kingdom, India, and Australia and experience for yourself the language of local computer programmers in the professional, Open Source, recreational, and security fields. They don't universally copy the language of the US to describe the same concepts even though they are all members of the same community. In addition, even within the United States, ordinary non-IT-related people (the majority of the whole) don't talk about "Computer Security" hackers or "Open Source" hackers either which leaves the so called "hacker community" documented in the current article in a worldwide minority.
Wikipedia is there to document, not define. The "hacker community" may exist worldwide, but as a proportion of the number of people who use and understand the common English word "hacker" in the non "hacker community" sense, the "hacker community" is in a minority. Therefore, if the article is about the "hacker community" as talked about using language of that US-led community, then this fact should be disambiguated through the assignment of a new title (which would leave space for replacement article), or through the insertion of the phrase "in the United States" (or similar) at every point where a US-specific reference is made. The current article instead attempts to redefine, not document, a word of common-usage English language that is in use across all English-speaking countries to the meaning of the minority US-led "hacker community". Concentration on just a small part of United States specific history and culture without documenting the full 50+ years of history that has been occuring worldwide consitutes undue weight and bias and was addressed in the proposed changes.
Andrew81446 (talk) 11:35, 5 February 2008 (UTC)
Andrew:
Sorry, I couldn't really follow the argument you're making because it is too general, and unclear. I see you claiming that the article is "deliberately misleading" because of being "anchored" in United States culture, but your asserting that doesn't make it true. So let's try again. What, specifically, is wrong with the first paragraph of the article? Which sentences would you change, and why?
Thanks in advance for your cooperation. Nandesuka (talk) 13:18, 1 February 2008 (UTC)
As requested:
In computing in the United States, a hacker is a member of one of several different subcultures:
* A community of computer programmers, originating around the 1960s in the United States "Tech Model Railroad Club" and the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory at the US Massechusett's Institute of Technology. This community is notable for launching the free software movement. The World Wide Web and the Internet itself are also considered to be a legacy of this group of enthusiast programmers.
* People who engage in breaking any kind of software security. For example, breaking the security in an electronic product like a mobile phone to allow usage where usage was not intended, or using a telecommunications link to break gain unauthorised access to a secure instution like a government office or a bank.
* The home computing community of the late 1970s, largely based around the United States Homebrew Computer Club.
The context of this article is the entire English-speaking world, because the word "Hacker" is recognised English across all of the English-speaking world, not just the United States, and has different meanings depending on the country (see previous dictionary references if you are unsure about this).
Given this worldwide context that the article has created through its specific non-disambiguation of the general word "hacker":
  1. The phrase "hacker subculture" is United-States specific. The subculture may exist outside the United States but it is not called the hacker "subculture". In some places it has a different phrase, and in other places its not called anything at all because such a subculture doesn't exist to the extent that it does within the United States. Therefore, you must go to other countries and find out what language they use to describe the "subculture" you talk about and state all the phrases that are used, or provide sources from around the world that verify the "hacking subculture" is a universally recognised concept by IT and non-IT related people. An example of a universally known subculture is the Hippie Subculture. The "hacker subculture" is not universally known. Finally, you can disambiguate the phrase "subculture" to United-States specific which is all the quoted sources are able to verify, the option I recommended. Remember, Wikipedia is there to document; it is not a dictionary.
Ok, there are hackers out of the US but they don't call themselves hackers? --Army1987 (talk) 14:28, 5 February 2008 (UTC)
  1. The article is for IT and non-IT related people, for US and non-US citizens. Therefore all jargon, technical phrases and local US terminology must be expanded and explained in full, because Wikipedia is not an instruction guide or technical manual. The "TMRC" is the "Tech Model Railroad Club" and so the full phrase must be used. Not everybody knows what "MIT" is, or more importantly where it is, therefore it was expanded and disambiguated to make sure people know. "RFC" is jargon and is not understood by any non-IT related person, the majority of the intended audience, therefore the entire sentence was stripped. The phrase "demoscene" was also stripped as it means nothing to most non-gaming IT people, let alone completely non-IT people.
Ok, I'm going to expand acronyms, but as for "explained in full", that's what hyperlinks are for. If one doesn't know a phrase and can't figure it out from the context, they can just follow the link. --Army1987 (talk) 14:28, 5 February 2008 (UTC)
  1. The word "Railroad" in "Tech Model Railroad Club" is United States English. Pure and Simple. United States English to describe a club that existed only within the United States. And yet this fact this was not disambiguated, or even explained, for the benefit of non-US citizens. Thus just mentioning "TMRC" by itself is linguistic and cultural bias and deliberately misleads people (especially non-native-English-speaking foreign people) into thinking that the "TMRC" existed in every English-speaking country when it didn't. For example, in the United Kingdom, people don't even say "Railroad", they say "Railway", and so the "Tech Model Railroad Club" could not have possibly existed in the United Kingdom. Yet the context for the article includes the United Kingdom and so misleads everyone into thinking that it was and that all people in the United Kingdom say "Railroad". As a basis for documenting the notion of a Hacker, the "Tech Model Railroad Club" cannot be used without specifically mentioning the United States and so the disambiguation was added.
Mentioning a club implies that it exists all over the world? I don't think so. --Army1987 (talk) 14:28, 5 February 2008 (UTC)
  1. Hacking outside of the United States means any kind of hacking. Breaking licensing in software, breaking network restrictions in mobile phones, copying CDs, as well as breaking into institutions using a telecommunications link, are all included. It is not internet security specific. Masses of documented occurrences of hacking outside of the United States confirm this so any attempt to redefine English in the rest of the world to conform to the United States constitutes bias, an attempted definition of a new term, and can be seen as propaganda for the US-specific "non-anti-criminal-hacker" debate. That is why an article documenting this must be general enough include all meanings, or must specifically list all meanings. I went for the former as it was shorter.
  2. "Hobbyist Hackers" is a United-States specific phrase. I even gave you an example about this. The Homebrew Computer Club did not exist outside of the US, and so I inserted the phrase "the United States" to make sure people are not misled to believing it is or was. Sources must be provided that verify that there were non-US branches of the Homebrew Computer Club in the UK, Australia, Canada, etc (i.e the entire English-speaking world) before you can imply that the Homebrew Computer Club was in effect across the whole of the English-speaking world.
This is just the first paragraph. The fixes necessary to make sure that non-IT people (US and non-US) and non-US English people understand the article properly has now, beyond all doubt, made this severely United States specific even though the "subculture" being talked about is only recognised by a minority of the entire intended audience. This is in direct contravention of Wikipedia Offical Policy on Undue Weight and neutrality and the paragraph needs to be rewritten. For this purpose I recommend the opening paragraph from the fixed article as it doesn't define anything; it is neutral in documenting what a hacker (good or bad) actually does without opinion (enthusiast? not an enthusiast?) leaving the reader to let the facts speak for themselves. Put simply, the current opening paragraph does not fairly document the word "hacker", as appearing in non-US contexts such as an Australian book, a Canadian Newspaper, or a British software programmer's blog, and so such a paragraph does not belong in a article about "hacker" which contextually includes those publications.
You want me to continue like this for the entire article or do you now understand the first claim about neutrality?
Andrew81446 (talk) 11:35, 5 February 2008 (UTC)
I asked you for 100 words, you wrote about 1000. This is why no one can take you seriously. More words does not equal more intelligence. Responding briefly:
One doesn't disambiguate "railroad" in "Tech Model Railroad Club" because that is a proper noun. Your suggestion that we should do so because "railroad" is a US-specific term is as ludicrous as suggesting that we should write "Margaret Thatcher" when discussing the former UK prime minister. The term model railroad is disambiguated on the article for that organization.
What evidence do you have that the phrase "hacker subculture" is US-specific? You've made this assertion many times now, but it doesn't appear to be true.
Your claims about "hacker" meaning more than computer hackers are incoherent. They happen to be true, but they are still incoherent. This article primarily addresses hackers of computers, but links to the disambiguation page which discusses some of the other uses. It's also extremely relevant that it's the computer-specific uses that are defined in the OED. Because the OED noted that this usage of the term originated in the US -- which no one debates -- you have chosen to ignore it (or, more properly, chosen to pretend the OED agrees with you. Which it does not.)
Lastly, I find your claim that non-IT people and non-US English people will not "understand" the article to be without any merit whatsoever. In fact, the definition that you propose would be inscrutable to the average person throughout Europe and Asia. Yes, there are other meanings of the word hacker. There are also other meanings of the word "fluke". The proper way to handle this is through disambiguation, not through insisting that your pet (atypical) definition should replace an existing article. Nandesuka (talk) 12:55, 5 February 2008 (UTC)
I can again only state that I completely disagree with your cult of the "ordinary language", which reminds me too much of the arguments of certain postmodern literary criticsm movements in philosophy. Wikipedia is not a paper encyclopedia, and if a reader wants to know what this or that word means, such as RFC or TMRC, he can click on it (which does not mean that I strictly oppose giving the unabbreviated version at least once). Of course hacking is understood as a subculture not only in the US. For example, the article cites a German source ("Die Hacker: Strukturanalyse einer jugendlichen Subkultur" -- "the hackers: structural analysis of a youthful subculture") that sees it in exactly the same way. So I wonder whether you even read the article carefully enough. Please do not delete parts of the article just because you think that this or that is not understood in this way outside of the US. That's simply not a valid argument. You may (1) clarify the context or (2) describe how something is understood in different parts of the world that does not match what is described. However, First of all, both (1) and (2) should be done only very conservatively; only if that is really necessary and contributes something to the article. For example, TMRC already implies that it is in the US, and Homebrew Computer Club also implies that it is in the US, and if the reader clicks on the link, he is going to see this. There is no need to emphasize it again, and only someone biased as you are towards questions of language could notice or care about this not being mentioned here again. Similarly, if some point of view is explicitly attributed to an author, such as Steven Levy, that already makes clear that it is an opinion of this author and the user can check to which context this author belongs to (in this case a US context). We cannot mention every irrelevant nuance; a good encyclopedia article must stick to the important things. For (2), you additionally need a source that explicitly says that in this or that part of the world, there is really a significantly different understanding of this or that issue. That one meaning is more prevalent than a different one here than there is hardly of any significance at all. It is false that how something is understood by the "intended audience" in any way matters for how an article should be written. It is not in "direct contravention of Wikipedia Offical Policy on Undue Weight and neutrality", as these policies do emphatically not put forward ordinary language as a criterion. They talk about sources available about the issue to be described, and how to weight them. I agree that "the current opening paragraph does not fairly document the word 'hacker', as appearing in non-US contexts such as an Australian book, a Canadian Newspaper, or a British software programmer's blog". In fact, it does not document the word "hacker" at all, and doing so would not be its purpose. This is an encyclopedia, not a dictionary, as you noted yourself . --rtc (talk) 13:06, 5 February 2008 (UTC)
You haven't answered my questions as I requested above. Please answer my questions.
Andrew81446 (talk) 11:29, 6 February 2008 (UTC)
Just curious, Andrew. What most people mean when they use the word "curl" isn't what the curl article is about. Are you going to take your "It's biased" rants there, too? (In other words, it is irrelevant what meaning happens for a word to be the most mainstream one in February 2008, and the "amount of matter composing a body" shouldn't be only discussed at weight rather than at mass as it is the most common usage.) --Army1987 (talk) 14:28, 5 February 2008 (UTC)
Of course there are other uses of the word, which is why there is a disambiguation page. Enigmaman (talk) 15:18, 5 February 2008 (UTC)
Undue Weight is about the presentation in as much as the content of an article (read the policy). Deliberate non-disambiguation of a term, regardless of whether you can click on the term or not, creates a biased presentation in as much as the deliberate non-disambiguation implies that term is universally understood and accepted within the stated context. And yes, User:Army1987, all words have whatever meaning the context implies. So, if the context is the entire English-speaking world, then any word used within that context e.g. "railroad", "TMRC", "hacker" will be given meaning according to the context of the entire English-speaking world.
You all enjoy putting words in people's mouths. The OED states it came from the US and my proposed fixes which you couldn't be bothered to read was structured around that premise. The Concise OED deals with current language and current language is the issue because documenting an article includes everything to the present day. You will back up your claims by quoting from my posts, or from the article, the exact phrases that show I have purposefully ignored the original US meaning of the word. And as regards to acronyms, you all believe non-IT people know what an "RFC" is, or even what "RFC1392" is? The bias and prejudice you have against other countries shines through with the shear ridiculousness of such a claim. We all know that the acronym "RFC" is IT-industry specific terminology so people outside of IT will not know about inside industry terminology. Do you know what all of the acronyms in use in Genetic Research, Microbiology, Biochemistry, Finance, or any other field even though that isn't your field? Of course not. Such acronyms must be explained, even if they are used within context.
Everyone here thinks they know what is going on outside of the United States better than a person who actually was born and lives outside of the United States, so now you all are going to back up your claims. You are all stating, with utmost certainty, that "hacker subculture" exists across the entire English-speaking world to the extent that it is in the US. You state that "model railroad", even though is actually a US-English phrase, is in general use by the rest of the English-speaking world even though the word "railroad" doesn't exist in the language or culture of other countries. Well, I've seen nothing but hot air in places where I have provided documents from around the world, the very existence of which prove that people are talking about subjects in the way I am describing. Very few documents or sources even exist to lend credence to what you're saying, let alone the contents of such documents actually confirming what you're all saying. Talking makes the world go round and people permanently talk about things that they know about. So given that, people should be talking about what you're claiming they're talking about, if they know about it. This discussion isn't going to proceed until you have provided some documents that I can talk about. If you can't find the documents then maybe we can ask an arbitrator to find them, if they exist. Go and find some documents that show that people outside of the US are talking in sufficient volume about Model Railroad clubs, Homebrew Computer Clubs, and Hacker Subcultures and I'll agree that undue weight and neutrality policies are being upheld and such phrases don't need to be disambiguated.
Andrew81446 (talk) 11:29, 6 February 2008 (UTC)
I can't understand what you actually mean, as what you seem to mean is that stating that something started in some place implies bias towards that place, and even that similar places exist all over the world. Does stating that the Web started at the CERN without pointing out that there aren't CERNs all over the world constitute pro-Swiss bias? How does mentioning "the Tech Railroad Model Club" (note the definite article, the capitals, and the singular) suggest that there are several such clubs at all, let alone in different countries?
(And, just in case it mattered (but I think it doesn't), I've never been to the USA.) Hacker seldom means a enthusiast programmer in the language of some non-IT person. But pressure seldom means the force perpendicular to a surface divided by the area of the surface in the language of some non-physics person. Wikipedia's job isn't exclusively documenting words used in mainstream English as of 2008. And I don't know what all acronyms mean, but if I come across an acronym I don't know, and I can't figure it out, and it is hyperlinked, I just follow the link. (And now all of the acronyms used in the intro are expanded before they are first used.
So, unless your point is indeed the absurd one which emerges by literally interpreting your words, you should try to make it a little clearer. --Army1987 (talk) 15:21, 6 February 2008 (UTC)
Something started in some place but ends up somewhere implies bias? Where in this article is the documentation of what happened when the "hacker ethic" moved to other places in the English Speaking World? Why is only the start documented in this article? And if the start isn't just documented, why is the end only documented with respect to the United States and not the other places where the "hacker ethic" actually moved to? Your arguments are flawed as the points I have been making are the same all along. No material in the article pertains to any region except the US. The article contains no references and no sources that show the "hacker ethic" moved elsewhere, or is present elsewhere in the English-speaking world, or is being talked about elsewhere as it is described in this article.
You're so right in saying that it started in the US. So find me documents that show it moved. And another thing, you're so right it's not about documenting 2008. But then it would be nice if 2008 even featured in the current article, wouldn't it, as an article about "hacker" should start at the beginning and should end at the end. That is the context created by the disambiguated word "hacker". If the context of the article is not "hacker" from begininng to end then it should be disambiguated with a different title, for example, "Hacker history from 1975 to 1990" would be a good choice. Where is documentation of the last 15 years in the disputed article? Where is information from 1950 to 1975? It is biased presentation to concentrate on a single part of a subject when the title implies the article covers the entire subject.
Which is why acronyms and all phrases must be disambiguated in full where global concepts are not used. You think adults are the only people accessing this system? Millions of children access Wikipedia every day as part of their education and you think they are able to reason like adults and know that "The Model Railroad Club" was not part of their culture? Of course not! Not if the parents don't say anything. And how are parents going to say something about a subject they no nothing about because it wasn't part of their culture? That is yet another reason why things must be disambiguated. And you think that English-speaking people are the only people accessing this system? English Wikipedia to a foreign person is just that: English Wikipedia, the entire English-speaking world. You think a person from China or some country on the African sub-contintent is going to magically know that "The Model Railroad Club" is a US-only club? Of course not! They'll think that everywhere that speaks English had a club called that becuase the article's title and context apply to the whole English-speaking world. Deliberate misinformation, pure and simple.
It's stating the obvious but in a way you already know it. Because, if it wasn't so important to control the information in the article people like you wouldn't be arguing against me so fiercely. If it didn't really matter you would just let the changes go ahead in some guise and accept them. After all, "The Model Railroad Club" is a US only club, so given that it is a US-only club, what's the big deal about saying "The Model Railroad Club in the United States?". It's not incorrect, it's not a lie, but it does tell people who don't know any better that it was a US only club and the article has a responsibility to properly inform, not to put the burden of initial verification onto the reader be it in the form of clicking a link or reading a book. If every link in an article had to be pressed in order not to be misinformed a single Wikipedia article would take days to read. People take things at face value and that's a fact. But no, control of information is real power and that is the reason why I'm being fought so fiercely, is it not?
As for the article, please find me the sources I asked for. Or I will ask an arbitrator to find them for you.
Andrew81446 (talk) 10:58, 8 February 2008 (UTC)
If every concept was explained inline, a single Wikipedia article would take days to read (and to write), too. And if on any article we should explain any word that a child could read without its parents knowing it, an article such as quantum electrodynamics, C (programming language), or International Phonetic Alphabet would become colossally long. You might consider to go to the Simple English Wikipedia, instead.
But if that worries you that much, I added mention of where the TMRC is.
And if you are concerned that the more recent history of hackerdom is underrepresented, why don't *you* expand it? Army1987 (talk) 15:48, 8 February 2008 (UTC)
I did, and all my edits got reverted. You want me to expand it? then reapply my edits. Just read the alternative article which is not biased and integrate the content into the current article.
And you still haven't provided the sources I have been waiting for. You can disprove my claims by finding the sources that prove the counter-claims (and accusations) you are constantly making. Otherwise I will go to an arbitrator and ask them to find your sources so that one way or another this debate comes to an end.
Andrew81446 (talk) 10:57, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

Introduction

I have some comments on the introduction: "In computing, a hacker is a person who delights in having an intimate understanding of the internal workings of a system, computers and computer networks in particular, as defined by RFC 1392 [1]. More specifically, there are several different hacker subcultures:" I think that the RFC should not be cited as a source about a general understanding of hackers; there is no such understanding, and the RFC is not an authority or standard on word usage in the Internet, as this passage seems to imply slightly. The RFC is merely amplifying the point of view of the jargon file, not giving a general definition, so if it is mentioned, it should be made clear that it is only as a secondary opinion, with the jargon file being the primary one. That is, the RFC clearly takes sides on the issue. "Unlike the definition in the RFC given above, this includes script kiddies" As just mentioned, the RFC definition does not include computer security centered hackers, either. "Free software hackers consider this usage incorrect, and refer to them as crackers." repeats one more time what is already said more than twice in the rest of the article. Please eliminate this redundancy. Also, I dislike that script kiddies are kept separate from the rest of the computer security hacker subculture. It is usually merely experience and knowledge, not general mindset that makes the difference between the script kiddie and the rest of these people. Further, I disagree with the implication that Free Software hackers consider as incorrect merely the general usage. The way I understand [2], they consider the computer security centered hackers all as crackers, neither merely the general use of the word nor merely script kiddies. --rtc (talk) 15:25, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

As a practising UK IT professional, I freely use and understand terms such as "hack" in both legal and illegal senses. I occasionally write crude software quickly for urgent one-off tasks. I am happy to describe such work as "hacking, the activity of a hacker" to distinguish it from my more normal job producing maintainable systems. If it "is considered a crime under law in most countries" then I'm in big trouble!. Apologies if this point has been covered above; I didn't have time to read every word of the more verbose responses. Certes (talk) 15:32, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

It's still being argued. :) Yes, some people use "hack" as quickly putting together code of a sort. Enigmaman (talk) 15:40, 5 February 2008 (UTC)
To Rtc: Yes, the way the RFC is cited makes it seem more relevant than it is. Rather than just dropping it, I'd prefer to use a different wording to address that issue, but I can't think of one right now. As for what cracker means, I had already changed "them" with "security breakers" before I read your comment. The sentence about the mainstream usage vs. free software usage is intended so that someone having just heard the word hacker and coming to this article can figure out which meaning was intended already from the introduction. And as for script kiddies vs. other black hats, the "Hacking in 17 easy steps" link at the bottom describe a mindset which is closer to that of the "academic hackers" (as Wikipedia calls them) than to that of script kiddies, and if it hadn't been posted on alt.2600, I could have believed it was written by a "academic" hacker, being just slightly surprised by the very rude contempt toward "lamers", until the focus on security holes becomes clear near the end. This, as well as documents showing a "hacker ideology" (FLOABW) by the black hats (e.g. the Hacker Manifesto), make me think that there is more than "mere experience and knowledge" which differentiate them from script kiddies. (No, I'm not defending black hats, only saying that they would have good reasons not to want to call a script kiddie a hacker.) Army1987 (talk) 16:10, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

Addressing Andrew81446's issues.

Let's temporarily put aside the question of whether Andrew's concerns are relevant to the article and address whether they're correct at all:

  • Is the percentage of times that the word hacker is used in one of the non-deprecated meanings in [3], significantly higher in the United States than in the rest of the world?

I have never come across any reason to think it is, though I admit that lack of evidence isn't evidence of lack. And since, if the answer is 'yes', that could be simply due to the higher percentage of computing people in the US than elsewhere,

  • Is the percentage of times that the word hacker is used in one of the non-deprecated meanings in [4], by somebody in the computing community, significantly higher in the United States than in the rest of the world?
  • Is the percentage of times that the word hacker is used in one of the non-deprecated meanings in [5], by somebody not in the computing community, significantly higher in the United States than in the rest of the world?

Does anyone have any references about what the answers of these questions would be? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Army1987 (talk • contribs) 15:52, 6 February 2008 (UTC) I'll try to be less ambiguous: 

                            computing | other
                               people | people
                                      |
             A                        |                     D
                                      |
                                      |
                            ----------+---------
                           /          |         \
                          /           |          \
                         /     B      |    C      \
non-deprecated meanings |             |            |
in the Jargon File      |             |       U.S. | rest of the world
------------------------+-------------+---------------------------------------
other meanings          |             |            |
                        |      F      |            |
                         \            |    G      /
             E            \           |          /
                           \          |         /             H
                            ----------+---------
                                      |
                                      |
                                      |
                                      |
                                      |

Now, let A, B, …, H be counts of times the word hacker is used as shown above. Is there evidence that:

  • (A + D) / (A + D + E + H) ≪ (B + C) / (B + C + F + G),
  • A / (A + E) ≪ B / (B + F), and/or
  • D / (D + H) ≪ C / (C + G)?

(≪ stands by is much less.) --Army1987 (talk) 22:30, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

Completely flawed, but I'll get to this later. Andrew81446 (talk) 11:13, 8 February 2008 (UTC)
Responses from someone (in IT or not) who has spent significant amounts of time both in the USA and elsewhere, experiencing hacker's use in both those communities, would be particularly valuable. My only experience of the USA is through the internet and other media which may be biased, so I'll refrain from giving flawed answers to these useful questions. A quick hint for those who find set theory difficult or tedious: the three bullet points of prose above the diagram match the three "≪" questions below. Certes (talk) 13:55, 8 February 2008 (UTC)
To Andrew: if by "flawed" you mean "not very rigorous", I agree, I don't think that a clear-cut division of "computing people" vs "other people" can be made, nor do I think that counting the number of times a word is uttered/written down makes much sense. My purpose was pointing out a concept. To Certes: Wow, you understood them! My prose writing skills aren't as bad as I thought! :-) --Army1987 (talk) 15:53, 8 February 2008 (UTC)
Yes, I meant flawed, for the simple reason that the entire basis of the argument physically cannot be rooted in any concrete, verifiable peice of existing evidence or information. It is speculative. "Used in the community" in itself is an unverifiable quantity, making the entire argument unverifiable. The mathematics behind your analysis is possibly already rigourous enough to pass some level of scrutiny.
On the other hand, "Used as noted in documents that were written in all places for consuption by all people implied by the context of the article's title, now there's a concrete, verifiable, and obtainable set of documents that conforms to Wikipedia Core Policy on verifying a claim. Then, you can actually draw your graph based on all the documents that exist in that set and start to formalise a real, mathemetically sound argument.
The bottom line is that you don't need mathematics to back up existing facts. The facts state that there is more than one race in the world and they all speak different languages and have different cultures, and where an article attempts to create its target audience by unifying people from two or more different races or cultures, all existing documentation from all races and in all cultures that comprise the audience must appear in the article. That said, if you want to see the mathematical definition for this concept I have provided it.
Andrew81446 (talk) 12:33, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

Reply to Army1987: The Mathematics Of The Perfect Article

User:Army1987's attempt at mathematical proof was fatally flawed because the base assertions were rooted in things that could not be measured of verified in any concrete manner. To disprove the claims one has to start with a known, un-biased, concrete, and verifiable starting point. If one wants to talk about creating the perfect article, a theory must describe exactly how the perfect article is constructed, then the current article can be compared to that perfect article and the claim of bias can be proved or disproved. If one isn't talking about constructing the perfect article then that implies the creation of a biased article, and that does not disprove the claims being made.

The opening question needs to be re-phrased:

Does the use of the word "hacker", as used in the article, reflect the use of the word in all existing verifiable documentation that exists within the context of the article's title?
That is a badly-formed question, since Wikipedia's content policies do not require conformance with such a requirement -- and, indeed, they forbid such conformance. See WP:FRINGE and WP:UNDUE. Nandesuka (talk) 12:48, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

ANALYSIS OF THE PERFECT ARTICLE

Every document in the world that has ever been written has been written for consumption by a specific audience: its target audience. The union of all target audiences for all documents ever written we shall define as set A, the Universal Audience. For a specific document, D, we define the audience for D as AD for which the following can be asserted:

AD ⊆ A ("the audience for D is a subset of A, and can be equal to A")
⋕AD >= 1 ("the author(s) of document D comprise its minimum audience")
(Lemma #1)

Wikipedia Core Policy states that the perfect article must document events, not attempt to define them. Core Policy is an invariant for all Wikipedia and can be understood to apply to all perfect Wikipedia articles. Therefore, to create the perfect Wikipedia article, it is necessary to find all reliable documents on that subject that apply to the article's context; that is, documents from all countries implied by the context, created between the start and end times implied by the context.

You are misunderstanding Wikipedia's core policies if you think that they are either definable mathematically, or if you think that they imply what you state in this paragraph. Put simply: Wikipedia's core policies are broader than what you state here, and explicitly disagree with the particular invariants you invoke. Nandesuka (talk) 13:11, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

Let us group all these documents together into the set of Verifiable Sources, V, and let us number each document in set set V1...Vn such that:

V = { V1, V2, ... Vn }
(Equation #1)

The combined target audiences for all documents in V we define as AV, such that:

AV = { AV1 ∪ AV2 ∪ ... ∪ AVn}
(Equation #2)

Every Wikipedia article has a context and is constructed from a group of sections, C, or claims, numbered C1...Cm, such that:

C = { C1, C2, ... Cm }
(Equation #3)

Each claim, Cx, consists of one or more sentences and so is itself a document with a target audience ACx (Lemma #1). The union of all audiences for all claims C1...Cm within the article is:

AC = { AC1 ∪ AC2 ∪ ... ∪ ACm}
(Equation #4)

That is, given a specific Wikipedia article, P, consisting entirely of the set of claims, C:

AP = AC
(Equation #5)

In plain English, the target audience for the perfect article is simply the unification of all (not necessarily overlapping) target audiences for the article's different sections. Equation #5 can be drawn diagramatically as follows: 

       +-----------+--------------+-------------+---------+...+---------+
       |11111111111|33333333333333|4444444444444|555555555|   |xxxxxxxxx|
       |11       11|33       33333|44444       4|555555555|   |xxxxxxxxx|
       |11 A(C1) 11|33 A(C3) 3+-------+4 A(C4) 4|555555555|   |xxxxxxxxx|
       |11       11|33       3|3434343|4       4|555555555|   |xxxxxxxxx|
       |11111111111|3333333333|4343434|444444444|5       5|   |x       x|
A(P) = +-----------+------+333|3434343|444444444|5 A(C5) 5|   |x A(Cm) x|
       |222222222222222222|333|4343434|444444444|5       5|   |x       x|
       |222222       22222|333|3434343|444444444|555555555|   |xxxxxxxxx|
       |222222 A(C2) 22222|333+---+---+444444444|555555555|   |xxxxxxxxx|
       |222222       22222|3333333|4444444444444|555555555|   |xxxxxxxxx|
       |222222222222222222|3333333|4444444444444|555555555|   |xxxxxxxxx|
       +------------------+-------+-------------+---------+...+---------+

Note that AC3 and AC4 intersect. In plain English, the audience that understands the content of C3 and the audience that understands the content of C4 are comprised in part of the same physical people (e.g. people who are active in two or more fields).

A Wikipedia article, P, is perfect if it perfectly adheres to Wikipedia Core Policy about documenting a notion, not defining it. This means that P can only contain information that already appears in one or more documents within V and it must be able to reference every document in V to verify every claim in C from which P is constructed. In plain English, the article cannot contain any new information, new assertions or new claims that have not already been documented elsewhere.

Article P is a document and so has a target audience AP (Lemma #1). The verifiability of P is dependent on its sources, V, and the responsibility for determining P's verifiability falls to its audience, AP. However, the audience AP must be able to interpret and understand all of P's referenced sources V1...Vn in order to determine the degree to which P can be verified. This can only be done by the combined target audience for all the sources, AV (Equation #2). Therefore, to verify P and maintain the premise that P is the perfect article, a portion of P's audience must overlap a portion of the combined audience for all the referenced sources, AV so that the sources can be interepreted with respect to P's claims. The degree of this overlap can be expressed using three relationships:

  1. AV ⊂ AP
  2. AP = AV
  3. AP ⊂ AV

Relationship #1 says that the audience of P is larger than the combined audience of all P's referenced sources. i.e. part of the target audience for P doesn't understand the sources on which the article's verifiability is based as they did not form part of the original target audience for those sources. As all sources must be used to verify all claims that exist in a perfect article, the entire target audience for P is unable to verify that claims in P are valid. That is, claims in the article remain unverified and the original premise that P is a perfect article is contradicted. For example, such an article would be one that was targetted at both IT professionals and non-IT professionals but only referenced sources originally targetted at just IT professionals, leaving non-IT professionals who don't understand industry-specific papers to interpret those industry-specific papers for themselves and try and assess the verifiability of article P.

Relationship #2 says that the target audience of P is exactly all the target audiences of all P's referenced sources combined. As AV understands the sources then AV will also understand the article. As Relationship #2 is commutative the reverse also applies. This means that the entire of P is verifiable by its audience and the premise that P is the perfect article is preserved.

Relationship #3 says that the audience of P is smaller than the combined audience of all P's referenced sources. That is, P doesn't reference all sources in V and the original premise that P is the perfect article is contradicted. For example, such an article does not document all information within its context, it concentrates on only a small section, deliberately omitting other available information and causing only a subset of all available sources to be referenced.

Thus Relationship #2 is the only relationship that preserves the original premise that P is the perfect article. In plain English, a document can only be verified by the people who originally formed the target audience of (and so basically understand) its sources. Taking Relationship #2:

AP = AV
(Lemma #2)

now gives us two expressions for AP. Combining Lemma #2 and Equation #5:

AC = AV
(Equation #6)

Equation #6 defines two fundamental properties of the perfect article:

  1. The combined target audience of all claims C1...Cm equals the combined target audience of all sources V1...Vn used to verify those claims. In plain English, the target audience for a the perfect article is exactly the combined target audiences for all the article's sources.

    For example, if an article references sources that were originally targetted at IT professionals, then the claims in the article are only verifiable by the original target audience (i.e. IT professionals) and the new article's audience becomes just IT professionals. On the other hand, if an article references sources that were originally targetted for separate audiences of IT professionals and non-IT professionals, claims in the article will be verified by those two separate audiences and the unification of both of those audiences (i.e. everybody) becomes the article's target audience.

  2. As Lemma #2 is commutative, the reverse interpretation of Equation #6 must also hold; that is, as V is all documents in existence given the article's context, as defined by its title (Equation #1), all documents in V must have one or more claims within C to which they apply. In plain English, an article is not complete unless the entire context, as defined by its title, is documented within the body of the article itself.

    For example, assume an article's title is a general title whose context defines that is targetting all IT-related people and all non-IT related people (i.e. everybody) and does not specify a start and stop time (i.e. applies to all time). The article's sources will be a set of documents that collectively have everybody as their target audience, and collectively cover all time. If the the content of the article physically references all sources in V then Lemma #2 holds and the article is perfect. Conversely, if the same article is a completely verifiable article but only references sources that originally targetted IT-related people, then the audience implied by the article's title (Equation #2) and the audience of the article itself (Equation #5) differ, contradicting Lemma #2 and the premise that the article is perfect. Fixing the article would mean either reducing the target audience of the title through a more specific title, or by adding more content that references sources such that the total combined audience for the content equals the total combined audience for the sources verifying that content.


ANALYSIS SCOPE

This analysis only covers the verifiability of an article. Enhancements will be made to this analysis to mathematically define the neutrality and visual balance of the perfect article.

It is pertinent to note that this analysis is rigourous enough to withstand being applied recursively, so that, for example, the "perfect sentence" can be defined in terms of the grammar and vocabulary that comprise that sentence. In that example the sources V would merely comprise dictionaries and grammar definition texts, all of which are country specific and whose audiences are geographically limited.


DEFINITION OF THE PERFECT ARTICLE

Based on the above analysis, the perfect article can be defined concisely as follows:

  1. An article's context is defined by its title. Therefore, V is the set of all documents implied by the title. We note that as it might not be practical to collect every existing document that exists, V need only be the set of documents such that the AV covers the entire target audience for the article as defined by its title. Equations based on V only rely on AV (who makes up the audience), not ⋕AV (how many people are in the audience) hence all equations are still valid given this relaxation on the stipulation of V.
Your premise (that an article's context is "defined" by its title) is already wrong. With a flawed premise, one can draw any incorrect conclusion, as you do here. Nandesuka (talk) 12:48, 12 February 2008 (UTC)
  1. Lemma #2 must hold otherwise either a portion of the article is not verifiable, or the article does not document all possible information pertaining to the context implied by the title.


COMPARISON OF THE DISPUTED ARTICLE WITH THE PERFECT ARTICLE

We now compare the disputed article, D with the perfect article, as defined above. This comparison only checks the article's claims, C. It does not attempt to verify the sentences from which claims in C are constructed although, as already noted, this is possible by recursive application of the above analysis to each sentence in the disputed article.

D's title is "hacker"; a word that is understood and has definitions in every English-speaking country in the world. The title contains country disambiguation and no time frame so all time is assumed. This creates a set of available sources V, the combined audience of which AV must cover all people, regardless of country, education, or any other trait, and all time (that is, audiences comprising people who might already have died).

D is built of claims C and every claim in C is verified by one or more Vx. As no claim in D remains unverified, Equation #6 looks as if it holds. However, the combined audience of the sources physically referenced by D is only US IT professionals who grew up in US academia, or all people who understand US IT professionals and US academia. Equation #6 thus defines the audience for D as precisely that group of people, and this breaks Lemma #2 which requires that the audience for D match that of V (i.e. everybody). Thus, as Lemma #2 doesn't hold, the article is flawed and needs to be fixed.

One way to fix the article would be to increase the combined target audience of all physically referenced sources so that it matches the combined audience of all required sources V, as defined by D's title. This would require an increase in the number of members of C, to physically reference the currently unreferenced sources in V. (i.e. add more content to the article). The other way to fix the article would be to change the title so that the combined audience of all required sources V is reduced and matches that of all the claims C currently D. (i.e. disambiguate the title by adding a country and a time-frame). Either solution would satisfy both Equation #6 and Lemma #2 and so make D a perfect article.


Andrew81446 (talk) 12:33, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

I respectfully request that you put all your comments to this below this line, so as not to interrupt the flow of the article for other readers. Thank you.

[This Section moved by Andrew81446 (talk) 09:28, 15 February 2008 (UTC)]
The opening question needs to be re-phrased:
Does the use of the word "hacker", as used in the article, reflect the use of the word in all existing verifiable documentation that exists within the context of the article's title?
That is a badly-formed question, since Wikipedia's content policies do not require conformance with such a requirement -- and, indeed, they forbid such conformance. See WP:FRINGE and WP:UNDUE. Nandesuka (talk) 12:48, 12 February 2008 (UTC)
[This Section moved by Andrew81446 (talk) 09:28, 15 February 2008 (UTC)]
An article's context is defined by its title. Therefore, 'V' is the set of all documents implied by the title. We note that as it might not be practical to collect every existing document that exists, 'V' need only be the set of documents such that the 'AV' covers the entire target audience for the article as defined by its title. Equations based on 'V' only rely on 'AV' (who makes up the audience), not ⋕'AV' (how many people are in the audience) hence all equations are still valid given this relaxation on the stipulation of 'V'.
Your premise (that an article's context is "defined" by its title) is already wrong. With a flawed premise, one can draw any incorrect conclusion, as you do here. Nandesuka (talk) 12:48, 12 February 2008 (UTC)
I respectfully decline. Nandesuka (talk) 12:48, 12 February 2008 (UTC)
To Andrew: I didn't attempt to mathematically prove anything at all. (I don't understand what you claim I attempted to prove, and a proof wouldn't end in a question mark (no, it was not a rhetorical question).) I used "math" just to convey the idea, with no effort to be rigorous. And it was a question, as the '?' character at the end denoted. In case you didn't notice, it rephrased the points of your RFC, but more concisely.
If the audience of an article always coincided with that of its sources, one would directly read the sources themselves, wouldn't they? Also, the title of an article doesn't by itself identify its topic. If it did, any article whose title is a word with several meanings would be a disambiguation page. Instead, often an article is about a particular topic, and has a disambiguation notice at its top (e.g. For other uses, see Mass (disambiguation).). And which article has the title without parentheses doesn't depend on which meaning is more common. Probably there are more people who use that word to mean the concept at Mass (liturgy), calling the concept at mass weight, instead. Often, it is completely arbitrary which article has the title without parentheses, and often the criterion of "how many pages link here with the meaning 1? how may with the meaning 2?" is useful. Perhaps it would make sense to move mass to mass (physics) and mass (disambiguation) to mass, but, given that many more encyclopedia articles link to the former, the current titles aren't completely absurd.
Currently, there is hacker (disambiguation) dealing with all the meanings of the word, hacker dealing with the several meanings of it used in computing, and hacker (computer security), hacker (hobbyist) and hacker (academia) for each one of them. Given that most links in [6] deal with computer hackers, but at least two kinds of computer hackers are intended by significant numbers of these links, maybe this choice of titles isn't perfect, but at least it makes sense.
(And if your comments weren't so prolix, people would be less inclined to split them.) Army1987 (talk) 13:26, 12 February 2008 (UTC)
I have only three words: Oh My God. --rtc (talk) 12:32, 13 February 2008 (UTC)
I have two words for you: Yes and No. You haven't answered my questions yet. Please answer my questions before replying to my comments again.


JOINT REPLY TO Nandesuka and Army1987
Firstly, Nandesuka, you left an unsigned post in the middle of my post. Don't ever edit my posts again without signing them. Have respect for people's contributions. And if you want to be taken seriously in this debate then I suggest you wait until other people have finished "talking" before you butt into other people's opinions.
I wasn't editing your post. I was replying to it. Nandesuka (talk) 02:24, 15 February 2008 (UTC)
You've done it again. You put an edit into the middle of my post without signing it. I shall report you to the administrators the next time you do it. You think you can lie about this? It's visible in the page's version history. Final warning.
Andrew81446 (talk) 09:28, 15 February 2008 (UTC)
I look forward to your complaint on WP:AN/I where you alert the administrators that I have committed the crime of engaging you in conversation. Nandesuka (talk) 13:19, 15 February 2008 (UTC)
Now for the rest of the points.
You are misunderstanding Wikipedia's core policies if you think that they are either definable mathematically, or if you think that they imply what you state in this paragraph. Put simply: Wikipedia's core policies are broader than what you state here, and explicitly disagree with the particular invariants you invoke. (Nandesuka) 12:48, 12 February 2008 (UTC)
The point of the anaylsis was to formalise and add to rigour to an attempted mathematical description made of the current article by another editor. That initial anaylsis by the other editor, by its very presence in this debate, was presented as some sort of evidence to back up or counter a claim and so I merely performed it properly.
The very editor you claim was offering such a description disclaims that he was attempting anything of the sort. As I said: if you start from a false premise, you can "prove" anything. Nandesuka (talk) 02:24, 15 February 2008 (UTC)
You don't need mathematics to prove Wikipedia policy, just like you don't need mathematics proof to prove that there is more than one country and more than one culture makes up the English-speaking world and that a single disambiguated word in the title of an article dictates that information be included from all countries where that word has the common, disambiguated meaning implied by that title.
Wikipedia policy makes no such dictate. The dictate, such as it is, exists entirely in your head. Nandesuka (talk) 02:24, 15 February 2008 (UTC)
Read the response. ...you don't need mathematics proof to prove that ... a single disambiguated word in the title of an article dictates that information be included from all countries where that word has the common, disambiguated meaning implied by that title. Where does that say that Wikipedia policy dictates anything? You don't read people's responses. Read the response before answering in future.
Andrew81446 (talk) 09:28, 15 February 2008 (UTC)
(Original post continues...)
If the audience of an article always coincided with that of its sources, one would directly read the sources themselves, wouldn't they. (User:Army1987) 13:26, 12 February 2008 (UTC)
No, as one the primary value of a Wikipedia particle is to centralise, condense, and summarise, the information on a subject that exists in all disparate sources. That way it will naturally conform to Wikipedia policy on documenting, not defining. Also, Wikipedia's core foundation is that of verifiability, which means that after the article has been written it has to be verified. The only people who understand how to prove the article is not verifiable are the people who understand the sources. It is impossible to prove the article is not verifiable if you don't understand its sources. Therefore the analysis holds. Mass media articles are verifiable by the general public because they talk in terms and are verified by sources the general public understand. Are you saying that an article can be verified by people who do not even understand the sources that the article's verifiability is based on? Please back up that claim.
However, the best yet is that now people are saying that the title of an article doesn't define its context. According to that statement, every document in the world ever written up until now does not require its content to fit within the context defined by its title.
Alright, let's test your theory. I write a document titled "Cars" but, actually, the context of the document doesn't have to be "cars", even though the title says "cars". So, I can have the content talk about "bikes" because, according to your statement, an article's title doesn't define its context. I have another one: I write a document entitled "Rock music, 1970-1980" but, actually, the title doesn't define the article's context as rock music between 1970 and 1980. So, actually, I can have the article's content actually talk about Classical music from 1800-1900. Another "perfect document" according to everyone here who says that an article's title doesn't define its context. Finally, I write an article called "hacker" which does not imply any particular country or time so it implies "hacker" in all countries in the English-speaking world for all time but I actually write an article about "hacker" that is only understood by people in the United States and applies only to the years 1975 and 1990.
You are arguing from false premises. There is nothing specific about the word "hacker" that "implies the word hacker in all countries in the English-speaking world." Since you are starting from a false premise, it's no surprise that you are reaching ludicrous conclusions. Nandesuka (talk) 02:24, 15 February 2008 (UTC)
Oh yes there is, becuase your article is claiming to be documenting the situation of, and is claiming a total audience of, the entire English-speaking world. The audience of your document implies everything. Are you saying that this article's audience is not the entire English-speaking world? The World Health Organisation use of the word "Food" in its documents, with no disambiguation, I am pretty sure means that "Food" has the same meaning for the intended audience of the document, that is, the whole English-understanding world. Or could it be that every appearance of the word "Food" is disambiguated into "American Food" and "Australian Food" (for example) because they're talking about more than a single country. Define the audience of this article.
Andrew81446 (talk) 09:28, 15 February 2008 (UTC)
(Original post continues...)
Do you know how ridiculous that sounds? Do you actually know what you're saying any more?

Andrew's response to Nandesuka's points

Does the use of the word "hacker", as used in the article, reflect the use of the word in all existing verifiable documentation that exists within the context of the article's title?
That is a badly-formed question, since Wikipedia's content policies do not require conformance with such a requirement -- and, indeed, they forbid such conformance. See WP:FRINGE and WP:UNDUE. Nandesuka (talk) 12:48, 12 February 2008 (UTC)
Wikipedia policy does require all documents to conform to its document, not define policy. That means that, given an article with a context as defined by its title, all sources can only be verifiable if they fall within the context of the article, and so apply to its content in order to verify it. Therefore, it is a very good question, and the question that underlies every article on Wikipedia. And while we talk about WP:FRINGE, my fixed article contained plenty of sources that document, prove, show, however you wish to phrase it, that the whole of the United States isn't talking about hackers in terms of this article. US internet firms don't, US Federal Government doesn't, and the US media (whose content reflects the majority audience incidentally - Equation #5) don't. They all talk about hackers with the same (and only) meaning officially understood outside of the US. So, if anything, the current article violates WP:FRINGE as well as all the other policies I've been citing.
The argument that this extremely well cited article is documenting a "fringe usage" is ridiculous on its face. It is impossible for anyone who has
An infinite amount of supporting documentation can be found to support a fringe claim. However, that doesn't make a fringe subject the documented view of the majority (Lemma #2 of my analysis, Undue Weight and Neutrality policies). I never said it was a badly cited article, and I have never claimed it was poorly researched. You enjoy attempting to stuff words that were never said into people mouths. I said (1) it's an article whose context doesn't match its title and violates Wikipedia dictionary policy by attempting to define and give opinions. Due this fact, (2) the content does not document the subject across the entire English-speaking world, (3) uses language that is rooted only the culture of one country even though you are claiming that this documents a world subject, and (4) contains too much jargon for a document aimed at non-IT people as well as IT.
Andrew81446 (talk) 09:28, 15 February 2008 (UTC)
I am claiming that it is impossible to make the claim that this usage is a fringe usage, given the particular supporting documentation. The article's content does, in fact, match its title. The fact that you are reading words into the title that aren't there is, quite simply, your problem, and not Wikipedia's. Nandesuka (talk)
read the article to make such a ridiculous argument in good faith. Since I am a big believer in assuming good faith, my conclusion is that you haven't actually read the article. Nandesuka (talk) 02:24, 15 February 2008 (UTC)
Don't butt into people's posts. It's rude and makes the original posts unreadable. Kindly wait until they finish talking.
Andrew81446 (talk) 09:28, 15 February 2008 (UTC)
If you don't want to engage in discussion, don't post on a discussion page. You are welcome to talk here, but you are not welcome to issue directives about how others may participate. Nandesuka (talk) 13:11, 15 February 2008 (UTC)
(Original post continues...)
I notice this article has been locked for one week which means everyone can divert their efforts to finding evidence to back up the counter-claims they're making. The latest counter-claim is that:
Your premise (that an article's context is "defined" by its title) is ... wrong (Nandesuka) 12:48, 12 February 2008 (UTC)
That is, the title of an article does not define its context.
I would like to see evidence to back up this claim. Seeing as everyone thinks they're correct in this matter then please show me, from the literally infinite supply of documents written and in existence, the enormous corpus of articles that show that the content of the article doesn't conform to the context created by its title. And those articles must be articles that conform to Wikipedia's Verifiability Policy as that analysis, and this debate, are occurring purely within that context. I do have one such article to get you started, though: Hacker.
The core policy at issue here -- which is official Wikipedia policy, not a guideline -- is Wikipedia:Naming_conventions. That policy states:
Generally, article naming should give priority to what the majority of English
speakers worldwide would most easily recognize, with a reasonable minimum
of ambiguity, while at the same time making linking to those articles
easy and second nature.
Participants on this talk page have presented volumes -- mountains, in fact -- of evidence showing that the usage of "Hacker" presented here is easily recognized by the majority of English speakers worldwide, with a reasonable minimum of ambiguity. To the extent that you wish to make the claim that a majority of English speakers worldwide would not even recognize a definition that is in the OED, the burden of proof is on you. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Nandesuka (talk) 13:11, 15 February 2008 (UTC)
A good place to start looking for such evidence is the article's references section. Seeing as you evidently haven't actually read it, I guess I understand your conclusion. Hopefully, once you read the article and follow up on the references, you'll understand why your argument seems to make no sense to those that have read the material under discussion. Nandesuka (talk) 02:24, 15 February 2008 (UTC)
No, I was talking about your claim. I would like see evidence to backup your claim. The claim that you made:
Your premise (that an article's context is "defined" by its title) is ... wrong (Nandesuka) 12:48, 12 February 2008 (UTC)
That is, the title of an article does not define its context.
I was talking about evidence to backup this claim. You are using this claim in an attempt to backup your original claims that my edits to the page are unfounded, are you not? You said this and now I want evidence to backup this claim otherwise your blocking my edits is unfounded.
Andrew81446 (talk) 09:28, 15 February 2008 (UTC)
An article's context is defined by its lede, not its title. This is self-evident, and is as elementary as saying that articles on English Wikipedia should be written in English glyphs rather than Cyrillic or Katakana. If you are seriously disputing that, then I am beginning to come around to rtc's view on your participation here. Nandesuka (talk) 13:17, 15 February 2008 (UTC)
The Wikipedia policy on naming conventions does not cover the situations where the title is a single word in the English language that has been proven not to have the same meaning across all countries in the English-speaking world, English Wikipedia's intended audience. That is why the phrase "the majority of English speakers worldwide" is a phrase that is not applicable to such titles and, being also applicable to how disambiguation entries are decided, it is not an issue that disambiguation can solve either.
Dictionaries are the only sources that can physically verify this point and the evidence is unequivocal. The Oxford Dictionary for usage outside of the US defines a hacker as a criminal only. The Mirriam-Webster Dictionary for usage inside the US defines a hacker as both a criminal and "an expert at programming and solving problems with a computer". As these meanings are different, application of naming policy on a word in the English language constitutes an attempt to redefine a word in another country based on a group of editors' opinions that one meaning is understood by more of a "majority" than the other. Such definitions are a direct contradiction of Wikipedia policy on defining, on documenting (which was specifically designed to prevent such a situation) and so cannot be allowed. The naming policy itself is showing itself to have a flaw and should be modified to make sure that editors' opinions (or prejudices) as to what constitutes a "majority" doesn't allow them to effectively dictate how people in their own countries should interpret a single word of English that may have a different regional meaning to that the editors know.
Andrew81446 (talk) 05:48, 18 February 2008 (UTC)
I find it ironic that you claim that dictionaries' stance on this is "unequivocal" in the same paragraph in which you choose to quote the Oxford concise dictionary instead of the real OED, which of course endorses the definitions that you so strenuously disagree with. Since you've been told about the existence of those definitions -- repeatedly -- I can only view this as cherry picking. Which, it seems to me, is a pretty equivocal activity. Nandesuka (talk) 06:10, 18 February 2008 (UTC)
There is nothing ironic about it at all. The Full OED is a historical dictionary that lists all English over all time (on record). My proposed article follows that history by devoting its first sections to the good meaning and the latter sections to the current meaning, thus being neutral and balanced. This discussion already happened with Colonel Warden further back on this talk page but you have forced me to repeat his conversation because you didn't read the official OED product discription on Oxford University Press's website, a section of which is reproduced below:
The OED covers words from across the English-speaking world... [and] As the OED is a historical
dictionary, its entry structure is very different from that of a dictionary of current English,
in which only present-day senses are covered.
Incidentally, Colonel Warden's quotation of the OED shows that outside of the US, the non-criminal use of the word hacker in IT-related documents and publications cannot be traced beyond 1986. So, my use of the Oxford Concise version (the "dictionary of current English" referred to in the Full OED's product description) was deliberate, not "ironic", as the Concise version defines current usage by stripping the phrases that are not in common use (clearly stated in its synopsis and in its official product description). It is called "Concise" for this reason, not because it has current definitions removed to make it more compact, which is why all definitions for hack (1 2) are included.
Andrew81446 (talk) 06:37, 18 February 2008 (UTC)


(Original post continues)
As to Army1987's comments about the article title, that is probably the closest to proper sense that has ensued in this entire debate, and my analysis points to exactly that. Unfortunately, the disambiguation titles for "hacker" all use language rooted in the United States as well ("Hobbyist Hackers" do not exist outside of the US - show be documents that prove that they do). Therefore, I propose a new title for the current article of "Hacker (United States)" which would remove any necessity to edit the article at all and all bias claims would disappear. Furthermore, having only US-only sources would suddenly be sufficient as the title specifically states that context. And we can start afresh with a new article that documents the word "hacker" according to all countries in the English-speaking world from the start to the present day.
Andrew81446 (talk) 12:44, 13 February 2008 (UTC)
You are repeating yourself, troll, and still fail to communicate in a civil and sufficiently concise manner. Please learn that before replying here again. Don't ever post here again before you have managed that. --rtc (talk) 14:10, 13 February 2008 (UTC)
So are you. And you haven't answered my questions. Please answer my questions before replying to me again. I'll repeat them again here for convenience:
1) Do you believe that language is used to describe and communicate about the things around us? [Yes/No]
2) Do you believe that all countries in the English-speaking world have exactly the same culture (e.g. education systems, goverments, policies, currencies, taxation systems, judiciary systems, etc.)? [Yes/No]
3) Do you believe that all countries in the English-speaking world speak exactly the same English? [Yes/No]
Andrew81446 (talk) 09:28, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

One last request, Andrew. You've chided me for engaging in conversation with you -- for replying in-line in your long, extended, wandering ruminations. I have done this because I take you seriously. Previously, you complained that no one was responding to your points at all. This is because your points are not readable enough to respond to in bulk. I did you the courtesy of replying inline so that you would understand that we do take your concerns seriously. Be that as it may, when I replied to you, although you may not have liked that I was "interrupting" you, I did not remove, delete, edit, or move your comments to a different part of this page. In other words, I did not edit your text. You, however, have seen fit to edit mine. Please don't do this again. If you wish to be treated with respect, then you must treat others with the same respect. I will, of course, not complain in the slightest should you respond to my comments in-line, since that is a common (and best) practice here on Wikipedia. Kind regards, Nandesuka (talk) 13:41, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

Respect is defined, amongst other things, as letting people finish "speaking" before you decide to butt into other people's conversations. On Wikipedia this is especially important as the point of "not butting in" is not for the benefit of either you or me. It is so that the person making the original point has his point read to the end by a third party before any counter-claims are made. Butting into a person's point on Wikipedia has the (well known and deliberately used) side-effect of biasing a reader's viewpoint with your response before the reader has even finished reading the original point being made. That is why I let you finish what your "saying" before I reply. I could, with very careful placement of my interspersed comments, completely change the emphasis of what you say, but I don't because I am fair and respect people's right to have their complete say on any issue.
Of course, I assumed Good Faith when I moved your replies out of my post as I did actually re-quote the part of the post to which you were commenting along with your comment. Had I wanted to disrespect you I could have just deleted it.
If reproducing your comments in such a way as to preserve your original critique, and to allow third-parties to actually get to the end of what I was saying without their mind being biased with responses, constitutes disrespect then I apologise. Respect is a two-way process. As we now know where we both stand, I suggest we both try and work around each others' requests.
Thanks in advance for your understanding.
Andrew81446 (talk) 05:48, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

Protected for one week

At this time I've protected the page for one week, due to repeated edit wars. I encourage involved parties to resolve disputes on this talk page, instead of by battling things out with reverts. Page protection is not an endorsement of the current page version. Interested parties may wish to review the protection policy and dispute resolution. – Luna Santin (talk) 20:58, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

{{globalize}} and {{globalize/USA}} tags missing from locked page

{{editprotect}} There is a debate (three months plus) about an article's bias towards the language and culture of a single country, and such a debate is continuing on the talk page for the article. The {{globalize}} tag, used in these very circumstances to warn readers of an article about such a debate, had been "edit-warred" off the page at the instant it got locked. It is requested that the {{globalize}} and/or {{globalize/USA}} tag(s) be re-instated.

Andrew81446 (talk) 09:51, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

 Not done Adding cleanup tags at this point would serve only to inflame an already heated debate. The purpose of the tags is to attract editors to work on the article - the level of activity on this talk page indicates that this is not required. Happy‑melon 11:14, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

Summary of Claims and Counter-claims for Arbitrators

This summary of the articles being debated, and the comments made about those articles, is for the benefit of the Arbitrators in the event their assistance becomes necessary. It covers the entire discussion regarding bias in the current article since the 1st November, 2007. All claims and counter-claims that have been made by all parties, anonymous and named, are included. The summary itself is not a comment or a proposal and so requires no response. However, it might be incomplete and so any omissions should be added by the relevant parties.

NOTES

  1. All information is plain text quoted directly from the version control system, including all spelling and grammatical errors. Each claim is reproduced with its original date. All formatting in claims (e.g. bold, italic, or hyperlinking) as been stripped, the rationale being that a quotation may end half-way through a formatting block and attempts to reinsert formatting for the sake of quotation could seriously affect the original intended emphasis of the claim.
  2. A "claim" has been interpreted as (1) a definitive statement made about something that is considered right or wrong with either of the articles being disputed, or (2) a definitive statement made in response to any claim (according to (1)) made by another person. Statements including, or prefixed by, phrases like (but not limited to) "I think that...", "It looks like...", "It seems like...", "From the evidence...", "On the whole...", "It necessary that...", have all been classed as opinions and have been omitted.
  3. No paraphrasing has been performed. Where a claim had an opinion inserted in the middle of it, an ellipsis ("...") has been used. Where the original word order of the claim results in it being misunderstood when taken in isolation, square brackets ("["..."]") have been used to insert the original context. All context insertions and removals should be verified by each claim's original author.
  4. Any claims that are believed to have been omitted should be added by the relevant party who made the claim in accordance with the above interpretation of what constitutes a claim.
  5. This is a summary. It is not a list so that people can choose which claims they wish to submit and which ones they wish to retract. Attempted correction, removal or concealment of any claim, as well as being visible in the page edit history, will be noted for the Arbitrators attention.
  6. Information in this summary should be locatable in the original version history by taking the entire quote (or any part between two ellipsis/square bracket points), URL, etc. and doing a literal string search on that quote in a browser on the rendered document (not the page source as formatting has been removed). No claim should be added that does not pass this test.

Thank you.

Andrew81446 (talk) 10:08, 18 February 2008 (UTC)


Articles under discussion


People who have significantly contributed to the debate regarding the claims being made
(If any of this information is incorrect then please correct it).

Andrew81446 (not United States, IT related)
rtc (United States, IT related)
Pengo (Nationality not determinable, IT related)
Cyrius (United States, IT-related)
Kirrus (not United States, IT-related)
Colonel Warden (not United States, IT relationship not determinable)
Nandesuka (United States, IT-related)
Army1987 (not United States, IT-related)


Claims being made against disputed article with respect to bias
(In chronological order)

  1. English, as a language, is not the exclusive preserve of a single nation. Andrew81446 09:55, 1 November 2007 (UTC)
  2. Wikipedia is used by non-English speakers as the bible about the English speaking world when it comes to learning about both language and culture [in the English-speaking world]. Andrew81446 09:55, 1 November 2007 (UTC)
  3. In the [Oxford Concise] UK dictionary, of which the Oxford series is an authority, the "good" meaning of the word "hack" does not exist at all. It is not even acknowledged as having been imported from the US. Andrew81446 09:55, 1 November 2007 (UTC)
  4. The [disputed article's] title and mostly US-biased references incorrectly (and purposefully) mislead readers into thinking that the information presented is the most widely accepted interpretation in the English-speaking world. Andrew81446 02:37, 6 November 2007 (UTC)
  5. "neutrality" means presentationally neutral, not just informationally neutral... as this article (under its current title) is not presentationally neutral ..., this article, or its title/categorisation, should be modifed. Andrew81446 09:17, 7 November 2007 (UTC)
  6. The entire focus of the previous [disputed] article was geared at US-educated, technical people and to trying to ... solve the US-centred Hacker Debate. Andrew81446 17:34, 22 December 2007 (UTC)
  7. The criminal notion of hacking is enshrined in the laws of numerous countries including the United States, where even the US Department of Justice uses the words as normal vernacular. Andrew81446 17:34, 22 December 2007 (UTC)
  8. Outside of the US, the term "hacker" only has a single, undebated meaning (that of criminal) Andrew81446 11:13, 23 December 2007 (UTC)
  9. Any term that attempts to distinguish good hackers from bad ones has absolutely no validity within a context (e.g. a country) where the word "hacker" already has only one, undebated, understood meaning Andrew81446 20:40, 24 December 2007 (UTC)
  10. Talking about hackers under the general keyword "hacker" without mentioning in any way the legalities or history of criminal hacking is absolutely biased Andrew81446 20:20, 26 December 2007 (UTC)
  11. The definition of "hacker", as written, doesn't match my experience in 24+ years programming and growing up around programmers. ... Usage of "hacker" to mean "computer enthusiast" and the new term "cracker" seem to be an attempt to control the usage of language. 69.231.200.128 18:54, 28 December 2007 (UTC) (Location: San Francisco 94107, United States)
  12. I am merely documenting the current situation in the entire of the English speaking world, not just a single part of it. Andrew81446 13:47, 2 January 2008 (UTC)
  13. The previous article did not explain any history about the hacker at all, which goes back over 40 years. Andrew81446 09:46, 7 January 2008 (UTC)
  14. The previous article did not explain anything to do with the hacker's techniques, which apply to ALL hackers. Andrew81446 09:46, 7 January 2008 (UTC)
  15. References are not just for additional information so that "readers can read about described views in more detail". References are there to substantiate information (i.e. provide information that verifies a claim). Andrew81446 09:46, 7 January 2008 (UTC)
  16. [The Hacker] debate was, and still is, United States specific. ... The result of that US-specific debate was that English Language in the United States only changed to include the "non-criminal" use of the word "hacker". Andrew81446 10:17, 9 January 2008 (UTC)
  17. A dictionary documents language within the regions for which it is purporting jurisdiction. Andrew81446 09:08, 15 January 2008 (UTC)
  18. Wikipedia is not a democracy. Andrew81446 09:08, 15 January 2008 (UTC)
  19. This dispute is about the native English-speaking world. Andrew81446 09:08, 15 January 2008 (UTC)
  20. Wikipedia is there to document all aspects of a subject, not just specific parts of it. Andrew81446 09:08, 15 January 2008 (UTC)
  21. English Wikipedia primarily exists to document events and culture in the English-speaking world. Andrew81446 09:08, 15 January 2008 (UTC)
  22. English Wikipedia is primarily aimed at people in the English-speaking world. ...all verifiable sources must be given in English unless where possible. ...articles on Wikipedia must document all corners of the English-speaking world, not a single part of it. Andrew81446 14:53, 17 January 2008 (UTC)
  23. Wikipedia demands sources that are verifiable within context. ... Claims within the article's context that cannot be verified constitute original research. Andrew81446 14:53, 17 January 2008 (UTC)
  24. The [disputed] article attempts to define a hacker when Wikipedia is not a dictionary, it uses jargon and speaks like a reference manual when Wikipedia is not manual. Andrew81446 14:53, 17 January 2008 (UTC)
  25. The disputed article, through deliberate non-disambiguation of the region to which it applies, is biased and gives hefty undue weight to the United States Academia/IT-professionals by not documenting what is understood and used by people (especially non-IT people) throughout the entire English-speaking world. Andrew81446 11:36, 28 January 2008 (UTC)
  26. It's not so much the region as the context which matters. Colonel Warden 18:55, 28 January 2008 (UTC)
  27. The [new proposed] article ... retains all of the definitions for all of the terminology from the original article plus those other statements that were re-usable. Andrew81446 11:57, 29 January 2008 (UTC)
  28. Impact on local culture within a wider context is absolutely not a prerequisite for inclusion when documenting the events as they have happened. ... The relevance and impact you talk about is with respect to your culture; not all culture in the English-speaking world, and that is the context that the disputed article is written in. Andrew81446 10:42, 30 January 2008 (UTC)
  29. The statement that the "hacker community" is worldwide, and the statement that the "hacker community" use and understand the same United States based English regardless of which local region they are in, are not the same thing. Andrew81446 11:35, 5 February 2008 (UTC)
  30. The phrase "hacker subculture" is United-States specific. The subculture may exist outside the United States but it is not called the hacker "subculture". In some places it has a different phrase, and in other places its not called anything at all because such a subculture doesn't exist to the extent that it does within the United States. Andrew81446 11:35, 5 February 2008 (UTC)
  31. Hacking outside of the United States means any kind of hacking. Breaking licensing in software, breaking network restrictions in mobile phones, copying CDs, as well as breaking into institutions using a telecommunications link, are all included. It is not internet security specific. Andrew81446 11:35, 5 February 2008 (UTC)
  32. If every [hypertext] link in an article had to be pressed in order not to be misinformed a single Wikipedia article would take days to read. People take things at face value and that's a fact. Andrew81446 10:58, 8 February 2008 (UTC)
  33. English Wikipedia to a foreign person is just that: English Wikipedia, the entire English-speaking world. [A foreign person will] think that everywhere that speaks English had a club called [The Model Railroad Club] becuase the article's title and context apply to the whole English-speaking world. Andrew81446 10:58, 8 February 2008 (UTC)
  34. The target audience for the perfect article is simply the unification of all (not necessarily overlapping) target audiences for the article's different sections. Andrew81446 12:33, 12 February 2008 (UTC)
  35. A Wikipedia article, ... if it perfectly adheres to Wikipedia Core Policy about documenting a notion, not defining it, ... cannot contain any new information, new assertions or new claims that have not already been documented elsewhere. Andrew81446 12:33, 12 February 2008 (UTC)
  36. A document can only be verified by the people who originally formed the target audience of (and so basically understand) its sources. Andrew81446 12:33, 12 February 2008 (UTC)
  37. The target audience for a the perfect article is exactly the combined target audiences for all the article's sources. Andrew81446 12:33, 12 February 2008 (UTC)
  38. An article is not complete unless the entire context, as defined by its title, is documented within the body of the article itself. Andrew81446 12:33, 12 February 2008 (UTC)


Documents offered to support the claims being made
(These documents appear only on the talk page and are in addition to those appearing in any article)

  1. Computer Associates (United States)
  2. Hewlett Packard (United States)
  3. Oxford University Press (non-United States) (word: enthusiasm)
  4. non-US US (non-United States) (word: propaganda)
  5. Dell (United States)
  6. Le Figaro (France)
  7. Microsoft (United States)
  8. Prospectus for Carleton University Computer Science Courses (Canada, top 5 University (Source: Maclean's University Guide))
  9. Sydney Morning Herald (Australia)
  10. IBM (United States)
  11. Merriam-Webster (United States) (word: hacker)
  12. Oxford Concise Dictionary (non-United States) (word: hacker1)
  13. Oxford Concise Dictionary (non-United States) (word: hacker2)
  14. Oxford English Dictionary (non-United States)
  15. Roget's Thesaurus (all countries) (word: enthusiast)


Sources cited in the new proposed article to support its content

  1. United States Department of Justice - 18 U.S.C §§1831-1839 Theft of Commercial Trade Secrets (United States)
  2. United Kingdom Office of Public Sector Information - Terrorism Act 2006 ¶16 (United Kingdom)
  3. United States Department of Justice, Computer Crime & Intellectual Property Section - Summary of Computer Crime Cases (United States)
  4. United States Department of Justice, Computer Crime and Intellectual Property Section - Press Releases (United States)
  5. $70M bank scam foiled; 7 charged - USA Today Newspaper Archives, 19th May 1988 (United States)
  6. Police Swoop on 'hacker of the year' - The Sydney Morning Herald, 15th November, 2007 (Australia)
  7. Dangerous Decisions: Problem Solving in Tomorrow's World - Enum Mumford. ISBN-13: 978-0306461439. Pages 161-165 (paperback)
  8. Edward Cherlin, Simputer Evangelist and son of George Yale Cherlin, Ph.D, courtesy of www.oldcomputers.com (Europe)
  9. New York Times, 20th August 2007 - "JoyBubbles, 58, Peter Pan of Phone Hackers, Dies" (Online Version: delete cookies before viewing) (United States)
  10. Origins of Phreaking - Gary Robson (United States)
  11. John Draper interviewed in early 1995 by Tom Barbalet, software programmer and Co-Chair of Intellectual Property Rights Special Interest Group (United States)
  12. The Trials of Kevin Mitnick - CNN Special Report, 1999 (United States)
  13. Biography of Kevin Mitnick - Courtesy of Takedown.com
  14. Prominent Hacker Mitnick Hacked - BBC News Online, 11th February, 2003 (United Kingdom)
  15. Teenage Hacker Unlocks the iPhone - BBC News Online, 25th August, 2007 (United Kingdom)
  16. Apple Inc. Press Releases - Apple Chooses Cingular as Exclusive US Carrier for Its Revolutionary iPhone, January 7th 2007 (United States)
  17. Legal Threats Halt iPhone Crack - BBC News Online, 28th August 2007 (United Kingdom)
  18. The Digital Millenium Copyright Act of 1998, U.S. Copyright Office Summary - Library of Congress (United States)
  19. Library of Congress, United States Copyright Office - Fair Use (United States)
  20. Canadian Hacker worked with MPAA to combat BitTorrent downloads - Financial Post, 22nd October, 2007 (Canada)
  21. The Library of Greek Mythology - Apollodorus (translation by Robin Hard) ISBN-13: 978-0192839244 (United Kingdom)
  22. How Viruses Work - Craig C. Freudenrich, Ph.D. Courtesy of How Stuff Works
  23. The Shockwave Rider - John Brunner ISBN-13: 978-0345324313 (United States)
  24. Xerox Parc - Innovation Milestones (United States)
  25. The "Worm" Programs - early experience with a distributed computation. Shoch, J.F and Hupp, J.A. Palo Alto Research Center NY: ACM; 1999; 19-27 (United States)
  26. Symantec Corporation: Security Responses - W32.Blaster.Worm (United States)
  27. Wireless World Is Vulnerable - National Post, 6th December, 2007 (Canada)


Counter-claims being made against the claims of bias in the disputed article
(In chronological order)

  1. [It's Incorrect] to say that "each word [of language] is interpreted according to the cultural frame within which the listener has grown up". rtc 19:48, 4 November 2007 (UTC)
  2. There is no such thing as a cultural frame. Cultural frames are chimera of postmodernism. rtc 14:34, 4 November 2007 (UTC)
  3. Cultural frames [of reference] simply do not exist. rtc 14:34, 6 November 2007 (UTC)
  4. There is nothing different about the common understanding of hacker in the US. rtc 14:34, 6 November 2007 (UTC)
  5. There is no such thing as "evidence" (the same way that there is no such thing as cultural frames) rtc 19:03, 8 November 2007 (UTC)
  6. Your whole basic point is wrong, that there is something like an authoritative use of words, or that the plurality of uses of the word hacker is any different outside of the US than it is inside the US. rtc 15:32, 23 December 2007 (UTC)
  7. Hacker does not mean a criminal. Ever. Pengo 04:57, 24 December 2007 (UTC)
  8. Hacker [is] the more general, but less used term. Pengo 22:00, 24 December 2007 (UTC)
  9. Wikipedia seeks no "verifiable evidence" to "support" claims in articles rtc 18:54, 29 December 2007 (UTC)
  10. Even if the understanding of hacker were any other outside of the US than inside the US, which is not true, ... rtc 10:23, 6 January 2008 (UTC)
  11. References are necessary, but not because they "verify" anything (which they don't). They are necessary for the readers to be given the opportunity to read about the described views more in detail. And they are necessary for the editors to check whether the view is correctly described. rtc 10:23, 6 January 2008 (UTC)
  12. Much of this [new proposed] article refers to crackers. ... They are two very different groups. 67.141.215.252 21:51, 7 January 2008 (UTC) (Location: Pennsylvania 15857, United States)
  13. Sources must be "verifiable", but they may not be used as evidence or to verify claims you want to put into the article. You may only use the source if the source says so. rtc 11:06, 9 January 2008 (UTC)
  14. You are creating an original theory to explain why the definition of hacker in this dictionary and that dictionary differ, while both happen to be from different countries. You give no relevant source that holds this theory of yours. rtc 13:58, 10 January 2008 (UTC)
  15. [I'm an] IT professional in Canada. My own experience is that, in fact, the pejorative usage of hacker meaning "criminal" is not the definitive international meaning, among IT professionals and amateurs. 216.144.119.132 20:17, 11 January 2008 (UTC) (Location: Valcourt, Quebec, Canada)
  16. The oxford [Concise Dictionary] definition you link is a limited definition, and incomplete based on modern published usage -- in multiple languages and continents. here 03:13, 14 January 2008 (UTC)
  17. The prosecution section [in the new proposed article] seems excessive and overly recent [for inclusion] here 03:13, 14 January 2008 (UTC)
  18. I am someone who works in the IT industry in the UK, I have come across all the terms "White Hat", "Black Hat", "Hacker", "Hacking" etc. Kirrus 12:49, 23 January 2008 (UTC)
  19. Relevance is given by the overall cultural impact. The Open Source/Free Software community may not be known so much, and even where it is known may not be associated so much with the word hacker in the general public. But it had a huge impact on our society ... and hence this article has to describe that. rtc 19:24, 29 January 2008 (UTC)
  20. I find your claim that non-IT people and non-US English people will not "understand" the article to be without any merit whatsoever. ... The proper way to handle this is through disambiguation, not through insisting that your pet (atypical) definition should replace an existing article. Nandesuka 12:55, 5 February 2008 (UTC)
  21. TMRC already implies that it is in the US, and Homebrew Computer Club also implies that it is in the US. rtc 13:06, 5 February 2008 (UTC)
  22. That one meaning is more prevalent than a different one here than there is hardly of any significance at all. It is false that how something is understood by the "intended audience" in any way matters for how an article should be written. rtc 13:06, 5 February 2008 (UTC)
  23. I agree that "the current opening paragraph does not fairly document the word 'hacker', as appearing in non-US contexts such as an Australian book, a Canadian Newspaper, or a British software programmer's blog". In fact, it does not document the word "hacker" at all, and doing so would not be its purpose. rtc 13:06, 5 February 2008 (UTC)
  24. If one doesn't know a phrase and can't figure it out from the context, they can just follow the link. Army1987 14:28, 5 February 2008 (UTC)
  25. Wikipedia's job isn't exclusively documenting words used in mainstream English as of 2008. Army1987 15:21, 6 February 2008 (UTC)
  26. Your premise (that an article's context is "defined" by its title) is already wrong. Nandesuka 12:48, 12 February 2008 (UTC)
  27. There is nothing specific about the word "hacker" that "implies the word hacker in all countries in the English-speaking world." Nandesuka 02:24, 15 February 2008 (UTC)


Documents offered to support the counter-claims being made
(These documents appear only on the talk page and are in addition to those appearing in any article)

  1. "Die Hacker: Strukturanalyse einer jugendlichen Subkultur" -- "the hackers: structural analysis of a youthful subculture" (Germany)
  2. Oxford English Dictionary (non-United States)

Sources cited in the disputed article to support its content

  1. Fred Shapiro: Antedating of "Hacker". American Dialect Society Mailing List (13. June 2003) (United States)
  2. "webzone.k3.mah.se/k3jolo/HackerCultures/origins.htm". (Sweden)
  3. See the 1981 version of the Jargon File, entry "hacker", last meaning. (United States)
  4. "Computer hacking: Where did it begin and how did it grow?". WindowSecurity.com. October 16, 2002. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help) (United States)
  5. Detroit Free Press, September 27, 1983 {{citation}}: Missing or empty |title= (help)CS1 maint: date and year (link) (United States)
  6. Elmer-DeWitt, Philip (Aug. 29, 1983), "The 414 Gang Strikes Again", Time magazine, pp. p. 75 {{citation}}: |pages= has extra text (help); Check date values in: |date= (help)CS1 maint: date and year (link) (United States)
  7. "Beware: Hackers at play", Newsweek, pp. pp. 42-46, 48, September 5, 1983 {{citation}}: |pages= has extra text (help)CS1 maint: date and year (link) (United States)
  8. "Timeline: The U.S. Government and Cybersecurity". Washington Post. 2002. Retrieved 2006-04-14. (United States)
  9. David Bailey, "Attacks on Computers: Congressional Hearings and Pending Legislation," sp, p. 180, 1984 IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy, 1984.
  10. Eric S. Raymond: A Brief History of Hackerdom (2000) (United States)
  11. "www.faqs.org/docs/artu/ch20s06.html".
  12. Graham, Paul (2004). "Great Hackers". (United States)
  13. See for example the MIT Gallery of Hacks (United States)
  14. http://www.catb.org/~esr/jargon/html/P/phreaking.html (United States)
  15. Thompson, Ken (August 1984). "Reflections on Trusting Trust" (PDF). Communications of the ACM. 27 (8).
  16. http://gnu.mirrorspace.org/philosophy/rms-hack.html (United States)
  17. http://www.catb.org/~esr/jargon/html/C/cracker.html (United States)
  18. http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/pt03.html#bibliography (United States)
  19. http://www.catb.org/~esr/jargon/html/magic-story.html (United States)

FAO All Editors: Consensus and Bias with respect to an article's Intended Audience

Consensus

The concept of consensus is that all people agree before taking some kind of action. In the context of Wikipedia articles, all decisions about the article's title, and content with respect to that title, should be taken with the consensus of all editors for the article. For the consensus system to work properly, however, key fundamentals about the article's audience must be defined beforehand so that discussions regarding an article's content can be interpreted correctly, allowing editors to ascertain if fixes are necessary and to what degree they are necessary. Only then can consensus can be reached on whether the article's content is neutral, or biased, with respect to that audience.

As no statement has ever been made defining the exact intended audience of the current (disputed) aricle, every claim regarding content not matching the context of the article has been evaded, and arguments have continued relentlessly. Therefore, I am now calling on all the editors who are involved in the current article to define their article's intended audience. Below is a set of questions I have formulated for determining the intended audience of an article about hackers on English Wikipedia. Each question has a number of possible answers but has been designed so that only one answer is possible from its list of responses, so leading to an unambiguous definition of the intended audience.


Audience Questions

What is the current article's intended audience with respect to:

A1) IT industry association?
  • Only IT people
  • Only non-IT people
  • Both IT and non-IT people
A2) geographic region?
  • United States (and governed territories) only
  • United Kingdom (and sovereign states) only
  • Australia only
  • New Zealand only
  • Canada only
  • Whole English-speaking world
  • Whole World
  • Other (please state)
A3) the English ability of the reader?
  • Native speakers only
  • Native speakers and non-native speakers
A4) possible languages for translation?
  • No translation of the article into other languages is intended
  • Translation of the article into other languages is intended

As there are actually two articles being debated, valid comparisons between the articles is not possible until the intended audience for both articles has been defined. Once the audiences have been defined, comparisons can be made and decisions taken as to what content is most suitable for the audience of an English Wikipedia article. Below are two answer spaces, one for each of the articles being debated. I did not write the current article therefore the editors of the current article should answer the questions for their article. However, I proposed a new article and I did define the audience for the article before I wrote it, hence I have answered the questions for the new article below. Editors of the current article please answer the questions for your article below in the same style that I used for answering.

Intended Audience (Current Article):
A1)
A2)
A3)
A4)
Intended Audience (New Proposed Article):
A1) Both IT and non-IT people
A2) Whole English-speaking world
A3) Native speakers and non-native speakers
A4) Translation from English into other languages other is intended

The Consensus policy states that all editors views should be taken on board when writing an article. Therefore, as I have been involved in the debate about the current article as well, I have stated below what I believe the current article's intended audience should be, were it to be fixed:

Intended Audience (Current Article) (as proposed by Andrew81446):
A1) Both IT and non-IT people
A2) Whole English-speaking world
A3) Native speakers and non-native speakers
A4) Translation from English into other languages other is intended


Bias

The concept of Bias is that of the content of an article not reflecting a neutral or balanced account of the article's subject as seen from the point of view of the article's intended audience. In the context of Wikipedia, the editors of an article create bias which is then experienced by the readers of the article. As this is English Wikipedia, it is expected that all people in the English-speaking world are able to read, and have the option to contribute to, any article. However, the reality is that while most people do read Wikipedia articles, most choose not to contribute to them. Therefore, in order for the consensus system to guarantee, given the severe lack of editors, that bias is not experienced when an article is read, it is imperative that those who do edit articles take into consideration the geographic, cultural, and linguistic diversity of English Wikipedia's entire intended audience with respect to every content decision made on any article.

In normal cases, the concept of "Good Faith" allows one to assume that the comments of all editors do indeed take into account all the diversity of English Wikipedia's entire audience. However, the debate ensuing on this page has shown categorically that "good faith" cannot be assumed so I have constructed a set of questions, for each editor to answer, to enable the fundamental extent to which consensus is possible among editors to be determined. The questions ask an editor to declare how they believe English Wikipedia's audience to be comprised. Unlike the definition of an article's intended audience, which obviously must be decided before an article can be written, this is purely voluntary and all editors are being invited to participate.

Belief Quesions

Do you believe that:

B1) the intended audience of English Wikipedia is made up of citizens from more than one country? [Yes/No] (If "No", state country)
B2) the culture in all countries making up the audience of English Wikipedia is shared and identical? [Yes/No]
B3) each country served by English Wikipedia uses its own dialect of English, with its own grammar and meanings for words? [Yes/No]

The version control system for this page shows that the people who have contributed to this debate and/or have made edits to the page are as follows:

I have answered the questions in place. For other users who wish to declare their views, would you please enter your answers in the space opposite your name in a similar style to me.


Conclusion

This entire post is an invitation to the editorial community to determine the two most important prerequisites for any article on Wikipedia over and above its content. These are:

1) the intended audience of the article
2) the scope of the consensus that is possible between the article's editors

If the intended audience for an article is not defined before an article is written, or the beliefs of just one editor with regards to how English Wikipedia's audience is comprised are not known by all editors involved, then consensus will almost certainly be impossible and bias in the article will be inevitable (as has been demonstrated in the "Hacker" article).

The lock on the "Hacker" article will eventually expire meaning that editing on it will be resumed. However, if an editor makes any change to the article's content without (a) the article's audience being defined and publicly stated, or (b) that editor's views as to how they perceive English Wikipedia's audience to be comprised being publicly stated, I shall lodge the existing claims of irreparable bias to the Arbtration Committee, citing that the bias stems from a failure in the consensus system, caused almost certainly by partiality among contributing editors.

Andrew81446 (talk) 10:18, 18 February 2008 (UTC)


Sources Used in the Disputed Article

A look at the currently disputed article sees Paul Graham being cited as a source, with the article "Great Hackers" being referenced with respect to the section on the Open Source movement. Mr. Graham appears respected in the US (where he grew up and was educated) academic and hacking communities, which is why I am curious that more of his views on this subject have not been cited. In particular, a very thorough insight into the US word "hacker" itself. What could be more pertinent to the focus of the current article?

If a source is going to be cited, then wouldn't it be better that a full balance of a source's opinions that are pertinent to the subject being documented be put into the article? Quoting only one half (or one side) of someone's opinions means effectively manipulating a living person's point of view to suit one's own and amounts to misquotation. And Mr. Graham holds nothing back as he states that hacking, in the sense documented in the currently disputed article, is purely a facet of the United States, and he offers no words about the "hacker scene" in terms of any other country. I won't quote him - read the "entire" article for yourselves.

In a similar vein, the Swedish source Jonas Löwgren, who is cited for writing the article "Hacker Culture(s)" (at the untitled URL: http://webzone.k3.mah.se/k3jolo/HackerCultures/sources.htm in the article itself), writes an article that looks pretty similar to the one being disputed, and this is borne out with a look at the sources for his article which show that his sources have exactly the same scope as, and in some cases are identical to, this article. Meaning that not only is Mr. Löwgren's document US-specific as his sources are only US-specific, but on a verifiability level it puts his article on the same level as this Wikipedia article, effectively meaning that it is Questionable as it does not appear to draw on any sources that are better grounded than the ones appearing the Wikipedia article that references it. Having said that, quite by accident, I do notice that his interpretation of the first hacker is the same as the new proposed article, citing the 1960s and a programmer on the (ex-military) computing project that went on to form the heart of the MIT AI laboratory.

Which returns me to the entire crux of this debate: if the "hacker scene", as observed by a prominent and respected insiders, is US-specific, what is it doing taking up the majority of an article that is for the entire of English Wikipedia's intended audience? Quite by accident, his observations on the history of the word "hacker" mirror the description that is documented in the various parts of the proposed new article, showing that the new proposed article documents, not defines, what as been independently observed by both US and non-US IT-related people in different parts of the world.

Andrew81446 (talk) 10:46, 18 February 2008 (UTC)


Non-US/non-IT people in agreement about bias claims

I'm a school teacher from the United Kingdom. I am not related to IT in any way and I don't normally edit on Wikipedia, but I just had to leave a comment on this (with the technical help of a friend, of course) when I noticed something amiss with this article. It does not document any history or anything to do with hacking. My internet connection doesn't work every now and then, or my email has a virus, and I wanted to know about how hackers do these things. That is what I consider Wikipedia to be for. However, what I found was difficult to read, full of acronyms and (American?) words I didn't understand, and as an article which I could use to teach to 14-19 year old children, I think this kind of material is one-sided and does not represent what goes on here in the United Kingdom. After showing the site page to my colleagues, they also agree.

I was researching hackers on the internet and was led to this article. However I was appalled by what I saw as people I personally know in IT (particularly friends and family members who have been programming computers for over 25 years) do not know or relate to any of the information in the article, except maybe for the part on "Computer Security". Hackers are generally considered to be criminals in the United Kingdom and Ireland, where I currently reside. I also have IT friends from Dubai, Australia, and India where hackers are only known in this context. Shouldn’t this article be documenting what is actually going on everywhere so lay readers like me are not being given a single point of view, which does not represent the country I come from? Isn’t Wikipedia meant to represent all points of view or common view?

I found an alternative article, which I saw when scanning over these comments, and it’s been extremely useful. I even gave it to my 16-year-old children, and my 60-year-old father who knows little about computers, and they had no problem understanding it, saying it was very easy to read and very informative (although the legal section was over the children's heads). The alternative article had the information I was looking for about hackers, but the current one opened my eyes to the biased writing that I thought didn't exist on Wikipedia.

As a teacher, I thought Wikipedia was independent, so I thought it would reflect, in part, what appears in UK newspapers and appears on UK television so that it could be used as a reference aid for deeper study of things going on around me. What I have seen on this page, and the attitudes towards people who try and be neutral, is absolutely appalling and it has made me seriously question previous information I have sought from this site. As a consequence, I shall be recommending to my teacher's union of 250,000 members that Wikipedia be removed as a research tool to protect our children, instead recommending that we focus more on the value of good quality, neutral, book-based research. I shall be distributing the alternative article in my classroom even though it is not the main one because as a completely computer-novice, I feel it is interesting, well-written and does not feel like it is trying to push or define something, perfect material for teaching children. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.41.56.30 (talk) 10:39, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

Cutting the Gordian Knot

I have no intention of participating in Andrew81446's pathological games. I propose that his editing, with this last jeremiad -- complete with him speculating, in an absolutely inappropriate manner, on the nationalities and employment status of various editors -- has moved beyond good faith editing into simple disruption. We cannot possibly get work done here under these circumstances.

Accordingly, I propose that this talk page be archived, immediately, and if Andrew81446 wishes to engage in such behavior he work through the dispute resolution process, via an RfC, mediation, or through an arbitration committee case. Please indicate whether you support or oppose this remedy.

Support

  1. Nandesuka (talk) 12:41, 18 February 2008 (UTC)
  2. Kirrus (talk) 13:30, 18 February 2008 (UTC)
  3. rtc (talk) 16:57, 18 February 2008 (UTC) I can't take this busybody seriously; his rants are just sick.
  4. Certes (talk) 17:05, 18 February 2008 (UTC) 248 kilobytes is more than enough for this topic, and it is hard to spot the wheat amongst the chaff.
  5. ∴ here…♠ 06:50, 19 February 2008 (UTC) // no further tolerance necessary. Wikipedia:Disruptive editing , and continued ignorance of Wikipedia:Talk page guidelines (length).

Oppose

Conclusion

Since Andrew81446 has now seen fit to begin using sockpuppets to edit the talk page (see here and compare with this IP's edit on OrangeMarlin's page here, which is part of an earlier conversation here, which is unquestionably Andrew81446's style), and since no one has indicated they oppose the planned remedy, I am implementing it presently. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Nandesuka (talk • contribs) 12:28, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

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