Hi Rupert, as promised here is the other reply.
On Sun, 3 Feb 2013 14:52:40 +0100 rupert THURNER <rupert.thur...@gmail.com> wrote: > hi shlomi, > > what you are doing here might be perceived as having a conflict of > interest and/or doing self promotion. > > you wrote a solver for black hole solitaire. then you create a > wikipedia article about black hole solitaire, mentioning your name and > your software in it, as well linking to your software. OK, I realise it seems bad and it might, however - here is the longer story from what I recall. I recall knowing of a Solitaire variant called http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penguin_%28solitaire%29 , which was featured in some places as similar to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FreeCell and which due to its technical features, I had some reservations about adding support for it to Freecell Solver (can I give a link? oh well). Anyway, I read on its wikipedia page that it was created by a certain creator of games, and that he also created Black Hole Solitaire. This interested me to check it out on and play it on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PySol , and play it and I noticed that I could also create a solver for it relatively easily, which I did (I preferred not to use Freecell Solver for that, because there was a much more compact way to represent the states). Then after I had the solver, I decided to determine which percentage of the deals was solvable, and with the help of “Amadiro” (someone I know) who deployed my solver on the University of Oslo’s high-performance cluster, I was able to solve a large number of deals. And then and only then, I decided to write a page for that on Wikipedia, so people may find it interesting. I realise there's http://cards.wikia.com/ , but not too many people edit it or visit it, and there's otherwise also extensive coverage of card games of all sorts on Wikipedia, despite some heat and resistance from trigger-happy deletionists. I don't mind that someone improves upon this page - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Hole_%28solitaire%29 - and make it a little better (like the old “making soup out of stone” story), and I noticed people making pages a little better in the past, or that I reverted some temporary deletionism that I didn't like, into a better incarnation. But removing it completely is cruel, and sort of like expecting http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_S._Raymond to remove all traces of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fetchmail off his servers, because people think it is: poorly written/has too many bugs/too much hyped and talked about/not very functional/whatever. All of these may be true, but Mr. Raymond (or ESR) eventually decided that he has better things to do with his time, and could not allocate the time to maintain it, so he passed the baton to some other people who had more time, and possible were even more capable software developers than he is. Likewise, if someone wants to take the Black Hole Solitaire page and improve it, then I say “Go for it!” (or “Drive safely, the keys are inside” like we say in Israel based on a skit of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HaGashash_HaHiver ). But do and let do, instead of "do, undo, redo, undo, redo, etc.". (Sorry for the long post). > then you fill > an unrelated mailing list with this topic and link to it. your first > mail in this thread btw, the 30 page long mail, included links to your > website(s) as well. > I think what I said there about Aesop’s The Grandfather, The Boy and the Donkey, Saladin, etc. were on topic here and could be useful food for thought and to implement - it's just that I used associations from my own experience. This is because I didn't think too straight now and because I have some emotional attachment to what I did and experience and care about. I apologise if I sounded too narcissistic (and I may have) but hopefully you can forgive me and get past that and try to deal with my advice. My primary intention in posting the message was to create a more positive wikipedia-editing experience for everyone in the long run, based on psychology, compassion, being “a bigger man”, and less about territoriality, doing things “quick” in order to save time, and being an inconsiderate and short-term thinking bastard (see http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Don%27t_be_a_dick ). Regards, Shlomi Fish > rupert. > > > On Sun, Feb 3, 2013 at 2:18 PM, Shlomi Fish <shlo...@shlomifish.org> wrote: > > Hi Ole, > > > > thanks for your useful and constructive advice. I'll reply below, but note > > that I was speaking from the general/philosophical/strategical > > Point-of-view. > > > > On Sun, 3 Feb 2013 13:22:49 +0100 > > Ole Palnatoke Andersen <o...@palnatoke.org> wrote: > > > ... > > non-native speakers of English (like me) feel that they are > > “men-of-the-world” and will reach a wider audience if they wrote in English > > instead of in their > ... > > As a result, I decided to write > ... > > Solitaire game nicknamed “Baker’s Dozen”) and ... (ditto for “Black > > Hole”) in the English wikipedia and do not really see the point of putting > > it on the Hebrew wikipedia > ... > > Also related is: > > > > * (“Dealing with Internet Trolls > ... > > _______________________________________________ > Gendergap mailing list > Gendergap@lists.wikimedia.org > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/gendergap -- ----------------------------------------------------------------- Shlomi Fish http://www.shlomifish.org/ Parody of "The Fountainhead" - http://shlom.in/towtf sed and awk make me sad and awkward. Please reply to list if it's a mailing list post - http://shlom.in/reply . _______________________________________________ Gendergap mailing list Gendergap@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/gendergap
