Talk:Hacker/Archive 4

message: 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):
# Consider which country you are from and ask yourself "Does English have the same meaning everywhere in the world where it is used?"
# Read the ongoing Wikipedia project about the amount of inherent bias in Wikipedia articles
# 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)
thread_title: Systemic and Cultural Bias fixed. New Article Posted

message: 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)
thread_title:  More Accurate Definition 

message: 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 . 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 , 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)
replies: text: 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)

text: 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)
thread_title:  Introduction 

message: 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)
thread_title:  Protected for one week 

message: 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  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  and/or  tag(s) be re-instated.
Andrew81446 (talk) 09:51, 15 February 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: 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)
thread_title:  <nowiki>{{globalize}}</nowiki> and <nowiki>{{globalize/USA}}</nowiki> tags missing from locked page 

message: 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
# 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.
# 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.
# 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.
# 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.
# 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.
# 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)
thread_title:  Summary of Claims and Counter-claims for Arbitrators 

message: 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:
* Andrew81446 (B1: Yes) (B2: No) (B3: Yes)
* rtc
* Pengo
* Cyrius
* Kirrus
* Colonel Warden
* Nandesuka
* Army1987
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)
thread_title:  FAO All Editors: Consensus and Bias with respect to an article's Intended Audience 

message: 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)
thread_title:  Sources Used in the Disputed Article 

message: 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)
thread_title:  Non-US/non-IT people in agreement about bias claims 

message: 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===
# Nandesuka (talk) 12:41, 18 February 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Cutting the Gordian Knot 

message: # Nandesuka (talk) 12:41, 18 February 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Support

message: 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)
thread_title: Conclusion