[Toybox] 0.6.0 release notes

[Rob Landley]

On 08/07/2015 03:48 PM, enh wrote:
> a couple of things:
> 
> * if wikipedia makes you mad,

More sad than mad, really.

> why don't you tell us what you'd like
> the page to say, then someone can edit it with a link to the mailing
> list post?

Because firsthand knowledge collapses their quantum state as the world's
largest supply of anecodotal evidence. (Excuse me, "comprised of"
anecdotal evidence.) I'm not allowed to edit an article about me, I know
too much. How is telling someone else what changes to make in an article
about me different? It would still contaminate their site with firsthand
knowledge, it's against the rules.

What I'm supposed to do is put up lots of things people can then cite,
because as long as you have a random web page out on the internet you
can link to that makes it real. If the game of telephone goes through
enough cycles, then it's wikipedia-worthy.

So I blogged about this when the wikipedia[citation needed] article
first went up: http://landley.net/notes-2013.html#07-11-2013

I tried copying other people's approaches:
https://twitter.com/neilhimself/status/295649243916550144
https://twitter.com/landley/status/557309224535851009

I put a section about the wikipedia article in my ELC talk in the
spring: http://landley.net/talks/celf-2015.txt

And so on and so forth. Oddly enough I was listening to
http://nerdist.com/nerdist-podcast-leo-laporte/ while I wrote the
release notes and at 23 and a half minutes in they start talking about
how wikipedia gets their personal information wrong, how they're not
allowed to edit their own pages, and what to do about it. (I.E. "Give an
interview, and quote the interview." That's why I'm trying to do.)

I've never personally edited wikipedia on other topics for reasons I
talked about in
http://lists.landley.net/pipermail/aboriginal-landley.net/2011-June/000867.html
(search for "egg freckles"). There's a bunch of reasons for it: tvtropes
exists because of the other site's "notability guidelines", not to
mention the whole war on webcomics thing a few years ago
(http://www.networkworld.com/article/2349453/data-center/wikipedia-at-war-with-web-comic-strips.html).
The first comment on
http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/015099.html is "I really
wish this was news".

My understanding of Wikipedia[citation needed]'s "are you too close to
the subject" policy is about the same as Amazon's "personal connection"
policies about reviews:
http://accrispin.blogspot.com/2015/07/amazons-personal-connection-review.html
I.E. if they think you're involved with the subject, they'll revert it
regardless of being right because how dare you.

That's why I'm not suggesting specific new text, just repeatedly
pointing out that they're persistently factually wrong.

> * on Android's default SIGPIPE signal handler front, i've removed that
> for N (not M), and so far have only received positive feedback.
> (though it's only been a week or two.) at some point we should
> probably remove the hack from toybox (on the assumption that anyone
> using toybox on non-current releases will be using a static binary
> anyway), but it's not causing any harm right now.

Yay!

I'll yank the signal handler next release.

Thanks,

Rob

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