from_name: MHart

body:
> How are the historical documents actually hampering the
> usability of Meta? Point me to a page, category, template, image,

FWIW, I've found Meta to be useful to varying degrees, frustrating in
others. It once lacked any historical tags, and that tripped me up
sometimes. The information in a wiki can be organized to present historical
and current sections, but the software isn't built for it in the same way
that, say, a Blog is.

One of our business units (@ Intuit) is using a wiki for help documentation
on multiple versions and platforms, and we created an information
infrastructure to handle the differing versions and releases and all that.
It took a while for us to work it out.

Overall, I generally hit Meta first when looking for something, or when
pointing people to answers when they have wiki questions (I administer and
host more than 80 wikis for Intuit). Sometimes I have to Google for the
answer, but that's the nature of answers: theorize, experiment, measure,
refine. "I think it's about this, so use these keywords. Hmm, didn't work,
let me try this one."  Meta almost always helps me find the answer, even if
it doesn't have the answer itself.

People need information in varying forms (sample code, overviews,
historical) and in varying styles/lengths (tips, complete explanations,
different contexts, e.g. Windows or Linux). That's the power of a wiki. We
phrase the power as the ability to give the "Complete Answer". Not
necessarily the "right" answer - that's different for different people. Nor
even the "best" answer - that's also different. Rather the "most possible
answers".

It's one reason that we hired a library science major and social software
expert to work with us in the iLab: content organization "becomes" king in
wikispace, especially as the amount of content increases. Some organization
is fairly simple and can model the physical: wikipedia entries are
essentially stand-alone within multiple categories. The same isn't true of a
wiki that documents a project. More thought must be put into organization.

Anyway... my two cents - Meta, indeed all wikis, need a clear mission
statement ("A website about/discussion" is a bit unclear, and a wiki isn't a
great tool for discussion, imho) and a foundational organization for
content. The organization can shift over time, but you need the foundation
to recognize the shift as well as to adjust the foundation or bring it back
into alignment.

I'm all for making Meta easier to use, but I'm for making everything easier
to use. Easy for me might be difficult for you...

- Matt Hart
- Intuit Innovation Lab
- Waltham, Ma


list: wikimedia-l

source: pipermail-mbox

subject: [Foundation-l] Meta:MetaProject to Overhaul Meta


list: wikien-l

from_name: charles matthews

subject: [WikiEN-l] Analysis of Request for Adminship

body:
Well, perhaps this was not well done at RfA in the particular case.  But the
argument given is strange and pedantic, really.  To take

"If the nominee fulfills these criteria, then it is Wiki policy that
that person should be granted administrator access"

as the basis of an argument is pedantically strange.  Does that mean that
anyone who votes against is somehow breaching policy?  Or even that anyone
who fails to vote for is going against policy?  I'm not a great fan of RfA
votes, but the voting is a rough way of _determining_ who is trusted.
Arguing that if you are in some abstract sense trusted then people have to
vote for you is odd.

Charles


from_name: geni

body:
On 3/31/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 3/31/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> > >    * if the nominee is "generally a known and trusted member of the community".
> >
> > And this is where the attempt to rule lawer from outdated policy
> > breaks down. You can count the number of people generally know to the
> > current wikipedia community one hand. Thus we have to accept that
> > either there should be almost no new admins or that policy is failing
> > to describe wikipedia practice and needs to be rewriten.
>
> Tyrenius's interpretation of this rule seems to be that amongst those
> who have had contact with him, he is respected and trusted. Is that
> fair enough?
>

Since we are aparently following the hard wording of the rules no.

> I would actually argue that the number of people generally known to
> the community can be counted on one thumb, and some comments in the
> userbox controversy cast doubt on that.
>

We do have [[Category:Notable_Wikipedians]].

The regular RFAr votes probably know each other (myself I try to avoid
voteing there for a number of reasons includeing spaming of my talk
page)

> I think my biggest complaint with all this is that, as happens so
> often, when people are asked to make quick fire judgments about
> something big and complicated, they resort very quickly to judging
> form or statistics. My own nomination was unanimously opposed because
> I hadn't included an introductory nomination statement. You see a lot
> of comments that "edit summaries too low", for people with 90% or more
> edit summary in major edits, or "not enough edits", for people with
> more than 2000.
>

Heh last time I was there I a fair number of the oppose votes came
from people who said I should have held a policy debate first.

There is no way to prevent people from makeing snap judgements so at
best we can hope to make sure those judements are as good as posible

> And the worst is "come back later, might support you then". Not
> because the candidate is in any way actually deficient as an admin,
> but they simply haven't served an unwritten waiting period.
>
> </rant>
>
> Steve

It does take time to learn how wikipedia works (I'm not still totaly
certian on range blocks although I have used them on other wikis) so
it is reasonable to have some level of waiting peroid.
--
geni


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: wikipedia at computerkultur.org

subject: [Wikipedia-l] RETURNED MAIL: SEE TRANSCRIPT FOR DETAILS

body:
The original message was received at Fri, 31 Mar 2006 13:07:19 -0500 from computerkultur.org [118.133.252.42]

----- The following addresses had permanent fatal errors -----
wikipedia-l at wikimedia.org


list: foundation-l

from_name: Benjamin Webb

subject:
[Foundation-l] Rodovid.org, family tree wiki,
	wishes to become a wiki project

body:
Perhaps you are right, but the thing I like about Rodovid is that you
can create your family tree, and in order to do that you must add
yourself, who is obviously living, and also your parents, who are
likely to be as well.

What legal rules are there, because they are most important and must
be implemented as soon as possible. An additional policy can be
decided on later.

On 31/03/06, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> Simply asking a person's permission would simply lead to chaos.  The
> person whom you ask may agree, but his brother may not.  A 110 year rule
> may be a little excessive.  The US census, for example, is in the public
> domain after 72 years.  BMD announcements in newspapers are all a matter
> of public record; telephone directories, property tax records and the
> Social Security Death Index are all publicly available sources of
> information.
>
> Ec
>
> Benjamin Webb wrote:
>
> >Hmm. Well Rodovid is designed to have a My Tree button, so would it be
> >alright to have information about yourself? The current policy on
> >Rodovid is ask permision if you are going to include living people. By
> >default living people are not imported during a GEDCOM inport. What do
> >you think of this? What must we do by law, because that is most
> >important, although it would be best to have better privacy.
> >
> >On 29/03/06, Robert Scott Horning <robert_horning at netzero.net> wrote:
> >
> >
> >>Ray Saintonge wrote:
> >>
> >>
> >>>This strikes me as somewhat irresponsible.  Some GEDCOM files are huge.
> >>>Are you suggesting that we just accept them as valid without any
> >>>standards for verifiability?  We also need to address the privacy
> >>>issues.  The copyright question may turn out to be a less critical problem.
> >>>
> >>>
> >>The best privacy policy I've seen regarding geneological information is
> >>to not list anybody who is currently alive, or in other words does not
> >>have a listed death date and is less than 110 years old, under the
> >>assumption that people over 110 years of age are so unusual that they
> >>deserve special mention anyway, or can be generally assumed to be dead.
> >> I think it might be safer for 120 years instead, but that is a fine
> >>point to quibble here.
> >>
> >>Some exceptions might happen for very famous people, but that is
> >>certainly something to express concern over.  It is also something that
> >>can be automated directly in the software if a policy is set up, where
> >>the information can be added but not displayed if it fails the living
> >>person criteria.
> >>
> >>A good point to raise, however.
> >>
> >>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


from_name: Lars Aronsson

subject: [Foundation-l] [WikiEN-l] Meta:MetaProject to Overhaul Meta

body:
David Gerard wrote:

> No, it would be to tag it {{historical}} or similar, i.e. not
> currently active. If you can show me where I have proposed any such
> thing be deleted ...

No, not you, but I can point you to two postings where Alex
Schenck screams out loud on this list that all of meta is useless
and obsolete and needs to be deleted all over.  And *that* is what
I have reacted against in both of my messages. He clearly talks of
a "clean canvas" and building the new "from the ground up". There
is no provision for keeping *any* of the old material, because in
his mind everything we now have just sucks.

The first was on March 25,
http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2006-March/006399.html

The second was yesterday,
http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2006-March/006526.html

--
  Lars Aronsson (lars at aronsson.se)
  Aronsson Datateknik - http://aronsson.se


from_name: Steve Bennett

body:
Hi all,
I just came across this excellent analysis of the problems with RfA at
the moment, written by Tyrenius, who had his application rejected on
the basis of insufficient edits (he had 1331 at time of application,
and apparently works offline a great deal, making that figure
misleading), age (not sure, older than 3 months) and supposedly not
doing enough "project work".

It's worth a read - he has every right to be annoyed at not being
granted adminship, when he has followed the letter of the law, and was
rejected by an RfA culture which does not reflect that policy.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_adminship
----paste (hope he doesn't mind...)--------

An examination of policies and guidelines for RfA

I have been somewhat taken aback and disappointed by the 4 oppose and
1 neutral votes to date, not because they are "rejections" but because
of the arbitrary imposition of personal preference over not only Wiki
guidelines, but also over Wiki policy (I expand on this below). The
only way a community project can succeed is if there are communal
rules and understandings, which are respected and fulfilled. I do not
consider the "oppositions" meet those standards. I am used to dealing
with contention in my non-Wiki life, so that doesn't worry me. What
does worry me is the undermining of objective standards. I should
point out that I am not suggesting that there is any malevolent
intent, more that standards have slipped. I hope that, whatever the
outcome of this RfA, it may at least stimulate a debate about the
process and lead to some self-examination.

I believe the first 4 oppose votes and the first neutral should be
discounted on the basis that Wiki guidelines and policy have not been
followed in making them.

In order to provide a proper context, I refer to Wikipedia:Policies
and guidelines, which states:

    This page is an official policy on the English Wikipedia. It has
wide acceptance among editors and is considered a standard that all
users should follow.

Thus the nature of a policy is clearly spelt out, namely:

    a standard that all users should follow.

The page then expands on this:

    A policy is similar to a guideline, only more official and less
likely to have exceptions. As with guidelines, amendments should
generally be discussed on their talk pages, but are sometimes forked
out if large in scope. One should not generally edit policy without
seeking consensus first.

A guideline is defined on the same page as follows:

    A guideline is something that is: (1) actionable and (2)
authorized by consensus. Guidelines are not set in stone and should be
treated with common sense and the occasional exception. Amendments to
a guideline should be discussed on its talk page, not on a new page -
although it's generally acceptable to edit a guideline to improve it.

And also:

    In addition to the generally accepted policies listed above, a
very large number of guidelines have been proposed and adopted by
Wikipedians. These are used to provide guidance in various situations
that arise on Wikipedia. They cover everything from naming conventions
and sensitive terms that should be avoided to how to get along, and
why not to bite the newcomers.

Even guidelines, therefore, being "authorised by concensus" should
normally be followed with only "the occasional exception". I suggest
that in the RfA process the exception has become the rule. This may
necessitate the rule being changed through the proper process, but in
the meantime it is an an example of bad practice, which needs to be
redressed.

However, a policy is an even stricter requirement, and "a standard
that all users should follow" and "even less likely to have
exceptions." There must be extreme conditions for it to be ignored,
yet the current practice on granting admin rights allows voters to
blatantly ignore policy as a matter of course. Again, if this policy
needs to be changed, then it should be done so through a proper
consensual process and established as such, but meanwhile its abuse is
a deterioration of standards for Wiki. Such deterioration would not be
tolerated in articles with POV and there is no more reason that it
should be tolerated in RfA.

Wikipedia:Administrators states:

    Administrators are Wikipedians who have access to a few technical
features that help with maintenance ("SysOp rights"). Wikipedia policy
is to grant this access to anyone who has been an active Wikipedia
contributor for a while and is generally a known and trusted member of
the community. [my underlining]

I cannot stress strongly enough that this is stated as "Wikipedia
policy". According to Wiki policy, there are therefore only two points
to be considered:

    * if the nominee has been "an active Wikipedia contributor for a while"
    * if the nominee is "generally a known and trusted member of the community".

If the nominee fulfills these criteria, then it is Wiki policy that
that person should be granted administrator access. In regard to these
two criteria:

    * I have been "an active Wikipedia contributor for a while".

    Please note that this policy does not specify any requirement for
the amount of activity, only that the nominee has been "active".
However, even Wikipedia:Guide to requests for adminship, gives a
guideline of probably at least 1,000 edits, which I have exceeded, and
Wikipedia:Miniguide to requests for adminship gives an "informal,
minimalistic guide" of "at least 3 months", which again I have
exceeded.

    * I "generally a known and trusted member of the community." I am
sufficiently well known and trusted to have been awarded two barnstars
for my contributions. I cannot see that there is anything in my
history at Wiki not to show me as trustworthy. I have not been
involved in edit wars; I have not made 3 reverts in 24 hours; I have
not vandalised any pages; I have not been abusive or uncivil; my
articles have not been disputed for accuracy. On the contrary, I have
reverted vandalism and left the appropriate "test" templates; I have
notified an admin about some consistent abuse and been thanked for my
vigilance; I have intervened to help settle disputes; I have left
welcome messages on new contributors' talk pages; I have held
dialogues with other editors where necessary to consult about points I
was unsure of or to inform them as to why I was removing material that
they had contributed.

There is, according to Wiki policy no reason not to grant my request
for admin rights.

I am particularly concerned that potentially good administrators are
being either put off altogether from applying due a process that can
be perceived as a "kangaroo court", where the law is not administered
fairly?and are unwilling to submit themselves to its arbitrariness?or
are applying and being rejected because of subjective opinions, which
violate policy. It is one thing to have a request denied because it
does not meet the requirements of guidelines and policy, but a highly
different one if the nominee has studied the guidelines and policy,
fulfilled them and is still turned down. That is something that will
obviously cause bad feeling and lack of faith in the system and other
editors.

It is a poor example when voters assessing someone's fitness to uphold
Wiki's policies, guidelines and procedures, are themselves in breach
of those same rules, and seemingly unaware of their existence. This
situation needs to be addressed.

The means to do this is also stated in Wikipedia:Policies and
guidelines, namely:

    You are a Wikipedia editor. Since Wikipedia has no editor-in-chief
or top-down article approval mechanism, active participants make
copyedits and corrections to the format and content problems they see.
So the participants are both writers and editors.

    Individual users thus enforce most policies and guidelines by
editing pages, and discussing matters with each other. Some policies,
such as Vandalism are enforced by Administrators by blocking users. In
extreme cases the Arbitration Committee has the power to deal with
highly disruptive situations, as part of the general dispute
resolution procedure.

I trust that the obvious concern of the voters so far for the
betterment of Wiki will cause them to "self-police", in order to
redress matters at the first stage, now that this situation has been
pointed out.

Guide to requests for adminship

In respect of my own request, I address points on the page
Wikipedia:Guide to requests for adminship, with the text from the page
in italics and my comments in normal type:

    What RfA contributors look for
    RfA contributors want to see a record of involvement and evidence
that you can apply Wikipedia policies calmly, maturely and
impartially. What are often looked for are:

    Strong edit history with plenty of material contributions to
Wikipedia articles.

I have detailed the nature of my editing already.

    Varied experience. RfAs where an editor has mainly contributed on
one subject have tended to be more controversial than those where the
user's contributions have been wider.

I concentrate on art, but have edited a much wider range of articles
to a lesser extent, including military, naval and geographical
subjects.

    User interaction. Evidence of you talking to other users, on
article talk or user talk pages. These interactions need to be helpful
and polite.

I have fulfilled these criteria.

    Trustworthiness General reliability as evidence that you would use
administrator rights carefully to avoid irreversible damage,
especially in the stressful situations that can arise more frequently
for Administrators.

I have already given a relevant statement on this.

    Helping with chores. Evidence that you are already engaging in
administrator-like work and debates such as RC Patrol and articles for
deletion.

Again, I have already made the point that I am zealous as regarding
vandalism, which I regularly look out for.

    High quality of articles ? a good way to demonstrate this is
getting articles featured.

My work has been commended by Solipsist.

    Observing policy A track record of working within policy, showing
an understanding of policy.

I trust the previous observations show my understanding of, and
attention to, the correct application of policy.

    Edit summaries. Constructive and frequent use of edit summaries is
a quality some RfA contributors want to see. See Wikipedia:Edit
summary.

I always try to make use of edit summaries, and have 99% on major
edits. I am surprised it's as low as 49% on minor edits and don't
understand how this happened, but it will make me more vigilant in
future.

Tyrenius 11:11, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

----------

Steve


body:
On 3/31/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
> Are we? It doesn't look like. Perhaps we should, but it doesn't look
> like we are.

The intial complainant is trying to make the case that we don't follow
the rules and that under the rules he should be elected. The first
part is true. The second is not.

> > We do have [[Category:Notable_Wikipedians]].
>
> Not a very notable category, I didn't know about it :)
>

Most people don't. You only need know about it if you deal with
certain areas or want to be an all knowing admin.

> Eep. Regularly RFAr voters! So there is a self-appointed cabal that
> selects admins? Oh, goodie. :)

Yes and no. While the regulars handle the nn cases they don't have the
numbers to promote someone who picks up oposition from any signifant
group of non regualar voters.

>
> Good god.
>

It was a slightly non standard case:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_adminship/Genisock2

>
> Any ideas?
>

Make as much information as about the candidate availible as quickly
and as simply as posible.

> I don't agree. There should be other ways of assessing whether a user
> has "gotten it" or not. A user who makes 3000 edits in a month is not
> substantially different from a user who makes 3000 edits in 2 years,
> is he? Or, even if there is a difference, is the difference critical?
>

The two year version is more likely to know why we are where we are
now. Admins who don't know this tend to cause interesting problems.
This can also be the case with returning admins. There are other
differences that are also likely to exist.

> Maybe we should adopt an "easy come, easy go" policy. Make it much
> easier for users to get admin rights, but make it much easier for them
> to be desysopped too (perhaps by simple request by 3 other admins?).

That sounds like a great recipy for admins to vote against adminship
requests of people they have had dissputes with

> Then, rather than attempting to prejudge admins, we could actually
> road-test them. Hell, give them a trial period of 2 weeks, *then* vote
> on them.
>

2 weeks tells you nothing. Even I can avoid causeing problems for a
couple of weeks with a bit of effort.

> This arbitrary set of ever-increasing hurdles defined by a small group
> of regular voters seems to go against the Wikipedia spirit.
>

Maybe but wether it goes against the wikipedia spirit is not the issue.

--
geni


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Ivan Krstic

subject: [Wikitech-l] A design for a debate tool

body:
Robert Rapplean wrote:
> I think that'll do it for an introduction.  If this is interesting to you,
> please let me know and I can provide you with more details.

This would make a great submission to the 2006 Wikimedia conference,
where it could be discussed by users and the core MediaWiki developers.

Please visit http://cfp.wikimania.wikimedia.org and submit a talk!

--
Ivan Krstic <krstic at fas.harvard.edu> | GPG: 0x147C722D


subject: [WikiEN-l] What to do?

body:
On 3/31/06, David Alexander Russell <webmaster at davidarussell.co.uk> wrote:
> I don't know what would be best for this situation, but one thing I
> would avoid /like the plague/ is RFC - there is no formal process to
> /enforce/ an RFC's conclusions (ie the process has no 'teeth') - and
> they generally descend into conclusionless flamewars.
>

Article ones can work out well.

--
geni


body:
On 3/31/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> >    * if the nominee is "generally a known and trusted member of the community".
>
> And this is where the attempt to rule lawer from outdated policy
> breaks down. You can count the number of people generally know to the
> current wikipedia community one hand. Thus we have to accept that
> either there should be almost no new admins or that policy is failing
> to describe wikipedia practice and needs to be rewriten.

Tyrenius's interpretation of this rule seems to be that amongst those
who have had contact with him, he is respected and trusted. Is that
fair enough?

I would actually argue that the number of people generally known to
the community can be counted on one thumb, and some comments in the
userbox controversy cast doubt on that.

I think my biggest complaint with all this is that, as happens so
often, when people are asked to make quick fire judgments about
something big and complicated, they resort very quickly to judging
form or statistics. My own nomination was unanimously opposed because
I hadn't included an introductory nomination statement. You see a lot
of comments that "edit summaries too low", for people with 90% or more
edit summary in major edits, or "not enough edits", for people with
more than 2000.

And the worst is "come back later, might support you then". Not
because the candidate is in any way actually deficient as an admin,
but they simply haven't served an unwritten waiting period.

</rant>

Steve


from_name: Stephen Bain

subject: [WikiEN-l] Fwd: Wikipedia e-mail

body:
On 3/31/06, Kelly Martin <kelly.lynn.martin at gmail.com> wrote:
> This IP is being used almost exclusively by a single editor who is
> currently blocked indefinitely.  There are no other recent edits from
> this IP except by this editor and anonymous edits matching the blocked
> editor's style.  It seems likely that the person complaining to Mr.
> Spade is likely the editor who has been blocked, quite legitimately by
> the looks of it.

Plus it's a little unusual for someone claiming to be an innocent user
coming from a shared IP to then say "Please unblock, I promise not to
post anything in the articles I was previously active at anymore."

--
Stephen Bain
stephen.bain at gmail.com


from_name: Robert Rapplean

subject: [Wikitech-l] A design for a debate tool

body:
Thanks, Rich.  I've looked at IBIS, and it also takes the divide-and-conquor
approach to problem solving, which I think is one of this tool's greatest
advantages.  Being able to divide an issue into subissues allows people to
identify what they're really disagreeing about instead of arguing over
things that are really differences in definition.

Unfortunately, IBIS is a managed system, which is to say that there is no
automated method for identifying when a particular conjecture has enough
evidence for most of the participants to accept or disclaim its truth.  That
process seems to be done via an occasional vote, kind of like for
parlimentary procedure.

Since it lacks "degree of relevance" measures, it fails the casual arguer in
identifying the most important sub-points behind a conjecture.  Also, the
lack of a "one person, one statement" structure means that all discussions
occur in a linear nature, which falls prey to the hostile arguer.

In short, while IBIS has an excellent structure, it lacks the specific
implementation details that I've designed into this tool that taylor it for
use in the massively diverse, unmoderated, ad-hoc environment that Wikipedia
exists in.

On 3/31/06, Rich Morin <rdm at cfcl.com> wrote:
>
> IBIS (Issue-Based Information System)  can be used to
> structure discussions and cut down on repetition, while
> allowing everyone to have their say.
>
>   http://www3.iath.virginia.edu/elab/hfl0104.html
>   http://www-iurd.ced.berkeley.edu/pub/WP-131.pdf
>
> -r
> --
> http://www.cfcl.com/rdm            Rich Morin
> http://www.cfcl.com/rdm/resume     rdm at cfcl.com
> http://www.cfcl.com/rdm/weblog     +1 650-873-7841
>
> Technical editing and writing, programming, and web development
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>


from_name: Rob Church

subject: [Wikitech-l] Automatically put text on a non existing page?

body:
On 31/03/06, Jan Vanoverpelt <jan.vanoverpelt at gmail.com> wrote:
[snippety snip]
> What i would like to achieve now is to put a preload-parameter into it (just
> like is done with the inputbox), so the above becomes.

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=This_is_not_a_real_page&action=edit&preload=Template:Afd

You can use {{FULLURL}} (or {{LOCALURL}} etc), the title, and the
preload parameter to achieve this.

Rob Church


subject: [Wikitech-l] A design for a debate tool

body:
>
> It sounds great, but for widespread acceptance you're going to have to
> dumb it down. Avoid words like "conjecture" and "debate". Maybe "idea"
> and "discussion" or something :)

I couldn't agree with you more.  I've actually gone through many iterations
of descriptive words for the elements, including changing the structure so
that a conjecture was actually a question (because some people think it's
impossible to improve on socratic method).  The current set of words are
specifically for describing the idea to people who might be able to actually
implement it, not for describing it to people who might want to use it.
They most specifically convey the meaning.  For a working version, I expect
things to be described by people who know how to teach ideas to people, not
those who know how to implement them.

Do you have any working prototypes?

I wish I did.  For the past two years I've had so much on my plate that the
edges of the plate have been cracking off.  I've started and stalled the
project several times in the past five years, and I just had to admit that
I'll never get it done on my own.  However, I continue to have great faith
in this tool's ability to help people achieve greater harmony, so I continue
to look around for others who might be able to help.


body:
"Steve Bennett" wrote

> And the worst is "come back later, might support you then". Not
> because the candidate is in any way actually deficient as an admin,
> but they simply haven't served an unwritten waiting period.

I can't see what's wrong with that.  There isn't the slightest entitlement
to become an admin.  Anyone who has more than 15000 edits or so is likely to
get asked whether they want to be nominated.  That's about the size of it.

Charles


body:
What about if you wanted to have yourself on a family tree could you do
that? (See my prewious comment)

On 31/03/06, Robert Scott Horning <robert_horning at netzero.net> wrote:
>
> Ray Saintonge wrote:
>
> >Simply asking a person's permission would simply lead to chaos.  The
> >person whom you ask may agree, but his brother may not.  A 110 year rule
> >may be a little excessive.  The US census, for example, is in the public
> >domain after 72 years.  BMD announcements in newspapers are all a matter
> >of public record; telephone directories, property tax records and the
> >Social Security Death Index are all publicly available sources of
> >information.
> >
> >Ec
> >
> >
> The point of the 110 rule is that it does fit with almost all known
> privacy laws throughout the world, and for geneological research
> purposes is generally not that big of an inconvience.  Finding
> information for people who lived in the past century is usually fairly
> straight forward and can usually be done by asking a close relative that
> has personal knowledge and information about that person, or there are
> extensive public records as you have pointed out.  And keep in mind that
> the "rule" included allowing information about people born more
> recently, it is just that you had to have a clear death date to do so,
> such as from something like the Social Security Death Index or probate
> records (both public domain information as well).
>
> I don't know how useful telephone directories would be for geneological
> purposes other than to confirm that somebody with that name lived in a
> certain location, and perhaps they had a close relationship (not
> necessarily marriage) with somebody else.
>
> --
> Robert Scott Horning
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


from_name: David Alexander Russell

body:
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The 'generally known and trusted...' doesn't reflect how RFAs actually
happen. It usually comes down to 'absence of fault' rather than any sort
of positive support of a person. Unless someone has done something
controversial (previously be desysopped, stated unpopular views on
deletion policy or whatever) then, provided they have significant
participation in various namespaces their RFA will probably be unanimous
(if they have any of the aforementioned faults, however minor, it will
probably degenerate into a no-consensus flamewar)

Cynical

geni wrote:
> On 3/31/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
>> On 3/31/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>    * if the nominee is "generally a known and trusted member of the community".
>>> And this is where the attempt to rule lawer from outdated policy
>>> breaks down. You can count the number of people generally know to the
>>> current wikipedia community one hand. Thus we have to accept that
>>> either there should be almost no new admins or that policy is failing
>>> to describe wikipedia practice and needs to be rewriten.
>> Tyrenius's interpretation of this rule seems to be that amongst those
>> who have had contact with him, he is respected and trusted. Is that
>> fair enough?
>>
>
> Since we are aparently following the hard wording of the rules no.
>
>> I would actually argue that the number of people generally known to
>> the community can be counted on one thumb, and some comments in the
>> userbox controversy cast doubt on that.
>>
>
> We do have [[Category:Notable_Wikipedians]].
>
> The regular RFAr votes probably know each other (myself I try to avoid
> voteing there for a number of reasons includeing spaming of my talk
> page)
>
>
>> I think my biggest complaint with all this is that, as happens so
>> often, when people are asked to make quick fire judgments about
>> something big and complicated, they resort very quickly to judging
>> form or statistics. My own nomination was unanimously opposed because
>> I hadn't included an introductory nomination statement. You see a lot
>> of comments that "edit summaries too low", for people with 90% or more
>> edit summary in major edits, or "not enough edits", for people with
>> more than 2000.
>>
>
> Heh last time I was there I a fair number of the oppose votes came
> from people who said I should have held a policy debate first.
>
> There is no way to prevent people from makeing snap judgements so at
> best we can hope to make sure those judements are as good as posible
>
>> And the worst is "come back later, might support you then". Not
>> because the candidate is in any way actually deficient as an admin,
>> but they simply haven't served an unwritten waiting period.
>>
>> </rant>
>>
>> Steve
>
> It does take time to learn how wikipedia works (I'm not still totaly
> certian on range blocks although I have used them on other wikis) so
> it is reasonable to have some level of waiting peroid.
> --
> geni
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>
>
>
>

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from_name: Guy Chapman aka JzG

subject: [WikiEN-l] What to do?

body:
There exists in the UK a small - politically insignificant at present
- movement known as the traditional counties movement.

The two largest groups are:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Association_of_British_Counties
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/County_Watch

There is zero news coverage of ABC that I can find.

Looking at :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traditional_counties_of_the_British_Isles

and its linked articles, you could be forgiven for thinking that:
* the term traditional county is usually ascribed to these (it is not
AFAICT actually generally used much at all other than by the
traditional counties movement)
* that they are the sole and indisputable historic counties (they
aren't, boundaries have shifted a number of times and there have been
a lot of legislative changes too)
* that there is widespread recognition of these as the "true" counties
(in fact most Brits don't actually care, and it's only really
significant in some areas like parts of Yorkshire and former Rutland)

I have a serious problem with the assertion that these are
"traditional" counties, since there are other arrangements both before
and after them; the ones the traditional movement claim existed from
the 16th to the 19th Centuries, with some boundary changes - the only
thing on which all sources appear to agree over time is the
approximate locations, county towns and the names.

There have been edit wars over the Scottish infoboxes re the wording:
"traditional", "historic" or "former" county - deeply contentious
here, as Fife for example was historically the Kingdom of Fife, as my
friend Eric will tell you at every opportunity.

Now, I don't really know much about this apart from what I've seen in
the edit wars, but it does look to me as if some peer-review is
necessary.  Barrows are being pushed.

So the question is: where is the best place to take this?  Article
RfC?  Peer review?  NPOV tags and the Cleanup Squad?  What's likely to
get the best and most informed result, I do not want to get into forum
shopping.

Thanks,
Guy (JzG)
--
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG


body:
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*Ducks for cover* the '3 admins request' you suggested would mean that
we end up with very few admins left - recent wheelwars have occured
(where more than 3 admins were involved in each side) where both sides
would be happy to use this procedure to desysop each other. I do think
we need to make it easier to desysop 'screw process'/'screw consensus'
admins, but making it a '3 admins request' would a) Make spurious
desysoppings far too easy and b) Lead to charges of cabalism - why
should admins only hold office at the pleasure of OTHER ADMIMS?

A better idea would be one of the perennial 'requests for deadminship'
proposals, but the problem with these is not creating a logjam of
automatic renominations (as the 'required to reapply every year'
proposals would do) or violating WP:VIE (as the 'petition required to
initiate new RFA') in the process. Perhaps if Arbcom was more willing to
desysop admins who annoy the community, that would solve the problem.

Cynical

Steve Bennett wrote:

>
> Maybe we should adopt an "easy come, easy go" policy. Make it much
> easier for users to get admin rights, but make it much easier for them
> to be desysopped too (perhaps by simple request by 3 other admins?).
> Then, rather than attempting to prejudge admins, we could actually
> road-test them. Hell, give them a trial period of 2 weeks, *then* vote
> on them.
>
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body:
On Fri, 31 Mar 2006 12:57:08 +0000, you wrote:

>We do have [[Category:Notable_Wikipedians]].

Yes, I was going through that the other day.  Some of these "notable
Wikipedians" registered, created their own autobiography articles,
added themselves to the category, and haven't been seen since...
Guy (JzG)
--
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG


subject: [WikiEN-l] What to do?

body:
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I don't know what would be best for this situation, but one thing I
would avoid /like the plague/ is RFC - there is no formal process to
/enforce/ an RFC's conclusions (ie the process has no 'teeth') - and
they generally descend into conclusionless flamewars.

Cynical

Guy Chapman aka JzG wrote:
> So the question is: where is the best place to take this?  Article
> RfC?  Peer review?  NPOV tags and the Cleanup Squad?  What's likely to
> get the best and most informed result, I do not want to get into forum
> shopping.
>
> Thanks,
> Guy (JzG)

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from_name: Kelly Martin

body:
On 3/31/06, Matt Brown <morven at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 3/31/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Posible but unlikely. For example without looking do you know what
> > [[MediaWiki:Bad image list]] does?
>
> Somehow I managed to get as far as being on the Arbcom without having
> a clue what that does.
>
> -Matt

I'd not heard of it before today.

Kelly


body:
On Fri, 31 Mar 2006 13:29:10 +0200, you wrote:

>I just came across this excellent analysis of the problems with RfA at
>the moment, written by Tyrenius, who had his application rejected on
>the basis of insufficient edits (he had 1331 at time of application,
>and apparently works offline a great deal, making that figure
>misleading), age (not sure, older than 3 months) and supposedly not
>doing enough "project work".

To be honest I am not a huge fan of self-nominations for adminship
anyway.  I turned down three nominations before accepting one, and had
to be persuaded even then.  Are we sure that Tyrenuis' assessment of
his own fitness for adminship is objective?  Not that I'm saying he
would not be a good admin, but it seems to me that the people who get
given admin tools are generally the ones who are seen to be likely to
use them, those who are active in countering vandalism, cleaning up,
stopping wars, finding vanity and spam articles and so on.  If someone
is not doing these things, why do they need the Wikimop?  If they are
doing these things, they will get noticed.

I do think it is bad that so few RfAs reach 100 votes.  It would be
much better if more people contributed.  But then, I rarely vote so I
can hardly talk.
Guy (JzG)
--
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG


body:
On 3/31/06, Mark Gallagher <m.g.gallagher at student.canberra.edu.au> wrote:
>
> G'day David,
>
> > *Ducks for cover* the '3 admins request' you suggested would mean that
> > we end up with very few admins left - recent wheelwars have occured
> > (where more than 3 admins were involved in each side) where both sides
> > would be happy to use this procedure to desysop each other. I do think
> > we need to make it easier to desysop 'screw process'/'screw consensus'
> > admins, but making it a '3 admins request' would a) Make spurious
> > desysoppings far too easy and b) Lead to charges of cabalism - why
> > should admins only hold office at the pleasure of OTHER ADMIMS?
>
> 0) As a "screw process" admin, I wonder what leads you to believe my
>    quick'n'easy de-sysopping is necessary.
>

Process is the method by which the commonity can control admins. If
admins wish to step outside that control another more direct method is
required.

> 1) There are not "screw consensus" admins.  There *are* admins who
>    disagree with certain wikilawyers about what "consensus" means, but
>    then that's hardly their fault.
>

Wikilawyers don't really have many weapons against a recorded
consensus or supermajority. Classic edit warriors do. This is because
classic edit warriors work by takeing the screw process aproach.

--
geni


body:
On 3/31/06, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:
> To be honest I am not a huge fan of self-nominations for adminship
> anyway.

They allow people who would otherwise be overlooked to run. Personal I
object to non self noms. As an admin you are going to have to stand
alone and take responcibilty for your actions fast. Might as well
start off by doing that.

--
geni


body:
"David Alexander Russell" wrote

> Perhaps if Arbcom was more willing to
> desysop admins who annoy the community, that would solve the problem.

We are certainly willing to de-sysop those who annoy us.  Not the same thing
of course.  But I think it would be a bad thing if admins went in fear of
vocal minorities, who claim on occasion to speak for 'the community'.

I suspect that as time goes on a small proportion of admins will have their
mops and buckets retired.  This currently only happens in egregious cases of
forfeit of confidence.  The admin group is now very large.  There is
probably 1% or so who attract attention for their _recurrent_ questionable
use of the powers.  Mistakes are made, more widely than that, but it's part
of the ArbCom's mission to be rather sparing in the use of its powers, and
honest errors are part of life in a volunteer organisation.

Charles


body:
On 25/03/06, Tim Starling <t.starling at physics.unimelb.edu.au> wrote:
>
> Angela wrote:
> > On 3/25/06, Benjamin Webb <bjwebb67 at googlemail.com> wrote:
> >
> >
> >>I'd noticed that you'd menationed the specialised software on
> wikitree.org,
> >>I'd just be intereseted to know what you think about the specialised
> >>software of Rodovid <http://rodovid.org> and what you, as someone high
> up
> >>the the foundation, think about it becoming a foundation project.
> >
> >
> > That looks good too, and I've no opinion on whether Rodovid or
> > Wikitree is using a better approach. Perhaps there are aspects of each
> > that should be included. I'm also wondering whether Wikidata will fit
> > into this somehow, or whether the structure you're using on Rodovid
> > replaces that.
> >
> > The last time a genealogy wiki was seriously proposed as a Wikimedia
> > project, there was little interest, and few answers to the questions I
> > asked at <http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Wikipeople>.  What
> > software to use and what to do with the Sep11 wiki still need to be
> > addressed. However, it is one of the proposals that comes up most
> > often, so perhaps there is interest there, certainly from editors, but
> > is there enough interest from developers to give this project the
> > software changes it would need?
>
> The software Benjamin has written himself looks quite solid and reasonably
> feature complete to me. I
> don't see why he would need to attract interest from developers when he's
> obviously quite a
> proficient one himself. Wikimedia could certainly benefit from Benjamin's
> expertise, if we could win
> him over, but I'm not sure what benefit Benjamin expects to derive from
> Wikimedia. Whether or not
> this is a Wikimedia project, Benjamin will have to do most of the
> development and promotion himself.
> Hosting costs should be small during startup, easily covered by donations.
> If he can avoid
> Wikimedia's bureaucracy and run the project himself, why not do so?
>
> -- Tim Starling
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>

It is a few days since Tim wrote this comment, but I still have something to
say in reply to it. Before I start I must remind people that it was my
fellow Rodovid user Baya who wrote the software, but that doesn't make much
difference to the discussion.

Tim suggested setting up Rodovid as an independent project, and although I
still prefer the idea of it becoming a Wikimedia project, this is a possible
alternative.

The one real issue is the matter of linking from Wikipedia and other
Wikimedia projects to Rodovid. If it did become a Wikimedia project, then
nobody would object to this: we could use link boxes like we currently have
for commons etc.

But what if the project is run independently, could any linking be done
then. Personally as a Wikipedia contributor myself, I feel having such links
would add to the quality of an article. However, I am sure others would
disagree with this and delete it as spam linking.

What do subsricbers to the mailing list think about linking?

Regards,
Benjamin Webb


body:
On 3/31/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 3/31/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> > The two year version is more likely to know why we are where we are
> > now. Admins who don't know this tend to cause interesting problems.
> > This can also be the case with returning admins. There are other
> > differences that are also likely to exist.
>
> Could a one month editor not be a good admin? If they could, then why
> do we have such prejudice against the idea?
>

Posible but unlikely. For example without looking do you know what
[[MediaWiki:Bad image list]] does?

> Cool. 2 weeks of problem-free adminning. What's the downside? :)
>
> Steve

But we haven't learned anything.

--
geni


body:
On 3/31/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
> What is a "screw process" admin anyway? Is it:
> - an admin who does destructive things without respect for consensus
> - an admin who streamlines process to achieve the right result
>
> or something else?
>
>
> Steve

It is an admin who ignores process without a very very good reason.
streamlineing process does not involve ingoreing process. In thack I
think we have a process for doing so. the village pump (policy) is
probably a good place to start.

--
geni


from_name: uninvited at nerstrand.net

body:
I agree that the adminship process is broken and has been for quite some
time. People become admins by making a sufficient number of edits over a
span of some months without making a career-limiting mistake.  It helps
to participate in IRC and to be part of a mutually reinforcing group of
people who are also seeking adminship, and there are certain purely
mechanical requirements involving edit summaries, minor edits, and
participation in various housekeeping tasks.

The amount of time and number of edits requirements are now high enough
that they have little to do with understanding Wikipedia.  They are as
high as they are just to be sure that potential admins have had
sufficient opportunity to make a career-limiting mistake, if they are
prone to that sort of thing by their nature.

While RFA is more or less functional at a basic level of being effective
in getting admins promoted that have received some sort of vetting,
there are problems with the ill will it generates and the fact that the
project could benefit from more admins than are being promoted
presently.  Though rare, there have also been some admins that have
slipped through that were, in hindsight, clearly not suitable.  The
fact that RFA has become politicized is also a problem because it means
that admins as a group are more predisposed to behave politically than
was once the case.

Tyrenius is an example of the problem we face.  It's clear from the RFA
page
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_adminship/Tyrenius)
that he is unaware of the "RFA culture" which is rife with unwritten
rules, such as the unwritten rule against attempted rebuttal of an
oppose vote, the unwritten rule that you really ought to vote on a
bunch of RFAs before nominating yourself, and the unwritten rule that
self-noms in at least some peoples' minds must be well qualified.

While I don't necessarily believe that Tyrenius should be an admin at
this time, I do believe that he is justified in feeling unfairly
treated by the project.  The lack of consensus on a minimum number of
edits, and the ever-growing minimum in the minds of many, is
particularly a problem.  We used to require 500 edits.

I'm not sure what all the answers are but the two thoughts that come to
mind are the sequenced granting of rights, which I've proposed in the
past (in general, granting deletion, undeletion, and rollback first and
the other privs more or less automatically after a six month or yearlong
"apprenticeship" period), and a sponsorship and mentoring system where
existing admins take responsibility for shepherding new editors through
the process.

uc


body:
On 3/31/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Tyrenius's interpretation of this rule seems to be that amongst those
> > who have had contact with him, he is respected and trusted. Is that
> > fair enough?
> >
>
> Since we are aparently following the hard wording of the rules no.

Are we? It doesn't look like. Perhaps we should, but it doesn't look
like we are.

> We do have [[Category:Notable_Wikipedians]].

Not a very notable category, I didn't know about it :)

> The regular RFAr votes probably know each other (myself I try to avoid
> voteing there for a number of reasons includeing spaming of my talk
> page)

Eep. Regularly RFAr voters! So there is a self-appointed cabal that
selects admins? Oh, goodie. :)

> Heh last time I was there I a fair number of the oppose votes came
> from people who said I should have held a policy debate first.

Good god.

> There is no way to prevent people from makeing snap judgements so at
> best we can hope to make sure those judements are as good as posible

Any ideas?

> > And the worst is "come back later, might support you then". Not
> > because the candidate is in any way actually deficient as an admin,
> > but they simply haven't served an unwritten waiting period.

> It does take time to learn how wikipedia works (I'm not still totaly
> certian on range blocks although I have used them on other wikis) so
> it is reasonable to have some level of waiting peroid.

I don't agree. There should be other ways of assessing whether a user
has "gotten it" or not. A user who makes 3000 edits in a month is not
substantially different from a user who makes 3000 edits in 2 years,
is he? Or, even if there is a difference, is the difference critical?

Maybe we should adopt an "easy come, easy go" policy. Make it much
easier for users to get admin rights, but make it much easier for them
to be desysopped too (perhaps by simple request by 3 other admins?).
Then, rather than attempting to prejudge admins, we could actually
road-test them. Hell, give them a trial period of 2 weeks, *then* vote
on them.

This arbitrary set of ever-increasing hurdles defined by a small group
of regular voters seems to go against the Wikipedia spirit.

Steve

Steve


from_name: Neil Harris

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Mediametry survey (was )Re: Language versions'
 popularity vs. number of articles...)

body:
Brion Vibber wrote:
> Miguel Chaves wrote:
>
>> Hi, I wonder if wikipedia only relies on this sort of external statistics
>> (like Alexa) to gather information about visits to the sites.
>> Aren't there statistcs collected on wikipedia servers itself? This would be
>> more useful and reliable.
>>
>
> Not at this time. At our traffic level, web server logs are too large to handle
> comfortably without a dedicated infrastructure, and we've been forced to simply
> disable them until something easier to handle gets set up.
>
> (If we were an ad-supported site, such statistics would be much much more
> important and we'd have put in the time and money for it a lot sooner.)
>
>
>> BTW, if we want to know the popularity of an specific article (not a
>> specific wikipedia), is there a tool for that?
>>
>
> Not really, sorry.
>
> -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
>
>
Since the traffic is so vast, why not use random sampling? At each page
hit, call a random-number generator (eg read four bytes from
/dev/urandom, or call a seeded pseudo-random number routine), and make a
log entry only if its result == 0 mod 1000. That way, the logs will be
statistically representative, but only require a relatively tiny amount
of disk I/O, compute time, and disk space.

Alternatively, you could log using UDP syslog, and have a listener that
threw away 999 out of 1000 packets.

-- Neil


body:
Brion Vibber wrote:
> Andrew Gray wrote:
>
>> Is that "keep recording but ignore them", or disable in the sense of
>> turn off logging totally? Just curious...
>>
>
> After a few months of having logs that you're not reading fill up the servers'
> hard disks every few days, you turn them off. :)
>
> -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
>
>
How about a cron job that turns logging on, then off, intermittently? Eg.

For example, on each server, have a cron job that does this:

Every 5 mins:
    Is logging on?
       Then: turn it off
       Else: generate a random number
            If it's == 0 mod 1000:
            Then:  turn logging on
            Else: do nothing

This way, you get representative short blocks of 5 minutes of traffic,
kicking in once every three days or so on each of the 100 or so servers
at random times of the day or night.  This would also suffice for gross
statistical analysis, and wouldn't require any modification of the squid
code, just a short external shell script.

Log-rotation should handle the rest and prevent the disks filling up,
since the average sampling rate would then be low enough to cope with.

-- Neil


subject:
[Wikitech-l] [Wikipedia-l] Mediametry survey (was )Re: Language
 versions' popularity vs. number of articles...)


from_name: Sue Reed

body:
Instead of fixed number, shouldn't it be a percentage? That
way, when the wikipedia population grows - the number of
admins can grow along with it. To me, the number of
beauracrats should be along the same sort of formula.

Sue Anne

--- Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
> How many admins do we want? We have 800. Do we want 2000?
> Or do we want 200?
>
> I suspect that until we can answer that question, most of
> our
> discussion on how hard it should be to become an admin is
> actually
> fairly pointless. Why? Because ultimately, if adminship
> is not to be a
> "reward for hard work", then it should be bestowed upon
> the top X% of
> the population, rather than every editor who has done
> good. And we
> don't know what X is.
>
> Steve


from_name: Matt Brown

body:
On 3/31/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> You know you are not helping my case here.

Probably not.

The thing is: not everyone has been that active in vandal fighting,
and it is not required in order to become an administrator (nor
arbitrator, for that matter).  Thus, not everyone knows all the little
vandal-fighting tricks.

-Matt


subject: [Wikitech-l] A design for a debate tool

body:
On 3/31/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Perhaps the best idea for the end product would use no words at
> all...it would be totally intuitive.

In a perfect world, tools would be unnecessary.

I'm having trouble visualising this in a wiki environment though.

This isn't a new use for a wiki, it's a replacement for the discussion pages
in a wiki that I believe will better suit Wikipedia.  Your discussion below
indicates how a wiki environment is barely able to contain, much less make
sense of, the kind of exchange that goes on when people attempt to debate
complicated and hotly debated concepts.

Sort of seems like anyone sophisticated enough to use such a tool is
> probably capable of arguing coherently in the first place :)

If that's true, then the user interface would be badly designed.  I'm
specifically hoping that using this tool will teach people how to argue more
coherently.

Also, for your "hostile debaters", they would probably attack the
> credibility of such a tool.

I agree.  If they can't play their games, then they won't participate and
they'll try to degrade the validity of the results.  In my experience,
though, hostile debaters rarely provide any substance.  They provide a lot
of conjecture, and tend to point to that one author that agrees with them a
lot.  This tool will divide them into two groups (1) those who can play nice
and are willing to contribute what they know to the debate, and (2) those
who can't play nice and probably wouldn't have contributed anything to the
conversation in any case.

If the majority of your users are hostile debaters then your conversations
are probably mostly stagnated and stymied, but the only way you'll get them
to use this tool is to make it the only way to get their opinions heard.
The unfortunate truth is that it just plain ruins their fun, but if a
person's fun involves befuddling the opposition, it's a behavior that must
be curbed for effective communication to occur.

And for the "casual debaters", perhaps they would just look at it, go "too
> complicated", and move on.

Again, that's a user interface thing.  Creating an effective user interface
was always my biggest obstacle in creating this.  I've done sketches and
mockups, but I think that the only way that an effective UI can be designed
will be to create one for a set of early adopters, watch it get used, and
then incrementally redesign the UI to make it easier to use based on the
input from the test group.

The reason the UI is such a challenge is because this entire pattern of
debate is foreign to most people.  We're used to thinking in documents and
lists, not ranked statements and tree structures.

> I wish I did.  For the past two years I've had so much on my plate that
> the
> > edges of the plate have been cracking off.  I've started and stalled the
> > project several times in the past five years, and I just had to admit
> that
> > I'll never get it done on my own.  However, I continue to have great
> faith
> > in this tool's ability to help people achieve greater harmony, so I
> continue
> > to look around for others who might be able to help.
>
> Pity, a concrete prototype would be great. Personally I find Wiki very
> badly suited to the sort of discussion that has to happen at WP. Very
> frequently, I find that someone makes a point, and the first person to
> respond pretty much monopolises the conversation. If anyone else
> attempts to respond to the initial point, they get lost in the flow.
> ....
> By contrast, email allows the focus of the conversation to be
> constantly redefined. Each email, by quoting selectively, draws the
> reader's attention to a single part of the dialogue. However email
> lacks permanence - all the replies that will ever be made to an email
> will be made within a week or so. Whereas it's not uncommon to see
> replies on wiki made a year or more after the original post, with the
> presumption that some time later someone else will take up the
> original viewpoint.

Thank you, Steve.  You've very effectively summed up why I feel that the
development of a new tool is warranted.  Threaded blogs are very slightly
better than email, but any significant volume will bury the most elequently
made point in no time.  None of our current conflict resolution mechanisms
is effective for tracking large, prolonged conversations.

I want to thank everyone who's responded to me here.  I'll be sure to write
up a presentation and submit it for the conference.  Your questions and
comments here are helping me better identify what kind of content I need to
include in the presentation.

-Robert


from_name: Aphaia

body:
On 3/30/06, Elisabeth Bauer <elian at djini.de> wrote:
> Samuel Klein schrieb:
>
> > Yep, it's understandable.  They were listed for bulk deletion; there were
> > no active objections.  But a few hundred irreversible deletions, mixed w/
> > unusual article deletions, are unnerving as someone's first admin actions.
> > One feels the urge to double-check...
>
> I scanned through the pictures before they were deleted and I saw
> nothing worth keeping. And you can be sure that I would have protested
> if someone attempted to delete a candidate in the logo contest or
> whatever nice picture _relevant_ to wikimedia or any of its projects.

Summary: I'm sure and you can be sure that my first proposal included
a whitelist ; any editor could list such images if they want to keep.
Loud voide "delete all" is disruptive after such concensus was made
IMHO.

====
Nach meiner Meinungen, war unser Diskussion darueber _fertig_ im
letzten Jahre (am Anfang des Sommers). Das liegt immer da, aber es ist
nicht dafuer, dass wir nur noch nicht eingestimmen haben, sondern dass
zu viel Bilder da liegen.

Und nach meiner Erinnerungen, haben wir schon uns eingestimmen, dass
alle Bilder in "Whitelist" nicht geloescht werden duerfen.

Wenn ich etwas sagen sollte, ist es unnutzbar, das zu behaupten, dass
"alle" Bilder, mit solchen an der Whiteliste, geloeschen werden sollen
- wie eine letzte Stimme.

--
Aphaea@*.wikipedia.org
email: Aphaia @ gmail (dot) com


from_name: Mathias Schindler

subject: [WikiEN-l] [Fwd: Reports of Wikipedia being blocked in Pakistan]

body:
http://groups.google.com/group/AGABBIP/browse_thread/thread/bc3ab7dc86829adc/10abb76eccd7a6e7#10abb76eccd7a6e7

http://danial.pixelsndots.com/archives/386

"Pakistan Blocks Wikipedia

After Blocking the dirty dozen, Pakistan bans Wikipedia. The Government
has gone totally mad and someone needs to stop them from this crazyness.
Atleast three different ISPs failed to open Wikipedia. "


from_name: Nick Jenkins

subject: [Wikitech-l] Towards arbitrary client-side JavaScript execution

body:
Aim
===

To see if it's possible to execute arbitrary client-side JavaScript,
using MediaWiki as the delivery system.

Background
==========

To execute arbitrary JavaScript, we mostly need to find a way to get
MediaWiki to allow us to open a tag ("


from_name: David Gerard

subject: [Foundation-l]  Hold on a moment, please.

body:
> This struck me as unnecessarily confrontational.

The stream of abuse from those who consider themselves the guardians
of Meta strikes me as unnecessarily confrontational, and I'm really
not happy about it. When one of those is a Foundation board member,
I'm even less happy about it.

- d.


body:
On 3/31/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> The two year version is more likely to know why we are where we are
> now. Admins who don't know this tend to cause interesting problems.
> This can also be the case with returning admins. There are other
> differences that are also likely to exist.

Could a one month editor not be a good admin? If they could, then why
do we have such prejudice against the idea?

> That sounds like a great recipy for admins to vote against adminship
> requests of people they have had dissputes with

Sounds good, it would cut both ways, and they could be desysopped at
the same time :) Well, seriously, if admins are having serious
disputes with each other that they can't resolve, then are they better
admins than fresh admins without a long trail of grudges? (just food
for thought...)

> 2 weeks tells you nothing. Even I can avoid causeing problems for a
> couple of weeks with a bit of effort.

Cool. 2 weeks of problem-free adminning. What's the downside? :)

Steve


from_name: Thommandel at aol.com

subject: [WikiEN-l] Ethics

body:
Is it ethical for an editor to support one viewpoint and then edit the
opposing viewpoint? Is it ethical for a supporter of the big bang to edit the
alternative plasma cosmology?

tom


body:
si leggono la discussio origine in foundation-l;

Hello all
Two Wiktinary related pages on meta are now deletion candidates;
This mail is concerned with those requests;

On 3/30/06, Elisabeth Bauer <elian at djini.de> wrote:
> Aphaia schrieb:
>
> > I feel myself being mimed by those "overhaul" folks. They want to
> > deprive my tools from me. I can't imagine in this circumstance what I
> > can for coordination.
>
> What is always a bit neglected: Many tools can be stored without any
> problems in userspace on your user subpage where nobody would bother to
> delete it.

They are not my own creations, but files to Wiktionary. Personally I
think them benefical for other purpose, that is, to maintain some
files related to translations and multilingualized WMF pages, but it
is not a strong reason to move them into user name space of a certain
user.

--
Aphaea@*.wikipedia.org
email: Aphaia @ gmail (dot) com


body:
On Fri, 31 Mar 2006 16:39:38 +0200, you wrote:

>ultimately, if adminship is not to be a
>"reward for hard work", then it should be bestowed upon the top X% of
>the population, rather than every editor who has done good. And we
>don't know what X is.

Or indeed what defines top.
Guy (JzG)
--
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG


list: textbook-l

from_name: xkernigh at netscape.net

subject:
[Textbook-l] Fwd: [Wikia-l] Fw: [Pakistan PRESS RELEASE] PAKISTAN
	BLOCKS WIKIPEDIA

body:
I forward an email claiming that Pakistan was blocking access to
Wikipedia. I do not know whether Wikibooks and other Wikimedia
sites were also blocked (they run on the same servers), but an
earlier block against one Blogspot blog apparently blocked all
of Blogspot.

The linked site http://help-pakistan.com/main/dont-block-the-blog/
claims that the Wikipedia block began at 31 March 2006, but was lifted
at
the same day. I have no way to verify this information.

The email said that Wikipedia "was likely
blocked because one article of the massive 3.5 million topics covered
on the website contained information pertaining to the controversial
cartoons on the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH)". I am aware that an
English Wikipedia article contains such cartoons. There is a thread
from February 2006 at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Kernigh
about them. Though I favor removing the cartoons from the article,
I think that governments should not block unrelated pages, and
governments that respect free speech should not block such cartoons
nor pages about them.

I am not aware of any similar content on Wikibooks, but we could
have such content in the future. English Wikibooks policy at
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/WB:WIW states that "Wikibooks is not
censored for the 'protection of minors' (content-rated)," and that
"modules can be, and are, censored by consensus."
 -- [[User:Kernigh]], in USA

-----Original Message-----
From: Sabahat Ashraf <ashrafs at alum.rpi.edu>
To: pakistan-l at wikicities.com; wikia-l at wikicities.com
Sent: Fri, 31 Mar 2006 12:24:33 -0800
Subject: [Wikia-l] Fw: [Pakistan PRESS RELEASE] PAKISTAN BLOCKS
WIKIPEDIA

  I am not on the wikipedia lists; please forward.

 S

 <-----Original Message----->

 ---------- Forwarded message ----------
 From: Dr. Awab Alvi
 Date: Mar 31, 2006 12:20 PM
 Subject: PRESS RELEASE

 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

 31st March 2006

 For Further Information:

 Dr. Awab Alvi (Pakistan)
 Cell: 92-333-2373493
 Email: drawab at cyber.net.pk
 Blog: http://www.teeth.com.pk/blog/

 Omar Alvie (UAE)
 Cell: 00971-50-6268410
 Email: over_email at yahoo.co
 Blog: http://oream.blogspot.com

 URL: http://help-pakistan.com/main/dont-block-the-blog/

 PAKISTAN BLOCKS WIKIPEDIA

 Today, 31 March 2006, at around 13:00 Pakistan Standard Time, it has
 come to our attention that another important website was added to the
 blacklisted domains from Pakistan: that is the entire domain of
 Wikipedia.org. Wikipedia, the free online encyclopaedia, was likely
 blocked because one article of the massive 3.5 million topics covered
 on the website contained information pertaining to the controversial
 cartoons on the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH). While the block appeared to
 be limited in duration, having been lifted at 20:00 (PST) seven hours
 after the initiation, the real issues remain about the future
 censorship of education and knowledge in Pakistan.

 We request the international print and electronic media to bring this
 issue to light in order to ensure that the concerned Pakistani
 authorities and ISPs understand the importance of free access to the
 Internet.

 A month back, the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) blocked
 access to upwards of 10 million websites being hosted on the
 blogspot.com domain, following a Supreme Court order issued on March
 3rd condemning the controversial cartoons. The judicial order
 instructed the PTA to regulate only twelve offending websites which
 were promoting the blasphemous cartoons on the Prophet Muhammad
 (PBUH). One of the offending websites happened to be hosted on the
 domain www.blogspot.com. The PTA, as the supreme controlling body of
 internet access in Pakistan, entirely blocked access to upwards of 10
 millions websites.

 Wikipedia is the world's largest online encyclopaedia and is
 considered as the single largest online storehouse of knowledge having
 over 3.5 million articles on every imaginable topic conceivable in the
 world. These articles are gradually improved by contributors and then
 the topics are stored safely to then be freely shared with the entire
 world. The wikipedia project is translated into over 200 languages
 with over one million pages written in the English language, and it
 even contains hundreds of topics specifically written in the Urdu
 language. It should be important to point out that the largest
 printable encyclopaedia Britannica can only cover 65,000 topics which
 is easily dwarfed by the 3.5 million topics on Wikipedia.
 Simultaneously the printed version of the Britannica Encyclopaedia can
 cost upwards of $1400 to purchase but on the other hand each and every
 article on Wikipedia is free to read by anyone having an internet
 connection.

 The DON'T BLOCK THE BLOG campaign
 (http://www.help-pakistan.com/main/dont-block-the-blog/ ) was launched
 on 3rd March, 2006 in order to highlight and protest the issue of the
 blockage of blogs in Pakistan. We now extend our campaign to protest
 any blockage of Wikipedia in Pakistan. Both these issues are
 important to a developing nation such as Pakistan. What began as
 censorship of simple freedom of speech appears to have the real
 possibility of being extended to censorship of education and knowledge
 in Pakistan.

 --
 [Sabahat Iqbal Ashraf]

------------------------------------------------------------------------
 c: (510) 304 5927 www.ashrafs.org/iFaqeer
 ashrafs at alum.rpi.edu pakistan.wikia.com

------------------------------------------------------------------------
 Please visit: http://pakistan.wikia.com/wiki/Earthquake_10-05

------------------------------------------------------------------------
 http://iFaqeer.blogspot.com Socio-Political Commentary
 http://WadiWallah.blogspot.com Technology, Life & Silicon Valley
 http://PakistanFutures.blogspot.com Possible Futures for Pakistan
 http://Urdu-ke-Naam.blogspot.com Language, Poetry and Spirituality
 http://Rickshaw.blogspot.com Rickshaw!

------------------------------------------------------------------------
 My religion is humanitarianism?.. Which is basis [sic]of every religion
 in this world.
 Abdus Sattar Edhi (Pakistan's humanitarian phenom)

------------------------------------------------------------------------

   _______________________________________________
Wikia-l mailing list
Wikia-l at wikicities.com
http://lists.wikicities.com/mailman/listinfo/wikia-l

___________________________________________________
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from_name: Steve Bennett

body:
On 3/31/06, Ilmari Karonen <nospam at vyznev.net> wrote:
> However irritating this might seem to the person who is told that, this
> can in fact be quite reasonable advice.  The subtext is often "We don't
> know enough about you to tell if you'd be a good admin.  If you're still
> interested and haven't gone off the deep end in the meanwhile, try again
> in a few months."  Or simply "I don't think you're experienced enough
> yet.  Try again when you've been around longer."  Or possibly both.

Do people know me? Probably not. Even though I've edited a fair few
policy articles, I don't go out of my way to become "known". And I'm
not sure that egos are good for adminning.

> sock.  The six months or so between the two events served not only to
> familiarize me with Wikipedia, but also to provide other users with some
> confidence that I wasn't going to go on a vandalism spree as soon as I
> got my admin buttons.

The chance that anyone will go on a "vandalism spree" with admin
rights is vanishingly small. And if they did, they can be  quickly
desysopped before they've done any real damage (as I understand it).
Is this really what the whole RfA charade is about? Protecting
ourselves against users with 1500 edits who might suddenly,
inexplicably turn into vandals the instant they're given admin rights?
Sounds fishy to me.

To be honest, the more we proclaim that adminship is "no big deal", or
"not a badge" or "not prestigious" or a "reward for good editing", the
more I suspect that all those things are true. Hell, the word
"promote" is even used on the "failed RfAs" page.

Steve


subject: [Foundation-l]Redémarrage du Wikiquote Francophone / French Wikiquote Relaunch

body:
C'est un jour triste !
Mais votre mot, Monsieur, m'a donn? l'espoir; il sera relanc?.

Back to our normal mode,
Mon chou, you say it should have been closed and erased as whoe
because of too many copyvio. But please, Soufron or any other FR WQ
editors, can you give me a list of articles which are really copyvio?
Because I imported some stuffs from frwq to ja, and now I'm afraid if
those pages on ja should be deleted also. (Most of them are classical
authors due to jawq submission policy; no author alive or died 50+
years before must not have their pages on JA WQ.)

Pour vos collaborations a propos,
*bisous*

Aph

On 3/30/06, Jean-Baptiste Soufron <jbsoufron at gmail.com> wrote:
> Bonjour,
>
> Apr?s avoir expertis? l'?tat des donn?es contenues dans le site
> fr.wikiquote, la fondation Wikimedia consid?re que le mat?riel
> h?berg? dans la base
> du site fr.wikiquote ne pr?sente pas les garanties minimales de
> s?ret? juridique n?cessaires ? la
> p?rennit? du projet. Le site va donc ?tre enti?rement repris pour
> ?tre effac? et relanc?. Une politique
> plus exigeante de tra?abilit? des citations mises en ligne sera
> instaur?e sur la version II de
> fr.wikiquote. Cette d?cision a ?t? prise dans l'int?r?t de l'ensemble
> des projets mis en oeuvre par la
> fondation Wikimedia.
>
> --English Translation --
>
> Hello,
>
> After analyzing the data contained in the fr.wikiquote site, the
> Wikimedia Foundation has determined that the material stored in the
> fr.wikiquote database does not provide the basic assurance of legal
> soundness necessary to the permanence of the project. Therefore, the
> site will be entirely taken down to be erased and relaunched. A
> policy requiring greater traceability of quotations will be put in
> place on fr.wikiquote version II. This action has been taken for the
> benefit of all Wikimedia Foundation projects.
> Translations can be made into other languages after the announcement
> for the benefit of Wikiquotes in other languages that may be
> interested. Any such translations should if possible work from the
> original French text, this is a French announcement.
>
> ----
>
> Jean-Baptiste Soufron
> wikimedia foundation
> chief legal officer
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>

--
Aphaea@*.wikipedia.org
email: Aphaia @ gmail (dot) com


subject: [WikiEN-l] what are the ethics involved?

body:
Is it ethical for a Wiki editor, who is also an admistrator,  to edit  both
sides of an issue?

tm


body:
On 3/31/06, charles matthews <charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com> wrote:
> I can't see what's wrong with that.  There isn't the slightest entitlement
> to become an admin.  Anyone who has more than 15000 edits or so is likely to
> get asked whether they want to be nominated.  That's about the size of it.

How many admins do we want? We have 800. Do we want 2000? Or do we want 200?

I suspect that until we can answer that question, most of our
discussion on how hard it should be to become an admin is actually
fairly pointless. Why? Because ultimately, if adminship is not to be a
"reward for hard work", then it should be bestowed upon the top X% of
the population, rather than every editor who has done good. And we
don't know what X is.

Steve


body:
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

There is no upper limit to the number of admins Wikipedia needs - even
now with 800 admins there is a backlog on WP:COPYVIO and WP:PROD which
needs work. There will always be vandals who could be blocked quicker,
nonsense pages (created by the aforementioned vandals) which need
deleting. The more admins we have, the quicker these things get done,
and therefore the smoother Wikipedia works.

Cynical

Steve Bennett wrote:
> On 3/31/06, charles matthews <charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com> wrote:
>> I can't see what's wrong with that.  There isn't the slightest entitlement
>> to become an admin.  Anyone who has more than 15000 edits or so is likely to
>> get asked whether they want to be nominated.  That's about the size of it.
>
> How many admins do we want? We have 800. Do we want 2000? Or do we want 200?
>
> I suspect that until we can answer that question, most of our
> discussion on how hard it should be to become an admin is actually
> fairly pointless. Why? Because ultimately, if adminship is not to be a
> "reward for hard work", then it should be bestowed upon the top X% of
> the population, rather than every editor who has done good. And we
> don't know what X is.
>
> Steve
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>
>
>
>

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from_name: Ilmari Karonen

body:
Steve Bennett wrote:
>
> And the worst is "come back later, might support you then". Not
> because the candidate is in any way actually deficient as an admin,
> but they simply haven't served an unwritten waiting period.

However irritating this might seem to the person who is told that, this
can in fact be quite reasonable advice.  The subtext is often "We don't
know enough about you to tell if you'd be a good admin.  If you're still
interested and haven't gone off the deep end in the meanwhile, try again
in a few months."  Or simply "I don't think you're experienced enough
yet.  Try again when you've been around longer."  Or possibly both.

People do change over time, and more importantly, people also reveal
more about themselves as they interact with people.  _I_ know I was as
trustworthy back when I registered my account as when my RfA was passed,
but for all anyone else knew back them, I could've been another WoW
sock.  The six months or so between the two events served not only to
familiarize me with Wikipedia, but also to provide other users with some
confidence that I wasn't going to go on a vandalism spree as soon as I
got my admin buttons.

--
Ilmari Karonen


subject:
[Wikitech-l] [Wikipedia-l] Mediametry survey (was )Re: Language
	versions' popularity vs. number of articles...)

body:
These ideas sound creative :) Also, if the problem is *storage* of
logs, rather than the server hit of *creating* the logs, then would it
not be possible to write some log analysis routines that massively
summarise the logs, then delete them? Such a thing could be run once a
day.

It would only need to store the number of hits per day to each page,
which, even with 1 million articles, would only be 4 megabytes, right?
:)

Steve

On 3/31/06, Neil Harris <usenet at tonal.clara.co.uk> wrote:
> Brion Vibber wrote:
> > Andrew Gray wrote:
> >
> >> Is that "keep recording but ignore them", or disable in the sense of
> >> turn off logging totally? Just curious...
> >>
> >
> > After a few months of having logs that you're not reading fill up the servers'
> > hard disks every few days, you turn them off. :)
> >
> > -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
> >
> >
> How about a cron job that turns logging on, then off, intermittently? Eg.
>
> For example, on each server, have a cron job that does this:
>
> Every 5 mins:
>     Is logging on?
>        Then: turn it off
>        Else: generate a random number
>             If it's == 0 mod 1000:
>             Then:  turn logging on
>             Else: do nothing
>
> This way, you get representative short blocks of 5 minutes of traffic,
> kicking in once every three days or so on each of the 100 or so servers
> at random times of the day or night.  This would also suffice for gross
> statistical analysis, and wouldn't require any modification of the squid
> code, just a short external shell script.
>
> Log-rotation should handle the rest and prevent the disks filling up,
> since the average sampling rate would then be low enough to cope with.
>
> -- Neil
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] Philosophical question re sources

body:
On Tue, 28 Mar 2006 22:49:15 +0200, you wrote:

>(PS keep up the good work on [[University of Melbourne Student
>Union]], but don't forget [[University of Melbourne student
>organisations]] :))

Haven't forgotten, but I'm singing Beethoven's Missa Solemnis tomorrow
night, and we are hosting a choir over from Germany to sing with us,
so I'm a bit busy and will be until Monday.

I'm not welshing, honest :-)
Guy (JzG)
--
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG


body:
On 3/31/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> > 0) As a "screw process" admin, I wonder what leads you to believe my
> >    quick'n'easy de-sysopping is necessary.
> >
>
> Process is the method by which the commonity can control admins. If
> admins wish to step outside that control another more direct method is
> required.

What is a "screw process" admin anyway? Is it:
- an admin who does destructive things without respect for consensus
- an admin who streamlines process to achieve the right result

or something else?

Steve


body:
On 3/31/06, Ilmari Karonen <nospam at vyznev.net> wrote:
> Well, no, the part about going on a vandalism spree was hyperbole.  It's
> more about protecting ourselves against users who might use their admin
> povers for more subtle undesirable things, such as POV pushing, or for
> ends incompatible with the project (like the folks who think the best
> thing about Wikipedia are the userboxes), or who might simply use them
> carelessly or thoughtlessly, say, by rangeblocking all of Europe.

And we are going to detect such users by ensuring we only select
admins who use edit summaries 95% of the time and have made at least
1500 distinct edits in the minimum 6 months they have had an account
at en?

False metrics are worse than no metrics :(

I think I'd rather that each RfA required a neutral person to review
the person's entire edit history, noting the number of edit wars,
whether edit summaries were accurate, their apparent stance on
controversial topics like userboxes etc, then publishing those facts
for everyone to decide on. Rather than (incorrectly) assuming that
each person voting does such a review for themselves.

> That said, even vandalism _is_ a concern, if an unlikely one.  Besides
> the obvious opportunities, like replacing MediaWiki messages with
> genitalia, a malicious admin could really have a field day with the
> ability to edit the sitewide javascript files.  Unfortunately that does
> make adminship a big deal in some ways.

Has that ever happened?

Steve


body:
On 3/31/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> They allow people who would otherwise be overlooked to run. Personal I
> object to non self noms. As an admin you are going to have to stand
> alone and take responcibilty for your actions fast. Might as well
> start off by doing that.

Personally I object to there even being a distinction between a
self-nom and a non-self-nom. Anyone can get a friend to nominate them.
What is it supposed to prove exactly? If anyone really has no Wiki
friends at all, such a fact will probably manifest itself in other
ways.

Steve


body:
On Fri, 31 Mar 2006 18:04:16 +0200, you wrote:

>Q: What to do when an article stresses you out?
>A: Find someone else in the same boat. Swap. Don't even look at "your"
>article for a week.

Who's going to create the [[Wikipedia/Edit war swapmeet]] then?
Guy (JzG)
--
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG


body:
On Fri, 31 Mar 2006 17:45:38 +0200, you wrote:

> Is adminship really something that cannot be "learnt on the job"?

Adminship can *only* be learned on the job.  The point is, of course,
that the admin tools are only really useful for certain classes of
actions (like fighting vandalism).  If you don't already do this
things then you will make more and bigger mistakes if you start doing
them with admin tools than with regular editor rights, and if you
don't intend to do these things why do you need the tools?  An admin
has no more or less status in the community than any other editor in
good standing.  There are many editors who do nothing but create good
content, and steer clear of edit wars, POV-pushers, contentious
subjects and so on.  Would that there were more of them!  And they
have no need of admin tools.
Guy (JzG)
--
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG


body:
On 3/31/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> Posible but unlikely. For example without looking do you know what
> [[MediaWiki:Bad image list]] does?

Heh, nup. Who, apart from admins, does?

Steve


body:
David Alexander Russell wrote:
>
> The 'generally known and trusted...' doesn't reflect how RFAs actually
> happen. It usually comes down to 'absence of fault' rather than any sort
> of positive support of a person. Unless someone has done something
> controversial (previously be desysopped, stated unpopular views on
> deletion policy or whatever) then, provided they have significant
> participation in various namespaces their RFA will probably be unanimous

Yes, this is a consequence of allowing anyone to create a new account
without publically verifying their identity.  Since user accounts have
no pre-established reputation, and since very few new users actually
accomplish something notable that is widely lauded across the project,
the most we can actually ask for in terms of trust is "has been active
for N months without having screwed up".  Raising the bar much higher
than that would significantly reduce the number of new admins.

Of course, the fact that it's much easier to achieve notoriety than
acclaim means that a single screwup can easily ruin your chances of
being trusted.  Once your trust level has dropped below that of a random
new user, you either need to work your way up the hard way, by making
significant positive contributions, or give up and start over with a new
account.

No, it's not fair, nor is it a particularly efficient system of judging
the value of contributors.  But it's the only one we've got.

--
Ilmari Karonen


from_name: Sam Korn

body:
On 3/31/06, Lars Aronsson <lars at aronsson.se> wrote:
> One of the archaic pages on meta is
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikispecies
> which hasn't really changed much since September 2004. The project
> proposal is dead, nobody works on it.  There are few better
> examples of dead meat on meta.
[snip]
> Then next month, someone can come to this new, fresh and
> legacy-free meta to do "work", for example by suggesting a new
> project called Wikispecies.  Since there is no previous mentioning
> of this idea, it must be new.  Brave new world!

Not to disagree with the essence of your points, but we do happen to
have a project called Wikispecies...
[http://species.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page]

--
Sam


body:
On Fri, 31 Mar 2006 18:09:30 +0200, you wrote:

>Perhaps we need a
>non-empowered "respected user" flag for oldbies with common sense that
>don't actually want to do any vandal fighting?

This is, in effect, what happens now.  You can tell the good guys by
the string of barnstars on their user pages, and by their edit
history.  And the ones with no userpage, and only a Welcome message
and ten {test} warnings - well, you know not to give their opinion
quite the same weight.
Guy (JzG)
--
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG


from_name: Benjamin Webb

subject: [Foundation-l] September 11 Wiki

body:
What do people think about the September 11 Wiki. I don't really mind what
happens with up, but have noticed the
proposal<http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Proposals_for_new_projects#Closure_of_September_11_Wiki>as
it is on the same page as the Rodovid one.

If the project is wanted to be deleted, its content could be moved to
Rodovid <http://rodovid.org> then the people who want it deleted will be
happy, but the contents could be kept.

What do you think?
Benjamin Webb


subject: [Foundation-l] September 11 Wiki


from_name: charles matthews

body:
"Steve Bennett" wrote

>Because ultimately, if adminship is not to be a
> "reward for hard work", then it should be bestowed upon the top X% of
> the population, rather than every editor who has done good. And we
> don't know what X is.

We do know you can be a good editor, without being a suitable person for
adminship (no names, no packdrill).

It is sadly the case that we are short of ways to recognise people's
contributions.  Leaving aside long-dead notions such as wiki-money, there
appear to be just these, really:

- barnstars (but these are wholly debased as a coinage)
- WP:1000, which is not really great as a measure
- admin status granted
- getting 'your' article featured (no ownership, naturally, but this is
effective in areas where it works).

We could do with a fresh idea here.  I didn't much like past article
competitions, BTW.

Charles


body:
"Steve Bennett" wrote

> Personally I'm a bit puzzled that there seems to be a bias in favour
> of people who have edited high profile articles and thus have "handled
> conflict" well.

Errr ... aren't those exactly the kind of people we are short of?  Few are
natural diplomats, but part of being an admin is a willingness to intervene
in tense situations, where there is no personal gain at all in sight.

Charles


from_name: WikiAardvark at butterflyfiles.cjb.net

subject: [WikiEN-l] One month block from Wikipedia

body:
I've been blocked for a month from Wikipedia for personal attacks. Now, I do grant that a block was perhaps justified... but I also feel that a month is quite egregarious.

Yes, I had stated my intention to go on wikibreak, but that isn't to say that I had not intended to come back from time to time, perhaps to comment on discussions or to perform some RC patrol on occasion.

To be fair, I didn't necessarily handle the block appropriately, instead responding by creating (and using some existing) sockpuppets and posting responses laden with even more personal attacks to the relevant thread on WP:ANI. (Sockpuppets: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Wikipedia:Suspected_sockpuppets_of_Blu_Aardvark)

However, I also believe that I had legitimate cause for upset, as I was responding in part to being accused of being a neo-Nazi/racist/anti-Semite. The statements that I was subjected to where highly offensive, and I responded in a very similar vein. This isn't to justify my actions, which, in retrospect, where clear violations of numerous policies, but nonetheless, I do want to make clear that, in part at least, my personal attacks were a response to what I felt were also personal attacks.

I would like to request that my block be reduced to 24 or 48 hours, because, although I can grant that a block was appropriate, I do not believe that a block of one week (the initial length), or one month (the extended length after my response to an admin on my talk page) is appropriate. I do grant that my actions with sockpuppets may have ruined any chance at getting my block reduced to a more appropriate time frame, but I feel I must at the very least request it.


from_name: Cormac Lawler

body:
On 3/31/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> >Sure, improve it, but that's no reason to lambaste its
> >community, or make false claims about it. (David, you still haven't
> >addressed my questioning of how historical pages make Meta unusable).
>
>
> Because you can't tell what on earth is active and what isn't. e.g. Is
> [[Meta:Babel]] active? It's supposed to be the Village Pump of Meta. I
> see tumbleweeds blow past. e.g. Is [[m:RFA]] checked at all on any
> regular basis? The bureaucrats were notable by their complete absence
> until Linuxbeak ran for bureaucrat, which appeared to cause a sudden
> flurry of activity and declarations that there were enough bureaucrats
> on Meta, even though there was visibly no-one minding the store. That
> sort of thing. I've given both these examples before on the wiki,
> though not here (my apologies).

This doesn't answer *any* of my very simple question (see above
*again*) - which I think cuts to the point of why me and others are
angry at your '''attitude''' (note: not work). Meta is very clearly a
working wiki, with tons of work going on (local chapters, new project
proposals, research, wikimania etc.); just the pages you refer to are
never the most active pages anyway (and as for pages in general being
active or not - ever heard of the history button?). I didn't bother
responding to your question on meta:babel, because the discussion was
happening on this mailing list, having come from the project's talk
page and Requests for deletion (as you well know).

>
> Note, by the way, that everyone listed on [[WM:OM]] are individuals -
> despite, e.g. Anthere answering one person [1] with a reply to what
> someone else said [2]. So, e.g., Linuxbeak's list of things he wants
> isn't mine (e.g. an en: only meta).
>
> I will note also that the incumbents have successfully driven out at
> least some of the "insurgents" [3]. Are you proud? If not, why?
>

Well, I'd say you should ask yourself the same question.

/me walks away..

C

>
> - d.
>
> (I'm giving references because people are too often claiming not to
> know what I'm talking about in this discussion.)
>
> [1] http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Meta_talk:MetaProject_to_Overhaul_Meta&diff=316433&oldid=316395
> [2] http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Meta_talk:MetaProject_to_Overhaul_Meta&diff=315566&oldid=314729
> - I do agree this was inappropriate, but it does help not to answer
> the wrong person, as if everyone involved is a single entity.
> [3] http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Meta:MetaProject_to_Overhaul_Meta&diff=316383&oldid=316371
> _______________________________________________
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>