subject: [WikiEN-l] Markup; html

body:
On 15/11/05, Justin Cormack <justin at specialbusservice.com> wrote:
>
> On 15 Nov 2005, at 01:07, Andrew Gray wrote:
>
> > On 15/11/05, Justin Cormack <justin at specialbusservice.com> wrote:
> >>
> >> Where is the documentation for the markup changes that suddenly
> >> arrived without
> >> me knowing? </div> seems to be redundant now and other stuff, and I
> >> need to fix
> >> some stuff.
> >
> > "The developers on IRC said it's an older HTML validator which runs
> > when the HTML Tidy is disabled. It seems to not only close the table
> > prematurely, but also escape all table markup outside a table." -
> > cesarb, on WP:HD
> >
> > My (limited) understanding so far is that the existing html code
> > decided that a Monday evening was a really, really, good time to
> > explode. So it did.
> >
> > In order to get the site running again an older version of the html
> > parser was put in place, one which is less tolerant of sloppy coding
> > (some discussion pages are hideous!) and also slightly less capable. I
> > am unaware what the current status of this is, but presumably someone
> > is working on reinstating the old one - it wasn't a deliberate choice
> > to change over to a new piece of code, though.
>
> Hmm, well can the person who broke it write a decent article on
> [[HTML Tidy]] as penance if they are going to link from WP:HD.

I assume they're busy fixing it :-)

> So you are saying that everything that is broken is actually wrongly
> coded? A good chance to fix it I suppose, If I actually understood how it
> all worked but its rather late in my timezone so I might wait and see what
> happens in the morning.

Signatures that are broken are, in most cases, sloppy coding that was
previously shored up by our parser, I think. However, a lot of other
issues aren't bad coding (at least, not on the surface); there's
issues with HTML in transcluded templates, for example, which no-one
seems sure about; these may be template coding flaws or they may be a
problem with the backup code.

I really don't know anything more than what I've just been reading, though...

--
- Andrew Gray
  andrew.gray at dunelm.org.uk


list: foundation-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Angela

subject:
[Foundation-l] Incubator Wiki for New Wikimedia Projects (was
	Vote to create Wikiversity Vote)

body:
On 11/14/05, Anthony DiPierro <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
> Wikimedia should stick to creating and
> distributing informational materials.  There are wikis on Wikicities
> which qualify, though.  The poker one comes to mind (because that's
> one of the few I've actually participated in).

The original poker request said it was aimed at the community at
http://www.twoplustwo.com and specifically said "this project will
only seek to involve content that would be out of Wikipedia's scope".
A wiki where poker players can share tips, or write about specific
non-notable games they've played doesn't fit in with anything
Wikimedia is likely to do, in my opinion.

> I don't understand any of this.  Is scratchpad.wikicities.com a
> Wikimedia project?

No, the WikiLab at scratchpad.wikicities.com is a Wikicity. What is
currently called "Seed Wiki" on meta would be the Wikimedia version of
this, though hopefully will more of a policy of what was allowed to be
there.

> The process to create a new project is far too difficult.  An
> incubator wiki would facilitate that process.

Yes, but it should only facilitate it for things the community
actually want there, not everything someone thinks would make a good
wiki. There are hundreds of wiki ideas that are rejected even from
Wikicities. If you look a wikifarm with no policy, like pbwiki.com,
you'll see the sort of content I'm concerned about ending up on this
"seed wiki" if people think it is a general dumping ground rather than
something where the project proposals need to be community approved.

> By the way, I just realized that some people might misunderstand my
> quote.  Angela, referring to wikiseed (the incubator wiki), said in an
> IRC board meeting "Angela thinks it will end up being a fork of
> Wikicities."  That's all I was referring to when I referred to the
> project that way.

This was my concern *if* the site was going to be set up without any
policies on what content should be there (which luckily isn't the case
now that people are discussing these policies on meta). Without those
policies, it wouldn't only be a fork of Wikicities, but of any wiki
hosting project / wikifarm.

Angela.


list: wikimedia-l


list: wikien-l

from_name: Justin Cormack

subject: [WikiEN-l] Markup; html

references:
<813E7CE2-EDB7-4067-B670-7EDE950EA713@specialbusservice.com>
	<f3fedb0d0511141707m2fe242fau@mail.gmail.com>
	<2C7C96A3-78CF-4A96-B0A0-82798A55D9A2@specialbusservice.com>
	<f3fedb0d0511141721q3d8d07d8u@mail.gmail.com>

body:
On 15 Nov 2005, at 01:21, Andrew Gray wrote:
> Signatures that are broken are, in most cases, sloppy coding that was
> previously shored up by our parser, I think. However, a lot of other
> issues aren't bad coding (at least, not on the surface); there's
> issues with HTML in transcluded templates, for example, which no-one
> seems sure about; these may be template coding flaws or they may be a
> problem with the backup code.
>
> I really don't know anything more than what I've just been reading,
> though...

Its the template thing: it was [[Portal:London]] I saw which has
lots. Quite
prepared to believe that there were errors to start with; the current
state
looks like a pretty major change though, so it doesnt seem worth fixing
until they have reverted to something that is going to stay stable. If
there are problems it would be good to have checking tools on input, or
more markup to replace common html uses (html in sigs is rather evil
as it
cant be cleaned up after if wrong which is rather gross and this
should really
be fixed).

Justinc


from_name: geni

subject: [WikiEN-l] How did this happen (comixpedia??)

body:
On 11/15/05, Snowspinner <Snowspinner at gmail.com> wrote:
> Actually, what happened at WikiProject Webcomics is that the people
> who drove away the contributors proceeded to get into a pissing match
> and tried to write the guidelines in such a way as to render a comic
> which had survived an AfD not a week before to be deletable,
> community consensus on the AfD be damned.
>
> -Snowspinner

AfD represents community consensus? Even I don't think the system is
that flawless.

--
geni


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: "Oh, Yuck: The Encyclopedia of Everything Nasty"

body:
On 11/14/05, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> > There might be a time when forks will work well, but that'll be several
> > years from now, when the user base is much bigger and there are better
> > sofware interfaces and visualizations to sort through the differences
> > between the forks.
> http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/Main_Page
> I think that dissproves your claim.

As I've said before
(<http://mail.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2005-September/028369.html>),
Memory Alpha was never a fork of Wikipedia. This idea was derived from
the Star Trek Encyclopedia which predates Wikipedia by over 7 years.
It is under an incompatible license, which should mean that none of
the content in MA was even taken from Wikipedia. Please stop assuming
every other project that uses MediaWiki must be a fork of Wikipedia
since it really isn't true.

Angela.


subject: [WikiEN-l] opinions

body:
On 11/15/05, Brown, Darin <Darin.Brown at enmu.edu> wrote:
> Geni said:
>
> >>You appear to think that respecting you means that I have to respect
> your opinions. This is not the case.
>
> You appear to think that respecting someone's opinions means you have to
> agree with their opinions. This is not the case. It is possible to disagree
> with someone's opinions and still respect their opinions. Saying that you
> respect someone, but you don't respect their opinions is just empty
> posturing.
>
> darin

That is your opinion. There are of course many opinions the majority
of the population don't respect. for example the opinion that starlin
was an all round good guy would not be widely respected. Once you move
away from the absolute position it simply becomes a question of where
to draw the line.

--
geni


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Neil Harris

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: [WikiEN-l] Markup; html

body:
Justin Cormack wrote:
>
> On 15 Nov 2005, at 01:21, Andrew Gray wrote:
>> Signatures that are broken are, in most cases, sloppy coding that was
>> previously shored up by our parser, I think. However, a lot of other
>> issues aren't bad coding (at least, not on the surface); there's
>> issues with HTML in transcluded templates, for example, which no-one
>> seems sure about; these may be template coding flaws or they may be a
>> problem with the backup code.
>>
>> I really don't know anything more than what I've just been reading,
>> though...
>
> Its the template thing: it was [[Portal:London]] I saw which has lots.
> Quite
> prepared to believe that there were errors to start with; the current
> state
> looks like a pretty major change though, so it doesnt seem worth fixing
> until they have reverted to something that is going to stay stable. If
> there are problems it would be good to have checking tools on input, or
> more markup to replace common html uses (html in sigs is rather evil
> as it
> cant be cleaned up after if wrong which is rather gross and this
> should really
> be fixed).
>
> Justinc
>
> _
Maybe templates should be HTML-cleaned as independent entities before
transclusion / substitution into the larger page? Or would that not work
because the code doesn't work that way, or break existing uses?

-- Neil


from_name: Mark Gallagher

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Re: Arbitration Committee members granted checkuser
	tool

body:
G'day Chris,
> Kelly Martin wrote:
>> Since we're discussing qualifications: I am the network manager for a
>> financial services firm; systems under my supervision store personal
>> and financial information for our clients and business partners.
>> Privacy and security issues are obviously a significant part of my
>> job.
>
> What would happen if either of you (Kelly or Sean) disclosed private
> information into the public domain? Aside from ethical concerns, what
> prevents you from doing this?

Ethical concerns aren't enough?

--
Mark Gallagher
0439 704 975
"What?  I can't hear you, I've got a banana on my head!"
- Danger Mouse

--
No virus found in this outgoing message.
Checked by AVG Free Edition.
Version: 7.1.362 / Virus Database: 267.13.0/167 - Release Date: 11/11/2005


body:
G'day Chris,

> As both of you would face legal recourse if you were to divulge private
> information in your day jobs, what do you think the opposition to having
> a comparable legal agreement between the Foundation and people with
> checkuser is due to, given that the situation is reasonably similar?

On Wikipedia, they're valued, trusted volunteers.  In real life, they're
employees being paid to assume their responsibilities.

Volunteers like Sean and Kelly are valuable: they put in the equivalent
of an employee's work without the financial outlay.  Asking them to also
put their arses on the line is more likely to drive them away than
increase our security.

Cheers,

--
Mark Gallagher
"What?  I can't hear you, I've got a banana on my head!"
- Danger Mouse

--
No virus found in this outgoing message.
Checked by AVG Free Edition.
Version: 7.1.362 / Virus Database: 267.13.0/167 - Release Date: 11/11/2005


subject: [WikiEN-l] Is a bad encyclopedia an encyclopedia at all?

body:
On 15 Nov 2005, at 02:16, Daniel P. B. Smith wrote:

>> No the primary goal is to make a free encyclopaedia. It will be the
>> best one
>> as a byproduct.
>
> I think that by definition an encyclop[a]edia _needs_ to be pretty
> good, or what good is it? If making a _good_ encyclopedia is only a
> byproduct, we will find in the end that we do not have an
> encyclopedia at all.

But getting the process right is the important thing rather than what
it ways now.

So long as we have a process that leads to improvement it doesnt
matter to us if a few planes crash
for a few months (as I try to tell people in revert wars; they have
to live with each other because
the process is there going on; in some ways a 1.0 stream will make
dealing with difficult people
who care about particular revisions harder). The encyclopaedia is a
result of the process and it being
free is a vital part of that. If you just want the best one just
throw money at it. A lot more than
Jimbo threw at nupedia. You can work out how much you need by looking
at how you would scale Brittanica
to be like wikipedia. If you want the best one by the WP process it
being free is vital.

Justinc


from_name: Tom Cadden

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Tower of Babel - Voting to ignore MoS,
	NCs for language reasons.

body:
---------------------------------
How much free photo storage do you get? Store your holiday snaps for FREE with Yahoo! Photos. Get Yahoo! Photos


subject:
[WikiEN-l] What is going on? Yahoo mail won't allow messages to be
	replied to. It gives a blank box and won't accept typing


from_name: Matt Brown

subject: [WikiEN-l] Totally unscientific investigation...

body:
On 11/15/05, kosebamse at gmx.net <kosebamse at gmx.net> wrote:
>
> Wikipedia needs more dumping grounds. We have seen that with trolls, some of
> whom now spend their energy for the benefit of mankind on consumerium.org
> and elsewhere. If people redirect their "fanwanking" activities to sites
> outside Wikipedia, all the better.
>
> Our central problem these days is the shitty quality of so many articles.

> Just now I caught two conspicuous errors on today's featured article, and
> that's supposed to be the best work that we can offer.

The featured article process tends to be more about style, writing
quality, being reasonably cited, and having pictures that are free.
Not much involvement of subject matter experts that weren't already
working on the article.  Maybe there's a way to improve that - ideas?

> Another example: [[Fantasy literature]] of all things, is an absolute non-article.

Because it's hard to write such an article in a NPOV way.  That's one
big mountain of research to get right; no wonder most editors have
ignored it.

> As long as we can't correct these and similar deficits, we don't need more
> articles, and we certainly don't need more 20 kb articles about the hiding
> tactics of some unknown ugly imp in an unknown video game

Would that such articles were 20 kb, rather than the two sentence ugly
stubs most of them are.

Problem is, as Jimbo already stated recently - it is a fallacy to
think that preventing new articles or restricting their creation will
make anyone work harder on what you would rather they were working on.
 Writing a free encyclopedia, like writing free software, is a matter
of scratching one's own itches and doing what pleases oneself, for the
most part.  The proportion of people who will selflessly do "what
needs to be done" instead of what they'd like to do is vanishingly
small.  Fortunately, the proportion of people who LIKE doing these
tasks is higher than one might think, so progress is made.

-Matt


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Tim Starling

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Re: [Fwd: [HelpDesk-l] Moving pages and how to
	control this]

body:
Alphax wrote:
> Page move vandalism help request. This is going to wikipedia-l and
> wikien-l; hope someone can help...
>
> -------- Original Message --------
> From: 	Muriel Gottrop <gottrop at yahoo.co.uk>

[...]

> So, how can we limit new users from moving pages and in what terms? Can
> we decide a fixed number of editions from which the user can move pages?
> How does this work??

The feature in question is enabled on en, de and fr. It denies page moves to
new users based on a heuristic which is currently the same for all wikis.
For security reasons I'd prefer it if the exact algorithm was not
publicised; it's subject to change without notice in any case. I can discuss
it privately with known members of the community.

We can enable it for pt if there is a consensus in favour. I know that might
be difficult without more public information, but in any case, remember that
you, the community, are in control. If it causes problems, you can discuss
improvements with me or one of the other developers, or ask that it be
switched off.

For more information, try the #wikimedia-tech channel on irc.freenode.net.

-- Tim Starling


body:
Forgot to respond to this part:

On 11/15/05, kosebamse at gmx.net <kosebamse at gmx.net> wrote:
> Wikipedia needs more dumping grounds. We have seen that with trolls, some of
> whom now spend their energy for the benefit of mankind on consumerium.org
> and elsewhere. If people redirect their "fanwanking" activities to sites
> outside Wikipedia, all the better.

So-called 'fanwanking' doesn't damage unrelated articles nearly as
much, though.  Trolls and those out to 'change the world' according to
their ideas (if there's any difference) want to change the core.

The only real damage fanboys create on Wikipedia is the "X in popular
culture" disease that infects way too many articles, but fortunately
these can be got rid of quite easily.

And as has been said before, most subjects appear to be 'fancruft' to
someone.  Articles on obscure bits of history almost nobody remembers
are of interest to significantly fewer people than articles about game
characters, after all.

-matt


from_name: Tony Sidaway

body:
On 11/14/05, Andrew Gray <shimgray at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> I have no doubt that a sizable proportion of people on
> both sides of those disputes knew for a fact that they were right
> about their preferred usage being vastly more common, and quoted
> specific searches to prove it.

Yep.  The world will not be a worse place, nor Wikipedia a worse
encyclopedia, if it happens to have the article on Zurich at Z?rich
and the article on Ivory Coast at Cote d'Ivoire.  While such choices
seem utterly bizarre they are certainly not matters of great moment.

I do sometimes wonder where the process of abandonment of English
proper names of places will lead us, but no doubt in time we would all
become accustomed to referring to Cymru, Alba, Euskal Herria,
Deutschland, Espa?a, Confoederatio Helvetica, ?sterreich, and all the
rest--and some of us may even understand which country we're talking
about.


from_name: Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason

subject: [Wikitech-l] sr.wiki has been waiting for months!

body:
On 11/14/05, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi everybody,
>
> Representatives of the Serbian Wikipedia have asked a number of times
> how they can get their conversion engine installed for sr.wikipedia.
>
> 1) It was approved in a vote by Serbian Wikipedians
> 2) It will make Wikipedia more usable to many people, including most
> Montenegrins
> 3) It does not require any new software; rather it is a fully working
> Mediawiki component already.
>
> Now, so far there has been no response from this community.
>
> Please, somebody, respond -- how is it that the Chinese Wikipedia got
> a conversion system implemented as soon as it was written, but the
> Serbian Wikipedia is waiting and waiting and waiting?

Where's the patch to LanguageSr.php and the conversion library to make
this happen?


body:
On 11/15/05, Michael Snow <wikipedia at earthlink.net> wrote:
> If it's not GFDL, then it is by definition not a fork of Wikipedia
> content. Either that or it's a violation of the license.
>
> --Michael Snow

As I said true forks are unlikely because the initial bulk of material
you pick up will be beyond your rescourses to handle. What you see are
the result of "wikipedia has some coverage of subject X but we want to
do it in a different way" sometimes this means more of it, sometimes
this means original reseach and some times this means POV.

--
geni


subject: [WikiEN-l] Probation Committee

body:
It may be useful in future if arbitration committee makes use of those
involved on the newly formed mentorship group and nominates those who
perform well as informal mentors along the lines in the Cool Cat
mentorship, which effectively amounts to a controlled probation.

In the Cool Cat case, disruptive editing by Cool Cat on articles
related to Turkey and Kurds (for instance, persistent pushing of a
point of view) may be dealt with by blocking.

He has three mentors who can ban him from editing any article if
necessary, but they also act as a court of appeal against blocks, with
the power to alter or clear a block made by other administrators.

In my opinion as a mentor the effects have been helpful, enabling this
editor to perform useful work for Wikipedia while checking potential
problems--some of them unforeseen at the time the mentorship was set
up--as soon as they arise.


body:
On 11/15/05, Alphax (Wikipedia email) <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
> Tony Sidaway wrote:
>
> > Alba,
>
> Erm...

Ken ye no the name o' Bonnie Scotland? Dinnae fash yersel', it's
mostly teuchters use it.

>
> > Euskal Herria,
>
> Erm...

Basque Country

>
> > Confoederatio Helvetica,
>
> Switzerland?

Yes.  Having four official local languages, they decided to choose a
fifth, Latin, for the official name of their country.


body:
On 11/15/05, Alphax (Wikipedia email) <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
> And the rest can just smile and nod, and read the article while nobody's
> looking! Perfect! :)

Trying to figure out what langage the interlang links will take you
too can be a challange.

--
geni


body:
On 11/15/05, kosebamse at gmx.net <kosebamse at gmx.net> wrote:
> As soon as they stray away from the featured article
> on the front page, or happen to run into the random pages, their impression
> will be not favorable. That's what I tried to find to out with my twenty
> random pages.

I submit that the vast majority of the truly awful pages on Wikipedia
are very hard to find without the Random Page function, because
they're very poorly linked into the site.  There are many substandard
articles on important topics, but much fewer that are utterly
horrible.

> But it IS getting in the way. I have recently spent several hours patrolling
> the newpages and recent changes, and that was a very sobering experience.

Another point of view is that it's getting in the way of only those
editors who patrol New Pages.  The flow of new pages is not so large
that we are having trouble coping, and the harm of most of these is
minimal, since they're not linked into the rest of the site.  The only
reason to patrol New Pages at all is that it's easier to weed out the
utter crap at the point of entry.

> Another thought experiment: What if we shut down new page creation for a
> year? Simply declare 2006 the year of quality improvement and accept no new
> pages until 2007.

Frankly, if we did that, I quit.  I'm sure I'm far from alone.

> But we could start lifting the quality of the average article to where it belongs,
> and we would have a chance to lift our reputation beyond the "public toilet"
> image that has deservedly been bestowed upon us.

You care too much about the public image, frankly.  You hear the
complaints louder than the praise, and louder than the silent praise
of all those people who, day after day, use Wikipedia for information.

Some parts of Wikipedia are frankly awful, yes; I submit that a good
proportion of them don't matter.  They're on topics nobody gives a
damn about.

Making the barriers to entry harder is a tempting thought, but among
these newbies and dabblers are tomorrow's admins and writers.  A small
proportion of them, granted, but making it harder decreases the flow
of good people as well as bad people.

Yes, I'm an eventualist.  From my point of view, Wikipedia has a long,
long way to go, and that's not a bad thing.  It's that the sum total
of useful human knowledge is so vast.  There are many subject areas
that Wikipedia's coverage is scant or wholly lacking.  Yet, at the
same time, there are articles on Wikipedia that are better than ANY
other online resource.  I am sure there are some that are better than
ANY published article, on or offline.  Isn't that something to feel
good about?

-Matt


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: How did this happen (comixpedia??)

body:
On 11/15/05, Brown, Darin <Darin.Brown at enmu.edu> wrote:
> Geni wrote:
>
> >Can you verify all the claims in them.
>
> Here we do run into an issue which esp. tricky in this particular case. By
> its very nature, webcomics and the webcomics community are going to eschew
> the more traditional verification mechanisms, most esp. those found in
> print. Of course -- the entire phenomenon itself is based around the
> internet. The entire *community* itself, its own internal verification
> procedures, its own internal conditions upon which it deems verification
> necessary, are non-traditional. It is disingenuous to hold it accountable to
> similar verification procedures as say, mathematics or physics. You are not
> going to find thousands of references to webcomix in the academic
> literature. And it will be very difficult to find many in print. The fact
> is, the phenomenon of webcomix itself is highly radical and raises serious
> issues about the nature of verification itself.

Not it doesn't. Things are either verifiable or they are not. There
are a supriseing number of aproaches to trying to verify things.

> For example, simply applying the "website notability" requirements to
> webcomix is absurd. There is a fundamental difference between websites which
> serve as fronts to organisations, or which provide specific services to
> users and contributors, and to websites where the internet itself is the
> medium of being. Webcomix websites are not "reflectors" of external
> interest. They are the substance itself. You would never consider
> discounting a book as being unencyclopedic simply because it had low sales.
> There are numerous examples of books with low sales that had enormous
> influence. There are too many other important factors to consider.
> Similarly, a webcomix website cannot be assessed solely on "sales".

True. However some measure of trafic is one of the few things that can
be verifed in many cases. However there are other options. For examplr
Casey and Andy has become the basis of GURPS Casey & Andy.

> To be upfront, I don't understand how forks should be necessary at all.
> Exposition is either encyclopedic or it is not. If it is encyclopedic, it
> belongs in wikipedia under a suitable wikiproject. If it is not, then it is
> something else, which should go on elsewhere. Now, it's true, people may
> legitimately disagree on whether a *particular* webcomic is notable enough
> to merit an article, but this is not the issue. If comixpedia.org wants to
> delete notability from their requirements, that is their right, but it is
> inaccurate IMO to then claim that they are a *fork* of wikipedia. It is
> inaccurate to claim their exposition is encyclopedic. What they will be
> doing then is great and wonderful, but not encyclopedic. By dropping one of
> the major tenets of article inclusion, they are by definition creating
> something new.

That is a key part of being a fork. Wikinfo (the first real fork)
droped NPOV. Comixpedia
are not a true fork since they didn't take all of wikipedia's content

> Another thing that bothers me is that the "fork" was clearly hostile and not
> a mutually satisfying event. I am not so much disturbed that people felt a
> need to create something new, where notability was not a criteria. Rather, I
> am disturbed that such a creation came about amidst a tangible amount of
> rancor, ill will, bad faith, lack of communication and compromise. It is
> clear by looking at the histories of several AfD's for just a few hours that
> many people who were not experts on the topic, and hardly cared or were even
> interested in the topic, expended so much time and energy in telling people
> who *were* experts and interested people how they should police themselves.
> Alexa and Google rankings are useful criteria *when used in combination with
> expert judgment and informed community knowledge*, but when they are used by
> people who obviously don't give a damn about the topic they're policing,
> it's a disaster.

This is where stuff such as WP:MUSIC comes in handy

> And who is carrying out these standards? Those who are knowledgeable? Or
> those with a bone to pick? I have seen a lot of evidence that the latter
> have had disproportionate sway.

That is the problem of not establishing proper WP:MUSIC style
standards (and not being a school).

> You missed my point, which obviously went way over your head. I was being
> *ironic*. We already have a thousand forks! They're called wikiprojects. If
> non-notability is dropped, and a new wiki started, that is something new,
> but it is not encyclopedic. It is not a "fork".

Yes it is. A fork is where you start at the same point and then go in
different directions

> My ironic observation would be that at AfD, lots of people work on deletions
> who obviously don't give a damn about a particular subject. While I realise
> AfD plays an important role in regulating content and enforcing standards,
> and the the wiki would fall apart without it, I am a bit, let's say,
> skeptical about the motives of people who seem to do almost nothing but work
> at AfD.
>

Can't stop them. Perhaps it might be worth trying to educate them.

>
> What's to stop people who don't give a damn about baseball from deciding
> what players are "notable"? What's to stop people who don't give a damn
> about chess from deciding what famous games are "notable"? What's to stop
> people who don't give a damn about music from deciding which individual
> piano concertos are "notable"?

In most cases WP:MUSIC deals with the issues that arise over music.

> What's to stop people who don't give a damn
> about math from deciding what theorems are "notable"?

Fear.

>None of these things
> can be determined solely by google rankings or alexa rankings. For example,
> the fact a pitcher has only been in the majors 2 years and has a career ERA
> of 5.90 is far more compelling argument for deletion based on NN than google
> ranks. Barring some specific incident (newsstory, etc.)

For you maybe. For me it just means that that AFD has just developed a
very strong SEP field

[quote]
> Here's a prefect example of what I'm talking about: "'notable within the
> webcomic community' and 'notable in the context of wikipedia' are two
> different things." (from User:SCZen/Webcomics) What baloney! Of course, no
> single individual should be able to decide notability, but certainly on any
> subject, the decision of notability should come from the community involved
> in that subject itself, no matter how small the community. Who else is
> better to decide?

Define the community. I suspect a lot of wikipedia regulars read at
least one webcomic.

> Those who don't give a damn? The Lindemann-Weierstrass
> theorem is not "notable in the context of wikipedia", in the sense that
> hardly anyone outside of specialists takes note of it, but within number
> theory circles, it is highly notable. You will get a very low google rank
> (224 unique hits) for it, and anyone outside of math, and even possibly
> outside of number theory, will have great difficulty verifying its
> notability, without directly consulting experts, as it would be almost
> impossible for someone else to attempt to consult the literature to
> determine this notability. (It would appear indistinguishable to the
> untrained eye from thousands upon thousands of other results in the
> literature or even textbooks.) By the usual "arguments" used at AfD, where
> people ignorant of a subject rely uncritically on google hits, it would get
> speedy deleted. But of course, no one dares do that, as they are petrified
> to comment on mathematical topics.
>
> darin

It is uncommon for people to write vanity articles on mathmatical
topics and the odds are that such articles really were writen by an
expert.

--
geni


subject:
[WikiEN-l] Wikipedia's provable anti-expertise bias (was How did
	thishappen (comixpedia??))

body:
On 11/15/05, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 11/15/05, charles matthews <charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com> wrote:
> > Sort: by relevant WikiProject for example. Nominator's responsibility.  Make
> > sorted noms a crisper process.
>
> Great so as well as remebering how to list something in the first
> place I know have to remeber every single wikipedia wiki project.
> Congrats on makeing RC patrol even more complex.

It's a newpages patrol job, not a rc patrol job.

Be that as it may, there's no reason it can't be a two-stage process
where the person nominating for deletion simply tags the article, and
other people then work on that tagged category and work out what
should be done.

-Matt


from_name: Walter van Kalken

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Assumptions about westerners

body:
Mark Williamson wrote:

>OK, now you're just spewing anti-Western rubbish. I am an opponent of
>colonialism. End of discussion.
>
>Mark
>
Mark .......

You just do not know when to stop don't you. Milos send a thoughtfull
email and what do you react with? With this rubbish?

Waerth/Walter


body:
On 11/15/05, kosebamse at gmx.net <kosebamse at gmx.net> wrote:
> it is my
> belief that among the newbies ( = tomorrow's potential admins) the ratio of
> seriously interested users to vandals/trolls/low-potential-users has
> declined to an unpleasant dimension. That's of course highly subjective.

That is probably true to a degree, at least.

> Furthermore, if we continue to grow exponentially (how long can we, BTW?),
> we will not improve the average quality of our work, as several users have
> rightly pointed out. In other words, we'll continue to expand an already
> enormous body of mediocre writing. I can see no point in that.

I think we can grow exponentially for a little while longer.  The
average quality of our articles is only one metric, though - another
would be to, say, take a representative sampling of other
encyclopedia's topics and measure how well Wikipedia shapes up.  On
that score, I think, we're improving.

> Yes it is, and it is one of the things that makes one stay despite all the
> nuisances. Wikipedia has indeed a long way to go, and an essential
> prerequisite to mastering it is to realize that we must work towards
> quality, not quantity.

Indeed; and thus we must try and encourage people to work on quality.

I do think one problem is that the bar to entry for article creation
is a lot more than it is for article improvement.  I'm not sure how we
go about fixing that.

> What happended to the validation code, by the way? It's been discussed for
> four? five? years now and few people seem to miss it. I can't understand
> that.

Recent discussion on this mailing list seems to tell me that quite a
few people would love to see it in, but the developers/sysadmins are
cautious.

-Matt


subject:
[WikiEN-l] What is going on? Yahoo mail won't allow messages to
	be replied to. It gives a blank box and won't accept typing

body:
Wikipedia doesn't own Yahoo mail. Yet.

Replies work in gmail.


body:
On 11/14/05, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 11/14/05, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Case where this happened really badly: webcomics. We now have a
> > project fork, Comixpedia, entirely caused by AFD. You may recall
> > extensive discussion surrounding this on this list a few weeks ago.
> >
> >
> > - d.
>
> You relise I don't view the existance of Comixpedia (other than their
> choice to use CC) as a bad thing. Wikipedia needs these subject
> specific spinoffs. I hope to see more of them.

Why does Wikipedia need subject-specific spinoffs?


from_name: Anthony DiPierro

body:
On 11/14/05, Angela <beesley at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 11/14/05, Anthony DiPierro <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
> > Wikimedia should stick to creating and
> > distributing informational materials.  There are wikis on Wikicities
> > which qualify, though.  The poker one comes to mind (because that's
> > one of the few I've actually participated in).
>
> The original poker request said it was aimed at the community at
> http://www.twoplustwo.com and specifically said "this project will
> only seek to involve content that would be out of Wikipedia's scope".
> A wiki where poker players can share tips, or write about specific
> non-notable games they've played doesn't fit in with anything
> Wikimedia is likely to do, in my opinion.
>
The project is for the most part out of Wikipedia's scope (there is
some overlap but I see that as inevitable and not a bad thing).  I
think it's well within the scope of Wikimedia, though.  I think you've
slightly misidentified the actual purpose of the site, too.  Maybe the
original proposal mentioned writing about specific non-notable games,
but I haven't seen anything like that.  I mean, why would a
non-notable game be mentioned?  Some example questions from
http://poker.wikicities.com/wiki/PokerWiki:Why_a_wiki%3F

    * What games are spread at the Borgata?
    * How should I play a pair of jacks under the gun?
    * What are the basic rules of five-card stud?
    * How should I manage my bankroll?
    * What are some basics every beginner should know?

I can't "imagine a world in which every single person is given free
access to the sum of all human knowledge" without it.  (and lest
someone misunderstand my quote that's from
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Home)

Maybe this is an anomaly, but PokerWiki is an example of a project on
Wikicities that I'd like to see in Wikimedia.  <sarcastic humor>Maybe
we could start a Wikibook about poker and use that site as an
incubator.</sarcastic humor>

> > I don't understand any of this.  Is scratchpad.wikicities.com a
> > Wikimedia project?
>
> No, the WikiLab at scratchpad.wikicities.com is a Wikicity. What is
> currently called "Seed Wiki" on meta would be the Wikimedia version of
> this, though hopefully will more of a policy of what was allowed to be
> there.
>
That's what I thought, in which case I don't really see what you're
trying to say.  Maybe you thought I was saying there should be no
policy on the seed wiki?  I certainly wasn't.  <strikethrough
reason='see explanation below'>You're the one who said that it would
wind up being a fork of Wikicities, not me.</strikethrough>

> > The process to create a new project is far too difficult.  An
> > incubator wiki would facilitate that process.
>
> Yes, but it should only facilitate it for things the community
> actually want there, not everything someone thinks would make a good
> wiki. There are hundreds of wiki ideas that are rejected even from
> Wikicities. If you look a wikifarm with no policy, like pbwiki.com,
> you'll see the sort of content I'm concerned about ending up on this
> "seed wiki" if people think it is a general dumping ground rather than
> something where the project proposals need to be community approved.
>
Obviously the community should decide what goes in the seed wiki and
what doesn't.  But I think we've developed a good process for the
community to decide - a wiki.  Artificially raising the bar to require
board support for people just to begin working on something new, using
Wikimedia resources, is not good idea.

And I re-read the current policies on new project creation.  From what
I've read it seems to be completely a board decision, though the board
is supposed to consider a poll.

> > By the way, I just realized that some people might misunderstand my
> > quote.  Angela, referring to wikiseed (the incubator wiki), said in an
> > IRC board meeting "Angela thinks it will end up being a fork of
> > Wikicities."  That's all I was referring to when I referred to the
> > project that way.
>
> This was my concern *if* the site was going to be set up without any
> policies on what content should be there (which luckily isn't the case
> now that people are discussing these policies on meta). Without those
> policies, it wouldn't only be a fork of Wikicities, but of any wiki
> hosting project / wikifarm.
>
> Angela.

Sorry about that then.  It wasn't clear to me when I read this that
that was what you meant.

Clearly the seed wiki should have policies on what content should be
there.  I really don't think anyone was ever suggesting that there
shouldn't.

Anthony


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: cluster monitoring

references:
<dl09q7$jne$1@sea.gmane.org>	<4374EF03.6020302@nedworks.org>	<dl7gmk$s7f$1@sea.gmane.org>	<43776C59.8040907@nedworks.org>
	<dlan22$s3d$1@sea.gmane.org>

body:
Ashar Voultoiz wrote:
> Mark Bergsma wrote:
> <snip>
>
>>>Can we start installing snmpd on all servers to at least get some basic
>>>data ? :o)
>>
>>That's exactly the same data ganglia is currently monitoring, so I don't
>>really see the point...
>
>
> So lets write ganglia scripts :o)
>
> If we want to monitor every minute 15 services, we will have to telnet
> the gmetad every 2 seconds. We could build a caching system though:
>
> Check gmetad, cache the result for one minute, the have the nagios
> plugins grep the cache instead of telneting gmetad.
>
> I think i have an idea about how to handle that.
>

I wrote a perl script a while back to poll the gmond XML output from one
machine and stop or start a process on another machine based on the value of
a metric retrieved. I didn't use telnet (ick), I read from a socket and then
used an XPath module to find the metric in the XML. It's probably lying
around in my home directory somewhere if you want to look at it.

If caching is required, then adding metrics to nagios is obviously not the
same as adding metrics to ganglia. For ganglia, you run gmetric whenever a
metric changes, so you can have a loop that sets 30 metrics in each pass if
you like. You don't give it a plugin for it to invoke at its leisure, you
make your own daemon.

-- Tim Starling


body:
On 11/14/05, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> Most
> stuff that lands on afd is not implicetly verifiable.
>

Oh I dunno.   Looking at (randomly chosen recent day log) November 8,
we have the following entries:

Verifiable: 50-cent word, A. Y. Jackson Secondary School, Abdul Samad
Maharuddin, Alan lennon, AMUST Registry cleaner, Andkon, Anphillia,
Anvert, Appalachian State University Student Government Association,
Arcanime, Archos Gmini XS202

Unverifiable: A. Willis Abraham, Aadam Nasir, Afskum, Apples, Guns and
Greed, Archipel

I stopped after this, but I think you'll see my point.  Lots of
entries on AfD are  verifiable.

Incidentally I find one or two of the deletion nominations somewhat
disturbing.  The "Archos Gmini XS202" nomination was accompanied by
the statement "I've never heard of this mp3 player"  The only problem
with the article was some unencyclopedic language.  The Alan lennon
entry was apparently deleted merely because the performer has no entry
on Allmusic.com, but this Kilkenny musician has played on a Kim Fowley
album and recorded his own well received 2003 album and achieved
endorsements by several musical instrument companies.

Unless we're adopting an extremely exclusionist approach to Wikipedia
entries, such articles don't really belong on AfD at all.  They seem
to be a symptom of simple laziness on the part of the nominators.


subject: [Foundation-l] Incubator Wiki for New Wikimedia Projects

body:
On 11/15/05, Robert Scott Horning <robert_horning at netzero.net> wrote:
> Daniel Mayer wrote:
> >--- Robert Scott Horning <robert_horning at netzero.net> wrote:
> >>Wikibooks is about
> >>non-fiction books, and that takes many very unique forms.
> >And Wikijunior is certainly a non-fiction book.
> Wikipedia is also a non-fiction book, however.

I brought that up earlier, and I'm really not sure what to make of it,
because Wikipedia certainly shouldn't be made a part of Wikibooks.  I
can think of two possible reasons:

1) Wikibooks is for textbooks, and this should be narrowly construed
to mean classical textbooks, not to include any learning resources
such as encyclopedias.

2) Wikipedia is too big for Wikibooks (combined perhaps with the fact
that Mediawiki is not sophisticated enough to handle both of them
under a single project).

I actually favor the latter argument, though Jimbo has just recently
suggested that the former is (also?) true.  Also, the latter argument
would lead to Wikibooks being used as an incubator wiki, as big
projects would eventually outgrow Wikibooks.  (Maybe Mediawiki can be
developed in a way to better integrate all the projects, but that's
somewhat of a separate issue).

Anthony


body:
Mark Williamson wrote:

>Because that's what it was: anti-Western rubbish. He made blanket
>statements about Westerners, etc., etc., etc.
>
>Just because some people didn't understand the problems with blocking
>open proxies in Thailand, does not mean _nobody_ understood. If you'll
>recall, I supported what you said back then...
>
>And I really wouldn't consider his e-mail thoughtful. It was a pile of
>rubbish about what is wrong with Westerners, and by extension me, etc.
>etc etc
>
Oh common that is crazy and you know it. It is very simple. What you in
Midwest USA feel is the truth and is the right way of handling things
....... somebody in Mexico might frown upon. Even people in the UK might
frown upon it. You should learn that not everybody on this earth thinks
alike nor is raised alike nor considers the same things truths that you
consider truths ..... that is a simple fact of life. Learn to life with
it instead of keeping on telling people that you are right all the time
and people should listen to you. You simply didn't get the point of my
previous email it was not just about that issue it was a general
tendency which I addressed. Since I am not a native USA-English speaker
I blame it on my insufficient grasp of using the USA-English language in
an email to convince you of my point.

Waerth/Walter


from_name: Jason Stubbs

subject: [Wikitech-l] Help: <nowiki> not working on my wiki

body:
Hi,

I have set up a company wiki over the last couple of weeks. I have tried to
us the <nowiki></nowiki> tage to display the wiki formatting, but it doesnt
seem to work. eg if it type:

<nowiki>'''bold'''</nowiki> expecting to get '''bold'''

I get *bold* instead.

I assume that this is the parser that does this. Is there a configuration
file that can enable or disable this function?

I have incorporated the FCKeditor into the wiki...could this have broken
something? However, the page i am editing is not using HTML.

Regards

Jason


from_name: M. Creidieki Crouch

subject: [WikiEN-l] Tower of Babel - Voting remains stupid as well as evil.

body:
> >It occurs to me that these nomenclature problems could be solved at
> >software level by permitting the creation of synonyms, rather than
> >redirects.

> Get coding :-D

Did we ever get the whole "developer bounty" system started?  I'd be
happy to donate $15 to a developer who codes this.

-- Creidieki


from_name: Kelly Martin

subject: [WikiEN-l] Fwd: FW: Billboard chart data licensing

body:
On 11/14/05, Brandon Cordy <b.touch at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi, all. I'm a Wikipedia editor who uses the login "FuriousFreddy". There
> were some questions raised over the legality of the inclusion of data from
> the American Billboard music charts, since the company that owns Billboard
> (VNU Media) claims copyright and ownership of the chart information. I sent
> them an email several weeks ago...and they finally got back to answering it.
>
> What does this mean for the Wikipedia music articles which include Billboard
> charts?

Absolutely nothing.  The mere fact that album X reached position Y on
the Billboard charts is a raw fact and cannot be copyrighted.
Billboard, like so many other companies, likes to claim a broader
scope of intellectual property rights than they are entitled to.

Kelly


from_name: Bob Mellish

subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia's provable anti-expertise bias

body:
On 11/15/05, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:[...]

> The problem here is the degree of it. The assumption of bad faith that
> appears to be far too common on AFD has led to an expert being *driven
> off* Wikipedia by people who are not only proudly ignorant, but are
> doing their best to get anti-expert bias made policy and the way
> things work around here.

It's funny, but I quite often create "expert" articles on subjects I'd bet
that few wikipedians know about, or have even heard of (e.g.:<
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cauchy%27s_equation>). But I've yet to have one
listed on AFD because they are ignorant of the subject, and I'm in no danger
of being driven off. Perhaps there's more to the problem than just the
"proud ignorance" of AFDers.

Bob Mellish


subject: [Wikitech-l] Help: <math> not working on my wiki

body:
I managed to fix the problem with the <nowiki> tags mentioned below, but
i have now discovered that I cannot parse <math> tags. I get the
following error displayed on the page when I try to parse:

<math>\sqrt{1-e^2}</math>

*Failed to parse (unknown error): \sqrt{1-e^2}*

I've checked through the all of the preference files to make sure it is
enabled, and I think I have everything set up correctly.  Is there
something extra I need that is not supplied in the 1.5.2 build?

Thanks

Jason

Jason Stubbs wrote:

> Hi,
>
> I have set up a company wiki over the last couple of weeks.  I have
> tried to us the <nowiki></nowiki> tage to display the wiki formatting,
> but it doesnt seem to work. eg if it type:
>
> <nowiki>'''bold'''</nowiki> expecting to get '''bold'''
>
> I get *bold* instead.
>
> I assume that this is the parser that does this.  Is there a
> configuration file that can enable or disable this function?
>
> I have incorporated the FCKeditor into the wiki...could this have
> broken something? However, the page i am editing is not using HTML.
>
> Regards
>
> Jason
>
>
>


from_name: Ryan Hudy

subject: [Wikitech-l] Image Upload/Import

body:
I know that tools like mwdumper don't have the ability to upload and import
images from wikipedia, so I was wondering if anyone has written a script in
PHP or know of any other tools that perform this functionality. I found this
topic discussed here:
http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2005-May/029745.html

with someone stating they were working on a PHP script to do this, but I
guess it never happened or it would have probably been passed around within
the community. Anyone have any additional information on this issue?

Ryan


from_name: Daniel Mayer

body:
--- Anthony DiPierro <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
> I brought that up earlier, and I'm really not sure what to make of it,
> because Wikipedia certainly shouldn't be made a part of Wikibooks.  I
> can think of two possible reasons:
>
> 1) Wikibooks is for textbooks, and this should be narrowly construed
> to mean classical textbooks, not to include any learning resources
> such as encyclopedias.
>
> 2) Wikipedia is too big for Wikibooks (combined perhaps with the fact
> that Mediawiki is not sophisticated enough to handle both of them
> under a single project).

Both are true. Also, a collection of articles does not a book make. You can
bind them together and present them like a book, but they will never be
something that somebody is going to read cover to cover in sequence. Articles
are self-contained entities that stand perfectly well on their own. Pages or
even chapters in a book should be part a much larger self-contained work that
itself has a specific goal on where it wants to lead the reader.

-- mav

__________________________________
Yahoo! FareChase: Search multiple travel sites in one click.
http://farechase.yahoo.com


body:
On 11/15/05, Brandon Cordy <b.touch at gmail.com> wrote:
> Here's an email I got from the Business Development associate at VNU Media:
>
> Please tell the appropriate person at Wikepedia to contact me as soon as
> possible. As Sam noted, the current use of our content on your site is not
> permissible without a licensing agreement. Therefore we would like to
> resolve the issue quickly. Thanks again for bringing this to our
> attention.
>
> Best,
> Ben

It is better to beg forgiveness than to ask permission, especially
when dealing with people who think you need to pay them money to get
permission to do things you can do without asking for it in the first
place.

Let this be a lesson to you.

Kelly


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject:
[Foundation-l] Incubator Wiki for New Wikimedia Projects (was
	Vote to create Wikiversity Vote)

body:
Anthony DiPierro wrote:

>The process to create a new project is far too difficult.  An
>incubator wiki would facilitate that process.  The fact that
>Wikicities is already doing something which you feel has overlap (but
>then later say wouldn't have any overlap), is really irrelevant.
>
The process should be that difficult.  The impetus for new projects
seems to be more often a reflection of people's inability or
unwillingness to look for compromise solutions;  it has very little to
do with an objective need for another project.

One starts from Wikipedia with its set of fundamental principles.  A new
project should first of all have a motivation based on a variance of one
of those fundamental principles.  The first spin-off was Meta which when
I first joined was promoted as a place where one could engage in POV
rants that could not be allowed on Wikipedia.  Wiktionary was a response
to "Wikipedia is not a dictionary".  Wikibooks was intended for books
(not necessarily strictly *text*books) which required that a subject be
treated with more depth than would be possible in an encyclopedia; I've
always believed that the "No original research" could be a little more
relaxed in a Wikibooks context.

The answer to deletionist controversies should not always be to
establish a new project; it should lie in an attempt to find common
ground.  That's something which a certain cadre of people on Wikipedia
refuses to seriously consider.  I don't know what rules the Wikijunior
people have been violating in Wikibooks, but that is an omnous claim.
It seems to reflect the usual dynamic conflict between those who want
clarity and certainty, and those who treasure innovation as a primary
value.  A project has a serious problem when either of those two gains
dominance.

Once established I believe in the autonomy of the separate projects, but
they still need to have an understanding of where they come from.
Autonomy should not be an excuse for excluding what might otherwise be
allowed, but this is an extremely difficult problem which can only be
addressed with a lot of goowill.

Ec


from_name: kosebamse at gmx.net

body:
m.g.gallagher at student.canberra.edu.au wrote

>Notable webcomics belong in Wikipedia.  Unconscionable fanwank belongs
>in Comixpedia.  Fortunately, with compatible licencing, we can share the
>best/worst of both.  That's why I (and I assume geni) don't think of
>Comixpedia as a Bad Thing: it's a filter.  Obviously, Comixpedia isn't a
>dumping ground for Wikipedia, but if they're willing to take what we
>don't want, and if we can import the stuff we do want but didn't
>realise, then that's good, surely?

Wikipedia needs more dumping grounds. We have seen that with trolls, some of
whom now spend their energy for the benefit of mankind on consumerium.org
and elsewhere. If people redirect their "fanwanking" activities to sites
outside Wikipedia, all the better.

Our central problem these days is the shitty quality of so many articles.
Just now I caught two conspicuous errors on today's featured article, and
that's supposed to be the best work that we can offer. Another example:
[[Fantasy literature]] of all things, is an absolute non-article. See also
the post that started this series of threads, and
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Carnildo/The_100 for more.

As long as we can't correct these and similar deficits, we don't need more
articles, and we certainly don't need more 20 kb articles about the hiding
tactics of some unknown ugly imp in an unknown video game (okay, I made that
up, but if you look into AFD or recent changes you'll know it's not
exaggerated).

kosebamse

--
Lust, ein paar Euro nebenbei zu verdienen? Ohne Kosten, ohne Risiko!
Satte Provisionen f?r GMX Partner: http://www.gmx.net/de/go/partner


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: "How to get a girl"

body:
--- Gerrit Holl <gerrit at nl.linux.org> wrote:
> And what about [1]? It has been very useful for me, but a "textbook"?
> Not really. A book on "how to get a girl" could cite
> http://www.sirc.org/publik/flirt.html, a publication by the Social
> Issues Research Centre. I find it a strange decision to allow only
> 'textbooks', no other educational books.
>
> [1]
>
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Bicycles/Maintenance_and_Repair/Wheels_and_Tires/Fixing_a_flat

While not commenting on the merit of the "how to get a girl" Wikibook, I'd just
like to say, as a co-founder of Wikibooks, that I never intended Wikibooks to
only have what would classically be seen as textbooks (although that was the
focus).

Manuals, self-help guides, and even longer format reference books that are so
popular in bookstores (such as a 200+ page biography about Napoleon) should,
IMO, also be welcome. I also don't see how having those type of works on
Wikibooks is in any way inconsistent with the foundation's goals.

-- mav

__________________________________
Yahoo! FareChase: Search multiple travel sites in one click.
http://farechase.yahoo.com


body:
Anthony DiPierro wrote:

>On 11/13/05, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
>
>
>>>I also don't see why a wiki for game cards or for elementary schools
>>>or for (to use another example) dead people wouldn't make a good wiki.
>>>In fact, at some point or another I've proposed the latter two as
>>>projects.
>>>
>>>
>>As far as I'm concerned, whatever we have on these belongs in Wikipedia.
>>We only need bold and courageous action to deal with the deletion madness.
>>
>>
>I probably agree with you.  But there is pretty strong opposition to
>Wikipedia being a phone book, a knowledge base, a geneology website,
>or a memorial website, though I think these all fit clearly within the
>scope of Wikimedia (and in fact much of "What Wikipedia is not" does).
> I seriously doubt the scope of Wikipedia is going to be expanded to
>include these things.
>
Philosophically I think that an encyclopedia IS a knowledge base, but
that could just lead us into a lot of unsolvable semantic arguments.

There are companies out there that can do phone books much better than
we ever could.  Until Wikipedia came along on-line genealogy was already
perhaps the best self-organized amateur research area on the net.  It
would take a tremendous effort to come up to speed in that area..  We
have had our own 9-11 Wiki, but that has not exactly been a memorial
success.

Ec


body:
daniwo59 at aol.com wrote:

> In a message dated 11/13/2005 10:13:39 PM Eastern Standard Time,
>robert_horning at netzero.net writes:
>
>
>     That such proposals seemingly never get approval is a reason
>     why nobody wants to throw an idea into that dustpile of ideas and
>     instead try to sneak the projects through a back door like Wikijunior
>     has done.
>
>Excuse me, but Wikijunior was never snuck through a back door. In fact, it
>is probably one of the most relevant projects to Wikibooks in that it is
>developing age-appropriate educational material. As I recall, that was the
>objective of Wikibooks. Looking at it, it seems to have developed quite nicely.
>
There you go!  Trying to change the debate by sneaking facts into it! ;-)

Ec


from_name: geni

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: opinions

body:
On 11/15/05, Brown, Darin <Darin.Brown at enmu.edu> wrote:
> Geni said:
>
> > That is your opinion. There are of course many opinions the majority
> of the population don't respect. for example the opinion that starlin
> was an all round good guy would not be widely respected. Once you move
> away from the absolute position it simply becomes a question of where
> to draw the line.
>
> Yes, and of course, you have the ultimate moral authority on that.
>
> Isn't there some saying, the most reliable way to tell if someone has lost
> an argument is how by soon they start invoking the Holocaust or Stalin??
>
> darin

Godwins law? Only applies to the nazis I'm afariad so logiacly you
have just lost. I can change the above to mao or kim jong il or well
take your pick really.

--
geni


body:
On 11/15/05, Tony Sidaway <f.crdfa at gmail.com> wrote:
> Why does Wikipedia need subject-specific spinoffs?

Because certian people will be able to work better if they don't keep
running into people who don't know anything about the subject.
Secondly they are in a much better position to detect hoaxes.

--
geni


from_name: Joseph Reagle

subject: [WikiEN-l] People editing their own Wikipedia articles.

body:
On Thursday 10 November 2005 19:10, Matt Brown wrote:
> Daniel Brandt is far from the first subject of a Wikipedia article to come
> along, find the article, and try to 'fix' it, edit it, delete it, or even
> boost themselves on it. And he won't be the last. As Wikipedia becomes
more
> and more in the public eye, and as well-known people become more and more
> familiar with online things, we'll see it quite often.

Interestingly, I had just written about this with respect to Mike Godwin and
his Law.

http://reagle.org/joseph/blog/culture/wikipedia/godwins-law?showcomments=yes
2005 Nov 14 | Godwin's Law
...
In any case, the Wikipedia experience that Godwin wished to share was about
the article on Godwin's Law. While modifying the article to more accurately
reflect the history of the meme, some other editors objected. The trinity
of Wikipedia policies is that editors should be neutral in their
presentation of claims, not include original -- and potentially crackpot --
research, and provide citations such that any such claim can be verified by
others. So, this story brings us to the interesting question of how does
the primary source, such as Godwin, edit a related article? While
recognizing Godwin's authority, one might also then challenge his
neutrality and reporting of primary claims. It is not uncommon for
contributors to create "vanity" edits (pages or links) that are rebuffed
with these policies when the edit is not of encyclopedic merit. But what of
when the edit is of merit? Are the most qualified primary sources
disqualified from editing the Wikipedia article? Need a primary source
published her first person claim elsewhere before it can bear upon the
Wikipedia article?


from_name: Peter Mackay

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Tower of Babel - Voting to ignore MoS,
	NCs for language reasons.

body:
> From: wikien-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org
> [mailto:wikien-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org] On Behalf Of Sam Korn
> Sent: Tuesday, 15 November 2005 09:59
> To: English Wikipedia
> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Tower of Babel - Voting to ignore
> MoS,NCs for language reasons.
>
> On 11/14/05, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> > You appear to think that respecting you means that I have
> to respect
> > your opinions. This is not the case.
>
> Sometimes it pays to say "hmm, I disagree with that.
> Nevertheless, I can see where he/she/(insert appropriate
> pronoun here) is coming from, so I'll respect his/her/(ditto)
> opinion.  Maybe that will make people more keen to respect mine."
>
> If you want people to respect you, respect them.  If you want
> people to respect your opinions, respect theirs.
>
> Civility is not really that hard, and would make many people
> much happier.

The more I learn of Wikipedia and the WP community, the more I think that
true wisdom lies not in being "right", but in finding a way to gain
consensus.

These sort of nit-picking skirmishes on minor details have the potential to
brew up into major wars. This particular one looks like a prime candidate
for WP:LAME. I honestly couldn't care which name is right. As an English
speaker, I would have thought that Ivory Coast would be the name we'd use
and Cote d'Ivoire the "local" name we'd use in the template. But there seem
to be arguments for both usages, and I cannot say that I am (or want to be)
an expert on the matter.

But, um, who really cares? From a usability point of view, readers seeking
information on this quaint nation will get to the same article whichever
name they type in. Isn't that the main thing?

Much to my bemusement, I see on the discussion page for the article that
this dispute has been running for over a year, and the article retains its
French name. Has anything changed recently to upset what is presumably
enough of a consensus to see stability for twelve months or so?

However, so long as the discussion remains civil, *shrug*

Peter (Skyring)


from_name: Bryan Derksen

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Wikipedia's provable anti-expertise bias (was How did
	this happen (comixpedia??))

body:
geni wrote:

>My general answer to this one is that X in popular culture makes
>useful padding untill the the article isup to a reasonable size. After
>that it may be time for it to be culled.
>
>
>
Split off into its own article, you mean.

If it's perfectly good encyclopedia material _before_ the article gets
"big enough", then it's perfectly good material _after_ the other parts
of the article grow too. The other parts of the article growing has no
effect whatsoever on the nature of the material that doesn't grow along
with it.


subject:
[WikiEN-l] Re: Re: Wikipedia's provable anti-expertise bias (was
	Howdidthis happen (comixpedia??))

body:
geni wrote:

>On 11/15/05, Phil Boswell <phil.boswell at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>>So factor it out into a separate article, rather than simply throw it away.
>>If there is sufficient information in [[X#X in popular culture]] to cause a
>>noticeable delay in loading the article, then maybe an article [[X in
>>popular culture]] should be created.
>>
>>
>>
>
>I have no wish to create permastubs
>
>
If the "X in popular culture" section is so small that splitting it off
would make it a stub, how could it possibly be having any significant
impact on the loading time of the article it's currently in? If it's a
permastub section then it can stay in the main article without causing
any harm.


from_name: Brandon Cordy

body:
Here's an email I got from the Business Development associate at VNU Media:

Please tell the appropriate person at Wikepedia to contact me as soon as
possible. As Sam noted, the current use of our content on your site is not
permissible without a licensing agreement. Therefore we would like to
resolve the issue quickly. Thanks again for bringing this to our
attention.

Best,
Ben

Ben French
Associate, Business Development
VNU eMedia, Inc.
770 Broadway, 6th Floor, New York, NY 10003
Phone: (646) 654-5593 / Fax: (646) 654-5589

On 11/15/05, Kelly Martin <kelly.lynn.martin at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 11/14/05, Brandon Cordy <b.touch at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Hi, all. I'm a Wikipedia editor who uses the login "FuriousFreddy".
> There
> > were some questions raised over the legality of the inclusion of data
> from
> > the American Billboard music charts, since the company that owns
> Billboard
> > (VNU Media) claims copyright and ownership of the chart information. I
> sent
> > them an email several weeks ago...and they finally got back to answering
> it.
> >
> > What does this mean for the Wikipedia music articles which include
> Billboard
> > charts?
>
> Absolutely nothing. The mere fact that album X reached position Y on
> the Billboard charts is a raw fact and cannot be copyrighted.
> Billboard, like so many other companies, likes to claim a broader
> scope of intellectual property rights than they are entitled to.
>
> Kelly
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] re: Billboard charts

body:
Here's an email I got from the Business Development associate at VNU Media:

Please tell the appropriate person at Wikepedia to contact me as soon as
possible. As Sam noted, the current use of our content on your site is not
permissible without a licensing agreement. Therefore we would like to
resolve the issue quickly. Thanks again for bringing this to our
attention.

Best,
Ben

Ben French
Associate, Business Development
VNU eMedia, Inc.
770 Broadway, 6th Floor, New York, NY 10003
Phone: (646) 654-5593 / Fax: (646) 654-5589


from_name: Brown, Darin

body:
> Message: 7
> Date: Tue, 15 Nov 2005 05:15:39 +0000
> From: geni <geniice at gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Re: How did this happen (comixpedia??)
> To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at wikipedia.org>
> Message-ID:
> 	<f80608430511142115s86863b4p369a22f75279688 at mail.gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
>
> On 11/15/05, Brown, Darin <Darin.Brown at enmu.edu> wrote:
> > Geni wrote:
> Not it doesn't. Things are either verifiable or they are not. There
> are a supriseing number of aproaches to trying to verify things.

And that was just my point. The nature of verifiability may change depending
on the topic. Having the same expectations for math or physics, which have
hundreds of professional journals, vs. webcomix, which does have some
professional journals, but where a lot of the community operates outside
this, doesn't seem right. This is what I meant by, it raises issues about
verifiability. Not that it doesn't exist, but that you can't always apply
norms from one area to another.

> True. However some measure of trafic is one of the few things that can
> be verifed in many cases. However there are other options. For examplr
> Casey and Andy has become the basis of GURPS Casey & Andy.

This is getting at what I was getting at with regard to proofs in math
articles earlier -- sometimes, you're just not going to be able to find a
"smoking gun" to establish notability or verify something. Verifying a
calculation, or making judgments about whether a particular topic or person
is notable in spite of raw numbers is a subtle issue and in any particular
case, I would defer to experts.

> That is a key part of being a fork. Wikinfo (the first real fork)
> droped NPOV. Comixpedia
> are not a true fork since they didn't take all of wikipedia's content

Ok, clearly there's a lot of confusion on my part (and maybe in general)
what exactly a fork is. Does a fork really have to "take all of wikipedia's
content?"

My original point stands. If Comixpedia had simply developed harmoniously as
a place to promote non-notable webcomics, that would be one thing. But there
was some hostility and the creators said the site was created not just as a
place to promote non-notables, but because they were frustrated with
processes at AfD.

> This is where stuff such as WP:MUSIC comes in handy
>
>
> > And who is carrying out these standards? Those who are knowledgeable? Or
> > those with a bone to pick? I have seen a lot of evidence that the latter
> > have had disproportionate sway.
>
> That is the problem of not establishing proper WP:MUSIC style
> standards (and not being a school).

You don't seem to understand my point. I'm saying that you are never going
to be able to write down and make formal policy about every type of decision
regarding deletion or inclusion or articles. Just like the Constitution
requires interpretation by judges in practice, policies require
interpretation in practice. This requires good faith, a certain deference to
people who know more, and a certain flexibility. Saying these can be
replaced by just writing more and more policies is folly. And it allows
people to turn interpretation into policy.

> > What's to stop people who don't give a damn about baseball from deciding
> > what players are "notable"? What's to stop people who don't give a damn
> > about chess from deciding what famous games are "notable"? What's to
> stop
> > people who don't give a damn about music from deciding which individual
> > piano concertos are "notable"?
>
> In most cases WP:MUSIC deals with the issues that arise over music.

I went there, it's all aimed toward popular music. There is nothing to stop
someone from knocking down a relatively obscure piano concerto because
they've never heard of it or the composer. Notability would come from the
reputation of the concerto in the music community and things that had been
written about it. But there could be very little written about it and still
be notable. You have to rely on judgment. And you can never formalize this
by writing more and more policies.

>
> > What's to stop people who don't give a damn
> > about math from deciding what theorems are "notable"?
>
> Fear.

Are you suggesting they should?

>
> >None of these things
> > can be determined solely by google rankings or alexa rankings. For
> example,
> > the fact a pitcher has only been in the majors 2 years and has a career
> ERA
> > of 5.90 is far more compelling argument for deletion based on NN than
> google
> > ranks. Barring some specific incident (newsstory, etc.)
>
>
> For you maybe. For me it just means that that AFD has just developed a
> very strong SEP field

I have no idea what SEP is. And yes, the ERA stats are better than google
rankings. They tell you more.

> Define the community. I suspect a lot of wikipedia regulars read at
> least one webcomic.

And that makes them experts? I drink coffee most days, but I don't think I'm
a coffee expert. I read newspapers, but don't think I'm a journalism expert.

> It is uncommon for people to write vanity articles on mathmatical
> topics and the odds are that such articles really were writen by an
> expert.

Exactly my point -- you are admitting that decisions on deletion or
notability are made on superficial appearances rather than real knowledge --
"there are more trolls, vanity seekers in area X than Y, so I'll be a lot
harsher on deleting articles in area X than Y". This works for some of the
anonymous new articles, since a lot of them *are* speedy deletes. But I'm
saying these decisions should be based on knowledge, not presumptions about
the "odds" that the contributors are in bad faith contributing vanity.

I was simply stating that if many of the arguments from other areas were
applied to math, without fear, countless legitimate articles would be in AfD
purgatory for a long time.

darin


body:
(we should probably move this discussion back to the mail list, but...)

"A lesson to me?" I don't really care either way whether or not Wikipedia
lists Billboard information; the legality of the issue was something that
peopel felt should be inquired about (the question has been o nthe table for
quite some time), and so it was. It's better to research something than to
turn a blind eye to what very well could be an unallowable use of
propriatery information.

On 11/15/05, Kelly Martin <kelly.lynn.martin at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 11/15/05, Brandon Cordy <b.touch at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Here's an email I got from the Business Development associate at VNU
> Media:
> >
> > Please tell the appropriate person at Wikepedia to contact me as soon as
> > possible. As Sam noted, the current use of our content on your site is
> not
> > permissible without a licensing agreement. Therefore we would like to
> > resolve the issue quickly. Thanks again for bringing this to our
> > attention.
> >
> > Best,
> > Ben
>
> It is better to beg forgiveness than to ask permission, especially
> when dealing with people who think you need to pay them money to get
> permission to do things you can do without asking for it in the first
> place.
>
> Let this be a lesson to you.
>
> Kelly
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] Signature problems

body:
On 11/15/05, Phil Boswell <phil.boswell at gmail.com> wrote:
> What the heck happened with signatures since last night? There's a heap of
> complaints on [[en:WP:VPT]] from people with complicated, and indeed
> not-so-complicated, signatures, which suddenly stopped resolving properly.

There are two issues: first, lots of people have had bad markup in
their signatures. When details of the parser change, or if we have to
temporarily turn off the 'HTML Tidy' postprocessor due to
configuration issues, the bad markup, already inserted into thousands
of pages, can suddenly become visible, sending entire pages into
superscript or whatever.

Tidy was disabled on Monday due to some crashing/hangup problems that
haven't been resolved yet, so we've gotten the usual round of
complaints about broken pages because of this.

> My sig is fairly simple: up to a few minutes ago it was non-raw, and
> consisted of "Phil]] | [[User talk:Phil Boswell|Talk", which when wrapped
> with the traditional "[[User:..." and "]]" worked fine. I have now converted
> it to raw and filled in the supposedly automatic bits by hand.

The last time this happened, I added the 'raw signatures' option to
discourage people from using these crappy markup tricks -- since
they're often also badly broken.

I want to accommodate fancy signatures; personalized sigs help build a
sense of community and personality, but we also need to not break
things all the time. :) This time I've gone ahead and added some
stricter behavior; I know I'll get some hate mail on this (hi!) but we
get hate mail about the broken rendering due to people inserting
broken markup on thousands of pages, too, so I think I'll like this
hate mail better.

First, non-raw signatures no longer allow markup, just text. This
keeps the simple cases simple. Fancy cases can use the 'raw signature'
option, which will also keep them from breaking if/when we change how
the default signature works.

Second, raw signatures are now more strictly checked for validity.
Currently it's doing a check for well-formed XML, which will keep out
the common mismatched tags problem (eg having a <sup> and forgetting
the </sup>). This may be expanded to check for unbalanced '' and '''
wiki tags, unbalanced [[ and ]], etc. Also we will probably change it
to either reject or pre-expand any templates.

Unfortunately all this excitement came at a bit of a bad time; I'm on
intermittent, very slow dial-up until my cable gets installed so I
haven't been able to put in big shiny announcements in all the usual
places. I hope this has been sufficiently widely announced by now (eg
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:How_to_fix_your_signature),
please spread the info around as necessary.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


from_name: Tony Sidaway

subject: [WikiEN-l] Totally unscientific investigation...

body:
On 11/15/05, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 11/15/05, Tony Sidaway <f.crdfa at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Why does Wikipedia need subject-specific spinoffs?
>
> Because certian people will be able to work better if they don't keep
> running into people who don't know anything about the subject.
> Secondly they are in a much better position to detect hoaxes.

This doesn't seem very satisfactory to me.  I'm always bumping into
people who know nothing about lisp except that they don't like the
language's ubiquitous brackets and they consider this to be such a
grave failing in a programming language that it renders lisp almost
useless, and that lisp is an interpretive language that must always be
slow in execution.  Should the articles about programming languages
then be exiled to a specialist wiki?

It is certainly true that a specialist is better able to detect
hoaxes, but I don't see how this can be used as an argument for moving
all articles about programming languages, web comics, pokemon or
whatever to a specialist wiki, which would almost inevitably have
fewer editors competent in the subject than the much larger and more
popular English language Wikipedia.  It is also the case that I'm
competent in rather more subjects than programming languages, so it
would be very inconvenient to deal with a number of fragmented wikis.
Hoaxes aren't common enough to justify splitting the wikipedia, nor is
the presence of the odd blithering ignoramus a problem.


subject: [Wikitech-l] Change "Wikimedia Project" Icon

body:
On 11/15/05, Ryan Hudy <rthudy at hotmail.com> wrote:
> I'm looking to replace the Wikimedia Project icon (located at the bottom
> left of the mediawiki pages: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki) with
> another icon within my intranet wiki. I believe I made all the necessary
> changes within the files (Skin.php, SkinTemplate.php, Monobook.php,
> Commonprint.css, Monobook/main.css) but my icon still isn't showing up. Am I
> missing an adjustment/addition in a specific file, and is the Wikimedia
> Project icon called as copyrightico?

Here's ours:

$wgCopyrightIcon = '';

As always with configuration options, double-check your cache issues
after making changes.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


from_name: David Gerard

body:
Andrew Gray wrote:

>As Sam says below, this is an issue of interpretation of a clear and
>sensible rule which is, in this case, ambiguous. We had the same over
>Gdansk/Danzig, over Gasoline/Petrol, over Alumin(i)um, a score of
>other pages. I have no doubt that a sizable proportion of people on
>both sides of those disputes knew for a fact that they were right
>about their preferred usage being vastly more common, and quoted
>specific searches to prove it.

What we need to do, right, is put up a third alternative so horrible
that the warring sides no longer really care which it is as long as
it's not that one. No-one could decide whether the flat round things
with sound in the grooves should be at "Gramophone record" or
"Phonograph record", so someone invented the term [[Analogue disc
record]] and put the article there. This sucked so much that even the
partisans for one of the standard terms would be happy with the other
one.

So the article was put at [[Gramophone record]], with a redirect at
[[Phonograph record]] and both prominent in the first sentence. I
wonder if something like that could be done here.

[[m:Voting is evil (and stupid)]]

- d.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: How did this happen (comixpedia??)

body:
Darin Brown wrote:

>Here we do run into an issue which esp. tricky in this particular case. By
>its very nature, webcomics and the webcomics community are going to eschew
>the more traditional verification mechanisms, most esp. those found in
>print. Of course -- the entire phenomenon itself is based around the
>internet. The entire *community* itself, its own internal verification
>procedures, its own internal conditions upon which it deems verification
>necessary, are non-traditional. It is disingenuous to hold it accountable to
>similar verification procedures as say, mathematics or physics. You are not
>going to find thousands of references to webcomix in the academic
>literature. And it will be very difficult to find many in print. The fact
>is, the phenomenon of webcomix itself is highly radical and raises serious
>issues about the nature of verification itself

Oh, it's much better than that. There is in fact a real genuine actual
peer-reviewed academic journal on comics called ImageTexT
(http://www.english.ufl.edu/imagetext/). One of the managing editors
is Phil Sandifer, who you will know better as Snowspinner. In a
jawdropping assumption of bad faith (which is, of course, the reason
why AFD is so poisonous to the Wikipedia community in its present
form), the AFD regulars did their damnedest to get coverage in it
excluded from the webcomics guidelines *because* Snowspinner was the
editor. The excuse was that he was too involved or too close or knew
too much or something.

This was after they'd driven off a previous comics expert for knowing
more than them on the topic, leading him to say "you people are
clearly idiots" and form Comixpedia.

geni will, if he reads back, agree that this is closer to the
chronology of what actually happened in the formation of the comics
inclusion guidelines: (1) provably bad AFD, (2) deliberate attempt to
exclude academic expert for being an expert, (3) guidelines then
formed such that the bad AFD would have led to a deletion.

(Don't take my word for it - read the talk page, it's amazing. Note in
particular the direct assertion that editors who confess to knowing
*NOTHING* on a topic should have their opinions count just as much as
an actual provable expert, for the purposes of achieving "consensus" -
remembering that the AFD jargon meaning of "consensus" is a two-thirds
vote. Therefore, that a two-thirds majority of editors who
*admittedly* know nothing at all about a topic can get the topic
excluded from Wikipedia altogether over the objections of experts on
said topic. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Webcomics/Notability_and_inclusion_guidelines
)

- d.


body:
> It's funny, but I quite often create "expert" articles on subjects I'd bet
> that few wikipedians know about, or have even heard of (e.g.:<
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cauchy%27s_equation>). But I've yet to have one
> listed on AFD because they are ignorant of the subject, and I'm in no danger
> of being driven off. Perhaps there's more to the problem than just the
> "proud ignorance" of AFDers.

The problem is definitely much less severe in technical fields.  But
all of these specialized articles serve a common problem: failure to
establish context.

When I wrote [[conditional quantum entropy]], I didn't include enough
information to tell a general audience how important it was.  It might
be taught in every undergraduate QM course (no).  It might be a
specialized topic used by specialized researchers (yes).  But people
see the article, and say, "this is science, I can't tell how important
it is, I don't want to be the one who nominates this".  I'm confident
that it can get filled out later.

But in the current atmosphere you can't do that with, say, webcomics.
Any article on a webcomic *should* explain to a general audience what
the importance of the article is.  Things are important because of
their larger context, and a webcomic article needs to explain that it
has 1000 readers, that it was the first keenspace comic to use
this-and-that artistic technique, that it was a major influence on
Penny Arcade, that it was an early exploration of this-or-that theme
in webcomic history.  All of those things are much more important than
a list of characters, but they're *hard*, and maybe they'll come over
time.  But these days we're not waiting for them.

In conclusion, I have no idea what position I just took.

-- Creidieki


subject:
[WikiEN-l] Wikipedia's provable anti-expertise bias (was How did this
	happen (comixpedia??))

body:
Darin Brown wrote:

>It is
>clear by looking at the histories of several AfD's for just a few hours that
>many people who were not experts on the topic, and hardly cared or were even
>interested in the topic, expended so much time and energy in telling people
>who *were* experts and interested people how they should police themselves.

Yep. AFD is one place where Larry Sanger's claim of blatant
anti-expert bias is provably correct.

So. Is Wikipedia's provable anti-expert bias here a good or bad thing?
If bad, what to do about it? Please discuss.

- d.


body:
It occurs to me that these nomenclature problems could be solved at
software level by permitting the creation of synonyms, rather than
redirects.

There's no reason why there should be two or more separate articles,
with people squabbling about which one should be the main article and
which the redirect, if both exist and have precisely the same article
id.  The synonym creation would also have to operate for the
corresponding talk namespace.


from_name: Snowspinner

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Re: Wikipedia's provable anti-expertise bias (was How
	didthis happen (comixpedia??))

body:
On Nov 15, 2005, at 11:32 AM, geni wrote:
>
> Does "the entire world does not have broadband" mean anything to you?
> Ok so 32 is probably a little low for an article size limit but 40+
> and popular culture/trivia are second on my list of things to kill
> (the first being random quotes about the subject wikiquote is thata
> way)

The popular culture sections are often magnets for irrelevant trivia,
but I wouldn't say they're in and of themselves bad. The "In modern
fiction" section of [[Succubus]], for instance, would probably not be
worse off for losing the bit about Sluggy Freelance and the game
series in which succubi are a "forgotten, yet remarkable foe."

Which is not to say that either topic is non-notable - just that they
are not really relevant to a general study of succubi.

You know what's a project we don't have that would be helpful?
Wikibibliography. A repository for things like "List of media with
succubi" or "List of songs over seven minutes in length" or "List of
books about the Vietnam War."

-Phil


body:
As far as legal issues go, I was always told it was better to be safe than
sorry.

Be that as it may, I emailed Jimbo, and he says that we should keep the
BIllboard info in the artist/song/album articles, and delete articles
dedicated to re-listing, for example, the Hot 100 #1 hits and such.

On 11/15/05, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 11/15/05, Brandon Cordy <b.touch at gmail.com> wrote:
> > (we should probably move this discussion back to the mail list, but...)
> >
> > "A lesson to me?" I don't really care either way whether or not
> Wikipedia
> > lists Billboard information; the legality of the issue was something
> that
> > peopel felt should be inquired about (the question has been o nthe table
> for
> > quite some time), and so it was. It's better to research something than
> to
> > turn a blind eye to what very well could be an unallowable use of
> > propriatery information.
> >
>
>
> Not from a legal standpoint.
>
> --
> 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
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: "Oh, Yuck: The Encyclopedia of Everything Nasty"

body:
geni wrote:
>On 11/15/05, Michael Snow <wikipedia at earthlink.net> wrote:

> If it's not GFDL, then it is by definition not a fork of Wikipedia
> content. Either that or it's a violation of the license.

>As I said true forks are unlikely because the initial bulk of material
>you pick up will be beyond your rescourses to handle. What you see are
>the result of "wikipedia has some coverage of subject X but we want to
>do it in a different way" sometimes this means more of it, sometimes
>this means original reseach and some times this means POV.

This is hairsplitting over the definition of the word "fork". It's a
fork because the guy was trying to work within Wikipedia to write
encyclopedic articles and was driven off by anti-expert bias and
assumption of bad faith on AFD.

Comixpedia is not a fork of *content* - it's a fork of the
*community*. That is why that such a thing could happen is a BIG RED
FLASHING DANGER SIGNAL.

- d.


body:
Tony Sidaway wrote:

[re: pissfight over [[Ivory Coast]] vs [[Cote d'Ivoire]] on en:]

>It occurs to me that these nomenclature problems could be solved at
>software level by permitting the creation of synonyms, rather than
>redirects.
>There's no reason why there should be two or more separate articles,
>with people squabbling about which one should be the main article and
>which the redirect, if both exist and have precisely the same article
>id.  The synonym creation would also have to operate for the
>corresponding talk namespace.

Get coding :-D

(This is a really nice idea, IMO, and would save much of the forests
of redirects and annoyance of double redirects.)

- d.


subject:
[Wikitech-l] Re: [WikiEN-l] Tower of Babel - Voting remains stupid
	as well as evil.


from_name: Justin Cormack

body:
On 15 Nov 2005, at 03:53, Tony Sidaway wrote:
> I do sometimes wonder where the process of abandonment of English
> proper names of places will lead us, but no doubt in time we would all
> become accustomed to referring to Cymru, Alba, Euskal Herria,
> Deutschland, Espa?a, Confoederatio Helvetica, ?sterreich, and all the
> rest--and some of us may even understand which country we're talking
> about.

It seems to be a gradual trend. Leghorn redirects to Livorno but not
that long ago it was the standard English version; its rather rare now.

Also there were a lot of changes post war, when German names were
changed
(Pressburg to Bratislava etc; we used to use the German names). And we
have our entry under Mumbai. I think it is an inevitable trend; there is
no reason now not to use local names and the world is becoming more
internationalized.

There is still an issue as to when we change.

Justinc


body:
On 11/15/05, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Yep. AFD is one place where Larry Sanger's claim of blatant
> anti-expert bias is provably correct.
>
> So. Is Wikipedia's provable anti-expert bias here a good or bad thing?
> If bad, what to do about it? Please discuss.

Snowspinner, who does actually know a thing or two about webcomics,
has been practising some interventionism in webcomic article deletion
debates.   This kind of thing isn't for the faint of heart, because
usually it involved convincingly facing down a bunch of ignoramuses,
but he's had some success.

I have come around to the suggestion that I formerly felt rather wary
of: closing AfD at least for an experimental period, because of its
function in lending leverage to attempts to exclude whole subjects
from Wikipedia.  The current activities organised around AfD not good
for the long term health of the project, in my opinion.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Status of article rating feature?

body:
dpbsmith wrote:

>On my next flight, I hope my pilot will not be using these maps.

That's because the maps are marked "ALPHA QUALITY - NOT FINAL
PRODUCTION VERSIONS" and are written in pencil. Never mind they're in
the top-40 maps in the world - the project has peaked way too early.

Damn we need the rating feature. What's holding it up right now? List
please, referring to current version of code. (I know the servers are
creaking ...)

- d.


subject: [Wikitech-l] Status of article rating feature?


subject: [WikiEN-l] Tower of Babel - Voting remains stupid as well as evil.

body:
On 11/15/05, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> Tony Sidaway wrote:
>
> [re: pissfight over [[Ivory Coast]] vs [[Cote d'Ivoire]] on en:]
>
> >It occurs to me that these nomenclature problems could be solved at
> >software level by permitting the creation of synonyms, rather than
> >redirects.
> >There's no reason why there should be two or more separate articles,
> >with people squabbling about which one should be the main article and
> >which the redirect, if both exist and have precisely the same article
> >id.  The synonym creation would also have to operate for the
> >corresponding talk namespace.
>
>
> Get coding :-D
>

Oh shit!  What did I just say?


body:
On 15 Nov 2005, at 04:28, Tony Sidaway wrote:
>>
>>> Confoederatio Helvetica,
>>
>> Switzerland?
>
> Yes.  Having four official local languages, they decided to choose a
> fifth, Latin, for the official name of their country.

They have been known to conduct business meetings in Latin there. A
friend of mine went and as there was a mixed group it was suggested
that they use Latin. Alas he didnt speak Latin.

Justinc


subject: [WikiEN-l] Fwd: FW: Billboard chart data licensing

body:
Are there any moderators who would be able to talk to VNU?

On 11/15/05, Brandon Cordy < b.touch at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> As far as legal issues go, I was always told it was better to be safe than
> sorry.
>
> Be that as it may, I emailed Jimbo, and he says that we should keep the
> BIllboard info in the artist/song/album articles, and delete articles
> dedicated to re-listing, for example, the Hot 100 #1 hits and such.
>
> On 11/15/05, geni < geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > On 11/15/05, Brandon Cordy < b.touch at gmail.com > wrote:
> > > (we should probably move this discussion back to the mail list,
> > but...)
> > >
> > > "A lesson to me?" I don't really care either way whether or not
> > Wikipedia
> > > lists Billboard information; the legality of the issue was something
> > that
> > > peopel felt should be inquired about (the question has been o nthe
> > table for
> > > quite some time), and so it was. It's better to research something
> > than to
> > > turn a blind eye to what very well could be an unallowable use of
> > > propriatery information.
> > >
> >
> >
> > Not from a legal standpoint.
> >
> > --
> > 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
> >
>
>


body:
On 11/15/05, Mark Gallagher <m.g.gallagher at student.canberra.edu.au> wrote:
>
> It depends on the expert.  On the one hand, an unbiased view on AfD is a
> very welcome thing.  Imagine if SPUI were the sole authority on what
> roadcruft we should keep, and what we should delete!  And yet, he's
> undeniably an amateur expert on transportation in the USA --- should his
> opinion count for more than the metric truckload of people who don't
> think an unnoteworthy back street encyclopaedic?
>

Actually from what I've seen SPUI does a convincing job on this
subject and I'd trust his judgement because of it.  Roads and the like
are pretty heavy duty things involving pretty massive amounts of work,
usually publicly organised, so it's a bit odd to see people nominating
articles on these massive slabs of tarmacadam for deletion in the
first place.  If the roads aren't particularly interesting in
themselves, then we should organise the information using our existing
redirect and merge features.


from_name: JAY JG

body:
>From: David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com>
>
>Damn we need the rating feature. What's holding it up right now? List
>please, referring to current version of code. (I know the servers are
>creaking ...)

Indeed they are.  There was a one hour period yesterday when I could not get
a single page to come up.

Jay.


from_name: Poor, Edmund W

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Totally unscientific investigation...

body:
> > Yes, I'm an eventualist.  From my point of view, Wikipedia
> has a long,
> > long way to go, and that's not a bad thing.  It's that the
> sum total
> > of useful human knowledge is so vast.  There are many subject areas
> > that Wikipedia's coverage is scant or wholly lacking.  Yet, at the
> > same time, there are articles on Wikipedia that are better than ANY
> > other online resource.  I am sure there are some that are
> better than
> > ANY published article, on or offline.  Isn't that something to feel
> > good about?

I would feel good about it, if I believed it. <sarcasm>Please list BOTH
of the articles you're referring to. </sarcasm>

If there are several, or even dozens or hundreds of such articles, I'm
sure ALL of our readers would like to know which ones they are. Is there
a [[Category:Best online article]] or something?

Ed Poor
Quality Control Expert