from_name: Maru Dubshinki

subject: [Wikipedia-l] exicornt switch

body:
On 3/19/06, - Essjay - <essjaywiki at gmail.com> wrote:
...
> 2) Bug 550 deals with the issue of allowing users who have accounts to edit
> even if thier IP is blocked. The solution for it is quite simple; it's
> actually three lines of code that can be written by anyone with minor PHP
> skill. It requires the following:
>
> a) that the patch be enabled;
> b) that account creation from blocked IPs be disabled (to prevent the
> vandals from simply creating an account to sidestep the IP block) which to
> my knowledge is already enabled
> c) throttling account creation from IPs to x per day, currently 10 per day.
> This allows legit people to create accounts, but prevents vandals from
> creating 1000 sleeper accounts to use once the IP is blocked.
>
> The devs are aware of the fix, and are not willing to enable it. The exact
> quote was that doing so is a  "very very bad idea." It is thier opinion that
> it will be of no use, that the vandals will just create sleeper accounts and
> evade the blocks. I don't agree, but I'm not a developer either; I defer to
> thier expertise in the matter.
...
> Essjay

Is that really their reason?  That is *remarkably stupid* of them. I
had thought there was a real reason; such lame excuses disgust me.

The whole idea of blocking, reverting and rollbacking and such like is
to change the balance between the ease of vandalising and the ease of
fixing vandalism in the favor of the latter.
Likewise, the whole idea of blocking is to raise the costs of an
attack on pages to the point where the vandal engages in fewer or none
(at which point the fixing-vandalism comes into play).  Ex. it is hard
to vandalise a conventional website, and so it isn't done often, but
it is easy to vandalise a wiki, so it is done often.
Enabling that feature would raise the cost of vandalism from those
IPs- even if they could still get around it (note that *all* blocks
can be circumvented; it is just too troublesome for most vandals) by
making sleeper accounts, that requires quite a bit of effort and
planning, and waiting- all factors that considerably raise the cost of
vandalism from those IPs, especially since the sleeper accounts would
be indef blocked on surfacing, requiring the vandal to get even more
sleeper accounts, costing ever more effort.
It would be very useful.

~maru


list: wikitech-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: brion at pobox.com

subject: [Wikitech-l] MediaWiki automated test run failure 2006-03-20

body:
An automated run of parserTests.php showed the following failures:

Running test BUG 361: URL within URL, not bracketed... FAILED!
Running test External links: invalid character... FAILED!
Running test Bug 2702: Mismatched <i> and <a> tags are invalid... FAILED!
Running test A table with no data.... FAILED!
Running test A table with nothing but a caption... FAILED!
Running test Link containing "#<" and "#>" % as a hex sequences... FAILED!
Running test Template with thumb image (wiht link in description)... FAILED!
Running test Link to image page... FAILED!
Running test BUG 1887: A ISBN with a thumbnail... FAILED!
Running test BUG 1887: A <math> with a thumbnail... FAILED!
Running test BUG 561: {{/Subpage}}... FAILED!
Running test Simple category... FAILED!
Running test Basic section headings... FAILED!
Running test Section headings with TOC... FAILED!
Running test Handling of sections up to level 6 and beyond... FAILED!
Running test Resolving duplicate section names... FAILED!
Running test Template with sections, __NOTOC__... FAILED!
Running test Link inside a section heading... FAILED!
Running test Media link with nasty text... FAILED!
Running test Bug 2095: link with pipe and three closing brackets... FAILED!
Running test Parser hook: static parser hook inside a comment... FAILED!
Running test Sanitizer: Validating the contents of the id attribute (bug 4515)... FAILED!

Passed 275 of 297 tests (92.59%) FAILED!


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Jacky PB

subject: [Wikipedia-l] To Gerard re: Moldovan wiki

body:
Chris Jenkinson <chris at starglade.org> wrote: Wikipedia Romania (Ronline) wrote:
> The biggest problem that people don't agree with, however, is that the
> Moldovan Wikipedia is biscriptal, and in practice is Cyrillic-only
> (article-wise), when Cyrillic is neither the majority script, nor an
> official script, while also ideologically representing a symbol of past
> repression (we can't always look at things in a political vacuum).

That's a reason to add more content, not delete existing content.

Chris

If by "adding content" you mean Mark adding loads of incorrect two-line articles, then cheer up, you have your wikipedia. It reminds me of the good old communist Romania, where the agricultural and industrial production figures were artificially inflated by producing crap. Of course, that system was not democratic, so that one person could have his way without good reason against the will of the people. Looks much like today's mo.wiki, where Mark blocks everything just because he wants to.

BTW, someone asked me why I'm against mo.wiki. I am not fundamentally against it. The only thing I say is that it should remain in the private space of Mark while it's a pure creation of Mark.

Otherwise, I request that the american us.wikipedia.org is created! It is right, as some people believe this language exists, and we should add content to it. There are even american dictionaries. Of course, I will fill it up just like Mark does, by copying articles from en.wiki, and by writing two-line crap articles. Unfortunately, I will not be able to produce as many grammar errors per sentence as Mark does. Maybe someone level en-1 would like to join me in promoting americanism against the imperialist brits (the "imperialist" part it adapted from Mark's posts)?

Cheers,
Dpotop

---------------------------------
Yahoo! Mail
Bring photos to life! New PhotoMail  makes sharing a breeze.


list: wikien-l

from_name: Chris Jenkinson

subject: [WikiEN-l] Fwd: Wikipedia: Admins abusing their authority

body:
Gay Muslim wrote:
> I have been systematically harassed by these three admins and their cronies.
> They attacked me and another user named I_AM, accused us of being
> sockpuppets of each other falsely.

For the benefit of those of us not fully informed of this, do you have
links to Wikipedia diffs where these accusations occurred?

> They then banned I_AM permanently, blocked me, and proceeded shortly
> thereafter to ban me on the false claim that I am some other user, despite
> the fact that I_AM and I are not each other and a checkuser proved this.

Could you provide links to the block logs for the block they placed on
I_AM and yourself?

> On IRC, DavidGerard was extremely rude and belligerent, and demanded money
> from me, saying that unless I did so he would not publish the checkuser
> result.

Do you have independently-verifiable logs backing up this claim?

> They have since followed me around, deleting all of my appeals and responses
> to their lies. They have locked my user page so that I cannot even request
> unblock via normal appeal means.

Could you provide diffs for where you added your appeals, and where they
deleted them?

Chris

--
Chris Jenkinson
chris at starglade.org

"Mistrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful."
  -- Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra


from_name: Steve Bennett

subject: [WikiEN-l] Help me!

body:
On 3/19/06, Daniel R. Tobias <dan at tobias.name> wrote:
> At least there's no (easy) way to top-post with fullquotes within
> wiki software, so that form of annoying idiocy isn' t present there.

*bite my tongue*

> > And to think there was a proposed policy to ban offsite discussion
> > about Wikipedia...:)
>
> Just how were they going to try to enforce such a ban?

They weren't.

Steve


subject:
[WikiEN-l]
	http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Village_pump_%28news%29&oldid=43104773#USNewsLink

body:
JUDITH HANEY wrote:
> A user named Golbez has vandalized the content of Village Pump by removing
> an entire entry on the list of topics and range blocked the IP 08:04, 10
> March 2006
> <http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Village_pump_%28news%29
> &oldid=43104773>  151.213.243.207
> <http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Contributions&target=151.
> 213.243.207>
>
>
> When he was reverted, he had a friend revert the change and then proceeded
> to contact the user who reverted his vandalism by stating that the IP he had
> blocked was persona non grata at Wikipedia.org

Your first edit appears to be saying you are blocking Golbez. Could you
provide links to where Golbez vandalised the content of the Village
Pump, and provide the block log for the IP in question, so those of us
who were not involved have some context.

Chris

--
Chris Jenkinson
chris at starglade.org

"Mistrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful."
  -- Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra


from_name: Andrew Gray

subject: [WikiEN-l] blocking problem

body:
On 17/03/06, joshuaadamf at aol.com <joshuaadamf at aol.com> wrote:
> I have been falsely accused of vandalizing Wikipedia pages since
> October 2005. Many of the complaints I see on my user talk page deal
> with me editing pages that I have never even seen before. I do not know
> what is going on, but I do find it incredibly unfair that I am
> restricted from editing on Wikipedia because of something that possibly
> someone else might have done.

I see you're writing from an America Online address. Users of America
Online have an IP address that is shared by many other subscribers;
that is, it looks like a large group of people all coming from the
same computer. Since Wikipedia is a site that anyone can edit,
sometimes people make inappropriate edits, and in that case other
editors need to leave messages for them. Unfortunately, because you
share that IP address, you will also see that comment, as we cannot
single out that one user to receive the message.

Because of this problem, we put a notice on the talk page to explain
that messages may refer to other users. If the message does not apply
to you, then you can simply ignore the comment.

If you do not wish to see these misdirected messages you may wish to
make an account, even if you never use it for editing. This will give
you a personal talk page and will prevent such misdirected messages.
You can create an account at:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Special:Userlogin>.

You don't need to log in to edit, but creating an account gives you
more options and helps you keep track of your contributions.

You do not need to enter any personal information to make an account,
although you do have to have cookies enabled. If you select the
"Remember me" option on logging in, you will be logged in
automatically each time you visit the site.

I'm sorry that you were inconvenienced by this problem, and hope you
continue using Wikipedia. You can learn more about our site and how it
works at the Introduction page:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Introduction

You may also find the tutorial useful:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Tutorial

Thanks for your interest and I hope you join us.

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


subject: [WikiEN-l] blocking problem

body:
joshuaadamf at aol.com wrote:
> I have been falsely accused of vandalizing Wikipedia pages since
> October 2005. Many of the complaints I see on my user talk page deal
> with me editing pages that I have never even seen before. I do not know
> what is going on, but I do find it incredibly unfair that I am
> restricted from editing on Wikipedia because of something that possibly
> someone else might have done.

Could you provide some diffs to where you have been accused of
vandalism? Obviously we don't know where this has occurred unless you
tell us.

Chris

--
Chris Jenkinson
chris at starglade.org

"Mistrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful."
  -- Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra


subject: [WikiEN-l] Blocking policy violation

body:
Mel Gibson wrote:
> Hello all.  I am writing to this list because I believe the blocking
> policy was violated for my account.  Admin Nlu blocked my account due to
> "personal attack".  However, there was no such attack whatsoever.  I had
> comments on my front page stating, in my opinion, admins who I thought
> were doing a good job and admins who were not.  Can anyone look into
> this for me?  In advance, I greatly appreciate anyone's assistance.

What account name? Could you link to the block log for the account name
in question?

Chris

--
Chris Jenkinson
chris at starglade.org

"Mistrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful."
  -- Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra


subject: [WikiEN-l] Captcha word quiz

body:
On 3/19/06, Daniel R. Tobias <dan at tobias.name> wrote:
> Anyway, Firefox and the Mozilla/SeaMonkey Suite, to name a couple of
> fully modern browsers, offer the configuration option to disable
> images.

You seem to be arguing something strange here. It sounds like you're
saying that the tools are available if people try hard enough, to get
themselves temporarily into a situation where they are unable to
answer a CAPTCHA, which they only need to do once.

If you're arguing something else, I apologise.

Steve


from_name: Alphax (Wikipedia email)

subject: [WikiEN-l] Libel against Wikipedia and Jimbo

body:
Oskar Sigvardsson wrote:
> On 3/18/06, Chip Berlet <c.berlet at publiceye.org> wrote:
> <snip>
>
>>The author also is complaining that Wiki entries critical of Holocaust denial are part of the conspiracy of Jews.
>>
>>See:
>>
>>http://judicial-inc.biz/wikipedia_supplement.htm#Fredrick%20Tobens%20comments%20that%20were%20deleted
>>
>>This is really nasty stuff.
>
>
> Am I crazy or are they violating the GFDL in that link? I mean they
> publish a few complete articles without mentioning the authours and
> without providing the text of the GFDL. God, it would be sweet to sue
> these assholes (pardon me' french). Can't we atleast send a Jack
> Thompson-esque threatening letter?
>

They'd probably claim "fair use" for commentary purposes.

--
Alphax - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax
Contributor to Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia
"We make the internet not suck" - Jimbo Wales
Public key: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax/OpenPGP
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from_name: Sam Korn

subject: [WikiEN-l] Blocking policy violation

body:
On 3/20/06, Chris Jenkinson <chris at starglade.org> wrote:
> What account name? Could you link to the block log for the account name
> in question?

Just a thought: if something's more than a day or so old, it has
probably already expired.  I also doubt all these users are
necessarily subscribed.

--
Sam


subject: [WikiEN-l] Blocking policy violation

body:
Sam Korn wrote:
> Just a thought: if something's more than a day or so old, it has
> probably already expired.  I also doubt all these users are
> necessarily subscribed.

What's the point in approving them then?

Chris

--
Chris Jenkinson
chris at starglade.org

"Mistrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful."
  -- Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra


from_name: - Essjay -

subject: [Wikipedia-l] exicornt switch

body:
Apparently, [[WP:BPP]] is the most current discussion of the matter on
English Wikipedia; it currently has a lot of support, as I hear the story
told. However, given the opposition from the devs, I just don't see it
happening without a Jimbo-level order to do it. He's the one we need to be
lobbying.

And yes, that was the reason: It would be of little use, because they would
just create sleeper accounts.

Essjay

On 3/19/06, Maru Dubshinki <marudubshinki at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 3/19/06, - Essjay - <essjaywiki at gmail.com> wrote:
> ...
> > 2) Bug 550 deals with the issue of allowing users who have accounts to
> edit
> > even if thier IP is blocked. The solution for it is quite simple; it's
> > actually three lines of code that can be written by anyone with minor
> PHP
> > skill. It requires the following:
> >
> > a) that the patch be enabled;
> > b) that account creation from blocked IPs be disabled (to prevent the
> > vandals from simply creating an account to sidestep the IP block) which
> to
> > my knowledge is already enabled
> > c) throttling account creation from IPs to x per day, currently 10 per
> day.
> > This allows legit people to create accounts, but prevents vandals from
> > creating 1000 sleeper accounts to use once the IP is blocked.
> >
> > The devs are aware of the fix, and are not willing to enable it. The
> exact
> > quote was that doing so is a  "very very bad idea." It is thier opinion
> that
> > it will be of no use, that the vandals will just create sleeper accounts
> and
> > evade the blocks. I don't agree, but I'm not a developer either; I defer
> to
> > thier expertise in the matter.
> ...
> > Essjay
>
> Is that really their reason?  That is *remarkably stupid* of them. I
> had thought there was a real reason; such lame excuses disgust me.
>
> The whole idea of blocking, reverting and rollbacking and such like is
> to change the balance between the ease of vandalising and the ease of
> fixing vandalism in the favor of the latter.
> Likewise, the whole idea of blocking is to raise the costs of an
> attack on pages to the point where the vandal engages in fewer or none
> (at which point the fixing-vandalism comes into play).  Ex. it is hard
> to vandalise a conventional website, and so it isn't done often, but
> it is easy to vandalise a wiki, so it is done often.
> Enabling that feature would raise the cost of vandalism from those
> IPs- even if they could still get around it (note that *all* blocks
> can be circumvented; it is just too troublesome for most vandals) by
> making sleeper accounts, that requires quite a bit of effort and
> planning, and waiting- all factors that considerably raise the cost of
> vandalism from those IPs, especially since the sleeper accounts would
> be indef blocked on surfacing, requiring the vandal to get even more
> sleeper accounts, costing ever more effort.
> It would be very useful.
>
> ~maru
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

--
Essjay
-----
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Essjay
Wikipedia:The Free Encyclopedia
http://www.wikipedia.org/


subject: [WikiEN-l] Blocking policy violation

body:
On 3/20/06, Chris Jenkinson <chris at starglade.org> wrote:
> Sam Korn wrote:
> > Just a thought: if something's more than a day or so old, it has
> > probably already expired.  I also doubt all these users are
> > necessarily subscribed.
>
> What's the point in approving them then?

Some of them might be worth reading, I don't know.  I'll leave it open
to the floor.

--
Sam


from_name: Mark Gallagher

subject: [WikiEN-l] Captcha word quiz

body:
G'day Oskar,

> BTW, if people use browser unable to display images, how much would an
> audio captcha really help (I mean, sound's way more hi-tech)?

Some people use browsers that cannot display images because they're
blind.  In such cases, audio is a Good Thing, and use of images
specifically designed to be unreadable to computers is not.

--
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: 7.1.385 / Virus Database: 268.2.5/284 - Release Date: 17/03/2006


subject: [WikiEN-l] Interlanguage Links - The Interwiki-Link-Checker

body:
On 10/03/06, Marc Dangers <marcdangers at gmx.de> wrote:

> This articles have been listed for many language combinations by
> de:user:SirJective. But not all articles with identical names are about
> the same subject, so human work is needed to decide whether an
> Interwiki-Link can be automatically inserted by a bot. In order to make
> this decision easy and comfortable, there is a brilliant tool called
> Interwiki-Link-Checker written by de:Benutzer:Flacus.

This is pretty fun (and surprisingly easy to do, even if you speak
neither language - it's amazing how quickly you can guess if two
articles are on the same topic, assuming you have even a passing grasp
of the alphabet or vocabulary...). But dear goodness, it's *slow*...

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


from_name: SPUI

subject: [WikiEN-l] Blocking policy violation

body:
Mel Gibson wrote:
> The account name is Marcyu and can be seen at:
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Marcyu&action=edit
>
> Admin Nlu claims a personal attack, but he deleted the page permanently
> so there is no evidence against the contrary.

Given that Nlu saw
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:SPUI&diff=44465982&oldid=44465933
as a personal attack, I'd take his claim with a grain of salt.


from_name: Matt Brown

subject: [WikiEN-l] List moderation (Re: Blocking policy violation)

body:
On 3/20/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
> Am I alone in wondering what the benefit of allowing posts from people
> not subscribed to the list is?

That we advertise in a few places that you can post here if you're
having a problem.  E.g. on the message blocked users get - I believe
it informs them if they believe themselves blocked in error, they can
ask here to get unblocked.

-Matt


from_name: Theresa Knott

subject: [WikiEN-l] Blocking policy violation

body:
On 3/20/06, Mel Gibson <mel_gibson_ at hotmail.com> wrote:
> Do the aforementioned comments constitute a personal attack?

Yes.

Theresa


from_name: Sean Barrett

subject: [WikiEN-l] Captcha word quiz

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

Theresa Knott stated for the record:
> Do we have to have catchpa's at all?
>
> No one seems to be addressing the original poster's comment. Why not
> have a simple IQ test type question? Something that even the most
> idiotic human could answer but a machine could not?

It's always bothered me[0] that if I were ever in a WWII movie and got
separated from my squad, I would have a great deal of proving that I was
an American -- I have no idea who won the World Series.

[0] Well, okay, not really.

- --
 Sean Barrett     | Modern art is what happens when painters stop
 sean at epoptic.org | looking at girls and persuade themselves
                  | that they have a better idea. --John Ciardi
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from_name: Jonathan

subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia article violates patent?

body:
As I looked at slashdot.org today. I saw a message yesterday about the
possible patent violation when  a lack of B12 to homocysteine is mentioned.

Here is the wikipedia article that follow the claim:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vegan_nutrition
The quote is simple: "Vitamin B12 destroys Homocysteine, a neurotoxin
the body naturally produces."
The patent would make it invalid to include such claim without royalty.

The news article is entitled "The essay breaks the law" by Michael Crichton.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/19/opinion/19crichton.html?ex=1300424400&en=9addb806498d2739&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss

Freakin' POV pushers!

Jonathan


list: foundation-l

from_name: Birgitte Arco

subject: [Foundation-l] Sister Project Cooperation

body:
I hesitate to write this because it might seem
self-serving in a dispute I am involved in.  But
truthfully I am thinking of the larger picture here.
There is a discussion on the Talk page for the English
Wikipedia Main Page under "Sister projects on new Main
Page".  The main sticking point in this discussion is
the people from the English Wikipedia truly believe
they know what Wikisource is or is not and want to
write a description, but are unable to understand that
people from Wikisource have a better idea of what
Wikisource is than they do.  Of course that statement
is inherently biased, but everyone involved has the
best intentions.  For my part everyone there has been
completely civil and willing to explain themselves.
Unfortunately there is a prevailing attitude that
people from a "different" project should not decide
how they are represented in the Sister project
template.  This is over a minor wording issue and I am
not asking people to intercede on this.  However if
you read through the comments, it is easy to see how
easily this could have devolved into complete
bitterness.  I hope that outcome has been avoided now.

I worry that in the future a similar issue may come up
and things will turn out worse.  I believe fostering a
sence of harmony and cooperation between sister
projects is the utmost importance.  I wonder if it
would be best for wikimedia to have an agreed upon
sister project template at meta for each necessary
language, with the recommendation that all daughter
projects base thier local Sister project templates
from the meta one.  This would provide an authorative
example of what is acceptable and should hopefully
prevent any future turf wars.

Thanks for considering this.  I would suggest if this
idea is implented; it is done without any haste and is
well-advertised amoung all sister projects in many
languages.

Birgitte SB

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
http://mail.yahoo.com


list: wikimedia-l


subject: [WikiEN-l] Captcha word quiz

body:
On 3/20/06, John Lee <johnleemk at gawab.com> wrote:
> We already have a spam filter. And the nofollow proposal was rejected by
> the community.

For en.wikipedia only, I thought?

-Matt


from_name: Fred Bauder

subject: [Foundation-l] Etiquette, Civility

body:
We expect the users who are involved in a matter to maintain civil
communication with one another. Like you, I would be at a loss to
point to specific language. If someone is touchy about their talk
page, use the talk page of the article or other matter you are
concerned with.

Fred

On Mar 20, 2006, at 2:00 AM, Cormac Lawler wrote:

> Hi all, as the title suggests, I'm writing about etiquette.
> Specifically, whether it's ok to delete  valid questions or comments
> from a talk page (in the particular case I'm talking about, deleting a
> question from their own user talk page).
>
> Personally, I think this is highly uncivil. "Sorry, I am just going to
> ignore you, no, in fact, I am going to pretend you never asked the
> question in the first place" (without even the "courtesy" of saying
> this). However, there is scant mention of this in policy or guideline
> pages (admittedly, I've only looked at English Wikipedia and
> Wikibooks). Why?
>
> Is it not considered rude to ignore someone? Is refusing to answer
> questions not an ominous sign in a collaborative environment? (Ok,
> when someone has just asked their umpteenth ignorant question, it
> might be understandable, but this was my first contact with the
> person.)
>
> For what it's worth, the only mention I found was on either project's
> policy pages was on [[w:en:Wikipedia:Etiquette]], which says "don't
> ignore questions". Etiquette isn't even a policy or guideline on
> Wikibooks - I'm addressing that at the moment.
>
> So, has anyone else had a similar thought or frustration? And while
> I'm asking about this, I'll also ask: what's the difference between
> Etiquette and Civility? As far as I can define it (in Wikimedia
> terms), etiquette is about specific instances of niceness or rudeness,
> whereas civility is about a whole attitude, comprised of etiquette, no
> personal attacks etc. Or what do you think?
>
> Cormac
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


subject: [Foundation-l] Etiquette, Civility


from_name: Mark Ryan

subject: [WikiEN-l] Influx of new messages

body:
Hello. I am about to clear over a week's worth of moderated messages
on the WikiEN-l moderation queue, and there will be a sudden influx of
messages, many of which are old and/or from newbies complaining about
being blocked. I apologise.

~Mark Ryan


from_name: Gay Muslim

body:
The evidence was already posted to the WP:AN/I page although David Gerard's
toadies deleted my responses to his lies, my evidence, and my attempt to
file WP:RFAR against him and his cronies.

On 3/19/06, Daniel R. Tobias <dan at tobias.name> wrote:
>
> On 9 Mar 2006 at 23:08, "Gay Muslim" <queeran at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > My username is Queeran, because I am a gay muslim.
>
> The compatibility of those two aspects is between you and Allah... it
> does not affect your status on Wikipedia.
>
> > On IRC, DavidGerard was extremely rude and belligerent, and demanded
> money
> > from me, saying that unless I did so he would not publish the checkuser
> > result.
>
> That's a very serious allegation, that an admin is demanding bribes,
> kickbacks, blackmail money, or any other payment to influence his
> actions regarding the site.  Do you have any evidence?
>
> --
> == Dan ==
> Dan's Mail Format Site: http://mailformat.dan.info/
> Dan's Web Tips: http://webtips.dan.info/
> Dan's Domain Site: http://domains.dan.info/
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> 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 10/03/06, Gay Muslim <queeran at gmail.com> wrote:
> As absolutely no response has appeared, and the message not appeared on
> wikien-l, I must presume they are covering up their crimes here too.
>
> -Queeran

Don't go thinking you've had special treatment: all auto-moderated
messages posted to the list for the past week have been sitting in the
queue.

~Mark Ryan


body:
> > They then banned I_AM permanently, blocked me, and proceeded shortly
> > thereafter to ban me on the false claim that I am some other user,
> despite
> > the fact that I_AM and I are not each other and a checkuser proved this.
>
> Could you provide links to the block logs for the block they placed on
> I_AM and yourself?

You can see our user pages for yourself.

> On IRC, DavidGerard was extremely rude and belligerent, and demanded money
> > from me, saying that unless I did so he would not publish the checkuser
> > result.
>
> Do you have independently-verifiable logs backing up this claim?

I have my own log. I have no doubt they will lie and claim that I altered
it, because they banned me from speaking in the room and he then did it in
private window.

> They have since followed me around, deleting all of my appeals and
> responses
> > to their lies. They have locked my user page so that I cannot even
> request
> > unblock via normal appeal means.
>
> Could you provide diffs for where you added your appeals, and where they
> deleted them?
>
> Chris

If you hadn't taken completely forever to approve this it would have been
MUCH easier. I'm going to have to take hours to hunt it up and I do not have
the time right now. My user page and my friend's are a good start.


from_name: Cormac Lawler

subject: [Foundation-l] Etiquette, Civility

body:
Hi all, as the title suggests, I'm writing about etiquette.
Specifically, whether it's ok to delete  valid questions or comments
from a talk page (in the particular case I'm talking about, deleting a
question from their own user talk page).

Personally, I think this is highly uncivil. "Sorry, I am just going to
ignore you, no, in fact, I am going to pretend you never asked the
question in the first place" (without even the "courtesy" of saying
this). However, there is scant mention of this in policy or guideline
pages (admittedly, I've only looked at English Wikipedia and
Wikibooks). Why?

Is it not considered rude to ignore someone? Is refusing to answer
questions not an ominous sign in a collaborative environment? (Ok,
when someone has just asked their umpteenth ignorant question, it
might be understandable, but this was my first contact with the
person.)

For what it's worth, the only mention I found was on either project's
policy pages was on [[w:en:Wikipedia:Etiquette]], which says "don't
ignore questions". Etiquette isn't even a policy or guideline on
Wikibooks - I'm addressing that at the moment.

So, has anyone else had a similar thought or frustration? And while
I'm asking about this, I'll also ask: what's the difference between
Etiquette and Civility? As far as I can define it (in Wikimedia
terms), etiquette is about specific instances of niceness or rudeness,
whereas civility is about a whole attitude, comprised of etiquette, no
personal attacks etc. Or what do you think?

Cormac


subject: [Foundation-l] Etiquette, Civility


body:
On 3/20/06, Fastfission <fastfission at gmail.com> wrote:
> I think this is legally speculative enough to not need direct
> attention. To use patents to restrict written speech is, to use a
> phrase, patently weird (this sort of thing is practically *always* the
> domain of copyright law). I doubt the courts will uphold this, and
> anyway I doubt we need to worry about it specifically in any case, for
> now.

In fact, the very definition of patented is that the description is
made public in return for a limited monopoly on use.

-Matt


from_name: Brian Salter-Duke

subject: [WikiEN-l] Captcha word quiz

body:
On Sun, Mar 19, 2006 at 10:42:29PM +1030, Alphax (Wikipedia email) wrote:
>
> I've been forced to use Lynx over sluggish SSH tunnels before. With
> image-only captchas I'd be locked out in the cold, dark and wet.
>
> If you've actually bothered to read [[CAPTCHA]], you'll realise that
> they're a pain in the arse, you insensitive clod.

Ah, after reading all these messages, I finally find out what you are
all talking about. You are right, they are a pain in the arse. Do not go
that way.

[[Bduke]]

> --
> Alphax - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax
> Contributor to Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia
> "We make the internet not suck" - Jimbo Wales
> Public key: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax/OpenPGP
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>
> ------------------------------

--
         Brian Salter-Duke (Brian Duke) b_duke at octa4.net.au
       Post: 626 Melbourne Rd, Spotswood, VIC, 3015, Australia
    Phone 03-93992847. http://members.iinet.net.au/~linden1/brian/
Honorary Researcher Fellow, Dept. of Medicinal Chemistry, Monash Univ.


from_name: Steve Bennett

subject: [WikiEN-l] FYI: A program for evaluating WP articles

body:
On 3/18/06, Ray King <raymondking at gmail.com> wrote:
> On gaming: No matter what we do, the system will be gameable, but if the
> rewards for doing so aren't too high (which in this case I don't think they
> are) and we monitor the system, we can likely stay ahead of the gamers.  In
> the end, giving people the ability to quickly and easily see what other
> contributions an author has made gives the reader the chance to decide how
> credible the author is.

What are the rewards? Equivocating vandalism? Ie: That's probably not
vandalism, he has a rating of 80%! Possibly facilitating the road to
adminship?  Just brainstorming here.

Gaming could take the form of adding a paragraph of text to several
different articles on a similar theme, rewording paragraphs
meaninglessly, expanding what had been a concise definition to
something fluffier.

Well, it doesn't sound too bad, I have to say. Bring it on.

Steve


subject: [WikiEN-l] Captcha word quiz

body:
On 3/20/06, Philip Welch <wikipedia at philwelch.net> wrote:
> Do they offer the option to turn them back on again? Even
> selectively, so you can right-click on an image and choose to load
> it? If so, captchas should be no problem. In fact, captchas should be
> no problem even in Netscape 4.7 because as I recall, Netscape always
> had that feature.

Pretty sure Netscape 3 had it too. Those were the days. :)

Steve


body:
On 3/20/06, Andrew Gray <shimgray at gmail.com> wrote:
> This is pretty fun (and surprisingly easy to do, even if you speak
> neither language - it's amazing how quickly you can guess if two
> articles are on the same topic, assuming you have even a passing grasp
> of the alphabet or vocabulary...). But dear goodness, it's *slow*...

I just wish there was a way that interwiki links would not show up on
article histories...

Steve


subject: [WikiEN-l] List moderation (Re:  Blocking policy violation)

body:
On 3/20/06, Sam Korn <smoddy at gmail.com> wrote:
> Just a thought: if something's more than a day or so old, it has
> probably already expired.  I also doubt all these users are
> necessarily subscribed.

Am I alone in wondering what the benefit of allowing posts from people
not subscribed to the list is? Downsides:
* spam
* posts from people who don't realise they won't get a reply
* replies that go nowhere
* potential other annoyances for moderators that aren't technically spam...

Steve


subject: [WikiEN-l] Help me!

body:
On 3/20/06, Ilmari Karonen <nospam at vyznev.net> wrote:
> To be fair, I believe at least the proposals I've seen didn't try to
> actually ban offsite discussion, but merely the use of such discussions
> as justification for policy changes or other on-wiki actions.  That
> _would_ be enforceable.
>
> It's also something I'd almost be in favor of myself, at least for those
> offsite discussions that aren't even public.  The way I see it, if you
> can't say something in public, it's probably not something you should
> say at all.

There are a number of different formulations of similar ideas which
have differing levels of force attached to them. It seems reasonable
to say "Don't rock up claiming to have achieved consensus at some late
night poker game with the boys, and expect on-wiki users to accept
it". On the other hand, it's not reasonable to say "Don't talk about
policy anywhere but here."

In general, common sense doesn't seem to be letting us down on this
particular issue, does it?

Steve


from_name: Chip Berlet

body:
Hi,

There is no connection between Political Research Associates and Anon 71.193.216.103 .

Please stop these pointless and false attacks.

-Cberlet

________________________________

From: wikien-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org on behalf of Rob Smith
<<SNIP>>

Let's examine the latest Political Research Associates shenanigans.
On March 10 Anon 71.193.216.103 did as follows:

01:21, 10 March 2006 (hist) (diff) Jeffrey Dahmer
01:15, 10 March 2006 (hist) (diff) Sean Hannity (?Anti-Hannity)
01:10, 10 March 2006 (hist) (diff) Osama bin Laden
01:09, 10 March 2006 (hist) (diff) Pat Robertson
01:08, 10 March 2006 (hist) (diff) Jerry Falwell (?External links)
01:06, 10 March 2006 (hist) (diff) Ann Coulter (?External links)
01:00, 10 March 2006 (hist) (diff) Tom DeLay
00:59, 10 March 2006 (hist) (diff) Saddam Hussein
00:52, 10 March 2006 (hist) (diff) David Irving
00:47, 10 March 2006 (hist) (diff) Ted Bundy

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Contributions&target=71.193.216.103

What do Osama bin Laden, Saddam Hussein, Jeffrey
Dahmer and Ted Bundy have in common?  They no longer are in
[[Category:controversial people]].

Who has taken their place? Holocaust denier David Irving, Pat
Robertson, Jerry Falwell, Sean Hannity, and Ann Coulter. This is
really nasty stuff.


from_name: Ilmari Karonen

subject: [WikiEN-l] (no subject)

body:
Mark Gallagher wrote:
> What is your Wikipedia username?  It's clearly not "y control", since
> that name's already taken.  We can't help you unless we know who you are
> on-wiki.

Looking at Cryptic's block log, he's presumably [[User:Teethwar]].  But
the edits to [[Photoblog]] were made as [[User:68.109.154.125]].

--
Ilmari Karonen


from_name: Tony Sidaway

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Blocked for a week for some harmless fun on a
	wikiproject page and a your mom joke

body:
The block was removed.  I can only imagine that he'll take that as a
signal to continue as he has done.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Help me!

body:
Steve Bennett wrote:
>>>And to think there was a proposed policy to ban offsite discussion
>>>about Wikipedia...:)
>>
>>Just how were they going to try to enforce such a ban?
>
> They weren't.

To be fair, I believe at least the proposals I've seen didn't try to
actually ban offsite discussion, but merely the use of such discussions
as justification for policy changes or other on-wiki actions.  That
_would_ be enforceable.

It's also something I'd almost be in favor of myself, at least for those
offsite discussions that aren't even public.  The way I see it, if you
can't say something in public, it's probably not something you should
say at all.

--
Ilmari Karonen


from_name: Guy Chapman aka JzG

subject: [WikiEN-l] User page issue

body:
Could somebody who is not British (and therefore the target of this
user's ire) please review this user page for me:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Fenian_Swine

I think it violates a few policies and sundry guidelines (including,
arguably, user naming) but being British I can't really call myself
unbiased here, and even if I were I can't go along and say anything
without merely reinforcing his prejudices.
Guy (JzG)
--
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG


subject: [Foundation-l] Etiquette, Civility

body:
On 3/20/06, Angela <beesley at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 3/20/06, Cormac Lawler <cormaggio at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Hi all, as the title suggests, I'm writing about etiquette.
> > Specifically, whether it's ok to delete  valid questions or comments
> > from a talk page (in the particular case I'm talking about, deleting a
> > question from their own user talk page).
>
> What about when the question is from a troll? Would the advice about
> [[don't feed the troll | not feeding trolls]] mean might actually be a
> good idea in some cases?
>
> Even if the question wasn't from a troll, should people be forced to
> communicate with others when they really don't want to? If there's an
> issue with an article, that can be brought up on the article talk
> page, where it would be wrong to delete it, but I think users should
> have some control over whether or not they want to respond to messages
> on their talk page.
>
> Angela.

Yes, I agree that we cannot *force* people to answer other questions.
But what I am saying is that we should be encouraging as *good
practice* a spirit of listening. In the case of a troll, I fully
reserve the right to ignore that person. But in the case of a lengthy
question posed directly to a person (deliberately avoiding the
particular page I was disputing to avoid people thinking badly of this
person while we debated a point), and then that person simply deleting
my question, I think this is very bad practice. It smacks of someone
holding their hands over their ears and shouting "I'm not listening".

I agree that we can't decree "Thou shalt answer all questions put unto
ye". That's why I see this as a guideline, not a policy - we enforce a
code of civility, but encourage an attitude of etiquette.

Cormac

> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


subject: [Foundation-l] Etiquette, Civility


from_name: geni

subject: [WikiEN-l] User page issue

body:
On 3/20/06, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:
> Could somebody who is not British (and therefore the target of this
> user's ire) please review this user page for me:
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Fenian_Swine
>
> I think it violates a few policies and sundry guidelines (including,
> arguably, user naming) but being British I can't really call myself
> unbiased here, and even if I were I can't go along and say anything
> without merely reinforcing his prejudices.
> Guy (JzG)

This user has come up before. Probably best left alone.

--
geni


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikipedia-l] exicornt switch

body:
Maru Dubshinki wrote:
>> The devs are aware of the fix, and are not willing to enable it. The exact
>> quote was that doing so is a  "very very bad idea." It is thier opinion that
>> it will be of no use, that the vandals will just create sleeper accounts and
>> evade the blocks. I don't agree, but I'm not a developer either; I defer to
>> thier expertise in the matter.
> ...
>> Essjay
>
> Is that really their reason?  That is *remarkably stupid* of them. I
> had thought there was a real reason; such lame excuses disgust me.

Nope.

The real situation is that our current blocking system sucks. A lot. And if we
just "flipped a switch" it would suck *MUCH WORSE* because it would be virtually
impossible to actually block anyone -- just create a bunch of accounts and
you're immune until someone laboriously tracks them all down.

So, it'll take more options and rethinking and generally some better, clearer
idea of what blocking's supposed to do.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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body:
On Mon, 20 Mar 2006 09:57:53 +0000, you wrote:

>The block was removed.  I can only imagine that he'll take that as a
>signal to continue as he has done.

This is a Bad Thing, in my view.  SPUI has been blocked enough times
(well over twenty by my count) that a one week block is not
inappropriate, and undoing another admin's actions to reduce a block
on a serial vandal / disruptor does, as you suggest, send entirely the
wrong message.
Guy (JzG)
--
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG


from_name: Stacey Doljack Borsody

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia-l Digest, Vol 32, Issue 36

body:
> Message: 3
> Date: Mon, 20 Mar 2006 22:06:36 +1000
> From: "Craig Franklin" <craig at halo-17.net>
> Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] exicornt switch
> To: <wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org>
> Message-ID: <001501c64c16$bff788e0$015a5a0a at equinox>
> Content-Type: text/plain;	charset="iso-8859-1"
>
> Scr?obh Mark Williamson :
> >The current situation seems to be that all AOL users are blocked
> >pending cooperation from AOL in trying to stop vandalism. This seems
> >like a good approach to me.
>
> Frankly, I have to agree.  I can't see any problem with this.

Is the user violating any AOL AUP term?  I highly doubt it so I wouldn't expect AOL to stop this.
Maybe the user just needs to be left alone and ignored and a campaign initiated to educate the
public on what the real term of the railroad switch is.  :)

.s


subject: [WikiEN-l] Blocking policy violation

body:
On 20/03/06, Chris Jenkinson <chris at starglade.org> wrote:
>
> What's the point in approving them then?
>

It's easier for a list admin to blanket-approve all 30 or so on-topic,
non-spam emails among the thousand or so spam messages than to check
each individual email for its continuing relevance to mailing list
conversations.

~Mark Ryan


subject: [WikiEN-l] User page issue

body:
On 3/20/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:

> What exactly do you object to?
>
> Steve

Calling for an armed upriseing in whales is pretty anoying. However I
can live with that.

--
geni


from_name: Jimmy Wales

subject: [WikiEN-l] User page issue

body:
I agree with Angela.

Angela wrote:
> On 3/20/06, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:
>
>
>>Could somebody who is not British
>
>
> I'm not currently in Britain. Is that close enough?
>
>
>>please review this user page for me:
>>
>>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Fenian_Swine
>
>
> I'm was going to say I'm amazed he wasn't blocked for having an
> offensive username, but he was blocked for it. It's even more amazing
> he was unblocked for being "not offensive enough".
>
> Considering his name and attitude, I see nothing in the previous discussions at
> http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Administrators%27_noticeboard&oldid=21901342#User:Fenian_Swine
> and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_comment/Fenian_Swine
> to justify the unblock.
>
> Angela.
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

--
#######################################################################
#    Office: 1-727-231-0101       |  Free Culture and  Free Knowledge #
#    http://www.wikipedia.org     |     Building a free world         #
#######################################################################


subject: [WikiEN-l] User page issue

body:
On Mon, 20 Mar 2006 12:20:17 +0100, you wrote:

>Our article on Fenian says: "Fenian is a term used since the 1860s for
>an Irish nationalist who espouses or is perceived to espouse violence
>against British rule, usually by people opposed to their aims."

Yup.  That sets the tone, the balance is uncomfortable, not grossly
excessive.  The userboxes are also combative.  I have no problem with
identifying what your strong opinions are up front, but developing
your arguments is not really what WP is for.  But like I say, I am not
neutral with respect to this (although I am not a fan of British rule
in NI either).

I only asked, though, because others have come to my Talk page
expressing concern.  It would be nice if someone could ask him to tone
it down a bit, since it seems calculated to offend some.  I am not
offended, just not comfortable with it.
Guy (JzG)
--
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG


from_name: mdangers

body:
Andrew Gray schrieb:
> On 10/03/06, Marc Dangers <marcdangers at gmx.de> wrote:
>
>> This articles have been listed for many language combinations by
>> de:user:SirJective. But not all articles with identical names are about
>> the same subject, so human work is needed to decide whether an
>> Interwiki-Link can be automatically inserted by a bot. In order to make
>> this decision easy and comfortable, there is a brilliant tool called
>> Interwiki-Link-Checker written by de:Benutzer:Flacus.
>
> This is pretty fun (and surprisingly easy to do, even if you speak
> neither language - it's amazing how quickly you can guess if two
> articles are on the same topic, assuming you have even a passing grasp
> of the alphabet or vocabulary...). But dear goodness, it's *slow*...
>
> --
> - Andrew Gray
>   andrew.gray at dunelm.org.uk
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>
Regarding the slowness, in general the tool itself appears to be fast
enough for me, most of the time. I actually use it without being logged
in, so I suppose the Dutch Proxies are my friends and I get lots of
cached pages.
"Guessing" unknown languages is lots of fun, if you know at least one
germanic and one romanic language, you can grasp quite a lot of meaning.
My ability to understand swedish and norwegian is probably comparable to
a 1.6 year old native speaker, that's enough for me ;-).
Thanks for trying it,
Marc Dangers
de:Mdangers


body:
Is it just me, or are we giving trolls rather too much of the
attention they crave lately?


from_name: Matt R

subject: [WikiEN-l] User page issue

body:
--- MacGyverMagic/Mgm <macgyvermagic at gmail.com> wrote:
> Our article on Fenian says: "Fenian is a term used since the 1860s for
> an Irish nationalist who espouses or is perceived to espouse violence
> against British rule, usually by people opposed to their aims."
>
> Apparently it's a politically incorrect word used to insult someone
> with a particular belief. Combined with the word swine, I would very
> much think this to be an offensive username (and I'm Dutch not
> British). Please forgive me if it has been addrsssed before, but has
> anyone ever asked him to change his username?

Yes, last year, see:

   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Fenian_Swine/Archive_1

I'm British, but I don't find his user name (which would appear to be
sarcastic)  nor his user page especially offensive.

-- Matt

Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Matt_Crypto
Blog: http://cipher-text.blogspot.com

___________________________________________________________
Win a BlackBerry device from O2 with Yahoo!. Enter now. http://www.yahoo.co.uk/blackberry


subject: [WikiEN-l] User page issue

body:
On 3/20/06, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:
> Could somebody who is not British (and therefore the target of this
> user's ire) please review this user page for me:
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Fenian_Swine
>
> I think it violates a few policies and sundry guidelines (including,
> arguably, user naming) but being British I can't really call myself
> unbiased here, and even if I were I can't go along and say anything
> without merely reinforcing his prejudices.

I don't actually find it particularly offensive. This seems to be the
strongest it gets: "I hate the term British Isles. English people
should get over themselves. They no longer have an empire to speak of
and hopefully Scotland and Wales will leave the empire."

Seems like he's just stating his political beliefs, which are not
particularly extreme, and don't call for killing anyone. He even has
some nice words "Even if you're 100% sure that someone is a worthless,
no-good, low-down scum-sucking Internet troll, vandal, or worse,
conduct yourself as if they're not. By being calm, interested, and
respectful, your dignity is uplifted, and you further our project.This
an official policy of Wikipedia in relation to all but especially me."

What exactly do you object to?

Steve


from_name: Theresa Knott

subject: [WikiEN-l] Captcha word quiz

body:
Do we have to have catchpa's at all?

No one seems to be addressing the original poster's comment. Why not
have a simple IQ test type question? Something that even the most
idiotic human could answer but a machine could not?

Theresa


subject: [WikiEN-l] Captcha word quiz

body:
On 3/20/06, Theresa Knott <theresaknott at gmail.com> wrote:
> Do we have to have catchpa's at all?
>
> No one seems to be addressing the original poster's comment. Why not
> have a simple IQ test type question? Something that even the most
> idiotic human could answer but a machine could not?
>
>
>
> Theresa

You've just described a catchpa.

--
geni


from_name: Fastfission

body:
I think this is legally speculative enough to not need direct
attention. To use patents to restrict written speech is, to use a
phrase, patently weird (this sort of thing is practically *always* the
domain of copyright law). I doubt the courts will uphold this, and
anyway I doubt we need to worry about it specifically in any case, for
now.

FF

On 3/20/06, Jonathan <dzonatas at dzonux.net> wrote:
> As I looked at slashdot.org today. I saw a message yesterday about the
> possible patent violation when  a lack of B12 to homocysteine is mentioned.
>
> Here is the wikipedia article that follow the claim:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vegan_nutrition
> The quote is simple: "Vitamin B12 destroys Homocysteine, a neurotoxin
> the body naturally produces."
> The patent would make it invalid to include such claim without royalty.
>
> The news article is entitled "The essay breaks the law" by Michael Crichton.
> http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/19/opinion/19crichton.html?ex=1300424400&en=9addb806498d2739&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss
>
> Freakin' POV pushers!
>
> Jonathan
>
> _______________________________________________
> 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] Captcha word quiz

body:
On 3/20/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 3/20/06, Theresa Knott <theresaknott at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Do we have to have catchpa's at all?
> >
> > No one seems to be addressing the original poster's comment. Why not
> > have a simple IQ test type question? Something that even the most
> > idiotic human could answer but a machine could not?
> >
> >
> >
> > Theresa
>
> You've just described a catchpa.

Sorry i thought a catchpa was a wiggly word  _image_.  What I am
descirbing could easily be text.

Theresa


body:
On Mon, 20 Mar 2006 11:48:17 +0000, you wrote:

>Is it just me, or are we giving trolls rather too much of the
>attention they crave lately?

Stop trolling, Tony ;-)
Guy (JzG)
--
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG


from_name: jayjg

body:
In case people are unaware, queeran is Enviroknot / KaintheScion / ElKabong
/ a dozen other aliases...

On 3/10/06, Gay Muslim <queeran at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> As absolutely no response has appeared, and the message not appeared on
> wikien-l, I must presume they are covering up their crimes here too.
>
> -Queeran
>
> "The beauty of wiki-justice is anyone can edit the evidence; so they can
> convict on one issue, and then when its demonstrated that you aren't
> guilty,
> they can turn around and say that you were banned for some other reason.
> And, of course, you can't argue about it; because you are banned."
>
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: Gay Muslim <queeran at gmail.com>
> Date: Mar 7, 2006 7:58 PM
> Subject: Wikipedia: Admins abusing their authority
> To: jwales at wikia.com, wikien-l at wikipedia.org
>
> The following admins have completely abused their authority:
>
> Essjay
> NSLE
> DavidGerard
>
> My username is Queeran, because I am a gay muslim. I came to wikipedia
> trying to clean up ridiculous POV in our islamic-related articles that
> supports racism and hatred.
>
> I have been systematically harassed by these three admins and their
> cronies.
> They attacked me and another user named I_AM, accused us of being
> sockpuppets of each other falsely.
>
> They then banned I_AM permanently, blocked me, and proceeded shortly
> thereafter to ban me on the false claim that I am some other user, despite
> the fact that I_AM and I are not each other and a checkuser proved this.
>
> On IRC, DavidGerard was extremely rude and belligerent, and demanded money
> from me, saying that unless I did so he would not publish the checkuser
> result.
>
> They have since followed me around, deleting all of my appeals and
> responses
> to their lies. They have locked my user page so that I cannot even request
> unblock via normal appeal means.
>
> They even deleted my request to the arbitration committee.
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia%3ARequests_for_arbitration&diff=42737248&oldid=42736341
>
>
> This is ridiculous and complete abuse of their powers. I ask that you step
> in and right this atrocity.
>
> Queeran.
> _______________________________________________
> 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: MacGyverMagic/Mgm

subject: [WikiEN-l] User page issue

body:
Our article on Fenian says: "Fenian is a term used since the 1860s for
an Irish nationalist who espouses or is perceived to espouse violence
against British rule, usually by people opposed to their aims."

Apparently it's a politically incorrect word used to insult someone
with a particular belief. Combined with the word swine, I would very
much think this to be an offensive username (and I'm Dutch not
British). Please forgive me if it has been addrsssed before, but has
anyone ever asked him to change his username?

Mgm

On 3/20/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 3/20/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > What exactly do you object to?
> >
> > Steve
>
> Calling for an armed upriseing in whales is pretty anoying. However I
> can live with that.
>
>
> --
> 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
>


from_name: Jonathan

subject: [WikiEN-l] Primary sources

body:
The use of secondary sources gives us the breadth to mention primary
sources that give us the depth to an article. There is no mandatory
order in which they appear as long as the order in which they appear is
appropriate to the objective. It appears we agree about this with the
use of different words to describe it. The use of secondary sources to
rule out primary sources is equivocal, not that the primary source is
useful to trump the secondary source, but it adds further to the breadth
and depth to have them all referenced neutrally -- even if one gets more
attention than the others. Another words, there is no need to limit the
article to only "the truth." Articles should cover relevant details of
knowledge used to arrive at a truth or truths.

"Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence." -
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Carl_Sagan - "Baloney Detection Kit"
http://www4.tpgi.com.au/users/tps-seti/baloney.html

Jonathan

Fastfission wrote:

>True, but I think one should consult secondary sources *first* for our
>project, and primary sources *second*. You cannot consult a primary
>source without an interpretative framework, and you should be deriving
>that from a secondary source, in my interpretation of [[WP:NOR]].
>Primary sources are great for adding color and authenticity to an
>article -- nobody disputes that -- but articles based solely on
>primary sources are chancy indeed, and no individual user's individual
>idiosyncratic interpretation of a primary source should trump the
>interpretation given in a secondary source. The people who usually
>insist on primary sources over secondary sources are usually the ones
>who think that the "establishment" opinion is bunk -- a fairly good
>indication of a NPOV violation or a NOR violation.
>
>FF
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] Captcha word quiz

body:
On 3/20/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 3/20/06, Theresa Knott <theresaknott at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Sorry i thought a catchpa was a wiggly word  _image_.  What I am
> > descirbing could easily be text.
>
> Invent one then ;) Bear in mind that if it's multiple choice, then the
> robot could just have a few goes.

A colour that's the opposite of black

the number of days in a week

A pet animal that goes woof woof.

>
> Actually it would be nice if someone would explain why wikibooks (if I
> understood correctly) now needs captchas.

Linkspam.

Theresa


body:
On Sun, 19 Mar 2006 03:20:42 -0500, you wrote:

>User:Nlu (who I note is part of the CVU - that may be coloring his
>outlook, as he presumably deals mostly with vandals) has blocked me for
>a week for these edits:

After around two dozen blocks I would have thought you'd have worked
out by now that your definition of "harmless fun" differs from that of
other editors.
Guy (JzG)
--
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG


subject: [WikiEN-l] Captcha word quiz

body:
On 3/20/06, Theresa Knott <theresaknott at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 3/20/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 3/20/06, Theresa Knott <theresaknott at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > Sorry i thought a catchpa was a wiggly word  _image_.  What I am
> > > descirbing could easily be text.
> >
> > Invent one then ;) Bear in mind that if it's multiple choice, then the
> > robot could just have a few goes.
>
> A colour that's the opposite of black
>
> the number of days in a week
>
> A pet animal that goes woof woof.

That has the problem of being anglocentric.

You are going to need at least 1000 of these and you are going to need
them in a lot of languages.

--
geni


from_name: Phil Boswell

subject: [WikiEN-l] Greasemonkey script to filter the watchlist page

body:
"Steve Bennett" <stevage at gmail.com> wrote in
message news:f1c3529e0603181201y67bb4e96me34af9764ce3e386 at mail.gmail.com...
> Hi all,
>  I've made a a greasemonkey (google it) script for firefox that lets
> you filter your watchlist. It adds six buttons to your watchlist page,
> letting you filter out Wikipedia: pages, User: pages etc etc.
> http://www.angelfire.com/tv2/stevage/HideWikipedia.user.js
> Runs on Firefox 1.0.7
> I'd love your comments.

Not managed to finagle GM functionality on IE yet, but there is stuff out
there...in the meantime...

Could you possibly host this on WP itself, so we can watch it and discuss it
at our leisure? I'm kind of allergic to all the popups I get at angelfire
:-(
--
Phil
[[en:User:Phil Boswell]]


body:
We actually have a category "Controversial people"?  I have a hard time
understanding how assigning someone to that category could be anything but
POV.

Jay.

On 3/19/06, Rob Smith <nobs03 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 3/18/06, Chip Berlet <c.berlet at publiceye.org> wrote:
> > Hi,
> >
> > Actually, this is the classic antisemitic conspiracy theory linking Jews
> and Freemasons in a vast age-old plot. This was the theme of the hoax
> document, the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.
> >
> > See:
> >
> > http://www.publiceye.org/tooclose/masons.html
> > http://www.publiceye.org/tooclose/protocol.html
> >
> > The author also is complaining that Wiki entries critical of Holocaust
> denial are part of the conspiracy of Jews.
> >
> > See:
> >
> >
> http://judicial-inc.biz/wikipedia_supplement.htm#Fredrick%20Tobens%20comments%20that%20were%20deleted
> >
> > This is really nasty stuff.
> >
> > Cberlet
> > aka
> > Chip Berlet
> > Political Research Associates
> > www.publiceye.org
>
> Let's examine the latest Political Research Associates shenanigans.
> On March 10 Anon 71.193.216.103 did as follows:
>
> 01:21, 10 March 2006 (hist) (diff) Jeffrey Dahmer
> 01:15, 10 March 2006 (hist) (diff) Sean Hannity (?Anti-Hannity)
> 01:10, 10 March 2006 (hist) (diff) Osama bin Laden
> 01:09, 10 March 2006 (hist) (diff) Pat Robertson
> 01:08, 10 March 2006 (hist) (diff) Jerry Falwell (?External links)
> 01:06, 10 March 2006 (hist) (diff) Ann Coulter (?External links)
> 01:00, 10 March 2006 (hist) (diff) Tom DeLay
> 00:59, 10 March 2006 (hist) (diff) Saddam Hussein
> 00:52, 10 March 2006 (hist) (diff) David Irving
> 00:47, 10 March 2006 (hist) (diff) Ted Bundy
>
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Contributions&target=71.193.216.103
>
> What do Osama bin Laden, Saddam Hussein, Jeffrey
> Dahmer and Ted Bundy have in common?  They no longer are in
> [[Category:controversial people]].
>
> Who has taken their place? Holocaust denier David Irving, Pat
> Robertson, Jerry Falwell, Sean Hannity, and Ann Coulter. This is
> really nasty stuff.
> _______________________________________________
> 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: Mark Wagner

subject: [WikiEN-l] Captcha word quiz

body:
On 3/20/06, Neil Harris <neil at tonal.clara.co.uk> wrote:
>
> I tried to think of a good text-only captcha scheme some time ago, but
> came up short.
>
> The ideal text captcha is:
> * endlessly variable (there must be at least millions of potential
> challenges, to defend against replay attacks)
> * easy for people to answer without any specialist knowledge
> * easy to answer for people without advanced skills in the target language
> * not generated by a simple algorithm which can be reverse-engineered
> (as with the above)
> * not Googlable
> * easy to assess the answer using a computer program (which typically
> means it's a simple word or phrase)
>

Even this isn't good enough.  Spammers have already figured out out
how to defeat every visual captcha out there, and there's no reason to
believe it won't also apply to audio and text captchas.  It's very
simple:

1) Advertise free porn on USENET and other locations.
2) In order to get the pictures, users need to answer a captcha.
Serve up the captcha for a site you're trying to register for.
3) User answers the captcha.  User gets the porn, spammer gets the new
account, everyone's happy.

--
Mark
[[User:Carnildo]]


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [Foundation-l] Copyright on Wikisource

body:
Yann Forget wrote:

>Hi,
>
>Reading the answers, I deleted the works of Gide from the French Wikisource.
>
>I am quite disappointed as I asked the very same question on Wikisource on
>December 3rd, 2003, and no one has ever bothered to answer. 2003!!!
>
>http://wikisource.org/wiki/Wikisource_talk:Copyright
>
>Actually, that's one of my first post on Wikisource and also one of the first
>post on the whole project (the earliest post I could find is on November 24,
>2003.)
>
It's highly probable that no-one answered because no-one noticed.  If
no-one notices such questions in a week, it's likely they won't be seen
at all.

Ec


subject: [Foundation-l] Copyright on Wikisource


from_name: Andrew Gray

body:
On 20/03/06, mdangers <marcdangers at gmx.de> wrote:

> Regarding the slowness, in general the tool itself appears to be fast
> enough for me, most of the time. I actually use it without being logged
> in, so I suppose the Dutch Proxies are my friends and I get lots of
> cached pages.

Having experimented further, it seems to come in batches - it'll be
immensely slow one hour (never loading anything past the first pair of
pages), and happily zip through them the next.

> "Guessing" unknown languages is lots of fun, if you know at least one
> germanic and one romanic language, you can grasp quite a lot of meaning.
> My ability to understand swedish and norwegian is probably comparable to
> a 1.6 year old native speaker, that's enough for me ;-).

I spent last night interwiki-ing Norwegian and Catalan, of all things...

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


from_name: Steve Bennett

subject: [WikiEN-l] User page issue

body:
On 3/20/06, MacGyverMagic/Mgm <macgyvermagic at gmail.com> wrote:
> Our article on Fenian says: "Fenian is a term used since the 1860s for
> an Irish nationalist who espouses or is perceived to espouse violence
> against British rule, usually by people opposed to their aims."
>
> Apparently it's a politically incorrect word used to insult someone
> with a particular belief. Combined with the word swine, I would very
> much think this to be an offensive username (and I'm Dutch not
> British). Please forgive me if it has been addrsssed before, but has
> anyone ever asked him to change his username?

Well, if the username is the issue, that's different. We at least
theoretically have a rule against politically charged usernames, and
if enough people complain, he should change it...

Steve


body:
On 20/03/06, Matt Brown <morven at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 3/20/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Am I alone in wondering what the benefit of allowing posts from people
> > not subscribed to the list is?
>
> That we advertise in a few places that you can post here if you're
> having a problem.  E.g. on the message blocked users get - I believe
> it informs them if they believe themselves blocked in error, they can
> ask here to get unblocked.

Would it be worth changing this to give the address for the OTRS
queue? It gets a lot of email on the topic already, and having the
mailing list(s) as a primary contact point is probably a bit of a
relic of the early days by now.

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


subject: [Foundation-l] Copyright on Wikisource

body:
Yann Forget wrote:

>Further more, I would suggest than Wikisource should be hosted in Canada, so
>that the benefit of Canadian copyright law could be used.
>
Wikisource.ca could probably do this as long as it maintains an arms
length relationship.  This could be similar to what Project Gutenberg
did with with certain works in Australia before that country extended
its copyright laws to 70 years.  I don't think that this is enough to
have all of Wikisource hosted in Canada.

Ec


subject: [Foundation-l] Copyright on Wikisource


subject: [WikiEN-l] User page issue

body:
On 3/20/06, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:

> Yup.  That sets the tone, the balance is uncomfortable, not grossly
> excessive.  The userboxes are also combative.  I have no problem with
> identifying what your strong opinions are up front, but developing
> your arguments is not really what WP is for.  But like I say, I am not
> neutral with respect to this (although I am not a fan of British rule
> in NI either).

After being reminded of SPUI's userpage, I'm hard to find anything
offensive at all, to be honest. I also only see one userbox, which
just states his nationality...? And all he actually objects to is the
term "british isles" and then says he wants his counties
back...well...there's much worse out there.

Steve


subject: [Foundation-l] Copyright on Wikisource

body:
Patrick, Brad wrote:

>As American counsel, I would not dare contradict my French counterparts, but the answer is really simple - we will get sued by someone in France, and would subject the Foundation to the possibility of jurisdiction in France.  As our colleagues at Yahoo! Can attest, that is not a good thing.  It is not necessarily always in the interests of the mission of the organization to be aggressive at every turn.  This is one such example.
>
Didn't this have to do with the sale of Nazi memorabilia instead of
copyright?  Or am I thinking of the wrong case?

Ec


subject: [Foundation-l] Copyright on Wikisource


subject: [WikiEN-l] Captcha word quiz

body:
On 3/20/06, Theresa Knott <theresaknott at gmail.com> wrote:
> Sorry i thought a catchpa was a wiggly word  _image_.  What I am
> descirbing could easily be text.

Invent one then ;) Bear in mind that if it's multiple choice, then the
robot could just have a few goes.

Actually it would be nice if someone would explain why wikibooks (if I
understood correctly) now needs captchas.

Steve


from_name: Pedro Sanchez

subject:
[WikiEN-l] User Golbez has established his own admin policies
	that do not agree with Wikipedia's

body:
I also agree:

> >
> > 1.      No mercy for vandals. If you vandalize a page, you will probably
> > be
> > warned. If you vandalize again with fluffy stuff, you will be warned
> > again.
> > On the other hand, if you vandalize maliciously, you will be blocked. I
> > will
> > consider a clean slate after a month, removing old warnings from anyone,
> > in
> > case the IP has changed hands.

blocking policy, rules of thumb:  casual vandals will be warned before
being blocked, though warnings are not usually given for deliberate
vandalism

> > 2.      Personally, I think Speedy Delete should be expanded. Too much
> > stuff
> > clogs up AfD. But until this happens, I will remain within the strict
> > lines
> > of Speedy.

Yes, I ***PERSONALLY*** believe CSD should be expanded, but I try (99%
of times I achieve ;) to remain within its strict lines

> > 3.      You can always contest any action with me. Please do.

More examples of great common sense. I get many emails about blocks,
and review them and if the plea makes sense I will unblock. I've
undeleted stuff I've deleted, etc... admins actions aren't set on
stone

> > 4.      I will not typically protect for vandalism; I figure, if I can do
> > that, I can also block the vandal, which does more good than protection. I
> > will, however, protect, without warning, any high traffic page that has
> > been
> > doubled. Sorry, but if it's so high traffic, it would double the time to
> > fix
> > if I inserted a notice. Please understand. I will as quickly as I can fix
> > the doubling, and unprotect it.

Yes I prefer blocking the offending ip than protect the article from
all anon ips, what's wrong with that?

> >
> > NOTE: If you send me an email about being blocked, please put in all
> > information needed to unblock you like, I dunno, your IP address? because
> > I
> > will likely not respond to your email directly.

Plenty of times, I get a message "I've been unblocked, please
review!!", but nowhere I'm given an username or ip to review.

So, yes, most of those pass my common-sense test


from_name: Neil Harris

subject: [WikiEN-l] Captcha word quiz

body:
Theresa Knott wrote:
> On 3/20/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> On 3/20/06, Theresa Knott <theresaknott at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> Sorry i thought a catchpa was a wiggly word  _image_.  What I am
>>> descirbing could easily be text.
>>>
>> Invent one then ;) Bear in mind that if it's multiple choice, then the
>> robot could just have a few goes.
>>
>
> A colour that's the opposite of black
>
> the number of days in a week
>
> A pet animal that goes woof woof.
>
>
Unfortunately, Googling and word-counting is a rather powerful way of
cheating at these sorts of simple general-knowledge questions:

Searching for "animal that goes woof woof". removing trivial words from
the page fragments Google returns on its search page, and then counting
the most common remaining words gives the following:

43: woof
9: animal
8: dog
7: goes
6: joke

for "colour that's the opposite of black" we get:

21: colour
10: black
6: opposite
6: white
5: you

If you then try the words which are not in the question, the highest
rated few words tend to contain the answer to the question. Even if we
try at random from the top-rated words, there's a good chance of
success, which is all a bot needs.

-- Neil


from_name: pitchou jaures

subject: [Wikitech-l] Distributed process pool

body:
salut
  excuse moi mais je nesuis pas anglophone

Jonathan <dzonatas at dzonux.net> a ?crit :
  Brion Vibber wrote:

>Jonathan wrote:
>
>
>>Is there a way analyze the wikipedia logs to figure out what processes
>>takes the most time?
>>
>>
>
>For some past stuff, see:
>http://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Ameta.wikimedia.org+profiling
>
>Domas and Tim are more recently playing with kcachegrind and things to get some
>even more fine-grained recordings and pretty visualizations.
>
That is helpful.

I've wrote a virtual machine myself, and it appears much faster than
Java and PHP. However, until a program like mediawiki is directly
translated and put under the same load, it is hard to boast the stats. I
do know from experience with vm development that there is room to
advance the technology in use. Java and PHP are popular but still behind
edge technology.

Jonathan

_______________________________________________
Wikitech-l mailing list
Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l

---------------------------------
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body:
Yes, removing an {{unblock}} notice and blocking for a week might a
bit over the top, but "harmless fun" are the operative words here. By
now (after multiple blocks) you should've realized this is not the
type of fun most wikipedians appreciate.

Just be careful.

On 3/19/06, SPUI <drspui at gmail.com> wrote:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:SPUI#March_19
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Administrators%27_noticeboard/Incidents#user:SPUI_again
>
> User:Nlu (who I note is part of the CVU - that may be coloring his
> outlook, as he presumably deals mostly with vandals) has blocked me for
> a week for these edits:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:WikiProject_California_State_Highways&diff=next&oldid=43822380
> http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:WikiProject_California_State_Highways&diff=next&oldid=44465253
> http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:SPUI&diff=prev&oldid=44465982
> The first two are a bit of harmless fun on a project page. The third is
> a simple inoffensive your mom joke as a response to an overreaction to
> the first. I put {{unblock}} on my talk page, and he nowiki-ed it and
> protected my talk page to prevent me from putting it back. Something
> seems off here.
> _______________________________________________
> 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:
I read over the article more closely -- it's not the sentence, per se,
but the "fact" that was granted. It will be interesting to see what
the courts rule -- all precedent that I know of attests to not being
able to grant patents on "facts". Though who knows what they will do
-- many of the current patenting practices are, as Crichton points
out, patently ridiculous (hyuk yuk), and personally I think some of
the practices allowed (i.e. patenting business methods) are completely
abhorrent and counter-productive to the entire point of the patent
system (I don't think they encourage innovation, I think they just
give an incentive for companies to attempt to patent any conceivable
vague operation they can think of with the hopes of extracting future
royalties from people who independently use the same approach). So
we'll see... in any case, we certainly don't need to do anything until
after the ruling, and I'd be honestly shocked if the Court let
patenting a "fact" fly (but then again, I'm shocked that the Patent
Office would dare to let such a thing slip by itself -- "facts cannot
be patented" is practically a dogma in current intellectual property
discourse).

In a more lighthearted note, did you know the first patent
superintendent in the U.S. did not believe that patents should be
distributed publicly, and instead fought to have them kept secret?
Very strange episode in early U.S. patent history... unfortunately our
current entry on [[William Thornton]] doesn't mention this at all, so
maybe I'll add it in when I get some time.

FF

On 3/20/06, Matt Brown <morven at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 3/20/06, Fastfission <fastfission at gmail.com> wrote:
> > I think this is legally speculative enough to not need direct
> > attention. To use patents to restrict written speech is, to use a
> > phrase, patently weird (this sort of thing is practically *always* the
> > domain of copyright law). I doubt the courts will uphold this, and
> > anyway I doubt we need to worry about it specifically in any case, for
> > now.
>
> In fact, the very definition of patented is that the description is
> made public in return for a limited monopoly on use.
>
> -Matt
> _______________________________________________
> 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: Mark Gallagher

subject: [WikiEN-l] (no subject)

body:
G'day y control (any relation to Karen O?),

> few days ago, i added my photoblog to the list on "photoblog" page.
> however, i noticed it was removed. it's a legit photoblog, and when i
> re-edited it, i didn't find any specifications to adding a website -
> just the fact that it had to be a "photoblog".

We have policies and guidelines and holy writ and other such things that
loosely define what you can and can't add --- first and foremost is
WP:NOT (type that into the search box and click "go"), which states that
Wikipedia is *not* a link farm, and does not indiscriminately add links
to other websites.  For the most part, though, we operate on common
sense.  Consider the following tests, which aren't (to my knowledge)
enshrined anywhere, but are pretty common:

   1) What is your purpose in adding the link?  Is it to advertise your
      'blog, or to improve our article?
   2) What benefit does the link bring to the article?
   3) Why did *you* add it, and not someone else?

> my website was just opened, and there's not too many photos, but enoght
> to be on the list (or so i thought). i emailed the user who edited the
> page, and asked why they deleted it. i wasn't in the best of mood, so i
> might've sounded harsh. he never replied, so i assumed it might've been
> a mistake on his part.

No.  No, there were *not* enough photos.  There's a whole heap of
famous, notable, productive and long-lived photoblogs out there, which
we can point to as an example of the genre.  What does yours add to our
article?

> today, i noticed it was removed by "Cryptic" without a notice and
> without a reason. i emailed him quickly asking why the website got
> deleted. to which he blocked me for the following reasons "Zero
> contributions; being used to send spam via wikipedia email". i DID NOT
> say anything in a mean way to him, and i didn't spam him, i simply asked
> a question. and of course i have 0 contribution, because i've just
> joined the website!

What is your Wikipedia username?  It's clearly not "y control", since
that name's already taken.  We can't help you unless we know who you are
on-wiki.

> i feel the removale of my website was without reason - i couldn't find a
> reason anyway. there are no ads on my website, and the main part of it
> are photos. there were no specifications to add a website, so why was
> mine taken off?

Why not?  We're building an *encyclopaedia*.  You wanted to *advertise*
instead.  You don't have the right to complain when told you couldn't.

> also, my block was unfair, since i did not email cryptic in paticular
> with any sort of spam. i simply asked him why the site was blocked, so i
> could fix it.

If you can tell us who you are, I can review your contributions and talk
to Cryptic about possibly unblocking you.  Note, though, that you won't
be unblocked if you insist on adding links to your own websites.

Good authors are always welcome, even people who are here for reasons
other than altruistically improving the encyclopaedia.  However, those
who are more interested in pushing a point of view, advertising a
product, etc., must accept that we are not a free-for-all.

You *can*, if you like, just waltz in and add a link to advertise
yourself, as you've done.  However, you *must* accept that it may well
be removed, and people will glare at you.  We're here to produce an
encyclopaedia, not to provide free advertising to upstart 'blogs.

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

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body:
We *used* to have a category for controversial books -- reserved only
for books that indeed generated large amounts of persistent and
documentable controversy (Origin of Species, the Bell Curve, etc.),
but unfortunately even that got nixed as being too POV (I disagree
with that -- controversy does not in any way imply factual truth or
untruth, and it is easy to document long-standing controversies). In
any case, "controversial people" seems just as nebulous, if not even
more so, so it'll probably go the way of the buffalo pretty soon
itself, I reckon.

FF

On 3/20/06, jayjg <jayjg99 at gmail.com> wrote:
> We actually have a category "Controversial people"?  I have a hard time
> understanding how assigning someone to that category could be anything but
> POV.
>
> Jay.
>
> On 3/19/06, Rob Smith <nobs03 at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > On 3/18/06, Chip Berlet <c.berlet at publiceye.org> wrote:
> > > Hi,
> > >
> > > Actually, this is the classic antisemitic conspiracy theory linking Jews
> > and Freemasons in a vast age-old plot. This was the theme of the hoax
> > document, the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.
> > >
> > > See:
> > >
> > > http://www.publiceye.org/tooclose/masons.html
> > > http://www.publiceye.org/tooclose/protocol.html
> > >
> > > The author also is complaining that Wiki entries critical of Holocaust
> > denial are part of the conspiracy of Jews.
> > >
> > > See:
> > >
> > >
> > http://judicial-inc.biz/wikipedia_supplement.htm#Fredrick%20Tobens%20comments%20that%20were%20deleted
> > >
> > > This is really nasty stuff.
> > >
> > > Cberlet
> > > aka
> > > Chip Berlet
> > > Political Research Associates
> > > www.publiceye.org
> >
> > Let's examine the latest Political Research Associates shenanigans.
> > On March 10 Anon 71.193.216.103 did as follows:
> >
> > 01:21, 10 March 2006 (hist) (diff) Jeffrey Dahmer
> > 01:15, 10 March 2006 (hist) (diff) Sean Hannity (?Anti-Hannity)
> > 01:10, 10 March 2006 (hist) (diff) Osama bin Laden
> > 01:09, 10 March 2006 (hist) (diff) Pat Robertson
> > 01:08, 10 March 2006 (hist) (diff) Jerry Falwell (?External links)
> > 01:06, 10 March 2006 (hist) (diff) Ann Coulter (?External links)
> > 01:00, 10 March 2006 (hist) (diff) Tom DeLay
> > 00:59, 10 March 2006 (hist) (diff) Saddam Hussein
> > 00:52, 10 March 2006 (hist) (diff) David Irving
> > 00:47, 10 March 2006 (hist) (diff) Ted Bundy
> >
> >
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Contributions&target=71.193.216.103
> >
> > What do Osama bin Laden, Saddam Hussein, Jeffrey
> > Dahmer and Ted Bundy have in common?  They no longer are in
> > [[Category:controversial people]].
> >
> > Who has taken their place? Holocaust denier David Irving, Pat
> > Robertson, Jerry Falwell, Sean Hannity, and Ann Coulter. This is
> > really nasty stuff.
> > _______________________________________________
> > WikiEN-l mailing list
> > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> > To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
> >
> _______________________________________________
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> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] Primary sources

body:
True, but I think one should consult secondary sources *first* for our
project, and primary sources *second*. You cannot consult a primary
source without an interpretative framework, and you should be deriving
that from a secondary source, in my interpretation of [[WP:NOR]].
Primary sources are great for adding color and authenticity to an
article -- nobody disputes that -- but articles based solely on
primary sources are chancy indeed, and no individual user's individual
idiosyncratic interpretation of a primary source should trump the
interpretation given in a secondary source. The people who usually
insist on primary sources over secondary sources are usually the ones
who think that the "establishment" opinion is bunk -- a fairly good
indication of a NPOV violation or a NOR violation.

FF

On 3/20/06, Phil Boswell <phil.boswell at gmail.com> wrote:
> "Ilmari Karonen" <nospam at vyznev.net> wrote in
> message news:441B614A.7020406 at vyznev.net...
> > Fastfission wrote:
> [snippety-snip]
> > I suspect you're wrong about this being universal.  It may well be true
> > for history, but in mathematics, for example, citing primary sources is
> > perfectly reasonable and even desirable.  The difference, of course, is
> > that history, unlike mathematics, requires context and interpretation.
>
> The difference is between recounting what someone actually said, for which
> you need primary sources, and deciding whether what they said was true, for
> which you almost always require the support of secondary sources.
>
> Both have their place and function.
>
> HTH HAND
> --
> Phil
> [[en:User:Phil Boswell]]
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> 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 3/20/06, Phil Boswell <phil.boswell at gmail.com> wrote:
> Could you possibly host this on WP itself, so we can watch it and discuss it
> at our leisure? I'm kind of allergic to all the popups I get at angelfire
> :-(

Sure, but to actually deploy it it needs to be delivrable as a clean
.js file (no header etc). I don't think I can do that on Wikipedia.
Then again, with a greasemonkey script...:)

If you have any other webspace that you'd prefer I use, that's fine
too...I just hate looking for it, and the angelfire site has the nice
feature that it sits there without requiring any activity at all, and
allows FTP which integrates very nicely with the Windows shell (hence,
very easy drag/drop for me).

Steve


subject:
[WikiEN-l] Blocked for a week for some harmless fun on
	a	wikiproject page and a your mom joke

body:
G'day Ilya,

> But is a one week block maybe a little overkill?

I wouldn't have blocked him at all for this, but I'm not sure how I'd
treat a user who wasn't SPUI doing the same thing --- it could be I'm
just relieved he didn't mess all over the carpet this time.

The fact is that SPUI, every few weeks (if not more often), feels this
innate need to wave his arms about, holler swear words, and cry "Look at
me, I'm being disruptive!".  *Then* he has the hide to complain when
somebody blocks him for being disruptive.  I mean, for Pete's sake, man,
take your medicine and stop being such a baby.

But still he whines, "I was blocked for no reason!".  Imagine if Tom
Sawyer had cried and threatened to run away from home when his Auntie
caught him stealing the sugar.

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

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from_name: Andre Engels

subject: [Wikipedia-l] exicornt switch

body:
2006/3/19, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com>:
> The current situation seems to be that all AOL users are blocked
> pending cooperation from AOL in trying to stop vandalism. This seems
> like a good approach to me.

Not to me. It's not the IP's task to micromanage the online behaviour
of their users. And why single out AOL? Why not block ALL users until
their ISP starts to cooperate?

> Existing contributors who already use AOL should be motivated to
> contact AOL and request that they cooperate, or they can change ISPs,
> or maybe we can allow people who log in with certain usernames.

As said before, this should not be something to put on AOL's plate,
and forcing people to switch ISPs sounds like a very bad thing to do -
I have always tried to resist websites that require a certain browser
or operation system. Forcing people to have (or not have) certain ISPs
seems just as bad to me.

--
Andre Engels, andreengels at gmail.com
ICQ: 6260644  --  Skype: a_engels


subject: [Wikipedia-l] exicornt switch

body:
2006/3/19, - Essjay - <essjaywiki at gmail.com>:

> 2) Bug 550 deals with the issue of allowing users who have accounts to edit
> even if thier IP is blocked. The solution for it is quite simple; it's
> actually three lines of code that can be written by anyone with minor PHP
> skill. It requires the following:
>
> a) that the patch be enabled;
> b) that account creation from blocked IPs be disabled (to prevent the
> vandals from simply creating an account to sidestep the IP block) which to
> my knowledge is already enabled
> c) throttling account creation from IPs to x per day, currently 10 per day.
> This allows legit people to create accounts, but prevents vandals from
> creating 1000 sleeper accounts to use once the IP is blocked.
>
> The devs are aware of the fix, and are not willing to enable it. The exact
> quote was that doing so is a  "very very bad idea." It is thier opinion that
> it will be of no use, that the vandals will just create sleeper accounts and
> evade the blocks. I don't agree, but I'm not a developer either; I defer to
> thier expertise in the matter.

Well, as a voice in the desert, let me say that I'm one not in favor
of 550. In my opinion there is already too much overly broad and long
blocking. If logged-in users are not hit by the block, that will only
worsen, and we're looking forward to the day that not just all of AOL,
but all roaming IPs, internet cafes, schools and libraries are blocked
indefinitely. That's not the direction I want to go, and the
possibility that one might be blocking a logged-in user is one thing
that helps avoiding that.

--
Andre Engels, andreengels at gmail.com
ICQ: 6260644  --  Skype: a_engels