subject: [WikiEN-l] More Seigenthaler fallout

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

Jimmy Wales wrote:

> My belief is that in general we should be aggressive about removing
>
>vandalism from the page history. If there was an automated way to go
>through on a regular basis and remove reverted versions from the
>history, I would strongly support that we do so.
>
>The only sensible counter-argument I know of in this area is a concern
>for future historians or contemporary researchers who would like to
>study the phenomenon of vandalism. For this, it seems more than enough
>to make such revisions available in some limited-access way. There's
>just no reason to keep this junk cluttering up the publicly-viewable
>article history.

I suspect that scouring the edit history of vandalism might be more
trouble than it's worth. Consider that it's sometimes difficult to
tell if an edit is vandalism or not.  Before you know it, you'll have
an "Edits for deletion" voting system in place, because everyone wants
to have a vote in making sure that only real vandalism gets deleted.
Otherwise, it will be entirely up to the deleting admin, who is likely
to make mistakes.

On the other hand, it would be nice to be able to view the edit
history of [[George W. Bush]] and actually know who has been editing
the article and not vandalising.  Here's an idea: How about instead of
deleting vandalism outright, users (or admins) can mark an edit as
"vandalism/vandal revert" and there would be an option (on by
default?) not to view these marked edits on the edit history?  (A
possible function of admin rollback would be that it would mark all
rolled-back edits as vandalism.) That way we could preserve all edits
for posterity but people could still get work done.  You could even
keep track on a user-by-user or ip-by-ip basis how many edits had been
marked as vandalism.

Of course, blatantly libelous edits that contain personal information
(phone numbers, addresses) should be deleted.  But I think this would
be better than trying to clean up the bulk of all vandalism.

Ryan
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.2 (MingW32)
Comment: Using GnuPG with Thunderbird - http://enigmail.mozdev.org

iD8DBQFDnwPz6MKb8lYmCtcRArFaAJ99v6jOkjsTlBB0GX1A6xtt9yONlACeKBB5
O8P4vi8j1k3ufF3yd74C17M=
=SqnH
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----


list: wikien-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Fred Bauder

subject: [WikiEN-l] NPOV trainwreck

body:
Well, its not sports. You first came to my notice with the point of
view that Nazism was somehow "socialism". Ruy Lopez came to my
attention with edits which sought to deny the totalitarian nature of
Stalinism.

Fred

On Dec 13, 2005, at 11:46 AM, Sam Spade wrote:

> I think the fact that our most extreme POV pushers on both the right
> and the left are united on how worthless the arbitration committee is
> says something good about us.
>
> Fred
>
> Needless to say I am offended and saddened that criticism of the
> committe is being dismissed as the ravings of extremists. That is not
> a good sign. It is no compliment when those on both sides of an issue
> sternly criticise the "neutral" referee. When that happens in sports,
> it is the clearest of signals that the umpire is in the wrong.
>
> Sam Spade
> _______________________________________________
> 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: geni

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Turn off AfD

body:
On 12/13/05, Tony Sidaway <f.crdfa at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 12/11/05, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 12/11/05, Tony Sidaway <f.crdfa at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > On 12/10/05, MacGyverMagic/Mgm <macgyvermagic at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > >
> > > > Why should 2 people be able to overthrow a bunch of others in case
> > > > where there's nothing wrong with their judgement?
> > >
> > > One person can do it.
> >
> > Not if they want to stay an admin.
>
> Is that a threat? Read the undeletion policy.  Administrators are
> empowered to undelete out-of-process deletions unilaterally.

Things that have been through ADF are not out of process.

--
geni


from_name: Daniel Mayer

subject: [WikiEN-l] More Seigenthaler fallout

body:
--- Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:

> Matt Brown wrote:
> > My belief is that in general we should not remove things from page
> > history so easily.
>
> My belief is that in general we should be aggressive about removing
> vandalism from the page history.  If there was an automated way to go
> through on a regular basis and remove reverted versions from the
> history, I would strongly support that we do so.

I think that getting that set-up should be a top development priority. One idea:

A bot with sysop rights could be able to detect admin reverts fairly easily and delete both the
vandalized versions that were reverted along with the admin's revert version (which would be
pointless clutter at that point). The bot would use the text 'Reverted to last version by..' along
with checking the reverting person to make sure they are an admin. The bot would only delete
versions that are older than a week and would need to. This would clean-up page histories a great
deal and get rid of most of the libel and slander in them. Then, as needed, a human admin can
delete more versions since a great many reverts are not done by admins. A more sophisticated admin
bot could compare diffs to detect reverts (using the comments 'Reverted to last version by..' and
'rv' only to identify diffs to check).

> The only sensible counter-argument I know of in this area is a concern
> for future historians or contemporary researchers who would like to
> study the phenomenon of vandalism.  For this, it seems more than enough
> to make such revisions available in some limited-access way.  There's
> just no reason to keep this junk cluttering up the publicly-viewable
> article history.

I agree.

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


from_name: Sean Barrett

subject: [WikiEN-l] NPOV trainwreck

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

Sam Spade stated for the record:

> Needless to say I am offended and saddened that criticism of the
> committe is being dismissed as the ravings of extremists. That is not
> a good sign. It is no compliment when those on both sides of an issue
> sternly criticise the "neutral" referee. When that happens in sports,
> it is the clearest of signals that the umpire is in the wrong.

Do you see this a sport, with umpires?  How does one score in this
sport?  Is your team currently winning or losing?

- --
 Sean Barrett     | How much does it cost to have
 sean at epoptic.org | the Internet installed?
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.2 (MingW32)
Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org

iD8DBQFDnzETMAt1wyd9d+URAoVTAJ92vE/MmdfxE+pvif2QHFGS4Nnz7ACfbBsR
73N9Ei5EAvATE1hPGL4u9EM=
=lxa9
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----


from_name: Anthony DiPierro

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Next experiment: switch off AFD for a month. (was
	Guardian in defense of Wikipedia)

body:
On 12/13/05, Tony Sidaway <f.crdfa at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 12/13/05, Anthony DiPierro <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
> > On 12/13/05, Tony Sidaway <f.crdfa at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > On 12/13/05, Anthony DiPierro <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
> > > >
> > > > At least a month is better than forever, but I think a month is too
> > > > long to be manageable.
> > >
> > > I believe it's about the same amount of time we give suspected
> > > copyright infringements.
> > >
> > Suspected copyright infringements is a completely different situation,
> > though, because it invariably *requires* discussion.  That something
> > is not a copyright infringement cannot be easily proven, if at all.
> > That something has a citation in it can be easily proven.
>
> That isn't the right question.  It's not whether somehting is
> *verified*, it's whether it's *verifiable*.

In my mind verifiable, as used in Wikipedia, implies that it is easily
verifiable.  If something is asserted without providing any source,
and a quick good faith effort to find a source fails, I'd say
verifiability has failed.

"The burden of evidence lies with the editor who has made the edit." -
[[Wikipedia:Verifiability]]

> It's  wiki.  Lack of
> references (as in the very earliest version of the article Oxygen, see
> the addendum to
> http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Oxygen&oldid=271622) can be
> solved by editing.  It can never be solved by deletion, which should
> be reserved for articles that seem, after an honest effort has failed,
> to be unverifiable.
>
My latest proposal suggested that articles were merely moved to the
user namespace, 24 hours after creation, and only after the user was
notified and a good faith effort to locate a source had failed.

> > > > How about this: we list pages there for a month, but after 24 hours
> > > > the article gets moved to the user's subpage.  And let's add this: an
> > > > article doesn't get moved, even after 24 hours,  unless a member of
> > > > the "article referencing team" (or whatever) says that s/he has spent
> > > > a few minutes looking for a source and failed.  If no one bothers to
> > > > make a good faith search effort, the article stays in article space
> > > > for up to a month.
> > > >
> > >
> > > No need to userfy.  Just add an "unreferenced" tag.  This has the
> > > advantage of permitting casual visitors to find and improve the
> > > article.
> >
> > I find the unreferenced tag to be useless.  Either it says that the
> > article contains some unreferenced facts, in which case we'd be better
> > off tagging those few articles which don't contain unreferenced facts
> > with the opposite tag, or it says that the article contains zero
> > references, which is already evident to anyone scanning the article
> > anyway.
> >
> > If you want to put the tag on the talk page or use a category, in the
> > case of articles with absolutely no references, I wouldn't object.
> > But I don't think that is a solution for what I'm saying, which is
> > that we shouldn't be creating such articles in the first place.
> >
> > Anthony
> > _______________________________________________
> > WikiEN-l mailing list
> > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> > To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
> >
> _______________________________________________
> 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 12/13/05, Anthony DiPierro <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
> My latest proposal suggested that articles were merely moved to the
> user namespace, 24 hours after creation, and only after the user was
> notified and a good faith effort to locate a source had failed.
>
This should read "24 hours after tagging".  And I should also point
out that this would only apply to articles were tagged within 48 hours
of creation.  Older articles need to be dealt with more cautiously,
because the author didn't know about the rule ahead of time.  Maybe we
could focus on 10 of these per day, for instance.

Anthony


from_name: Tony Sidaway

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Turn off AfD

body:
On 12/13/05, Mark Gallagher <m.g.gallagher at student.canberra.edu.au> wrote:
>
> G'day Toni,
>
> > On 12/13/05, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> >>On 12/13/05, Tony Sidaway <f.crdfa at gmail.com> wrote:
> >>>On 12/13/05, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> >>>>In all fairness Googling, then adding the information is a lot of work.
> >>>
> >>>It's a couple of minutes.  And at the end of it you have a useful
> >>>article instead of a hole in the ground.
> >>
> >>Nocking out people on RC patrol for couple of minutes soon results in
> >>the loss of RC patrol as they are all of researching stuff.
> >
> > Goodness, editors of an encyclopedia performing research!  We can't
> > have that!  Anybody would think we wanted to be as good as Britannica
> > or something!
>
> You know exactly what geni meant.  This sort of cheap shot helps nobody.
>

I'm sorry that you see it as a cheap shot; it's rather the reverse.  I
regard the argument that research prior to deletion would detract from
recent changes patrolling as utterly indefensible.  I find it
difficult to believe that anyone would seriously attempt to defend it.


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Phil Boswell

subject:
[Wikitech-l] Bug with transcluded template list when <includeonly>
	used?

body:
I would like someone else to confirm this: there seems to be a bug with the
list of transcluded templates which appears at the bottom of the edit view.

If you create a template which uses <includeonly> and inside that tag you
transclude another template, that second template does not appear on the
list of templates. It does however seem to appear OK on the list for client
pages, i.e. those which transclude the "outer" template.

HTH HAND
--
Phil
[[en:User:Phil Boswell]]


list: wikipedia-l

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Wikipedia Class Action

body:
"Anthony DiPierro" <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote
in message
news:71cd4dd90512121025r42088e35m38bd4a9e3b045629 at mail.gmail.com...
> > http://www.wikipediaclassaction.org/
> It'll be interesting to see if someone tries to force them to remove
> the trademarked Wikipedia logo from that site.

According to the footer on that page:
"Wikipedia image, in its distorted format ? Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. is
used pursuant the fair use doctrine"

IANAL but that sounds pretty demented to me :-)
--
Phil
[[en:User:Phil Boswell]]


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Turn off AfD

body:
On 12/13/05, Tony Sidaway <f.crdfa at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 12/13/05, Mark Gallagher <m.g.gallagher at student.canberra.edu.au> wrote:
> >
> > G'day Toni,
> >
> > > On 12/13/05, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> > >>On 12/13/05, Tony Sidaway <f.crdfa at gmail.com> wrote:
> > >>>On 12/13/05, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> > >>>>In all fairness Googling, then adding the information is a lot of work.
> > >>>
> > >>>It's a couple of minutes.  And at the end of it you have a useful
> > >>>article instead of a hole in the ground.
> > >>
> > >>Nocking out people on RC patrol for couple of minutes soon results in
> > >>the loss of RC patrol as they are all of researching stuff.
> > >
> > > Goodness, editors of an encyclopedia performing research!  We can't
> > > have that!  Anybody would think we wanted to be as good as Britannica
> > > or something!
> >
> > You know exactly what geni meant.  This sort of cheap shot helps nobody.
> >
>
> I'm sorry that you see it as a cheap shot; it's rather the reverse.  I
> regard the argument that research prior to deletion would detract from
> recent changes patrolling as utterly indefensible.  I find it
> difficult to believe that anyone would seriously attempt to defend it.

Why? We've seen the cost of a failed RC patrol. If you want to put an
article on wikipedia doing a minium of research yourself is not too
much to ask.

--
geni


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Turn off AfD

body:
On 12/13/05, Mark Gallagher <m.g.gallagher at student.canberra.edu.au> wrote:
>
> G'day geni,
> >
> > Why? We've seen the cost of a failed RC patrol. If you want to put an
> > article on wikipedia doing a minium of research yourself is not too
> > much to ask.
>
> Remember that we are talking about coming across articles that don't
> cite their sources.  If you came across such an article on RC patrol,
> you would *not* immediately reach for AfD, and you should not be listing
> stuff on AfD without doing research (if nothing else, because then you
> couldn't write a good nom, and I've been hot on the issue of AfD
> nominations for a while now).

I'm not even talking about listing without research--that's sloppy but
cannot result in an out-of-process deletion.  I'm talking about RC
patrollers deleting articles that contain, for instance, statements
that imply notability, such as the recent deletion of an article that
described its subject as a "prominent barrister and civil
libertarian."

Now while it's conceivable that this could have been a peacock phrase
designed to puff up a nonentity, the question was easily settled by a
quick google on the person in question, which the deleting
administrator doesn't seem to have done.  The guy in question turns
out to be exactly what the stub said he was: a prominent barrister and
civil libertarian.


body:
On 12/13/05, Matt Brown <morven at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 12/13/05, Anthony DiPierro <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
> > My latest proposal suggested that articles were merely moved to the
> > user namespace, 24 hours after creation, and only after the user was
> > notified and a good faith effort to locate a source had failed.
>
> The problem with that is that it removes articles that need work from
> the eyes of the editors and readers who might be able to fix the
> problem.  Better to mark it as unreliable than make it invisible.
>
> -Matt

It doesn't make them invisible, it makes them less prominent.  Yes, it
might cause a few articles to stay missing for longer than they have
to.  I admit the proposal is not without some negatives.  I just
believe the positives far outweigh these negatives (and I'm not going
to repeat those positives, look above in the thread for them).

I will repeat that marking certain articles as unreliable is a bad
idea, because it implies that articles which aren't marked that way
are reliable.  If you want to tell readers about the reliability of
Wikipedia, just put a note about it at the top of *every* article.
Marking the fact that certain articles have no sources makes no sense,
as this fact is evident to anyone who scans the article and sees that
there are no sources.

Anthony


body:
On 12/13/05, Anthony DiPierro <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
>
> At least a month is better than forever, but I think a month is too
> long to be manageable.

I believe it's about the same amount of time we give suspected
copyright infringements.

>
> How about this: we list pages there for a month, but after 24 hours
> the article gets moved to the user's subpage.  And let's add this: an
> article doesn't get moved, even after 24 hours,  unless a member of
> the "article referencing team" (or whatever) says that s/he has spent
> a few minutes looking for a source and failed.  If no one bothers to
> make a good faith search effort, the article stays in article space
> for up to a month.
>

No need to userfy.  Just add an "unreferenced" tag.  This has the
advantage of permitting casual visitors to find and improve the
article.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Turn off AfD

body:
On 12/13/05, Anthony DiPierro <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
> Even if you're
> writing an article from the top of your head, it's obviously something
> you know a lot about, and you'd have a much easier time finding a
> reference than some random edit patroller.  If nothing else it's
> common courtesy to save the rest of us time researching your article.

Absolutely.  Starting an unreferenced article is discourteous

However, that is not an argument for deletion of unreferenced articles.


body:
On 12/13/05, Tony Sidaway <f.crdfa at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 12/13/05, Anthony DiPierro <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
> >
> > At least a month is better than forever, but I think a month is too
> > long to be manageable.
>
> I believe it's about the same amount of time we give suspected
> copyright infringements.
>

It isn't meant to be.

--
geni


from_name: Justin Cormack

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Turn off AfD

body:
On Tue, 2005-12-13 at 08:19 -0500, Anthony DiPierro wrote:
> C'mon, it's not like I'm asking for every single fact to be
> referenced.  Adding a single reference to every single article is just
> not a big deal.
>
> And yes, I myself have started articles without listing references.  I
> did it because I'm lazy and there wasn't a rule against it.  We've
> gotta stop lazy people like me.

Its a worthwhile aim. I know there are articles I have created that
still dont have references, guess I should fix them. Not sure that
moving them into user space is the best solution - no one else will
ever find them. I wrote a quick stub the other day (was redlinked
from several places, clearly notable, but couldnt find any references.
Within an hour someone else had found references, written a much
longer article. This wouldnt have happened in my user space.

Justinc


body:
On 12/13/05, Tony Sidaway <f.crdfa at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 12/13/05, Anthony DiPierro <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
> >
> > In my mind verifiable, as used in Wikipedia, implies that it is easily
> > verifiable.
>
> I have to disagree, for most applicable meanings of "easily".  I can
> verify lots of stuff by going down to my son's college library; if I
> cite a review paper in Nature or a graduate-level textbook, odds are
> the average joe won't be able to just click on Google and find a
> reliable verification, and his local reference library probably won't
> carry it.
>
I'd say that qualifies as easily verifiable, as long as you cite the
source.  And as for the graduate-level textbooks, I'd say the vast
majority of the information in them *is* available in Google Print.

> > If something is asserted without providing any source,
> > and a quick good faith effort to find a source fails, I'd say
> > verifiability has failed.
>
> Well at the moment we've got some editors openly defending the
> practice of deleting without *any* good faith search, so this is an
> improvement.
>
I'd defend that practice in the case of an article which didn't even
bother providing a source.  But I think a good compromise is to allow
admins to tag the article, let a second person make the good faith
effort, and let a third person delete it.  These could be the same
person, or different people.

> > My latest proposal suggested that articles were merely moved to the
> > user namespace, 24 hours after creation, and only after the user was
> > notified and a good faith effort to locate a source had failed.
>
> Leaving it in main namespace with a notice is better because the
> article may still be useful, and if it's accessible it may be edited
> to add references.  I don't see what good is done by moving to a user
> namespace.

It provides extra incentive to add references.  It makes it more clear
that the article is not acceptable as part of our mainstream content.
It takes it out of mirrors like that of Answers Corporation, which
don't mirror the user namespace.  And I believe it makes it ineligible
for that waste of time called AFD.

Anthony


body:
On Tue, 2005-12-13 at 13:24 +0000, Tony Sidaway wrote:

> No need to userfy.  Just add an "unreferenced" tag.  This has the
> advantage of permitting casual visitors to find and improve the
> article.

Thats much better.

When do we start?

Justinc


from_name: Keith Law

body:
On 12/13/05, John Lee <johnleemk at gawab.com> wrote:
>
> I always cite any possible source - even tertiary ones. They're better
> than nothing at all, and when someone with a better source comes along,
> they can be replaced.
>
> John Lee
> ([[User:Johnleemk]])

I agree with this wholeheartedly. Not only is a tertiary source better than
no source, but the link to a tertiary source may lead a future editor to dig
further and find a better source.

Keith
([[User:Keithlaw]])


from_name: charles matthews

subject: [WikiEN-l] More Seigenthaler fallout

body:
"David Gerard" wrote

>I am *greatly*
reluctant to let people bowdlerise their article because they don't
like notable and well-documented facts.

I'm up to my elbows with one of these ([[Acharya S]], currently on AfD).
One has to operate _without noticing_ that one of our users may be, or
claims to be, the subject of the article.  Anything else is madness.  We
cannot take more notice of fair criticism, just because it is the person in
question (well, one does, but we should respond in the same way).

Charles


from_name: Kelly Martin

subject: [WikiEN-l] More Seigenthaler fallout

body:
On 12/13/05, Katefan0 <katefan0 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>
> Well, this gets to my other point.  I haven't checked my watchlist this morning, but I'm assuming that the person who made this crazy rant -- who was blocked until late last night for 3RR and other bad behaviors -- is going to come back full speed if he hasn't already.  I have no reason to believe he won't continue to make the same crazy rants.  It's one thing to remove somebody's offensive talk page comment that's 5 months old, but what if they're still banging on about it?  Do we then get into the practice of actively censoring someone's speech?  Are we to be expected to come behind this person and simply erase that portion of his comments every time they get made?

Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, not a free speech forum.  People who are
using Wikipedia as a place to store their latest rants need to find
somewhere else to go; if they don't, it's our obligation as curators
of this encyclopedia to push them out the door.  Forcefully, if need
be.

Kelly


subject: [WikiEN-l] More Seigenthaler fallout

body:
On 12/13/05, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> For this, it seems more than enough
> to make such revisions available in some limited-access way.  There's
> just no reason to keep this junk cluttering up the publicly-viewable
> article history.

I made the same recommendation a few days ago and was told (admittedly
not by a developer) that "it would be too difficult to implement".
Bah.

Kelly


body:
On Tue, 2005-12-13 at 21:41 +0800, John Lee wrote:

> I believe the {{unreferenced}} template already exists. I've seen it
> quite a few times, but not often enough, IMO. I'm a fanatic on citing
> sources, but some of the old ones I started that I don't really have
> much interest in (like [[chicken nugget]] and [[double-decker bus]])
> don't have references yet (AFAIK).

Well lets start putting it in more.

Yes, things with little interest are an issue.

I think I will have to make full list of articles I am interested
in being good that I have contributed to, and prune my watchlist of
the stuff that I just made small fixes to and dont really care
about in order to make this improvement thing work.

I might however have a few erudite references for chicken nugget
in my large pile of history of food books.

Justinc


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Turn off AfD

body:
On 12/13/05, The Cunctator <cunctator at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> I'd be merry. Especially if we just gave more people the power to see
> deleted articles.

There'd have to be two classes of deletion; some articles must not be
served except for administrative purposes, because of legal liability
problems.


from_name: Andrea Forte

subject: [WikiEN-l] Simple interface tweak?

body:
And, it's an interesting question to me... how many watchers DO
articles generally have anyhow? ARE there articles with 600 watchers?
60? Am I diligently watching the same things as 100 others or are we
distiburing our observation more evenly over the content of the site?

-andrea

On 12/13/05, Mark Gallagher <m.g.gallagher at student.canberra.edu.au> wrote:
>
> G'day Mark,
>
> > On 12/13/05, Carbonite <carbonite.wp at gmail.com> wrote:
> ["X users watchlisted this article" feature]
> >>One of the drawbacks is that vandals would be able to target articles that
> >>have zero users watching them.
> >
> > That's not true.  An article with zero watchers still shows up on
> > Recent Changes, where anyone doing RC patrol can see what's happening.
>
> How often do you check your watchlist and find that something survived
> through RC patrol?  How often do you RC patrol and find yourself
> despairing as too many edits scroll past for you to check out everything?
>
> If a vandal knows an article isn't being watched, he'd be quite correct
> to assume his vandalism would stay on Wikipedia longer than if he'd
> taken an article watchlisted by 600 people.  RC patrol is a worn-out net
> with many holes in it: sometimes it catches enough, sometimes it doesn't.
>
>
> --
> 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: 7.1.371 / Virus Database: 267.13.13/198 - Release Date: 12/12/2005
>
> _______________________________________________
> 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: Blackcap

subject: [WikiEN-l] Allow searching of wikitext as well as articles

body:
On 12/13/05, charles matthews <charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com> wrote:

> My browser has text search, so I can use it with the edit box open.
>
> Charles
>

Mine does as well (I'm using FireFox), but it doesn't seem to like to search
the text box, instead getting everything that isn't in the box.

--
[[User:Blackcap]]


body:
On Tue, 2005-12-13 at 21:41 +0800, John Lee wrote:

> I believe the {{unreferenced}} template already exists. I've seen it
> quite a few times, but not often enough, IMO. I'm a fanatic on citing
> sources, but some of the old ones I started that I don't really have
> much interest in (like [[chicken nugget]] and [[double-decker bus]])
> don't have references yet (AFAIK).

[[:Category:Articles lacking sources]] does indeed get filled from
{{unreferenced}} - just checked. Theres lots in it already, even
if there should be much more.

Lots of moderately good stuff doesnt have refs eg [[Barbara Hepworth]].

Justinc


from_name: Bod Notbod

body:
Phil Boswell wrote:

> According to the footer on that page:
> "Wikipedia image, in its distorted format ? Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. is
> used pursuant the fair use doctrine"
>
> IANAL but that sounds pretty demented to me :-)

I think it's already becoming clear to interested Wikipedians that much
of this Class Action palaver is demented.

The Village Pump and various talk pages are painting the picture of a
disgruntled man behind all this who seems to be involved in some dodgy
"charity" dealings...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:QuakeAID#Whois_WikipediaClassAction.org

...and has been thoroughly called on it at Wikipedia. Though I suppose I
ought to allow that it's possible he has been the victim of wrongful
accusations.

What I can directly report is that I wrote to the email address on the
Class Action web page posing as someone interested in his group (since I
assumed there was a number of people behind it).

I simply claimed to be someone who was "concerned about accuracy within
Wikipedia", I ain't lying, as a long term editor, I am ;o) But I hoped
he would think I was a WP naysayer as opposed to a long time
contributor. I asked whether any lawyers were involved and who was
behind the group and how they planned to proceed.

Anyhow, in spite of the fact that the Class Action website says "email
for more information", the reply I got was "who are you? Why should we
share any information with you?"

I replied, restating that I was "concerned about accuracy in Wikipedia"
and "hoped that we shared common ground". He went on the most peculiar
rant saying "why should I join Wikipedia? Why should I edit it? If my
business and my family have been lied about, why should I become
involved? Why should I register?" I had not suggested he do any of those
things, nor even - not even in passing - suggested he could edit pages
he felt were wrong. I only asked for some basic information about his
"Action". I began to suspect he may have received lots of email that day
with those kinds of suggestions though, and was now at the end of an
angry tether.

He also said "you don't understand the issues involved so perhaps you
should just sit this one out?" Which seemed an odd response to someone
who had merely asked for information about his cause.

 From this I can draw the following conclusion: this person does not
work well with others and will have one hell of a hard time actually
pulling together any kind of a group with which to achieve any anti-WP aims.

Of course, there is one other explanation for his hostility, and that's
that he knows I'm a long term WP contributor. My username is the same as
at the beginning of my email address here. It wouldn't be a great leap
to find me. However, he gave no indication that I had indeed been rumbled.

Perhaps someone would like to make a similar approach (expressing polite
interest and gently enquiring about his cause) with a better hidden
identity and see what sort of response they get?

User:Bodnotbod from en.


from_name: Delirium

body:
Anthony DiPierro wrote:

>Well, yeah, in my opinion it's a pretty obvious case of fair use as
>far as the copyright goes.  Doesn't Wikipedia have a tag for "logo of
>a company on a page about the company".  The case for dilution is
>trickier, but still probably fair use (if it's even dilution in the
>first place).  I think it'd be a horrible mistake to sue them over it,
>but hey, it'd be an interesting thing to watch.
>
>
IIRC, most attempts by Company [x] to sue "Company [x] sucks" type sites
for trademark infringement have ended in failure, except for the ones
where the defendant settled.

-Mark


from_name: sockmonk at gmail.com

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: SPOV threatens NPOV

body:
On 12/13/05, Chris Jenkinson <chris at starglade.org> wrote:
>
> stevertigo wrote:
> > Lets not be sarcastic. Science is largely a process of
> > exclusion; Sherlock Holmes style reduction of possible
> > explanations. Granted its ground rules are reasonable
> > enough to contain some interesting debates which
> > stretch the boundaries. But if we say for sake of
> > argument that science has little compatibility with
> > religion, why then do a reasonable percentage of
> > scientists hold religious personal views? Is it just
> > for the church dating scene?
>
> What a ridiculous premise for a discussion. Obviously if a large number
> of scientists hold religious personal views, then there can't be much of
> a conflict (unless all scientists with religious views are schizophrenic).
>
> People who frame science and religion at each other's throats are either
> uninformed on the subject, or deceitfully trying to manipulate opinion.
>
> Chris
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

I agree of course that science and religion are not "at each other's
throats". However, there is one place where I think the SPOV is seen most
clearly as a POV. This is when any account of a miracle, or other
supernatural event, is presumed to be false, impossible, or to necessarily
have a purely scientific explanation. The 'laws of science' are undoubtedly
useful, and have produced lots of great things. Of course, people made some
progress even when the leading 'scientists' of the day thought everything
was made of just four elements. But to presume that everything supernatural
is bunk, is imposing a scientific point of view in a way that many people
think goes too far.

--
sockmonk
[[User:Wesley]]


from_name: Guettarda

subject: [WikiEN-l] Simple interface tweak?

body:
>
>
> Well, a quick rule-of-thumb is that if we were to spread the 850,000
> articles on en: out over the 600-or-so admins, that would make for
> 1400-or-so items to be added to each watchlist.
>
> If the # of regular RC watchers is, say, 5x the number of admins, that
> would become a more reasonable 280.

I recently purged my watchlist down to 2200 items.  It's back up to 2300 a
few days later.  Of course, it's the same hundred or so articles that keep
popping up, a smaller subset that keep getting vandalised.  I understand why
Evolution gets vandalised constantly.  I am clueless as to why Deforestation
gets vandalised all the time.

A few hundred extra articles wouldn't be a big deal.

Ian (Guettarda)


from_name: Peter Gervai

body:
On Tue, 13 Dec 2005 13:01:36 -0000
"Phil Boswell" <phil.boswell at gmail.com> wrote:

> > It'll be interesting to see if someone tries to force them to remove
> > the trademarked Wikipedia logo from that site.
>
> According to the footer on that page:
> "Wikipedia image, in its distorted format _ Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. is
> used pursuant the fair use doctrine"
>
> IANAL but that sounds pretty demented to me :-)

IANAL but if it would have been drawn by an European person (or anyone
worked on it from out here) it would be possible to force them to
remove it since as far as I remember international law does provide the right
to the author to request the removal of his work not otherwise released
freely. (If it was not published under a free license; so it was acquired
illegally anyway, IMHO.)

P.


from_name: Snowspinner

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: SPOV threatens NPOV

body:
On Dec 13, 2005, at 2:36 PM, Sam Korn wrote:

> On 12/13/05, Chris Jenkinson <chris at starglade.org> wrote:
>> An example of a 'supernatural phenomenon' which is not 'bunk'
>> would be
>> welcome. :)
>
> The Resurrection of Christ.  Certainly it is inexplicable (a term I
> prefer to "supernatural"), but that doesn't make it nonsense.

There's got to be a corollary to Godwin's Law that covers this.

-Phil


body:
On 12/13/05, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:

> I think there is something at [[WP:TOOLS]] to address this.
>
> --
> geni
>

Hmmm... I'm not finding anything. Could you be more specific?

--
[[User:Blackcap]]


subject: [WikiEN-l] Simple interface tweak?

body:
Sorry, I think we have a communication break down. Of course when I
say "watching" this article, I mean how many people have it on their
watch list, not how many people are reading it.

On 12/13/05, Sherool <jamydlan at online.no> wrote:
> On Tue, 13 Dec 2005 16:02:29 +0100, John Lee <johnleemk at gawab.com> wrote:
>
> > Andrea Forte wrote:
> >
> >> Has it ever been suggested before that a simple indicator of "how many
> >> people are watching this article" could be a useful tool for:
> >>
> >> users who want to figure out what to trust
> >> wikipedians who want to know where to spend their efforts
> >> discouraging vandalism
> >>
> >> Has this been tried? Suggested? Debated?
> >>
> >> Just curious,
> >>
> >> Andrea
> >>
> > It's not exactly new, but I've never figured out why it hasn't been
> > explored further.
>
> Main reason I believe is that page view logging is disabled for
> performance reasons. The only way to get such a feature to work would be
> to generate every page on the fly from the database on every view
> (otherwise the count would be out of date). As it is pages are cached by
> any number of Squid servers so the main database server have absolutely no
> idea how many people are watching any given page at any given time. If the
> caching was turned off the server(s) would probably outright die from
> overwork pretty much right away, it can barely cope as it is at peak times.
>
> Aside from that I don't think the feature would be overly usefull. The
> best you can do is give a count of how many people have loaded the page
> within the last X minutes, there is no way to actualy tell if anyone is
> *actualy* viewing the page. I think a more meaningfull number would be the
> number of active (insert a convenient definition of active here) users
> have the page on theyr watchlist or something like that, but again you
> can't stick that on the page itself with the caching eneabled, otherwise
> it would only update every time someone edited the page (or did an
> action=purge on it). Maybe it could be put in an asosiated special page,
> kinda like Special:Whatlinkshere or some such though, they are not cached.
>
> --
> [[User:Sherool]]
>
> _______________________________________________
> 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] More DRV shenanigans

body:
On 12/13/05, Sean Barrett <sean at epoptic.org> wrote:
> David Gerard stated for the record:
> >
> > DRV regulars appear convinced it is a fiefdom unto itself, with only a
> > passing consideration at best of writing an encyclopedia rather than
> > fetishisation of process. If there's more than me with the notice on
> > their user pages about undeletion for viewing, it would be worth
> > listing a bunch at a time per my original notice.
>
> Done.  Wanna see if we can tag-team someone into 3RR violation?  ;->
>

Not a good idea.

I have made a template that administrators can add to their user
pages, containing David's notice and adding the administrator to an
appropriate category.

{{user recovery}}

(Perhaps not the best name, but follows an informal naming convention
used on similar user-based templates).


subject: [WikiEN-l] UK libel law and reusers

body:
On 12/13/05, Steve Block <steve.block at myrealbox.com> wrote:
> Anthony DiPierro wrote:
> > On 12/9/05, Steve Block <steve.block at myrealbox.com> wrote:
> >
> >>Anthony DiPierro wrote:
> >>
> >>>On 12/8/05, Steve Block <steve.block at myrealbox.com> wrote:
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>>Okay then, let me try another tack which has occurred to me given the
> >>>>Wikipedia stance on "fair use".
> >>>>
> >>>>How is a commercial reuser going to feel when it is issued with a writ?
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>Probably not very good.  What do you suggest we do about this?
> >>
> >>Remove libel.  As I responded to Kim, the next question is which libel
> >>laws we have to wrry about.  In which countries are suits likely to be
> >>brought?  Australia and the United Kingdom look likely candidates, any
> >>others?
> >>
> >
> > We already do remove libel.
> >
> > As for which libel laws we have to worry about, assuming by "we" you
> > mean the foundation, none, we don't have to worry about any libel
> > laws.  We should remove libel because it's false information, and we
> > don't keep false information in the encyclopedia.  To the extent that
> > any country defines true information as libel, we should ignore it.
>
> Are we not going round in circles here?

Maybe a bit.

> I ask you how a reuser is going
> to feel when a writ is asked, you say not good and ask me what we should
> do, I tell you and then you reiterate the position that the foundation
> does not have to worry about libel.

The foundation doesn't have to worry about libel.  Reusers might.  We
should remove false facts from the articles.  We should remove privacy
violations from the articles.  If a reuser gets sued because something
that was true and not a privacy violation was nonetheless considered
libelous, well, there's nothing we can really do about that.

> You've already ceded that yes,
> there are reasons for the foundation to worry.

No I haven't.

> And no country that I
> know of defines true infomation as libel.  The problem is this:
> recently, two British newspapers stated Robbie Williams was gay.  Had
> Wikipedia repeated those claims, even in terms which made it clear we
> were just repeating allegations made by two British newspapers,
> Wikipedia would have opened itself and its reusers up to being named in
> the very succesful suit Williams just won.

The fact that two British newspapers called Robbie Williams gay is
true information.  Does British law define this as libel or not?

> It may well have been true
> that two newspapers alleged that Robbie Williams was gay, but he wasn't
> gay and repeating false information isn't a defence in the United
> Kingdom.

I don't understand.  Is it libel, in the UK, to say "Two newspapers
alleged that Robbie Williams was gay"?  I agree Wikipedia shouldn't
say "Robbie Williams is gay", if that's all you're saying.  Can you be
more specific as to what type of statement you *are* talking about?

> Otherwise the case against the two newspapers would have
> collapsed, since they only repeated allegations from an at the time due
> to be published book.
>
> As to who I mean when I say "we", I mean, us as individual editors, the
> foundation and the community, since I am unclear what the separation
> between the three is.  There is some small part of me that is hoping a
> suit is launched, because that seems to be the only thing that will
> actually get some clarification on these issues from people on Wikipedia.
>
> The foundation apparently refused to use images that cause Wikipedia no
> problem because they impact on reusers, yet we also seem to refuse to
> take into account the impact on such reusers of the ability of the
> information to stand up to viable legal challenges.
>

I'll ask again.  What do you propose that we do?  We clearly should
remove false information from Wikipedia.  I agree with that, and I
think everyone else does.  We should remove private information which
has not been published anywhere else.  Our verifiability rule ensures
that.  So what else should we do?

Even with images we have only gone so far to protect reusers.  Images
which can only be used by Wikipedia are off limits.  Images which can
be used by a broad range of reusers, on the other hand, are generally
kept.  There is somewhat of a balancing act here.

> Still, I think as an individual editor I'm not so bothered anymore.  I
> would simply seek to have my name removed from any suit by arguing that
> I am not responsible for the fact that a website chooses to publish my
> solicited submission without any editing or verification.


from_name: Magnus Manske

subject:
[Wikitech-l] Re: [Wikipedia-l] Christmas presents, or: MediaWiki,
	reloaded

body:
Magnus Manske wrote:

>Rowan Collins wrote:
>
>
>>Well, some people actually *like* it that way, so I think providing
>>the *option* will be important in getting this feature accepted (that
>>was certainly the case in some of the discussions I've seen regarding
>>alternative VfD styles, some time ago). The great thing about having
>>proper software support is that we can have all sorts of *different*
>>views, without anyone having to maintain them.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>Maybe I'l add this later; to be honest, I don't consider this a priority...
>
>
You know what? Done! :-)

Magnus (replying to myself)


from_name: stevertigo

subject: [WikiEN-l] NPOV trainwreck

body:
--- Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
>I think we can distinguish serious and >thoughtful
criticism of the ArbCom from partisan rantings fairly
easily.  Suggesting >that I am stacking the ArbCom
with people whose >politics I agree with is quite
frankly absurd.

Point taken, and the criticism (as well as the
criticism of the criticism) is really just a red
herring regardless of which way you look at it.
I.e. short term appointments contradict the basic Open
model, and elections would have meant that no time
would have been wasted on the criticism.

>On the other hand, legitimate feedback to the >ArbCom
like: "you're too soft on trolls" or "you are too hard
on users who have just made a >minor mistake" might be
right or wrong in the >final analysis, but at least it
is legitimate >criticism.

'Might be right or wrong' sounds rather indefinitive
to apply to a committe charged with making definitive
decisions. I think thats what the general concern is;
finding a balance between definitiveness and
responsiveness.

-Stevertigo

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


from_name: Mark Williamson

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Obstetrician needed for 7 new Wikipedias

body:
> Such requests may demotivate ;-) e.g. Samogitian 'language', in
> request is written to have '0.5 million speakers'. Have you ever
> heard of a language in Europe spoken by 0.5 million people, that has
> no media, literature, not used at all in schools (even in it's core
> region), etc? :) Currently it's a dialect, that reflects in sometimes
> weird pronouncations of words ;-)

Yes, I have heard of such languages.

Mark

--
"Take away their language, destroy their souls." -- Joseph Stalin


from_name: Andrew Gray

subject: [WikiEN-l] Poor quality in most linked articles

body:
On 13/12/05, Barry <barry at polisource.com> wrote:
> I've been challenging myself to find problems with the top regular articles
> listed at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Mostlinked and I'm 4 for 4 so
> far. I've fixed basic problems in the following articles that any decent
> editor should have been able to catch:
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Whatlinkshere&target=Fair_use
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_domain
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_copyright_law
>
> Maybe the editors here should pay more attention to the most linked
> articles.

I thought "wow, that's a weird set of most-linked articles", and then
I realised that three of them are there because of the tens of
thousands of image-description tags. I wonder if we can generate a
list of most-linked-from-the-main-namespace easily...

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


subject:
[WikiEN-l] Proposal: Article Improvement Weeks! (was Turn off
	article creation AND deletion.)

body:
On 13/12/05, stevertigo <vertigosteve at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> Yes, but its really just practice for next year's
> schedules "lets turn off the internet day." Anyone
> else hear about that?

End of March, so we can repaint Usenet, right?

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


list: foundation-l

subject: [Foundation-l] Jimbo's fantasy...

body:
The Cunctator wrote:

>
>I honestly do wonder how long it will be before the first Great Pedia
>Fork takes place. I've found the standard germ time for idea cycles to
>overturn is about 7 years, which means that we've got another three
>years to go...
>
>
For those who can read German:
http://www.wikiweise.de/

Not exactly a fork, but partly based on de.wikipedia articles, which are
then developed there.

Supposedly it puts quality in front of quantity. Has been around since
April, so 1900 articles in 8 month...

Magnus


list: wikimedia-l

subject: [Foundation-l] Jimbo's fantasy...


subject: [Foundation-l] Jimbo's fantasy...

body:
Delirium wrote:

>
> Paying editors is another matter.  In principle I would support it,
> but we have to be *very* careful that it doesn't cause all sorts of
> collateral problems, from people gaming any sort of bounty system to
> get paid for crap work, to distortions in the community that might
> cause greater harm than the paid writers help.  It's not impossible to
> do right, but I think it may be hard enough to not be worth it.

I think paid editors hired by Wikimedia is a Bad Idea (tm), and I guess
I'm not alone on this one.

*However*, a third party, someone not associated with Wikimedia, who
wants to spend some money on something good, but not just give to
charity (think Ubuntu Linux), could pay people to write/fix articles on
Wikipedia. That would be most welcome, IMHO.

Magnus


subject: [Foundation-l] Jimbo's fantasy...


from_name: Matt Brown

body:
On 12/13/05, Anthony DiPierro <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
> Well, yeah, in my opinion it's a pretty obvious case of fair use as
> far as the copyright goes.  Doesn't Wikipedia have a tag for "logo of
> a company on a page about the company".

The individual behind this is in Greece, not the US.  How does this
change things?  I'm not sure what Greek law has to say about Fair Use.

>The case for dilution is
> trickier, but still probably fair use (if it's even dilution in the
> first place).  I think it'd be a horrible mistake to sue them over it,
> but hey, it'd be an interesting thing to watch.

Not worth suing; besides, all the better to make him look foolish.

-Matt


from_name: Pawe³ Dembowski

subject: [Foundation-l] Jimbo's fantasy...

body:
> I honestly do wonder how long it will be before the first Great Pedia
> Fork takes place. I've found the standard germ time for idea cycles to
> overturn is about 7 years, which means that we've got another three
> years to go...

I doubt we'll see a big *multilingual* fork anytime soon, though.

--
Ausir
Wikipedia, wolna encyklopedia
http://pl.wikipedia.org


subject: [Foundation-l] Jimbo's fantasy...


from_name: geni

subject: [WikiEN-l] More Seigenthaler fallout

body:
On 12/13/05, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> My belief is that in general we should be aggressive about removing
> vandalism from the page history.  If there was an automated way to go
> through on a regular basis and remove reverted versions from the
> history, I would strongly support that we do so.
> --Jimbo

looks like we are back to looking at the old revert and delete idea.
It would need codeing though.

--
geni


from_name: Uwe Brauer

subject:
[Wikitech-l] are soft newlines evil? (was: rationale behind the use
	of hard newlines)

references:
<87d5k32vz2.fsf@mat.ucm.es> <439C9AB1.1050703@pobox.com>
	<dnim9n$5nj$1@sea.gmane.org>

body:
>>>>> "Tim" == Tim Starling writes:

   Tim> UseModWiki probably took their cue from TeX, which handles
   Tim> newlines in roughly the same way. It's convenient at times,
   Tim> for example when quoting emails. But it's very inconvenient at
   Tim> times, and I think there probably should be a global
   Tim> configuration option or a wikitext tag to change the
   Tim> behaviour. There are times when 1 NL = <br/>, 2 NL = <p> would
   Tim> be very useful. And in my experience, MediaWiki's line break
   Tim> rules are often surprising to a new user.

   Tim> TeX has much more use for their line break rules -- TeX
   Tim> documents often have complex notation, and it's often
   Tim> advantageous to split it up over multiple lines and add
   Tim> comments. Also, TeX was invented in a time when editors which
   Tim> did word wrapping by inserting line breaks were much more
   Tim> common. With MediaWiki, the pros and cons are more balanced.

Hm

So the idea is to have behaviour similar to TeX? If so I am a little
confused whether _soft newlines_ are evil, when using an *external editor*.

In order to describe what I have in mind, let me use the following
notation

[] denotes an empty line
:H: denotes a hard newline
:S: denotes a soft newline

    1. So in (La)TeX I would use a  text editor, which fill insert
      soft newlines  say around the   70th column. Then  I  would
      write the following text.

Hello
[]
Now comes text, which contains soft newlines, which are produced:S:
by the editor but ignored by TeX.
[]
Regards

     Which would give me, produce `Hello' on 1. Line then a paragraph
     filled accordingly to TeX and again a newline with the `Regards'.

     So if I understand what you said above (and what I tested with
     Sandbox) this should give the same result in Wiki.

    2.  However:  when  I want  to edit  a   wiki artikel with an
        external editor, text is not displayed as in 1. But

Hello
[]
Now comes text, which contains *NO* soft newlines, because the
editor does not produce them, so the line breaking is done by the
Wikipedia engine
[]
Regards

       which produces the same result as one. Up to now I
       proceeded as in 1. But then unfilled the paragraphs that
       is I deleted the soft newlines. But is this really
       _necessary_? Independent of this I have chosen a different
       appropach, using hardlines.

    3.  The text is then in the following form:

Hello:H:
Now comes text, which contains *NO* soft newlines, because the
editor does not produce them, so the line breaking is done by the
Wikipedia engine:H:Regards

         which is displayed as text 1 and since most of the
         article is in form 2, that will also be nicely
         displayed.

So again by questions:

    -  shall I delete soft newlines? If not

    - could I add soft newlines in  the other paragraphs such that
      they are displayed nicely in my editor, or is this risky
      since I might destroy the formating of the
      paragraphs. Since my possibility 3. Is buggy I would be
      interested in an answer to the problem

I checked all the possibilities in the sandbox, and they seem
fine, but I want to be sure.

Thanks

Uwe Brauer


from_name: Chris Jenkinson

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: SPOV threatens NPOV

body:
stevertigo wrote:
> Lets not be sarcastic. Science is largely a process of
> exclusion; Sherlock Holmes style reduction of possible
> explanations. Granted its ground rules are reasonable
> enough to contain some interesting debates which
> stretch the boundaries. But if we say for sake of
> argument that science has little compatibility with
> religion, why then do a reasonable percentage of
> scientists hold religious personal views? Is it just
> for the church dating scene?

What a ridiculous premise for a discussion. Obviously if a large number
of scientists hold religious personal views, then there can't be much of
a conflict (unless all scientists with religious views are schizophrenic).

People who frame science and religion at each other's throats are either
uninformed on the subject, or deceitfully trying to manipulate opinion.

Chris


from_name: Tony Sidaway

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Turn off AfD

body:
On 12/13/05, Anthony DiPierro <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
> On 12/13/05, Tony Sidaway <f.crdfa at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > Absolutely.  Starting an unreferenced article is discourteous
> >
> > However, that is not an argument for deletion of unreferenced articles.
>
> I think it is a good part of the argument.  It's the part that says
> you don't have a *right* to have your articles kept if they are
> unreferenced.

That's an odd way of putting it. No editor has rights beyond copyright
and the GFDL.  The question is whether it's appropriate to delete
articles solely because the deleting administrator cannot be bothered
to expand them and, for reasons that escape me, cannot leave expansion
to someone else.
>
> The other half of the argument is which would be better for Wikipedia.

I think we can take it as read that it isn't better for Wikipedia to
delete articles without good reason.  A wiki is always a work in
progress, and most articles on Wikipedia are unreferenced.  This
doesn't make them useless and certainly doesn't mean that
administrators should delete them without ever making any attempt to
expand them and without ever discussing their deletion on AfD.


from_name: Ryan Delaney

subject: [WikiEN-l] Improve AFD - require rationales (2-step process)

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

Tony Sidaway wrote:

>
> I think that's a very good thing. If we work by consensus, then
> the first thing we have to acknowledge is that there is no
> consensual definition of consensus, although there is general
> satisfaction that Wikipedia usually makes decisions that everybody
> can live with. The latter is termed "rough consensus" and, as an
> expression of the reasonableness and tolerance of Wikpiedians, is
> what keeps Wikipedia from breaking.

I totally agree with you here. I'm glad you brought the discussion
here because it's a great place to make my next point.  It's also a
great way to clarify why my criticism of your RFC is a criticism of
AFD and not of you.  My point here is that by letting people vote, AFD
creates the atmosphere that people are discussing the issue to find
out what the consensus is.  I view that as a farce.  In reality,
people tally votes, and the closing admin determines what percentage
will count as "consensus" today.

The fact that "there is no consensual definition of consensus" really
means that people can't agree on what percentage of votes should count
as consensus.  But no percentage of votes could possibly count as a
consensus.  "80% of the votes = consensus" means "It's okay to roll
over the opinions of 20% of the people if you have a big enough
majority." That's not what consensus means.  What happened in your RFC
shows how people with differing arbitrary percentage standards of
"consensus" can think they are "right" but have no rational basis for
argument in support of their position. In my view, any numerical
quantification of consensus is wrong, regardless of what number is
picked.  Consensus is a rational agreement among reasonable parties,
and that means that people have reflected and discussed the issue and
found a way to come to agreement.  Because AFD creates this illusion
of determining what consensus is, it perpetuates the myth that
articles deleted by an AFD vote were deleted by a legitimate mandate
of the community.  In reality, it means anyone who can get enough
votes can dictate policy to the minority without discussion, and
without real consensus.

Now you might be wondering why I said I agree with you.  What I agree
about is that I think admins should be greatly influenced by the rest
of the community on what articles should be deleted, but I think the
final decision should ultimately be in their hands.  This is mainly
why I am so strenuously advocating pure wiki deletion, with admins
reserving the power of page protection, as a substitute for AFD.  Pure
wiki deletion is transparent in that it puts the power in the hands of
the administrators explicitly, rather than claiming power for "the
people" while implicitly leaving the decision in the hands of the
closing admin.  When an article is deleted under PWD, we know who is
responsible for it and we can question their reasoning in an amicable
and direct way.  It also forces real discussion of deletion, just like
the concept of the Wiki forces discussion of content edits, because
it's no longer possible to delete an article just by getting enough
votes to break over the "consensus" threshold.  Imagine if we had
votes for content edits: That would mean that the opinions of 1/3
people on Wikipedia don't matter! A nightmare, to be sure, but it's
one that we're living under with AFD as relates to deletion.

All of this isn't important, though. I happen to think that PWD is the
best solution to the problem, but I would like to hear other ideas.
Maybe I haven't been paying close enough attention, but it occurs to
me that I haven't heard many other people advancing alternate
solutions. What I want to do is try to move the discussion toward what
we will replace AFD with, and why the replacement will be any improvement.

Ryan
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.2 (MingW32)
Comment: Using GnuPG with Thunderbird - http://enigmail.mozdev.org

iD8DBQFDn0K+6MKb8lYmCtcRAphiAKCkt1lZWM+95OLgZG/SYcG+FSkQmwCcDGRf
VYtY82XxN4EQlvy30cyiaW0=
=PWb9
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----


subject: [WikiEN-l] More Seigenthaler fallout

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

Kelly Martin wrote:

>On 12/13/05, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
>
>>For this, it seems more than enough
>>to make such revisions available in some limited-access way. There's
>>just no reason to keep this junk cluttering up the publicly-viewable
>>article history.
>
>
>I made the same recommendation a few days ago and was told (admittedly
>not by a developer) that "it would be too difficult to implement".
>Bah.

Too difficult in the sense of "not worth it". I'm not just talking
about coding here though, since I'm not a coder and have no idea how
much effort it would cost the devs. I mean it may be too difficult and
too costly to implement administratively; see my other email in reply
to Jimbo.  What I _don't_ want to see is an atmosphere where admins
are seen as obligated to scour the page histories to delete all vandal
edits. That would slow down RC patrol enormously, which is a job that
is tedious and rewardless enough as it is.

Still, I could be wrong, and I don't want to be that guy who is
opposed to all change, so maybe we should experiment with the idea on
a limited basis.

Ryan
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.2 (MingW32)
Comment: Using GnuPG with Thunderbird - http://enigmail.mozdev.org

iD8DBQFDn0PG6MKb8lYmCtcRApK7AJ9WDbMsRMwgJbZ4gT5Aztlu/YzahACgssm+
YkihQGm5tILO4Q9VirQSy0U=
=R6rv
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----


body:
On 12/13/05, Anthony DiPierro <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
> On 12/13/05, Tony Sidaway <f.crdfa at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 12/13/05, Anthony DiPierro <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
> > >
> > > At least a month is better than forever, but I think a month is too
> > > long to be manageable.
> >
> > I believe it's about the same amount of time we give suspected
> > copyright infringements.
> >
> Suspected copyright infringements is a completely different situation,
> though, because it invariably *requires* discussion.  That something
> is not a copyright infringement cannot be easily proven, if at all.
> That something has a citation in it can be easily proven.

That isn't the right question.  It's not whether somehting is
*verified*, it's whether it's *verifiable*.  It's  wiki.  Lack of
references (as in the very earliest version of the article Oxygen, see
the addendum to
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Oxygen&oldid=271622) can be
solved by editing.  It can never be solved by deletion, which should
be reserved for articles that seem, after an honest effort has failed,
to be unverifiable.

> > > How about this: we list pages there for a month, but after 24 hours
> > > the article gets moved to the user's subpage.  And let's add this: an
> > > article doesn't get moved, even after 24 hours,  unless a member of
> > > the "article referencing team" (or whatever) says that s/he has spent
> > > a few minutes looking for a source and failed.  If no one bothers to
> > > make a good faith search effort, the article stays in article space
> > > for up to a month.
> > >
> >
> > No need to userfy.  Just add an "unreferenced" tag.  This has the
> > advantage of permitting casual visitors to find and improve the
> > article.
>
> I find the unreferenced tag to be useless.  Either it says that the
> article contains some unreferenced facts, in which case we'd be better
> off tagging those few articles which don't contain unreferenced facts
> with the opposite tag, or it says that the article contains zero
> references, which is already evident to anyone scanning the article
> anyway.
>
> If you want to put the tag on the talk page or use a category, in the
> case of articles with absolutely no references, I wouldn't object.
> But I don't think that is a solution for what I'm saying, which is
> that we shouldn't be creating such articles in the first place.
>
> Anthony
> _______________________________________________
> 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] More DRV shenanigans

body:
On 12/13/05, Sean Barrett <sean at epoptic.org> wrote:
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
>
> Tony Sidaway stated for the record:
>
>
> > I have made a template that administrators can add to their user
> > pages, containing David's notice and adding the administrator to an
> > appropriate category.
> >
> > {{user recovery}}
> >
> > (Perhaps not the best name, but follows an informal naming convention
> > used on similar user-based templates).
>
> While I heartily agree with this project, I don't like the template.

sofixit


from_name: Kelly Martin

subject: [WikiEN-l] More Seigenthaler fallout

body:
On 12/13/05, Sam Korn <smoddy at gmail.com> wrote:
> An issue arises when admins use the rollback feature for reversions
> that aren't vandalism.  I know they're not supposed to, and I make a
> point never to, but it nonetheless does happen.  Any ideas how to
> prevent this?

Heavy use of cluesticks and a reminder that because adminship is no
big deal, it can be taken away without a lot of fuss.

Kelly


from_name: Stan Shebs

subject: [WikiEN-l] 3RR Unenforceable

body:
Tony Sidaway wrote:

>On 12/13/05, Jtkiefer <jtkiefer at wordzen.net> wrote:
>
>>It's gotten to the point where 3RR has become unenforceable.  Any
>>administrator who tries to enforce 3RR regulations posted on AN/3RR are
>>subsequently villified, accused of bias, amd/or threatened with an RFC
>>if they continue doing their job. Due to this many editors stay away
>>from enforcing 3RR and I think something needs to be changed so that
>>admnistrators can actually enforce this rule without fear.
>>
>>
>>
>The 3RR was one of those ideas that may have seemed good at the time
>(I supported the proposal).  In practice it seems to be used for two
>bad purposes:
>
>* to justify the notion that making up to three reverts per day is a
>normal mode of editing
>* to bait hotheads and get them into trouble
>
Going by random talk page comments, I think it has a deterrent
effect, although it's tough to prove whether an editor has been
deterred by the rule, or has spontaneously decided to talk
instead of revert.

I'm not very sympathetic to bait-able hotheads; I would say
they've failed the IQ test.

Stan


from_name: David Gerard

subject: [WikiEN-l] More DRV shenanigans

body:
>I have made a template that administrators can add to their user
>pages, containing David's notice and adding the administrator to an
>appropriate category.
>{{user recovery}}

Nice one!

See how long before that text gets reworded ;-) I have linked the cat
from WP:DRV.

- d.


subject: [WikiEN-l] More Seigenthaler fallout

body:
Katefan0 wrote:

>Thanks David.  Please let me know what they say.

I just cc'd it to the AC for information ;-) We've had a few of these
come to our attention. (Just because it's obviously not an arbitration
matter doesn't mean we don't get EVERYTHING.)

I think we're getting toward some sensible way to treat these things
here in this thread.

>I'd like to reiterate that the information I am assuming he's unhappy
with wasn't backed up by sourcing, it was just a crazy rant about his
relationship with UT and his book being biased.

Stuff like that, you cut it, say "see talk" in the edit summary and
say "source please" ;-)

- d.


from_name: Justin Cormack

body:
On Tue, 2005-12-13 at 11:49 -0500, Anthony DiPierro wrote:
> > I might however have a few erudite references for chicken nugget
> > in my large pile of history of food books.
> >
> > Justinc
>
> A quick Google Print search reveals that Poultry Products Processing
> by Shabtai Barbut has a description of the process of chicken nugget
> production, complete with schematic overview, starting on page 291.
> In all there are 73 results mentioning "chicken nugget".

Ah no doubt somewhere there are the right references. Or maybe the book
sitting on top of my pile...

j


from_name: Jimmy Wales

subject: [WikiEN-l] More Seigenthaler fallout

body:
Ryan Delaney wrote:
> Too difficult in the sense of "not worth it". I'm not just talking
> about coding here though, since I'm not a coder and have no idea how
> much effort it would cost the devs. I mean it may be too difficult and
> too costly to implement administratively; see my other email in reply
> to Jimbo.  What I _don't_ want to see is an atmosphere where admins
> are seen as obligated to scour the page histories to delete all vandal
> edits. That would slow down RC patrol enormously, which is a job that
> is tedious and rewardless enough as it is.

I think a lot of the issues being raised are solvable and amount to
interface design issues.  Certainly we don't want an atmosphere where
admins are seen as obligated to scour page histories.  But it might be
nice if admins could simply 'nuke' individual revisions (and 'unnuke'
them, of course).

There are lots of things that we allow admins to do, which other admins
can undo (like block vandals).  This can just be another tool in our
arsenal: the ability for admins to "hide" (we should call it that rather
than "delete") certain edits from casual users.

The issue of whether this would allow vandals to make it through an
admin election is an interesting one of course.  It seems unlikely to
me, and if it ever did happen that a vandal was elected admin, we could
adjust process.  (Calvinball, remember.)

_______________________________________________
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] More DRV shenanigans

body:
On 12/13/05, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> >I have made a template that administrators can add to their user
> >pages, containing David's notice and adding the administrator to an
> >appropriate category.
> >{{user recovery}}
>
>
> Nice one!
>
> See how long before that text gets reworded ;-) I have linked the cat
> from WP:DRV.

Well the bit about DRV being broken didn't last long, but that wasn't
the important bit.  I've been meaning to make something like this
available for some time and I'm glad that it has been taken up so
enthusiastically by so many sysops.


from_name: Tels

subject: [Wikitech-l] SVG To User Agent

body:
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----

Moin Aron,

On Tuesday 13 December 2005 05:58, Aron Rubin wrote:
> Now that Firefox 1.5 has been deployed for my user base I would like to
> start sending SVG content directly to the browser. I realize that
> Firefox 1.5 is not deployed everywhere but it is to my user base. That
> being now established (hopefully) I noticed that there are many
> workarounds within mediawiki that prevent SVG content from getting to
> the browser as an image source. Can someone give me a hand at switching
> all the locks?

Before doing that, you might want to take a look at all the outstanding
issues with SVG support in Firefox, namely:

* links dont work (they open inside the SVG)
* printing them is not usable (black background, HUGE fonts or other
issues making the print-out useless)
* incomplete support for SVG browsers (Firefox arbitrary, Opera only SVG
basic etc)
* Most browsers have huge problems with fonts (wrong sizes, not supporting
centering, tspans, or other problems)
* And there are quite a few bugs in there, as well.

A few issues I described here:

  http://bloodgate.com/perl/graph/faq.html#svg

Of course, things can get only better if more users use SVG and pressure
the browser developers to clean up the mess :-)

If you want, you can test-drive Graph::Easy's SVG output here:

	http://bloodgate.com/graph-demo

Best wishes,

Tels

- --
 Signed on Tue Dec 13 17:39:43 2005 with key 0x93B84C15.
 Visit my photo gallery at http://bloodgate.com/photos/
 PGP key on http://bloodgate.com/tels.asc or per email.

 "Most people, I think, don't even know what a rootkit is, so why should
 they care about it?" -- Thomas Hesse, President of Sony BMG's global
 digital business division, 2005.

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.2.4 (GNU/Linux)

iQEVAwUBQ577P3cLPEOTuEwVAQEzdQf7BTBuvL3EW7bKxPg1OToKCVYSrus/jadc
7rbtff2nMHrnM2fq2yi4I3G3GJ+gq9D5KNQecgesTKfq9bdATOMz9BRDLbronJRE
C+8/Wg30JsBrqgOXrfJMUyr0L6uy3bPrprU4Qr3EdEoE5NH3B62o37JVbjlBDmQL
x4XT7YYQkUF8pxRbj+Zv3M/t55pwLr6r0fUdqk3NXotgvNxejIIbQw573SeHlaMt
VRs+4KyJb4NNAgKpddU0vW9XDm2d3hWDH0QdgYNTwffPUPmVqGwWjNwz1AioKbMY
4jvo2a/2gIXYhpF2JeawZWNEHINk6l7m3xex5hqcMez1AJpjTHo1Wg==
=pb8m
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----


subject: [WikiEN-l] NPOV trainwreck

body:
Ruy Lopez wrote:
> 1) Jimbo, who said he sees Wikipedia as a "von Mises model", appoints like-minded people to
> ArbCom such as Fred Bauder and JayJG.  Jimbo appoints conservative cronies like that, making
> a far worse choice than the ArbCom elections, which in my view elected some good, decent people
> like Raul654, who I don't always agree with, but at least is neutral, fair and so forth.

ArbCom members will recall that I initially objected to JayJG out of a
concern that if his politics (about which I know nothing, by the way,
other than that he has sometimes been characterized as a supporter of
Israel) are viewed as similar to mine, some trolls might suggest that
I'm trying to stack the ArbCom politically.  David Gerard, who describes
himself as a "Guardian reading socialist" quickly jumped to JayJG's
defense, and I relented on this point on the view that JayJG would make
an excellent arbiter.  And, to my knowledge, that has been fully borne
out by the facts.

I wonder when I ever said Wikipedia was a "von Mises" model.  That'd be
a pretty strange thing for me to say.  I have pointed to Hayek's "On the
Use of Knowledge in Society" as a pivotal essay in guiding my own
thinking on topics like decentralization, knowledge, and society.  But
that's a far cry from what you are suggesting.

> 2) So Fred Bauder, Jimbo-appointed conservative cronie from way back "does" the case, and most of
> the other arbs just sign off on the work he did.  I've seen this movie before.
> 3) Getting onto ArbCom went from Jimbo appointments (who like JayJG and Bauder are horrible), to
> an election, which brought in good arbs, and now he wants to go back to appointing people again.

That's not true at all.  There seems to be considerable support for a
hybrid model.  Perhaps you haven't kept up with the poll and discussion.

> Of course he can't just kill the election once it's in place, so he says he will have an election
> to help him decide or some garbage like that.  I mean it's nonsense.  Despite the "be bold" mantra,
> I am usually not so bold on such things, but I moved the "ArbCom 2005 elections" page to something
> like "Arbcom 2005 support vote" and noted that there would be no elections.  Of course I was
> immediately reverted, and my notes on how the election is a fraud were removed.

That's not surprising, since the accusation is rather absurd.

> Wouldn't it be a good
> thing for all the "left wing cranks" to go off and edit some other wiki encyclopedia?

Be sure to take all the "right wing cranks" and indeed, all the other
cranks with you.  :-)  Then we'll be left with the kind of thoughtful
and reasonable people who understand that a broad centrist open approach
is the right way for an encyclopedia to be written.

--Jimbo


subject: [WikiEN-l] NPOV trainwreck

body:
Sam Spade wrote:
> Needless to say I am offended and saddened that criticism of the
> committe is being dismissed as the ravings of extremists. That is not
> a good sign. It is no compliment when those on both sides of an issue
> sternly criticise the "neutral" referee. When that happens in sports,
> it is the clearest of signals that the umpire is in the wrong.

I think we can distinguish serious and thoughtful criticism of the
ArbCom from partisan rantings fairly easily.  Suggesting that I am
stacking the ArbCom with people whose politics I agree with is quite
frankly absurd.

On the other hand, legitimate feedback to the ArbCom like: "you're too
soft on trolls" or "you are too hard on users who have just made a minor
mistake" might be right or wrong in the final analysis, but at least it
is legitimate criticism.

--Jimbo


from_name: Jakob

subject: [Wikitech-l] Some research questions

body:
Hi Danny,

I hope it's ok to forward this message to wikitech-l and
wiki-research-l because this are general research questions. You wrote:

> I think this is all an invaluable discussion, but it is being blurred
> by statements that have no basis in actual fact. "Most of our
> articles," "the vast majority of our articles," "only a very small
> percentage of our articles" all mean nothing.
>
> I would very much like to see a comprehensive report by the Research
> Committee about the current state of Wikipedia.

Probably it won't help a lot but at least I can tell you what measures
*can* be determined in which way from my point of view. That means if I
had the time I could do it (sorry, this is frustrating also for me).

> 1. How many articles are being created currently.

Can be measured from the recentchanges table. Up to now there is no
dump and you cannot use the XML dump only because it does not contain
deletions - I also think that this table is does not contain all edits
from the beginning.

> 2. What is the actual proportion of anon v. registered users.

Can be measured from the recentchanges table too. If you ignore the
deleted pages it can also measured from the full XML dump like I did
for the German Wikipedia or Erik Zachte for all Wikipedias:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wikistats/EN/TablesWikipediaEN.htm

There you can see it is 28% anonymous edits for the English Wikipedia
(but you may be interested in changes of this value so recentchanges is
needed)

> 3. How has the experiment on English impacted Wikipedia.

In the press or by content? ;-)

> 4. What percentage of our articles are classified as stubs?

There is a dump of categorylinks where you can easily count them. I'll
try do  this tomorrow.

> 5. What percentage of our articles contain incorrect information?

I guess 100%. Please specify "incorrect".

> 6. What percentage of our articles contain pornographic images in
> their histories?

You need to track deletion log (again there is no dump) but I don't
know how to determine if a deleted image was pornographic or not.

> 7. What percentage of our articles are copied verbatim from other sources?

This is also difficult, I have to think about it.

> 8. What percentage of our images are copyrighted.

Tagged or non tagged? This also depends a lot on the law you consider.

> 9. What percentage of edits are vandalism?

This could be measured with the full dump or recent changes log. At
least you can count the number of probably reverts by looking at the
comments but you only get reverted vadalism (better than nothing).

> 10. What percentagge of our articles are of Featured Article quality?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Featured_article_statistics

> Etc., etc., etc.
>
> I would also like to see practical suggestions that can be
> implemented in the immediate future to make the necessary changes.
> Ideally, this would include a timeline.

Research is beeing done but very slowly because there are so many
possibilities and most Wiki researchers do it in there own time (like
Wikipedians) so there are no deadlines (except your masters thesis
deadline and things like that) and no specific goals. It's freedom of
research. I play around a lot with Wikipedia statistics and ideas of
research but it's more for fun - writing it down and analysing it in
all details is work.

Greetings,
Jakob

P.S: By the way the best paper about quality of Wikipedia is already
published since Wikimania. Andreas Br?ndle has finished his thesis now
but it's in German and not published yet.
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Wikimania05/Paper-AB1


from_name: Mark Gallagher

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: SPOV threatens NPOV

body:
G'day C,

> I really don't know where you're going here. Tone aside, I was making
> the very serious point that the evidence that the scientific method
> works, people's opinions aside, should be pretty obvious to anyone
> enjoying the fruits of technological progress.

You're violently agreeing with each other, from my reading.

--
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: 7.1.371 / Virus Database: 267.13.13/198 - Release Date: 12/12/2005


from_name: Steve Bennett

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia Class Action

body:
Hi,
  Same problem again: "Wikipedia cannot hold itself out as
quintessential authority...".  Now, I don't know that Wikipedia *does*
do that.  But people obviously have that perception.  Time for a
"Wikipedia does not guarantee the veracity of its content. Please fix or
alert us to any errors that you find." disclaimer in big letters on
every page.

Steve

> -----Original Message-----
> From: wikipedia-l-bounces at Wikimedia.org
> [mailto:wikipedia-l-bounces at Wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Andrew Gray
> Sent: Monday, 12th December 2005 10:43 PM
> To: wikipedia-l at wikimedia.org
> Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia Class Action
>
>
> On 12/12/05, Anthony DiPierro <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
> > > http://www.wikipediaclassaction.org/
> >
> > It'll be interesting to see if someone tries to force them
> to remove
> > the trademarked Wikipedia logo from that site.
> >
> > Other than that, Seigenthaler has said he's not interested in suing
> > the foundation (and his lawyers have apparently informed
> him that he'd
> > fail due to the CDA).  I wonder if anyone else is going to come
> > forward in the first place, you know, someone with standing to
> > actually sue.  I also wonder who it is that's running this site.
> > (whois Registrant Name: Legal Department)
>
> The Village Pump solves the problem, thanks to [[User:Interiot]]:
>
> "It looks like the the site is set up by QuakeAID (WHOIS
> tie-ins here), because they have long-standing complaints
> about Wikipedia's coverage of them"
>
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:QuakeAID#Whois_WikipediaClassAction.or
g
http://news.baou.com/main.php?action=recent&rid=20675

--
- Andrew Gray
  andrew.gray at dunelm.org.uk
_______________________________________________
Wikipedia-l mailing list
Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l


from_name: Sam Korn

subject: [WikiEN-l] Tagline changed?

body:
On 12/13/05, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi all,
>   Not sure if anyone has commented on this already (I don't see a
> corresponding subject), but the tagline on wikipedia pages is now
> reading "From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit."
> As I commented several days ago, it used to just read "From Wikipedia,
> the free encylopedia".  Interesting.
>
> Is there any commentary on this change somewhere?

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=MediaWiki:Tagline&action=history
seems to spell out the debate rather well.

--
Sam


body:
On 12/13/05, Anthony DiPierro <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
>
> In my mind verifiable, as used in Wikipedia, implies that it is easily
> verifiable.

I have to disagree, for most applicable meanings of "easily".  I can
verify lots of stuff by going down to my son's college library; if I
cite a review paper in Nature or a graduate-level textbook, odds are
the average joe won't be able to just click on Google and find a
reliable verification, and his local reference library probably won't
carry it.

> If something is asserted without providing any source,
> and a quick good faith effort to find a source fails, I'd say
> verifiability has failed.

Well at the moment we've got some editors openly defending the
practice of deleting without *any* good faith search, so this is an
improvement.

> My latest proposal suggested that articles were merely moved to the
> user namespace, 24 hours after creation, and only after the user was
> notified and a good faith effort to locate a source had failed.

Leaving it in main namespace with a notice is better because the
article may still be useful, and if it's accessible it may be edited
to add references.  I don't see what good is done by moving to a user
namespace.


subject: [WikiEN-l] SPOV threatens NPOV

body:
On 12/12/05, David Gerard <fun at thingy.apana.org.au> wrote:
> stevertigo wrote:
> > Translation: "Its not the dark ages anymore, so
> > everyone should just accept SPOV as the One True POV."
> > Hrmph.
> So what term do you suggest for the thing that is currently usefully
> described by the word "pseudoscience"?

You state that some people (preferably citing) call it pseudoscience,
and then describe what the term means.  This explains why a category
"Pseudoscience" is a bad idea.  "Concepts labelled pseudoscientific"
is far better, if more wordy, if such a category is really necessary.

--
Sam


body:
On 12/13/05, Ryan Delaney <ryan.delaney at gmail.com> wrote:
>  The mere fact that administrators can decide for
> themselves is what bothers me

I think that's a very good thing.  If we work by consensus, then the
first thing we have to acknowledge is that there is no consensual
definition of consensus, although there is general satisfaction that
Wikipedia usually makes decisions that everybody can live with.  The
latter is termed "rough consensus" and, as an expression of the
reasonableness and tolerance of Wikpiedians, is what keeps Wikipedia
from breaking.


from_name: Blackcap

body:
Hmmm. Thanks, I'll take looks at those.

On 12/13/05, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 12/13/05, Blackcap <snoutwood at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 12/13/05, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > > I think there is something at [[WP:TOOLS]] to address this.
> > >
> > > --
> > > geni
> > >
> >
> > Hmmm... I'm not finding anything. Could you be more specific?
> >
> > --
> > [[User:Blackcap]]
>
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Tools/Browser_integration#Search_within_Textarea_Extension
> https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=252371#c123
>
> No idea if it works or not.
>
> --
> 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
>

--
[[User:Blackcap]]


subject: [WikiEN-l] Tagline changed?

body:
Hi all,
  Not sure if anyone has commented on this already (I don't see a
corresponding subject), but the tagline on wikipedia pages is now
reading "From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit."
As I commented several days ago, it used to just read "From Wikipedia,
the free encylopedia".  Interesting.

Is there any commentary on this change somewhere?

Steve


from_name: Adrian Buehlmann

subject:
[Wikitech-l] Re: Bug with transcluded template list when
	<includeonly>used?

body:
"Phil Boswell" <phil.boswell at gmail.com>
wrote in message news:dnmga3$edh$1 at sea.gmane.org
> I would like someone else to confirm this: there seems to be a bug
> with the list of transcluded templates which appears at the bottom of
> the edit view.
> If you create a template which uses <includeonly> and inside that tag
> you transclude another template, that second template does not appear
> on the list of templates. It does however seem to appear OK on the
> list for client pages, i.e. those which transclude the "outer"
> template.
> HTH HAND

Yes. There seems to be something strange. At the moment, to me it looks
like templates existing in older versions of the page that's edited
are also counting. Editing [[en:template:book reference]] at the moment
(2005-12-13 17:30 UTC) still shows usage of qif, though I could swear
I have replaced that with qif now (on all sub-templates too).

If I copy the whole thing to my sandbox (which I know for shure I never
used to play with book reference snippets - I have special template sandboxes
under my user space), the list of used templates looks more actual. Though
it does not correspond to what I have in the edit window. At best,
it corresponds to what's saved.

At the moment, I can't say whether <include> contributes to this or not.
Would need more testing.

Maybe there is some cache update problem? But that might be a feature...
(see also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Avoid_using_meta-templates#Proposal_for_.22lazy_templates.22 :-)

Maybe the list is just built from the cache.

--
Adrian
[[en:User:Adrian Buehlmann]]


from_name: Jtkiefer

subject: [WikiEN-l] 3RR Unenforceable

body:
It's gotten to the point where 3RR has become unenforceable.  Any
administrator who tries to enforce 3RR regulations posted on AN/3RR are
subsequently villified, accused of bias, amd/or threatened with an RFC
if they continue doing their job. Due to this many editors stay away
from enforcing 3RR and I think something needs to be changed so that
admnistrators can actually enforce this rule without fear.

-Jtkiefer


from_name: Fastfission

subject: [WikiEN-l] Simple interface tweak?

body:
On 12/13/05, Sherool <jamydlan at online.no> wrote:
> Main reason I believe is that page view logging is disabled for
> performance reasons. The only way to get such a feature to work would be
> to generate every page on the fly from the database on every view
> (otherwise the count would be out of date). As it is pages are cached by
> any number of Squid servers so the main database server have absolutely no
> idea how many people are watching any given page at any given time. If the
> caching was turned off the server(s) would probably outright die from
> overwork pretty much right away, it can barely cope as it is at peak times.
>

Why would it need to be calculated on the fly? Every time someone hits
watch, it adds one to the article's counter in some table. Every time
they hit unwatch, it removes one. True, you'd need to run some sort of
one-time update the first time around (or it could calculate it on the
fly once if a null value was found) but after that, barring database
errors, it would stay up to date, yes? Unless I am missing something
about the way the database works.

FF


subject: [WikiEN-l] Simple interface tweak?

body:
As a side note, my favorite "always vandalized though no idea why"
article is [[Gold foil experiment]]. But perhaps the school-project
approach is why.

FF

On 12/13/05, Guettarda <guettarda at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >
> > Well, a quick rule-of-thumb is that if we were to spread the 850,000
> > articles on en: out over the 600-or-so admins, that would make for
> > 1400-or-so items to be added to each watchlist.
> >
> > If the # of regular RC watchers is, say, 5x the number of admins, that
> > would become a more reasonable 280.
>
>
> I recently purged my watchlist down to 2200 items.  It's back up to 2300 a
> few days later.  Of course, it's the same hundred or so articles that keep
> popping up, a smaller subset that keep getting vandalised.  I understand why
> Evolution gets vandalised constantly.  I am clueless as to why Deforestation
> gets vandalised all the time.
>
> A few hundred extra articles wouldn't be a big deal.
>
> Ian (Guettarda)
> _______________________________________________
> 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: Chris Jenkinson

subject: [WikiEN-l] SPOV threatens NPOV

body:
Sam Spade wrote:
> There isn't much to discuss here. Articles should cite verifiable
> POV's in a neutral manner. Ergo we cite scientific journal X, and
> religious periodical Y. Everybody reads and makes up their own minds.
>
> Only the most irredeemable fanatic feels that science possesses a
> monopoly on the truth, or that all things labeled as "pseudoscience"
> by random eggheads (or worse yet POV pushing wikipedia editors) are in
> fact unscientific or lacking in merit.

I don't feel that science possesses a monopoly on the truth but other
examples of alternatives to science which are 'true' would be nice. And
examples of things labelled as 'pseudoscience' by 'random eggheads'
which are actually scientific or have merit would be nice too.

Chris


from_name: Steve Block

subject: [WikiEN-l] UK libel law and reusers

body:
Anthony DiPierro wrote:
> On 12/9/05, Steve Block <steve.block at myrealbox.com> wrote:
>
>>Anthony DiPierro wrote:
>>
>>>On 12/8/05, Steve Block <steve.block at myrealbox.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>>Okay then, let me try another tack which has occurred to me given the
>>>>Wikipedia stance on "fair use".
>>>>
>>>>How is a commercial reuser going to feel when it is issued with a writ?
>>>
>>>
>>>Probably not very good.  What do you suggest we do about this?
>>
>>Remove libel.  As I responded to Kim, the next question is which libel
>>laws we have to wrry about.  In which countries are suits likely to be
>>brought?  Australia and the United Kingdom look likely candidates, any
>>others?
>>
>
> We already do remove libel.
>
> As for which libel laws we have to worry about, assuming by "we" you
> mean the foundation, none, we don't have to worry about any libel
> laws.  We should remove libel because it's false information, and we
> don't keep false information in the encyclopedia.  To the extent that
> any country defines true information as libel, we should ignore it.

Are we not going round in circles here?  I ask you how a reuser is going
to feel when a writ is asked, you say not good and ask me what we should
do, I tell you and then you reiterate the position that the foundation
does not have to worry about libel.  You've already ceded that yes,
there are reasons for the foundation to worry.  And no country that I
know of defines true infomation as libel.  The problem is this:
recently, two British newspapers stated Robbie Williams was gay.  Had
Wikipedia repeated those claims, even in terms which made it clear we
were just repeating allegations made by two British newspapers,
Wikipedia would have opened itself and its reusers up to being named in
the very succesful suit Williams just won.  It may well have been true
that two newspapers alleged that Robbie Williams was gay, but he wasn't
gay and repeating false information isn't a defence in the United
Kingdom.  Otherwise the case against the two newspapers would have
collapsed, since they only repeated allegations from an at the time due
to be published book.

As to who I mean when I say "we", I mean, us as individual editors, the
foundation and the community, since I am unclear what the separation
between the three is.  There is some small part of me that is hoping a
suit is launched, because that seems to be the only thing that will
actually get some clarification on these issues from people on Wikipedia.

The foundation apparently refused to use images that cause Wikipedia no
problem because they impact on reusers, yet we also seem to refuse to
take into account the impact on such reusers of the ability of the
information to stand up to viable legal challenges.

Still, I think as an individual editor I'm not so bothered anymore.  I
would simply seek to have my name removed from any suit by arguing that
I am not responsible for the fact that a website chooses to publish my
solicited submission without any editing or verification.

--
No virus found in this outgoing message.
Checked by AVG Free Edition.
Version: 7.1.371 / Virus Database: 267.13.13/199 - Release Date: 13/12/05


from_name: Neil Harris

subject: [WikiEN-l] Simple interface tweak?

body:
> And, it's an interesting question to me... how many watchers DO
> articles generally have anyhow? ARE there articles with 600 watchers?
> 60? Am I diligently watching the same things as 100 others or are we
> distiburing our observation more evenly over the content of the site?
>
> -andrea

Well, a quick rule-of-thumb is that if we were to spread the 850,000
articles on en: out over the 600-or-so admins, that would make for
1400-or-so items to be added to each watchlist.

If the # of regular RC watchers is, say, 5x the number of admins, that
would become a more reasonable 280.

-- Neil