subject: [WikiEN-l] Question on citation policy

body:
On 21/08/06, zero 0000 <nought_0000 at yahoo.com> wrote:

> Take an example (but please answer on the principle and
> not on the example).  Suppose an article has this:
>    [[Babe Ruth]] hit 60 home runs in the 1927 season.
> Now someone comes along and slaps a "citation required"
> tag on it.  Someone else takes off the tag on the grounds
> that the WP article on Babe Ruth is linked right there and
> has copious citations that covers this fact.

I certainly hope there isn't a policy yet. To answer in the general
case, I would say you should look into your heart and see what your
editorial judgement says.

Sometimes the cite can be put right in there without it seeming to be
stupid, in which case hey, why not - I took the time to learn the new
references syntax and it's really pretty darn cool. Sometimes it would
lead to "The sky is blue {{cite}}".

We need process, but not more than is absolutely required to get stuff done.

- d.


list: wikitech-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Steve Bennett

subject: [Wikitech-l] Upload large files

body:
On 8/21/06, Magnus Manske <magnus.manske at web.de> wrote:
> I've found some nice classical ogg files online (CC-BY-SA-2.0). However,
> some are larger than 20 MB. Uploading those leads me back to a blank
> upload page, without comment or error. 20MB seems to be a magical limt
> for PHP.

You mean a magical limit for uploading to MediaWiki? Maybe a nice
person with access to the servers would copy them for you? :)

Steve


list: foundation-l

from_name: Walter van Kalken

subject: [Foundation-l] Using someone's real name instead of his wikiname

body:
On the Dutch wikipedia there is a user who is constantly using my real
name in discussions instead of my wikiname. Although my real name is
widely known, I do not wish that it is used on the wiki in discussions.
One of the reasons is Google's indexing the other reason is my real name
is known only by people who have been on the wiki for a long time.

I am using my wiki alternate name for a reason. I feel that this user is
violating my privacy by constantly using my real name instead of the
name under which I edit. Is this a violation of our wiki privacy policy?

Waerth


list: wikimedia-l


list: wikipedia-l

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Using someone's real name instead of his wikiname


subject:
[Wikitech-l] How bad is a category with 21,
	008 pages for the servers?

body:
On 8/21/06, Magnus Manske <magnus.manske at web.de> wrote:
> Well, saying "show me recent changes in biology and subcategories" is
> definitely something I'd enjoy.

Yeah. It just depends a lot on the kind of category. You probably
wouldn't want *all* its subcats, there might be thousands of articles?
Maybe you just want one level of subcats?

On the other hand, clear-cut subcats like "Musicians by country" would
definitely be interesting.

Steve


from_name: Domas Mituzas

subject: [Wikitech-l] Date fields in DB

body:
Hi!

> I have heard that the culprit was Lee and that the problem was some
> kind of
> unspecified data import problem.

Well, TIMESTAMP is magic field which has too much magic in it, and
the magic was less controllable before 4.1.
The first timestamp field would auto-update itself on both inserts or
updates (if not referenced directly).
Second timestamp field would be set to current timestamp only on
inserts.
So if you, say, reset page_random, and have TIMESTAMP field, you'd be
ending up with all fields loosing time information.

> I've never really felt the need to change it, personally. It's not
> like
> changing it would enable any extra features or anything. You can
> convert
> between the representations easily enough, in either PHP or SQL.

Um, yeah, there would not be much difference of functionality (you
can cast, anyway ;-).
The only question is efficiency - 8 (or 4 in case of usable 4.1
TIMESTAMP) bytes instead of 14, and somewhat easier range scans.

It is not that it is the most significant issue at the moment, hence
it stays there for a while.

--
Domas Mituzas -- http://dammit.lt/ -- [[user:midom]]


from_name: Erik van den Muijzenberg

body:
"It is a normal problem with me. The heart takes over from the brain
and the damage is done. -Waerth / Walter van Kalken" (1)
"Hello my name is Walter van Kalken also known as waerth." (2)

Apparently Walter van Kalken/Waerth is referring to me. He didn't
contact me though, although he claims he did; he just pasted a
vandalism-warning on my discussion-page, without substantiating his
accusations.

Waerth is bullying and insulting Dutch users for some years now, and
I am one of the few users there who still dare to criticize his
somewhat sociopathic behaviour. At first I considered Waerth as a
friend though. In real life I even gave Walter van Kalken a tour in
Amsterdam when he was visiting Holland a few years ago and I got the
impression we both liked that very much.

But since I defended another Dutch user against heavy attacks by
Waerth, I am bullied and insulted by Waerth as well. Waerth even went
as far as to disclose on the Dutch wikipedia private information
about me some months ago.
It comes as no surprise to me that he doesn't mention his own
violations of the privacy of other users, but poses as the victim now.

Concerning his recent accusations: it is simply not true that I am
*constantly* referring to him by using his real name. I am not gonna
prove that though, because I don't have to prove my innocence -
Walter van Kalken/Waerth is to prove that his accusations are correct.
And he better do that quickly, or withdraw his accusations quickly
and stop accusing me, because I am fed up with it.

However, it is correct that I used his real name yesterday. Another
user asked me if I could end the ongoing problems, by having a beer
with Waerth. As drinking a beer takes place in the physical world, I
referred in my answer to the human being 'Walter van Kalken', because
to me 'Waerth' is only a persona in the virtual world.

The Dutch Wikipedia has an article 'Walter van Kalken' - see: http://
nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_van_Kalken
It's Google-NL's first hit for "walter van kalken waerth". Apart from
that, Google-NL has at least 500 other hits for this combination.
Tthe fact that 'Waerth' is the nickname of 'Walter van Kalken' is
hardly private information anymore.
Walter van Kalken/Waerth even violated his own privacy, by using
'waerth' as his handle on at least one wiki-mailinglist that is
indexed by Google.

Best regards,
Erik van den Muijzenberg aka Muijz

(1)
List:       wikipedia-l
Subject:    [Wikipedia-l] my apologies
From:       Walter van Kalken <walter () vankalken ! net>
Date:       2005-07-06 18:32:57
Message-ID: 42CC23D9.7080207 () vankalken ! net

(2)
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/User:Waerth

On 21-aug-2006, at 9:41, Walter van Kalken wrote:

> On the Dutch wikipedia there is a user who is constantly using my real
> name in discussions instead of my wikiname. Although my real name is
> widely known, I do not wish that it is used on the wiki in
> discussions.
> One of the reasons is Google's indexing the other reason is my real
> name
> is known only by people who have been on the wiki for a long time.
>
> I am using my wiki alternate name for a reason. I feel that this
> user is
> violating my privacy by constantly using my real name instead of the
> name under which I edit. Is this a violation of our wiki privacy
> policy?
>
> Waerth
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l


list: wikien-l

from_name: geni

subject: [WikiEN-l] Defamation policy

body:
On 8/21/06, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
> The talk pages aren't part of our GFDL product are they? God I hope not.
>
> Steve

At the end of every page you will find:

This page was last modified ##:##, ## month ####. All text is
available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License. (See
Copyrights for details.)

--
geni


body:
More than one time. But this user and me have a personal fued spanning 2
years. I am not always nice to him and he returns that. But I haven't
resorted to using his real life name in discussions.

Waerth

>Have you tried asking him to stop?
>
>On 8/21/06, Walter van Kalken <walter at vankalken.net> wrote:
>
>
>>On the Dutch wikipedia there is a user who is constantly using my real
>>name in discussions instead of my wikiname. Although my real name is
>>widely known, I do not wish that it is used on the wiki in discussions.
>>One of the reasons is Google's indexing the other reason is my real name
>>is known only by people who have been on the wiki for a long time.
>>
>>I am using my wiki alternate name for a reason. I feel that this user is
>>violating my privacy by constantly using my real name instead of the
>>name under which I edit. Is this a violation of our wiki privacy policy?
>>
>>Waerth
>>_______________________________________________
>>foundation-l mailing list
>>foundation-l at wikimedia.org
>>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>>
>>
>>
>_______________________________________________
>foundation-l mailing list
>foundation-l at wikimedia.org
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>
>
>


from_name: Magnus Manske

subject: [Wikitech-l] Upload large files

body:
Rob Church schrieb:
> On 21/08/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> On 8/21/06, Magnus Manske <magnus.manske at web.de> wrote:
>>
>>> I've found some nice classical ogg files online (CC-BY-SA-2.0). However,
>>> some are larger than 20 MB. Uploading those leads me back to a blank
>>> upload page, without comment or error. 20MB seems to be a magical limt
>>> for PHP.
>>>
>> You mean a magical limit for uploading to MediaWiki? Maybe a nice
>> person with access to the servers would copy them for you? :)
>>
>
> There are limits within MediaWiki, PHP and Apache. Magic can come from
> more than one direction.
>
I don't think it's MediaWiki, as it doesn't display the
file-is-too-large message, but just returns a blank upload form. And
AFAIK, Apache doesn't have an upload size limit /per se/ (though you can
set one, apparently, with LimitRequsetBody). Thus, I'd bet on PHP to be
the culprit. I know we've raised the PHP upload limit, but maybe not
enough, or maybe there is a compiled-in limit?

Also, I don't think manually copying files would be a good idea. Even if
you'd replace an existing upload, at least the img_size field would be
wrong. And manually copying a file, then manually update the database to
have it show correct values, just for uploading a larger-than-usual file
is ... not good at all.

Magnus

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subject: [Wikitech-l] Upload large files

body:
Also, that error should at least display a message, not just return a
blank upload form.

Magnus

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from_name: Stephen Bain

subject: [WikiEN-l] News.com: Teen's warning on the gospel of Wikipedia

body:
On 8/21/06, Peter Ansell <ansell.peter at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Of course in theory it works perfectly like that. However, if a "fact"
> was included in a version a year ago how easy is it to figure out who
> put it in to go and ask them for verification? There is no automatic
> mechanism for "blaming" any one user for any word in an article, which
> means it is a possible, but totally manual process.

Unless you have the IBM History Flow app. It's downloadable from IBM:
http://www.alphaworks.ibm.com/tech/historyflow

You can import data from a database dump, if you have access to one,
or the program will get the data from the wiki itself. The last I
heard, Special:Export was limited to showing 100 revisions, but this
seems to have changed now.

--
Stephen Bain
stephen.bain at gmail.com


from_name: Andre Engels

body:
2006/8/21, effe iets anders <effeietsanders at gmail.com>:
> Maybe it's worthwhile to split the discussion, and focus on the
> original question, in which answer I am quite interested in too:
>
> Is this a Wikimedia Foundation Privacy Policy violation?

No, I would not say so. The only part of the privacy policy that I see
could apply here, is:

When you edit any page in the wiki, you are publishing a document.
This is a public act, and you are identified publicly with that edit
as its author.

That is, anything you write on Wikipedia is public. Given that Walter
has himself made the connection in Wikipedia posts, it is public.

Of course, this does NOT mean that Muijz's behavior is ok. It just
means that him doing it, and the Wikimedia Foundation doing nothing
against it, would not be against our privacy policy.

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


from_name: George Herbert

subject: [WikiEN-l] Process is evil

body:
On 8/21/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 21/08/06, Andrew Gray <shimgray at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 21/08/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > On 21/08/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > > On 8/21/06, Kelly Martin <kelly.lynn.martin at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > > > > I support the idea of a "policy retreat" where we get 15-20 of
> > > > > Wikipedia's leading community members together around a table
> > > > > somewhere and sort out the major issues that are bothering us at
> the
> > > > > moment.  Launder, rinse, repeat.
>
> > > > This would almost certianly result in more policy. Small groups
> appear
> > > > to like doing that.
>
> > > Not if Kellly or I get anywhere near it. MUWAHAHAHAHA etc.
>
> > "Policy-forming retreat" is not code for "lock a dozen policy wonks in
> > cabin and set on fire", David.
>
>
> Next you'll want me to be a responsible company director or something.
>
>
> - d.
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

There is this election coming up...

--
-george william herbert
george.herbert at gmail.com


subject: [Wikitech-l] Upload large files

body:
On 8/21/06, Rob Church <robchur at gmail.com> wrote:
> Yeah, I was advising Steve that more than one possible limit exists. :)

Heh, I wasn't actually meaning to blame MediaWiki, but it sounded like it.

Ugly kludge of the day idea: add a "feature" where two files can be
appended to create a new file. Then users could upload large files in
20mb segments and concatenate them afterwards.

Steve


body:
Which ''was'' one of the centers of Waerths activities. Waerth has
stopped contributing since it was made impossible by Muijz and Wikix as
they deliberately provocate Waerth by deliberately making edits for
edits sake. Meanwhile accusing Waerth of not wanting to co-operate.
Anyone looking at the edits made on Thailand articles in the Dutch
wikipedia will see that Waerth co-operates in a good manner. And I think
that the people who also work on Thailand articles in the english
wikipedia like Ahoerstemeier can attest that waerth co-operates in a
fine manner.

I am getting sick and tired of people who edit for edittings sake and
who only use that as a way to provocate others. And then hold large
diatribes accusing others of refusing to co-operate. And then to be even
more provocative use someone's real name which means that someone's real
name gets slaundered all over the internet.

I am still waiting for the bloody arbcom which was promised over a year
ago on nl: but still gets frustrated.

Waerth

>Hoi,
>Waerth has been long enough with the WMF projects not to have asked. I just
>checked, he did and as could have been expected it is a well known
>"gentleman" who should know better that is again at it being his "gracious"
>self. Not only does he refuse the reasonable request not to name names, he
>ends his diatribe with a promise to scrutinize the articles on Thailand
>which is one of the centers of gravity of Waerth's activities. In my opinion
>this can not be seen as anything but a deliberate provocation of Mr Muijz.
>
>Thanks,
>     GerardM
>
>On 8/21/06, James Hare <messedrocker at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>>Have you tried asking him to stop?
>>
>>On 8/21/06, Walter van Kalken <walter at vankalken.net> wrote:
>>
>>
>>>On the Dutch wikipedia there is a user who is constantly using my real
>>>name in discussions instead of my wikiname. Although my real name is
>>>widely known, I do not wish that it is used on the wiki in discussions.
>>>One of the reasons is Google's indexing the other reason is my real name
>>>is known only by people who have been on the wiki for a long time.
>>>
>>>I am using my wiki alternate name for a reason. I feel that this user is
>>>violating my privacy by constantly using my real name instead of the
>>>name under which I edit. Is this a violation of our wiki privacy policy?
>>>
>>>Waerth
>>>_______________________________________________
>>>foundation-l mailing list
>>>foundation-l at wikimedia.org
>>>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>_______________________________________________
>>foundation-l mailing list
>>foundation-l at wikimedia.org
>>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>>
>>
>>
>_______________________________________________
>foundation-l mailing list
>foundation-l at wikimedia.org
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>
>
>


body:
On 8/21/06, Rob Church <robchur at gmail.com> wrote:
> Wikipedians prefer to highlight and tag problems than to take 30
> seconds to fix them, it seems. I can understand that larger cases crop
> up, and warrant attention from more than one person, but stupid little
> unsourced stubs don't need to be tagged - either find a source on the
> web, or find reference that a source might exist within five minutes,
> or "prod" it, or whatever we do now.

Are you talking about presumed hoaxes or presumed good articles that
simply don't have any citations?

> Do we still have AfD, or was it renamed again?

You mean Arguments for Dimwits?

Steve


from_name: David Gerard

subject: [WikiEN-l] Process is evil

body:
On 21/08/06, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:

> I would like to read this process. I think the basic issues are
> relatively complex, because it's not as if *all* process is bad. It
> often really does serve a purpose. Maybe people need to think about
> the ramifications of not following any given process. If the
> ramifications are not bad, then the process could be scrapped, or
> downgraded to "howto" or something.

Yeah. The problem comes when people write what should be editorial
guidelines as if they are didactic instruction. The only purpose this
serves is if you want to use it as a stick to beat people down
afterwards - it makes it completely useless as an actual editorial
guideline. There was a lot of this during the writing of WP:LIVING and
it keeps creeping back. Because it's easier to lecture people than
trust them, or something. The fallacy is the instruction creep
fallacy, that if you write something down people will do it.

- d.


from_name: GerardM

body:
Hoi,
I do disagree utterly. I would be interested to see to what extend Waerth
has made this connection. I am of the opinion that there should be no link
between peopel IRL and people in their Wikimedia persona. There are few
people for

On 8/21/06, Andre Engels <andreengels at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> 2006/8/21, effe iets anders <effeietsanders at gmail.com>:
> > Maybe it's worthwhile to split the discussion, and focus on the
> > original question, in which answer I am quite interested in too:
> >
> > Is this a Wikimedia Foundation Privacy Policy violation?
>
> No, I would not say so. The only part of the privacy policy that I see
> could apply here, is:
>
> When you edit any page in the wiki, you are publishing a document.
> This is a public act, and you are identified publicly with that edit
> as its author.
>
> That is, anything you write on Wikipedia is public. Given that Walter
> has himself made the connection in Wikipedia posts, it is public.
>
> Of course, this does NOT mean that Muijz's behavior is ok. It just
> means that him doing it, and the Wikimedia Foundation doing nothing
> against it, would not be against our privacy policy.
>
>
> --
> Andre Engels, andreengels at gmail.com
> ICQ: 6260644  --  Skype: a_engels
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


body:
Hoi,
I do disagree utterly.

I would be interested to see to what extend Waerth has made this connection.
I am of the opinion that there should be no link between peopel IRL and
people in their Wikimedia persona. There are few people where a link with
their real life persona is justifiable, Jimmy Wales is one. Even Angela asks
to have her article removed once her tenure as a board member has ended.

It is not polite to say the least.

Thanks,
    GerardM

On 8/21/06, Andre Engels <andreengels at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> 2006/8/21, effe iets anders <effeietsanders at gmail.com>:
> > Maybe it's worthwhile to split the discussion, and focus on the
> > original question, in which answer I am quite interested in too:
> >
> > Is this a Wikimedia Foundation Privacy Policy violation?
>
> No, I would not say so. The only part of the privacy policy that I see
> could apply here, is:
>
> When you edit any page in the wiki, you are publishing a document.
> This is a public act, and you are identified publicly with that edit
> as its author.
>
> That is, anything you write on Wikipedia is public. Given that Walter
> has himself made the connection in Wikipedia posts, it is public.
>
> Of course, this does NOT mean that Muijz's behavior is ok. It just
> means that him doing it, and the Wikimedia Foundation doing nothing
> against it, would not be against our privacy policy.
>
>
> --
> Andre Engels, andreengels at gmail.com
> ICQ: 6260644  --  Skype: a_engels
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Foundation-l] Re : WikiDump help

body:
saikrishna wrote:
> Hai,
>  	This a sample document from wikipedia dump.

This is the wrong place for technical questions; you want mediawiki-l.

>  	1. What does "revision" tags exactly mean ?

A particular revision of the page.

>  	2. #REDIRECT [[Algeria]] ---> redirects to document with title Algeria.
>  	   Then what does "{{R from CamelCase}}" refer to.

Please see the documentation for wiki markup on Wikipedia and elsewhere.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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subject: [Foundation-l] Re : WikiDump help

body:
saikrishna wrote:
> Hai,
>  	This a sample document from wikipedia dump.

This is the wrong place for technical questions; you want mediawiki-l.

>  	1. What does "revision" tags exactly mean ?

A particular revision of the page.

>  	2. #REDIRECT [[Algeria]] ---> redirects to document with title Algeria.
>  	   Then what does "{{R from CamelCase}}" refer to.

Please see the documentation for wiki markup on Wikipedia and elsewhere.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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subject: [Foundation-l] Re : WikiDump help

body:
saikrishna wrote:
> Hai,
>  	This a sample document from wikipedia dump.

This is the wrong place for technical questions; you want mediawiki-l.

>  	1. What does "revision" tags exactly mean ?

A particular revision of the page.

>  	2. #REDIRECT [[Algeria]] ---> redirects to document with title Algeria.
>  	   Then what does "{{R from CamelCase}}" refer to.

Please see the documentation for wiki markup on Wikipedia and elsewhere.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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subject: [Foundation-l] Re : WikiDump help

body:
saikrishna wrote:
> Hai,
>  	This a sample document from wikipedia dump.

This is the wrong place for technical questions; you want mediawiki-l.

>  	1. What does "revision" tags exactly mean ?

A particular revision of the page.

>  	2. #REDIRECT [[Algeria]] ---> redirects to document with title Algeria.
>  	   Then what does "{{R from CamelCase}}" refer to.

Please see the documentation for wiki markup on Wikipedia and elsewhere.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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subject: [WikiEN-l] Process is evil

body:
On 8/21/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> Perhaps an essay page: [[Wikipedia:Process is dangerous]]. "Process is
> important. But beware of two common fallacies: 1. that therefore more
> process is better; 2. that process can cure cluelessness. Product
> beats process."

I would like to read this process. I think the basic issues are
relatively complex, because it's not as if *all* process is bad. It
often really does serve a purpose. Maybe people need to think about
the ramifications of not following any given process. If the
ramifications are not bad, then the process could be scrapped, or
downgraded to "howto" or something.

Steve


subject: [WikiEN-l] Defamation policy

body:
On 8/21/06, Anthony <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
> I'd be in favor of taking talk pages out of google, but I think it'd
> meet from resistance by others.  It could also be argued that putting
> parts of Wikipedia under robots.txt constitutes "technical measures to
> obstruct or control the reading or further copying of the copies you
> make or distribute" and violates the GFDL.

The talk pages aren't part of our GFDL product are they? God I hope not.

Steve


body:
On 8/21/06, Rob Church <robchur at gmail.com> wrote:
> I'm talking about the little stub that looks 50/50, or the single

I hate those. I really do. They take a lot of time and usually aren't
worth it. We should probably prod them. Probably no cause for speedy,
and at least by prodding them we're raising a red flag to potential
hoaxees.

> spelling error that causes them to roll out the {{cleanup}} tag.

That's just dumb. I occasionally use {{cleanup}} on pages that just
don't look remotely like a Wikipedia article, or for pages where it's
obvious someone started a merge operation and never finished, leaving
redundant hunks of text all over the place. Anything minor...well...I
wonder if anyone actually goes around carrying out these cleanup
operations.

Steve


from_name: Kelly Martin

subject: [WikiEN-l] Process is evil

body:
On 8/21/06, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
> Although I'm very much a part of the anti-process-bound crowd, I must ask:
> How many people were in Mr. Shirky's group?
>
> Until it is demonstrated otherwise, it would be wise to assume that
> there is a difference between a group of a dozen carefully selected
> likeminded folks who are making a living doing something,  and a
> project of thousands of constantly changing, self-selecting, unequally
> skilled people, who are largely just fooling around on the Internet.
>
> I enjoy process when it quickly helps me figure out how to do
> something without reinventing the wheel on my own, and when it helps
> my work be more consistent with the rest of the project.  I dislike it
> when it's used as a bludgeoning device by the weak minded to produce
> an easy attack against someone whos actions taken with deep
> understanding and careful consideration.

At my Wikimania presentation ("Does Consensus Scale?") one participant
brought up the consensus building methodolgy used at Apache; someone
else during Wikimania (Lessig, perhaps) mentioned IETF "rough
consensus".  My counterpoint to both of these suggestions (and which I
made at Wikimania) is that if I were to walk into an IETF meeting or
an Apache Software Foundation discussion and expect to have a say in
the discussion, I would likely be shown the door.  Both of those
organizations invite people into their discussions on an
invitation-only basis: you don't get to have a voice until there is
consensus that you should.  This is the exact opposite of Wikipedia:
at Wikipedia you get to have a voice until there is a consensus that
you shouldn't.  And it is my opinion that this aspect of Wikipedia's
consensus building methodology simply doesn't scale.

The old saw is "have an open mind, but not so open that your brain
falls out".  I am beginning to think that, at least on the English
Wikipedia, our collective mind is too open.

So, yes, when it comes to shaping policy on the English Wikipedia, I
support cabalism.  I think it would do better than our current system,
which is basically a ochlocratic dystopia.

Kelly


subject: [WikiEN-l] Process is evil

body:
On 8/21/06, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 8/21/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> > (Whatever happened to my project to give the policy/guidelines
> > collection a much-needed enema this year ...)
>
> I think we should schedule 6 monthly enemas. Every policy should be
> rewritten from scratch every 6 months, only incorporating the
> absolutely most critical and still relevant sections from the
> preceding version.

I support the idea of a "policy retreat" where we get 15-20 of
Wikipedia's leading community members together around a table
somewhere and sort out the major issues that are bothering us at the
moment.  Launder, rinse, repeat.

Kelly


from_name: Austin Hair

body:
Please take this feud somewhere else.  It's off-topic and now becoming
disruptive.

If necessary, I will begin moderating posts from the involved parties
to ensure that this thread does not persist.

Austin


subject: [WikiEN-l] Process is evil

body:
On 8/21/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> > This would almost certianly result in more policy. Small groups appear
> > to like doing that.
>
>
> Not if Kellly or I get anywhere near it. MUWAHAHAHAHA etc.

There are certain people I think are indispensible in such a retreat.
While I don't have to be there, we'd be wrong to do it without Kim
Bruning and David Gerard.  I'd like to have Seth there too.

Kelly


subject: [WikiEN-l] Process is evil

body:
On 21/08/06, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:

> If you write something people, people will *do* it - as long as
> they're the people who came to you looking for instructions. Compare:
> John: How should I clean the kitchen? I've never done it before.
> Mary: Start with the benchtops, then the stove, clean under the
> microwave, the fridge, then do the floors last.
> with:
> Steve: Hey, you want me to clean the kitchen?
> Mary: Sure. Start with the benchtops, then the stove, clean under the
> microwave, the fridge, then do the floors last.
> Steve: Fuck off.
> (I think that example pretty much explains everything)

It does. Is there a "guidelines vs policy" page it can be added to?

(Whatever happened to my project to give the policy/guidelines
collection a much-needed enema this year ...)

- d.


from_name: Aphaia

subject: [Foundation-l] board elections: help wanted

body:
Thank you for showing interests,
Although I directly replied to a certain editor who has been already
involved into the operational side very well, and personally I
convinced all involved parties will be supportive for this editor, I
think it would be nice to show what we/I did and will do last week and
this week.

*Done
- a meeting  (1 hour) with Datrio via google chat on confirmation
(procedure, drafting relevant announcement etc).
- posting that announcement to meta & foundation-l (by me)
- bringing a possible problem on candidacy (by me; no response until now)
- replying Fl Celloguy's questions sent to us three
- trying to multilingualize meta sitenotice (by me; failed)
- copyediting some Japanese translation related to the Election
- found some wikis lacking sitenotice; contact to the local people
through irc and other media and ask them to restore (by me; needed
three days in a sum; I hope local community realises the global
sitenotce is the notice on the global issues from the Foundation,
based on many discussions between several involved parties [this case,
Election officers, Communication committees and some developers], and
even if they don't want, it is unthoughtful to remove it without
reporting to the global community in a proper channel like
foundation-l)
- drafting a note for candidates (by me; thanks mindspillage for her
copyediting)
- send meta mails to unconfirmed candidates (be me; I asked others to
share this work but no response came; then I realized a need to
additional help).

Though I wanted to do something for Election related as one of
Election Officials and of Promotion & Translation Subcommittee, I
found no enough time to deal with those. So it should be done in this
week.

Todo:
- end the confirmation process [till Tuesday]; currently four
candidates had no information from us, if I recall correctly. They
want not to be mailed. Perhaps we put a note to their talk or
otherwise.
- discussion and decision-making of a certain candidate's candidacy [till 8/28]
- checking translation of candidate presentation and coordination, if
necessary. Collaboration with PTsubcom might be considered. [asap, and
till 8/28]
- preparing the translation platform for new boardvote messages [asap,
and translation into major langs will be ideally ended before the
voting, 9/1, or the voters will be misinformed in some points]
- make a complete list of [confirmed] candidates and give it a
developer (perhaps Tim Starling) [8/29]
- update Election FAQ on meta, if possible, translation coordination
of FAQ into several major languages
- checking wikis randomly to know if they have been informed about
this Election properly (some wikis might hold the last year notice
...) [if time available]

I hope these two lists help you to understand what we have done and
will do, and also why I think an additional help is necessary at this
point.

Also, I'd like to stress that I expected the requested helper as not
informal one, but a formal additional staff, since I think the absence
of two "inspectors" has paralysed the decision making process related
to this Election recently, and personally I think it inappropriate
that one remaining, that is,  "additional" officer (in this case, me)
makes a decision unilaterally, in particular some serious issues like
candidacy or voters' eligibility. To make a decision by consensus, I
long for an additional staff whose opinion can be legitimately
reflected to the Election Officials decisions.

I had no time to discuss the above with anyone until now, so don't
know how the idea we have one another Election Official in that moment
will be considered by the Board, other Officers and involved parties,
however I'd like to point out that it would be better for us to have
such before voting starts than after that.

> > > On 8/19/06, Anthere < Anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> > > > Hello,
> > > >
> > > > It seems we have a shortage of help for election officials, at least
> > > for
> > > > august. Could someone give a hand to Aphaia and assist her ?
> > > >
> > > > Thanks
> > > >
> > > > Anthere

--
Kizu Naoko
  Wikiquote: http://wikiquote.org
  * vivemus, mea Lesbia, amemus *


subject: [WikiEN-l] Question on citation policy

body:
On 21/08/06, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:

> If someone makes a practice of going around and {{fact}}ing obvious
> things, then they are due an RFC, and if that fails, I'd hope arbcom
> would be quite willing to censure them.

It has been in the past, thankfully.

- d.


from_name: Jimmy Wales

subject: [WikiEN-l] More about PR firms

body:
I think we need to be very clear in a lot of different places that PR
firms editing Wikipedia is something that we frown upon very very
strongly.  The appearance of impropriety is so great that we should make
it very very strongly clear to these firms that we do not approve of
what they would like to do.

It is all well and good to say, well, it is ok so long as they remain
neutral, but if they really want to write neutral articles, they can do
so, on their own websites, and release the work under the FDL, and
notify Wikipedians who are totally independent.

Additionally, it is always appropriate to interact on the talk pages of
articles.  If a PR firm is not happy about how something is presented
about their client, they can identify themselves openly on the talk
page, and present well-reasoned arguments and additional information and
links.

Of course it is always going to be the case that unethical practitioners
  may get involved in inappropriate behavior, but I think this is no
argument for simply accepting it.  Rather, it is a strong argument for
asking people to do this the right way: transparently and allowing
independent editors to make the actual editing decisions.

--Jimbo


from_name: Paweł Dembowski

body:
GerardM wrote:

> Hoi,
> I do disagree utterly.

> I would be interested to see to what extend Waerth has made this connection.
> I am of the opinion that there should be no link between peopel IRL and
> people in their Wikimedia persona. There are few people where a link with
> their real life persona is justifiable, Jimmy Wales is one. Even Angela asks
> to have her article removed once her tenure as a board member has ended.
> It is not polite to say the least.
> Thanks,
>     GerardM

Still, if someone uses his real name on a public mailing list, I don't
see how using that name in conversation at Wikipedia is a violation of
privacy. If Waerth doesn't want his real name to be public, he
shouldn't post on public mailing lists with his real name in the
"From:" field and in his e-mail address.

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


subject: [WikiEN-l] Process is evil

body:
On 21/08/06, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:

> But there are certainly a lot of policies which do get crufted... but
> suggesting we nuke them ignores one of the primary causes of the
> crufting:  They get crufted because there either isn't anyone with an
> interest in stopping it, or some malfunction in our community is
> allowing the one-rule-per-mistake-made crowd to have editorial control
> of the page.

There are some truly accomplished policy edit warriors.

Of course, they're failing to consider that being right is not enough
- you need to be right and *convincing*.

> Simply nuking the pages from orbit would not solve this....  and it
> would quickly drive the folks who've worked so carefully on our more
> balanced non-crufted policies totally insane as new users decide they
> can (ab)use that policy to rewrite our policies in their own image.

Of course. But there's one hell of a lot of bathwater out there.

- d.


from_name: Steve Bennett

subject:
[WikiEN-l] editorial judgment and process (was Re: Defamation
	policy hypothetical)

body:
On 8/21/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> There are few dissputes over consensus these days because generaly it
> is defined. Or do you want to see what would happen if a buracrat
> passed an admin at 69% or failed them at 81%?

Dammit, it's not a vote. Or if it is, let's call it that. I would be
perfectly happy to see someone with 90% fail it was 9 pokemon newbies
in favour and Jimbo Wales against. Similarly in the reverse case.

It happens that in most cases the result of treating a discussion as a
consensus-finding matter is similar to treating it as a vote - but
that does not mean it's a vote. Sigh.

> Except of course in this case I know what the percentage is and the
> arguments used and in theory at least I am in a position to draw my
> own judgement.

And if you don't like the decision made by the discussion closer,
there should be a mechanism to reopen the discussion. Administrator
discretion zones my arse, if there is genuine dissent with the
outcome, then it should be discussed until an agreement is reached.

Steve


subject: [WikiEN-l] Defamation policy

body:
On 8/21/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> This page was last modified ##:##, ## month ####. All text is
> available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License. (See
> Copyrights for details.)

Heh, yeah. Though come to think of it, I really doubt anyone can
enforce the terms of the GFDL on the originator of the material. If
you reuse someone else's GFDL material then fail to respect the terms,
that would be one thing. But if you create the (entirely original,
underived) material, call it GFDL, then don't carry out the terms
properly, I don't see how you can be held to account - it's your
material, you can do whatever the bloody hell you want with it.

Steve


subject: [WikiEN-l] Question on citation policy

body:
On 8/21/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> I certainly hope there isn't a policy yet. To answer in the general
> case, I would say you should look into your heart and see what your
> editorial judgement says.

How about a guideline?

My heart says to copy the reference as many times as needed. In rare
instances where that means several hundred copies of the reference, a
template or a link might be better.

Steve


subject: [WikiEN-l] Process is evil

body:
On 8/21/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> Yeah. The problem comes when people write what should be editorial
> guidelines as if they are didactic instruction. The only purpose this
> serves is if you want to use it as a stick to beat people down
> afterwards - it makes it completely useless as an actual editorial
> guideline. There was a lot of this during the writing of WP:LIVING and
> it keeps creeping back. Because it's easier to lecture people than
> trust them, or something. The fallacy is the instruction creep
> fallacy, that if you write something down people will do it.

If you write something people, people will *do* it - as long as
they're the people who came to you looking for instructions. Compare:

John: How should I clean the kitchen? I've never done it before.
Mary: Start with the benchtops, then the stove, clean under the
microwave, the fridge, then do the floors last.

with:
Steve: Hey, you want me to clean the kitchen?
Mary: Sure. Start with the benchtops, then the stove, clean under the
microwave, the fridge, then do the floors last.
Steve: Fuck off.

(I think that example pretty much explains everything)

Steve


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [WikiEN-l] Question on citation policy

body:
Matt Brown wrote:

>Sometimes I add {{fact}} to articles and sections that I write - as a
>reminder to myself that I need a better source, or because my source
>is at home or in the library and I can't quite cite accurately without
>having it to hand.
>
>I don't personally see a problem with this - anyone else?
>
It makes perfectly good sense to me.  It's also consistent with the rule
that says we should leave something for others to do.

Ec


from_name: Andrew Dunbar

body:
On 8/21/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 8/21/06, Ligulem <ligulem at pobox.com> wrote:
> > Thanks for the responses. So this is not a technical problem then. I
> > just wonder what's the benefit of having such huge categories...
> >
> > I thought categories were meant as a tool for editors to iterate over
> > the articles contained in them. I can't imagine that a human would ever
> > iterate over a set of 20K pages (at least not without using specialized
> > tools like AWB [1] or bots).
>
> There are several distinct uses of categories:
> a) To allow human readers to browse related articles
> b) To organise articles for future distribution, publishing etc
> c) To assist quality control, such as labelling articles that need cleanup etc
> d) To assow bots to work some kind of magic.

I've been thinking for some weeks or more now that a good feature to improve
the usefulness of large categories would be "Random article in this
category". I would be excellent for maintainence where nobody is going to
iterate through the whole lot but does like to try to keep order etc.

Andrew Dunbar (hippietrail)

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

--
http://linguaphile.sf.net


subject: [WikiEN-l] Process is evil

body:
On 8/21/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> (Whatever happened to my project to give the policy/guidelines
> collection a much-needed enema this year ...)

I think we should schedule 6 monthly enemas. Every policy should be
rewritten from scratch every 6 months, only incorporating the
absolutely most critical and still relevant sections from the
preceding version.

Steve


from_name: effe iets anders

subject: [Foundation-l] Board election notice on the English Wikipedia

body:
I think the watchlist is too minor. Established users don't read the
crap on the watchlist anymore, because they already exactly know
what's in there. So putting a notification on top of that won't help
much, maybe only for the few users that look for the first time on
their watchlist. (And then I don't even mention all the users who have
adapted their watchlist through scripts). So I don't think the
watchlist is an appropriate solution.

Lodewijk

2006/8/21, Oleg Alexandrov <aoleg at math.ucla.edu>:
> The board election is coming up real soon, and it is good that people are
> notified about that. However, I strongly disagree with the election notice
> showing up on all English Wikipedia article pages.
>
> I would believe it would be more appropriate for that notice to show up on
> wathclists only, that way any established editor can see it. I think it is just
> distracting on all article pages.
>
> Comments?
>
> Oleg Alexandrov
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


from_name: Anthony

subject: [WikiEN-l] Defamation policy

body:
On 8/21/06, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> Anthony wrote:
> >On 8/21/06, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >
> >>If the goal is to get stuff out of google, why don't we just nospider
> >>the talk pages? Is there any reason to have them spidered?
> >>
> >>
> >Having talk pages in google has advantages and disadvantages.  The
> >main advantage is that it makes it easier to search for things on talk
> >pages, as Wikipedia's search facilities still kind of suck.
> >
> This sounds llike a damn good reason for fixing the search facilities.
>
Are you volunteering?

If not, I think there are more important things to do first.  If time
and/or money were unlimited, of course...

Anthony


from_name: Gerard Meijssen

body:
Hoi,
There is a difference between what is published on Wikipedia and what is
published on a mailing list. On all projects I am known as GerardM. It
is trivial to find my full name. However, it is not up to anyone to make
this connection on any of the Wiki projects.. Yes, you may deduce that
my first name is probably Gerard.. :)
Thanks,
GerardM

Pawe? Dembowski wrote:
> GerardM wrote:
>
>
>> Hoi,
>> I do disagree utterly.
>>
>
>
>> I would be interested to see to what extend Waerth has made this connection.
>> I am of the opinion that there should be no link between peopel IRL and
>> people in their Wikimedia persona. There are few people where a link with
>> their real life persona is justifiable, Jimmy Wales is one. Even Angela asks
>> to have her article removed once her tenure as a board member has ended.
>> It is not polite to say the least.
>> Thanks,
>>     GerardM
>>
>
> Still, if someone uses his real name on a public mailing list, I don't
> see how using that name in conversation at Wikipedia is a violation of
> privacy. If Waerth doesn't want his real name to be public, he
> shouldn't post on public mailing lists with his real name in the
> "From:" field and in his e-mail address.
>
>


subject: [Wikitech-l] Beyond watchlists and "my contributions"

body:
Hi all,
  A bit of brainstorming here. Our two basic tools to help editors
track changes to articles they have an interest in are the watchlist
and 'my contributions' lists.

Summarised:
Watchlist: Show me every change recently made to any article I've
noted as "interesting", most recent first.
My contributions: Show me every change I've recently made, and tell me
whether anyone has touched it since then, sorted by when I made the
change.

However, what I really want is:
Show me every change made to any article I've worked on recently. Let
me "approve" changes so they don't show up again.

It's kind of half way between: the "my contributions" is primarily
interesting for the presence or absence of "(top)" which means that no
one has touched it - but it doesn't show who changed it, when, or how
often. Watchlist is more detailed, but quickly gets out of control and
you end up seeing changes on articles you haven't touched in months,
but haven't bothered to remove from your list.

I gather that there exists a mechanism for 'approving' changes at the
personal level (I don't want/need anyone else to see which changes
I've approved). If that were combined with a way of sorting the
watchlist in order of the last time I made a change to that article,
this would alost satisfy the need I see (apart from the watchlist
getting out of control...). Is this possible?

To be quite specific, let's imagine there are three articles, A, B and
C, which I've worked on in that order - C most recently. However,
since I've worked on them, editors have made changes to them in the
order B, C, A. Watchlist currently would show them:

A
C
B.

I would like to see them:
C
B
A

Does anyone agree that this would be a more useful and relevant way of
showing changes? Are there further enhancements one could add to
quickly see what's changed since the last time one checked - within
the narrow sphere of one's own interests?

Steve


from_name: Walter van Kalken

body:
>>wikipedia like Ahoerstemeier can attest that waerth co-operates in a
>>fine manner.
>>
>>
>
>Then I assume you have never told Ahoerstemeier that he should not be
>editing pages on Thailand, I assume?
>
>
>
Why should he or you not edit? Neither of you have ever added false
information. Wikix has and Muijz has removed relevant info.

>
>They edit many articles, and the only time that that is considered a
>provocation, is by you when they edit on Thailand. Apparently there is
>not just an issue with them, there is an issue with you as well.
>
>
>
>>And then to be even
>>more provocative use someone's real name which means that someone's real
>>name gets slaundered all over the internet.
>>
>>
>
>Apparently it's okay when you or someone who you like does it, but if
>it's someone you don't like, it's suddenly an act of vandalism that
>should be punished with a block. Maybe he's done it before, and maybe
>you have told him not to do so, I cannot find that, but I can find
>that the connection between your nick and your real name is currently
>7 or 8 times on Wikipedia, with none of them created by Wikix, but
>instead by Tlc, Walter, Steinbach, Flyingbird, yourself (3 times) and
>me in discussion with Verrekijker. None of these seem to have been
>considered provocations by you.
>
>
Well in that case I will have a look and remove the instances. Muijz is
not using my full name but my family name. Which means that after it is
taken up by google these accusations that Muijz makes can be pertained
to any member of my family. Which means that he is slandering them all
and adding them to a personal fight he has with me. If Muijz wants to
attack me with all kinds of insults on wikipedia he can be me guest. By
using my familyname he is insulting my whole family not just me. and
mind you there is 3 people in my family with my firstname. So adding my
first name will not solve that. And with your redenation I can publish
Muijz full name and his history anywhere as he has made a website about
himself and his very particular history. Because it is widely known and
he has told about it on wikipedia on talkpages. Just because he has done
so doesn't give me the right to do this, neither does he have the right
in a discussion between user:Waerth and user:Muijz to all of a sudden
draw my complete family in the conflict.

Waerth


body:
Andre Engels wrote:

>2006/8/21, Walter van Kalken <walter at vankalken.net>:
>
>
>
>>I am still waiting for the bloody arbcom which was promised over a year
>>ago on nl: but still gets frustrated.
>>
>>
>
>Now, there I agree, but it seems that the Dutch Wikipedia is very good
>at fight and namecalling, and very bad at actually making a decision.
>I have stopped bringing this up, because it's probably not going to
>work anyway. I'm afraid that if I bring it up now, there's a lot of
>discussion on whether to do it and how it should look, then when I
>wait till it has died out and make a proposal, everyone will complain
>that they have not had a chance to get their say on how it will look.
>At best.
>
>
>
We agree on one thing.

Waerth


from_name: geni

body:
On 8/21/06, effe iets anders <effeietsanders at gmail.com> wrote:
> I think the watchlist is too minor. Established users don't read the
> crap on the watchlist anymore, because they already exactly know
> what's in there. So putting a notification on top of that won't help
> much, maybe only for the few users that look for the first time on
> their watchlist.

So how come when I put the notice up for the arcom election (from
16:08, 6 January 2006 to 00:00, 8 January 2006) we got a load of extra
candidates?

--
geni


body:
On 8/21/06, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 8/21/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> > There are few dissputes over consensus these days because generaly it
> > is defined. Or do you want to see what would happen if a buracrat
> > passed an admin at 69% or failed them at 81%?
>
> Dammit, it's not a vote. Or if it is, let's call it that. I would be
> perfectly happy to see someone with 90% fail it was 9 pokemon newbies
> in favour and Jimbo Wales against. Similarly in the reverse case.
>

Doesn't seem to happen on WP:RFA so nothinbg something we need concern
ourselves with in this case

> And if you don't like the decision made by the discussion closer,
> there should be a mechanism to reopen the discussion. Administrator
> discretion zones my arse, if there is genuine dissent with the
> outcome, then it should be discussed until an agreement is reached.
>
> Steve

First I'm being told that long running debate is a bad idea and now
I'm being told we should keep reopening discussions. It would appear
there is a lack of consensus on this issue (which is just the way I
like it but no matter).

--
geni


subject: [WikiEN-l] Process is evil

body:
On 8/21/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> It does. Is there a "guidelines vs policy" page it can be added to?
>

Policy something you should think very hard before not following.
Guidelines are something to be ignored if they get between you and
your objective. Any questions?

--
geni


from_name: Erik Moeller

body:
On 8/21/06, Oleg Alexandrov <aoleg at math.ucla.edu> wrote:
> As such, watchlists are much more appropriate medium if you want only editors
> to see a message, rather than putting that message on all article pages.

MediaWiki:Sitenotice is only shown to logged in users, as opposed to
MediaWiki:Anonnotice. It is the correct place; however, it would be
desirable for such notices to be easily dismissable, so that users
will only see them once.
--
Peace & Love,
Erik


from_name: Jon Harald Søby

body:
What effeitsanders means is that no-one reads the intro text.
Everybody knows what it says, and don't need to read it every time
they view the page.

On 8/21/06, Oleg Alexandrov <aoleg at math.ucla.edu> wrote:
> I beg your pardon, "Established users don't read the crap on watchlists
> anymore"?  Perhaps a few editors ignore their watchlist, but unless you don't
> want to be kept updated with changes to articles, or unless you are technically
> proficient enough to use an alternative to watchlists for tracking changes (few
> do that), the watchlist is still the way things are done.
>
> As such, watchlists are much more appropriate medium if you want only editors
> to see a message, rather than putting that message on all article pages.
>
> Oleg
>
>
> On Mon, Aug 21, 2006 at 05:43:02PM +0200,  effe iets anders  wrote:
>
> > I think the watchlist is too minor. Established users don't read the
> > crap on the watchlist anymore, because they already exactly know
> > what's in there. So putting a notification on top of that won't help
> > much, maybe only for the few users that look for the first time on
> > their watchlist. (And then I don't even mention all the users who have
> > adapted their watchlist through scripts). So I don't think the
> > watchlist is an appropriate solution.
> >
> > Lodewijk
> >
> > 2006/8/21, Oleg Alexandrov <aoleg at math.ucla.edu>:
> > > The board election is coming up real soon, and it is good that people are
> > > notified about that. However, I strongly disagree with the election notice
> > > showing up on all English Wikipedia article pages.
> > >
> > > I would believe it would be more appropriate for that notice to show up on
> > > wathclists only, that way any established editor can see it. I think it is just
> > > distracting on all article pages.
> > >
> > > Comments?
> > >
> > > Oleg Alexandrov
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>

--
Best regards,
Jon Harald S?by

Website - http://www.alqualonde.com/
Wikipedia - http://no.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruker:Jhs
MSN messenger - jhsoby at gmail.com
Skype - jon.harald.soby


body:
On 8/21/06, Jay R. Ashworth <jra at baylink.com> wrote:
> You're right, but I rather suspect the answer you're going to get from
> people who've been here longer than me is "yes, but that might
> encourage people to feel like they 'own' articles, and we want to avoid
> that".

People behave like that already. Let them behave like that
efficiently. Fwiw, I'm generally talking about monitoring a large
number of pages with very few changes (1 a week or less), which are
quite susceptible to spam and nonsense.

Steve


subject: [WikiEN-l] Process is evil

body:
On 8/21/06, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 8/21/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Policy something you should think very hard before not following.
> > Guidelines are something to be ignored if they get between you and
> > your objective. Any questions?
>
> '''and your objective'''.
>
> Hmm.

Improveing the quality of wikipedia.

--
geni


from_name: saikrishna

subject: [Foundation-l] Re : WikiDump help

body:
Hai,
 	This a sample document from wikipedia dump.

- <page>
 	 <title>AlgeriA</title>
 	 <id>5</id>
 	 <revision>
 		 <id>18063769</id>
 		 <timestamp>2005-07-03T11:13:13Z</timestamp>
 		 <contributor>
 			 <username>Docu</username>
 			 <id>8029</id>
 		 </contributor>
 		 <minor />
 		 <comment>adding cur_id=5: {{R from CamelCase}}</comment>
 		 <text xml:space="preserve">#REDIRECT [[Algeria]]{{R from CamelCase}}</text>
 	 </revision>
   </page>

 	I am not able understand two things

 	1. What does "revision" tags exactly mean ?
 	2. #REDIRECT [[Algeria]] ---> redirects to document with title Algeria.
 	   Then what does "{{R from CamelCase}}" refer to.

regards,
Saikrishna.

--
Remember Things can be difficult but not impossible


subject: [Foundation-l] Re : WikiDump help


from_name: Peter Ansell

body:
On 21/08/06, Stephen Bain <stephen.bain at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 8/21/06, Peter Ansell <ansell.peter at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > Of course in theory it works perfectly like that. However, if a "fact"
> > was included in a version a year ago how easy is it to figure out who
> > put it in to go and ask them for verification? There is no automatic
> > mechanism for "blaming" any one user for any word in an article, which
> > means it is a possible, but totally manual process.
>
> Unless you have the IBM History Flow app. It's downloadable from IBM:
> http://www.alphaworks.ibm.com/tech/historyflow
>
> You can import data from a database dump, if you have access to one,
> or the program will get the data from the wiki itself. The last I
> heard, Special:Export was limited to showing 100 revisions, but this
> seems to have changed now.
>

Sounds interesting. I should look into that.

Peter Ansell


body:
On 21/08/06, MacGyverMagic/Mgm <macgyvermagic at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 8/21/06, Peter Ansell <ansell.peter at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > Coming from a non-chalant user point of view though, they do not
> > realise that they can track back through the history of the page to
> > verify things themselves. The quality control you speak of is not
> > perfect, the author of the article was not attempting to say there was
> > no control, just that the control is susceptible to failure due to its
> > passive nature.
>
>
> I seem to remember this person literally writing there was no quality
> control.

They did say that, however, I read it at least at first as the author
pointing out the fact that the software allows anything, regardless of
quality. The only quality control in Wikipedia is the community that
keeps a track of fellow editors contributions.

I still think you were a bit too extreme in your comments. The
majority of the article was quite well done IMO.

Peter Ansell


subject: [Wikitech-l] How bad is a category with 21, 008 pages for

body:
On 8/21/06, Aerik Sylvan <aerik at thesylvans.com> wrote:
> I *still* think categories as tags is one of the most promising applications
> of a wiki, as opposed to hierarchical categories like dmoz.  We currently
> seem to be doing some of both (the administrative categories are essentially
> tags, while many other categories, ie "Norwegian
> composers<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Norwegian_composers>"
> which is several levels down from the high level musicians category, etc.)
> and that's really pretty cool.
>
> I think we should *embrace* doing both types of categories, because we can
> in the wiki structure, it's not an mutually exclusive way of doing things.
> We can make everybody (sort of) happy.  The hurdle then becomes writing code
> efficient enough to sift through all the records to find what you want.

We had a great discussion about all of this several months ago. Still
not sure what to make of it all ;) However, it seems that there are
several different fundamental types of categories (primarily, strict
hierarchies, and thematic hierarchies), and some good rules on how to
combine them (strict hierarchies can descend from thematic
hierarchies, but never the other way). It would theoretically be
possible and maybe desirable to make the granddaddy of all categories
a basic metacategory like "administrative tag" or "taxonomic category"
or whatever.

I had a dream that all pages could be categorised along at least one
strict taxonomic category structure without resorting to copouts like
"... terminology", but I found some tricky pages. Like the rock
climbing term "enchainement" which refers to climbing several
mountains without a break in the middle. I can't think of any
plausible category except the artificial "rock climbing feats". And a
couple of other things which really describe particular aspects of
various fields that are so unique to the field I just can't think of a
category.

I do need to look more at semanticwiki and category math and stuff,
though. And to be optimistic that it can and will be integrated into
Wikipedia when it's ready.

Steve


subject: [WikiEN-l] Process is evil

body:
On 8/21/06, Matt Brown <morven at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 8/21/06, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 8/21/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > Policy something you should think very hard before not following.
> > > Guidelines are something to be ignored if they get between you and
> > > your objective. Any questions?
> >
> > '''and your objective'''.
>
> I don't like that phrasing.  "And the project's objective", maybe.
> Otherwise if your objective is to disrupt, or to POV-push, or to ...
>
> -Matt

Err in that case the cynical side of me would rather you ignored our
guidelines since it would make it less work to neutralise you.

--
geni


references:
<ec7kjb$lb4$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<d44ae6a20608191259u67702800y76fa62346a659e6a@mail.gmail.com>
	<ecbs6r$aqk$1@sea.gmane.org>

body:
Jon is a good recommendation, I think, but if you would not mind, I
would like to have another guy, James Forrester as help, just because
I have nodded him before I noticed this discussion, when he had
offered me a help as well Jon, but privately.

Again, thank you for your all attention, you guys who offered helps
a/o considered, and don't forget to vote on September 1 ;)

Just sliding topic:
I have recently gotten some private contacts from editors who would be
running for this Election or has been considering ... Fine, generally
I think so, and encouraged them. However, now I would like you all who
have that idea to be aware of that; your candidacy and confirmation
prosess will begin when you put your presentation on meta, not just
the moment you informed your possible running to a certain Election
Official or even all ot us. So, I say to those possible candidates:
don't forget to appear in public till August 28!

On 8/21/06, Anthere <Anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Aphaia,
>
> If that is fine with you, I am happy with Jon becoming an official hand
> to help with elections.
>
> Anthere
>
> Jon Harald S?by wrote:
> > On 8/19/06, Anthere <Anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> >
> >>Hello,
> >>
> >>It seems we have a shortage of help for election officials, at least for
> >>august. Could someone give a hand to Aphaia and assist her ?
> >>
> >>Thanks
> >>
> >>Anthere
> >>
> >>_______________________________________________
> >>foundation-l mailing list
> >>foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> >>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
> >>
> >
> >
> > If there's anything I could do, I'd be happy to help. =)
> >
> > Best regards,
> > Jon Harald S?by
> >
> > Website - http://www.alqualonde.com/
> > Wikipedia - http://no.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruker:Jhs
> > MSN messenger - jhsoby at gmail.com
> > Skype - jon.harald.soby
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>

--
Kizu Naoko
  Wikiquote: http://wikiquote.org
  * vivemus, mea Lesbia, amemus *


from_name: Tels

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

Moin,

On Monday 21 August 2006 18:49, Aerik Sylvan wrote:
> Some of the issues around the structure of categories have been both
> contentious and promising for a long time, 2 years or better...  (see
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Category_math_feature, and many
> links to category intersections / category math on meta)
>
> I *still* think categories as tags is one of the most promising
> applications of a wiki, as opposed to hierarchical categories like dmoz.
> We currently seem to be doing some of both (the administrative categories
> are essentially tags,

I wonder why for these purposes templates aren't used. You can then retrieve
all pages that have the "tag" via WhatLinksHere.

Maybe I didn't get the memo, but on wikis I contributed to that was done
this way instead of using categories :)

All the best,

Tels
- --
 Signed on Mon Aug 21 19:59:53 2006 with key 0x93B84C15.
 Visit my photo gallery at http://bloodgate.com/photos/
 PGP key on http://bloodgate.com/tels.asc or per email.

 "MY CAUSE IS JUST... MY WILL IS STRONG... AND MY GUN IS VERY VERY
 LARGE!" - The Doom Guy

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from_name: Walter Vermeir

body:
Oleg Alexandrov schreef:
> The board election is coming up real soon, and it is good that people are
> notified about that. However, I strongly disagree with the election notice
> showing up on all English Wikipedia article pages.
>
> I would believe it would be more appropriate for that notice to show up on
> wathclists only, that way any established editor can see it. I think it is just
> distracting on all article pages.
>
> Comments?
>
> Oleg Alexandrov

This is not really about EN Wikipedia but in general;

I find there no need to keep the site notice running at this time
anymore. It can come back for a few days when the voting starts.

Now the message is about a call for candidates. If a potential candidate
  now at this time needs that site notice to come up with the idea to
present themselves for the board I do need think he/she make any change.

And when the vote is open, and that I my personal POV, that should be be
 announced naturaly but not to strongly and not with a site notice to
ask to vote during the complete period. Only an notice when it starts
and when I is almost closing is enough.

--
Contact: walter AT wikizine DOT org
Wikizine.org - news for and about the Wikimedia community


body:
Erik van den Muijzenberg wrote:

>"It is a normal problem with me. The heart takes over from the brain
>and the damage is done. -Waerth / Walter van Kalken" (1)
>"Hello my name is Walter van Kalken also known as waerth." (2)
>
>
>Apparently Walter van Kalken/Waerth is referring to me. He didn't
>contact me though, although he claims he did; he just pasted a
>vandalism-warning on my discussion-page, without substantiating his
>
>
Nope, see the village pump, where I also requested it earlier on
numerous occasions I have editted my real name out of commentary made by
you.

>accusations.
>
>Waerth is bullying and insulting Dutch users for some years now,
>
Could you please come with proof of this? From the other Dutch users I
am allegedly bullying?

> and
>I am one of the few users there who still dare to criticize his
>somewhat sociopathic behaviour.
>
And I am being accused of personal attacks? I take a big offence to this
statement.

>At first I considered Waerth as a
>friend though. In real life I even gave Walter van Kalken a tour in
>Amsterdam when he was visiting Holland a few years ago and I got the
>impression we both liked that very much.
>
>
I did yes, I never denied that. Why do you repeat this everytime we have
a discussion? I never said I didn't like that tour.

>But since I defended another Dutch user against heavy attacks by
>Waerth, I am bullied and insulted by Waerth as well. Waerth even went
>as far as to disclose on the Dutch wikipedia private information
>about me some months ago.
>
>
You mean me congratulating you with your birthday after other
nl.wikipedia users congratulated you? Which you childishly removed
because you didn't want to be congratulated by me specifically?

>It comes as no surprise to me that he doesn't mention his own
>violations of the privacy of other users, but poses as the victim now.
>
>
As like other users who have either withdrawn from nl.wikipedia
completely (GerardM) due to problems with you as with Ellywa who left
for a half year. Not to forget the vengefull articles you wrote about
other people in Amsterdam including a Dutch writer who all came
complaining on nl.wikipedia. Nobody really interfered because everyone
on nl.wikipedia is bullied so much by you that no-one dares complaining.

>Concerning his recent accusations: it is simply not true that I am
>*constantly* referring to him by using his real name. I am not gonna
>prove that though, because I don't have to prove my innocence -
>Walter van Kalken/Waerth is to prove that his accusations are correct.
>And he better do that quickly, or withdraw his accusations quickly
>and stop accusing me, because I am fed up with it.
>
>
I am also fed up with your constant stalking of me around the wiki I
have been complaining about it for years. And it is a habit you have as
someone else complained about it on a talkpage on the Dutch wiki.

>However, it is correct that I used his real name yesterday. Another
>user asked me if I could end the ongoing problems, by having a beer
>with Waerth. As drinking a beer takes place in the physical world, I
>referred in my answer to the human being 'Walter van Kalken', because
>to me 'Waerth' is only a persona in the virtual world.
>
>
You never Mentioned Walter van Kalken, you said mr. van Kalken which
could have been anyone of over a hundred male subjects in the world.
again you have a quarrel with me. Waerth. You even asked me to change my
username as you didn't want to speak with Waerth again. Which is another
one of your personal demands. We had someone who wanted to negotiate
between us. I accepted, you refused! You refused to reach a solution! So
who is being a hardhead here?

>The Dutch Wikipedia has an article 'Walter van Kalken' - see: http://
>nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_van_Kalken
>It's Google-NL's first hit for "walter van kalken waerth". Apart from
>that, Google-NL has at least 500 other hits for this combination.
>Tthe fact that 'Waerth' is the nickname of 'Walter van Kalken' is
>hardly private information anymore.
>
>
IIt doesn't matter it is Waerth who is discussing with you on the wiki,
so you have to refer to that name. If I had wanted to be known under my
real name and would have wanted to be spoken to under my real name I
would have registered under my real name. It is my right.

>Walter van Kalken/Waerth even violated his own privacy, by using
>'waerth' as his handle on at least one wiki-mailinglist that is
>indexed by Google.
>
All Wikimedia mailinglists are indexed by google, which I feel is a bad
thing, but a fait accompli already.

But no problem Muijz as I have mentioned earlier I have already
registered my own websites and after I have found someone to help me
with the mediawiki installation I am gone. I have no time for people
like you in my life.

Waerth


from_name: Delirium

subject: [WikiEN-l] Defamation policy

body:
Anthony wrote:
>> And how precisely do you propose to simultaneously take care of both of
>> these things?  Wikipedia is not in a position to determine truth, only
>> to report on what others have said.  It's possible that some parts of
>> physics may be incorrect, and you may be absolutely sure of it, but
>> Wikipedia isn't the place to publish that research.  I don't think it's
>> the place to publish novel historical, biographical, mathematical, or
>> any other research either, regardless of how sure you are that you have
>> "the truth" that every published source is missing.
>>
>>
> I think I'm capable of determining the difference between a
> complicated new physics theory that I've just come up with, and which
> hasn't been peer reviewed, and a blatant falsity propagated by a
> misquote or other misinformation in a newspaper which can be trivially
> misproven by the subject of the article.  At the very least I think an
> encyclopedia article should note the fact that the subject disputes
> the claim.  Perhaps I could interview the person and stick the
> interview in Wikinews, would that qualify as a published source
> outside of Wikipedia?  Alternatively, the claim shouldn't be there in
> the first place.  If neither of those two are legitimate under the
> rules, then I'd say it's time to break the rules.
>
I don't recall having said anything about a "complicated" theory.  Even
if your change to physics is simple, and you think it's blatantly
obvious that it's true, Wikipedia isn't the place to publish it.

I do think people are reliable sources for their own views, but editors
personally interviewing them is problematic because it's not well
documented.  A Wikinews article or a reference to their own personal
website or something like that would be fine with me, though.

-Mark


list: commons-l

from_name: Florian Straub

subject: [Commons-l] Rethinking [[COM:DEL]]

body:
From: "Platonides" <Platonides at gmail.com> wrote on Sunday, August 20, 2006
8:24 PM:

> "Florian Straub" wrote:
> On Thu, 17 Aug 2006 15:47:33 +1000  "Brianna Laugher" wrote:
>>> Do you mean *not* keeping the discussion?
>>No, i didn't. I meant keeping them at the talk page.
>
>>> Keeping orphan talk pages around would be weird. I don't really like
>>> that
>>> idea.
>>They wouldn't be orphans, since there used withing the daily pages ;)
>
> Easy. Make discussion on the image talk: and if deleted, move to
> COM:DEL/deleted/Image

Nice idea!

> *A template would probably be needed to header the image talk (if you're
> not brwosing from COM:DEL)
> *How to open a deletion  request when the image talk: is already used?
> Probably <noinclude>ing the other content, but it's not too friendly

Maybe you could combine the template and the noinclude-tags to one and enter
the rest of the discussion page withing the }} brackets.

Best regards,

Flo


subject: [WikiEN-l] Defamation policy

body:
Steve Bennett wrote:
> On 8/21/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> This page was last modified ##:##, ## month ####. All text is
>> available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License. (See
>> Copyrights for details.)
>>
>
> Heh, yeah. Though come to think of it, I really doubt anyone can
> enforce the terms of the GFDL on the originator of the material. If
> you reuse someone else's GFDL material then fail to respect the terms,
> that would be one thing. But if you create the (entirely original,
> underived) material, call it GFDL, then don't carry out the terms
> properly, I don't see how you can be held to account - it's your
> material, you can do whatever the bloody hell you want with it.
>

The originator (and copyright holder) here is the Wikipedian who posted
the comment, though, not the Wikimedia Foundation, so the Wikimedia
Foundation does still need to respect the GFDL, since that's the license
under which it has permission to use the material.

-Mark


from_name: wallace mcgee

subject: [Foundation-l] Wikiworld

body:
Hi guys.. Im all for wikis although I have not contributed to any (yet) but
find them wonderful resources.

I have made a text-based virtual world which is multi-user, browser based
and someone commeted that since anyone can login and create and contribute
its like a "wikiWorld"

Admitidly all written in perl using MySQL with a whole bunch of javascript
(ajax) forthose who want it, could it be included in the wiki stable?

I call it Creative Object World (cow) and you can login here:
http://creativeobjectworld.com

--
  ___
/\___\ Creative Object World (cow)
\/___/ http://creativeobjectworld.com
"What is the world coming to!"


subject: [Foundation-l] Wikiworld


from_name: Fredrik Johansson

body:
On 8/21/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
> Does anyone agree that this would be a more useful and relevant way of
> showing changes?

Yes. I've had the same idea for a long time.

Fredrik


body:
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Hash: SHA1

Moin,

On Monday 21 August 2006 20:03, Simetrical wrote:
> On 8/21/06, Tels <nospam-abuse at bloodgate.com> wrote:
> > I wonder why for these purposes templates aren't used. You can then
> > retrieve all pages that have the "tag" via WhatLinksHere.
> >
> > Maybe I didn't get the memo, but on wikis I contributed to that was
> > done this way instead of using categories :)
>
> Templates aren't really designed for that the way categories are.  The
> syntax is less clear (the function of "{{foo}}" is less obvious than
> that of [[Category:Foo]], because of the keyword "category"), the
> "what links here" page is sorted quite randomly to most people's eyes
> (by date added, not alphabetic order), there aren't category links on
> the bottom of the page, fewer entries are displayed per page by
> default, you can't easily browse to a supercategory (which might in
> some cases by handy even for simple "tags"), and you can't split up
> large categories into subcategories.

Sensible points.

> Why would you *want* to use templates instead of categories?

Because you can have a large, red block "THIS PAGES NEEDS CLEANUP!"
screaming a the viewer :)

Mainly because I used templates before and for a small wiki it doesnt matter
much. For Wikipedia, well, a category might make more sense as you pointed
out. I was just asking.

Best wishes,

Tels

- --
 Signed on Mon Aug 21 21:02:19 2006 with key 0x93B84C15.
 Visit my photo gallery at http://bloodgate.com/photos/
 PGP key on http://bloodgate.com/tels.asc or per email.

 "The campaign should combat the messages of pornography by putting signs
 on buses saying sex with children is not OK." -- Mary Anne Layden in
 ttp://tinyurl.com/6a9cy

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from_name: Robert Jones

subject: [Wikitech-l] Sanitizer.php

body:
In my wiki installation, I have edited the sanitizer to allow use of
as much HTML as possible, but there are some tags I cannot add
successfully due to strange characters.

adding '!DOCTYPE' returns <!DOCTYPE as it would do if the tag was
not allowed.

the attribute 'http-equiv' gets removed, presumably because of the dash.

Do these characters need to be escaped or written in a different way?
I've tried various methods without success. Hope you can help.

Regards,

Bob Jones


from_name: Jay R. Ashworth

subject: [Wikitech-l] Java applets for Wikiversity

body:
On Mon, Aug 21, 2006 at 10:18:52PM +0100, Rob Church wrote:
> Discuss, don't bitch about "zomg use JavaScript" instead; that's as
> bad as all the half-assed shouting about rewriting MediaWiki in
> brainfuck.

Ok, Rob, you're now responsible for replacing the keyboard on my laptop.

> You did illustrate a reasonable objection to the problem, but it was
> surrounded in a load of incoherent gibberish ranting.

Actually, he didn't.

Because the problem is *not* "shouldn't some things which are now
written in Java be written in JS, etc, instead?", it's "There are
indisputably useful things which can *only* be written in Java for the
deployment environment being discussed", and he didn't solve that worth
a damn, alas.

Cheers,
-- jra
--
Jay R. Ashworth                                                jra at baylink.com
Designer                          Baylink                             RFC 2100
Ashworth & Associates        The Things I Think                        '87 e24
St Petersburg FL USA      http://baylink.pitas.com             +1 727 647 1274

	The Internet: We paved paradise, and put up a snarking lot.


from_name: Rob Church

body:
On 21/08/06, Platonides <Platonides at gmail.com> wrote:
> A projectile movement doesn't need Java. It can be done with JavaScript (and
> DHTML). Of course you will need a special script. Maybe some addition for
> custom JavaScript per-page? It would be nice. However Java may needed for
> more complex actions.

It was an example of one such use case. Sidestepping the bigger issue
with a trivial implementation detail like this isn't helpful.

Rob Church


from_name: Tim Starling

body:
Rob Church wrote:
> On 21/08/06, Andrew Dunbar <hippytrail at gmail.com> wrote:
>> I've been thinking for some weeks or more now that a good feature to improve
>> the usefulness of large categories would be "Random article in this
>> category". I would be excellent for maintainence where nobody is going to
>> iterate through the whole lot but does like to try to keep order etc.
>
> Someone tell me why the bollocking hell I never implemented that? I'm
> pretty sure I set out to do so at least once in the past.

Because it would require a DB query with an execution time proportional to
the number of articles in the category? Having categories with lots of
members is fine, as long as we don't try to traverse them all the time.

The efficient way to do it would be to enumerate the category members,
saving the results to a table for later lookup. The entries in this special
table could have an expiry time. Is that how you were planning on doing it?

-- Tim Starling


from_name: Tjipke de Vries

body:
"Walter van Kalken" <walter at vankalken.net> wrote:

> I am using my wiki alternate name for a reason. I feel that this user is
> violating my privacy by constantly using my real name instead of the
> name under which I edit. Is this a violation of our wiki privacy policy?
>
> Waerth

If you don't want to link your online name to your real name, you could also
concider the following steps:

1. Do not send e-mails with your real name in the "from" field while signing
with your online name.
2. Do not edit the article on nl.wikipedia about your real identity. You
even might concider putting that article up for deletion.

Best regards,

Tjipke de Vries


subject: [Wikitech-l] Date fields in DB

body:
Domas Mituzas wrote:
> Hi,
>
>> This is documented in maintenance/tables.sql - check the comments at
>> the top, it has something about timestamp fields.
>
> Generally someone ages ago didn't like that TIMESTAMPs are auto-
> updated in MySQL and chose CHAR(14) instead of DATETIME.

I have heard that the culprit was Lee and that the problem was some kind of
unspecified data import problem.

> It would be pretty good idea to switch some day to datetime, and we
> have nearly all code in there. The sole problem is tables with tens
> of millions of rows to change.
> But that is doable, I suppose.
>
> And in case anyone needs a cast, one can do that with say... ourfield
> +interval 0 second ;-)

I've never really felt the need to change it, personally. It's not like
changing it would enable any extra features or anything. You can convert
between the representations easily enough, in either PHP or SQL.

-- Tim Starling


from_name: Akash Mehta

body:
I'm not too sure if its a violation of Dutsh wikipedia policy, as I'm
not familiar with their policies. However, I can guarantee you it is a
violation of English Wikipedia policy,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:ANON, and I don't see why it should be
permitted on the Dutch wikipedia. I suggest you contact a sysop and
have them kindly inform the user, possibly run through their edits and
remove your name then have a steward oversight the revisions. Hope
this helps.

Draicone / Akash

On 8/21/06, Walter van Kalken <walter at vankalken.net> wrote:
> On the Dutch wikipedia there is a user who is constantly using my real
> name in discussions instead of my wikiname. Although my real name is
> widely known, I do not wish that it is used on the wiki in discussions.
> One of the reasons is Google's indexing the other reason is my real name
> is known only by people who have been on the wiki for a long time.
>
> I am using my wiki alternate name for a reason. I feel that this user is
> violating my privacy by constantly using my real name instead of the
> name under which I edit. Is this a violation of our wiki privacy policy?
>
> Waerth
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


from_name: David Gerard

subject: [WikiEN-l] More about PR firms

body:
On 21/08/06, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:

> I think we need to be very clear in a lot of different places that PR
> firms editing Wikipedia is something that we frown upon very very
> strongly.  The appearance of impropriety is so great that we should make
> it very very strongly clear to these firms that we do not approve of
> what they would like to do.

Would this or something like it make a decent press release?

- d.


from_name: Andrew Gray

subject: [WikiEN-l] Using social networking sites as sources

body:
This may be of interest to some people, given our occasional habit of
fleshing out articles by raiding the personal sites of subjects:

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2003211808_fancher20.html

It's a brief report of a discussion at the Seattle Times about the
reliability and ethical appropriateness of using (say) the Myspace
page of a murder victim in reporting on them. Not much content, but
it's good to see people are asking themselves these questions.

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


from_name: geni

subject: [WikiEN-l] Process is evil

body:
On 8/21/06, Kelly Martin <kelly.lynn.martin at gmail.com> wrote:
> I support the idea of a "policy retreat" where we get 15-20 of
> Wikipedia's leading community members together around a table
> somewhere and sort out the major issues that are bothering us at the
> moment.  Launder, rinse, repeat.
>
> Kelly

This would almost certianly result in more policy. Small groups appear
to like doing that.

--
geni


subject: [WikiEN-l] Process is evil

body:
On 21/08/06, Kelly Martin <kelly.lynn.martin at gmail.com> wrote:

> I support the idea of a "policy retreat" where we get 15-20 of
> Wikipedia's leading community members together around a table
> somewhere and sort out the major issues that are bothering us at the
> moment.  Launder, rinse, repeat.

ZOMG CABAL!!! I think we already have this; it's clear the community,
or the noisiest portions thereof, can be batshit insane educated
two-cornered stupid. Considering you got RFCed by morons over blatant
copyright violations tagged "fair use" in userboxes ...

- d.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Process is evil

body:
On 21/08/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 8/21/06, Kelly Martin <kelly.lynn.martin at gmail.com> wrote:

> > I support the idea of a "policy retreat" where we get 15-20 of
> > Wikipedia's leading community members together around a table
> > somewhere and sort out the major issues that are bothering us at the
> > moment.  Launder, rinse, repeat.

> This would almost certianly result in more policy. Small groups appear
> to like doing that.

Not if Kellly or I get anywhere near it. MUWAHAHAHAHA etc.

- d.


subject: [WikiEN-l] More about PR firms

body:
On 8/21/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> Would this or something like it make a decent press release?

Please no. Plastering Wikipedia with more rules isn't going to help
much. Instead trying to persuade whoever the top PR gurus are that
having PR companies is a bad idea has a slightly greater chance of
working.
--
geni


subject: [WikiEN-l] Process is evil

body:
On 21/08/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 21/08/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 8/21/06, Kelly Martin <kelly.lynn.martin at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > > I support the idea of a "policy retreat" where we get 15-20 of
> > > Wikipedia's leading community members together around a table
> > > somewhere and sort out the major issues that are bothering us at the
> > > moment.  Launder, rinse, repeat.
>
> > This would almost certianly result in more policy. Small groups appear
> > to like doing that.
>
> Not if Kellly or I get anywhere near it. MUWAHAHAHAHA etc.

"Policy-forming retreat" is not code for "lock a dozen policy wonks in
cabin and set on fire", David.

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


from_name: Alphax (Wikipedia email)

subject: [Commons-l] Upload large files

body:
Magnus Manske wrote:
> I've found some nice classical ogg files online (CC-BY-SA-2.0).
> However, some are larger than 20 MB. Uploading those leads me back to
> a blank upload page, without comment or error. 20MB seems to be a
> magical limt for PHP.
>
> Is there a way to bypass that limit? I'd hate to have to cut
> perfectly good ogg files.
>

According to my PHP manual, Chapter 38 (Handling file uploads):

> Related Configurations Note: See also the file_uploads, upload_max_filesize,
> upload_tmp_dir, post_max_size and max_input_time directives in php.ini

where

> upload_max_filesize integer
>
> The maximum size of an uploaded file.
>
> When an integer is used, the value is measured in bytes. You may also
> use shorthand notation as described in this FAQ.

and the FAQ says

> 16.  A few PHP directives may also take on shorthand byte values, as
> opposed to only integer byte values. What are all the available
> shorthand byte options? And can I use these outside of php.ini?
>
> The available options are K (for Kilobytes), M (for Megabytes) and G
> (for Gigabytes; available since PHP 5.1.0), these are case
> insensitive. Anything else assumes bytes. 1M equals one Megabyte or
> 1048576 bytes. 1K equals one Kilobyte or 1024 bytes. You may not use
> these shorthand notations outside of php.ini, instead use an integer
> value of bytes. See the ini_get() documentation for an example on how
> to convert these values.

Now, unless there's a hard limit of 20MB that's not documented in the
manual...

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

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subject: [WikiEN-l] Process is evil

body:
On 21/08/06, Andrew Gray <shimgray at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 21/08/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 21/08/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > On 8/21/06, Kelly Martin <kelly.lynn.martin at gmail.com> wrote:

> > > > I support the idea of a "policy retreat" where we get 15-20 of
> > > > Wikipedia's leading community members together around a table
> > > > somewhere and sort out the major issues that are bothering us at the
> > > > moment.  Launder, rinse, repeat.

> > > This would almost certianly result in more policy. Small groups appear
> > > to like doing that.

> > Not if Kellly or I get anywhere near it. MUWAHAHAHAHA etc.

> "Policy-forming retreat" is not code for "lock a dozen policy wonks in
> cabin and set on fire", David.

Next you'll want me to be a responsible company director or something.

- d.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Process is evil

body:
On 8/21/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> Not if Kellly or I get anywhere near it. MUWAHAHAHAHA etc.

You are both part of the communications committee which appears to be
creating more rules.

--
geni


subject: [WikiEN-l] Process is evil

body:
On 21/08/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 8/21/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:

> > Not if Kellly or I get anywhere near it. MUWAHAHAHAHA etc.

> You are both part of the communications committee which appears to be
> creating more rules.

Yes and whuh?? in that order. Mind you, I never show up to meetings.

- d.


references:
<44E89CFC.6040303@earthlink.net> <ecd4nh$uru$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<e92136380608211325p156fe53au94996c3f6b727e74@mail.gmail.com>
	<ecd7hj$9je$1@sea.gmane.org>

body:
On 21/08/06, Platonides <Platonides at gmail.com> wrote:
> Not so trivial. People underestimate JS power. Many of this applets could be
> probably done in javascript. I have seen plenty of webs using java or flash
> for a damned background-changing button link! Why should i use such de-facto
> standard?? Why should i have it installed? I use a WEB browser, expecting
> html. ''Happily'' some people are so kind of including the 'skip intro' link
> _into_ the object (making it unusable if you see no object).
> Now, i have no problem on using Java for issues where 'a program' is needed,
> like webchats or maths simulations. This proposed use seems acceptable. What

[snip snip to get to the quote I want]

Oh dear lord, ask for a web zealot and get one. It's like the buses.

Anyway, the whole point of the thread was for a user to ask us about something.

"We would like to use Java applets, etc. where appropriate in
Wikiversity, because we think that practical examples will help
illustrate some of the concepts we're describing."

"Would it be possible for us to think about means of integrating such
content into the wikis and enabling this on Wikimedia projects?"

Discuss, don't bitch about "zomg use JavaScript" instead; that's as
bad as all the half-assed shouting about rewriting MediaWiki in
brainfuck.

You did illustrate a reasonable objection to the problem, but it was
surrounded in a load of incoherent gibberish ranting.

Rob Church


from_name: Platonides

body:
A projectile movement doesn't need Java. It can be done with JavaScript (and
DHTML). Of course you will need a special script. Maybe some addition for
custom JavaScript per-page? It would be nice. However Java may needed for
more complex actions.

Platonides


subject: [WikiEN-l] Process is evil

body:
On 8/21/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> Yes and whuh?? in that order. Mind you, I never show up to meetings.
>

Aparently I'll need your permission to put up arcom election notices
and such. Rather than the previous rather informal system of putting
them up whever people wouldn't yell at me more than I was prepared to
put up with. I'm sure it will all work out in a few months. Things
normaly do.

Although the story that appears to be doing the rounds today
(wikipedia article on vandalism vandalised) suggests that other
problems may be rather more intractible.

--
geni