from_name: geni

body:
On 4/1/06, Anthere <Anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> I see...
>
> No. I do not know where. I am not following you step by step you know ?

Edit war around the 12th week of january. Turned into quite an
interesting debate. Discovering the best financial model foundation
had projected rather more taffic than yahoo within three years was
interesting. In any case the next fundraiseing drive is comeing up so
that should settle the core of the debate once and for all.

> We have 8 project and over a 100 languages. I am not prescient.
> And since I do not consider the english wikipedia to be the central
> place where all relevant debates take place, I must admit I do not take
> the time to daily follow everything that happens here.
>

You do however view us as central for funding:

10:21, 12 January 2006 Anthere (some things are needed to keep the
website running....)

Refering to a notice than appeared on en but not on many other
wikipedias (it now on even fewer now which is kinda anoying because it
makes the calculations more difficult)

> I think it is kinda amazing to see a perfectly decent, normal, polite,
> simple and neutral question being answered in such a rude way.

What kind of responce would you have wanted? "A couple of mediawiki
pages starting on the 12th of jan". You know that would be
missleading. You were there.

> Well, it is good there are plenty of good editors on the english
> wikipedia to work with.

Yes please help them turn meta into something worthwhile

I mean have you ever seen how dead http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Proposals is?

> Because with editors such as you, I would have
> long dropped the project. You lack the most basic knowledge of what civility is.

Type of bird isn't it?

> As such, you'll be invisible to me in the future. Period.
>
> Anthere

Well good luck and try to make sure the board doesn't do anything else
dissruptive.

--
geni


list: wikien-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Alphax (Wikipedia email)

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

body:
jayjg wrote:
> On 3/31/06, Ilmari Karonen <nospam at vyznev.net> wrote:
>
>>Steve Bennett wrote:
>>
>>>On 3/31/06, Ilmari Karonen <nospam at vyznev.net> wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>>sock.  The six months or so between the two events served not only to
>>>>familiarize me with Wikipedia, but also to provide other users with some
>>>>confidence that I wasn't going to go on a vandalism spree as soon as I
>>>>got my admin buttons.
>>>
>>>The chance that anyone will go on a "vandalism spree" with admin
>>>rights is vanishingly small. And if they did, they can be  quickly
>>>desysopped before they've done any real damage (as I understand it).
>>>Is this really what the whole RfA charade is about? Protecting
>>>ourselves against users with 1500 edits who might suddenly,
>>>inexplicably turn into vandals the instant they're given admin rights?
>>>Sounds fishy to me.
>>
>>Well, no, the part about going on a vandalism spree was hyperbole.  It's
>>more about protecting ourselves against users who might use their admin
>>povers for more subtle undesirable things, such as POV pushing, or for
>>ends incompatible with the project (like the folks who think the best
>>thing about Wikipedia are the userboxes), or who might simply use them
>>carelessly or thoughtlessly, say, by rangeblocking all of Europe.
>
>
>
> There are people who are working towards getting several userids up to admin
> status, doing uncontroverisal editing in areas they don't care about, so
> that they can then use that status to enforce their views in areas which are
> truly of concern to them.  This has been advertised and discussed on
> off-Wikipedia fora.
>

Nod. Hence we don't just promote anyone who asks and fits the criteria
as set out by the letter of the policy.

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

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

body:
geni wrote:
> On 3/31/06, Anthere <Anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>>Anthere wrote:
>>
>>>geni wrote:
>>
>>>>The one solid debate on wikimedia funding I've seen was on
>>>>en.wikipedia (the fincial models presented were amusing)
>>
>>ooops, I forgot. Could you give me the link to it please ?
>>
>>Ant
>
>
> You know where. It breaks out a bit after you threatened to break the
> three revert rule to get your way. Incerdently I see de has dropped
> the notice.
> --
> geni

I see...

No. I do not know where. I am not following you step by step you know ?
We have 8 project and over a 100 languages. I am not prescient.
And since I do not consider the english wikipedia to be the central
place where all relevant debates take place, I must admit I do not take
the time to daily follow everything that happens here.

I think it is kinda amazing to see a perfectly decent, normal, polite,
simple and neutral question being answered in such a rude way.

Well, it is good there are plenty of good editors on the english
wikipedia to work with. Because with editors such as you, I would have
long dropped the project. You lack the most basic knowledge of what
civility is. As such, you'll be invisible to me in the future. Period.

Anthere


from_name: Ray Saintonge

body:
Steve Bennett wrote:

>On 3/31/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>>The two year version is more likely to know why we are where we are
>>now. Admins who don't know this tend to cause interesting problems.
>>This can also be the case with returning admins. There are other
>>differences that are also likely to exist.
>>
>>
>Could a one month editor not be a good admin? If they could, then why
>do we have such prejudice against the idea?
>
A one-month editor could be a good admin.  What a minimum time rule
really tests is patience.  Is he willing to stick around when things get
tedious.  If he goes away when he doesn't get made a sysop right away
maybe he wasn't meant to be one.

Has anyone done a statistical  analysis of the day-by-day contributions
of editors and graphed their number of edits over perhaps the first 100
days after they registe?.  Does boredom hit suddenly or do the edits
gradually diminish?

Ec


list: foundation-l

from_name: Jean-Christophe Chazalette

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

body:
You 're probably the only one in the world to celebrate April's fool on
March 31 then, flo :p
villy

Le 01/04/06, Anthere <Anthere9 at yahoo.com> a ?crit :
>
> Thanks Brion and all who worked to fix the whole wikiquote issue.
>
>
> Maybe we did not choose the best date...
>
> Ant
>


list: wikimedia-l


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Francis Tyers

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Language versions' popularity
	vs.	number	of	articles (vs. number of speakers)

body:
Haha!

Sorry for that, but my brain obviously wasn't turned on and I'm not
subscribed to foundation-l :)

Thanks for the pointer,

Fran

On Sat, 2006-04-01 at 06:04 +0200, Elisabeth Bauer wrote:
> Francis Tyers schrieb:
> > I'd definately like to see a standard flier. I'm sure people could
> > arrange translations. Perhaps even just a paragraph or so and then have
> > many many translations on one flier :)
>
> The evil version of me would now say (especially in regard to the
> current fight on foundation-l): it's on meta, try to find it.
>
> The more gentle version of me says:
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Leaflet
>
> greetings,
> elian
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l


body:
Steve Bennett wrote:

>On 3/31/06, Ilmari Karonen <nospam at vyznev.net> wrote:
>
>
>>Well, no, the part about going on a vandalism spree was hyperbole.  It's
>>more about protecting ourselves against users who might use their admin
>>povers for more subtle undesirable things, such as POV pushing, or for
>>ends incompatible with the project (like the folks who think the best
>>thing about Wikipedia are the userboxes), or who might simply use them
>>carelessly or thoughtlessly, say, by rangeblocking all of Europe.
>>
>>
>And we are going to detect such users by ensuring we only select
>admins who use edit summaries 95% of the time and have made at least
>1500 distinct edits in the minimum 6 months they have had an account
>at en?
>
I wouldn't attach much importance to en editor's use of edit summaries,
unless it is part of a bigger pattern of hiding hostile edits.

>False metrics are worse than no metrics :(
>
Very much!

>I think I'd rather that each RfA required a neutral person to review
>the person's entire edit history, noting the number of edit wars,
>whether edit summaries were accurate, their apparent stance on
>controversial topics like userboxes etc, then publishing those facts
>for everyone to decide on. Rather than (incorrectly) assuming that
>each person voting does such a review for themselves.
>
As a Wiktionary bureaucrat I make a point of recusing myself from voting
on any admin requests.  When it appears that the candidate has more than
trivial support I do look at the kind of things that you mention before
acting.  Usually the result will be to support the community, but I
reserve the right to act contrarily.  If I want to override the
community I better have a good reason without being too stubborn about it.

Ec


from_name: Steve Bennett

body:
On 4/1/06, charles matthews <charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com> wrote:
> > Does the riot act say "team A is right", or does it say "I don't care
> > who's right, play nicely please"?
>
> The latter. No personal attacks, for example.  It is a different matter when
> an admin says this, compared to people going on about ad hominem in a
> pot-kettle situation.

Right, so having gotten an article to featured article status is not
necessarily a useful training ground for being an admin? In the same
way that being a great soccer player is not necessarily an advantage
in being a great referee, or being a great pianist is not particularly
useful in being a piano tuner...

Steve


from_name: eromanme at gmu.edu

subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia Survey

body:
Dear Wikipedians,

I am a professor at George Mason University (Virginia, USA), and I am researching the Wikipedia contribution practices. As part of my research, I am conducting a survey of Wikipedians. If you would like to participate, you can access the survey at

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.asp?u=276181968078

The survey consits of 33 short questions, and It should not take you longer than 15 minutes to complete the questionnaire. Your participation in the survey is completely anonymous.

Thank you very much for your help. Do not hesitate to contact me if you have any questions.

Best regards,
Esperanza


from_name: Ilya N.

body:
Hell, we used to not require any. Then it became 200, slowly up to 500, and
now i think you can't even get a signle support vote unless you've had 2000
edits and an even spread across namespace (as some have been voting
jokingly: "not enough portal talk edits")

I think this is becoming slightly ridiculous in some cases.

On 3/31/06, uninvited at nerstrand.net <uninvited at nerstrand.net> wrote:
>
>
> While I don't necessarily believe that Tyrenius should be an admin a
> this time, I do believe that he is justified in feeling unfairly
> treated by the project.  The lack of consensus on a minimum number of
> edits, and the ever-growing minimum in the minds of many, is
> particularly a problem.  We used to require 500 edits.
>

--
~Ilya N.
http://w3stuff.com/ilya/ (My website; DarkLordFoxx Media)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Ilyanep (on Wikipedia)
http://www.wheresgeorge.com - Track your money's travels.


from_name: NSLE (Wikipedia)

body:
As one of the four opposers he asked votes not be counted, I personally note
that his self-nom just noted the number of his edits, how long he's been
here, and that he'd never been blocked. I opposed based on not enough
information given. Regarless of whether it's a self-nom or not, I'd think
just plainly saying "I've (This user's) never been blocked in my (their) X
months here and have (has) Y edits and thus I want (they deserve) to be an
admin" would not get anyone the mop and bucket.

--NSLE

On 3/31/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> <snip>
> ----------
>
> Steve
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


body:
Guy Chapman aka JzG wrote:

>On Fri, 31 Mar 2006 17:45:38 +0200, you wrote:
>
>
>>Is adminship really something that cannot be "learnt on the job"?
>>
>>
>Adminship can *only* be learned on the job.  The point is, of course,
>that the admin tools are only really useful for certain classes of
>actions (like fighting vandalism).
>
Not necessarily.  I have already gone over four years without becoming a
Wikipedia admin.  If I were to change my mind now I would most likely
use Wikipedia adminship to revue the edit history of deleted articles
that have been transwikied to Wiktionary.  That would be a passive use
that would not even appear in the logs.

>If you don't already do this
>things then you will make more and bigger mistakes if you start doing
>them with admin tools than with regular editor rights, and if you
>don't intend to do these things why do you need the tools?  An admin
>has no more or less status in the community than any other editor in
>good standing.
>
In theory!

>There are many editors who do nothing but create good
>content, and steer clear of edit wars, POV-pushers, contentious
>subjects and so on.  Would that there were more of them!  And they
>have no need of admin tools.
>
Generally true.

Ec


body:
Guy Chapman aka JzG wrote:

>On Fri, 31 Mar 2006 18:09:30 +0200, you wrote:
>
>
>>Perhaps we need a
>>non-empowered "respected user" flag for oldbies with common sense that
>>don't actually want to do any vandal fighting?
>>
>>
>This is, in effect, what happens now.  You can tell the good guys by
>the string of barnstars on their user pages, and by their edit
>history.  And the ones with no userpage, and only a Welcome message
>and ten {test} warnings - well, you know not to give their opinion
>quite the same weight.
>
Some of us are just a little less egotistical about our user pages. :-)


body:
jayjg wrote:

> There are people who are working towards getting several userids up to
> admin
>
>status, doing uncontroverisal editing in areas they don't care about, so
>that they can then use that status to enforce their views in areas which are
>truly of concern to them.  This has been advertised and discussed on
>off-Wikipedia fora.
>
Maybe we should simply ban socksysops.  Checkuser could be used to
identify that kind of abuse.

Ec


from_name: Angela

subject: [WikiEN-l] What to do?

body:
This sounds similar to an issue that came up before. The policy at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Naming_conventions_(places)#Counties_of_Britain
was made in an attempt to help the situation.

Angela.


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

body:
According to <http://help-pakistan.com/main/dont-block-the-blog/>, the
block has now been lifted.

See
http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/textbook-l/2006-March/002491.html
for a press release forwarded to the Wikibooks list.

General information on blocks in Pakistan:
http://pakistan.wikia.com/wiki/Internet_Filter_Status

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_projects_blocks still only
mentions China.

Angela.


body:
Steve Bennett wrote:

>On 3/31/06, charles matthews <charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com> wrote:
>
>
>>"Steve Bennett" wrote
>>
>>
>>>Personally I'm a bit puzzled that there seems to be a bias in favour
>>>of people who have edited high profile articles and thus have "handled
>>>conflict" well.
>>>
>>>
>>Errr ... aren't those exactly the kind of people we are short of?  Few are
>>natural diplomats, but part of being an admin is a willingness to intervene
>>in tense situations, where there is no personal gain at all in sight.
>>
>>
>Admins normally shouldn't be entering content disputes. Theoretically
>they shouldn't even care about content, in the same was as a football
>referee theoretically doesn't care who's winning.
>
>I may be forgetting some pertinant situations here, but being well
>versed in getting a point of view across in a content dispute is not
>necessarily a useful skill in adminship. No?
>
What undid Pete Rose was not simply gambling, but betting on baseball.

Admins will have opinions on different subjects, and hopefully many came
here in the first place because they felt they had something to say
about some encyclopedic topic.  One way of reading what you say is that
admins should abandon normal editing though I doubt that that is your
intent.  It is more immportant to avoid using admin status as a trump
card in a dispute.  There are many more articles where an admin can act
as an honest broker.

Ec


body:
Thanks.  I'll have to see whether I can use it.

Ec

David Alexander Russell wrote:

>Don't know about day-by-day, but Interiot's edit counter tool (linked to
>from his userpage) gives a month-by-month edit breakdown
>
>Cynical
>
>Ray Saintonge wrote:
>
>
>>Has anyone done a statistical  analysis of the day-by-day contributions
>>of editors and graphed their number of edits over perhaps the first 100
>>days after they registe?.  Does boredom hit suddenly or do the edits
>>gradually diminish?
>>
>>


body:
Jtkiefer wrote:
> Steve Bennett wrote:
>
>>On 3/31/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>
>>>>   * if the nominee is "generally a known and trusted member of the community".
>>>>
>>>
>>>And this is where the attempt to rule lawer from outdated policy
>>>breaks down. You can count the number of people generally know to the
>>>current wikipedia community one hand. Thus we have to accept that
>>>either there should be almost no new admins or that policy is failing
>>>to describe wikipedia practice and needs to be rewriten.
>>>
>>
>>Tyrenius's interpretation of this rule seems to be that amongst those
>>who have had contact with him, he is respected and trusted. Is that
>>fair enough?
>>
>>I would actually argue that the number of people generally known to
>>the community can be counted on one thumb, and some comments in the
>>userbox controversy cast doubt on that.
>>
>>I think my biggest complaint with all this is that, as happens so
>>often, when people are asked to make quick fire judgments about
>>something big and complicated, they resort very quickly to judging
>>form or statistics. My own nomination was unanimously opposed because
>>I hadn't included an introductory nomination statement. You see a lot
>>of comments that "edit summaries too low", for people with 90% or more
>>edit summary in major edits, or "not enough edits", for people with
>>more than 2000.
>>
>>And the worst is "come back later, might support you then". Not
>>because the candidate is in any way actually deficient as an admin,
>>but they simply haven't served an unwritten waiting period.
>>
>></rant>
>>
>>Steve
>>
>
> Don't blame me, I went up for bureaucratship so that I could actually
> interpret RFA's as not being votes but based on consensus where the
> jackasses get discounted but the asshole cabal;voted me down 5 times in
> a row.  If that doesn't show that Wikipedians and RFA are fucked up in
> the head I don't know what it says.
>

How many times did you self-nom? How long did you wait between each
time? Have you been active on RFA? Have you been active on WT:RFA?

If you answered "too many", "not long enough", "no" and "no", then
you'll understand *why* you were opposed 5 times in a row. It's not that
I don't like you, but you can't just wander in and say "I have no idea
what's going on here, but if you promote me I'll fix it my way, screw
what the community thinks!". I found this out the hard way on my first
RFA, and came up again in my second RFA, even though I specifically
stated that I had no desire to carry out what I had promised the first
time around.

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

subject: [Foundation-l] Wikimania 2006 CfP - deadline extension

body:
Hello,
The deadline for submitting proposals to the Wikimania 2006 conference
has been extended, to April 15 for workshop and tutorial submissions,
and April 30 for presentation submissions.

For more information, visit http://wikimania2006.wikimedia.org. The
Call for Participation is attached below.
------

Call for Participation -- Wikimania 2006 -- Aug. 4 - Aug. 6, Cambridge, MA

About Wikimania

Wikimania is an annual global event devoted to Wikipedia and other
Wikimedia projects. It is both a scientific conference and a community
event, open to the public. Wikimania is a place for users and editors
of the projects to gather from around the globe, to meet each other,
to exchange ideas, and to report on research and projects. This year's
conference will be held from 4-6 August, 2006, on the Harvard Law
School campus in Cambridge, Massachusetts. See
http://wikimania2006.wikimedia.org for more information.

We are accepting submissions for papers, posters, presentations,
workshops, and discussion groups. We are also accepting nominations
for speakers and speaker panels, and suggestions for other activities.
Everyone is welcome to submit abstracts and ideas. Be bold in your
submissions!
-----
Important dates:

* 15 Apr 2006 (extended): Proposal deadline for workshops and tutorials
Notification of acceptance: by April 30
* 30 Apr 2006 (extended): Abstracts due for panels, papers, posters
and presentations
Notification of acceptance: by May 15
* 4-6 Aug 2006: Wikimania
-----
Conference Themes

Submissions should address one or more of the following themes:

* Technical infrastructure -- Issues related to Mediawiki development
and extensions; Wikimedia hardware layout; new ideas for development
(including case studies from other wikis or similar projects).

* Wikimedia projects and content -- Presentation of interesting
projects and results; future aims of the projects and types of
distribution; ways to improve content quality. New uses for project
content: in education, journalism, research, &c.

* Free knowledge and access to information -- Present and future free
knowledge initiatives; related library and archival projects around
the world and input from librarians and archivists; ways to gather and
distribute knowledge.

* Wiki social science -- The contributors and users (who are they?
Where do they come from?); reputation and identity issues; conflict
resolution and community dynamics; scaling digital communities.
Languages and cultures and their interactions online; multilingualism
via wikis. Linguistics studies on wiki communities.

* Law and Policy -- Copyleft, collective copyright, special issues
pertaining to communal editing and distribution; other legal areas for
which Wiki[mp]edia is an interesting case study. Policy creation
within individual projects.
-----
Submissions

Types of Submissions:

* Panels (Suggest a group of 2-5 speakers on a specific subject)
* Workshops (From 30-120 minutes)
* Presentations (10-30 minute presentations/papers)
* Posters (Printed presentations or visual displays that can stand on their own)
* BOFs (Birds-of-a-Feather/discussion sessions - 45-60 minutes of
group discussion)
* We are also accepting artistic submissions, especially visualizations
or other representations of some aspect of the projects.

------
Submission format

* All submissions must include a title and an abstract of 100 to 300
words. They should also list the full name (and wiki name if
appropriate) of the submitter, with contact information and
affiliations. Special requirements for the presentation (equipment for
a workshop or panel) should be noted. The abstracts should be provided
as plain text, and not as file attachments.
* Workshop submissions should include a 1-2pp overview of the areas to
be covered or taught.
* Speaker panel submissions should include short biographies of each
suggested panelist.
* Paper and Presentation submissions may include a link to a draft of
the paper or slides, if available. State clearly whether the
submission concerns a specific wiki project, and whether the
presentation is intended to be a specific length.
* BOF proposals should describe the significance of and community
interest in the topic, and name the proposed discussion leader(s).

To process your submission, please see the Wikimania website -
http:/cfp.wikimania.wikimedia.org. Send questions or
suggestions to wikimania-cfp <at> wikimedia.org .
-----
Final Submissions

Final submissions must be provided in an open format (OpenOffice,
LaTeX sources, HTML...) and licensed under a free content license (GFDL
or CC-BY-SA).
-----
Stipends

A limited number of stipends will be available to those unable to
obtain funding to attend the conference. Accepted presenters are
encouraged to apply if assistance is needed.

--
- phoebe s. ayers
brassratgirl at gmail.com | 530-756-2551
http://wikimania2006.wikimedia.org


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wikimania 2006 CfP - deadline extension


subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikimania 2006 CfP - deadline extension


from_name: Ryan Norton

subject: [WikiEN-l] Meta and the cleanup project

body:
Someone asked me to comment on the meta cleanup project, and
foundation-l is subscription-only, so I guess I'll comment here.

Basically, I agree with a lot of what Anthere said on the
foundation-list. I think a lot of people that come to meta freak out a
lot when they see the funky essays and don't realize that meta is sort
of a seperate project. What Walter said on Meta:Babel is pretty
accurate too - it is the bus station for several wiki projects. In
terms of the cleanup project in general though I thought/think it is a
great idea - cleanup on meta is always welcome - however, there were
just a lot of bad tags, perhaps due to recent changes in deletion
policy (or rather, more recent ambiguity), and I myself was a little
abrupt at times. The whole ironic part is that even though several were
claiming there wasn't a "meta community" I think a few prospectives for
administrator are finding out that there indeed is a bit of one...

I also stated in agreement with David that at times it is a bit the
"personal wiki" of the stewards on Meta:Babel. Really though, it is
sort of a semi-serious thing, I mean there isn't exactly a whole lot of
policy debates there relating to meta because it itself is fairly
clearly defined as to what it is - i.e. a sort of MeatBall-esque wiki -
and there isn't a TON of activity. Personally, I find it as a "feature"
that you can still track things with recent changes :). Besides, the
stewards there are by far doing a good portion of that work so the fact
that it is "run" by them is probably a result of activity more then
anything else.

Anyway, I hope people don't give up on cleaning up meta. You can still
have nearly all the interproject pages you need - and just having the
essays there isn't going to hurt that too much.

P.S. "Don't be a dick" is up for being moved AGAIN. Really, this thing
should just be on english because while it is tolerable there in
non-english languages it can be unnecessarily unruly. "Don't be a jerk"
is probably a decent replacement, albiet less traditional.

Your en and meta administrator
[[w:User:RN]]
[[m:User:RN]]


from_name: michael_irwin at verizon.net

subject: [Foundation-l] Instant Commons

body:
Robert Scott Horning wrote:

>Anthere wrote:
>
>
>
>>ChitChat with David over whether there is a meta community ... or not...
>>is nice, but let's get back to real business for a while :-)
>>
>>There is a proposal on meta : InstantCommons
>>http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/InstantCommons
>>
>>I would be happy if some of you could have a look at it (if not at the
>>technical details, at least to the general concept - it will not take
>>you much time) and give a feedback about it (here or on meta or on irc).
>>
>>I am not looking for a comment by those who proposed the project... but
>>by the others ;-)
>>
>>Thanks for your feedback.
>>
>>Anthere
>>Special Project Committee
>>http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special_projects_committee
>>
>>
>>
>>
>I think Instant Commons is an incredible concept.  I don't see how it
>will directly help individual Wikimedia projects, but it is something
>that is going to be beneficial in terms of having goodwill to other
>MediaWiki website administrators and perhaps other individuals who are
>sucking bandwidth out of the Wikimedia Commons image archive.
>
>Are there any statistics available to show how much bandwidth is going
>to serving images to non-Wikimedia projects who are using HTML markup
>links to commons images?  I'm especially talking about site mirrors (who
>may not mirror the images), but other projects as well.
>
>
>

I am interested in this reasoning:
"

    * It does not respect the license terms of the image, and does not
      allow for other metadata to be reliably transported
    * It does not give credit to Wikimedia
    * It consumes Wikimedia bandwidth on every pageview (unless the
      image has been cached on the client side or through a proxy)"

Has any consideration been given to allowing a pass through type of
feature where the Wiki Media Commons becomes more of a registry and
published online backup rather than a centralized master archive?

For example:  If NASA could publish some of the famous Apollo
photographs or Mars data documenting water erosion in partnership with
another entity under a GPL (this is already done by for profit entities
who attempt to enforce copyright so there should be no problems using
GPL on public domain NASA data) by submitting the photographs, detailed
information and the master URLs where they keep the masters.

Under this scenario, perhaps the NASA site could be the primary URL with
Wikimedia Commons used as a secondary accessed when the original is not
available.    Rather than becoming the primary source for the data,
Wikimedia Commons serves more as a catalogue of GPL'ed data available
elsewhere on the web.

Rather than acting as a centralized single massive server Wiki Commons
might save substantial bandwidth by only providing data when the primary
source is not available when an update to local caches is initiated.

This might also encourage other smaller sites to collaborate with Wiki
Commons as they would receive exposure and traffic in exchange for
publishing their content under the GPL via the Wiki Commons registry.
Wikimedia Foundation thus becomes a welcome large partner or umbrella
resource improving wiki technology and available FDL'ed content rather
than the 800 pound competitor avoiding exposure of Achilles tendons.

The technical developers responsible for the Wikimedia Commons might
wish to also look this over:
http://dijjer.org/

It is a caching technology being designed for web browsers to cooperate
in reducing the load on central resources using a peer to peer transport
similar in some ways to bittorrent.  I am trying it out at the moment
but I am uncertain whether it will catch on widely.  Bit Torrent
provides the luxury of supporting transmission of specific files the
individual users chooses.  This dijjer.org project appears to place all
control in the hands of web publishers and thus I think it becomes
vulnerable to unaccountable freeloaders.  If this is true, it will
probably not prosper or be an influential technology in the long run.

regards,
lazyquasar


subject: [Foundation-l] Instant Commons


from_name: Benjamin Webb

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

body:
On 01/04/06, Robert Scott Horning <robert_horning at netzero.net> wrote:
>
> Benjamin Webb wrote:
>
> >What about if you wanted to have yourself on a family tree could you do
> >that? (See my prewious comment)
> >
> >On 31/03/06, Robert Scott Horning < robert_horning at netzero.net> wrote:
> >
> >
> >>Ray Saintonge wrote:
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>>Simply asking a person's permission would simply lead to chaos.  The
> >>>person whom you ask may agree, but his brother may not.  A 110 year
> rule
> >>>may be a little excessive.  The US census, for example, is in the
> public
> >>>domain after 72 years.  BMD announcements in newspapers are all a
> matter
> >>>of public record; telephone directories, property tax records and the
> >>>Social Security Death Index are all publicly available sources of
> >>>information.
> >>>
> >>>Ec
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>The point of the 110 rule is that it does fit with almost all known
> >>privacy laws throughout the world, and for geneological research
> >>purposes is generally not that big of an inconvience.
> >>
> Yourself, perhaps.  I understand in part that you want to show a full
> family tree starting with yourself and going to your ancestors (or
> decendants if you are older).  The problem here is that this information
> is all going to be publicly available for anybody to use and have
> access.  Indeed, a very, very common "security question" used to help
> prevent identity theft is to ask what your mother's maiden name was.  By
> publishing full geneological links in a public place like on a Wikimedia
> project, you are inviting fraud, identity theft, and violation of
> several personal privacy laws.  With the Wikimedia Foundation so
> paranoid about something so insignificant as an IP address connected to
> a user account and the hyper paranoid (in my opinion) check user policy,
> this might be enough to kill this whole proposal completely in terms of
> violating privacy laws.
>
> More important, the suggestion here is that other living relatives may
> also be listed if a policy like this isn't implemented.  They did not
> give concent to have their information posted in a public forum, even if
> on a technical level the information is available through public records
> like birth certificates and driver's license registrations.
>
> I completely agree that this is a sticky issue.  I'm just suggesting
> that some thought needs to go into it and I'm also suggesting what other
> groups are doing who publish geneological information in a public forum.
>
> --
> Robert Scott Horning
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>

I understand the need for being cautious about security and I think that
your comment that the subject is something that needs to be thought hard
about is exactly right. However, there's one thing that I have been
wondering about. You have raised the point that identity theft could be
carried out, using the mother's maiden name. As, Rodovid grows and the
number of people with the same increases, it will be difficult to link a
person whose identity you are trying to steal with someone on the database.
To do this would mean having other data such as age, place of birth and so
on, which would probably be as difficult to obtain as  the maiden name.


body:
Benjamin Webb wrote:

>It is a few days since Tim wrote this comment, but I still have something to
>say in reply to it. Before I start I must remind people that it was my
>fellow Rodovid user Baya who wrote the software, but that doesn't make much
>difference to the discussion.
>
>Tim suggested setting up Rodovid as an independent project, and although I
>still prefer the idea of it becoming a Wikimedia project, this is a possible
>alternative.
>
>The one real issue is the matter of linking from Wikipedia and other
>Wikimedia projects to Rodovid. If it did become a Wikimedia project, then
>nobody would object to this: we could use link boxes like we currently have
>for commons etc.
>
>But what if the project is run independently, could any linking be done
>then. Personally as a Wikipedia contributor myself, I feel having such links
>would add to the quality of an article. However, I am sure others would
>disagree with this and delete it as spam linking.
>
>What do subsricbers to the mailing list think about linking?
>
>

If you are using Wikimedia compatible software and/or public editing
techniques I would encourage applicable sections of Wikiversity to link
to your material.

I would encourage you to find several other high quality similar
projects online and come to Wikiversity and write some generic materials
in related educational areas using links to all other applicable online
resources.   At the moment we are pending official approval and
apparently caught up in the middle of the Wikimedia Foundations internal
reorganization efforts so wikiversity.org is inactive.   Try starting
at:  http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Wikiversity.

Some spam linkers are currently enjoying some success at Wikiversity
primarily due to the scarcity of local content and scaffolding.  I am
confident that as our web traffic picks in a permanent URL space and our
generic quality is fleshed out these links are going to begin
disappearing rapidly.

The large advantage I perceive to this approach is that it will allow
you to keep your site focused on what you and/or your community wish it
be while enhancing the experience of both Wikiversity participants and
your site users.  It will take a bit more work on your part initially
and patience waiting for Wikiversity participants interested in
geneology to get around to your few links among many but there should be
no large maintenance effort as there would be if the Wikiversity
participants begin to perceive your links as spam and delete them.

Perhaps some of our biological or medically literate people (user:JWSurf
is highly qualified and has been approachable in the past) could suggest
learning portals related to genetics, biology, evolution, etc. where
participants would find online detailed geneological information useful
in demonstrating that science applies to human beings as well as the
rest of the ecosystem.

Another approach might be to publish an introduction to geneology in
general at http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Main_Page.   Our Wikiversitians
are likely to find your efforts there.  If your site is referenced in
the book or used for specific data  illustrating various techniques then
your links should be secure from most of the less militant link police.

OTOH I am not familar with Wikibooks policy as I tend to use their
materials in a read only or trivial correction mode at the moment.  You
probably will wish to review their detailed policies before investing
any marketing effort there.

regards,
lazyquasar


from_name: Philip Welch

body:
On Mar 31, 2006, at 7:59 AM, Kelly Martin wrote:

> Unfortunately, I don't have any better proxies for "will not abuse
> administrative privilege".  But I do think it would be a good idea to
> have admin selection be more deliberative and less of a popularity
> contest, as it is today.  But the best solutions to accomplish that
> all involve creating special "administrator selection committees" or
> similar such bodies, which will be roundly decried as anti-democratic
> and cabalistic by people who are more interested in Wikipedia as an
> social experiment.  And while this latter group is smaller than the
> group of people who are interested in Wikipedia as an encyclopedia,
> this smaller group is disproportionately represented amongst those who
> participate in community processes, thereby skewing "consensus" toward
> the "social experiment" point of view.
>
> I wish I had a solution to THAT problem.
>
> Kelly

Kelly, you seem to always ascribe bad faith to people for no reason
other than the fact they disagree with you. I wish I had a solution
to THAT problem.

--
Philip L. Welch
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Philwelch


body:
On Mar 31, 2006, at 3:39 PM, Sue Reed wrote:

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

The number of bureaucrats should rise according to the amount of
bureaucrat work required. Since bureaucrat work consists of user
renames and admin promotions, then it's the rate of growth of admins,
and not the number of admins, that should affect that.

Likely, the need for admins grows, not according to the number of
users, but according to the rate of bad article creation and vandalism.

I propose that new bureaucratships be opened only when there is a
need for them in terms of there being more admin promotions than the
current bureaucrats can attend to in a timely fashion. At this point
we calculate how many bureaucratships we need and have a competitive
process to fill those slots.

Perhaps adminship can be done the same way.

--
Philip L. Welch
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Philwelch


body:
On Apr 1, 2006, at 7:22 PM, jayjg wrote:

>> So, why do we still have backlogs?
>
>
> What backlogs do we have that only admins can deal with?

Deletion backlogs, mainly PROD and copyvio.

--
Philip L. Welch
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Philwelch


from_name: jayjg

subject: [WikiEN-l] Fwd: unfair block

body:
Zadil is a highly disruptive editor trying to promote his original research
notion that "Judaism is racist".

On 4/1/06, MacGyverMagic/Mgm <macgyvermagic at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> I'm too busy right now to deal with unblock requests, so I've decided
> to forward this to the list so you guys can take a look at it.
>
> Mgm
>
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: Zadil <muliben at walla.com>
> Date: Apr 1, 2006 12:21 AM
> Subject: unfair block
> To: MacGyverMagic <MacGyverMagic at gmail.com>
>
>
>
> it seems like user SlimVirgin is abusing his privilages in the midst
> of a discussion.
> please, note my follwoing complaints:
> 1)the above user has blocked me for no apparent valid reason.
> 2)He has used the block in the midst of a dicussion, and then took the
> freedom to revert my edit.
> 3)He has nominiate a new article by me for "speedy deletion" and
> indeed deleted it without any discussion. I'ts indeed a shame that I
> can not provide you any link to that article, but it was -in my humble
> opinion- a very useful article.
> 4)He has used threats against me and still use in the midst of
> discussion, a fact I've already complaint and was assured by Benon
> that they better should be ignored. (see my user page)
> 5)He has took to privilage of my block to "vandalise" my user page", a
> fact which is the most disturbing.
>
> Please, if you can, take the trouble to look my relevant edits and
> ublock me. It is really unfair to have such "discussion" on wikipedia.
> And may I suggest, that an administrator who constantly uses threants
> and indeed blocks other users in the midst of discussion, should be
> deprived from such privileges.
>
> Thank you
> Zadil bbb
> Muliben at walla.com
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


body:
On 4/1/06, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
>
> Steve Bennett wrote:
>
> >On 3/31/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >
> >>The two year version is more likely to know why we are where we are
> >>now. Admins who don't know this tend to cause interesting problems.
> >>This can also be the case with returning admins. There are other
> >>differences that are also likely to exist.
> >>
> >>
> >Could a one month editor not be a good admin? If they could, then why
> >do we have such prejudice against the idea?
> >
> A one-month editor could be a good admin.  What a minimum time rule
> really tests is patience.  Is he willing to stick around when things get
> tedious.  If he goes away when he doesn't get made a sysop right away
> maybe he wasn't meant to be one.

It tests more than patience.  A one-month editor might be a good admin, or
might not.  It's really hard to tell. Aside from the issue mentioned before
(people who are trying to get sockpuppet accounts to admin status), how do
we know how the person will perform under pressure?  Does he really know the
policies?  It's really hard to get to know anything about an editor after
just one month, and it's not like we're suffering from a lack of admins - we
have almost 900.

Jay.


from_name: Konstantinos

subject: [Wikipedia-l] History

body:
> -----Original Message-----
> From: wikipedia-l-bounces at Wikimedia.org [mailto:wikipedia-l-
> bounces at Wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Andre Engels
> Sent: Sunday, April 02, 2006 2:12 AM
> To: wikipedia-l at wikimedia.org
> Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] History
>
> 2006/4/1, geraki at geraki.net <geraki at geraki.net>:
>
> > When someone copies some text that is under the GFDL to a wikipedia
> article, the
> > rule is to write about it on the bottom of the article to pay
> attribution. I
> > think this is not fair for users of wikipedia, as for them the only
> attribution
> > is in the History section. Take as an example an article of five
> paragraphs, two
> > from some other GFDL source and three from a user contributions. The X
> source
> > will me mentioned in the article, while the user will be mentioned only
> in
> > history, among minor edits and bot edits. Remember that the GFDL says
> that
> > authors should be mentioned in a section entitled "History" not in the
> > Document.
>
> The GFDL also says that authors (or at least the last author and the
> five main authors of the previous document) should be shown on the
> title page, which for a Wikipedia page would be the area between the
> title and the start of the article. Why follow the letter of the GFDL
> at one place, and follow neither letter nor spirit on another?
>
>
> --
> Andre Engels, andreengels at gmail.com
> ICQ: 6260644  --  Skype: a_engels
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l

We don't follow the spirit or letter of the GFDL at two places, and we can
make it one. The fact that it is almost impossible to put the five main
authors on the title page does not mean that we should not try to fix the
other issue. Discriminating wikipedia authors from external sources does
follow neither the letter nor the spirit of the license. We can fix this,
and we will have only the other one.

Konstantinos (geraki at el.wikipedia)


subject: [WikiEN-l] Fwd: unfair block

body:
Yes, well, he was told that, and his original research etc. was removed from
various articles, and he was warned, but to no avail; he took it upon
himself to create a whole new article about the topic, List of Racist Quotes
in Judaism<http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=List_of_Racist_Quotes_in_Judaism&action=edit>(since
speedy deleted), and has devoted his userpage to more of the same.
There's a small discussion about this at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:AN/I#User:Zadil.27s_complaints

Jay.

On 4/1/06, Alphax (Wikipedia email) <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> jayjg wrote:
> > Zadil is a highly disruptive editor trying to promote his original
> research
> > notion that "Judaism is racist".
> >
>
> {{NPOV}}
>
> s/original\ research/uncited\ and\ unverifiable/
>
> --
> 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
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>
>
>
>


body:
On 4/1/06, Alphax (Wikipedia email) <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> jayjg wrote:
> > On 4/1/06, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> >> Steve Bennett wrote:
> >>
> >>> On 3/31/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>> The two year version is more likely to know why we are where we are
> >>>> now. Admins who don't know this tend to cause interesting problems.
> >>>> This can also be the case with returning admins. There are other
> >>>> differences that are also likely to exist.
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>> Could a one month editor not be a good admin? If they could, then why
> >>> do we have such prejudice against the idea?
> >>>
> >> A one-month editor could be a good admin.  What a minimum time rule
> >> really tests is patience.  Is he willing to stick around when things
> get
> >> tedious.  If he goes away when he doesn't get made a sysop right away
> >> maybe he wasn't meant to be one.
> >
> >
> > It tests more than patience.  A one-month editor might be a good admin,
> or
> > might not.  It's really hard to tell. Aside from the issue mentioned
> before
> > (people who are trying to get sockpuppet accounts to admin status), how
> do
> > we know how the person will perform under pressure?  Does he really know
> the
> > policies?  It's really hard to get to know anything about an editor
> after
> > just one month, and it's not like we're suffering from a lack of admins
> - we
> > have almost 900.
> >
>
> So, why do we still have backlogs?

What backlogs do we have that only admins can deal with?

Jay.


from_name: Matt Brown

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

body:
On 3/31/06, Chris Jenkinson <chris at starglade.org> wrote:
> Can you stop breaking the subject lines? I've asked you this many times.
>   If your email client doesn't support it, please upgrade to one which
> does, such as Thunderbird. It is really inconvenient for the rest of us.

Changing the subject line is quite appropriate if one feels the topic
has veered off the original one.

If you're meaning something else, then "breaking the subject lines"
isn't a good description of it ...

-Matt


from_name: David Alexander Russell

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

Don't know about day-by-day, but Interiot's edit counter tool (linked to
from his userpage) gives a month-by-month edit breakdown

Cynical

Ray Saintonge wrote:
> Steve Bennett wrote:
>
>> On 3/31/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>
>>> The two year version is more likely to know why we are where we are
>>> now. Admins who don't know this tend to cause interesting problems.
>>> This can also be the case with returning admins. There are other
>>> differences that are also likely to exist.
>>>
>>>
>> Could a one month editor not be a good admin? If they could, then why
>> do we have such prejudice against the idea?
>>
> A one-month editor could be a good admin.  What a minimum time rule
> really tests is patience.  Is he willing to stick around when things get
> tedious.  If he goes away when he doesn't get made a sysop right away
> maybe he wasn't meant to be one.
>
> Has anyone done a statistical  analysis of the day-by-day contributions
> of editors and graphed their number of edits over perhaps the first 100
> days after they registe?.  Does boredom hit suddenly or do the edits
> gradually diminish?
>
> Ec
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>
>
>

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from_name: Chip Berlet

subject: [WikiEN-l] User deleting mentions of racism and antisemitism

body:
Hi,

Could someone please check out what this user is doing? Scores of edits in two days removing mentions of racism of antisemitism.

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Contributions&target=71.131.245.179&offset=0&limit=500

-Cberlet


from_name: Anthere

body:
I have not changed yet all my watches, nor the cell phone....

Jean-Christophe Chazalette wrote:
> You 're probably the only one in the world to celebrate April's fool on
> March 31 then, flo :p
> villy
>
>
> Le 01/04/06, Anthere <Anthere9 at yahoo.com> a ?crit :
>
>>Thanks Brion and all who worked to fix the whole wikiquote issue.
>>
>>
>>Maybe we did not choose the best date...
>>
>>Ant
>>


from_name: Andre Engels

subject: [Wikipedia-l] History

body:
2006/4/1, geraki at geraki.net <geraki at geraki.net>:

> When someone copies some text that is under the GFDL to a wikipedia article, the
> rule is to write about it on the bottom of the article to pay attribution. I
> think this is not fair for users of wikipedia, as for them the only attribution
> is in the History section. Take as an example an article of five paragraphs, two
> from some other GFDL source and three from a user contributions. The X source
> will me mentioned in the article, while the user will be mentioned only in
> history, among minor edits and bot edits. Remember that the GFDL says that
> authors should be mentioned in a section entitled "History" not in the
> Document.

The GFDL also says that authors (or at least the last author and the
five main authors of the previous document) should be shown on the
title page, which for a Wikipedia page would be the area between the
title and the start of the article. Why follow the letter of the GFDL
at one place, and follow neither letter nor spirit on another?

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


list: textbook-l

from_name: Tim Starling

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

body:
Garrett wrote:
> I don't think we'll have been hit by this block. Blogspot blogs use
> subdomains, however Wikibooks isn't a subdomain of Wikipedia so won't have
> been counted in a full-domain ban.

My understanding is that they were using IP-based filtering. The original mailing list report
(http://tinyurl.com/koy25) stated that it was "blocked at the PIE routers", which only makes sense
for IP blocks. Domains are irrelevant unless they're spoofing DNS.

-- Tim Starling


from_name: Mikkerpikker

body:
As far as I can make out, the person's edits have mostly been
reverted. In fact, before seeing this post I reverted one of the
user's edits over at [[South Africa]] without realising there's a
pattern. Doubt he/she can do much damage, edits of this kind
(especially by an IP) will soon be picked up by those with the
affected articles on their watchlists.

Mikker

On 4/2/06, Chip Berlet <c.berlet at publiceye.org> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> Could someone please check out what this user is doing? Scores of edits in two days removing mentions of racism of antisemitism.
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Contributions&target=71.131.245.179&offset=0&limit=500
>
> -Cberlet
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>
>
>


from_name: Sean Barrett

subject: [WikiEN-l] Ethics

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

Thommandel at aol.com stated for the record:

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

Yes.  It is not only ethical, it is desired and expected.

- --
 Sean Barrett
 sean at epoptic.org
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from_name: Gordon Joly

subject: [WikiEN-l] Use of English

body:
I have just "discovered" the "Simple English Wikipedia"

http://simple.wikipedia.org/

On the left, under "Navigation", I find

>>  Newest changes

I am very surprised to find this phrase here, since it is very poor English!

Gordo

--
"Think Feynman"/////////
http://pobox.com/~gordo/
gordon.joly at pobox.com///


subject: [WikiEN-l] Use of English

body:
At 09:27 +0100 2/4/06, Gordon Joly wrote:
>I have just "discovered" the "Simple English Wikipedia"
>
>http://simple.wikipedia.org/
>
>
>On the left, under "Navigation", I find
>
>>>   Newest changes
>
>I am very surprised to find this phrase here, since it is very poor English!
>
>Gordo
>
>--

In fact, all menus have been "munged" (**) into dialect of English!

# My talk
# My settings
# My watched pages
# Pages I worked on
# Log out

# Show any page (which is really "Random Page")

Gordo

**

http://foldoc.org/foldoc/foldoc.cgi?query=munge

--
"Think Feynman"/////////
http://pobox.com/~gordo/
gordon.joly at pobox.com///


from_name: Guy Chapman aka JzG

body:
On Sat, 01 Apr 2006 15:10:38 -0800, you wrote:

>Some of us are just a little less egotistical about our user pages. :-)

Sure.  But it's usually not too hard to spot the people who are great
contributors from those who spend most of their time adding articles
about potty humour.
Guy (JzG)
--
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG


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

body:
At 22:51 +0100 30/3/06, David Gerard wrote:
>  >  Can you give us a little more context? I can see that there is a
>>proposal to create a separate meta wiki just for the english
>>wikipedia, presumably because many things currently on meta.wikipedia
>>are not really applicable to other wikipedias?
>
>
>This isn't a proposal for an English meta at all. It was an attempt to
>make Meta actually useful as a cross-project work wiki, rather than a
>disorganised collection of historical documents with a few working
>pages camped out in the archaeological rubble.
>
>Linuxbeak started the latest attempt ( [[m:WM:OM]] ); Jimbo gave his
>blessing, but warned that many had tried and failed before. The reason
>appears to be that there are enough people who like it as it is that
>they don't care it's all but unusable and frequently actively
>misleading, and that those of us who would like a cross-project work
>wiki are regarded as a bunch of dicks for trying.
>
>Anthere has also said, when asked directly, that there is an active
>meta community but they don't actually do their work on meta, rather
>on mailing lists and IRC. Which doesn't sound to me like a work wiki,
>but evidently does to her and others. So I proposed a "meta2", which
>can actually be used as a work wiki. The current meta incumbents have
>decided this is in fact a proposal for an en: wikipedia Meta, when it
>wasn't actually anything of the sort, but anyway.
>
>Meta is evidently not a cross-project work wiki or service wiki for
>other projects, but a separate community unto itself, somewhat like
>Commons. (Recall en:'s problems with vandalism of images stored on
>Commons, and how we eventually had to resort to storing featured
>images directly on en: owing to the recalcitrance of Commons admins
>who insisted they were an independent project, never mind Commons was
>*invented* as a service wiki.) I'm not entirely sure what the point
>is, but I'm sure someone will follow up with what makes a wiki where
>the community do their actual work in IRC and mailing lists into a
>work wiki whose use is clear to those not in the inner circle.
>
>- d.

Can I just add my name to the list who have complained in the past
that Meta is not useful for some aspects of our work? I was concerned
that information about the inception of "Wikimedia UK" was hard to
find, duplicated etc. This meant that many volunteers who might have
taken part got lost on the way or may never have known about the
existence of the team (who worked very hard and drank some good "real
ale" on Sunday afternoons:-)

The main difference between, say, IRC (and email) and a wiki is that
a the former are linear (by timestamp) and the latter (a set of Wiki
pages) is not.

A recent example of "Wikimeia UK" existing on a island was that
(previously discussed) total lack of any involvement from Welsh
speakers, who may or may not live in Wales. If "Wikimedia UK" wants
to be inclusive, and democratic, it has to open the doors a little
wider, and not live in "Meta Space", but In Real Life.

Hence, I would submit to you that Mediawiki 1.5.x and 1.6.x may not
be the "magic bullet". A wiki is poor tool for many jobs.

--
Gordo (aka LoopZilla)
gordon.joly at pobox.com
http://pobox.com/~gordo/
http://www.loopzilla.org/


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


body:
At 01:19 +0100 31/3/06, Justin Cormack wrote:
>On 30 Mar 2006, at 17:43, Angela wrote:
>
>>  (I'm copying this to wikien-l since the issue of whether the English
>>  Wikipedia needs its own "meta" is probably better discussed there. See
>  > <http://mail.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2006-March/
>  > thread.html>
>>  for previous mails.)
>
>Until we have single sign in, meta is a minority interest.
>
>Move things to en.wikipedia.org/Meta: if its about en.
>
>Justinc

Fook me, that is so simple, so brilliant!

:-)

--
"Think Feynman"/////////
http://pobox.com/~gordo/
gordon.joly at pobox.com///


from_name: MacGyverMagic/Mgm

subject: [WikiEN-l] Use of English

body:
On 4/2/06, Gordon Joly <gordon.joly at pobox.com> wrote:
> At 09:27 +0100 2/4/06, Gordon Joly wrote:
> >I have just "discovered" the "Simple English Wikipedia"
> >
> >http://simple.wikipedia.org/
> >
> >
> >On the left, under "Navigation", I find
> >
> >>>   Newest changes
> >
> >I am very surprised to find this phrase here, since it is very poor English!
> >
> >Gordo
> >
> >--
>
>
> In fact, all menus have been "munged" (**) into dialect of English!
>
>
> # My talk
> # My settings
> # My watched pages
> # Pages I worked on
> # Log out
>
> # Show any page (which is really "Random Page")
>
> Gordo
>
>
> **
>
> http://foldoc.org/foldoc/foldoc.cgi?query=munge
>
> --
> "Think Feynman"/////////
> http://pobox.com/~gordo/
> gordon.joly at pobox.com///
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

New, Newer newest. What's wrong with that?

Mgm


from_name: Kelly Martin

body:
On 4/1/06, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:

> >This is, in effect, what happens now.  You can tell the good guys by
> >the string of barnstars on their user pages, and by their edit
> >history.  And the ones with no userpage, and only a Welcome message
> >and ten {test} warnings - well, you know not to give their opinion
> >quite the same weight.
> >
> Some of us are just a little less egotistical about our user pages. :-)

I used to have a bunch of barnstars on my user page, but I deleted
them a while ago, feeling that they were irrelevant and somewhat vain.

Kelly


body:
On 4/1/06, jayjg <jayjg99 at gmail.com> wrote:
> What backlogs do we have that only admins can deal with?

Indeed.  I'm not clear when the policy that a non-admin cannot close
an AfD came into play, for example.  When I was first an admin, it was
the case that non-admins could close AfDs, but it's my understanding
now that a non-admin who attempts to close an AfD will probably get
blocked.

Kelly


body:
On 4/1/06, Philip Welch <wikipedia at philwelch.net> wrote:
> Kelly, you seem to always ascribe bad faith to people for no reason
> other than the fact they disagree with you. I wish I had a solution
> to THAT problem.

Nonsense.  I have never attributed bad faith to Geogre, Johnleemk,
JayJG, Raul654, for example, despite disagreeing with them, in some
cases quite vehemently.

The comments you so pithily dismissed as "assuming bad faith" are
simply my observations on the political nature of the Wikipedia
community.  You apparently don't like those observations, and so
you've accused me of assuming bad faith by making them.  Talk about
the pot calling the kettle black.

Kelly


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Blocking vandals' IPs - survival kit

body:
Berto wrote:
> Hi!
>
>
>>Probably there's just a single connection on this IP address (one
>>house, school or small company). Usually in this case the various
>>users have different but similar IP addresses.
>
> It actually does not seem to be a floating IP, neither a political thing. He
> simply drops in meaningless chars instead of the original page, or redirects
> the page to the english edition (which does not work), his style seems to be
> pretty stable.  So you are likely to be right. It's a unique IP. Let's block
> it.
>
>
>>You will have to ask a Steward to make one (or more) of you a sysop.
>>They then have the ability to block an IP address, which means that no
>>edits can be done from that address.
>
>
> Yeap! I've asked for it some 10 days ago :) Still waiting for an answer :) I
> hoped that maybe there could be someone with that access here, and that they
> could terminate the guy for us, while we wait for operative indipendence :)
>
> B?rto

Err, not really. Your first request 10 days ago was incomplete. It
lacked the necessary links (which was understandable since the language
was not yet created... no project ---> no pages ---> no sysop). Jon
explained that to you.

Then, when the page was created (2 days ago), Jon explained to you we
usually wait 1 week before giving the status.

So, no, you are not waiting for an answer from steward... stewards are
waiting for any editor on your language answer on the matter :-)
Posting here will not make a difference ;-)

Now... let me tell you about all the tricks which will allow you to
survive .... in case of vandalism, ask temporary access here :
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_permissions#Current_temporary_permissions_for_emergency_or_technical_purposes

Cheers

Ant


body:
On 4/1/06, Philip Welch <wikipedia at philwelch.net> wrote:
> The number of bureaucrats should rise according to the amount of
> bureaucrat work required. Since bureaucrat work consists of user
> renames and admin promotions, then it's the rate of growth of admins,
> and not the number of admins, that should affect that.

Last month bureaucrats on en changed user rights 35 times, 22 of them
by Cecropia.

Last month bureaucrats on en renamed users 97 times, 62 of them by NichalP.

There is, so far as I know, no evidence of a backlog for either activity.

Seems like we don't need any more bureaucrats, and likely won't for
quite a while.

There are 862 admins, 267 of which performed no administrative actions
during the month of March.  I do have a list. :)

It's my impression that the 596 active admins (there is one admin,
Chuq, who did nothing in March but has used administrative rights at
least once in April) are more than we need, and in fact we could stand
to lose 100 to 200 of them without any serious impairment.

Kelly


body:
On 4/2/06, nwilkins at bu.edu <nwilkins at bu.edu> wrote:
> I closed quite a few this January without being blocked.  Including a few
> relatively controversial articles.  While I have since been informed that I
> shouldn't have closed those ones, nobody said anything about them to me at the
> time, much less blocked me.

There's no reason why a non-admin cannot close a keep, except that the
process wonks have decided that only an admin can do this, for no
reason that makes any sense to me.

Kelly


from_name: Alphax (Wikipedia email)

body:
Ilya N. wrote:
> On 3/31/06, uninvited at nerstrand.net <uninvited at nerstrand.net> wrote:
>>
>> While I don't necessarily believe that Tyrenius should be an admin a
>> this time, I do believe that he is justified in feeling unfairly
>> treated by the project.  The lack of consensus on a minimum number of
>> edits, and the ever-growing minimum in the minds of many, is
>> particularly a problem.  We used to require 500 edits.
>>
>
> Hell, we used to not require any. Then it became 200, slowly up to
> 500, and now i think you can't even get a signle support vote unless
> you've had 2000 edits and an even spread across namespace (as some
> have been voting jokingly: "not enough portal talk edits")
>
> I think this is becoming slightly ridiculous in some cases.
>

Note: today is April 2. Yesterday was April 1.

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

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from_name: Ray Saintonge

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

body:
Benjamin Webb wrote:

>What do you think of the idea of limiting information to the names of living
>people? If our database of people was large enough, then there will be quite
>a few people with the same names, but they are actually different people. If
>we do not publish extra information, such as date/place of birth etc, it
>would be impossible to find the right person, so the inclusion of his
>mothers maiden name will not pose such serious concerns.
>
At this early stage of things a conservative approach to this issue is
warranted. There are other issues that need to be tackled before we
refine the privacy matters.

I was looking through the rodovid file and encountered the entry

>
>         Jessie Harlan Lincoln (Beckwith, Johnson, Randolf) (* 6
>         November 1875 ? 4 January 1948)
>
This is trying to put too much into a heading. The additional married
names should not be part of the heading. It is nevertheless conceivable
that separate redirect entries could be created for the other names.

The asterisk and dagger are indeed standard symbols for birth and death,
but they are redundant when these events are implicit in the format. The
dagger could be retained for cases where only the death date is known.
The ISO date format (y-m-d) should be preferred. This will have the
effect of causing people with the same name to be automatically sorted
by date of birth. Thus the above example could be reduced to

>
>         Jessie Harlan Lincoln (1875-11-06 1948-01-04)
>
Ec


subject: [WikiEN-l] Fwd: unfair block

body:
jayjg wrote:
> Zadil is a highly disruptive editor trying to promote his original research
> notion that "Judaism is racist".
>

{{NPOV}}

s/original\ research/uncited\ and\ unverifiable/

--
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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list: wikitech-l

from_name: Adam Atlas

subject: [Wikitech-l] Extension problem

body:
I forgot to mention that this only happens when the extension calls
$wgOut->parse(). If I comment out those bits, the extension works
fine, even when a page includes multiple templates invoking it.


from_name: Cormac Lawler

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

body:
On 4/2/06, Gordon Joly <gordon.joly at pobox.com> wrote:
>
>
> Can I just add my name to the list who have complained in the past
> that Meta is not useful for some aspects of our work? I was concerned
> that information about the inception of "Wikimedia UK" was hard to
> find, duplicated etc. This meant that many volunteers who might have
> taken part got lost on the way or may never have known about the
> existence of the team (who worked very hard and drank some good "real
> ale" on Sunday afternoons:-)

That was good ale :-)

>
> The main difference between, say, IRC (and email) and a wiki is that
> a the former are linear (by timestamp) and the latter (a set of Wiki
> pages) is not.
>
> A recent example of "Wikimeia UK" existing on a island was that
> (previously discussed) total lack of any involvement from Welsh
> speakers, who may or may not live in Wales. If "Wikimedia UK" wants
> to be inclusive, and democratic, it has to open the doors a little
> wider, and not live in "Meta Space", but In Real Life.
>
> Hence, I would submit to you that Mediawiki 1.5.x and 1.6.x may not
> be the "magic bullet". A wiki is poor tool for many jobs.

But I don't understand what you're getting at here. As you remember,
information on Wikimedia UK was quite spread out - so I made a
navigational template (horrible at first - then a bit nicer).

The fact that people might not be using the Wikimedia UK pages (if
that's true) is a symptom of the fact that *we* haven't provided for
that. That's you, me, and the others who have been working on this
over the last few months. If you want to get participation of and
ideas from Welsh speakers, you use a variety of methods (email, wiki,
IRC, real-life meetings) and a variety of these mailing lists, wikis,
chatrooms and community gatherings to bring together some ideas. The
fact that it's not what we want it to be right now is nothing to do
with Meta *itself*.

Cormac

>
> --
> Gordo (aka LoopZilla)
> gordon.joly at pobox.com
> http://pobox.com/~gordo/
> http://www.loopzilla.org/
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] Use of English

body:
At 17:05 +0800 2/4/06, NSLE (Wikipedia) wrote:
>Besides, it's supposed to be simple. Unless you can think of something
>simpler?
>
>--NSLE

>  > > >
>>  > >>>   Newest changes
>  > > >

1)
Most recent changes

2)
Latest changes

3)
Recent changes

4)
Changes

5)
Changelog

6)
Latest updates

7)
Updates

8)
Recent updates

9)
Edit log

Gordo

--
"Think Feynman"/////////
http://pobox.com/~gordo/
gordon.joly at pobox.com///


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

body:
Ilmari Karonen wrote:

> So you're essentially proposing that candidates should only be nominated
>
>by someone who is already an admin, and that the nominating admin would
>be expected to carry out a background check on the nominee.
>
>That sounds like a reasonable proposal to me, for what little my opinion
>counts.  It's not as if anyone with the proverbial snowball's chance in
>hell of passing RfA couldn't find one _single_ admin to nominate them.
>
It sounds like the kind of reasonable proposal that most people will
agree to and ignore.  Either by ignoring the background check, or by not
bothering to make nominations.

Ec


subject: [WikiEN-l] Use of English

body:
>
>
>New, Newer newest. What's wrong with that?
>
>Mgm

Newer - of two

Newest - of three or more

Or is the job of "Simple" to invent new grammar rules for English as
she it wrote?

Gordo

--
"Think Feynman"/////////
http://pobox.com/~gordo/
gordon.joly at pobox.com///


from_name: Berto

body:
Hi!

>Err, not really. Your first request 10 days ago was incomplete. It
>lacked the necessary links (which was understandable since the language
>was not yet created... no project ---> no pages ---> no sysop). Jon
>explained that to you.

>Then, when the page was created (2 days ago), Jon explained to you we
>usually wait 1 week before giving the status.

>So, no, you are not waiting for an answer from steward... stewards are
>waiting for any editor on your language answer on the matter :-)
>Posting here will not make a difference ;-)
LOL yes... I wasn't actually trying to push the matters :) It's just that in
the last days I spent so much time on the wiki that my circadians rythms are
beginning to be shaky :) Normally I can count up to 10 :)))) Sometimes I
even reach eleven without mistakes :)))

>Now... let me tell you about all the tricks which will allow you to
>survive .... in case of vandalism, ask temporary access here :
>http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_permissions#Current_temporary_p
ermissions_for_emergency_or_technical_purposes

Thanks! It's what I needed :))

B?rto


body:
jayjg wrote:
> On 4/1/06, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
>> Steve Bennett wrote:
>>
>>> On 3/31/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>> The two year version is more likely to know why we are where we are
>>>> now. Admins who don't know this tend to cause interesting problems.
>>>> This can also be the case with returning admins. There are other
>>>> differences that are also likely to exist.
>>>>
>>>>
>>> Could a one month editor not be a good admin? If they could, then why
>>> do we have such prejudice against the idea?
>>>
>> A one-month editor could be a good admin.  What a minimum time rule
>> really tests is patience.  Is he willing to stick around when things get
>> tedious.  If he goes away when he doesn't get made a sysop right away
>> maybe he wasn't meant to be one.
>
>
> It tests more than patience.  A one-month editor might be a good admin, or
> might not.  It's really hard to tell. Aside from the issue mentioned before
> (people who are trying to get sockpuppet accounts to admin status), how do
> we know how the person will perform under pressure?  Does he really know the
> policies?  It's really hard to get to know anything about an editor after
> just one month, and it's not like we're suffering from a lack of admins - we
> have almost 900.
>

So, why do we still have backlogs?

Not all admins are active, and not all admins are suitable for all jobs.
Conversely, we have a lot of non-admins who *are* active, and are doing
jobs which admins aren't.

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

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from_name: jayjg

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

body:
On 3/31/06, WikiAardvark at butterflyfiles.cjb.net <
WikiAardvark at butterflyfiles.cjb.net> wrote:
>
> I've been blocked for a month from Wikipedia for personal attacks. Now, I
> do grant that a block was perhaps justified... but I also feel that a month
> is quite egregarious.
>
> Yes, I had stated my intention to go on wikibreak, but that isn't to say
> that I had not intended to come back from time to time, perhaps to comment
> on discussions or to perform some RC patrol on occasion.
>
> To be fair, I didn't necessarily handle the block appropriately, instead
> responding by creating (and using some existing) sockpuppets and posting
> responses laden with even more personal attacks to the relevant thread on
> WP:ANI. (Sockpuppets:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Wikipedia:Suspected_sockpuppets_of_Blu_Aardvark
> )
>
> However, I also believe that I had legitimate cause for upset, as I was
> responding in part to being accused of being a neo-Nazi/racist/anti-Semite.
> The statements that I was subjected to where highly offensive, and I
> responded in a very similar vein. This isn't to justify my actions, which,
> in retrospect, where clear violations of numerous policies, but nonetheless,
> I do want to make clear that, in part at least, my personal attacks were a
> response to what I felt were also personal attacks.
>
> I would like to request that my block be reduced to 24 or 48 hours,
> because, although I can grant that a block was appropriate, I do not believe
> that a block of one week (the initial length), or one month (the extended
> length after my response to an admin on my talk page) is appropriate. I do
> grant that my actions with sockpuppets may have ruined any chance at getting
> my block reduced to a more appropriate time frame, but I feel I must at the
> very least request it.

Actually, nobody accused you of being any of those thing's; they just
pointed out some rather unsavory comments you had made.  If you think those
comments made you look like a neo-Nazi/racist/anti-Semite, then perhaps you
should have thought twice before making them.

In any event, since that point you've used dozens of IPs to continue your
attacks, and deliberately vandalized WikiMedia and WikiCommons.  Are you
really suggesting that, at this point, you should be allowed to come back to
Wikipedia?

Jay.


from_name: Thommandel at aol.com

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

body:
In a message dated 4/2/2006 10:05:28 A.M. Central Daylight Time,
m.g.gallagher at student.canberra.edu.au writes:

G'day Thom,

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

If  that editor is a good Wikipedian --- and, being an administrator, we
should hope he is --- then it is entirely appropriate for him (or her)
to edit any article he (or she) damn well pleases.

        What if the editor only  thinks he is a good wikipedian, but in
reality
         by what he  does, is actually promoting a POV? How is that
determined?
        and where is the line  drawn between good editing and POV pushing?

It's called "writing from a  netural point-of-view", and some of us pride
ourselves on our ability to  do just that.

If a reader, a researcher say, accesses  the pages of standard and non-
        standard theories, what  kind of "neutrality" is he looking for? If
there is a
        controversy between  standard and non-standard, was it good editing
to
        remove that controversy  from the Wikientry?    Is it "neutral" for
an admin
        editor advocate of the  standard theory to write "non-standard
theories are
        widely discredited" on  the non-standard theory page?

You might as well ask if it's ethical for  me to edit an article about
Manchester United FC ...

        You are assuming "good Wikipedian"  but what about not-good
        Wikipedian  admin/editors? How do you  identify  them?
        For example, what  sort of evidence  would you want  if I were
        to present a case  against an aledged  wikiadmin pov  pusher?

tm


from_name: Mark Gallagher

body:
G'day Steve,

> On 4/1/06, charles matthews <charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com> wrote:
>
>>>Does the riot act say "team A is right", or does it say "I don't care
>>>who's right, play nicely please"?
>>
>>The latter. No personal attacks, for example.  It is a different matter when
>>an admin says this, compared to people going on about ad hominem in a
>>pot-kettle situation.
>
> Right, so having gotten an article to featured article status is not
> necessarily a useful training ground for being an admin? In the same
> way that being a great soccer player is not necessarily an advantage
> in being a great referee, or being a great pianist is not particularly
> useful in being a piano tuner...

It is not necessary to have been a good player to become a good referee;
or, indeed, to have played at all.  However, it helps ... oh, crikey,
does it help!  The more experience you can get with the game (in my
experience this applies to every game I've played or officiated), the
easier it is to officiate that game.  In a sporting context, being a
player yourself helps you understand what the players require from an
official, what things are trivial[0], what things are dangerous and tend
to upset players and need to be stamped on, and so on.  It is possible
to learn these things, but it takes time, and while you're busy trying
to work out what's expected of you your reputation suffers.

On Wikipedia this manifests itself differently.  Those of us of a
"process is descriptive, not prescriptive" bent like to see admins who
have a handle on the way Wikipedia works, who can be trusted to do what
seems best for the project (as opposed to just doing what policy says
or, worse, just doing what they feel like).  The more experience in the
different areas of Wikipedia one has, the better an admin they'll make.

RC patrol and stub-sorting produces awe-inspiring edit counts, but
doesn't really provide any real insight to how Wikipedia works.  Now, an
admin who becomes an admin solely on the strength of his vandal-fighting
abilities is fine, so long as he restricts himself to vandal-fighting
... and doesn't run off to speedy delete stuff that doesn't need
deleting, or close AfDs with "x% said delete/keep", or unblock patently
offensive usernames because "you need a better summary than 'username'",
or semi-protect pages because one vandal added 'poop' to the lede, or
apply indefinite range blocks, or ...

There are plenty of things a good editor might find useful about
adminship, and plenty of reasons why a good vandal-fighter might not be
a good admin.  Remember the CVU newbie syndrome from a while back?  "I
don't have a fucking clue about Wikipedia, but I'm good at whacking
newbies, so I should have admin tools!"

The more experience you get, the greater an understanding of the project
your receive, and (theoretically), the better an admin you are.  This
applies to all aspects of the project, whether you're stub-sorting, RC
patrolling, newpages patrolling, on the welcome committee, mediating,
working on the cleanup backlog, fixing typos, crafting FAs, or even just
simply editing for fun once in a while.  Administrator is a
Wikipedia-wide r?le, and not just the preserve of one aspect of the project.

[0] Some levels of football expect to be allowed to get away with a
     certain degree of holding, pushing, etc.  Some levels of softball
     expect some latitude with leaving the base early, pitching, etc.
     Some levels of netball expect you to go easy on the stepping,
     contact, etc.  And so on ... knowing which level expects what, and
     how much to allow and how much to come down hard, is vital to the
     game.  Be too strict, and you can kill the game.  Be too laid-back,
     and the players will take advantage of you.

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

--
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Checked by AVG Free Edition.
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from_name: Guettarda

subject: [WikiEN-l] Ethics

body:
On 4/2/06, Sean Barrett <sean at epoptic.org> wrote:
>
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
>
> Thommandel at aol.com stated for the record:
>
> > Is it ethical for an editor to support one viewpoint and then edit the
> > opposing viewpoint? Is it ethical for a supporter of the big bang to
> edit the
> > alternative plasma cosmology?
> >
> > tom
>
> Yes.  It is not only ethical, it is desired and expected.

The essence of NPOV is to be able to "write for your enemies".  It's a great
(and somewhat humbling) experience to write fairly about something you
disagree with or someone you dislike.

I suspect that it's more likely to be a problem to write for an idea you
support, because there's less reason to introspection...you tend to assume
you are right.

Ian


from_name: nwilkins at bu.edu

body:
Quoting wikien-l-request at Wikipedia.org:

>
> Message: 8
> Date: Sun, 2 Apr 2006 10:52:41 -0600
> From: "Kelly Martin" <kelly.lynn.martin at gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Analysis of Request for Adminship
> To: "English Wikipedia" <wikien-l at wikipedia.org>
> Message-ID:
> 	<bd4c411e0604020952s623ec6fr7b607a60bbe1e77f at mail.gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
>
> On 4/1/06, jayjg <jayjg99 at gmail.com> wrote:
> > What backlogs do we have that only admins can deal with?
>
> Indeed.  I'm not clear when the policy that a non-admin cannot
> close
> an AfD came into play, for example.  When I was first an admin, it
> was
> the case that non-admins could close AfDs, but it's my
> understanding
> now that a non-admin who attempts to close an AfD will probably get
> blocked.
>
> Kelly
>

I closed quite a few this January without being blocked.  Including a few
relatively controversial articles.  While I have since been informed that I
shouldn't have closed those ones, nobody said anything about them to me at the
time, much less blocked me.

-- Jonel


from_name: David Alexander Russell

body:
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How about just banning all sockpuppets?

Cynical

Ray Saintonge wrote:
> jayjg wrote:
>
>> There are people who are working towards getting several userids up to
>> admin
>>
>> status, doing uncontroverisal editing in areas they don't care about, so
>> that they can then use that status to enforce their views in areas which are
>> truly of concern to them.  This has been advertised and discussed on
>> off-Wikipedia fora.
>>
> Maybe we should simply ban socksysops.  Checkuser could be used to
> identify that kind of abuse.
>
> Ec
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>
>
>

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from_name: Aerik Sylvan

subject: [Wikitech-l] Specialpages and overdue note

body:
I must be completely stupid, but I can't seem to create a special page for
mediawiki 1.5.8 following any flavor of the instructions on Meta - Help!!!

On another note, I had previously been all excited about this theory that
spam would tend to be a lot of urls posted in a wiki (or accross several
wikis) and that posts of individual urls would be more likely to be
legitimate.  After mangling some data (an long overdue thatnks, Brion, for
the link to the catpcha log data) I quickly came to the conclusion that this
theory wasn't going to be useful - plenty of spam of one or two urls, and
some mulitple posts of legitimate urls.  Oh well... the captcha thing is a
great solution though.

So, if someone could steer me in the right direction on the special pages,
I'd be very grateful.

Thanks,
Aerik


subject: [WikiEN-l] emailing to "query being blocked"

body:
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A quick 'WHOIS' reveals that your IP is registered to Austin College.
Most colleges operate 'proxy' systems so that everyone accessing the
internet from that college will have the same IP address. The problem
this presents is that if ANYONE in your college vandalizes Wikipedia,
you will see the warning messages and suffer from the ban that has to be
imposed. There isn't a lot that can be done about this - all you can do
is wait for the ban to expire or try editing from a non-college computer

Cynical

Lauren Sweat wrote:
> This evening I saw something that I knew to be inaccurate on a Wikipedia
> page (namely on the *Starbucks* page).  I often visit Wikipedia, and enjoy
> reading it, but never before had I ever attempted to edit anything.  So I
> was really surprised when I clicked on the *edit* button and it send me to a
> page informing me that I was blocked.  I would like to find out why my I.P.
> address is associated with this event, and I appreciate your efforts in
> looking into this.
>
> *General info*:
>
> I do not have an account at this time, so no username.
>
> My I.P. address is *198.151.179.66*
> **
> Wikipedia says that I was blocked by *Refdoc* for "vandalism," but does not
> specify any further (i.e. what it was concerning).
>
>
> I would be really pleased if this could be sorted out/cleared up,
> explained, and I could then create an account with Wikipedia.  I really want
> to find out what this "block" is referring to.  Again, thank you for your
> time.
>
> -Lauren Sweat
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>
>
>

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from_name: Theresa Knott

body:
On 3/31/06, Thommandel at aol.com <Thommandel at aol.com> wrote:
> Is it ethical for a Wiki editor, who is also an admistrator,  to edit  both
> sides of an issue?

Yes

Theresa


from_name: Finlay Logan

subject: [WikiEN-l] Project proposal

body:
I think the modified proposal is really nifty. Yes, that's quite the
sort of thing I had in mind. And pinpointing the idea of an
"educational resource" is valuable in helping me describe exactly how
I'm thinking of this project.

To respond to some other people re: spamming. People can already do
that, but they don't, really. I'm going to take the optimistic view and
say this: that I intend only to add sources that I have read or am at
least familiar with, and to accompany the less obvious listings with a
short description. If someone posts a long list of sources with no
explanation, other editors can sift through them, adding commentary,
and removing the ones that seem truly spurious. This is how the rest of
WP works, I don't see that this will be much different.

-F

On Apr 2, 2006, at 2:43 PM, Cormac Lawler wrote:
>
> Hi Finlay,
>
> I think there's real merit to this idea, and, though I understand the
> previously mentioned problems of blindly adding books for the sake of
> it or adding books for commercial interest, this needn't deter people
> from building (and then accessing) a comprehensive bibliography on a
> given subject.
>
> I agree this could be done better in Wikipedia in general (though
> there are obvious good examples where this *is* done well). But I'm
> thinking this could fit quite well with Wikiversity (another proposed
> project), which will (amongst other things) assemble a network of
> references for further reading on a topic. You can see details for
> this project at:
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikiversity/Modified_project_proposal -
> though there is much more information on this (something I'm working
> on at the moment).
>
> What do you think?
>
> Cormac


from_name: Philip Welch

subject: [WikiEN-l] Britannica quote of the day

body:
On Mar 27, 2006, at 10:04 PM, Karl A. Krueger wrote:

>>>           PERS.2 == "Marking my work for censorship is picking a
>>> fight."
>>
>> How bizzarre.
>
> Not really.  How would you like it if someone went around to _your_
> contributions and marked them up in ways you found insulting and
> derogatory?  That would be a bad thing, and nobody should do it.  It
> would be disrespectful of you as a contributor, and it would also be a
> violation of Wikipedia policy.

If I wrote an article that had bare breasts, I wouldn't be in the
least offended if someone tagged it as "has bare breasts".

--
Philip L. Welch
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Philwelch


from_name: Elisabeth Bauer

body:
Cormac Lawler schrieb:

> The fact that people might not be using the Wikimedia UK pages (if
> that's true) is a symptom of the fact that *we* haven't provided for
> that. That's you, me, and the others who have been working on this
> over the last few months. If you want to get participation of and
> ideas from Welsh speakers, you use a variety of methods (email, wiki,
> IRC, real-life meetings) and a variety of these mailing lists, wikis,
> chatrooms and community gatherings to bring together some ideas. The
> fact that it's not what we want it to be right now is nothing to do
> with Meta *itself*.

When we started Wikimedia Deutschland, we decided to use meta-wiki to
host the wiki pages related to the verein instead of hosting them on the
german wikipedia. The effect: nothings happens there. I think
participation on these pages would have been much higher, had they been
in the german wikipedia. I don't know the situation for the other
chapters, but it might be similar.

So, it somehow _has_ to do with meta itself.

greetings,
elian


from_name: Michael Jennings

subject: [WikiEN-l] Use of English

body:
use regular verb only
use of <s>is</s> bees bad - verb bees to be so use no verb but regular
then angle-ish tongue be simple and clear
first get rid of not regular verbs
then go to work on whacko spelling

"NSLE (Wikipedia)" <nsle.wikipedia at gmail.com> wrote in message
news:4e1121f80604020105s70052e00p1bed6c04cb19ace6 at mail.gmail.com...
> Besides, it's supposed to be simple. Unless you can think of something
> simpler?
>
> --NSLE
>
> On 4/2/06, MacGyverMagic/Mgm <macgyvermagic at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> On 4/2/06, Gordon Joly <gordon.joly at pobox.com> wrote:
>> > At 09:27 +0100 2/4/06, Gordon Joly wrote:
>> > >I have just "discovered" the "Simple English Wikipedia"
>> > >
>> > >http://simple.wikipedia.org/
>> > >
>> > >
>> > >On the left, under "Navigation", I find
>> > >
>> > >>>   Newest changes
>> > >
>> > >I am very surprised to find this phrase here, since it is very poor
>> English!
>> > >
>