from_name: Guruprasad Baskaran

subject: [Foundation-l] Proposal:Consumer Wiki?

body:
Hi All!

This is my first post on the mailing list  and I am not sure if this is the
right mailing for this topic.

Actually I had two ideas

1)I have found that people tend to use the internet a lot to research about
about various products/services that they wish to buy.And as far as I know
most of the sites that offer information on the products or services are
commericial sites either hosted by the creator of the product or service or
by some other commercial site which would probably also be selling the
product, so there is no guarantee how unbiased the information is.So I was
wondering if we can create a web site which will have unbiased information
about all the products/services in the world, where users will create the
pages with product/service information , how good , how bad it is, what are
the alternatives, what price the user paid etc etc.Something similar to the
wikipedia site for knowledge where users can log in and edit.I have not
thought about the design of the web site, its just a rough idea so far, but
what do you people think?wouldnt it be great to have just one web site where
you can look up all the unbiased information of whatever product/service you
want to buy?

2)I was reading that wikimedia projects need lot of donations to support
hardware and software requirements for the staggering growth its
having.Iwas wondering if wikimedia could earn this money by itself for
example by
just showing some small non intrusive adds(like google adds) which are
selected in a fair fashion by a search algorithm(again its a rough idea not
sure how to do it yet), wouldnt that be good?Obviously all this money can be
pushed back into the primary goal of wikimediafoundation 'Imagine a world in
which every single person is given free access to the sum of all human
knowledge. That's what we're doing." wouldnt that make the
wikimediafoundation much more stronger to achieve its goal?Just a thought
what do you people think?

Thank you!

Regards
GP


list: wikimedia-l

source: pipermail-mbox

subject: [Foundation-l] Proposal:Consumer Wiki?


list: foundation-l

from_name: Aphaia

subject: [Foundation-l] Proposal: meta2

body:
Sorry but I can't get your point. What is related between the
read-only foundation wiki and your proposing meta2?

I'm afraid you only exposes now you fail to track meta activities
including its community's, vivid and dynamic.

aph

On 3/30/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> The Foundation wiki isn't a work wiki because nearly no-one can edit
> it, and those who can don't - for most people, it's basically a
> read-only website that happens to have Mediawiki behind it.
>
> I propose something called Meta2 which can actually be used as a work wiki.
>
>
> - d.
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>

--
Aphaea@*.wikipedia.org
email: Aphaia @ gmail (dot) com


subject: [Foundation-l] Proposal: meta2


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

body:
On 3/30/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> I also recall you attempting to delete the various test wikipedias
> from Meta, after they were told by Jimbo to set up there.

?????????????
???????????????????????????
???Test wiki ??????????????????????????????????????

>
> Jimbo said to Linuxbeak to go for it with this attempt to make Meta
> actually usable as a work wiki, and cautioned that many had foundered
> before. The reason becomes increasingly obvious. So I suggest a meta2
> be created as an actual current work wiki, and meta be kept with its
> primary function as an archive.
>
>
> - d.
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>

--
Aphaea@*.wikipedia.org
email: Aphaia @ gmail (dot) com


body:
On 3/30/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> Aphaia wrote:
>
> >I have been  claiming the page which contains the obscene word
> >mentioned should be deleted because of its obscenity and making
> >editors who are really working on there displeased.
>
>
> The word "dick"? As those of us who are native speakers of English
> suggested: how about moving the page to "Don't bowdlerise Meta."
>
> I recall you writing a long paragraph in Japanese explaining why this
> page in English should be deleted. Is that an example of the
> multilingual side of Meta, advocating deletion in a language the
> people you are replying to won't understand?

???????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????

????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????

?????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
--
Aphaea@*.wikipedia.org
email: Aphaia @ gmail (dot) com


from_name: Ray Saintonge

body:
Matt Brown wrote:

>On 3/29/06, Samuel Klein <meta.sj at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>>Yep, it's understandable.  They were listed for bulk deletion; there were
>>no active objections.  But a few hundred irreversible deletions, mixed w/
>>unusual article deletions, are unnerving as someone's first admin actions.
>>
>>
>Not so much when someone is accustomed to being an admin on another
>project and sees a job that needs to be done, I think.
>
>It seems that Meta is unused to people doing such things, which seems
>quite strange to me.
>
There's nothing strange about it.  You may have built trust in the other
project to enable you to do such things.  You can't assume that the
trust will transfer as easily as your interests.  Perhaps the members of
your new project have established different policies for such things.
Those policies could be diametrically different from the ones that you
are familiar with.

Ec


body:
Angela wrote:

>On 3/31/06, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
>
>
>>All Board members should have at least read access to ALL committee
>>archives.  It is a part of their duties as corporate directors to be
>>aware of issues when they arise.
>>
>>
>The committees are supposed to report to the Board about what they're
>doing. Shouldn't that prevent the need for us to read the mailing
>lists?
>
Not at all. Clearly you can't read everything.  Doing so would leave you
little time for anything else.  Nevertheless it should all be
immediately accessible to you when the circumstances require.  Most of
the time you you will only skim and spot-check the topics, and only need
to probe in depth when you see a potential danger.  That kind of
oversight keeps committees accountable, and protects the entire
community from committees which drift off in their own policy
direction.  If the activities of a committee are consistent with their
reports there is nothing to worry about.  I am sure that the corporate
world is full of sub-groups that gradually moved in the direction of
their own agendas, and left their directors unwittingly holding the
legal bag.

Ec


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Jan Vanoverpelt

subject: [Wikitech-l] Automatically put text on a non existing page?

body:
Hello,

Does MediaWiki allows to automatically put a certain text in advance on a
non-existing page? What I am trying to do is this: when users click on a
picture, a (link to a) new page is generated with the name
"{{PAGENAME}}-more-detailed-name".

Is it possible to already put automatically some text (e.g. "{{template}}")
on this new (non existing) page?

greetings,
JAN


list: wikien-l

from_name: Ryan Delaney

subject: [WikiEN-l] Fwd: Wikipedia e-mail

body:
According to admin Gator1, this IP is being used by a banned user. Best to
ask him about it.

Ryan

On 3/30/06, Sam Spade <samspade.thomasjefferson at googlemail.com> wrote:
>
> I got the below email, and am unable to help not being an admin.
> Please lend a hand. I know nothing of the particulars, btw.
>
> Sam Spade
>
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: TroyVaughn <flammarion42 at hotmail.com>
> Date: Mar 30, 2006 9:13 PM
> Subject: Wikipedia e-mail
> To: Sam Spade <samspade.thomasjefferson at gmail.com>
>
>
>
> 82.15.17.152 is the IP of one of the computers at the community
> lending library in Belfast City, N. Ireland. Blocking it prevents
> other users from the privilege of editing Wikipedia articles. Please
> unblock, I promise not to post anything in the articles I was
> previously active at anymore.
>
> Thank you.
> _______________________________________________
> 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: Jean-Baptiste Soufron

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

body:
We'll see. We gave a lot to make it possible for this project to re-
start. Let's give it a try.

Best,

JBS

Le 30 mars 06 ? 16:25, dake a ?crit :

>>
>> After analyzing the data contained in the fr.wikiquote site, the
>> Wikimedia Foundation has determined that the material stored in the
>> fr.wikiquote database does not provide the basic assurance of legal
>> soundness necessary to the permanence of the project. Therefore, the
>> site will be entirely taken down to be erased and relaunched. A
>> policy requiring greater traceability of quotations will be put in
>> place on fr.wikiquote version II. This action has been taken for the
>> benefit of all Wikimedia Foundation projects.
>> Translations can be made into other languages after the announcement
>> for the benefit of Wikiquotes in other languages that may be
>> interested. Any such translations should if possible work from the
>> original French text, this is a French announcement.
>
> Are you sure it is a good idea to reopen fr.wikiquote ? Look at the
> history.. most contributors are IP, there is no regular control by
> users.. In other words, the wikiquote community is insufficient to
> fullfil the legal criterias you mentionned above. In one year or
> so, you
> will have to delete the DB again.
>
> The site should be kept closed until a trusty group of people show
> some
> interest in this project. Afaik, there is no such group atm.
>
> -dake
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

Jean-Baptiste Soufron
cersa-cnrs paris 2
+33 (0)6 17 96 24 57
http://soufron.typhon.net


from_name: Angela

subject: [WikiEN-l] Neal Horsley explains: "Why I Am Suing Wikipedia "

body:
> No trace of 'Horsley' on any emails that have reached WikiEN-l

There were also none in any of the OTRS queues I monitor until March
29 when he sent one mail to info-en. He hasn't mailed the Board at
all.

Angela.


from_name: Anthere

body:
Matt Brown wrote:
> On 3/30/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>Certainly. Have meta and enjoy it as a separate community increasingly
>>unusable by any other, as is working so well for Commons, rather than
>>the service project it purports to be; just stop representing it as
>>such, because it simply isn't.
>
>
> Am I right in feeling that a lot of your frustration here, David, is
> that you feel that Meta and Commons were not supposed to be
> 'communities' at all?  That they were supposed to be shared project
> space and managed as such?
>
> -Matt

Your comment reminds me of several disagreements which boiled up with
wikibooks. Last summer, a few users started kicking off wikiversity out
of wikibooks quite vigorously. More recently, it was the Wikimania
proceedings.

And actually... Robert made a comment where I really think he had a
point. He said he had the feeling some of us could not easily accept
that there was a community on wikibooks, that people outside wikibooks
could not just do of Wikibooks whatever they felt like. He insisted that
the project had its own community and its own rules. Which is true. We
tend to forget this. The weight of the big Wikipedia brother :-(

Ant


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Patrick Hall

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

body:
On 3/30/06, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com> wrote:
> One way is posting flyers at universities and other intellectual
> "hotspots". The Icelandic Wikipedia had printable fliers a while back
> for people to post around your school, they were neat, and could
> probably very easily be adapted to any other language. (sort of like,
> "Come help us build the first free online encyclopedia in Icelandic"
> or something like that).

Is this flyer still available online somewhere? I think that's a great
idea, I'd like to take a look at it.

I've been thinking about doing something similar in my area, which is
pretty multilingual. I know several people offhand who could probably
be persuaded to translate the flier, assuming it's a short document.

Plenty of places to post them, as well -- most coffee places have
community bulletin boards, so do libraries.

Pat
--
?6u?sn?? s? ?po??un


from_name: Sam Korn

body:
On 3/30/06, amgine at saewyc.net <amgine at saewyc.net> wrote:
> I think this response neatly proves Angela's point: en.Wikipedia is not
> interested in collaboration, but wishes to have a separate wiki for itself

Please, please don't generalise like this.  Many people who discovered
enwiki first are greatly interested in other projects and in
collaboration.  I know many *do* collaborate.  Others support
collaboration but are unable to assist themselves, being without
sufficient time or linguisitic ability (I myself fall into the
not-enough-time category).

While I can see your grievances with certain enwiki users' actions,
please don't assume that all enwiki users are against inter-project
collaboration.

And I think you'll agree that Linuxbeak's aims -- to make Meta more
usable -- are in themselves healthy.  You may disagree with his
methods and his vision of a more usable Meta, but not with the aims in
themselves.

--
Sam


from_name: Violet/Riga

subject: [WikiEN-l] Overly lengthy blocks

body:
I've given up editing from work as I have to unblock the shared IP every
time I want to rollback some vandalism.  Frankly I think that it's pathetic
that this known issue has never been resolved.

violet/riga


from_name: Erik Moeller

body:
On 3/30/06, Jean-Baptiste Soufron <jbsoufron at gmail.com> wrote:
> We'll see. We gave a lot to make it possible for this project to re-
> start. Let's give it a try.

Perhaps it should go through a similar process like the Wikinewses
first - have a list of people on Meta who are willing to work on the
project, and maybe even some of the key policies written before the
project is launched. I would certainly advise to have a discussion
about this before setting up the wiki.

Erik


from_name: Platonides

subject: [Wikitech-l] What is the wpSummary for ?

body:
You can see it if you go to the page history. It's intended to give you
tricks about what was changed on that revision.
Plus, if you are creating a new section, it gets that field's title.

"chris2fr" <contact at infopol.fr> escribi? en el
mensaje news:442A4E23.2030105 at infopol.fr...
> If I fill out the wpSummary field, nothing seems to be done with it.
> What is this feild for ?


from_name: Kelly Martin

subject: [WikiEN-l] Fwd: Wikipedia e-mail

body:
This IP is being used almost exclusively by a single editor who is
currently blocked indefinitely.  There are no other recent edits from
this IP except by this editor and anonymous edits matching the blocked
editor's style.  It seems likely that the person complaining to Mr.
Spade is likely the editor who has been blocked, quite legitimately by
the looks of it.

Kelly

On 3/30/06, Ryan Delaney <ryan.delaney at gmail.com> wrote:
> According to admin Gator1, this IP is being used by a banned user. Best to
> ask him about it.
>
> Ryan
>
> On 3/30/06, Sam Spade <samspade.thomasjefferson at googlemail.com> wrote:
> >
> > I got the below email, and am unable to help not being an admin.
> > Please lend a hand. I know nothing of the particulars, btw.
> >
> > Sam Spade
> >
> > ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> > From: TroyVaughn <flammarion42 at hotmail.com>
> > Date: Mar 30, 2006 9:13 PM
> > Subject: Wikipedia e-mail
> > To: Sam Spade <samspade.thomasjefferson at gmail.com>
> >
> >
> >
> > 82.15.17.152 is the IP of one of the computers at the community
> > lending library in Belfast City, N. Ireland. Blocking it prevents
> > other users from the privilege of editing Wikipedia articles. Please
> > unblock, I promise not to post anything in the articles I was
> > previously active at anymore.
> >
> > Thank you.
> > _______________________________________________
> > WikiEN-l mailing list
> > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> > To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
> >
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


subject:
[Wikipedia-l] tiki-install.php will not create all tables in
	tiki mysql db

body:
Dear Mr Baumann

You have written to a mailing list for Wikipedia, which is run on
MediaWiki software, not TikiWiki.  I suggest you look at tikiwiki.org,
or install MediaWiki, which works ;-).

Yours,
Sam Korn

On 3/30/06, tba <thomas.baumann at ch.thalesgroup.com> wrote:
>
> Hi all
> I'm new to tikiwiki
> I downloaded the latest version tikiwiki (tikiwiki-1.9.2.zip)
> followed all th instruction:
> - installed apache version 2.0.55
> - installed php version 4.4.2
> - installed mysql DB version 5.0.19
> - installed phpMyAdmin version 2.8.0
>
> Now, after all this when I point my browser to the tiki-install.php and
> select to create the default db the following tables are not created:
>
> tiki_articles
> tiki_submissions
>
> The error displayed:
>
> Message: You have an error in your SQL syntax; check the manual that
> corresponds to your MySQL server version for the right syntax to use near
> 'reads int(14) default NULL,
>   votes int(8) default NULL,
>   poi
>
> Do I have to downgrade the server? Or where can the problem be situated?
>
> Any help is welcome
> Thanx
>
> th*
>
> --
> View this message in context: http://www.nabble.com/tiki-install.php-will-not-create-all-tables-in-tiki-mysql-db-t1370723.html#a3677240
> Sent from the Wikipedia General forum at Nabble.com.
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

--
Sam


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

body:
What would *exactly* be on the english meta ?

What would editors do there ?

How would we handle duplications with meta ?

I can see some benefits for an english meta, but if the only arguments
to set up one are
1) editors will have the benefits of following english wikipedia rules
----> what about the other projects in english ?
2) that meta will be clean of any historical pages (most of them
actually being from english editors...)
I would say that might not be sufficient.

Anthere

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.)
>
> Alex Schenck <linuxbeak at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>A.) It would be heavily based upon most of the policies from en.wikipedia.
>>Some things can change, but it will be a site designed with the purpose of
>>being an extention of en.wikipedia instead of an entirely separate project.
>>Meta2 will exist for Wikipedia instead of being a standalone project.
>
>
> Does the community on the English Wikipedia need or want to be
> expanded in this way?
>
> There has always been some opposition to moving anything to meta
> (though perhaps single login will alleviate some of the concerns).
>
> There is currently confusion about what should be on the English
> Wikipedia and what should be on meta. "Don't be a dick" is on meta,
> but "Wikipedia:Complete bollocks" is on Wikipedia. Recentism is on
> Wikipedia, deletionism is on meta.
>
> Is
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Wikipedia_essays
> supposed to be different to
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Essays ?
>
> Are chess, quizzes, and humor pages supposed to be on meta or en?
> (They're currently on both).
>
> Are you suggesting that all of this stuff would move to Meta2? Is
> there any advantage to that? Is there likely to be any agreement about
> it within the English Wikipedia community?
>
> Angela.
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Gabriel Wicke

subject:
[Wikitech-l] [MediaWiki-CVS] phase3/includes Parser.php, 1.602,
	1.603

body:
On Wed, 2006-03-29 at 18:48 +0000, ?var Arnfj?r? Bjarmason wrote:

> Thus what I'm asking you to do is go over the test cases that were
> solved with your fix(es) and add new ones that do fail if you didn't
> solve the real problem they were supposed to test for (e.g. if it
> tested whether the parser can balance tags and you only fixed
>  or some other things like that), because having a test
> suite that passes when we still have some core parsing problems
> doesn't mean that we have a decent parser, it means that the test
> suite has become worthless.

?var,

i do not agree that the test suite has become worthless- it currently
provides 301 regression tests and a sound specification on what a future
parser needs to do. Any drop-in replacement parser will have to pass the
same tests as the current one, plus more tricky ones.

Having many failing tests to document obvious and known shortcomings
that won't be fixed without a rewrite tends to decrease the motivation
to run the test suite and distracts from important regressions. Who
cares if there are 50 or 52 failing tests? Having all tests pass and
then suddenly two fail generates far more attention.

In my opinion deep structural shortcomings are better documented in
other places (bug reports and design documents come to mind) or in
not-yet-implemented/wishlist tests that are not run by default, but can
be enabled with a switch to test new features or implementations.

In XP, unit tests are mainly a way to enable changes without having to
worry too much about unforeseen consequences- if the tests pass, you
should be fine. Having all tests pass does not mean that the product is
perfect. It only means the product is doing what the tests specify and
nothing about what they don't specify.
--
Gabriel Wicke
MediaWiki hosting, support and development
http://wikidev.net wicke at wikidev.net
Phone +49 (0)431-5569001, Mob +49 (0)177 2065127
Eckernf?rder Str.58, 24116 Kiel


from_name: Ilmari Karonen

subject: [WikiEN-l] Overly lengthy blocks

body:
Violet/Riga wrote:
> I've given up editing from work as I have to unblock the shared IP every
> time I want to rollback some vandalism.  Frankly I think that it's pathetic
> that this known issue has never been resolved.

That would be 217.33.74.20, right?  I think that would be an excellent
candidate for the "semi-blocks" discussed in another thread.  In the
meanwhile, if it's a web proxy (not a firewall or router) and has been
configured to provide X-Forwarded-For headers, it could perhaps be
included in the [[meta:XFF project]].  (Having reverse DNS would help,
though, but at least the whois records look correct.)

--
Ilmari Karonen


from_name: Steve Bennett

body:
Hi,
  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?

Wouldn't a new namespace (or even re-use of existing wikipedia:
namespace) handle that?

Steve

On 3/30/06, Anthere <Anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>
> What would *exactly* be on the english meta ?
>
> What would editors do there ?
>
> How would we handle duplications with meta ?
>
> I can see some benefits for an english meta, but if the only arguments
> to set up one are
> 1) editors will have the benefits of following english wikipedia rules
> ----> what about the other projects in english ?
> 2) that meta will be clean of any historical pages (most of them
> actually being from english editors...)
> I would say that might not be sufficient.
>
> Anthere
>
>
> 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.)
> >
> > Alex Schenck <linuxbeak at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >>A.) It would be heavily based upon most of the policies from en.wikipedia.
> >>Some things can change, but it will be a site designed with the purpose of
> >>being an extention of en.wikipedia instead of an entirely separate project.
> >>Meta2 will exist for Wikipedia instead of being a standalone project.
> >
> >
> > Does the community on the English Wikipedia need or want to be
> > expanded in this way?
> >
> > There has always been some opposition to moving anything to meta
> > (though perhaps single login will alleviate some of the concerns).
> >
> > There is currently confusion about what should be on the English
> > Wikipedia and what should be on meta. "Don't be a dick" is on meta,
> > but "Wikipedia:Complete bollocks" is on Wikipedia. Recentism is on
> > Wikipedia, deletionism is on meta.
> >
> > Is
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Wikipedia_essays
> > supposed to be different to
> > http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Essays ?
> >
> > Are chess, quizzes, and humor pages supposed to be on meta or en?
> > (They're currently on both).
> >
> > Are you suggesting that all of this stuff would move to Meta2? Is
> > there any advantage to that? Is there likely to be any agreement about
> > it within the English Wikipedia community?
> >
> > Angela.
> > _______________________________________________
> > WikiEN-l mailing list
> > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> > To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
> >
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


body:
On 3/30/06, Gabriel Wicke <lists at wikidev.net> wrote:
> Having many failing tests to document obvious and known shortcomings
> that won't be fixed without a rewrite tends to decrease the motivation
> to run the test suite and distracts from important regressions. Who
> cares if there are 50 or 52 failing tests? Having all tests pass and
> then suddenly two fail generates far more attention.

I agree. I was a bit shocked when I started receiving "20 tests
failed" messages - normally a failed regression test is a cause for
serious alarm.

On the other hand, you could definitely create tests for features that
have not been implemented, and run them separtely, perhaps replacing
"FAILED" with "Sorry, not yet".

Steve


from_name: David Gerard

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

body:
>  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.


from_name: John Lee

subject: [WikiEN-l] (No subject)

body:
Mark Wagner wrote:

>
>What about articles like [[Latin profanity]]?  Last I checked, that
>article had an image near the top that's certain to trigger comments
>and questions from co-workers, but at the same time, no red-flag
>categories, and a title that sounds linguistics-related.
>
>--
>Mark
>[[User:Carnildo]]
>
>
Surely [[Category:Profanity]] would do the trick?

John


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] Towards arbitrary client-side JavaScript execution

body:
Nick Jenkins wrote:
> * Why does MediaWiki ever allow unescaped ">" characters? This
> behaviour seem to increase the chances of a JavaScript security
> problem.

It doesn't, modulo uncaught bugs.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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from_name: Ray Saintonge

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

body:
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

Benjamin Webb wrote:

>Hmm. Well Rodovid is designed to have a My Tree button, so would it be
>alright to have information about yourself? The current policy on
>Rodovid is ask permision if you are going to include living people. By
>default living people are not imported during a GEDCOM inport. What do
>you think of this? What must we do by law, because that is most
>important, although it would be best to have better privacy.
>
>On 29/03/06, Robert Scott Horning <robert_horning at netzero.net> wrote:
>
>
>>Ray Saintonge wrote:
>>
>>
>>>This strikes me as somewhat irresponsible.  Some GEDCOM files are huge.
>>>Are you suggesting that we just accept them as valid without any
>>>standards for verifiability?  We also need to address the privacy
>>>issues.  The copyright question may turn out to be a less critical problem.
>>>
>>>
>>The best privacy policy I've seen regarding geneological information is
>>to not list anybody who is currently alive, or in other words does not
>>have a listed death date and is less than 110 years old, under the
>>assumption that people over 110 years of age are so unusual that they
>>deserve special mention anyway, or can be generally assumed to be dead.
>> I think it might be safer for 120 years instead, but that is a fine
>>point to quibble here.
>>
>>Some exceptions might happen for very famous people, but that is
>>certainly something to express concern over.  It is also something that
>>can be automated directly in the software if a policy is set up, where
>>the information can be added but not displayed if it fails the living
>>person criteria.
>>
>>A good point to raise, however.
>>
>>


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

body:
Ec wrote:
>David Gerard wrote:
>>Aphaia wrote:

>>>I have been  claiming the page which contains the obscene word
>>>mentioned should be deleted because of its obscenity and making
>>>editors who are really working on there displeased.

>>The word "dick"? As those of us who are native speakers of English
>>suggested: how about moving the page to "Don't bowdlerise Meta."

>A euphemism of a euphmism!
>I've always viewed "Don't be a dick," as a >polite way of saying "Don't
>be an asshole." :-)

As the page now points out, the original term was actually "fuckhead",
as per http://thingy.apana.org.au/~fun/fuckhead.html .

- d.


from_name: Alphax (Wikipedia email)

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

body:
Sean Barrett wrote:
> charles matthews stated for the record:
>
>
>>>"Steve Bennett"  wrote
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>>And notice that my example was objective: "naked breasts".
>>>>Yours is subjective: "offensive". Kind of logical that a subjective
>>>>term is hard to apply objectively.
>>>
>>>
>>>Naked breasts - the last thing young kids should be exposed to.  No, wait.
>>>The first thing young kids should be exposed to.  No, wait, the breasts
>>>should be exposed to the kid, but one at a time.  Good thing newborns have
>>>good enough grasp of subjectivity and objectivity not to be confused.  Or
>>>offended.  No wait, they grasp fingers, but I think they don't really grasp
>>>... never mind, the confusion seems to lie elsewhere ...
>>>
>>>Charles
>
>
> Charles, Charles, Charles.  That is such a straw man.  Everyone knows
> that it is (are?) only pert, young, virginal breasts that kids must not
> see.  It is perfectly all right to expose children to breasts (or vice
> versa) /as long as they are lactating/ (the breasts, not the children).
>

So, a girl can't look at her own breasts then.

--
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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body:
Nick Jenkins wrote:
> ---------------------------------------------------------
> {| WIDTH=[[image:ftp://~
> {| ALIGN='''~~~</math>
> {| BGCOLOR=
> ---------------------------------------------------------
>
> Which will give this HTML output:
> ---------------------------------------------------------
> <table width="[[image:
> <table align="


from_name: Walter Vermeir

subject: [Foundation-l] this is not a joke (Re: Redémarrage du Wikiquote Francophone / French Wikiquote Relaunch)

body:
Jean-Baptiste Soufron schreef:
[cut]
> soundness necessary to the permanence of the project. Therefore, the
> site will be entirely taken down to be erased and relaunched. A
[cut]

I have received some responds from people who are under the impression
that this is an April Fool's Day joke of the Wikimedia Foundation to the
community.

I can assure you as a member of the WMF communications committee that
this is not a joke.

Greetings,
[[meta:user:Walter]]

--
Ook een artikeltje schrijven? WikipediaNL, de vrije GNU/FDL encyclopedie
http://www.wikipedia.be


from_name: Delphine Ménard

body:
On 3/30/06, Erik Moeller <eloquence at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 3/30/06, Jean-Baptiste Soufron <jbsoufron at gmail.com> wrote:
> > We'll see. We gave a lot to make it possible for this project to re-
> > start. Let's give it a try.
>
> Perhaps it should go through a similar process like the Wikinewses
> first - have a list of people on Meta who are willing to work on the
> project, and maybe even some of the key policies written before the
> project is launched. I would certainly advise to have a discussion
> about this before setting up the wiki.

Seconded. The rules are ready and drastic, but the difficulty will be
to enforce them. And that cannot be done without dedicated people
willing to spend time doing it.

Delphine
--
~notafish


from_name: Sam Spade

subject: [WikiEN-l] Fwd: Wikipedia e-mail

body:
I got the below email, and am unable to help not being an admin.
Please lend a hand. I know nothing of the particulars, btw.

Sam Spade

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: TroyVaughn <flammarion42 at hotmail.com>
Date: Mar 30, 2006 9:13 PM
Subject: Wikipedia e-mail
To: Sam Spade <samspade.thomasjefferson at gmail.com>

82.15.17.152 is the IP of one of the computers at the community
lending library in Belfast City, N. Ireland. Blocking it prevents
other users from the privilege of editing Wikipedia articles. Please
unblock, I promise not to post anything in the articles I was
previously active at anymore.

Thank you.


from_name: Neil Harris

subject:
[Wikitech-l] [MediaWiki-CVS] phase3/includes Parser.php, 1.602,
 1.603

body:
Gabriel Wicke wrote:
> On Sun, 2006-03-26 at 03:08 +0000, ?var Arnfj?r? Bjarmason wrote:
>
>
>> This fixes the "Bug 2702: Mismatched <i>, <b> and <a> tags are
>> invalid" test case but it's not really an improvement. The test case
>> was supposed to demonstrate that we don't balance tags, which this
>> doesn't fix, it merely hacks around very specific cases with regular
>> expressions which fail if you insert more tags which would be fixed in
>> a parser that balanced tags properly.
>>
>> I'm all for fixing the parser, but it's not an improvement to make
>> that parser test cases we have pass by basically writing a hack in the
>> parser to make just that test pass rather than fixing the core issue.
>>
>
> ?var,
>
> i'm the last one to disagree with you about the core issue.
> I did start an (unfinished) attempt to write a Bison-based parser, and i
> added tidy support to MediaWiki to get at least close to xhtml.
> Timwi and others got further with the flexbisonparse module in CVS.
>
> But still as it stands the parser in use is a sophisticated regexp
> collection.
>
> While i would welcome all effort being directed towards a proper
> solution of the core issue this is simply not happening right now, for
> various reasons. Shifting the focus of MediaWiki development from the
> current parser to a better solution is difficult at best, i doubt
> anything short of doing the full implementation or funding it will do. I
> would love to be wrong on this though, and i would really like to work
> on such a parser.
>
> My task at hand was to fix bugs in the current parser, not working on a
> replacement for it. The change above makes MediaWiki-generated (x)html
> slightly less invalid, so i consider it an improvement overall.
>
Has anyone considered using a packrat parser for implementing MediaWiki
parsing? Packrat parsers use simple grammar-driven top-down recursion,
are naturally ambiguity-resolving, and use memoization to prevent the
otherwise inevitable combinatorial explosion. They are quite
fast-running and yet easy to write, and are much easier to understand
and hack than most compiler-compiler-style parsers.

-- Neil


from_name: Cormac Lawler

body:
On 3/31/06, Anthere <Anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> David Gerard wrote:
> > 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.
>
> Yup.
>

Eh no, I don't think this project's people are a bunch of dicks for
trying - I just resent the attitude that's been shown to Meta in the
last few days. Sure, improve it, but that's no reason to lambaste its
community, or make false claims about it. (David, you still haven't
addressed my questioning of how historical pages make Meta unusable).
Anyway, some of this project's members are doing good work, and I
commend them.

Cormac


from_name: V. Ivanov

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Mediametry survey (was )Re: Language versions'
	popularity vs. number of articles...)

body:
Loi,

I think, it's really good for the community that we have no reliable
statistics on "language popularity" and article popularity. Otherwise
there would be inevitable talks like "let's close this or that wiki,
it's a place visited by a couple of same people" (I've already heard
similar ideas about the wp-s edited by one to few editors).

In the recent environment smaller language wikipedias can feel like
really equal parts of the community -- and that's great. The same
about the larger language wikipedias, when the language users have not
come into the Internet massively yet.

Sl./ru:User:Amikeco

2006/3/29, Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com>:
> Not at this time. At our traffic level, web server logs are too large to handle
> comfortably without a dedicated infrastructure, and we've been forced to simply
> disable them until something easier to handle gets set up.
>
> (If we were an ad-supported site, such statistics would be much much more
> important and we'd have put in the time and money for it a lot sooner.)
>
> > BTW, if we want to know the popularity of an specific article (not a
> > specific wikipedia), is there a tool for that?
>
> Not really, sorry.
>
> -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

--
Esperu cxiam!


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

body:
Anthere wrote:

>I am glad :-)
>You admitted there was a meta community ;-)
>Note : a *meta* community, not a *wiki* community ;-)
>Thanks David

Evidently - those who've been around Wikipedia->Wikimedia so long they
know their way around and react with perplexing accusations [1] to
anyone pointing out that its present organisation is misleading and
confusing. So what then makes Meta a work wiki, if (as you said [2] )
they don't do the actual work on Meta?

- d.

[1] http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Meta:Requests_for_adminship&diff=316894&oldid=316849
(you answering a simple question with a long, long paragraph of
perplexing accusations and not answering the fairly simple question
asked)
[2] http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Meta:Requests_for_adminship&diff=317353&oldid=317213
(me quoting you from IRC)


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


from_name: Erik Moeller

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

body:
On 3/30/06, Angela <beesley at gmail.com> wrote:
> The committees are supposed to report to the Board about what they're
> doing. Shouldn't that prevent the need for us to read the mailing
> lists?

The fact that you have access to a mailing list doesn't mean that you
have to read it :-). It just means that, when someone mentions (as
happened in this thread) that there was a particular discussion
happening on this or that private list, you should be able to take a
look at it without asking for permission. And I absolutely think that
Board members should be able to do that. This may change when we have
people on the Board in representative roles and a separate Executive
Committee, but for now, there is no such distinction.

Erik


body:
How one can keep in touch with the work of the committee?

Another question: can somebody take the effort to summarize all the
great ideas about promoting a smaller wp that have sounded in this
discussion (and probably the others)? Enthusiasts of new and smaller
wikipedias might be glad to find such a text.

ru/os:User:Amikeco

2006/3/29, Erik Moeller <eloquence at gmail.com>:
> The new Communications Committee might be able to help with raising
> Wikipedia-awareness in specific countries:
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Communications_committee

--
Esperu cxiam!


body:
>Sure, improve it, but that's no reason to lambaste its
>community, or make false claims about it. (David, you still haven't
>addressed my questioning of how historical pages make Meta unusable).

Because you can't tell what on earth is active and what isn't. e.g. Is
[[Meta:Babel]] active? It's supposed to be the Village Pump of Meta. I
see tumbleweeds blow past. e.g. Is [[m:RFA]] checked at all on any
regular basis? The bureaucrats were notable by their complete absence
until Linuxbeak ran for bureaucrat, which appeared to cause a sudden
flurry of activity and declarations that there were enough bureaucrats
on Meta, even though there was visibly no-one minding the store. That
sort of thing. I've given both these examples before on the wiki,
though not here (my apologies).

Note, by the way, that everyone listed on [[WM:OM]] are individuals -
despite, e.g. Anthere answering one person [1] with a reply to what
someone else said [2]. So, e.g., Linuxbeak's list of things he wants
isn't mine (e.g. an en: only meta).

I will note also that the incumbents have successfully driven out at
least some of the "insurgents" [3]. Are you proud? If not, why?

- d.

(I'm giving references because people are too often claiming not to
know what I'm talking about in this discussion.)

[1] http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Meta_talk:MetaProject_to_Overhaul_Meta&diff=316433&oldid=316395
[2] http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Meta_talk:MetaProject_to_Overhaul_Meta&diff=315566&oldid=314729
- I do agree this was inappropriate, but it does help not to answer
the wrong person, as if everyone involved is a single entity.
[3] http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Meta:MetaProject_to_Overhaul_Meta&diff=316383&oldid=316371


from_name: geni

body:
If the locals are causeing problems just speed up the process of
shifting most of the interproject stuff over to en where a lot of the
interproject comunication takes place anyway.

--
geni


from_name: Anthere

body:
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?

Uh. No.
The proposal born from the fact several editors from the english
wikipedia recently decided to entirely fix meta as they believed it was
best. THeir work to categorize meta generally met approval. Their work
to clean meta (understand speedy delete) generally met opprobe.

So, we are trying to find a common ground so that both deletionnists
(the group of newcomers) and inclusionnists (meta people) be both happy.

> 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.

POV :-)

> 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.

Yup.

> 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.

Uh ?

David is slightly arranging propositions the way he sees fit. No, meta
incumbents have not decided in any way that it was a proposal for
en:wikipedia. "Meta incumbents" are probably quite perplex with the
proposal at all...

Let me copy here LinuxBeak proposal so that you understand better...

Alex writes

Well, besides from being a clean canvas that we can work from, it would
boast some things that Meta currently does not:

A.) It would be heavily based upon most of the policies from en.wikipedia.
Some things can change, but it will be a site designed with the purpose of
being an extention of en.wikipedia instead of an entirely separate project.
Meta2 will exist for Wikipedia instead of being a standalone project.

B.) Seeing that it is being built from the ground up, it will be several
exponential degrees easier to keep things organized in a clear and concise
manner. Read: categorization.

C.) It would be much cleaner and accessible by regular Wikipedians. Meta as
it stands right now frightens many people on en. I know... I've talked to
them.

D.) Old material three years from now would be in a category called
"archive" or something akin.

E.) It would have the potential expandability that Meta boasts, except in a
more defined and controlable setting.

--Alex

> 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.

I am glad :-)
You admitted there was a meta community ;-)
Note : a *meta* community, not a *wiki* community ;-)
Thanks David

ant


from_name: Justin Cormack

body:
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


body:
On 3/31/06, Justin Cormack <justin at specialbusservice.com> 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

No if it is pure En it should probably be in the wikipedia namespace.

--
geni


body:
On 3/31/06, Matt Brown <morven at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 3/30/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> > No if it is pure En it should probably be in the wikipedia namespace.
>
> Unfortunately, people have gone through 'Essays should be in userspace
> or on Meta:' rampages before on En:.
>
> -Matt

Yeah but now [[Wikipedia:Process is Important]] and [[WP:SNOW]] have a
fairly solid position there I doubt anyone will suceed in future.

--
geni


from_name: Angela

body:
I wonder if what you're looking for with Meta2 is actually a meta for
the English Wikipedia. I'm not saying that as a criticism since it
might actually be a useful thing, but would certainly be something
very different to the existing meta which is a
cross-wiki/project/language area.

How would Meta2 differ from the current meta other than just being
new? And what happens in 3 years time when the content on that is
"historical" as well?

How does the existence of an essay prevent whatever "work" you think
meta should be used for?

Angela.


body:
(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.)

Alex Schenck <linuxbeak at gmail.com> wrote:
> A.) It would be heavily based upon most of the policies from en.wikipedia.
> Some things can change, but it will be a site designed with the purpose of
> being an extention of en.wikipedia instead of an entirely separate project.
> Meta2 will exist for Wikipedia instead of being a standalone project.

Does the community on the English Wikipedia need or want to be
expanded in this way?

There has always been some opposition to moving anything to meta
(though perhaps single login will alleviate some of the concerns).

There is currently confusion about what should be on the English
Wikipedia and what should be on meta. "Don't be a dick" is on meta,
but "Wikipedia:Complete bollocks" is on Wikipedia. Recentism is on
Wikipedia, deletionism is on meta.

Is
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Wikipedia_essays
supposed to be different to
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Essays ?

Are chess, quizzes, and humor pages supposed to be on meta or en?
(They're currently on both).

Are you suggesting that all of this stuff would move to Meta2? Is
there any advantage to that? Is there likely to be any agreement about
it within the English Wikipedia community?

Angela.


from_name: Robert Scott Horning

body:
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.  Finding
information for people who lived in the past century is usually fairly
straight forward and can usually be done by asking a close relative that
has personal knowledge and information about that person, or there are
extensive public records as you have pointed out.  And keep in mind that
the "rule" included allowing information about people born more
recently, it is just that you had to have a clear death date to do so,
such as from something like the Social Security Death Index or probate
records (both public domain information as well).

I don't know how useful telephone directories would be for geneological
purposes other than to confirm that somebody with that name lived in a
certain location, and perhaps they had a close relationship (not
necessarily marriage) with somebody else.

--
Robert Scott Horning


subject: [Foundation-l] Instant Commons

body:
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.

--
Robert Scott Horning


subject: [Foundation-l] Instant Commons


from_name: Kat Walsh

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

body:
On 3/31/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> 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 :-)
>
>
> So you don't plan to answer any of the questions I raised about your
> accusations directed at me, or explain yourself in any way?

David, perhaps she simply wants to take a bit of a break from the
subject and focus on something else for a bit, at least long enough to
send an email about it. I wouldn't blame her. (Conflict is draining.)

This struck me as unnecessarily confrontational. Please tone it down
and assume a bit more good faith of someone who is pouring her life
into this project, even if you are frustrated with her.

-Kat

--
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Mindspillage | (G)AIM:LucidWaking
"Once you have tasted flight you will always walk with your eyes cast
upward. For there you have been and there you will always be."
- Leonardo da Vinci


body:
On 3/31/06, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> All Board members should have at least read access to ALL committee
> archives.  It is a part of their duties as corporate directors to be
> aware of issues when they arise.

The committees are supposed to report to the Board about what they're
doing. Shouldn't that prevent the need for us to read the mailing
lists?

Angela.


body:
On 3/31/06, Delphine M?nard <notafishz at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 3/31/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> > If the locals are causeing problems just speed up the process of
> > shifting most of the interproject stuff over to en where a lot of the
> > interproject comunication takes place anyway.
>
>
> Excuse me?

Which part are you objecting to?

The claim that most interproject comunication takes place on
wikipedia? It tends to be true because english is fairly widespeard as
a langage with the result that an awful lot of people have a en
account. So people comunicate via en talk pages. En is home to a much
greater knowlage and user base than any wikipedia so you will probably
get responces faster. [[Wikipedia:500th language pool]] is on en. The
whole Moldovan langue spat particaly took place on en. The various
other en projects generaly try to recruite from en.wikipedia.

--
geni


body:
Aphaia wrote:

>si leggono la discussio origine in foundation-l;
>
>Hello all
>Two Wiktinary related pages on meta are now deletion candidates;
>This mail is concerned with those requests;
>
>
> They are not my own creations, but files to Wiktionary. Personally I
>
>think them benefical for other purpose, that is, to maintain some
>files related to translations and multilingualized WMF pages, but it
>is not a strong reason to move them into user name space of a certain
>user.
>
>
As en:wiktionary bureaucrat this could be of interest to me.  It would
help if you identified the articles in question.

Ec


body:
Legal rules vary considerably from one jurisdiction to the next.  It is
important to be conscious of them, but I don't think that it's necessary
to adhere to the most extreme ones in jurisdictions with which we have
little if any connection.

One needs to start from a common sense pragmatic policy position which
develops carefully as the project grows.  Different information may be
subject to different standards.  .

Ec

Benjamin Webb wrote:

>Perhaps you are right, but the thing I like about Rodovid is that you
>can create your family tree, and in order to do that you must add
>yourself, who is obviously living, and also your parents, who are
>likely to be as well.
>
>What legal rules are there, because they are most important and must
>be implemented as soon as possible. An additional policy can be
>decided on later.
>
>On 31/03/06, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> 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.
>>


subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Mediametry survey (was )Re: Language versions'
 popularity vs. number of articles...)

body:
Neil Harris wrote:
> Since the traffic is so vast, why not use random sampling?

That's been suggested, and would indeed be useful. If someone's interested in
writing patches for squid to do this, speak up. :)

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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subject: [Foundation-l] September 11 Wiki

body:
Benjamin Webb wrote:
> What do people think about the September 11 Wiki.

It's an archival site which contains pages which were removed from Wikipedia.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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subject: [Foundation-l] September 11 Wiki

body:
Benjamin Webb wrote:
> What do people think about the September 11 Wiki.

It's an archival site which contains pages which were removed from Wikipedia.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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subject: [Foundation-l] September 11 Wiki

body:
Benjamin Webb wrote:
> What do people think about the September 11 Wiki.

It's an archival site which contains pages which were removed from Wikipedia.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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subject: [Foundation-l] September 11 Wiki

body:
Benjamin Webb wrote:
> What do people think about the September 11 Wiki.

It's an archival site which contains pages which were removed from Wikipedia.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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body:
Benjamin Webb wrote:

>What about if you wanted to have yourself on a family tree could you do
>that?
>
You could, but if you include your brother you could be starting a
family fight.  What do you do about your underage children?

Ec


from_name: Andre Engels

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Blocking vandals' IPs

body:
2006/3/31, Berto <albertoserra at ukr.net>:

> At PMS we receive periodic vandalism from anon user 69.232.157.175, located
> at adsl-69-232-157-175.dsl.irvnca.pacbell.net. Is there anyway we can block
> this IP to access pages?

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.

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


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Blocking vandals' IPs

body:
2006/3/31, Berto <albertoserra at ukr.net>:

> On a second thought, we obviously dont want to cut off an entire ADSL
> network... So probably the only possible form of filter is to have him at
> least spend the time to create a new user.

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.

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


from_name: Kelly Martin

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

body:
On 3/31/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
> Then would it make sense to relax some of the requirements for future
> admins, or at least ask voters to consider relaxing them? Is adminship
> really something that cannot be "learnt on the job"?

All admins learn on the job.  It's not skill at doing the technical
duties of an admin that matters, it's competence in using
administrative powers responsibly that is being selected for.    RfA
has proven to be relatively poor at discriminating against people who
should not be admins, because the criteria that most people are
applying when they vote are not really very good proxies for "will not
abuse administrative privilege" and in some cases are actually proxies
for "will abuse administrative privilege".

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


from_name: Ray Saintonge

body:
Benjamin Webb wrote:

>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.
>
I have no more objection to this than to any other external link.  If an
individual has an article about him in Wikipedia, and a genealogical
entry in Rodovid that's not spam.  I would frown on a lot of speculative
links based only on the hope that Rodovid will someday include their
family histories.

Whether these links are in some kind of link box is a formatting issue
rather than a substantive one.

Ec


subject: [Foundation-l] Instant Commons

body:
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


subject: [Foundation-l] Instant Commons


body:
Ray Saintonge wrote:
> Matt Brown wrote:
>
>
>>On 3/29/06, Samuel Klein <meta.sj at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>>>Yep, it's understandable.  They were listed for bulk deletion; there were
>>>no active objections.  But a few hundred irreversible deletions, mixed w/
>>>unusual article deletions, are unnerving as someone's first admin actions.
>>>
>>>
>>
>>Not so much when someone is accustomed to being an admin on another
>>project and sees a job that needs to be done, I think.
>>
>>It seems that Meta is unused to people doing such things, which seems
>>quite strange to me.
>>
>
> There's nothing strange about it.  You may have built trust in the other
> project to enable you to do such things.  You can't assume that the
> trust will transfer as easily as your interests.  Perhaps the members of
> your new project have established different policies for such things.
> Those policies could be diametrically different from the ones that you
> are familiar with.
>
> Ec

Exactly.

Ant


body:
geni wrote:
> If the locals are causeing problems just speed up the process of
> shifting most of the interproject stuff over to en where a lot of the
> interproject comunication takes place anyway.
>
>
> --
> geni

A lot of the interproject communication is taking place on en wikipedia
rather than meta ?

Can you show me some examples please ?

Ant


body:
On 3/31/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> If the locals are causeing problems just speed up the process of
> shifting most of the interproject stuff over to en where a lot of the
> interproject comunication takes place anyway.

Excuse me?

Delphine
--
~notafish


body:
geni wrote:

>On 3/31/06, Delphine M?nard <notafishz at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>>On 3/31/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>
>>>If the locals are causeing problems just speed up the process of
>>>shifting most of the interproject stuff over to en where a lot of the
>>>interproject comunication takes place anyway.
>>>
>>>
>>Excuse me?
>>
>>
>Which part are you objecting to?
>
>The claim that most interproject comunication takes place on
>wikipedia? It tends to be true because english is fairly widespeard as
>a langage with the result that an awful lot of people have a en
>account. So people comunicate via en talk pages. En is home to a much
>greater knowlage and user base than any wikipedia so you will probably
>get responces faster. [[Wikipedia:500th language pool]] is on en. The
>whole Moldovan langue spat particaly took place on en. The various
>other en projects generaly try to recruite from en.wikipedia.
>
I don't doubt that a lot of this stuff gets discussed extensively on en.

The big advantage of doing what you suggest is that the results and
effects could be limited to en:wikipedia.  The other projects would no
longer be bound by these discussions. :-P

Ec


from_name: amgine at saewyc.net

body:
>> This struck me as unnecessarily confrontational.
>
> The stream of abuse from those who consider themselves the guardians
> of Meta strikes me as unnecessarily confrontational, and I'm really
> not happy about it. When one of those is a Foundation board member,
> I'm even less happy about it.
>
>
> - d.

David, I have failed to see any abuse from people questioning this project
on Meta, which I have myself been materially supportive of.

This is not usenet. In Wikimedia we apologize when we have been in error
and move on.

Amgine


body:
geni wrote:

> It does take time to learn how wikipedia works (I'm not still totaly
>
>certian on range blocks although I have used them on other wikis) so
>it is reasonable to have some level of waiting peroid.
>
If you think that the ability to apply range blocks is so important to
being a good admin, maybe you should try to amend the rules to have that
included.

Ec


from_name: Berto

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Blocking vandals' IPs

body:
Hi!

At PMS we receive periodic vandalism from anon user 69.232.157.175, located
at adsl-69-232-157-175.dsl.irvnca.pacbell.net. Is there anyway we can block
this IP to access pages? and can we please configure the instance in such a
way, that anon users won't be able to modify pages? I got problems enough in
my life even without this kind of "contributors".

Thanks
B?rto


from_name: Steve Bennett

body:
On 3/31/06, Nick Jenkins <nickpj at gmail.com> wrote:
> The MediaWiki parser seems to try to prevent both of these things, by
> escaping "<" and ">" characters. For example, if you give it wiki
> input like this:

Hi Nick - very interesting post :) I don't know anything of how
MediaWiki works, but I'm curious why you're allowed HTML of the form
<U>aoeu</U>. How does that work, and will that help your nefarious
goal?

Steve


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Blocking vandals' IPs

body:
Hi!

> At PMS we receive periodic vandalism from anon user 69.232.157.175,
located
> at adsl-69-232-157-175.dsl.irvnca.pacbell.net. Is there anyway we can
block
> this IP to access pages?

On a second thought, we obviously dont want to cut off an entire ADSL
network... So probably the only possible form of filter is to have him at
least spend the time to create a new user.

B?rto


body:
On 3/31/06, Anthere <Anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> geni wrote:
> > If the locals are causeing problems just speed up the process of
> > shifting most of the interproject stuff over to en where a lot of the
> > interproject comunication takes place anyway.
> >
> >
> > --
> > geni
>
> A lot of the interproject communication is taking place on en wikipedia
> rather than meta ?
>
> Can you show me some examples please ?
>
> Ant

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:%D0%82%D0%BE%D1%80%D1%92%D0%B5_%D0%94._%D0%91%D0%BE%D0%B6%D0%BE%D0%B2%D0%B8%D1%9B

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:.:Ajvol:.#Moscow_map

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:PanBK#Great_pics.21

The whole moldovan langauge thing spilled over onto en.wikipedia.

We've traced vandles over multiple languages (although fortunetly most
of them stay en based).

Things that will effect multiple projects tend to have discusion based
on en.wikipedia (to be expected since en.wikipedia has the largest
consitancy

The one solid debate on wikimedia funding I've seen was on
en.wikipedia (the fincial models presented were amusing)

--
geni


body:
On 3/31/06, Alphax (Wikipedia email) <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
> geni wrote:
> > On 3/31/06, Justin Cormack <justin at specialbusservice.com> 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.
> >>
> >
> >
> > No if it is pure En it should probably be in the wikipedia namespace.
> >
>
> Why?
>

Meta should be stuff about wikipedia which is also what the wikipedia
namespace is for.

____
geni


from_name: Jan Vanoverpelt

subject: [Wikitech-l] Automatically put text on a non existing page?

body:
Thanks, the preload parameter that can be used by the inputbox does indeed
exactly what i need...BUT what i actually want is not creating a page
through an inputbox, but through an image:
1) the user clicks on the image
2) the newly created page appears in front of the user with the predefined
text in the edit box of this new page.

In order for the user to be able to create a new page by clicking on an
image, i use the following template (called "hotspot"):

[[:{{{Link}}}|   ]]

               [[Image:{{{Image}}}|{{{Height}}}|{{{Link}}}]]

So the image is put on the wiki e.g. in this way:

{{hotspot |
| Image = image.gif
| Link = new-page-to-be-made
| Height = 81px
}}

What i would like to achieve now is to put a preload-parameter into it (just
like is done with the inputbox), so the above becomes:

{{hotspot |
| Image = image.gif
| Link = new-page-to-be-made
| Height = 81px
| Preload= the-preloaded-text
}}

Does somebody know whether i can achieve this by adapting the
"hotspot"-template or is there another way?

Many thanks in advance!

JAN

2006/3/30, Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com>:
>
> Jan Vanoverpelt wrote:
> > Does MediaWiki allows to automatically put a certain text in advance on
> a
> > non-existing page? What I am trying to do is this: when users click on a
> > picture, a (link to a) new page is generated with the name
> > "{{PAGENAME}}-more-detailed-name".
> >
> > Is it possible to already put automatically some text (e.g.
> "{{template}}")
> > on this new (non existing) page?
>
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Help:Inputbox
>
> -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>
>
>


from_name: David Gerard

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

body:
Lars responded to me:

>The current proposal to "overhaul" meta seems to suggest that the
>Wikispecies page could be simply deleted.  Is that correct?

No, it would be to tag it {{historical}} or similar, i.e. not
currently active. If you can show me where I have proposed any such
thing be deleted ...

- d.


body:
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 :-)

So you don't plan to answer any of the questions I raised about your
accusations directed at me, or explain yourself in any way?

- d.


from_name: Robert Rapplean

subject: [Wikitech-l] A design for a debate tool

body:
Hello, everyone.  I'm writing to this group because Wayne Saewyc tells me
that you might be interested in what I'm trying to present.  My name is
Robert Rapplean, and I'm a software engineer and political analyst.  You can
understand that I've spent an immense amount of time attempting to get ideas
across in the massively multiuser asynchronous world of the Internet.  Over
the years I've developed a detailed understanding of the problems inherent
in trying to persue a logical argument in this kind of environment, and I've
used that understanding to design a tool that addresses these problems.

I am a Wikipedia user, and make it a point to contribute to the articles
when I find I have more expertise than those who have already presented
information.  After spending quite a bit of time unwinding the sometimes
barely comprehensible dialogs that have occured on the discussion pages of
the articles, I've concluded that this particular environment would benefit
greatly from the implemenation of exactly the kind of tool that I've
designed.

With that in mind, I'm going to attempt to describe the idea to you.  The
remains of this email is a short description of the design of the tool and
its reason for being structured the way it is.

In my examination of online debates, I've noted a small bestiary of bad
debating habits, almost all of which fall under the categories of "casual
debater" or "hostile debater".  Casual debaters are those that don't take
the time to paruse the previous debate that has occured on a topic.  They
tend to re-submit points that have already been debated ad-nausum and
require re-iteration of important talking points.  Everyone starts out in
this category, but the casual debater gets bored before they get beyond that
point.  Because online debating tools are very poor at organizing previous
information, it quickly becomes a prodigious effort to get up to speed on a
debate.  This means that any forum which has enough contributors to form a
decent consensus also has a steady stream of neophytes clogging the
communication streams with off-the-cuff comments and other distractions.

An unfortunate side effect of this is that many of the good debaters get to
the point where they're tired of re-arguing the same points over and over
again.  When the debate follows those lines yet again, they tend to quit
contributing, and may leave the forum entirely.

Hostile debaters are those who aren't there to exchange ideas so much as to
spout them.  In other words, they're all mouth and no ears.  They don't want
to find the truth, they want everyone to accept their personal truth.  Their
entire purpose on the forum is to get a personal thrill from defeating the
opposition through wit, strategy, and tactics.  As a result, they persue an
argument via the well-worn tactics of attacking where the enemy is weak and
retreating where the enemy is strong.  If they can't win a particular point,
they'll shift the topic to something that they think the opponent might be
less strong on.  They'll continue stringing their opponents on a line of
topics until they can find one that the opponent isn't as well versed on,
and then stand on it like a bastion of safety, insisting that it's the only
valid perspective from which to view the concept.  If they can't find a weak
point, they'll circle back around to the original topic hoping for a second
try or resort to standard logic errors like ad-hominen attacks or faulty
analogies.

Although the design of the tool addresses many other issues (like ballot box
stuffing and squeaky wheel effects), these should be adequate to understand
the reasoning behind the basic structure I'm about to explain.  As I go
along, I'm going to compare my design to existing online collaborative
tools, like wikis and forums.

In order to deal with a lot of the tactics of the hostile debater, I started
by removing the linear nature of wikis and forums.  You can't lead a person
in circles if you're glued to the spot.  With this in mind, the base unit of
this tool is a conjecture, something like "alcoholism is a disease".  Each
person may (not must) make one statement about the conjecture.  They can
change the statement any time that they like, but that one statement must be
a summation of their entire opinion on that conjecture.  Then everyone gets
to vote on the statement that best matches their personal opinion.  If none
of them match closely enough, they can make their own statement.

Statements are ranked based on popularity.  Additionally, the writer of the
statement indicates the bias of their statement.  A bias states that the
conjecture is:

1. factual (based on repeatable phenomena)
2. true (not based on repeatable phenomena, but enough evidence exists)
3. unproven (enough evidence does not exist one way or the other)
4. unprovable (the conjecture requires evidence that is not obtainable)
5. unsupported (the evidence suggests that the conjecture is not true)
6. false (repeatable phenomena disproves the conjecture conclusively)

For the purposes of determining the validity of a conjecture, all statements
with 1 & 2 add their votes together, all with 3 & 4 go together, and all
with 5 & 6 go together.  This creates a distinct identification of the
participant's current consensus on the matter.

Since people need a place to ask questions and discuss ideas, a standard
message list should be matched with the conjecture, but it is strongly
suggested that all messages on the list group expire and vanish after 30
days or so to encourage the participants to embody their ideas in their
statements, not in their messages.

There's a further aspect of this.  Every conjecture debated tends to result
in child conjectures, for instance "a disease is anything which effects the
wellness of an individual".  These become their own conjectures, with their
own statements and (importantly) its own message list.  It is voted on to
determine its individual validity, and it gets linked to the parent
conjecture.  Participants in the parent conjecture can then rate the
relevance of the child conjecture to the parent conjecture, and take into
account the most relevant child conjectures when voting on a statement.

Taking this a step further, the conjectures can then be all reused.  For
instance, a conjecture like "the will of god is unknowable" could be used
again and again, being attached to a very wide range of parent conjectures
without having to re-create it and re-argue it every time.

The final result would be that, for each conjecture, all of the reasoning
behind the current decision would be laid out in a readily examinable
format, ordered by relevance.  This makes things much, much easier for the
casual arguer.  The modular format also makes it extremely easy to slap a
"logic foul" conjecture on anyone who presents falacious arguments.  The
non-linear format totally wrecks topic-shifting tactics, and the voting
system indicates not just how people feel about something, but how firmly
they feel about it.

I think that'll do it for an introduction.  If this is interesting to you,
please let me know and I can provide you with more details.

Yours,

Robert Rapplean


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Blocking vandals' IPs

body:
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


from_name: Brion Vibber

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

body:
Jean-Baptiste Soufron wrote:
> Apr?s avoir expertis? l'?tat des donn?es contenues dans le site fr.wikiquote,
> la fondation Wikimedia consid?re que le mat?riel h?berg? dans la base du site
> fr.wikiquote ne pr?sente pas les garanties minimales de s?ret? juridique
> n?cessaires ? la p?rennit? du projet. Le site va donc ?tre enti?rement repris
> pour ?tre effac? et relanc?.

fr.wikiquote.org est maintenant effac?.

Le nouveau site serait relanc? si existe des participants...

> After analyzing the data contained in the fr.wikiquote site, the
> Wikimedia Foundation has determined that the material stored in the
> fr.wikiquote database does not provide the basic assurance of legal
> soundness necessary to the permanence of the project. Therefore, the
> site will be entirely taken down to be erased and relaunched.

fr.wikiquote.org has now been taken down.

A new site will be relaunched if there are people interested in working on it...

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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body:
Jean-Baptiste Soufron wrote:
> Apr?s avoir expertis? l'?tat des donn?es contenues dans le site fr.wikiquote,
> la fondation Wikimedia consid?re que le mat?riel h?berg? dans la base du site
> fr.wikiquote ne pr?sente pas les garanties minimales de s?ret? juridique
> n?cessaires ? la p?rennit? du projet. Le site va donc ?tre enti?rement repris
> pour ?tre effac? et relanc?.

fr.wikiquote.org est maintenant effac?.

Le nouveau site serait relanc? si existe des participants...

> After analyzing the data contained in the fr.wikiquote site, the
> Wikimedia Foundation has determined that the material stored in the
> fr.wikiquote database does not provide the basic assurance of legal
> soundness necessary to the permanence of the project. Therefore, the
> site will be entirely taken down to be erased and relaunched.

fr.wikiquote.org has now been taken down.

A new site will be relaunched if there are people interested in working on it...

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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body:
Jean-Baptiste Soufron wrote:
> Apr?s avoir expertis? l'?tat des donn?es contenues dans le site fr.wikiquote,
> la fondation Wikimedia consid?re que le mat?riel h?berg? dans la base du site
> fr.wikiquote ne pr?sente pas les garanties minimales de s?ret? juridique
> n?cessaires ? la p?rennit? du projet. Le site va donc ?tre enti?rement repris
> pour ?tre effac? et relanc?.

fr.wikiquote.org est maintenant effac?.

Le nouveau site serait relanc? si existe des participants...

> After analyzing the data contained in the fr.wikiquote site, the
> Wikimedia Foundation has determined that the material stored in the
> fr.wikiquote database does not provide the basic assurance of legal
> soundness necessary to the permanence of the project. Therefore, the
> site will be entirely taken down to be erased and relaunched.

fr.wikiquote.org has now been taken down.

A new site will be relaunched if there are people interested in working on it...

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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body:
Jean-Baptiste Soufron wrote:
> Apr?s avoir expertis? l'?tat des donn?es contenues dans le site fr.wikiquote,
> la fondation Wikimedia consid?re que le mat?riel h?berg? dans la base du site
> fr.wikiquote ne pr?sente pas les garanties minimales de s?ret? juridique
> n?cessaires ? la p?rennit? du projet. Le site va donc ?tre enti?rement repris
> pour ?tre effac? et relanc?.

fr.wikiquote.org est maintenant effac?.

Le nouveau site serait relanc? si existe des participants...

> After analyzing the data contained in the fr.wikiquote site, the
> Wikimedia Foundation has determined that the material stored in the
> fr.wikiquote database does not provide the basic assurance of legal
> soundness necessary to the permanence of the project. Therefore, the
> site will be entirely taken down to be erased and relaunched.

fr.wikiquote.org has now been taken down.

A new site will be relaunched if there are people interested in working on it...

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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from_name: Lars Aronsson

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

body:
David Gerard wrote:
> 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.

Can anyone please explain to me what "work" means here?

One of the archaic pages on meta is
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikispecies
which hasn't really changed much since September 2004. The project
proposal is dead, nobody works on it.  There are few better
examples of dead meat on meta.

The current proposal to "overhaul" meta seems to suggest that the
Wikispecies page could be simply deleted.  Is that correct?

Then next month, someone can come to this new, fresh and
legacy-free meta to do "work", for example by suggesting a new
project called Wikispecies.  Since there is no previous mentioning
of this idea, it must be new.  Brave new world!

If I'm missing something here, perhaps a better explanation
of the overhaul plans could be needed.

--
  Lars Aronsson (lars at aronsson.se)
  Aronsson Datateknik - http://aronsson.se


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


from_name: geni

body:
On 3/31/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi all,
> I just came across this excellent analysis of the problems with RfA at
> the moment, written by Tyrenius, who had his application rejected on
> the basis of insufficient edits (he had 1331 at time of application,
> and apparently works offline a great deal, making that figure
> misleading), age (not sure, older than 3 months) and supposedly not
> doing enough "project work".
>
> It's worth a read - he has every right to be annoyed at not being
> granted adminship, when he has followed the letter of the law, and was
> rejected by an RfA culture which does not reflect that policy.
>
>
>    * if the nominee has been "an active Wikipedia contributor for a while"
>    * 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.

--
geni


from_name: jayjg

body:
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.

Jay.


from_name: Rich Morin

subject: [Wikitech-l] A design for a debate tool

body:
IBIS (Issue-Based Information System)  can be used to
structure discussions and cut down on repetition, while
allowing everyone to have their say.

  http://www3.iath.virginia.edu/elab/hfl0104.html
  http://www-iurd.ced.berkeley.edu/pub/WP-131.pdf

-r
--
http://www.cfcl.com/rdm            Rich Morin
http://www.cfcl.com/rdm/resume     rdm at cfcl.com
http://www.cfcl.com/rdm/weblog     +1 650-873-7841

Technical editing and writing, programming, and web development


subject: [Wikitech-l] HTTP interaction with MW?

body:
I'm looking into writing an script to (login and) edit MW page
content, via HTTP.  Is there a sample script that anyone can
recommend?  Alternatively, is there any documentation on how MW
handles login sessions (eg, what cookies it sets), etc?

-r
--
http://www.cfcl.com/rdm            Rich Morin
http://www.cfcl.com/rdm/resume     rdm at cfcl.com
http://www.cfcl.com/rdm/weblog     +1 650-873-7841

Technical editing and writing, programming, and web development


from_name: Matt Brown

body:
On 3/31/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> Posible but unlikely. For example without looking do you know what
> [[MediaWiki:Bad image list]] does?

Somehow I managed to get as far as being on the Arbcom without having
a clue what that does.

-Matt


subject: [WikiEN-l] What to do?

body:
On 3/31/06, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:
> There exists in the UK a small - politically insignificant at present
> - movement known as the traditional counties movement.

This has been a problem for some time - ask e.g. Morwen about it.

I suspect it's been through RFC a few times already.

-Matt