from_name: csherlock at ljh.com.au

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: blocking policy over personal attacks

body:
zero 0000 wrote:
> Teresa wrote:
>
>
>>You want TBSDY desysopped because he  blocked SS-88 after he said
>
> this:
>
>>"You consider the right side of the fence to be on the side of the
>>haters. You call us stupid, but you should know that we have a log of
>>your hatred and abuse of "power" against one of our comrades. THAT
>
> WAS
>
>>STUPID! Your actions have been documented and have, so far, been
>>circulated to thousands of aryans who do not look kindly on your type
>>of hatred. You know what happens to people who ignore history......
>>88 !!"
>>
>>I refer you to the blocking policy:
>>
>>"Blocks may be imposed in instances where threats have been made or
>>actions performed (including actions outside the Wikipedia site)
>
> which
>
>>expose other Wikipedia editors to political, religious or other
>>persecution by government, their employer or any others. In such a
>>case a ban for a period of time may be applied immediately by any
>>sysop upon discovery. "
>>
>>This looks like a pretty straightforward case to me.
>
>
> I must be missing something.  How do these (highly offensive) remarks
> expose this sysop to "political, religious or other persecution by
> government, their employer or any others"?   Unless the sysop lives in
> a state with a Nazi government, it is clear to me that there is no
> such exposure.
>
> My mail is really about the principles rather than this particular
> case.
>
> I think it would be a very bad idea to allow sysops to block people
> who insult them, except in the most extreme cases.  The
> community will see it as the sysop using their powers to their own
> personal benefit, and they will be right.
>
> Zero.

It was in the text:

"STUPID! Your actions have been documented and have, so far, been
circulated to thousands of aryans who do not look kindly on your type
of hatred. You know what happens to people who ignore history......
88 !!"

This is a clear and evident threat. It implies violence or some sort of
ramification and was a deliberate attempt to intimidate me. That's not
on, and they got blocked for it.

TBSDY


list: wikitech-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Juanma Barranquero

subject: [Wikitech-l] Small patches for 1.4rc1

body:
These are three patches for the just-released MediaWiki 1.4rc1.

The first two should be un-controversial, I think.

* A typo in language/Language.php ("dismbiguations" instead of
"disambiguations")

* Change "FROM links as la, links as lb, cur as ca, cur as cb" to use
$links and $cur in includes/SpecialDisambiguations.php (otherwise the
page throws an error).

The third patch makes two changes to maintenance/tables.sql, following
the thread at http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/mediawiki-l/2005-February/003367.html:

* A little change to the cl_sortkey index from the categorylinks table
so MediaWiki can be installed on MySQL 4.1 when utf-8 is the default
charset. Without the patch, the install script fails because the index
is longer than 1024 bytes.

* Forcing the log_title column from the logging table to be binary.
This is part of Brion Vibber's patch for bug 1057. I haven't tried the
rest of his patch because I modified the tables by hand, but at least
this part helps with new installations (though I agree that the rest
of his patch should also be included so people can upgrade; I'm just
not knowledgeable enough on PHP and MediaWiki).

--
                    /L/e/k/t/u


from_name: Domas Mituzas

subject: [Wikitech-l] reverse_timestamp

body:
Hey,

due to lots of hackish code concerning reverse_timestamp, I'm going to nuke this column away. That'd provide some more compatibility with other DB engines and remove some overhead. This would remove performance optimization for old versions of MySQL 3.x and introduce filesorts there. Ooops.

Cheers,
Domas


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Arwel Parry

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Fixing copyvios on small Wikipedias

body:
I'm not sure if this is the right place to ask, but we have found a
copyright violation on cy.wikipedia and have no way other than deleting
the entire article to remove it from the history, which we would rather
not do.

What is the approved method of getting rid of copyvios on small
Wikipedias? Do we have to attract a developer's attention somehow? Just
in case someone here is able to help us, the article in question is
[[cy:Dewi Sant]] and we want to get rid of all versions from 18 February
except the oldest.

--
Arwel Parry
http://www.cartref.demon.co.uk/


list: wikien-l

from_name: Rick

subject: [WikiEN-l] Desysoping

body:
--- Delirium <delirium at hackish.org> wrote:
> Similarly, nobody is arguing that Nazis have a right
> to turn [[Jew]]
> into a propaganda piece; to engage in endless revert
> wars; or to do any
> of the other things against general Wikipedia
> policies.  If they try to
> do so, they'll be banned for that, just like any
> other POV-pusher would
> be; there's no need to have special policies
> explicitly for Nazis, when
> the problems they pose are exactly those any other
> POV pusher poses.

However they are arguing that displaying Nazi symbols,
using offensive Nazi User names and making death
threats are not bannable offenses.

RickK

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Mail - now with 250MB free storage. Learn more.
http://info.mail.yahoo.com/mail_250


from_name: JAY JG

body:
>From: "csherlock at ljh.com.au" <csherlock at ljh.com.au>
>
>It was in the text:
>
>"STUPID! Your actions have been documented and have, so far, been
>circulated to thousands of aryans who do not look kindly on your type
>of hatred. You know what happens to people who ignore history......
>88 !!"
>
>This is a clear and evident threat. It implies violence or some sort of
>ramification and was a deliberate attempt to intimidate me. That's not on,
>and they got blocked for it.

And more have come back and (along with inserting their views in various
articles) have continued to harrass and threaten TBSDY; for example:

"Oh, are you going to ban me like you did the other NSM members? Please
remember that all of the harassment of us IS being noted AND we DO have a
NSM chapter in Australia. No, that is not a threat, just a comment. 88 4
Ever!!!"
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk%3ATa_bu_shi_da_yu&diff=10493689&oldid=10493378

I think that's a threat, regardless of the disingenuous claims of the Nazi
who made the commment.

Jay.


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject:
[Wikitech-l] Re: [Bug 1569] New: HTML comments in wikitext can
	cause extra spaces in rendered HTML

body:
Richard Holton wrote:
> Gmail placed this message into my SPAM folder (I'm guessing it looked
> like an on-line pharmacy ad). Those using Gmail may want to retrieve
> it.

Gmail's spam filter is quite aggressive regarding mailing lists; when I
started using it it took some days to train it to keep the majority of
my list traffic out of the spam folder.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 253 bytes
Desc: OpenPGP digital signature
URL: <http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/attachments/20050221/fb8e8d89/attachment.pgp>


from_name: Angela

body:
On Mon, 21 Feb 2005 11:53:01 +0000, Arwel Parry
<arwel at cartref.demon.co.uk> wrote:
> ...we want to get rid of all versions from 18 February
> except the oldest.

Undeletion of specific revisions is now possible.

Delete the page, and then click the link to undelete it. Before
confirming the undelete, select the revisions you want to undelete.
The unselected ones will remain deleted.

Angela.


from_name: Richard Holton

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Day 2 Fund Drive Report

body:
Mav,

In order to avoid picayune disputes over which comments you
include/exclude form your daily summaries, I suggest you simply leave
them out. Or make an exhaustive list. Otherwise, someone will always
find some reason to object.

-Rich Holton
--

en.wikipedia:User:Rholton


list: foundation-l

from_name: Daniel Mayer

subject: [Foundation-l] Day 3 Fund Drive Report

body:
On Day 3 (Sunday 20 February eastern US timezone since PayPal data are not
available in UTC) we made $7881.66 (USD equivalent) through PayPal and $64 (USD
equivalent) through MoneyBookers (no updates available for other sources at
this time).

As expected the total daily figures are dropping now that the initial
excitement surrounding the start of the fund drive is subsiding. But I also
expect a surge in new donations as we approach our fund drive goal (as occurred
in the last fund drive). Either way, it does now appear that we will reach our
goal (US$75,000) before the scheduled end of the fund drive (Friday 11 March).

Day 3 			        Day 2 comparison
Breakdown:
PayPal		USD equiv	USD equiv	%change
AUD	418.59	   $330.90	   $257.81       28.35%
CAD 	294.86	   $238.93	   $171.61       39.23%
EUR 	2108.06	 $2,755.66	 $3,078.43	-10.49%
GBP 	367.21	   $696.89         $862.28	-19.18%
JPY	20990	   $198.96         $257.66	-22.78%
USD	3596.33	 $3,596.33	 $4,888.47	-26.43%
PayPal total:	 $7,817.66	 $9,516.25	-17.85%

MoneyBookers
		64	          $362.69	-82.35%

	TOTAL	$7881.66	$9,878.94	-20.22%

Grand totals so far (only counting complete days)

PayPal		 USD equiv	% grand total
AUD	1125.1	     $889.39	 3.14%
CAD 	934.92	     $757.57	 2.67%
EUR 	7979.65	  $10,431.00	36.78%
GBP 	1322.28	   $2,509.42	 8.85%
JPY	82222	     $779.38	 2.75%
USD	12567.09  $12,567.09	44.31%
PayPal total:	  $27,933.85

Moneybookers:
		    $426.69	1.50%

GRAND TOTAL	 $28,360.54	100.00%

For the most recent grand total and other details visit
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Fund_drives/2005/Q1

Some selected comments from Day 3:
See http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Fund_drives/2005/Q1/Day_3

"Congratulations on keeping up such a sucessful and valuable internet
resource!" by Shaon Diwakar

"Wikipedia is amazing, I'm glad to have the opportunity to donate" by Anonymous

"My first time here. Thanks for improving civilization." by Anonymous

"Thank you so much for this fantastic source of knowledge!" by Thibaut Devulder

"This is what the internet is all about - open access to knowledge." by Jonas
Smith-Strawn

"One of those little big things that makes me proud of being a human. Great
idea for humanity. Thank you!" by Omar Franco Guerrero

"I like the way it helps freedom in education, I believe this could bring us
far" by Louis-Alexandre Marceau

"Wikipedia is a brilliant idea, a worthy project, and a vital resource.
Thanks." by Anonymous

"Thanks for running the most exciting knowledge resource online!" by John
Goddard

"Possibly the greatest project ever undertaken by humankind, wish I had more to
give" by Anonymous

"Free access to information is the key to prosperity!" by Simon Roby

"Amazing! That's what you are. Keep up the good work." by Anonymous

"Knowledge is power. Thankyou Wikimedia for empowering the masses -
[[en:User:Ae-a]]" by Anonymous

Some of my favorites:

"You got me! I found your entries on Terry Pratchett and the Discworld series
and just knew I had to support you!" by Deborah Hays

"Wikipedia, AKA the Degree Saver! Many thanks" by Tom Graham

"The legacy of Alexandria lives on" by Anonymous

"Destroyer of productivity - and yet I feel worthwhile for spending so much
time here." by Barry Petchesky

"Because the world needs an encyclopedia with a full Pokemon section." by
Anonymous

"Encouraged by the open accounting. And the great product." by Matthew Elvey

"Before I knew about Wikipedia, I was afraid. I thought most people in the
world were jerks, bigots, or just plain bad people. Then, while looking around
at wikipedia and seeing how it worked, I couldn't see how that could be true.
Wikipedia just could not exist if it was true: if bad people outnumbered,
outgunned, and out-shouted the good. I came to the conclusion that more people
in the world were good than bad. That the chances were good that the man you
bumped on the train is a good person, that the lady behind the cash register is
a good person, that the bus driver is a good person. Wikipedia restored my
faith in humanity, and my outlook on life has changed because of it. Thank
you." by Christopher Hutten-Czapski

"--wait, thank YOU!" by Ruth Temple

Daniel Mayer,
Wikimedia CFO

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Meet the all-new My Yahoo! - Try it today!
http://my.yahoo.com


list: wikimedia-l

subject: [Foundation-l] Day 3 Fund Drive Report


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Day 3 Fund Drive Report


subject:
[WikiEN-l] When goals conflict: There is no "right" for
	everyoneto edit Wiki

body:
>From: Matt R <matt_crypto at yahoo.co.uk>
>
>I posit that Wikipedia
>would be better off with a well-behaved, NPOV-writing Neo-Nazi than
>without;
>could such an individual exist?

I agree with this in theory; I've just never met one who fit the criteria.

Jay.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Blocking Nazis is not about blocking for mere insults

body:
>From: Theresa Knott <theresaknott at gmail.com>
>
> > Now we have a number of individuals with
> > similar beliefs attacking non-"Aryans", saying "88" (code
> > for "Heil Hitler", and abusing and driving away decent
> > contributors.
>
>That's not actually true they (actually they were probably all the
>same person) were blocked almost straight away. They haven't driven
>anyone away.

Right.  The planned attack by neo-Nazis was generally a bust.  Though there
are now regular and sometimes nasty incursions from the group, in general
they are a minor nuisance.

> > So I was hurt and stunned when Zero 0000 _again_ defended
> > Nazi hatespeech and harassment, and called for its
> > acceptance on Wikipedia.
>
>He didn't do any such thing, he queried a block and wondered whether
>it was within our blocking policy. He wasn't sure if the block was
>justified and wanted to discuss the matter. That doesn't make him a
>defender of hatespeech. ~~~~

Exactly.

Jay.


body:
In message <8b722b8005022104085cfae39b at mail.gmail.com>, Angela
<beesley at gmail.com> writes
>On Mon, 21 Feb 2005 11:53:01 +0000, Arwel Parry
><arwel at cartref.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>> ...we want to get rid of all versions from 18 February
>> except the oldest.
>
>Undeletion of specific revisions is now possible.
>
>Delete the page, and then click the link to undelete it. Before
>confirming the undelete, select the revisions you want to undelete.
>The unselected ones will remain deleted.

Aha! Thank you Angela, problem fixed. :)

--
Arwel Parry
http://www.cartref.demon.co.uk/


from_name: Tony Sidaway

subject:
[WikiEN-l] One reason why Wikipedia
	is	not	presently	classroom-safe

body:
Christiaan Briggs said:
> Tony Sidaway wrote:
>
>> Christiaan Briggs said:
>>>
>>> This function is NOT available in any browser; you cannot filter
>>> images based on categorisation using a web browser.
>>
>> Well, not by categories chosen by someone else, no.
>
> Good I'm glad we can finally agree.

Not quite. I'm left with the funny feeling that you think it's a ''good''
thing to permit other editors to control which parts of an article I will
see, and a ''bad'' thing, or at least very inconvenient and messy, to
exert that control myself. --~~~~


from_name: Robin Shannon

subject: [Foundation-l] currency POV

body:
At the risk of flaming race riots, this intrigues me. What do you mean
they are confused by canadian $s. As in they do not know the exchange
rate? And do all canadian merchants accept US$, or all merchants near
the border? Either way that seems very strange (then again as an
Australian land borders seem very strange)

if this is getting too offtopic, then you can reply to me personaly.

paz y amor,
-[[User:The bellman]]

On Sun, 20 Feb 2005 10:36:45 -0800, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> It's not a matter of NPOV at all.  It's a matter of avoiding
> ambiguities.  Canadians are far more experienced at recognizing which $
> is intended by the context than people in the US who get very confused
> when any curency than their own is mentioned.  It's quite common for US
> merchants, even ones near the border, to refuse Canadian currency
> because they don't understand it.  A Canadian merchant will except the
> US currency, and have some idea about what to do with exchange rates.
>
> This leaves Canadians bemused, and contributes much to putting our
> streotypes about confused Americans on a solid footing.
>
> Ec

--
hit me: robin.shannon.id.au
jab me: saudade at jabber.zim.net.au

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons
Recombo Plus License. To view a copy of this license, visit
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/sampling+/1.0/


subject: [Foundation-l] currency POV


from_name: Yann Forget

subject: [Wikitech-l] Spam

body:
Hi,

It is quite urgent to implement a spamfilter on Wikimedia servers.

I?already proposed several times to help set up this.

Thanks,
Yann

Return-Path: <mailman-bounces at wikipedia.org>
 X-Original-To: yann at cray.forget-me.net
 Delivered-To: yann at cray.forget-me.net
 Received: from r2d2.forget-me.net (r2d2.forget-me.net [192.168.0.13])
????????by cray.forget-me.net (Postfix) with ESMTP id 137121058E
????????for <yann at cray.forget-me.net>; Mon, 21 Feb 2005 11:56:49 +0100 (CET)
 Received: by r2d2.forget-me.net (Postfix)
????????id 2B18BBD0A8; Mon, 21 Feb 2005 01:25:31 +0100 (CET)
 Delivered-To: yann @ r2d2 . homeunix . org
 Received: by r2d2.forget-me.net (Postfix, from userid 1003)
????????id EC6F9BD0A9; Mon, 21 Feb 2005 01:25:30 +0100 (CET)
 Received: from xlate.ouvaton.net (ftp.ouvaton.net [62.233.46.136])
????????by r2d2.forget-me.net (Postfix) with ESMTP id DD0BFBD0A8
????????for <yann @ r2d2 . homeunix . org>; Mon, 21 Feb 2005 01:25:29 +0100
(CET)
 Received: from mx1.ouvaton.net (unknown [192.168.2.64])
????????by xlate.ouvaton.net (Postfix) with ESMTP id 319D067A03
????????for <yann @ r2d2 . homeunix . org>; Mon, 21 Feb 2005 01:25:29 +0100
(CET)
 Received: from zwinger.wikimedia.org ([207.142.131.234]
helo=mail.wikimedia.org)
????????by mx1.ouvaton.net with esmtp (Exim 4.34)
????????id 1D31O7-00010P-9G
????????for yann @ forget-me . net; Mon, 21 Feb 2005 01:25:23 +0100
 Received: from zwinger.wikimedia.org (localhost.localdomain [127.0.0.1])
????????by mail.wikimedia.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 855D91AC1778
????????for <yann @ forget-me . net>; Mon, 21 Feb 2005 00:25:28 +0000 (UTC)
 X-Original-To: wikifr-l-owner at wikipedia.org
 Delivered-To: wikifr-l-owner at wikipedia.org
 Received: from pcp01478295pcs.quaryv01.pa.comcast.net
????????(pcp01478295pcs.quaryv01.pa.comcast.net [68.82.206.20])
????????by mail.wikimedia.org (Postfix) with SMTP id 02DDC1AC1769;
????????Mon, 21 Feb 2005 00:25:14 +0000 (UTC)
 Received: from 227.216.224.207 (EHLO b-mail09.real-email.net)
????????(199.242.112.241) by EHLO b-mail09.real-email.net with SMTP;
????????Mon, 14 Feb 2005 14:04:18 -0700 Mon, 14 Feb 2005 14:04:18 -0700
 Received: by vais.net with SMTP id rT63so1911wrimT
????????for <5346wTasa94.hotmail.com>; 14 Feb 2005 14:04:18 -0700
 Received: by 178.156.210.200 with SMTP id 35mr2178fTkTmT;
????????Mon, 14 Feb 2005 14:04:18 -0700
 Received: by 49.76.242.157 with HTTP; Mon, 14 Feb 2005 14:04:18 -0700
 Date: Mon, 14 Feb 2005 14:04:18 -0700
 Message-Id:
200410150705.i9F750Kk01345794.i93ShqTw005240 at b-mail09.real-email.net>
 From: "Ahmed Camp" <sceva at casholasavings.com>
 To: wikifi-l at wikipedia.org
 Cc: wikifr-l at wikipedia.org,
?wikifr-l-admin at wikipedia.org,
?wikifr-l-bounces at wikipedia.org,
?wikifr-l-owner at wikipedia.org,
?wikiia-l at wikipedia.org,
?wikiis-l at wikipedia.org,
?wikiit-l at wikipedia.org,
?wikiit-l-bounces at wikipedia.org,
?wikiit-l-owner at wikipedia.org,
?wikija-l at wikipedia.org,
?wikikn-l at wikipedia.org,
?wikikn-l-bounces at wikipedia.org,
?wikilegal-l at wikipedia.org,
?wikimania-planning-l at wikipedia.org
 Subject: You've been selected for a low rate
 Mime-Version: 1.0
 Content-Type: text/plain;
 Sender: mailman-bounces at wikipedia.org
 Errors-To: mailman-bounces at wikipedia.org
 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.0.2 (2004-11-16) on r2d2.forget-me.net
 X-Spam-Level:
 X-Spam-Status: No, score=0.5 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,INVALID_MSGID,
????????RCVD_BY_IP,SUSPICIOUS_RECIPS autolearn=no version=3.0.2
 Status: R
 X-Status: NC
 X-KMail-EncryptionState:
 X-KMail-SignatureState:
 X-KMail-MDN-Sent:

Hello,

?We tried contacting you awhile ago about your low interest morta(ge rate.

--
http://www.non-violence.org/ | Site collaboratif sur la non-violence
http://www.forget-me.net/ | Alternatives sur le Net
http://fr.wikipedia.org/ | Encyclop?die libre
http://www.forget-me.net/pro/ | Formations et services Linux


subject:
[WikiEN-l] One reason
	why	Wikipedia	is	not	presently	classroom-safe

body:
John Lee said:
> Tony Sidaway wrote:
>
>>John Lee said:
>>
>
>>>Not all people would care
>>>to have  to click a few times every time they visit a webpage just to
>>>view its  images.
>>
>>This only applies to those pages where you choose to suppress image
>>downloads.
>>
> Then it might have some benefit, but you have to know what pages you
> want to block beforehand.

Usually people have a pretty good idea, from experience, of what will
annoy them.  For instance I would not dream of visiting guardian.co.uk (an
otherwise excellent website) without some way of blocking popups, and I
find many commercial websites unusable unless I can suppress animation of
the GIF images and automatic playing of the Flash ads.  Because all of
these features, or any one of them, would render my browsing experience
extremely unpleasant, I go prepared.  Sometimes it is even necessary to
turn off Javascript interpretation.
These activities and precautions are part and parcel of normal browser
control, making the browser show what *I* want to see, and nothing else,
in the form in which I want to see it.  Not looking at images that I don't
want to see is only part of a larger process.


from_name: Felix Wan

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Re: Quenya language request,
	and Chinese Wikipedia again

body:
On Mon, February 21, 2005 1:13 am, Sheng Jiong said:
>>> And remind you, if you have not already known, one of Chinese
>>> Wikipedia's founding member, [[User:Lorenzarius]], was from Hong Kong.
>>> And he was one of the main opposer of splitting Chinese Wikipedia
>>> into Simplified and Traditional version before there was a conversion
>>> script. And [[User:Tomchiukc]] is still an active Hong Kong
>>> Wikipedian.
>>>
>> I don't understand why that is relevant to the issue.
>>
>> I will very much like to hear their opinions on this issue.  They may
>> bring some good insights.  Can you invite them or should I?
>
> Sorry, I misread your words. I thought you mean that there are only 3
> Hong Kong Wikipedians in Chinese Wikipedia.
>
> I think mailing list now has become a place that is not so useful for
> discussions: there are only a few left who is speaking on this issue.
> I think we can have a page on meta to discuss the issue, and we can
> bring in more people who are interested (and are kept unaware of the
> issue).
>
I think that will be a good idea.  I certainly want to hear opinions from
more people.  What is the proper procedure to start a page on meta to
discuss the issue?  Is there any name space restriction or things like that?
Perhaps a sub page of [[Requests for new languages]]?

> For decision making, the board has the right to have the final say.
> But in most cases I think we should let the community decide first,
> and it can take the form of either consensus(if we can reach in the end),
> or a vote(which is not a preferred way of resolution, but in my opinion
> better than a board decision).
>
> I think it is meaningless to continue arguing about the same things
> again and again, since none of us is likely to change our opinions now.
> So I have summarised some points that I think both sides can
> agree on (feel free to correct me, or add in more):
>
> 1. The current Chinese Wikipedia is purely written in Baihuawen, which
>    is largely based on Mandarin.
>
> 2. Baihuawen is unversially understood by all literate Chinese,
>    regardless of the dialects they speak.
>
> 3. Although written Cantonese is used, especially in informal
>    writings, it is still uncommon for people to use Cantonese as a
>    formal writing (eg. newspaper articles/books/academic works)
>
Not going into the details, I generally agree with the above statements.
Assuming good faith, I will take your previous assertions like "written
Cantonese does not exist" or "Cantonese is not a written language" as
hyperbole, a figure of speech.

The reason to give examples of written Cantonese was to prove its
existence and illustrate it extent of usage, not to prove that it is
as widely used now as Baihuawen was in the 1920s.

> Then we shall summaries our differences, have more debate if
> necessary. And a consensus cannot be reached. let us put it to a vote.
>
> formulax
>
More discussion is always good, but I am not sure whether a vote will
be fair when people speaking a minority language wants to start a new
Wikipedia.  People speaking the majority language will always win if they
want to.

Another important question is: who should be eligible to vote?  The whole
Wikimedia community? The zh: community?  Everyone who can speak Chinese?

Felix Wan


body:
John Lee said:
> At first it seems like we're at an impasse,
> but  consider: While those who don't mind would be slightly
> inconvenienced,  those who do mind would be very heavily inconvenienced
> by having to  disable the image in their browser's settings. The latter
> group would  also be more annoyed than the former.

Let's use simpler words and grammar; those who don't mind would be much
less inconvenienced than those who are now unable to understand our
articles and wander off to look at the Sun or watch East Enders.  The only
people who would seriously object would be our elitist editors who would
moan about having to check their sentences against the word list.


from_name: Charles Matthews

subject: [WikiEN-l] One reason why Wikipediais	not	presently	classroom-safe

body:
John Lee wrote

> ...when we get
> to the point of having to debate with the readers, you know something is
> wrong.

That may be.

"Imagine a world in which every person has free access
to the sum of all human knowledge."

That is currently what we are using, successfully, to raise funds.

I think all of us here would want to qualify that in some way.  The
proposition as stated is not utopian.

But there is nothing there about 'and not have their assumptions
questioned'.  It distances WP, certainly, from kinds of journalism based on
the readership not having their assumptions questioned.

I just mention this, as a comment on the idea that WP is driven by having a
readership, and should have a sort of 'circulation manager' function based
on targeting and retaining the readership.  While the servers are strained
by the numbers of folk wanting to read WP, this is not a live issue, I
think.  For the longer term, yes.  I have already given an alternate slant
on it, in another post.

Charles


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Stats Wiktionary

body:
Le Monday 21 February 2005 03:10, Ashar Voultoiz a ?crit :
> Yann Forget wrote:
> > Hi,
> >
> > The stats onf the Wiktionary are not updated since October 30, 2004.
> >
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wikistats/wiktionary/EN/Sitemap.htm
> >
> > Can it be updated ?
> >
> > Thanks,
> > Yann
>
> For all stats queries, please read Erik Zachte answer:
>
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2005-February/027688.html

Yes, I read Erik's mail, but Wiktionary stats were stopped much before the DB
format issue came in.

Yann

--
http://www.non-violence.org/ | Site collaboratif sur la non-violence
http://www.forget-me.net/ | Alternatives sur le Net
http://fr.wikipedia.org/ | Encyclop?die libre
http://www.forget-me.net/pro/ | Formations et services Linux


from_name: Tomer Chachamu

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Will wikipedia.org in Hebrew,
	Arabic etc be registered?

body:
"Wikipedia" in Hebrew: xn--7dbcbqab9ewa.org
"Wikipedia" in Arabic: (I'm guessing) is xn--mgbbv2fyambbb.org (I took
this from the Main Page in Arabic; it's the text in quotes)

Are there plans to register these domains? What about Japanese, etc, etc?

Is Punycode even commonly used in the countries of those languages? I
know that in Israel it is common to see latinised domains
(http://www.shesh.co.il http://www.walla.co.il http://www.nana.co.il
etc) instead of domains in Unicode.

Internet Explorer does not appear to support Punycode.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punycode


from_name: Mark Williamson

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Day 3 Fund Drive Report

body:
"F?r die Menschheit" - Anon
"Wikipedia ist eines der coolsten Projekte im Netz... ohne w?re ich
wohl ab und an arg verloren. Rock on" - Sumedha Widyadharma
"In deze tijd een hoopvol initiatief" - Paul Hefting
"F?r Wissen und Freiheit" - Ralf Muno
"Diese Wissensdatenbank ist es wert." - Maximillian Winkler
"Super Projekt wenn ich mehr habe dann auch mehr Spende" - Anon
"Wissen muss frei verf?gbar bleiben!" - Detlev Mahnert
"?nimo, gracias por hacer que avance la civilizaci?n / Toda gran
cultura tiene su enciclopedia" - Anon
"Dankie vir 'n uitstekende diens." - David Roux
"Dan Holmlund's mom is a butter balloon." -- ???

Mark

On Mon, 21 Feb 2005 12:17:56 -0800 (PST), Daniel Mayer
<maveric149 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> On Day 3 (Sunday 20 February eastern US timezone since PayPal data are not
> available in UTC) we made $7881.66 (USD equivalent) through PayPal and $64 (USD
> equivalent) through MoneyBookers (no updates available for other sources at
> this time).
>
> As expected the total daily figures are dropping now that the initial
> excitement surrounding the start of the fund drive is subsiding. But I also
> expect a surge in new donations as we approach our fund drive goal (as occurred
> in the last fund drive). Either way, it does now appear that we will reach our
> goal (US$75,000) before the scheduled end of the fund drive (Friday 11 March).
>
> Day 3                           Day 2 comparison
> Breakdown:
> PayPal          USD equiv       USD equiv       %change
> AUD     418.59     $330.90         $257.81       28.35%
> CAD     294.86     $238.93         $171.61       39.23%
> EUR     2108.06  $2,755.66       $3,078.43      -10.49%
> GBP     367.21     $696.89         $862.28      -19.18%
> JPY     20990      $198.96         $257.66      -22.78%
> USD     3596.33  $3,596.33       $4,888.47      -26.43%
> PayPal total:    $7,817.66       $9,516.25      -17.85%
>
> MoneyBookers
>                 64                $362.69       -82.35%
>
>         TOTAL   $7881.66        $9,878.94       -20.22%
>
> Grand totals so far (only counting complete days)
>
> PayPal           USD equiv      % grand total
> AUD     1125.1       $889.39     3.14%
> CAD     934.92       $757.57     2.67%
> EUR     7979.65   $10,431.00    36.78%
> GBP     1322.28    $2,509.42     8.85%
> JPY     82222        $779.38     2.75%
> USD     12567.09  $12,567.09    44.31%
> PayPal total:     $27,933.85
>
> Moneybookers:
>                     $426.69     1.50%
>
> GRAND TOTAL      $28,360.54     100.00%
>
> For the most recent grand total and other details visit
> http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Fund_drives/2005/Q1
>
> Some selected comments from Day 3:
> See http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Fund_drives/2005/Q1/Day_3
>
> "Congratulations on keeping up such a sucessful and valuable internet
> resource!" by Shaon Diwakar
>
> "Wikipedia is amazing, I'm glad to have the opportunity to donate" by Anonymous
>
> "My first time here. Thanks for improving civilization." by Anonymous
>
> "Thank you so much for this fantastic source of knowledge!" by Thibaut Devulder
>
> "This is what the internet is all about - open access to knowledge." by Jonas
> Smith-Strawn
>
> "One of those little big things that makes me proud of being a human. Great
> idea for humanity. Thank you!" by Omar Franco Guerrero
>
> "I like the way it helps freedom in education, I believe this could bring us
> far" by Louis-Alexandre Marceau
>
> "Wikipedia is a brilliant idea, a worthy project, and a vital resource.
> Thanks." by Anonymous
>
> "Thanks for running the most exciting knowledge resource online!" by John
> Goddard
>
> "Possibly the greatest project ever undertaken by humankind, wish I had more to
> give" by Anonymous
>
> "Free access to information is the key to prosperity!" by Simon Roby
>
> "Amazing! That's what you are. Keep up the good work." by Anonymous
>
> "Knowledge is power. Thankyou Wikimedia for empowering the masses -
> [[en:User:Ae-a]]" by Anonymous
>
> Some of my favorites:
>
> "You got me! I found your entries on Terry Pratchett and the Discworld series
> and just knew I had to support you!" by Deborah Hays
>
> "Wikipedia, AKA the Degree Saver! Many thanks" by Tom Graham
>
> "The legacy of Alexandria lives on" by Anonymous
>
> "Destroyer of productivity - and yet I feel worthwhile for spending so much
> time here." by Barry Petchesky
>
> "Because the world needs an encyclopedia with a full Pokemon section." by
> Anonymous
>
> "Encouraged by the open accounting. And the great product." by Matthew Elvey
>
> "Before I knew about Wikipedia, I was afraid. I thought most people in the
> world were jerks, bigots, or just plain bad people. Then, while looking around
> at wikipedia and seeing how it worked, I couldn't see how that could be true.
> Wikipedia just could not exist if it was true: if bad people outnumbered,
> outgunned, and out-shouted the good. I came to the conclusion that more people
> in the world were good than bad. That the chances were good that the man you
> bumped on the train is a good person, that the lady behind the cash register is
> a good person, that the bus driver is a good person. Wikipedia restored my
> faith in humanity, and my outlook on life has changed because of it. Thank
> you." by Christopher Hutten-Czapski
>
> "--wait, thank YOU!" by Ruth Temple
>
> Daniel Mayer,
> Wikimedia CFO
>
> __________________________________
> Do you Yahoo!?
> Meet the all-new My Yahoo! - Try it today!
> http://my.yahoo.com
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


from_name: Andre Engels

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Changes in the Python Wikipediabot framework

body:
I missed one change:
interwiki.py handels the X-convention better in links to Esperanto -
wikipedia.py 1.400.
Apart from that interwiki.py 1.140 contains some test output, which
has been removed in version 1.141.

Andre Engels


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Changes in the Python Wikipediabot framework


from_name: Neil Harris

body:
Tomer Chachamu wrote:

>"Wikipedia" in Hebrew: xn--7dbcbqab9ewa.org
>"Wikipedia" in Arabic: (I'm guessing) is xn--mgbbv2fyambbb.org (I took
>this from the Main Page in Arabic; it's the text in quotes)
>
>Are there plans to register these domains? What about Japanese, etc, etc?
>
>Is Punycode even commonly used in the countries of those languages? I
>know that in Israel it is common to see latinised domains
>(http://www.shesh.co.il http://www.walla.co.il http://www.nana.co.il
>etc) instead of domains in Unicode.
>
>Internet Explorer does not appear to support Punycode.
>
>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punycode
>
>
The magic term is "IDN": Punycode is only part of the implementation of
internationalized domain names. Firefox currently does support IDN. This
is subject to change in the near term as security policies are worked
on. However, by later this year, I expect that IDN support will be solid
on at least Firefox, and perhaps IE, as Microsoft is forced to play
catch-up.

I would certainly recommend registering the names as soon as possible,
before someone else does.

-- Neil


subject: [WikiEN-l] Desysoping

body:
--- Richard Holton <richholton at gmail.com> wrote:

> > However they are arguing that displaying Nazi
> symbols,
> > using offensive Nazi User names and making death
> > threats are not bannable offenses.
> >
> > RickK
> >
>
> While I have not read every word of every message on
> this thread, I am
> unaware of anyone suggesting that making a death
> threat is not a
> bannable offense.
>
> There has been some discussion over whether a
> particular posting
> actually constituted a death threat, but that is
> another issue
> entirely.
>
> Let us all try to be fair in representing others'
> views.

It is impossible to interpret the comments left on
TBSDY's page as anything but a death threat.

RickK

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Mail - Easier than ever with enhanced search. Learn more.
http://info.mail.yahoo.com/mail_250


subject: [WikiEN-l] Desysoping

body:
--- Delirium <delirium at hackish.org> wrote:

> Rick wrote:
>
> >However they are arguing that displaying Nazi
> symbols,
> >using offensive Nazi User names and making death
> >threats are not bannable offenses.
> >
> >
> No, we are only arguing the first two of those.
>
> -Mark

But when TBSDY blocked the person for making a death
threat on his page, the block was reverted.

Would you allow someone to have a picture of a black
person being lynched on their page?

RickK

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


subject: [WikiEN-l] Don't push POV into the Wikipedia software and policies

body:
--- Tony Sidaway <minorityreport at bluebottle.com>
wrote:

> Richard Holton said:
> > Proposal:
> >
> > Implement a new user preference that allow the
> user the option to
> > filter image display based on category.
> >
> > Without entering into the technical feasibility or
> developer
> > priorities, does anyone have an objection in
> principle to having such a
> > feature? Why?
>
> I think we've already considered this and it's
> getting thumbs up from a
> wide range of people.  I see problems but there are
> workarounds.
> I think the interface will suck compared to the
> browser-based filtering I
> already use but apparently I'm the only person on
> this list with extensive
> experience of day-to-day content filtering, and it's
> possible that my way
> of using the web is vastly different from the way
> most people do.

I'm afraid that there is going to be a lot of edit
warring as we try to put things into categories like
"Offensive images" or "pictures of human body parts"
or "Violent imagery".

RickK

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Mail - Easier than ever with enhanced search. Learn more.
http://info.mail.yahoo.com/mail_250


subject: [WikiEN-l] What's the status of Wikipedia?

body:
I keep getting "The page cannot be displayed" for both
en.wikipedia.org and www.wikipedia.org.

RickK

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
All your favorites on one personal page ? Try My Yahoo!
http://my.yahoo.com


from_name: Karl A. Krueger

body:
On Mon, Feb 21, 2005 at 09:00:33PM +0800, John Lee wrote:
> Karl A. Krueger wrote:
> >When you speak for "the readers", nobody can hear the readers.  One can
> >hear only you, putting on the voice of "the readers" as a phony accent,
> >like a bad American actor pretending to Cockney.
> >
> It's things like this that tick me off, because in this case, that
> argument flies against common sense:

Not really.  You have every business to speak for yourself, and no
business at all speaking for people who have never asked for your
representation.  You weaken your argument when you set yourself up as
the Speaker-for-the-Readers, and thereby imply that those who disagree
with you are somehow opposed to "the readers" ... which, of course,
nobody here is.  It comes across, at least to me, as a thoroughly
arrogant and indefensible tactic of argumentation on your part.

> Most middle-class Asians and Americans would be offended or at least
> shocked/distracted by a vivid photograph of a man blowjobbing himself.
> Most middle-class Europeans and Australians wouldn't.

Okay.

The issue here is not the Autofellatio photograph.  It's a crappy
photograph and the encyclopedia is better off without it.  If you want
to beat that dead horse, it has a talk page ... I think it's at
[[Wikipedia talk:Dead horse]] or something like that.

The issue here is the proposed alteration of Wikipedia policy or
software to favor some people's standards of making Wikipedia
"inoffensive" or "safe".  That is, the making of structural changes to
Wikipedia which support some people's POV and derogate or closet others
... while not actually accomplishing the proposed (dystopian and
impossible) goals.

> At first it seems like we're at an impasse, but consider: While those
> who don't mind would be slightly inconvenienced, those who do mind
> would be very heavily inconvenienced by having to disable the image in
> their browser's settings. The latter group would also be more annoyed
> than the former. It's a clear case to me, but I can see why extreme
> liberals from Europe and Australia find this debate so puzzling.

It's really great how telepathic you are.  Not only can you read the
minds of the vast and powerful mass of "the readers", you can also tell
all sorts of things about the personal backgrounds of those who disagree
with you.  That's an amazing skill.

Or ... maybe you're just making stuff up.

> >I propose that offending people is a Virtue and not a Vice, if one does
> >so in a manner which is simultaneously informative & educational.  It is
> >of no use to offend gratuitously; that is, to rehash tiresome offenses
> >which no longer teach the offended person anything.  But to be offended
> >and to receive knowledge at the same moment, is to receive knowledge
> >twice over.
> >
> This is precisely the attitude I've been talking about: Editors imposing
> their personal beliefs on readers.

You don't have a rebuttal, do you?  You're spending all your time
talking about my "attitude" and speculating (erroneously) about the
nationality or ethnicity of those who disagree with you.  How come?

> We don't tell people "Nazis were evil" or "Saddam was evil" because
> that would be imposing our personal beliefs (for those editors that
> believe the statements). Likewise, we should not tell people "Being
> offended is good! Really! Otherwise you'll never learn anything!"

OK.  Then we should also not tell people "Sex is dirty!  Pictures of
things John Lee thinks are icky should be hidden away!  Otherwise
Wikipedia will go out of business and we'll all die on the streets from
acute square-bracket deficiency!"

Or, more seriously, we should not build your POV about "offense" into
the Wikipedia software or policies ... especially since the recent cases
of gratuitously offensive images have already been dealt with
adequately, WITHOUT any such POV-pushing software or policy.

Because that is what your (and others') "filtering" proposals are.  They
are not really about making Wikipedia "safe" or "inoffensive", since
those goals have been demonstrated to be impossible.  (As long as
Wikipedia is an editable wiki, there is no way to provide assurances
that it is inoffensive.  As long as it is NPOV, there is no way to
decide _whose_ offense shall be considered significant.  And those who
really militate against "indecency" and the like, in law and public
policy, are offended by text just as much as by images.)

Filtering proposals are thus not about making Wikipedia "safe", but
rather about encoding someone's personal and cultural biases about
sexuality and other so-called "offensive" topics into the software and
policies.  They are about making censorship, rather than openness, the
norm on Wikipedia, by mandating that things _you_ find "offensive" be
marked up with tags and hidden away.

Once more, the issue here is not Autofellatio.jpg.  It is the grievous
wrong of placing a POV-pushing mechanism into the technical and policy
support structure of Wikipedia.

> Disagreeing with the "customer" on an issue like this would mean big
> trouble in the business world. Just because we're trying something
> different does not mean "Hahahaha, I'll shove some pictures of Goatse
> in your face because you wanted to view the shock site article!"

Gratuitous, uninformative images and trolling are already dealt with
quite well by Wikipedia policy and editing practices.  They are not, at
present, a problem for Wikipedia.  You're just trying to use them as an
excuse to push your POV into the MediaWiki software in the form of
"offensive" image censorship.  For shame!

--
Karl A. Krueger <kkrueger at whoi.edu>


body:
Proposal:

Implement a new user preference that allow the user the option to
filter image display based on category.

Without entering into the technical feasibility or developer
priorities, does anyone have an objection in principle to having such
a feature? Why?

-Rich Holton

--

en.wikipedia:User:Rholton


body:
I say, all those who are native speakers of the language and are
interested in building a Wikipedia in it should be allowed to vote. It
shouldn't be anybody else's decision if they get a Wikipedia in their
language or not.

Mark

On Mon, 21 Feb 2005 13:13:36 -0800 (PST), Felix Wan
<felixwiki at earthsphere.org> wrote:
> On Mon, February 21, 2005 1:13 am, Sheng Jiong said:
> >>> And remind you, if you have not already known, one of Chinese
> >>> Wikipedia's founding member, [[User:Lorenzarius]], was from Hong Kong.
> >>> And he was one of the main opposer of splitting Chinese Wikipedia
> >>> into Simplified and Traditional version before there was a conversion
> >>> script. And [[User:Tomchiukc]] is still an active Hong Kong
> >>> Wikipedian.
> >>>
> >> I don't understand why that is relevant to the issue.
> >>
> >> I will very much like to hear their opinions on this issue.  They may
> >> bring some good insights.  Can you invite them or should I?
> >
> > Sorry, I misread your words. I thought you mean that there are only 3
> > Hong Kong Wikipedians in Chinese Wikipedia.
> >
> > I think mailing list now has become a place that is not so useful for
> > discussions: there are only a few left who is speaking on this issue.
> > I think we can have a page on meta to discuss the issue, and we can
> > bring in more people who are interested (and are kept unaware of the
> > issue).
> >
> I think that will be a good idea.  I certainly want to hear opinions from
> more people.  What is the proper procedure to start a page on meta to
> discuss the issue?  Is there any name space restriction or things like that?
> Perhaps a sub page of [[Requests for new languages]]?
>
> > For decision making, the board has the right to have the final say.
> > But in most cases I think we should let the community decide first,
> > and it can take the form of either consensus(if we can reach in the end),
> > or a vote(which is not a preferred way of resolution, but in my opinion
> > better than a board decision).
> >
> > I think it is meaningless to continue arguing about the same things
> > again and again, since none of us is likely to change our opinions now.
> > So I have summarised some points that I think both sides can
> > agree on (feel free to correct me, or add in more):
> >
> > 1. The current Chinese Wikipedia is purely written in Baihuawen, which
> >    is largely based on Mandarin.
> >
> > 2. Baihuawen is unversially understood by all literate Chinese,
> >    regardless of the dialects they speak.
> >
> > 3. Although written Cantonese is used, especially in informal
> >    writings, it is still uncommon for people to use Cantonese as a
> >    formal writing (eg. newspaper articles/books/academic works)
> >
> Not going into the details, I generally agree with the above statements.
> Assuming good faith, I will take your previous assertions like "written
> Cantonese does not exist" or "Cantonese is not a written language" as
> hyperbole, a figure of speech.
>
> The reason to give examples of written Cantonese was to prove its
> existence and illustrate it extent of usage, not to prove that it is
> as widely used now as Baihuawen was in the 1920s.
>
> > Then we shall summaries our differences, have more debate if
> > necessary. And a consensus cannot be reached. let us put it to a vote.
> >
> > formulax
> >
> More discussion is always good, but I am not sure whether a vote will
> be fair when people speaking a minority language wants to start a new
> Wikipedia.  People speaking the majority language will always win if they
> want to.
>
> Another important question is: who should be eligible to vote?  The whole
> Wikimedia community? The zh: community?  Everyone who can speak Chinese?
>
> Felix Wan
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] Desysoping

body:
On Mon, 21 Feb 2005 11:54:56 -0800 (PST), Rick <giantsrick13 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> --- Delirium <delirium at hackish.org> wrote:
> > Similarly, nobody is arguing that Nazis have a right
> > to turn [[Jew]]
> > into a propaganda piece; to engage in endless revert
> > wars; or to do any
> > of the other things against general Wikipedia
> > policies.  If they try to
> > do so, they'll be banned for that, just like any
> > other POV-pusher would
> > be; there's no need to have special policies
> > explicitly for Nazis, when
> > the problems they pose are exactly those any other
> > POV pusher poses.
>
> However they are arguing that displaying Nazi symbols,
> using offensive Nazi User names and making death
> threats are not bannable offenses.
>
> RickK
>

While I have not read every word of every message on this thread, I am
unaware of anyone suggesting that making a death threat is not a
bannable offense.

There has been some discussion over whether a particular posting
actually constituted a death threat, but that is another issue
entirely.

Let us all try to be fair in representing others' views.

--

en.wikipedia:User:Rholton


from_name: Kate Turner

subject: [Wikipedia-l] scheduled downtime warning

body:
hello,

all projects will be offline at some point today while routine network
maintenance is being performed.??this?is?not?expected?to?last?more?than?an
hour or so.??

apologies for any inconvenience...

kate.
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 189 bytes
Desc: not available
Url : http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-l/attachments/20050221/408cb6ce/attachment.pgp


subject: [Wikitech-l] scheduled downtime warning

body:
hello,

all projects will be offline at some point today while routine network
maintenance is being performed.??this?is?not?expected?to?last?more?than?an
hour or so.??

apologies for any inconvenience...

kate.
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 189 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/attachments/20050221/408cb6ce/attachment.pgp>


subject: [Wikitech-l] scheduled downtime warning

body:
Kate Turner wrote:

>hello,
>
>all projects will be offline at some point today while routine network
>maintenance is being performed.  this is not expected to last more than an
>hour or so.
>
>apologies for any inconvenience...
>
>kate.
>
>
Can a site warning please be placed on all pages to warn about this in
advance, so it does not come as a surprise to non-readers of this list?

-- Neil


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Day 2 Fund Drive Report

body:
--- Richard Holton <richholton at gmail.com> wrote:
> In order to avoid picayune disputes over which comments you
> include/exclude form your daily summaries, I suggest you simply leave
> them out. Or make an exhaustive list. Otherwise, someone will always
> find some reason to object.

Absolutely not. It is a very important feedback mechanism.

-- mav

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Mail - You care about security. So do we.
http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail


body:
"Repercussions on the other projects"?

Why should it be up to the community to decide this?

In the past when the majority has been allowed to decide the rights of
the minority, it has always made bad and irresponsible decisions that
have sometimes been horrific and sometimes just unjust (if a new
Wikipedia is voted against because the majority is allowed to decide,
that would be 'unjust')

In the past there have been no votes over new projects, why should
this start now?

Zh-min-nan was created against the will of the zh.wikipedia community,
and even people such as Tim Starling suggested after its creation
shutting it down, but it is still growing constantly and I was
surprised to receive from some Taiwanese people indications of
support.

New Wikipedias may effeect other projects but their effect is
microscopic. PRC is not in the habit of blocking sites in Cantonese or
Wu just for that reason, so that isn't a worry. People in the past
worried about ridicule, but most of the ridicule for Zh-min-nan: has
come from WITHIN the community, and there has been only a minimal
amount of ridicule for tlh:.

The main problem with a complete democracy is that there is no
protection for the minority. The majority can vote in any policy to do
anything they want to the minority and nothing is said about it. This
is why direct democracies without protections for the minorities
always split up along ethnolinguistic lines or have massive civil wars
and civil unrest.

We didn't have a vote on en: wehther or not to have de:, fr:, ja:, es
- they were just created. Controversial Wikipedias such as nds: and
als: were not voted on, if they were there is a good chance the
de.wikipedia community would've excluded all possibility of their
existance as Wikimedia projects.

The creation of nn.wikipedia was controversial, and it is perhaps the best case.

There was a VOTE on no: a bit prior to the creation of nn: as to
whether or not there should be a separate Wikipedia for Nynorsk. By a
margin of just a couple votes it was decided to keep a unified
Wikipedia, however most of the voters who voted for that were Bokm?l
users. A bit afterwards Nynorsk users such as Ulf Lunde brought their
complaint to this list and shortly thereafter nn: was created against
the will of the no: community and now has over 1k articles.

It's very na?ve of you to assume that in cases of a problem involving
a minority out of a larger community, the majority should always be
allowed to make the decision and that they will always decide wisely.

There is no precedent suggesting that all new Foundation-sponsored
projects must have community discretion involved in their creation.
This is simply a suggestion by you which doesn't seem to me like a
good idea at all. Do you let men decide the future or right of women,
or let Spaniards decide on whether Chechnya should be independent?

Mark

On Mon, 21 Feb 2005 16:42:03 -0600, Richard Holton <richholton at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Mon, 21 Feb 2005 15:04:41 -0700, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com> wrote:
> > I say, all those who are native speakers of the language and are
> > interested in building a Wikipedia in it should be allowed to vote. It
> > shouldn't be anybody else's decision if they get a Wikipedia in their
> > language or not.
> >
>
> Mark,
>
> I don't think you're thinking clearly here. Any Wikipedia, any
> Wikimedia project, has potential repercussions on the other projects,
> and certainly on those who are involved in coordinating and
> maintaining those projects.
>
> If native speakers want to start a wiki using the MediaWiki software,
> they are of course welcome to. But if it is going to be one of the
> WikiMedia Foundation projects, it's an absolute requirement that there
> be some community discretion involved.
>
> -Rich Holton
>
> --
>
> en.wikipedia:User:Rholton
>


from_name: Delirium

subject: [WikiEN-l] Desysoping

body:
Rick wrote:

>However they are arguing that displaying Nazi symbols,
>using offensive Nazi User names and making death
>threats are not bannable offenses.
>
>
No, we are only arguing the first two of those.

-Mark


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wiki Problems?

body:
James R. Johnson wrote:
>             Is there something wrong with the wikis?  I was trying to do
> some writing on ang.wikibooks.org, and ang.wiktionary.org and they don't
> work.  Are they down right now, or did something else happen?

There was some sort of power failure at the colocation facility. We're
in the process of rebooting and recovering machines.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 253 bytes
Desc: OpenPGP digital signature
Url : http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-l/attachments/20050221/80d8aae6/attachment.pgp


from_name: Sebastien BARRE

subject: [Wikitech-l] Some extensions...

body:
Hi,

I've created some extensions to make my life easier documenting some of our
projects.
Feel free to give them a shot, and use them at will:
http://public.kitware.com/Wiki/User:Barre/Extensions

Suggestions are welcome.
Bare in mind that I started fiddling with the MediaWiki API a little more
than one week ago, so hold on with the flaming.

--
Sebastien Barre


subject: [WikiEN-l] Desysoping

body:
JAY JG said:
>
> Is that the royal "we"? ;-)

Touch?!

I apologise for getting all snooty there.


from_name: Theresa Knott

body:
> Now we have a number of individuals with
> similar beliefs attacking non-"Aryans", saying "88" (code
> for "Heil Hitler", and abusing and driving away decent
> contributors.

That's not actually true they (actually they were probably all the
same person) were blocked almost straight away. They haven't driven
anyone away.

> So I was hurt and stunned when Zero 0000 _again_ defended
> Nazi hatespeech and harassment, and called for its
> acceptance on Wikipedia.

He didn't do any such thing, he queried a block and wondered whether
it was within our blocking policy. He wasn't sure if the block was
justified and wanted to discuss the matter. That doesn't make him a
defender of hatespeech. ~~~~


body:
On Mon, 21 Feb 2005 15:04:41 -0700, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com> wrote:
> I say, all those who are native speakers of the language and are
> interested in building a Wikipedia in it should be allowed to vote. It
> shouldn't be anybody else's decision if they get a Wikipedia in their
> language or not.
>

Mark,

I don't think you're thinking clearly here. Any Wikipedia, any
Wikimedia project, has potential repercussions on the other projects,
and certainly on those who are involved in coordinating and
maintaining those projects.

If native speakers want to start a wiki using the MediaWiki software,
they are of course welcome to. But if it is going to be one of the
WikiMedia Foundation projects, it's an absolute requirement that there
be some community discretion involved.

-Rich Holton

--

en.wikipedia:User:Rholton


from_name: actionforum at comcast.net

body:
-------------- Original message --------------
> You are absolutely right. The choice is clear. Freedom of speech,
> especially of speech we find hateful, is infinitely more important than
> sanctimonious attempts to create a controlled "classroom" environment.

I've never been a big fan of free speech or considered it a basic right.  The protection of threatening political free speech appears to be a necessary evil (like government) for democracies to work.  There is a lot of threatening hate speech on wikipedia, from the Nazi hate speech at issue here, to those advocating drug regulation, compulsory education, conscription, progressive taxation of the rich, etc.  If all threatening political hate speech were banned, only libertarian political speech would be allowed.  Some even argue that the red baiting of the 50s was wrong.  Yes the black listing, guilt by association and innuendo were wrong, but can democracy really afford be tolerant of political parties with which the 1st election they win would be the last free election you would ever have.

The problem with drawing the line at threatening speech is where do you draw the line.  As someone who views most of my fellow voters (and myself) in the United States as mass murders for having supported FDA drug regulation (I have since reformed my voting), I have learned to tolerate hate speech or at least to meet it head on in the world of ideas.  Perhaps threatening political speech should be both legal and rare, to adopt an analogy from Clinton's stance on abortion.

   -- Silverback


from_name: Sheng Jiong

body:
> I see no particular reason not to, if it's the case (which I don't know)
> that a significant number of people communicate largely in Singlish and
> find it more natural than "standard English".  We already have a
> ht.wikipedia.org for the Haitian creole, which is basically a French
> dialect with significant influences from a number of African languages.
> For a long time it was considered basically "improper French", and
> people spoke it but didn't write it---indeed, writing in it would earn
> you an F on your essay in school.  More recently, that's been recognized
> as a sort of cultural elitism, and it's becoming recognized as an
> acceptable language to write in, and in fact the standard language of Haiti.
>
> It might be worth pointing out that "standard English" for Wikipedia's
> purposes is itself already different from what your English teacher
> might say is standard.  We tend to avoid (for the most part) not only
> local dialects that are "improper" but also avoid "proper English" that
> is not commonly used, or is only used in some regions of the world.
>
> This is in some sense basically the [[en:Prescription and description]]
> debate.  Should we be enforcing handed-down rules of "correct language",
> whatever that might mean, or should we merely be documenting language as
> it is actually used by real people?
>
> (Of course, whether written Cantonese and Singlish are used by many
> people or not is another issue.  I'm just arguing that the fact that the
> Chinese and Singaporean governments dislike them and consider them
> "improper" shouldn't be the deciding factor.)

I cannot agree with you. I agree that we should not use "proper
English" that no one today understands. But if we accept languages
that are not commonly used in formal writings, we bear a danger of
undermining the credibility of Wikipedia, and credibility is one of
the most important considerations for readers.

Wikipedia has long been doubted for its credibility. I personally do
not agree with the view that Wikipedia cannot be trusted because
everybody can edit. I have this trust in Wikipedia because since I
discovered Wikipedia I have always seen it as a serious effort to
build an encyclopedia, despite its unconventional way to writing it.
But if I am told today, that Wikipedia has a version written in
Singlish or Cantonese or other spoken languages that are rarely or
even never used in formal writings and academic discussions, I will
begin to doubt if the aim of the Wikipedia is serious and its goal is
to build a trustworthy encyclopedia. And this in turn will undermine
my confidence in the credibility of Wikipedia.

Singlish, like Cantonese, are widely used in informal dialogues and
writings. But it not "natural" for Singaporeans or Hong Kongers to
write formal essays using Singlish or Cantonese, and neither are they
accustomed to read any formal written works (such as an encyclopedia)
that are published in languages that they think should only occur in
daily conversations.

formulax


from_name: BJörn Lindqvist

subject:
[WikiEN-l] When goals conflict: There is no "right" for everyone
	to edit Wikipedia

body:
> helpful to attract contributors from a wide variety of viewpoints -- the
> diversity is healthy and helps us maintain neutrality. I posit that Wikipedia
> would be better off with a well-behaved, NPOV-writing Neo-Nazi than without;
> could such an individual exist?

The hardest thing with Wikipedia is to realize that two editors with
diametrically opposite views both still are humans, and still can be
reasonable people. Denying that your opponent is also human is a grave
error and leads to lots of bad things happening in the world.

For an example of a well-behaved, NPOV-writing nazi (albeit a convert)
see Spandau: The Secret Diaries by Albert Speer.

--
mvh Bj?rn


body:
My main point is that no matter who gets to decide, it should NOT be
the general community. I personally think it should be the community
that uses that language, but obviously if the board does not like it
they have ultimate veto power.

Also, while individual Wikipedias DO take up developer resources, I
would severely question any argument to halt all creation of new
Wikipedias based on that alone - an individual Wikipedia, especially
if it's not a success, does not cost the foundation a significant
amount of money. If it did, all inactive Wikipedias would've been
outright deleted by now because they would be a waste of valuable
resources, but given that they don't take up anybody's time and money
right now but a lot of mine and a little of Angela's (at least to my
knowledge), they have all been left intact and the sole locked
inactive Wikipedia, the Bashkir Wikipedia, was unlocked recently.

Given that we have an existing Wikipedia in Englisc/Anglo-Saxon, one
in Gothic, one in Klingon, one in Lojban, and the like, I find it
extremely strange that anybody thinks we should bar the existance of a
new Wikipedia in a living, natural language who has at least some
native speakers who want a Wikipedia.

Mark

On Mon, 21 Feb 2005 19:52:17 -0500, Stephen Forrest
<stephen.forrest at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Mon, 21 Feb 2005 16:05:15 -0700, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com> wrote:
> > "Repercussions on the other projects"?
> >
> > Why should it be up to the community to decide this?
>
> There is a difference between saying that the entire Wikipedia
> userbase must approve any new language, and disagreeing with your
> suggestion that
>
> > all those who are native speakers of the language and
> > are interested in building a Wikipedia in it should be allowed
> > to vote. It shouldn't be anybody else's decision if they get a
> > Wikipedia in their language or not.
>
> For myself, I don't much buy the argument that approving a related
> language/dialect Foo of an existing Wikipedia language Bar will lead a
> to a huge drain on the userbase of Bar: Plattsdeutsch or Luxembourgish
> have apparently not drawn too many people away from German, etc.
> Furthermore, I agree with you in opposing any idea that general
> speakers of Bar should vote on the inclusion of Foo.
>
> However, the question of developer and network administrator resources
> seems to me to be important.  Wikimedia is a nonprofit organization
> with many goals in its mission, one of which is to promote the
> distribution of knowledge in many languages, including minority ones.
> While this is an important goal, I would not want to see the
> foundation constrained by explicit policy to spend its resources on
> minority languages if it decided that its mission could be better
> served another way.
>
> Steve
>


body:
"Community discretion" implies to me actual community involvement.

The board and the developers != the "community". The Board tries to
speak for the community, yes, but that doesn't mean the involvement of
the board is community involvement.

I think you are having some misconceptions about the resources used by
inactive Wikipedias. Even if we had 1000 Wikipedias - which isn't a
bad thing because according to the Ethnologue there are over 6k
languages spoken on Earth, which excludes almost all conlangs - if
half of them were inactive that would take up almost no resources
except developer time. The vandalism argument can no longer be used
because I now constantly monitor every single Wikipedia for vandalism
using an RSS feed aggregator and thus msot of the work reverting
vandalism and trying to assist new users on inactive Wikipedias is now
mine.

Mark

On Mon, 21 Feb 2005 19:23:46 -0600, Richard Holton <richholton at gmail.com> wrote:
> Mark,
>
> **Intentional Top-post**
>
> May I suggest that you calm down a bit, and actually read what people write?
>
> Your quite lengthy response was entirely based upon things that I
> never said, or even thought.
>
> Please re-read what I wrote; I'll quote myself here:
>
>
> Rich Holton wrote:
> > I don't think you're thinking clearly here. Any Wikipedia, any
> > Wikimedia project, has potential repercussions on the other projects,
> > and certainly on those who are involved in coordinating and
> > maintaining those projects.
> >
> > If native speakers want to start a wiki using the MediaWiki software,
> > they are of course welcome to. But if it is going to be one of the
> > WikiMedia Foundation projects, it's an absolute requirement that there
> > be some community discretion involved.
>
> You will note that nowhere did I mention a vote, or a majority. "Some
> community discretion" is a long way from "decided by majority vote." I
> was very intentionally non-specific, but in no way did I think or
> intend "majority vote." Exactly what form the community discretion
> would take is an open question. I would think that the developers
> should have some input into the decision, and probably the board of
> directors. Beyond that I am unsure. Perhaps we could use a petition
> model.
>
> To allow anyone to start a new language Wikipedia without any input
> from the larger community is an invitation to chaos.
>
> (This is not comparable to those who say that the 'wiki way' is an
> invitation to chaos. It's not the same, especially unless there is a
> mechanism to delete wikipedias, like VFD is for articles. Anyone can
> start a new one, but there can be vote to delete it? That certainly
> would be the tyranny of the majority, or even just the vocal
> minority.)
>
> We could easily end up with a thousand wikipedias, many of which with
> little or no traffic on a daily basis. Even if locked down, these
> deserted wikipedias would simply become a headache for maintenance,
> and would have no benefit.
>
> Now, it may be that my particular suggestions for community
> discernment are terrible. It would not be the first time I made
> terrible suggestions. But if my suggestions are terrible,  that does
> not mean that the concept is terrible.
>
> -Rich Holton
>
>
> On Mon, 21 Feb 2005 16:05:15 -0700, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com> wrote:
> > "Repercussions on the other projects"?
> >
> > Why should it be up to the community to decide this?
> >
> > In the past when the majority has been allowed to decide the rights of
> > the minority, it has always made bad and irresponsible decisions that
> > have sometimes been horrific and sometimes just unjust (if a new
> > Wikipedia is voted against because the majority is allowed to decide,
> > that would be 'unjust')
> >
> > In the past there have been no votes over new projects, why should
> > this start now?
> >
> > Zh-min-nan was created against the will of the zh.wikipedia community,
> > and even people such as Tim Starling suggested after its creation
> > shutting it down, but it is still growing constantly and I was
> > surprised to receive from some Taiwanese people indications of
> > support.
> >
> > New Wikipedias may effeect other projects but their effect is
> > microscopic. PRC is not in the habit of blocking sites in Cantonese or
> > Wu just for that reason, so that isn't a worry. People in the past
> > worried about ridicule, but most of the ridicule for Zh-min-nan: has
> > come from WITHIN the community, and there has been only a minimal
> > amount of ridicule for tlh:.
> >
> > The main problem with a complete democracy is that there is no
> > protection for the minority. The majority can vote in any policy to do
> > anything they want to the minority and nothing is said about it. This
> > is why direct democracies without protections for the minorities
> > always split up along ethnolinguistic lines or have massive civil wars
> > and civil unrest.
> >
> > We didn't have a vote on en: wehther or not to have de:, fr:, ja:, es
> > - they were just created. Controversial Wikipedias such as nds: and
> > als: were not voted on, if they were there is a good chance the
> > de.wikipedia community would've excluded all possibility of their
> > existance as Wikimedia projects.
> >
> > The creation of nn.wikipedia was controversial, and it is perhaps the best case.
> >
> > There was a VOTE on no: a bit prior to the creation of nn: as to
> > whether or not there should be a separate Wikipedia for Nynorsk. By a
> > margin of just a couple votes it was decided to keep a unified
> > Wikipedia, however most of the voters who voted for that were Bokm?l
> > users. A bit afterwards Nynorsk users such as Ulf Lunde brought their
> > complaint to this list and shortly thereafter nn: was created against
> > the will of the no: community and now has over 1k articles.
> >
> > It's very na?ve of you to assume that in cases of a problem involving
> > a minority out of a larger community, the majority should always be
> > allowed to make the decision and that they will always decide wisely.
> >
> > There is no precedent suggesting that all new Foundation-sponsored
> > projects must have community discretion involved in their creation.
> > This is simply a suggestion by you which doesn't seem to me like a
> > good idea at all. Do you let men decide the future or right of women,
> > or let Spaniards decide on whether Chechnya should be independent?
> >
> > Mark
> >
> > On Mon, 21 Feb 2005 16:42:03 -0600, Richard Holton <richholton at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > On Mon, 21 Feb 2005 15:04:41 -0700, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > > I say, all those who are native speakers of the language and are
> > > > interested in building a Wikipedia in it should be allowed to vote. It
> > > > shouldn't be anybody else's decision if they get a Wikipedia in their
> > > > language or not.
> > > >
> > >
> > > Mark,
> > >
> > > I don't think you're thinking clearly here. Any Wikipedia, any
> > > Wikimedia project, has potential repercussions on the other projects,
> > > and certainly on those who are involved in coordinating and
> > > maintaining those projects.
> > >
> > > If native speakers want to start a wiki using the MediaWiki software,
> > > they are of course welcome to. But if it is going to be one of the
> > > WikiMedia Foundation projects, it's an absolute requirement that there
> > > be some community discretion involved.
> > >
> > > -Rich Holton
> > >
> > > --
> > >
> > > en.wikipedia:User:Rholton
> > >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> >
>
> --
>


from_name: Jan Henning

body:
> So, Mr Formulax, now do you claim to speak for these Singaporeans and
> Hong Kongers? I find this extremely insulting.

> Baihua itself is a transcription of modern Mandarin, which not long
> ago was considered by people like Sheng Jiong to not be worth writing
> down to use Wenyan instead.

I do not particularly care one way or the other about the introduction
of Cantonese and other Chinese-language Wikipedias. It would, however,
gladden my heart if fewer comments were made about the persons
discussing the issue and more about the facts under discussion.

Thanks everybody
Skriptor


from_name: Karl Eichwalder

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Gutenberg, 1911 encyclopedia

body:
Magnus Manske <magnus.manske at web.de> writes:

> Are there any more parts on the 1911 done in that format yet? Where are
> they? How can we keep track of the new ones?

We proofread the EB volumes at http://www.pgdp.net/ - several volumes
are already done, but waiting for post-processing (PP).  At the moment,
Encyclopaedia Britannica 11th Ed Vol 6 #3 (Chiton to Cincinnati) is
offered for proofreading.  You can read more about this project here:

http://www.pgdp.net/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=3915

IIRC, you must create an account first.

--
http://www.gnu.franken.de/ke/                           |      ,__o
                                                        |    _-\_<,
                                                        |   (*)/'(*)
Key fingerprint = F138 B28F B7ED E0AC 1AB4  AA7F C90A 35C3 E9D0 5D1C


from_name: Richard Holton

body:
Mark,

**Intentional Top-post**

May I suggest that you calm down a bit, and actually read what people write?

Your quite lengthy response was entirely based upon things that I
never said, or even thought.

Please re-read what I wrote; I'll quote myself here:

Rich Holton wrote:
> I don't think you're thinking clearly here. Any Wikipedia, any
> Wikimedia project, has potential repercussions on the other projects,
> and certainly on those who are involved in coordinating and
> maintaining those projects.
>
> If native speakers want to start a wiki using the MediaWiki software,
> they are of course welcome to. But if it is going to be one of the
> WikiMedia Foundation projects, it's an absolute requirement that there
> be some community discretion involved.

You will note that nowhere did I mention a vote, or a majority. "Some
community discretion" is a long way from "decided by majority vote." I
was very intentionally non-specific, but in no way did I think or
intend "majority vote." Exactly what form the community discretion
would take is an open question. I would think that the developers
should have some input into the decision, and probably the board of
directors. Beyond that I am unsure. Perhaps we could use a petition
model.

To allow anyone to start a new language Wikipedia without any input
from the larger community is an invitation to chaos.

(This is not comparable to those who say that the 'wiki way' is an
invitation to chaos. It's not the same, especially unless there is a
mechanism to delete wikipedias, like VFD is for articles. Anyone can
start a new one, but there can be vote to delete it? That certainly
would be the tyranny of the majority, or even just the vocal
minority.)

We could easily end up with a thousand wikipedias, many of which with
little or no traffic on a daily basis. Even if locked down, these
deserted wikipedias would simply become a headache for maintenance,
and would have no benefit.

Now, it may be that my particular suggestions for community
discernment are terrible. It would not be the first time I made
terrible suggestions. But if my suggestions are terrible,  that does
not mean that the concept is terrible.

-Rich Holton

On Mon, 21 Feb 2005 16:05:15 -0700, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com> wrote:
> "Repercussions on the other projects"?
>
> Why should it be up to the community to decide this?
>
> In the past when the majority has been allowed to decide the rights of
> the minority, it has always made bad and irresponsible decisions that
> have sometimes been horrific and sometimes just unjust (if a new
> Wikipedia is voted against because the majority is allowed to decide,
> that would be 'unjust')
>
> In the past there have been no votes over new projects, why should
> this start now?
>
> Zh-min-nan was created against the will of the zh.wikipedia community,
> and even people such as Tim Starling suggested after its creation
> shutting it down, but it is still growing constantly and I was
> surprised to receive from some Taiwanese people indications of
> support.
>
> New Wikipedias may effeect other projects but their effect is
> microscopic. PRC is not in the habit of blocking sites in Cantonese or
> Wu just for that reason, so that isn't a worry. People in the past
> worried about ridicule, but most of the ridicule for Zh-min-nan: has
> come from WITHIN the community, and there has been only a minimal
> amount of ridicule for tlh:.
>
> The main problem with a complete democracy is that there is no
> protection for the minority. The majority can vote in any policy to do
> anything they want to the minority and nothing is said about it. This
> is why direct democracies without protections for the minorities
> always split up along ethnolinguistic lines or have massive civil wars
> and civil unrest.
>
> We didn't have a vote on en: wehther or not to have de:, fr:, ja:, es
> - they were just created. Controversial Wikipedias such as nds: and
> als: were not voted on, if they were there is a good chance the
> de.wikipedia community would've excluded all possibility of their
> existance as Wikimedia projects.
>
> The creation of nn.wikipedia was controversial, and it is perhaps the best case.
>
> There was a VOTE on no: a bit prior to the creation of nn: as to
> whether or not there should be a separate Wikipedia for Nynorsk. By a
> margin of just a couple votes it was decided to keep a unified
> Wikipedia, however most of the voters who voted for that were Bokm?l
> users. A bit afterwards Nynorsk users such as Ulf Lunde brought their
> complaint to this list and shortly thereafter nn: was created against
> the will of the no: community and now has over 1k articles.
>
> It's very na?ve of you to assume that in cases of a problem involving
> a minority out of a larger community, the majority should always be
> allowed to make the decision and that they will always decide wisely.
>
> There is no precedent suggesting that all new Foundation-sponsored
> projects must have community discretion involved in their creation.
> This is simply a suggestion by you which doesn't seem to me like a
> good idea at all. Do you let men decide the future or right of women,
> or let Spaniards decide on whether Chechnya should be independent?
>
> Mark
>
> On Mon, 21 Feb 2005 16:42:03 -0600, Richard Holton <richholton at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On Mon, 21 Feb 2005 15:04:41 -0700, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > I say, all those who are native speakers of the language and are
> > > interested in building a Wikipedia in it should be allowed to vote. It
> > > shouldn't be anybody else's decision if they get a Wikipedia in their
> > > language or not.
> > >
> >
> > Mark,
> >
> > I don't think you're thinking clearly here. Any Wikipedia, any
> > Wikimedia project, has potential repercussions on the other projects,
> > and certainly on those who are involved in coordinating and
> > maintaining those projects.
> >
> > If native speakers want to start a wiki using the MediaWiki software,
> > they are of course welcome to. But if it is going to be one of the
> > WikiMedia Foundation projects, it's an absolute requirement that there
> > be some community discretion involved.
> >
> > -Rich Holton
> >
> > --
> >
> > en.wikipedia:User:Rholton
> >
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

--


from_name: Nicholas Knight

body:
Rick wrote:
> I'm afraid that there is going to be a lot of edit
> warring as we try to put things into categories like
> "Offensive images" or "pictures of human body parts"
> or "Violent imagery".

There's no reason to have the word "offensive" appear in a category at
all. Categories like "frontal nudity", "blood and gore", "depiction of
sexual act", are all fairly neutral and should be easy to come to a
consensus on.


from_name: Gerard Meijssen

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Day 2 Fund Drive Report

body:
Richard Holton wrote:

>Mav,
>
>In order to avoid picayune disputes over which comments you
>include/exclude form your daily summaries, I suggest you simply leave
>them out. Or make an exhaustive list. Otherwise, someone will always
>find some reason to object.
>
>-Rich Holton
>
>
Hoi,
If some find a need to be negative, so be it. They will be known for it
and accordingly their comments will be valued.

 By providing some comments the text is less dry more palatable and
therefore it is appropriate to spice them with some comments. I found
the amusement value of these messages great. I do not need feel a need
to see them all.

On an other subject, I was told that the text of the concept for ISO-639
next version was hard to find. So I send it to the gentleman who could
not find it. If someone else is interested just drop me a line..

Thanks,
    GerardM


from_name: Petr Kadlec

subject: [Wikipedia-l] alphabetical order

body:
On Mon, 21 Feb 2005 09:22:17 -0800, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> I can sympathize with the idea, but one has to keep in mind that the
> sort order should vary between one language and another.  In English we
> would alphebetize "?" as though it were "ae" while Danish treats it as a
> separate letter tagged on at the end of the alphabet.

Of course! The sorting order would have to be determined by the Language object.

I know that well, as the Czech sorting has many rather peculiar
features (e.g. in the Czech language, we have a "letter" (digraph) ch
that is sorted between H and I -- specifically this would probably be
a problem for MediaWiki anyway). For a bit of amusement, our national
standard (?SN 97 6030) governing proper sorting is known for its lack
of precision and impossibility to be implemented because its rules are
considered to be AI-complete :-). For instance, numerals in text
should be sorted according to their meaning. (In practice, simplified
interpretations are normally used.)

-- [[:cs:User:Mormegil | Petr Kadlec]]


from_name: Axel

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: [ANN] New Eclipse Wikipedia Plugin version

body:
On Mon, 21 Feb 2005 03:34:25 +0100, Ashar Voultoiz <hashar at twenkill.net> wrote:
> Axel wrote:
> > Does someone has a list of typical "evil" Wikipedia syntax constructs
> > and how they should be rendered in (x)html?
>
> In mediawiki sources, have a look at ./maintenance/parserTests.txt .
> That's a serie of test we use to check if the parser behave correctly.
Thanks, exactly what I'm ?looking for :-)


from_name: Stephen Forrest

body:
On Mon, 21 Feb 2005 16:05:15 -0700, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com> wrote:
> "Repercussions on the other projects"?
>
> Why should it be up to the community to decide this?

There is a difference between saying that the entire Wikipedia
userbase must approve any new language, and disagreeing with your
suggestion that

> all those who are native speakers of the language and
> are interested in building a Wikipedia in it should be allowed
> to vote. It shouldn't be anybody else's decision if they get a
> Wikipedia in their language or not.

For myself, I don't much buy the argument that approving a related
language/dialect Foo of an existing Wikipedia language Bar will lead a
to a huge drain on the userbase of Bar: Plattsdeutsch or Luxembourgish
have apparently not drawn too many people away from German, etc.
Furthermore, I agree with you in opposing any idea that general
speakers of Bar should vote on the inclusion of Foo.

However, the question of developer and network administrator resources
seems to me to be important.  Wikimedia is a nonprofit organization
with many goals in its mission, one of which is to promote the
distribution of knowledge in many languages, including minority ones.
While this is an important goal, I would not want to see the
foundation constrained by explicit policy to spend its resources on
minority languages if it decided that its mission could be better
served another way.

Steve


subject: [WikiEN-l] Desysoping

body:
On Mon, 21 Feb 2005 14:39:03 -0800 (PST), Rick <giantsrick13 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> --- Delirium <delirium at hackish.org> wrote:
>
> > Rick wrote:
> >
> > >However they are arguing that displaying Nazi
> > symbols,
> > >using offensive Nazi User names and making death
> > >threats are not bannable offenses.
> > >
> > >
> > No, we are only arguing the first two of those.
> >
> > -Mark
>
> But when TBSDY blocked the person for making a death
> threat on his page, the block was reverted.
>
> Would you allow someone to have a picture of a black
> person being lynched on their page?
>
> RickK
>

That is a good question, and worthy of some thought.

My gut reaction is that any depiction of an actual act of murder (or
attempted murder) falls outside of what is appropriate for a use page.
 A parallel question: Would we allow someone to have a frame from Nick
Berg's murder/execution on their home page? Again, I think not.

We would allow someone to have the famous photo of a G.I. holding a
pistol to a civilian's head (Viet Nam era) on their home page? The
question seems to get a bit more cloudy.

Perhaps a more relevant question is: Would we allow a photo of a
Ku-Klux-Klan member wearing obvious identification of membership on
their home page?  I think that we probably should.

For some people in the world, a US Army uniform may inspire fear or
terror as real as that of any holocaust survivor. Should we deny their
fear/terror? Should we ban such pictures form home pages?

How about someone in a Japanese military uniform? The Japanese are not
without a history of atrocities...think of World War II. Not as
widespread and systematic as what the Nazi's perpetrated, but can we
deny the pain and fear of those survivors or relatives?

How about a picture of a person wearing gang colors?

None of these are intended as straw men. They are serious questions
that deserve some careful thought.

I conclude (my own opinion)  that, if there are to be any restrictions
on pictures on user pages, they would have to be based on some
well-defined principles that can be applied objectively.

   -Rich Holton

en.wikipedia:User:Rholton


from_name: Stirling Newberry

body:
On Feb 21, 2005, at 8:27 PM, Mark Williamson wrote:

> My main point is that no matter who gets to decide, it should NOT be
> the general community. I personally think it should be the community
> that uses that language, but obviously if the board does not like it
> they have ultimate veto power.
>

The God-King drives a Hyundai, I don't believe you drive a Hyundai,
therefore I don't believe you are the god-king. Please stop being so
stingy with other people's rights.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Logic is logic, that's all I say...

body:
On Mon, 21 Feb 2005 21:39:12 -0500, dpbsmith at verizon.net
<dpbsmith at verizon.net> wrote:
> > From: Richard Holton <richholton at gmail.com>
> >
> > Would we allow a photo of a
> > Ku-Klux-Klan member wearing obvious identification of membership on
> > their home page?  I think that we probably should.   -Rich Holton
>
> NOTE: WIKIPEDIAN IN-JOKING AHEAD. NOT REALLY A SERIOUS COMMENT.
>
> Recently, a user requested that someone post the text of a properly
> VfDed article in Votes for Undeletion, for "viewing." A sysop did so.
> The user promptly re-created the article in his user space.
>
> It was promptly speedy-deleted on the grounds that it was re-creation
> of a VfDed article.
>
> So... deliberately mixing up two unrelated contexts, and indulging
> myself in the hobgoblin of little minds:
>
> Premise 1: a user's self-portrait in KKK regalia would be acceptable in
> one's user space
>
> Premise 2: a re-creation of a VfDed article is not acceptable in one's
> user space.
>
> Inference: To deal with self-portraits in KKK regalia, post the user's
> page as an article, so it will be promptly VfDed as vanity, thereby
> making it legitimately speedy-deletable from the user's page.
>

Thanks for the moment of humor.

But, in all seriousness, why would someone want to delete a subpage
from someone's user space? Was there something inherently offensive
about the page?

Truly Mystified

en.wikipedia:User:Rholton


from_name: John Lee

body:
Tony Sidaway wrote:

>John Lee said:
>
>
>>Isn't it kind of obvious? I'd place appropriately resized screencaps of
>> both sites, and caption the Goatse one "Goatse is one of the most
>>commonly used shock site on the internet" and the Tubgirl one "Although
>> not as commonly used as Goatse, Tubgirl is also used on a regular
>>basis  to shock unsuspecting users".
>>
>>
>
>Size is important.  A postage stamp picture of Tubgirl or Goatse would
>not, in my opinion, be likely to shock many people, but it would give them
>an idea of what to expect if they clicked to see the picture full-sized.
>
>
Makes sense, but the size would have to be relative to the user's screen
resolution. A 100px image could easily take up a fifth of the screen for
someone on 640*480. Furthermore, as Goatse and Tubgirl are websites,
having screencaps of them might make sense. I don't think that
autofellatio image was appropriate for the article, though: my point
was, it unnecessarily shocked the viewers when we could have found a
photograph less commanding and eye-drawing.

>>Not all people would care
>>to have  to click a few times every time they visit a webpage just to
>>view its  images.
>>
>>
>
>This only applies to those pages where you choose to suppress image
>downloads.
>
>
Then it might have some benefit, but you have to know what pages you
want to block beforehand.

John Lee
([[User:Johnleemk]])


body:
Karl A. Krueger wrote:

>On Sun, Feb 20, 2005 at 08:21:08PM +0800, John Lee wrote:
>
>
>>Tony Sidaway wrote:
>>
>>
>>>Well, that's precisely what I am *not* seeing.  I'm seeing a substantial
>>>minority, nearly 40%, who are in favor of inlining.  This tells me that
>>>there is not a consensus that it's such an offensive image.>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>40% of *editors*. Not readers. Big difference. People like us who have
>>so much time to spend on an online "open source" encyclopedia probably
>>have far more liberal mind sets than average folk.
>>
>>
>
>To pretend to speak in the name of those who don't care to speak for
>themselves is very easy to do, but the words thus spoken carry no added
>weight.  They are merely the words of the speaker himself, dressed in
>the Potemkin-village clothes of the "Silent Majority".  Indeed, such
>words are weakened by the false banner under which they travel.  By
>pretending to a voice that is not your own, you give up yours.
>
>When you speak for "the readers", nobody can hear the readers.  One can
>hear only you, putting on the voice of "the readers" as a phony accent,
>like a bad American actor pretending to Cockney.
>
>
It's things like this that tick me off, because in this case, that
argument flies against common sense: Most middle-class Asians and
Americans would be offended or at least shocked/distracted by a vivid
photograph of a man blowjobbing himself. Most middle-class Europeans and
Australians wouldn't. At first it seems like we're at an impasse, but
consider: While those who don't mind would be slightly inconvenienced,
those who do mind would be very heavily inconvenienced by having to
disable the image in their browser's settings. The latter group would
also be more annoyed than the former. It's a clear case to me, but I can
see why extreme liberals from Europe and Australia find this debate so
puzzling.

>
>
>
>>>Only in one country.  The rest of the world was left scratching its heads
>>>and wondering what all the fuss was about.  US news programs even carried
>>>th images with the breast pixellated out, while non-US news programs
>>>showed the incident uncensored.  Please do not assume that the standards
>>>of one country are universal.>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>That may be true, but our readership is generally American. I'm not
>>denying a substantial portion of our patronage would not be offended,
>>but a substantial amount *would* be offended. If we were to link instead
>>of inline an image, I doubt the "non-offended" would complain, and if
>>they did, it would be hardly as much as the furore from the other side
>>were we to carry the image inline.
>>
>>
>
>What, precisely, is so terrible about being offended once in a while?
>In truth, being offended regularly is quite educational, and betters a
>person.  Those who go for too long without the experience of being
>offended become fossilized in their opinions of Mankind, and develop the
>false belief that all others are like unto themselves.  When, later,
>this belief is suddenly shown false, such persons are caught entirely
>unprepared, and retreat to childish outbursts and violence.
>
>I propose that offending people is a Virtue and not a Vice, if one does
>so in a manner which is simultaneously informative & educational.  It is
>of no use to offend gratuitously; that is, to rehash tiresome offenses
>which no longer teach the offended person anything.  But to be offended
>and to receive knowledge at the same moment, is to receive knowledge
>twice over.
>
>
This is precisely the attitude I've been talking about: Editors imposing
their personal beliefs on readers. We don't tell people "Nazis were
evil" or "Saddam was evil" because that would be imposing our personal
beliefs (for those editors that believe the statements). Likewise, we
should not tell people "Being offended is good! Really! Otherwise you'll
never learn anything!" Disagreeing with the "customer" on an issue like
this would mean big trouble in the business world. Just because we're
trying something different does not mean "Hahahaha, I'll shove some
pictures of Goatse in your face because you wanted to view the shock
site article!"

>
>
>
>>>This is not part of my argument.  IE is available to 95%+ of the web-using
>>>population and it will download images or not at the user's option.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>I spent four or five years of my life using IE and I've never run across
>>the option to block images on an individual basis. I did find the
>>ability to disable all images, but I should not need to throw out the
>>baby with the bathwater.
>>
>>
>
>You have the power in your hands to prevent the terrible offense to
>yourself, which offense you so vehemently decry.  Yet you choose
>willingly not to use that power, insisting that it is Someone Else's
>Job.
>
>Either the offense is not really so bad, or else you are cutting off
>your nose to spite your face.
>
>
Try telling this to all the readers who are distracted or annoyed by
that image. Your attitude of "Come on, you wanna' fight? Bring it on!
BEING OFFENDED IS GOOD FOR YOU!" is that sort of bitchy thing which
would never be accepted if our incomes depended on this encyclopedia.
Fortunately they don't, so we can afford to be liberal, but when we get
to the point of having to debate with the readers, you know something is
wrong.

John Lee
([[User:Johnleemk]])


from_name: Chad Perrin

body:
Tomer Chachamu wrote:
> "Wikipedia" in Hebrew: xn--7dbcbqab9ewa.org
> "Wikipedia" in Arabic: (I'm guessing) is xn--mgbbv2fyambbb.org (I took
> this from the Main Page in Arabic; it's the text in quotes)
>
> Are there plans to register these domains? What about Japanese, etc, etc?
>
> Is Punycode even commonly used in the countries of those languages? I
> know that in Israel it is common to see latinised domains
> (http://www.shesh.co.il http://www.walla.co.il http://www.nana.co.il
> etc) instead of domains in Unicode.
>
> Internet Explorer does not appear to support Punycode.

It doesn't.  Unfortunately, punycode (for IDN support) presents a huge
security vulnerability for browsers at this time, so even on non-IE
browsers a lot of people are turning off IDN support.  The problem is
that punycode allows easy spoofing of many domain names by using
character homographs in the URL.  I, for instance, have IDN support
turned off in Firefox.

--
Chad