from_name: Cobb

body:
>Garion1000 wrote:

>>On 6/22/06, Cobb wrote:
>>
>> In summary, the system is broken. But you won't get any sense on this
>> mailing list, because most of the people here don't actually edit
>> Wikipedia these days. They just pontificate and have faith in some
>> mystical power of the Wiki.

>Excuse me? I know editcount doesn't mean everything. But I would hate
>counting the editcount of regular posters on this mailing list. Even if
>only counting (main) edits.

"These days".

Some of the pontificators here should throw themselves
back into editing from a newbie's point of view. Pick some craphole
area of Wikipedia and try editing, and imagine that you don't know
anyone else... don't have tame admin buddies to call on. Imagine
facing up to a group of editors who know the ins and outs of the
process and how to game it. It might wake some people up.

Regarding my point about AFD... which seems to be misunderstood
by Jesse W.

The Wikipedia AFD process is complicated and crufty. Putting an
article up for AFD should be easy as adding {{afd|reason}} (don't make
technical arguments in response to this. I'm just telling you how it should
work). Putting something up for deletion should be almost as easy as
creating a new page. Currently the AFD process is obscure and
technical. It doesn't help that there are inclusionist editors who seem
to want to make it as unintuitive as possible and keep it that way,
and frustrate any attempts to change it. Pure wiki deletion might
offer an improvement... but something tells me that it's going
nowhere due to being too simple and easy to use.

>JesseW wrote:
> Also, as I mentioned above, we have a number of areas that are
>well-patrolled by non-nutballs who *do* follow our polices and guidelines,
>and editors who don't want to fight can also toil in those areas, and leave

>the work of defending the articles against crazies to others.

And this is an argument against what? Some bits of Wikipedia aren't too
bad, so that's ok.


list: wikitech-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Richard Wooding

body:
Hi,

Thanks for the assistance.

How do I do that, if found tidy in extensions/Tidy.php, I have installed
Tidy (and libtidy) in Suse 10.1

How do I enable this?

-----Original Message-----
From: wikitech-l-bounces at wikimedia.org
[mailto:wikitech-l-bounces at wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Brion Vibber
Sent: Wednesday, June 21, 2006 6:37 PM
To: Wikimedia developers
Subject: Re: [Wikitech-l] After importing wikipedia dump, some templates use
parserfunctions behave strangely by escaping HTML

Platonides wrote:
> Are you using the last version?
> Wikimedia doesn't use CVS any more, but SVN at http://svn.wikimedia.org/
> extensions should be at
> http://svn.wikimedia.org/viewvc/mediawiki/trunk/extensions/
>
> This may also be due to the mixing of wiki-tables and html-tables syntax
in
> the template.
> Brion recently changed the table behaviour, but as it shows well on
> wikipedia (running from SVN), it may be not related....

Rather, I have *not* changed the behavior.

Enable tidy.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


list: wikien-l

from_name: Steve Bennett

subject: [WikiEN-l] Monobook suddenly changed?

body:
On 6/22/06, Stephen Bain <stephen.bain at gmail.com> wrote:
> It's easier to keep track of changes to MediaWiki pages, just select
> the MediaWiki namespace in Recent Changes like so:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3ARecentchanges&namespace=8

Thanks, useful link!

Steve


subject: [WikiEN-l] New York Times article

body:
On 6/23/06, Alphax (Wikipedia email) <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
> Sceptre's second law: If only five bytes have been added to an article
> in a diff by an IP, it will almost always be the word "gay".

"gay" takes only 5 bytes now? What an ingenious unicode storage format
we must have :)

Steve


from_name: Bryan Derksen

subject: [WikiEN-l] Oversight log

body:
jayjg wrote:
> On 6/23/06, Mark Ryan <ultrablue at gmail.com> wrote:
>> If User X is doing 95% of the
>> oversight revision deletions, I'd like to know about it.
>
> Hmm.  For a while there someone was doing 95% of the CheckUsers,
> because they were willing to put in the hundreds of hours of volunteer
> time required to do it.  Is that suspicious in some way?

Yes. I would find it suspicious, at any rate. And then I (or someone
else, actually, since I haven't paid much attention to CheckUser stuff)
would go around asking "hey, how come User X is doing 95% of the
CheckUser stuff?" and get various answers from various people amounting
to "because it's a big hassle to do and he's the only one willing to
volunteer the time." That would allay my suspicions.

The fact that suspicions are raised is not necessarily a slight on the
person under suspicion, IMO. It's good to be able to get these things
out in the open and _confirm_ that nothing untoward is going on.

>> This is different to the CheckUser logs because this has content
>> implications, not privacy implications.
>
> Are content implications more serious than privacy implications?

Wikipedia's goal is to produce content. Protecting the privacy of its
users is only a means to that end - an important means, IMO, but not the
_most_ important. Otherwise why allow CheckUser to be used at all?

-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 250 bytes
Desc: OpenPGP digital signature
Url : http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/attachments/20060623/da0d9021/attachment.pgp


from_name: jayjg

subject: [WikiEN-l] Oversight log

body:
On 6/23/06, Mark Ryan <ultrablue at gmail.com> wrote:
> Okay, I appreciate that listing the article name may prompt
> investigative types to go searching for the deleted revisions on
> dumps.

Or to the many mirrors of Wikipedia, as has happened.

> But to close off all public record of this potentially
> GFDL-violating tool is very worrying to me.

How would it violate GFDL, and what would the "worrying" consequences be?

> Is there *any* reason not to have a bare log of oversight actions?
> Even without the page title, I'd like to see who removes an edit and
> when, with a reason (like "Personal Information"). Perhaps with some
> sort of unique tag (in the style of the autoblocks). This information
> would in no way give away the version removed or from what page it was
> removed, and it would reveal who was using the tools the most. Like:
>
> 22:17, 23 June 2006 Jimbo Wales removed a revision (ID #123456789).
> Reason given was: "Personally identifiable information"
>
> Any reason why that is unacceptable?

Of what benefit would that information be, and to whom?  What would
the subsequent action be, some editor saying "why did Jimbo remove
that revision on June 23"?  He's already said why, Personal
Information.  This suggestion would just turn the log into a fishing
expedition for distrustful editors.

Jay.


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [WikiEN-l] A very interesting recent "fair use" case ruling

body:
James wrote:

>It's interesting for many reasons, not least because it is explicit in
>rejecting many of the misunderstandings people have used to object to
>various fair use cases. Hopefully the explicit statements will resolve
>those misunderstandings. Nothing actually new in the decision but it
>makes some things really obvious (I hope! :))
>
Dream on! For me it does add a little more clarity to findings of fair
use, but for people who demand absolute certainty on the matter no
amount of fact will ever be convincing. Ultimately each and every claim
of fair use must be judged on its own merits, and that makes certainty
impossible.

>First the case itself: a history of the Grateful Dead group, used many
>pictures of posters and tickets where a copyright holder had refused
>permission under fair use and won in a relatively inexpensive summary
>judgment.
>
Seven pictures, not "many".

>"(noting that a work that comments about "pop culture" is not removed
>from the scope of Section 107 [fair use]simply because it is not
>erudite)."
>
>Sadly for those who dislike articles about popular culture, merely
>being about popular culture doesn't remove fair use. :) You get to use
>Beanie Baby pictures as well as the most admired modern art under fair
>use.
>
It's an interesting comment in the way it broadens the view of "cultured".

>"nearly all of the illustrative uses listed in the preamble paragraph
>of ? 107 . . . are generally conducted for profit ... Here,
>Illustrated Trip does not exploit the use of BGA's images as such for
>commercial gain. Significantly, DK has not used any of BGA's images in
>its commercial advertising or in any other way to promote the sale of
>the book. Illustrated Trip merely uses pictures and text to describe
>the life of the Grateful Dead. By design, the use of BGA's images is
>incidental to the commercial biographical value of the book."
>
>For those who wonder about fair use and commercial reusers of content
>placed in Wikipedia by its authors. Those commercial users also get
>fair use and that was part of the original intent of fair use law.
>
While it is conceivable that what the downstream user does with the
Wikipedia's fair-use material may no longer be fair use, it would take
considerable effort on his part to do that. Changing the transformative
nature of the Wikipedia material would likely require the stripping out
of the Wikipedia context. Taking a photo reduced image and blowing it
back up to poster size will not restore the lost resolution in that
image. The nature of the copyrighted work is constant without regard to
who is using it. As long as the transformative nature of our fair use is
maintained the effect on the copyright owner's markets is unchanged. It
is also difficult to imagine how the downstream user could or would use
Wikipedia's fair use material for a purpose other than one of those listed.

I would be interested to see an example of a use of fair-use material
from Wikipedia become non-fair-use when applied by a downstream user
without the example being impossibly contrived.

>"We conclude that such use by DK is tailored to further its
>transformative purpose because DK's reduced size reproductions of BGA'
>s images in their entirety displayed the minimal image size and
>quality necessary to ensure the reader's recognition of the images as
>historical artifacts of Grateful Dead concert events. Accordingly, the
>third fair use factor does not weigh against fair use."
>
>Reduced resolution is helpful but do remember that you can use
>whatever size is required. You do need to use sufficient resolution of
>portion so the viewer can clearly see what you're trying to show!
>We're already using suitable sizes, I think, so no change necessary,
>except reassurance for those who wondered whether small images were a
>problem if it was showing a small version of it all.
>
One argument that does not appear to have been raised about resolution
is that if the software must choose one representative pixel in a block
of 25 for a 4% sample that process is irreversible.

>"the parties agree that DK's use of the images did not impact BGA's
>primary market for the sale of the poster images."
>
>This should also be the case for almost all uses in Wikipedia, since
>Wikipedia use isn't the same as the originals
>
The footnote on page 20 of the decision is also interesting: "To the
contrary, had the book been commercially successful ? it was not ? it
might have garnered interest in the original images in full size because
the reduced images have such minimal expressive impact. An afficionado
might seek more than a ?peek.?" Our uses will often enhance the
marketability of the illustrated material. Maybe they should be paying
us to include it. ;-)

>On to a bit that often causes confusion... loss of revenue for the
>copyright holder. Best summarized with the simple sentences
>"[C]opyright owners may not preempt exploitation of transformative
>markets. ... Since DK's use of BGA's images falls within a
>transformative market, BGA does not suffer market harm due to the loss
>of license fees." (because it's not entitled to them anyway). Since
>use in Wikipedia will always be transformative, this is very unlikely
>to be a negative factor for a use in Wikipedia.
>
Entitlement to license fees may very well be a product of negotaitions,
even if that legal entitlement did not previously exist. The point is
that a negotiated agreement cannot be used to reverse engineer a
preexisting condition. Such a rationale is no more valid than a proof
for the existence of God.

>"Appellant argues that DK interfered with the market for licensing its
>images for use in books. Appellant contends that there is an
>established market for licensing its images and it suffered both the
>loss of royalty revenue directly from DK and the opportunity to obtain
>royalties from others. ...
>
>We have noted, however, that 'were a court automatically to conclude
>in every case that potential licensing revenues were impermissibly
>impaired simply because the secondary user did not pay a fee for the
>right to engage in the use, the fourth fair use factor would always
>favor the copyright holder.'
>
In Canadian law where the four factors are not a part of the fair
dealing provisions in the Copyright Act the Supreme Court has looked
favorably upon them. Moreover, in dealing with the fourth factor it has
determined that the burden of proving that a market hurt must lie with
the owner of the copyright since the user would not normally have access
to the owner's business records. There is more to market interference
than simply making an unfounded claim.

>And that's the reasoning that's going to apply to uses in Wikipedia as
>well, for pretty much the same fundamental reasons: transformative use
>and not primarily of value just because of the images, which are
>accompanied by the articles that provide the main part of the content.
>
There does remain the problem of other countries' laws. For the most
part there appears to be a lot of wind and little fact for interpreting
the fair dealing provisions of these places. It would be interesting to
read court precedents on these matters rather than the simple parotting
of skeletal statutory provisions.

>But once this legal aspect is taken care of, do remember that it's
>nice to seek to replace fair use images with more freely licensed
>images as those become available. Recruit friends, take pictures on
>vacations and around your town and encourage others to do so, so we
>can gradually replace all those that can be replaced. It'll take a
>while to get everyone on the planet working with us so we have done
>this for everything but it'll happen eventually... meanwhile, remember
>we're a wiki and successive improvement over time is one of the
>fundamental principles of wiki use. We don't insist on perfect first
>versions of an article and nor should we do so for images. But we
>should encourage perfection in both over time.
>
Absolutely, but there will always remain topics that can only be
illustrated by fair use image.

Ec


from_name: Rob

subject: [WikiEN-l] 3RR policy proposal: No "Gotcha" rule

body:
On 6/23/06, Warren Blanco <fireislandparadise at gmail.com> wrote:

>
> Unfortunately, admins seem increasingly willing to block without regard to
> warnings, a practiced that assumes bad faith.

I think admins are generally able to ascertain when a block is
warranted and when it is not.  Do we really need to add yet more
policy to cover this?


body:
On 6/23/06, Warren Blanco <fireislandparadise at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > WP:3RR was changed (without there first being consensus) back in April so
> > that reverts count towards the 3RR even if they are unrelated. This has
> > resulted in some editors playing "gotcha" by invoking the 3RR without first
> > giving a warning.
>
>
>
> I'd like to propose the following exception to the 3RR policy:
>
> Exception:
>
> Lack of warning
>
> A 3RR ban cannot be imposed against an editor who has not been warned that
> he or she is in danger of violating the 3RR. A ban can only be imposed when
> an editor violates the 3RR after receiving a warning even if he or she has
> already tecnically violated the 3RR prior to receiving a warning.
> ----
> This policy is already implied on ANI:3RR which states:
> "If you find yourself in a revert war, it is a good idea to ensure that the
> "other side" is aware of the 3RR, especially if they are new, by leaving a
> warning about WP:3RR <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:3RR> on their talk
> page. Administrators are unlikely to block a user who has never been
> warned."
>
> Unfortunately, admins seem increasingly willing to block without regard to
> warnings, a practiced that assumes bad faith.

On the contrary, the practice is to always warn new editors when they
have violated 3RR, and offer them the chance to revert themselves and
avoid any sanction. However, when people have been blocked for 3RR
before, or even clearly warned about 3RR before, then it's not bad
faith to assume they are fully aware of their actions; rather, it is
commonsense to assume they know what they're doing, and are willing to
accept the consequences.

Jay.


body:
On 6/23/06, Rob <gamaliel8 at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 6/23/06, Warren Blanco <fireislandparadise at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> >
> > Unfortunately, admins seem increasingly willing to block without regard to
> > warnings, a practiced that assumes bad faith.
>
> I think admins are generally able to ascertain when a block is
> warranted and when it is not.

Exactly. This statement, as is so typical, assumes bad faith about
admins, while decrying assumptions of bad faith.

> Do we really need to add yet more
> policy to cover this?

No, and especially not bad policy.  This idea would give any editor
license to revert as many times as they wanted, until they were
finally "officially warned" to stop reverting.  Then they could come
back 24 hours later, and again revert as many times as they wanted
until they were "officially warned".  It's a license for 4, 5, or more
reverts on any article, as long as you're quick enough on the revert
button, or your opponents aren't wise enough to post that formal
warning before you get your reverts in.

Jay.


from_name: Jay R. Ashworth

subject: [Wikitech-l] Wikimarkup request: -- to em-dash

body:
On Fri, Jun 23, 2006 at 12:44:09AM -0600, Chad Perrin wrote:
> > Clearly, if this is done, it needs to be considered whether surrounding
> > spaces should be eaten by the parser.
>
> Agreed.  I vote "no".

Oh; you're voting "no, the parser should *not* automagically replace
'--' and/or ' -- ' with —", then?

Might this, perhaps, be just a subst type thing that happens once when
a page is saved?

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

     A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text.
     Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?

     A: Top-posting.
     Q: What is the most annoying thing on Usenet and in e-mail?


subject:
[WikiEN-l] Category:<Subjective-pejorative>, weak consensus,
	and ! NPOV

body:
> "Alphax wrote:
>>Cobb wrote:
>> Some of the pontificators here should throw themselves back into editing
>> from a newbie's point of view. Pick some craphole area of Wikipedia and
>> try editing, and imagine that you don't know anyone else... don't have
>> tame admin buddies to call on. Imagine facing up to a group of editors
>> who know the ins and outs of the process and how to game it. It might
>> wake some people up.
>
>I wonder how the people with "tame admin buddies" got that way?
>Not possibly from being Good Editors perhaps?

I was talking about new editors, and how we drive them away... but then,
knowing that would require you to have actually read the post that you just
replied to. I know it's a burden, but it does make things go more smoothly.

>> The Wikipedia AFD process is complicated and crufty. Putting an article
>> up for AFD should be easy as adding {{afd|reason}} (don't make technical
>> arguments in response to this. I'm just telling you how it should work).
>> Putting something up for deletion should be almost as easy as creating a
>> new page.

> It is. Stick {{prod|reason}} on it.

The point was about AFD, not about prod. Prod tags can simply be
removed.

>> Currently the AFD process is obscure and technical. It doesn't help that
>> there are inclusionist editors who seem to want to make it as
>> unintuitive as possible and keep it that way, and frustrate any attempts
>> to change it.

>Calling someone an "inclusionist" or "deletionist" doesn't help.

Neither does avoiding the issue, which is eactly what you have just done.

>> JesseW wrote:
>> Also, as I mentioned above, we have a number of areas that are
>> well-patrolled by non-nutballs who *do* follow our polices and
>> guidelines, and editors who don't want to fight can also toil in those
>> areas, and leave the work of defending the articles against crazies to
>> others.
>
> And this is an argument against what? Some bits of Wikipedia aren't too
> bad, so that's ok.
>
> Could you rephrase that so it's coherent?

See above about reading the post properly before replying. What was his
point in relation to my post? That parts of wikipedia don't have nutball
editors? So what? My point was that we have policies that allow groups to
drive off any editor that tries to clean up the bad areas unless they happen
to
be experienced and hardened.  The current system burns up and throws
away good new editors with its extreme tolerance of
idiots and vandals under some misguided notion of openness. We don't
need idiots... we need lots and lots of editors who want to help Wikipedia
be an encyclopedia. Policies/admins that defend idiots and frustrate and
drive off decent and sensible editors are wrong.


body:
On Fri, Jun 23, 2006 at 08:10:43AM +0200, Steve Bennett wrote:
> Yeah I'd like to hear more about where en-dashes should be used. If
> it's just for the date range thing, then probably a bot could look for
> people mistakenly using emdashes or hyphens in those cases. A much
> less frequent occurrence than people using -- for emdashes currently.

Captain Obvious strikes:

  http://www.google.com/search?q=en+dash+usage

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

     A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text.
     Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?

     A: Top-posting.
     Q: What is the most annoying thing on Usenet and in e-mail?


from_name: Fred Bauder

subject: [WikiEN-l] Non-office OFFICE actions

references:
<oh4n92psoq7kh0i8pfj4uajbtol35h9e4l@4ax.com>
	<449BB1B8.4010206@gmail.com>
	<f80608430606230417l2eb80df4ud49e76cc6f402cb@mail.gmail.com>
	<8g8o92t8src8i7d1vnd63bs97332kvstmr@4ax.com>

body:
I suggest focusing on his political activities. If they are not
notable, the personal details of his life are not either.

Fred

On Jun 23, 2006, at 11:20 AM, Guy Chapman aka JzG wrote:

> On Fri, 23 Jun 2006 12:17:55 +0100, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>> No UK law against mention spent convictions. Otherwise tabloids would
>> never be out of court. Foundation doesn't have any UK assets and
>> there
>> is not reason for any of the board memeber to enter the UK.
>>
>
> That is the crucial question, isn't it?  Without the text of the
> complaint to OTRS we can't know whether the article was stated to be
> biased or whether it was the apparently (but without legal advice not
> definitely) baseless claim of protection under ROA.
>
> If it was accuracy there is no reason not to start rebuilding from the
> known verifiable facts.  Which, it has to be said, are mainly about
> the criminal conviction.
>
> Guy (JzG)
> --
> http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Nathan

subject: [WikiEN-l]  What is "spam?"

body:
Quite right. I changed all my IM accounts to some variation of
nathanrdotcom in 2002 after dealing with a lot of harassment.

At the time I registered here on Wikipedia, User:Nathan was taken.

I've had the same Wikipedia username since February and nobody's commented
on it until now. I think it's perfectly fine and there's only one person
with a problem with it. I'm hardly co-opting Wikipedia for my own personal
gain nor am I in any way disrupting it to advertise (I'm aware of WP:NOT).
It would be different if my username was..let's say.. nathanr.com or
www.nathanr.com, then that would be blatant advertising, but it's not and
it isn't.

- Nathan (User:nathanrdotcom)

Will wrote:
I had a friend who's email address was (let's call her Jane)
janedotcodotuk at aol.co.uk.

And in Nathan's case, Nathan and Nathanr was already taken.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Oversight log

body:
On 6/23/06, Mark Ryan <ultrablue at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 23/06/06, jayjg <jayjg99 at gmail.com> wrote:
> > How would it violate GFDL, and what would the "worrying" consequences be?
>
> I said it was "potentially GFDL-violating". Surely you, as a member of
> the ArbCom, know of the attribution requirements of the GFDL. Carnildo
> pointed out an example of one such situation earlier in this thread.

I'm looking for someone who will state what they believe the
likelihood of this happening, and what the practical consequences
might be.

> And I'm a little concerned that you don't seem to think violation on
> our part of the GFDL would be worrying in itself.

I'm a little concerned that you are trying to turn this into a
discussion about me, rather than a discussion about the practical
consequences of using the "Oversight" capability.

> > Of what benefit would that information be, and to whom?  What would
> > the subsequent action be, some editor saying "why did Jimbo remove
> > that revision on June 23"?  He's already said why, Personal
> > Information.  This suggestion would just turn the log into a fishing
> > expedition for distrustful editors.
>
> I see what you mean about the fishing trip. But I still feel a listing
> of these actions would be beneficial purely for the statistics it
> would show.
>
> I think you are under the mistaken delusion that members of the ArbCom
> are automatically trusted by the community. I know less than the half
> the people given this oversight power, and of those, I trust even
> fewer.

I'm not under any "mistaken delusions". :-)   Nevertheless, the
community has shown significant support for many of the members,
particularly in the recent elections.  Of course, every member elected
also got oppose votes, so distrust (at least by the opposers) is
inevitable.

> These people (including yourself) have been given access to
> what was effectively a developer-only action, and are asking the rest
> of us to "just trust you" that you'll all make sure you're all doing
> the right thing. That doesn't cut the mustard with me. I trust the
> developers I used to get to do this manually far more than most of the
> people now afforded this power.

How were the developers elected, and what made you trust them?

> If User X is doing 95% of the
> oversight revision deletions, I'd like to know about it.

Hmm.  For a while there someone was doing 95% of the CheckUsers,
because they were willing to put in the hundreds of hours of volunteer
time required to do it.  Is that suspicious in some way?

> This is different to the CheckUser logs because this has content
> implications, not privacy implications.

Are content implications more serious than privacy implications?

Jay.


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] New SVN committer

body:
It's an epidemic of new committers this week. :)

Added: Robert Stojnic (rainman), Serbian localization and character variant
conversion.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 249 bytes
Desc: OpenPGP digital signature
URL: <http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/attachments/20060623/6388fecd/attachment.pgp>


from_name: Anthony DiPierro

subject: [WikiEN-l] "the experiment" - did it work?

body:
On 6/23/06, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
> > I was referring to the fact that it's certainly *possible* to delete
> > crap without putting it through AfD, and is probably within policy to
> > do so.  If it isn't within policy to delete crap started by anons
> > which no registered user would have bothered to fix and move to
> > article space, then the policy is flawed, not the software.
>
> WP:AFC handles that quite nicely. But I'm not sure where we're going
> with all this.
>
Where we're going is that AFC *doesn't* handle things nicely.  It's a
terrible hack.  If you think AFC works well, you apparently don't use
it very much.

> > Of course, part of my second idea above was that we not only make it
> > explicitly within policy to speedily delete crap started by an anon,
> > but that we make it possible for the vast majority of established
> > users to do so.
>
> It's possible for anyone to nominate the article for speedy deletion.
> I suppose giving "deletion for anonymous articles" rights to people is
> possible, but fraught. Is an article that has been edited by a
> registered user still a candidate for mega-speedy deletion?
>
Until someone approves it, yes.

Anyway, yes, it's possible for anyone to nominate an article for
speedy deletion.  This is why I think your argument that "AfC is less
work for us, the established Wikipedia community, than is putting crap
new articles through AfD" is a strawman.

Anthony


body:
On Sat, Jun 24, 2006 at 01:46:41AM +1000, Brianna Laugher wrote:
> > No other wiki markup used in article space works that way.[1]
> >
> > Steve
> > [1] except subst:
>
> and ~~~ / ~~~~ / ~~~~ . oh wait, article space.
> *mutters* technicality!

I've never tried it: *do* the tilde subs work in article namespace?

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

     A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text.
     Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?

     A: Top-posting.
     Q: What is the most annoying thing on Usenet and in e-mail?


from_name: Lord Voldemort

subject: [WikiEN-l] Oversight -- Really new or not?

body:
On 6/23/06, Matt Brown <morven at gmail.com> wrote:
> Because we don't know which admin has done this, just that it happened.

Yet. To quote Saw2 "Oh yes, there will be blood."  (But not really,
desysopping won't physically harm anybody... unlike the possibilities
some of these other "watch" sites may present.)  I can't believe I
just quoted Saw2. ;-)

--LV


from_name: Guy Chapman aka JzG

subject: [WikiEN-l] Non-office OFFICE actions

body:
On Fri, 23 Jun 2006 18:47:44 +0930, "Alphax \(Wikipedia email\)"
<alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:

>> This article originally stated that Lauder-Frost was cleared on appeal
>> of charges of theft.  This turns out to be a lie: he was convicted.
>Per [[WP:LIVING]], we can't say that without a source.

And sources for both the conviction and failure of the appeal has
indeed been provided, as has a source for the sequestration of assets
following conviction.  The London Gazette is one of the most reliable
sources there is, in matters of public record.

>> His supporters assert that the theft may now not be mentioned
>> (although they were perfectly happy for the lie to be in there, it
>> seems),
>That shouldn't be in there either.

Obviously :-)

>> because it is a "spent" conviction under the rehabilitation of
>> offenders act.  This appears to be a novel interpretation, since the
>> text of the act as posted to Talk only prevents publication with
>> malicious intent.
>I assume that this is a piece of UK law, which probably doesn't apply to
>Wikipedia since the servers and the WMF are based in Florida. However,
>IANAL, and the UK has some wacky defamation/anti-libel laws, so anything
>could happen.

The law prevents a prior conviction from being used to discriminate
against a  job candidate, and prevents its malicious use, but does not
prevent (as far as any of us can tell) its use in a neutral biography.

>> They have argued long and hard for removal of this conviction from the
>> article.  I do not think neutral biography can omit it.
>Provided it's sourced, of course.

Indeed.  And William posted numerous references to support it. Sourced
it is - and as far as I can tell Lauder-Frost doesn't deny it either.

>> Lauder-Frost has had his solicitors write to one editor (who made no
>> significant edits to the article as far as I can see) and has
>> contacted the Foundation; Brad is involved.  User Sussexman has been
>> blocked for alluding to these legal threats before they were made - he
>> is clearly in contact with Lauder-Frost.
>Well, legal threats are grounds for immediate and indefinate blocking.

Yup. Sussexman is blocked (see legal threats by proxy post above), I
am not sure whether that is good or not - tough call.

>> I think they are gaming the system.  They wanted a long puff piece
>> about Lauder-Frost, when it was trimmed and the truth of his
>> conviction added they wanted it deleted.
>It's been AFD'ed twice, and kept both times. At present it's
>semi-protected, which is the appropriate action to take when extensive
>IP/sockpuppet vandalism has taken place.

It was already sprotected, and unusually here the IP vandalism
consisted of *removing cited content* rather than adding uncited
content.

Guy (JzG)
--
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG


from_name: geni

subject: [WikiEN-l] Non-office OFFICE actions

body:
On 6/23/06, Alphax (Wikipedia email) <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
> Per [[WP:LIVING]], we can't say that without a source.
>

#
# ^ "Right-wing activist jailed for cheque thefts", The Independent,
28 November 1992, p. 2.
# ^ records of the Court of Appeal, case number T19921351

> I assume that this is a piece of UK law, which probably doesn't apply to
> Wikipedia since the servers and the WMF are based in Florida. However,
> IANAL, and the UK has some wacky defamation/anti-libel laws, so anything
> could happen.
>

No UK law against mention spent convictions. Otherwise tabloids would
never be out of court. Foundation doesn't have any UK assets and there
is not reason for any of the board memeber to enter the UK.

> Provided it's sourced, of course.
>

It is.

>
> It's been AFD'ed twice, and kept both times. At present it's
> semi-protected, which is the appropriate action to take when extensive
> IP/sockpuppet vandalism has taken place.
>

It has been blanked by a member of OTRS. Admins have already ben
slightly made aware of the problem:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Administrators%27_noticeboard/IncidentArchive110#Sussexman

Where exactly are they going wrong?

--
geni


from_name: Zero

subject: [WikiEN-l] Spoiler Boilerplates

body:
I'm trying to understand the relevence of this unnecessary nonsense, and I must conceed that the rebutals provided by fellow editors (a great deal of them newbies that just began editting the wiki ) is some strawman to do with consideration. For more elaborate discussion see [[User talk:Megaman Zero]] and [[Wikipedia talk:Spoiler warning#Guideline]].

Obviously we all work toward building a great encyclopedia. But what do these have to do with that quality...? I'm quite confused by this. Days of discussion and not user in support of the template in question can provide one. Was there some demand by readers to implement this...? This seems quite utterly out of the boundries of a neutral editor at wikipedia to decide upon.

How on earth can a encyclopedia spoil a reader by being an encyclopedia...? Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, not a forum for netquitette relations. I humbly beg the community to clarify upon this matter and reconsider carefully the precense of this useless template upon wikipedia.

---------------------------------
Yahoo! Sports Fantasy Football ?06 - Go with the leader. Start your league today!


subject: [WikiEN-l] Spoiler Boilerplates

body:
Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote: On 6/23/06, Zero  wrote:
> How on earth can a encyclopedia spoil a reader by being an encyclopedia...? Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, not a forum for netquitette relations. I humbly beg the community to clarify upon this matter and reconsider carefully the precense of this useless template upon wikipedia.

>>This is a perennial argument. Yes, we are an encyclopaedia. No, I
don't feel that that goal is impaired by us warning the user "You may
not want to read the following paragraph". For the same reason,
warnings when users will encounter graphic violent or pornographic
images seems appropriate.

>>Quite personally, I do avoid reading articles about certain books and
TV shows, because I know the spoiler warnings aren't well implemented.
Therefore, my experience as a reader is diminished, and Wikipedia's
goal is hampered to a small extent.

>>But hey, others disagree, and it's not ruining my life either.

- Steve

Well that's another hassle. They are not only inappropriate, they're being used incorrectly. What does it matter to the encycloepdia if someone reads a plot twist...? That's what we do.

---------------------------------
Do you Yahoo!?
 Next-gen email? Have it all with the  all-new Yahoo! Mail Beta.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Spoiler Boilerplates

body:
Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote: On 6/23/06, Zero  wrote:
> How on earth can a encyclopedia spoil a reader by being an encyclopedia...? Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, not a forum for netquitette relations. I humbly beg the community to clarify upon this matter and reconsider carefully the precense of this useless template upon wikipedia.

>>This is a perennial argument. Yes, we are an encyclopaedia. No, I
don't feel that that goal is impaired by us warning the user "You may
not want to read the following paragraph". For the same reason,
warnings when users will encounter graphic violent or pornographic
images seems appropriate.

>>Quite personally, I do avoid reading articles about certain books and
TV shows, because I know the spoiler warnings aren't well implemented.
Therefore, my experience as a reader is diminished, and Wikipedia's
goal is hampered to a small extent.

>>But hey, others disagree, and it's not ruining my life either.

- Steve

Well that's another hassle. They are not only inappropriate, they're being used incorrectly. What does it matter to the encycloepdia if someone reads a plot twist...? That's what we do.  -Zero

---------------------------------
Sneak preview the  all-new Yahoo.com. It's not radically different. Just radically better.


list: foundation-l

subject: [Foundation-l] New privacy policy

body:
On 6/22/06, Mathieu Amo <solensean at gmail.com> wrote:
> I strongly agree with Delphine : the translations should have a
> warning on them. (remember, that's why we do not have official
> translations of the GFDL).
>
Is a privacy policy even a legal document in the first place?


list: wikimedia-l

subject: [Foundation-l] New privacy policy


from_name: Mark Wagner

subject: [WikiEN-l] semi-stuff (was Re: New York Times article)

body:
On 6/23/06, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 6/22/06, Mark Wagner <carnildo at gmail.com> wrote:
> > A great many users, including some of our most prolific editors, have
> > no clue about image copyright law or policy.  The ability to block
> > them from uploading images would be quite useful.
> >
> > What would be even more useful would be for image uploading to be a
> > privilege, not a right: you don't get the ability to upload images
> > simply by registering an account.
>
> A proper experiment on this would be a good thing. Measure the number
> of "good", "bad" and "borderline" images before and after the
> implementation of such a privilege system.

Well, the "before" results certainly aren't encouraging:
http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2006-March/041534.html
Roughly 50% of all uploads have incorrect license tags.  Roughly 35%
of all fair-use claims are immediately obvious as invalid, and I
expect at least another 25% to be found invalid on further inspection.

Preliminary results on who's doing the uploading indicate that about
35% of all uploads are by users with fewer than 50 edits; 15% are by
users with fewer than ten.  Less than a quarter are by users with a
thousand or more edits.  I don't have precise statistics, but in
general, the bad images I've seen go by tend to have been uploaded by
users with redlinked userpages.

In the past six months, OrphanBot has handed out 37,000 notices to
24,000 users.  200 users have received ten or more notices, with one
user receiving 53 notices.  For the majority of these users, the only
things on the user's talk page are a welcome notice and notifications
from OrphanBot.

> How would you work out who to give initial priveleges to? Is there
> enough history to determine which editors have uploaded more problem
> images than good ones?

I'd start by letting anyone with at least five hundred edits upload
images.  They may not be any better at uploading good images, but at
least they've got enough invested in Wikipedia that they'll stick
around to learn about the image use policy.

--
Mark
[[User:Carnildo]]


from_name: Alphax (Wikipedia email)

body:
Ilya N. wrote:
> Hi,
>
> You'll have to pardon me as I've been on break for a little bit.
>
> I'm just wondering how oversight is much different than an admin just
> deleting an article and restoring all but the selected revision.
>
> It's not like the revision is deleted in the database.
>
> So why have a separate permissions group?
>

Because we have 950 admins, and at least one of them is a member of
Wikitruth and has been undeleting stuff to get it posted there.

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

-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 569 bytes
Desc: OpenPGP digital signature
Url : http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/attachments/20060623/699d6891/attachment.pgp


subject: [WikiEN-l] Oversight log

body:
Andrew Gray wrote:
> On 22/06/06, Mark Wagner <carnildo at gmail.com> wrote:
>> On 6/21/06, Fred Bauder <fredbaud at ctelco.net> wrote:
>>> The problem is that what we are removing is stuff like personal
>>> information or libelous statements that we really do want to vanish
>>> and not be repeated internally.
>> Then the log as viewable to the world at large should say something
>> like '10:49, 22 June 2006 Fred Bauder deleted 1 revision(s) of "George
>> W. Bush" (Personal information)'
>
> An idle thought vaguely prompted by this... you know what would be
> nice? After a normal deletion, for the history to go from
>
> * 12:13 2006-01-01 User:Adam m. (Fixed typo)
> * 12.54 2006-01-01 User:Bill (Expanded biographical section)
> * 13.17 2006-01-01 User:Vandal (...)
> * 13:22 2006-01-01 User:NotAdmin (Remove defamation)
>
> to
>
> * 12:13 2006-01-01 User:Adam m. (Fixed typo)
> * 12.54 2006-01-01 User:Bill (Expanded biographical section)
> * 13.17 2006-01-01 User:Admin [Revision deleted (Defamatory material)]
> * 13:22 2006-01-01 User:NotAdmin (Remove defamation)
>
> rather than
>
> * There is one deleted revision.
> * 12:13 2006-01-01 User:Adam m. (Fixed typo)
> * 12.54 2006-01-01 User:Bill (Expanded biographical section)
> * 13:22 2006-01-01 User:NotAdmin (Remove defamation)
>

No. Absolutely not. If anyone apart from the oversight group knows that
a revision has been deleted, they can just find a database dump that was
taken before the deletion occurred, compare the history, and go post the
deleted revision somewhere else on the internet.

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

-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 569 bytes
Desc: OpenPGP digital signature
Url : http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/attachments/20060623/488b27c5/attachment.pgp


from_name: Jean-Denis Vauguet

subject: [Foundation-l] New privacy policy

body:
Aphaia wrote:
>> On 6/22/06, Anthere <Anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>>> http://wikimediafoundation.org/w/index.php?title=Privacy_policy&oldid=14088
>>>
>>> may be found here.
>
>>> Please, spread the word that all the translations in various languages
>>> should be updated. Thanks in advance.
>
> Please, /* deleted for redundancy */
> The same version of the above is now found on meta
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Privacy_policy
> and you are invited to translate it into your favorite language(s),
> and if possible, your language version will be available on July 1st -
> the date it will go alive.
>
> I remarked all links to other languages than English with "outdated".
> Please remove it after you finish your work.

Not exactly, it was already translated in French yesterday ;)

> Of course, you can work not only on wiki, but offline, if preferable.
> Please note that 1) you are strongly recommended to have other editors
> review and proofread it and
> 2) you need to put your final version on meta, to upload it to WMF
> website, unless you have an account on that.
>
> Other translation requests are available on
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Translation_requests
>
> P.S. As for those translations' status, I totally second Delphine and
> Mathieu. In our current curcumstance, only English version can be
> considered "original" therefore "official and legally valid" one in my
> opinion.

*nods*


subject: [Foundation-l] New privacy policy


subject: [WikiEN-l] Oversight log

body:
geni wrote:
> On 6/22/06, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
>> I think people are seriously underestimating the seriousness of some
>> personal privacy violations.
>>
>
> Since the problem existed pre oversite the odds are quite a few admins
> know exactly how serious the problem is.
>

Given the reponses I've seen from admins (both on this list and
elsewhere), they clearly don't.

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

-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 569 bytes
Desc: OpenPGP digital signature
Url : http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/attachments/20060623/bf9f707d/attachment.pgp


subject: [WikiEN-l] Oversight log

body:
Alphax (Wikipedia email) wrote:
> Andrew Gray wrote:
<snip>

Sorry, I thought you were still talking about oversight. My mistake.
Yes, I agree with you.

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

-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 569 bytes
Desc: OpenPGP digital signature
Url : http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/attachments/20060623/afaf968c/attachment.pgp


list: wikipedia-l

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Sort?

body:
James R. Johnson wrote:
> I agree with Berto on this...there should definitely be some kind of
> wiki-defined sort order so that accented characters can sort inline with
> non-accented in languages where the accents are not separate letters.  I'm
> wondering though, does anyone have a proposed solution other than the
> sort-keys, that would be more of an actual solution than a loophole?
> Perhaps something like a system message which defines a wiki's search order
> and which letters the wiki will treat as equivalent?  And something so that
> searches for, say, "pago" could turn up results like "p?go" and "p?go"
> (since the accents would be ignored)?  And how far along is a solution?
>
> I'm a question guy tonight...
>

IIRC this is Mediazilla Bug 164 -
http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=164

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

-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 569 bytes
Desc: OpenPGP digital signature
Url : http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-l/attachments/20060623/f2b4f8da/attachment.pgp


from_name: Michael Noda

body:
On 6/23/06, Michael Bimmler <mbimmler at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 6/23/06, Lord Voldemort <lordbishopvoldemort at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 6/23/06, Matt Brown <morven at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > Because we don't know which admin has done this, just that it happened.
> >
> > Yet. To quote Saw2 "Oh yes, there will be blood."  (But not really,
> > desysopping won't physically harm anybody...
> Sure. But desysopping somebody needs less time/skills than preparing a
> legal action against him ;-) (and it's something against which he
> cannot file an appeal)

You're wrong there; our villain will be able to file an appeal with ArbCom;
they'll laugh at him, but he will be able to appeal.

Actually, that's an interesting question; presuming we ever identify the
Wikitruth admin(s), will it stop at summary desysopping, or do we expect
that they will also be community banned?


from_name: Jon Awbrey

subject: [WikiEN-l] Exit Interview -- Jon Awbrey

body:
o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o

Jesse W wrote:
>
> Oh, [[Truth]]!
> One of the articles-which-are-nearly-all-the-time-in-a-
> state- of-total-complete-insane-edit-war/massive-blather!
> It's a highly subtle concept, that *everyone* thinks they
> know a vast amount about, that there are very few clear,
> uncontroversial facts about.  That's enough to make the
> devil jump with joy at all the craziness that can be
> created there.  I'm sorry you got sucked in, but
> it's one of the worst tar pits on the wiki!
>
> Jesse Weinstein

''now'' you tell me ...

fly in amber,

ja

o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o
inquiry e-lab: http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/
wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/user:Jon_Awbrey
o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o


from_name: maru dubshinki

body:
On 6/23/06, Michael Noda <michael.noda at gmail.com> wrote:
> You're wrong there; our villain will be able to file an appeal with ArbCom;
> they'll laugh at him, but he will be able to appeal.
>
> Actually, that's an interesting question; presuming we ever identify the
> Wikitruth admin(s), will it stop at summary desysopping, or do we expect
> that they will also be community banned?

I don't think there's any question that it won't be both. Abusing
undeletion privileges is definitely grounds for the first, and the way
he did is sufficient for the second- we indef ban for less.

~maru


from_name: Steve Bennett

body:
On 6/23/06, Anthony DiPierro <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
> If it's a bad article, it's better being out of the article space.  If
> it's a good article, it's better being *in* the article space.  Some
> articles created by "anons" are bad, some are good.  So putting these
> articles in another namespace would have both positives and negatives.
>  The positives probably outweigh the negatives, because having
> libellous content (for instance) in the main namespace is much worse
> than not having even ten times the amount of good content in it.

See [[WP:AFC]]. *Almost all* articles created by anons are bad.

> I was referring to the fact that it's certainly *possible* to delete
> crap without putting it through AfD, and is probably within policy to
> do so.  If it isn't within policy to delete crap started by anons
> which no registered user would have bothered to fix and move to
> article space, then the policy is flawed, not the software.

WP:AFC handles that quite nicely. But I'm not sure where we're going
with all this.

> Of course, part of my second idea above was that we not only make it
> explicitly within policy to speedily delete crap started by an anon,
> but that we make it possible for the vast majority of established
> users to do so.

It's possible for anyone to nominate the article for speedy deletion.
I suppose giving "deletion for anonymous articles" rights to people is
possible, but fraught. Is an article that has been edited by a
registered user still a candidate for mega-speedy deletion?

Steve


from_name: Matt Brown

subject: [WikiEN-l] Non-office OFFICE actions

references:
<oh4n92psoq7kh0i8pfj4uajbtol35h9e4l@4ax.com>
	<449BB1B8.4010206@gmail.com>
	<f80608430606230417l2eb80df4ud49e76cc6f402cb@mail.gmail.com>
	<8g8o92t8src8i7d1vnd63bs97332kvstmr@4ax.com>
	<266BE410-3DEE-4CE1-8A53-42E7C30CD0E4@ctelco.net>
	<1fko92105urho03bj2tb0bimt8e7jgfta8@4ax.com>

body:
On 6/23/06, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:
> On Fri, 23 Jun 2006 11:24:29 -0600, Fred Bauder <fredbaud at ctelco.net>
> wrote:
>
> >I suggest focusing on his political activities. If they are not
> >notable, the personal details of his life are not either.
>
> Tony Sidaway closed the last "real" AfD as keep because he was
> secretary of the Monday Club.  I thought this a tenuous claim to fame,
> myself.  Actually the theft, appeal, imprisonment and custody battle
> for his daughter which the theft funded are far and away the most
> interesting things about him.  Otherwise he's just a generic "darkies
> go home" far-right Tory.

Indeed.  I wouldn't be put out at all if the article was deleted; he's
at the threshold of notability if that.  However, if we're to have an
article, it should be brief but accurate.

It does seem that, aside from being a source of juicy 'nutjob tory
right' quotes when needed, his conviction for pilfering funds from his
health authority position is the most newsworthy thing he's done.  And
I'd certainly agree that most of THAT press was sheer schadenfreude at
seeing a "high Tory" caught with fingers in the till.

I couldn't find any reference material that suggested that reporting
upon a spent offence that had entered the public consciousness through
publication in the national press at the time was likely to be
forbidden under the Act.  Granted, I'm now in the USA and the only law
libraries I have access to are American ones, but I suspect that
Sussexman and sundry anon contributors would have raised some if there
were to be found.

It would be a much different matter if it were regarding an conviction
that had never garnered press attention, I suspect.

This is a very difficult area for Wikipedia because, unlike most
complaints, it has nothing to do with publishing untruth or
speculation.  It's about our publishing a sourced fact with more than
enough in the way of citations to justify it, but that someone is
arguing should be removed because of privacy law - despite the public
nature of the very sources upon which the article is based.

Note that the article has not gone into salacious detail of his
conviction - the article's words were (more or less - not looking at
it right now) 'retired from public life following a 1992 conviction
for theft".  Nothing else.

I'd also note that it's easy to get a solicitor to write threats on
headed paper - regardless of the legal methods.

-Matt


subject: [WikiEN-l] I like Wikipedia!

body:
Hi all,
  There's been lots of whingeing lately about evil admins taking over.
Just wanted to say, I still love Wikipedia, and spend hours there
every day. I do quite a lot of editing on an extremely diverse range
of subjects, and participate in a broad range of Wikipedia community
activities, of which WP:FPC and WP:DYK are probably my favourites. I
come into contact with lots of different editors, and by and large, I
think they're great, and the vast majority that I encounter are well
and truly there to build an encyclopaedia.

In my 4000 or so edits, I've had the misfortune to witness one or two
petty fights, but rarely get involved. I don't think I've been the
victim of any serious personal attacks, and have only once witnessed
blatant, sustained POV-pushing. I've never been on the wrong end of
admin misdeeds, and with only two minor exceptions, I think they do a
great job.

I adore browsing random topics, splitting and merging articles as
needed, and generally trying to organise information to make it as
useful as possible.

There probably are all sorts of tensions going on at the talk pages of
major pages, but there are so many topics that still don't even have
articles (Les Bidochon, one of France's more well-known comic strips
is one), so it's easy to avoid those problems - if one wants to.

Just a dose of WikiLove for you all :)

Steve


from_name: Cobb

body:
> Mark Gallagher wrote:
>Oh, yes?  I assume you have an example at the ready, because surely no-one
>would have the gall to pull a statement like that out of their arse with
>no proof of it being true.

Proof about being wiki-stalked and hassled by organised groups?

Are you actually stupid, or being deliberately stupid, or have you just
woken up
and don't know about the Wikiedia Review fiasco? Interested parties would
like
to know.

Do you think WR are alone, or just the most high-profile?

>As for knowledge of the Wikipedia rules, that's rot, too.  Knowing how to
>behave appropriately in a collaborative environment is useful (hint: don't
>be a dick), and having respect for our core principles, like neutrality
>and respect for copyright, even more so.  Wikipedia has too many rules,
>true, but you can get by quite happily without them if you just use common
>sense and keep in mind our principles.

Lovely sentiments. It's just a shame they don't have anything to do with
the actual reality of Wikipedia for a newbie editor.

>I suspect, from what (admittedly little) I've seen from you, that you
>have neither the backing of policy nor common sense when you
>ride out on your high horse desperate to delete someone else's hard work.

Well, of course you don't dear... but what does this have to do with
anything?

> Despite this minor issue, which others would consider crippling, you still
insist on
> stamping your foot and complaining that you never get your own way.  And
> as for "consensus building", well, it's a beautiful dream, but you
> actually have to talk to people (as opposed to ranting at them for being
> too stupid to agree with you).

As opposed to long, patronising lectures full of misrepresentations from
blowhards like you?

>As for the time it takes to run a checkuser, well, there are certain
>people who consider privacy important.  Crazy, I know.  What, do they have
>something to hide?  All right-thinking, red-blooded human beings owe it to
>themselves --- and us, damn it! --- to look under the beds of these people
>immediately, in case a Commie is hiding there.

Your IP address is all over the internet; so is your user agent string
(operating
system and browser). You are talking a complete a total load of old bollocks
- and that doesn't come as a surprise given some of your other confused
messages on this list.

>> In summary, the system is broken. But you won't get any sense on this
>> mailing list, because most of the people here don't actually edit
>> Wikipedia these days. They just pontificate and have faith in some
>> mystical power of the Wiki.

>True, dat.  It's left to people like you, the brave reformers fighting the
>good fight against us crusty old bureaucrats to try to pull Wikipedia out
>of its death spiral.  Cobblers---sorry, I mean Cobb---we, who are about to
>die, salute you!

Awww... isn't that sweet. You tried to make a joke.


subject: [Wikitech-l]Complete image list of a local Wikipédia

body:
Emmanuel Engelhart wrote:
> Thx a lot Brion for your quick answer.
> I will send you soon a list :-)

The munged file list:
http://download.wikimedia.org/images/wikipedia/fr/used-files.txt

The archive (28.9G):
http://download.wikimedia.org/images/wikipedia/fr/frwiki-20060623-used-files.tar

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 249 bytes
Desc: OpenPGP digital signature
URL: <http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/attachments/20060623/9c8ae012/attachment.pgp>


list: commons-l

from_name: Magnus Manske

subject: [Commons-l] some updated statistics

body:
Brianna Laugher schrieb:
> On 19/06/06, Magnus Manske <magnus.manske at web.de> wrote:
>
>> Brianna Laugher wrote:
>>
>>> On 18/06/06, Magnus Manske <magnus.manske at web.de> wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>> Brianna Laugher wrote:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>> Another write-me-some-code request:
>>>>> for any image in [[category:duplicate]], where the replacement image
>>>>> has a different file extension, remove {{duplicate|Image:...}} and
>>>>> replace with {{superseded|Image:...}} (if it's not already there) with
>>>>> edit summary '{{duplicate}} is only for exactly identical images,
>>>>> please don't use it for different file types, they cannot be
>>>>> identical'.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>> Done (in commons_dupes.php).
>>>>
>>>>
>>> That's perfect, except it puts a "Template:" prefix even before the
>>> image one...???
>>>
>>>
>> It replaces the "duplicate" template, whereever that is...
>>
>
> It still is not working correctly. It sends me to pages like this:
> http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Template:Image%3ABRUNTAL_PRAPOR.jpg&action=edit
>
> it's actually creating a new page in the template namespace for some reason....
>
> also at the moment everything appears to be "green", even
> JPG/SVGs...and is it possible to force it to stay within one
> horizontal screen instead of three? scrolling sideways sucks...
>
Sorry, I misread you. Try it now:
* Template thingy fixed
* Always green thingy fixed
* Scrolling thingy fixed - I guess...

Magnus

-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 249 bytes
Desc: OpenPGP digital signature
Url : http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/commons-l/attachments/20060623/36d0820f/attachment.pgp


from_name: Berto

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Sort?

body:
Hi!

>Perhaps something like a system message which defines a wiki's search order
>and which letters the wiki will treat as equivalent?  And something so that
>searches for, say, "pago" could turn up results like "p?go" and "p?go"
>(since the accents would be ignored)?

Yes, this would be the most practical solution to localise sorting orders.

As per accents, so far all we can do is manually input tons of redirects to
ensure the search will give a proper result... maybe a bot could do it for
us? Such redirects should somehow be marked, though, so that we can trace
them and kill them all once the bug is fixed.

B?rto


from_name: Petr Kadlec

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Sort?

body:
Hi!

On 23/06/06, Berto <albertoserra at ukr.net> wrote:
> >Perhaps something like a system message which defines a wiki's search order
> >and which letters the wiki will treat as equivalent?  And something so that
> >searches for, say, "pago" could turn up results like "p?go" and "p?go"
> >(since the accents would be ignored)?
>
> Yes, this would be the most practical solution to localise sorting orders.

I think you are mixing sorting and searching. Anyway, I don't think
this is a good solution to sorting, this would IMHO be
1) a hack solution that would not be enough for many languages (e.g.
in Czech, alphabetical sort is a two-stage process, as you can see at
http://cs.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abecedn%C3%AD_%C5%99azen%C3%AD#P.C5.99.C3.ADklad_.C5.99azen.C3.AD)
2) maybe hard to implement without excessive performance implications

A correct solution is to use the functions already provided by system
(and database); MySQL already has some support for collation that
could be used, see the discussion at [[bugzilla:164]].

> As per accents, so far all we can do is manually input tons of redirects to
> ensure the search will give a proper result... maybe a bot could do it for
> us? Such redirects should somehow be marked, though, so that we can trace
> them and kill them all once the bug is fixed.

I have been thinking about implementing a diacritical filter for the
search for a long time. It is quite easy and I have it practically
done (for Lucene.NET), only not tested. But there is a question
whether Wikimedia servers are not going to switch to another search
engine, as has been discussed recently. (Lemmatization would be fine,
too, but I know I do not have the required knowledge.)

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


subject: [WikiEN-l] Spoiler Boilerplates

body:
  >>That's such a famous case, and honestly, since when did the plot of
>>Star Wars affect anyone's enjoyment of it? Similarly, I don't see how
>>you can "spoil" the plot of a Friends episode.

>>The cases that bug me more are long books, where knowing the >>ending
>>would really put you off reading it. Or certain films like Fight Club,
>>the Sixth Sense, Unbreakable etc...it's not so much "knowing how >>the
>>film ends", but "knowing the secret that totally changes your
>>interpretation of the film". - Steve

  Steve, how are we as editors to know this..? As I do recall in a  previous encounter concerning a lad I went to school with, he and I  posessed very different views on what a "spoiler" was.

  As neutral editors, we also have a differing capacity on content is a  plot twist or what is considered the climax. It is only reasonable to  conclude this is what happens. This template simply smacks of what  intrepretation is left to the editor.

  Second, what does this have to do with the well-being of the  encyclopedia..? This is quite a presumption. "Well, as a neutral editor  of wikipedia, I happen to believe this spoils me, so I'll make the  unfounded assumption and believe that to be the same for the article,  its content and the readers." Excuse me..? What edvidence is there to  support this...? Perhaps there is support for this by comments from our  readers that wikipedia is the place for a brief read..? Or a quick  gander across three sentences..? Or a look at the pretty pictures..?  That's not an encyclopedia at all. Why would read an encyclopedia if  you didn't want information...?

---------------------------------
Do you Yahoo!?
 Next-gen email? Have it all with the  all-new Yahoo! Mail Beta.


from_name: Anthere

subject: [Foundation-l] New privacy policy

body:
Btw... fixing details in jd translation of the french version (tu es sur
qu'on dit "Journalisation priv?e" ???), I just realised that the current
version does not make reference to the new tool (oversight).

For now, it is no big deal, but we may have to think about adding a
paragraph about that tool, once the way it works has been "permanently"
fixed. Right now, it seems to early.

Ant

Jean-Denis Vauguet wrote:
> Aphaia wrote:
>
>>>On 6/22/06, Anthere <Anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>>http://wikimediafoundation.org/w/index.php?title=Privacy_policy&oldid=14088
>>>>
>>>>may be found here.
>>
>>>>Please, spread the word that all the translations in various languages
>>>>should be updated. Thanks in advance.
>>
>>Please, /* deleted for redundancy */
>>The same version of the above is now found on meta
>>http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Privacy_policy
>>and you are invited to translate it into your favorite language(s),
>>and if possible, your language version will be available on July 1st -
>>the date it will go alive.
>>
>>I remarked all links to other languages than English with "outdated".
>>Please remove it after you finish your work.
>
>
> Not exactly, it was already translated in French yesterday ;)
>
>
>
>>Of course, you can work not only on wiki, but offline, if preferable.
>>Please note that 1) you are strongly recommended to have other editors
>>review and proofread it and
>>2) you need to put your final version on meta, to upload it to WMF
>>website, unless you have an account on that.
>>
>>Other translation requests are available on
>>http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Translation_requests
>>
>>P.S. As for those translations' status, I totally second Delphine and
>>Mathieu. In our current curcumstance, only English version can be
>>considered "original" therefore "official and legally valid" one in my
>>opinion.
>
>
> *nods*


subject: [Foundation-l] New privacy policy


from_name: Ricky Beam

subject: [Wikitech-l] 207.142.131.221 listed in bl.spamcop.net

body:
On Sat, 18 Mar 2006, Mark Williamson wrote:
>If I recall correctly, SpamCop blackmails people by asking them to pay
>to have their address removed.

Nope.  That'd be SORBS.  I quote "SORBS Support (Dan)":

	Occassional spam is going to happen. And ISP's that take action
	on spam are quickly delisted. Almost nobody pays the $50 fine to
	charity. That is rare.

They amount to nothing more than hypocrits and liars.

To summarize the entire exchange, it takes on ONE (1) message, EVER to find
yourself listed in their spamtrap senders crap.  There is no expiration or
automatic deletion; if you don't beg to be removed, it'll sit there until
the end of time. (BTW, it only takes *a* message to a spamtrap address; it
doesn't have to be spam, anything and everything counts.)

(They may have changed the process in the last 6 months, but I wouldn't count
 on it.)

--Ricky


from_name: Fred Bauder

subject: [WikiEN-l] Non-office OFFICE actions

body:
On Jun 23, 2006, at 2:43 PM, Guy Chapman aka JzG wrote:

> On Fri, 23 Jun 2006 11:24:29 -0600, Fred Bauder <fredbaud at ctelco.net>
> wrote:
>
>
>> I suggest focusing on his political activities. If they are not
>> notable, the personal details of his life are not either.
>>
>
> Tony Sidaway closed the last "real" AfD as keep because he was
> secretary of the Monday Club.  I thought this a tenuous claim to fame,
> myself.  Actually the theft, appeal, imprisonment and custody battle
> for his daughter which the theft funded are far and away the most
> interesting things about him.  Otherwise he's just a generic "darkies
> go home" far-right Tory.
>
> Guy (JzG)

I'm sorry, but I was a divorce lawyer. While this case is a little
extreme, a person acting nutty during a highly contested divorce is
not notable.

Fred


subject: [WikiEN-l] Spoiler Boilerplates

body:
Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:  On Fri, 23 Jun 2006 15:49:09 -0400, "Kirill Lokshin"
 wrote:

>I suspect, though, that it matters to our *readers*  (you know, those
>people we're supposed to be writing this thing for).

"You  suspect"..? Are you telling me this template was created without any  request by the target audiance in question...? This is ridiculous. Who  are we...? We're editors of an neutral encyclopedia. Its not up to us  to make such assumptions without founded edvidence.

  Its somewhat similar to the premise of a mother giving her lad a jacket  in the wintertime without asking him if he desired one. Do we really  assume our readers are that stupid...? If you see a header called  "Plot" and there's three pharagraphs below it, then its obvious what  lies within. This template is incredibly redundant.

  If there were previously some sort of a mass request where millions of  readers requested this nonsense, advocating it assisted them in the  informative reading of an encyclopedia, then I could possbily  understand. Currently, it gives the entirely wrong impression of what  an encyclopedia is and what its attempting to convey. This isn't a  networking site.

---------------------------------
Sneak preview the  all-new Yahoo.com. It's not radically different. Just radically better.


from_name: George Herbert

body:
On 6/23/06, Matt Brown <morven at gmail.com> wrote:
> Because we don't know which admin has done this, just that it happened.

There's no log of who undeletes something?

I presume the article in question is known...

--
-george william herbert
gherbert at retro.com / george.herbert at gmail.com


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] Poem extension on Wikisource

body:
I've committed the Poem extension to SVN and activated it on Wikisource. Pretty
straightforward, works like this:

<poem>
bla bla
   bla bla

bla bla
</poem>

The inside text is wikitext, but line breaks and initial spaces are preserved.
Output is wrapped in a <div class="poem">, so you can do global styling of poems
per-wiki.

Additionallly you can add other allowed HTML attributes on the <poem> tag just
as you would for a <div> or <pre>, such as setting one-off custom styles or
additional CSS class names.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 249 bytes
Desc: OpenPGP digital signature
URL: <http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/attachments/20060623/7ae8bfe0/attachment.pgp>


from_name: Mark Wagner

body:
On 6/23/06, George Herbert <george.herbert at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 6/23/06, Matt Brown <morven at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Because we don't know which admin has done this, just that it happened.
>
> There's no log of who undeletes something?
>

An admin can view the contents of a deleted page without actively undeleting it.

--
Mark
[[User:Carnildo]]


from_name: Theresa Knott

subject: [WikiEN-l] Oversight log

body:
On 6/23/06, Mark Ryan <ultrablue at gmail.com> wrote:

>
> 22:17, 23 June 2006 Jimbo Wales removed a revision (ID #123456789).
> Reason given was: "Personally identifiable information"
>
> Any reason why that is unacceptable?
>
> ~Mark Ryan

No objections from me for this type of log.

Theresa


from_name: Simetrical

body:
On 6/23/06, Chad Perrin <perrin at apotheon.com> wrote:
> (such as the suggested Javascript method, which wouldn't work for
> everyone, but would at least circumvent the technical issues with having
> the parser do it).

A dev can correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think there would be
any substantial difference between coding it to work on the Javascript
side vs. the PHP side.  Either implementation would face the same
problems: you have to make sure it doesn't substitute anything in
wikilinks, URLs, SGML attributes/values, or preferably in any of the
default monospaced things (<tt>, <code>, <pre>, space-initial line),
plus perhaps some other stuff.  If you can write that in Javascript,
you can write it in PHP instead and stick it in somewhere for Yet
Another Parser Pass? to get much more consistency as well as
eliminating a large part of the objections to current solutions,
namely that they look ugly or confusing in wikitext.

On 6/23/06, Timwi <timwi at gmx.net> wrote:
> Steve Bennett wrote:
> > Let's be honest here: space indented text is *weird*. What's the
> > historical context behind it? Why is it monospaced, coloured,
> > surrounded with a border, and why doesn't it wrap? It's such an odd
> > layout choice for something so easy to do by accident.
>
> This "weirdness" comes from the fact that this particular wiki markup is
> not really defined in terms of what visible output it produces, but only
> in terms of what HTML it produces -- namely <pre>.

I think his actual question was: "Why was an initial space, which a
newbie would commonly add unwittingly, chosen to have such drastic and
confusing effects?"  The answer to that is slightly complicated.

The first point to realize is that HTML specifies that all leading
spaces are stripped by default, and other whitespace is compressed
into a single space (this is so HTML files aren't a nightmare to read,
with tons of tags squashed together lest sensible spacing format the
resulting document weirdly).  So the most obvious choice would be to
just translate the spaces literally and have them vanish when the
browser renders them; most blogging tools, Web forums, etc. do this,
and MediaWiki is not an exception?try it yourself and see. (SMF forums
are the one exception I know of offhand; they translate spaces that
would otherwise be compressed into "non-breaking spaces", possibly
familiar to you as  .)

So what to do with leading spaces?  Well, one common and important use
for leading spaces is to make some kind of chart or diagram, to indent
elements so they fit together properly.  HTML provides the <pre> tag
for that: it overrides the default space-compressing behavior and
PREserves all spaces, line breaks, etc. exactly as entered.  So, if
you knew HTML, you could make such a chart with <pre>, but what if you
didn't?  Well, with this markup, just try entering it and presto, it
will work, because your leading spaces clue the parser into the fact
that you want it to display with spacing preserved.

So that explains the monospacing and space-preservation.  What about
the linebreaking?  Well, same principle.  If you're making a chart,
you definitely don't want a line to be chopped up into pieces just
because someone's using a small screen; it would totally ruin the
relational intent.  Finally, the gray thing and the border are just a
minor stylistic decision, which isn't even decided by the parser but
rather by our stylesheet.  You can change that for yourself by adding
something like "pre { background: transparent; border: none; }" to
your stylesheet.

Of course, it's true that some people get confused when they try to
manually indent their paragraphs, which doesn't work.  But that's
easily fixable by a more experienced editor, so it's not a big deal.

Anyway, I hope that short essay explained things.  ;)


from_name: Stan Shebs

body:
Brion Vibber wrote:

>
><poem>
>bla bla
>   bla bla
>
>bla bla
></poem>
>
All it's lacking is a title! I propose "Brion's Poem".
It should get a reading at the next Wikimania too.

:-)

Stan


from_name: Kirill Lokshin

subject: [WikiEN-l] Spoiler Boilerplates

body:
On 6/23/06, Zero <megamanzero521 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Well that's another hassle. They are not only inappropriate, they're being used incorrectly. What does it matter to the encycloepdia if someone reads a plot twist...? That's what we do.  -Zero

To the encyclopedia?  Utterly nothing, of course; the encyclopedia,
being an inanimate collection of bits on some spinning metal plates in
Florida, is in no position to have an opinion on the matter.

I suspect, though, that it matters to our *readers*  (you know, those
people we're supposed to be writing this thing for).  It costs us
nothing to add a template to an article about a movie noting that the
surprise ending is revealed; and while most readers may not care,
there are some that, desiring to avoid reading such materials, will
thank us for our foresight in providing such a warning.

--
Kirill Lokshin


body:
Rob Church wrote:

>On 23/06/06, Stan Shebs <shebs at apple.com> wrote:
>
>>All it's lacking is a title! I propose "Brion's Poem".
>>It should get a reading at the next Wikimania too.
>>
>
>That one shouldn't.
>http://de.wikisource.org/wiki/Benutzer:Brion_VIBBER should, though. :)
>
That one's just doggerel though - doesn't have nearly the
sophisticated but spare rhythms of his later work.

Stan


from_name: Ben Yates

body:
Five hundred!  It took me years to get there, and I spend far too much
time on Wikipedia.  What about 75?

On 6/23/06, Mark Wagner <carnildo at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 6/23/06, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 6/22/06, Mark Wagner <carnildo at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > A great many users, including some of our most prolific editors, have
> > > no clue about image copyright law or policy.  The ability to block
> > > them from uploading images would be quite useful.
> > >
> > > What would be even more useful would be for image uploading to be a
> > > privilege, not a right: you don't get the ability to upload images
> > > simply by registering an account.
> >
> > A proper experiment on this would be a good thing. Measure the number
> > of "good", "bad" and "borderline" images before and after the
> > implementation of such a privilege system.
>
> Well, the "before" results certainly aren't encouraging:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2006-March/041534.html
> Roughly 50% of all uploads have incorrect license tags.  Roughly 35%
> of all fair-use claims are immediately obvious as invalid, and I
> expect at least another 25% to be found invalid on further inspection.
>
> Preliminary results on who's doing the uploading indicate that about
> 35% of all uploads are by users with fewer than 50 edits; 15% are by
> users with fewer than ten.  Less than a quarter are by users with a
> thousand or more edits.  I don't have precise statistics, but in
> general, the bad images I've seen go by tend to have been uploaded by
> users with redlinked userpages.
>
> In the past six months, OrphanBot has handed out 37,000 notices to
> 24,000 users.  200 users have received ten or more notices, with one
> user receiving 53 notices.  For the majority of these users, the only
> things on the user's talk page are a welcome notice and notifications
> from OrphanBot.
>
> > How would you work out who to give initial priveleges to? Is there
> > enough history to determine which editors have uploaded more problem
> > images than good ones?
>
> I'd start by letting anyone with at least five hundred edits upload
> images.  They may not be any better at uploading good images, but at
> least they've got enough invested in Wikipedia that they'll stick
> around to learn about the image use policy.
>
> --
> Mark
> [[User:Carnildo]]
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

--
Ben Yates
Wikipedia blog - http://wikip.blogspot.com


subject: [WikiEN-l] Oversight log

body:
On 6/22/06, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> I think people are seriously underestimating the seriousness of some
> personal privacy violations.

I am curious as to what situations could have happened here.

Coming from almost 20 years experience in Usenet, having trolls and
kooks show up and sometimes post people's home addresses and phone
numbers and work contact info including boss and so on... most of
these blow over without any notable harm other than people's
sensitivity.

I would be less happy with my Social Security Number or Drivers
License going up somewhere, but I've had my home address and phone
number spammed by nuts.

--
-george william herbert
gherbert at retro.com / george.herbert at gmail.com


from_name: Nolan mccollum

subject: [WikiEN-l] unblock namela

body:
please unblock namela now he hasnt vandalized anything in a while.

_________________________________________________________________
On the road to retirement? Check out MSN Life Events for advice on how to
get there! http://lifeevents.msn.com/category.aspx?cid=Retirement


subject: [WikiEN-l] New York Times article

body:
On 6/22/06, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
>[...]  Even
> good authors are prevented from editing semi-protected pages if they
> don't have an account.

This is a pretty trivial barrier to entry...

--
-george william herbert
gherbert at retro.com / george.herbert at gmail.com


from_name: Jürgen Herz

body:
Chad Perrin wrote:

>> Damn typography snobs... ;)
>
> That may look like a joke, but I agree -- endashes are rare enough in
> comparison that it seems that if one of the two is going to be somewhat
> unintuitive, it should be the endash, and thus the HTML entity strikes
> me as a good answer to the problem.

Huh? I'd suggest reading [[Dash (punctuation)]] to see that en dashes
aren't that rare. But in any case this is a quite english centric point
of view.
In German for example (and I guess that's not the only language where
this is valid, but that's the language I know well) em dashes are even
more rare than en dashes in English.
And it's not astonishing that users here are used for years to write --
to instruct word processors to use an en dash.

So please be careful when using "rare" and "unintuitive". That's beside
I prefer using JS for inserting such special chars and that I think of
interpreting -- or --- to be quite insecure if done by a machine.

J?rgen


from_name: Steve Bennett

subject: [WikiEN-l] I like Wikipedia!

body:
On 6/23/06, Steve Summit <scs at eskimo.com> wrote:
> Seriously, though, how misfortunate is that?  The fights, and the
> occasional POV war, are utterly inevitable.  What gratifies me is
> that, most of the time, we still *do* do a good job of finding
> the elusive NPOV middle ground.  I don't have more than a few
> thousand edits myself, but I've had the *pleasure* of wandering
> into a couple of POV battles on contentions subjects, learning
> a bit more about those subjects, learning a bit more about the
> personalities involved, and contributing some compromise wordings
> which both sides accepted and which are among my proudest
> Wikipedia edits.

Well, true. For me, Wikipedia is still so big, and at such an early
stage of development, that spending hours fighting over a couple of
sentences isn't a good use of my time. Meanwhile, the hundreds of
different types of pastas are barely stubs (look at [[Fettucini]]),
and they're all grouped into one thematic category - Pasta. We've got
work to do! :)

Steve


subject: [WikiEN-l] Spoiler Boilerplates

body:
On 6/23/06, Zero <megamanzero521 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Guy Chapman aka JzG wrote:
> >I suspect, though, that it matters to our *readers*  (you know, those
> >people we're supposed to be writing this thing for).
>
> "You  suspect"..? Are you telling me this template was created without any
> request by the target audiance in question...? This is ridiculous. Who  are we...?
> We're editors of an neutral encyclopedia. Its not up to us  to make such
> assumptions without founded edvidence.

Hi, I'm George, and I'm a Wikipedia Editor, and a  I'm a Wikipedia reader, too.

The dichotomy of "editors" not being "users" is false.  We're a subset
of readership.  We should not use our judgement to assume what readers
want arbitrarily, but using common sense is different.  Spoiler
warnings are common in other online forums, and have been for a long
time, and they're there for a reason.  They're there because some
people object to spoilers.  Sometimes a majority of readers object to
spoilers.

--
-george william herbert
gherbert at retro.com / george.herbert at gmail.com


subject: [WikiEN-l] Oversight log

body:
On 6/23/06, Fred Bauder <fredbaud at ctelco.net> wrote:
> George Herbert wrote:
> > Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> >> I think people are seriously underestimating the seriousness of some
> >> personal privacy violations.
> >
> > I am curious as to what situations could have happened here.
> >
> > Coming from almost 20 years experience in Usenet, having trolls and
> > kooks show up and sometimes post people's home addresses and phone
> > numbers and work contact info including boss and so on... most of
> > these blow over without any notable harm other than people's
> > sensitivity.
> >
> > I would be less happy with my Social Security Number or Drivers
> > License going up somewhere, but I've had my home address and phone
> > number spammed by nuts.
>
> You take your victim as you find them. If you kill a person with a
> thin skull it is still manslaughter.
>
> Some of our editor are not very tough characters. Perhaps they have
> led sheltered scholarly lives.
>
> We do what we can to prevent harassment.

I certainly don't intend to stand for the proposition that we should
encourage or stand passively by in cases of harrassment.  Deleting it
when inappropriate personal info is inserted somewhere is clearly good
policy.  Taking action against chronic abuser accounts is fine by me,
too.

What worries me is the apparent prevailing opinion that this is such a
terrible, serious problem.  I don't see it that way, based on my prior
internet experience.  I don't see it that way, based on the cases I
have seen on Wikipedia in the last year.  I don't see it as necessary
to exaggerate how serious a problem it is, to justify continuing to
remove the material and block or ban accounts which post it.

The responses are justified to end attempts to cause serious
harrassment of WP editors, whether those attempts are ultimately
successful or not.  As a rule I would expect them not to be
successful, based on prior experience.  They should still be responded
to as a legitimate attempt to harrass someone, and all such attempts
should be taken seriously, ineffectual or not.

--
-george william herbert
gherbert at retro.com / george.herbert at gmail.com


from_name: Zero

subject: [WikiEN-l] Spoiler Boilerplates

body:
Zero <megamanzero521 at Yahoo.com> wrote:  Zero wrote:
> how are we as editors to know this..? As I do recall in a previous
> encounter concerning a lad I went to school with, he and I posessed
> very different views on what a "spoiler" was.
>
> As neutral editors, we also have a differing capacity on content is a
> plot twist or what is considered the climax. It is only reasonable to
> conclude this is what happens. This template simply smacks of what
> intrepretation is left to the editor.

>>But all sorts of interpretation is left to editors -- what facts
>>to present, how best to present them, in which order, etc.

>>I'm sorry you don't like the spoiler templates.  But the simple
>>fact is that most people *do*.  We had a poll on this a little
>>while back and the results were something like 7:1 in favor of
>>keeping them.  Many, many editors expressed the very strong
>>opinion that spoiler warnings are "obviously" a good thing.

>>I say this not to suggest that you're wrong for having a contrary
>>opinion (which is of course your and everyone's right) but to
>>make the point that to most people it's reasonably obvious where
>>a spoiler template ought to go, and what sorts of thing
>>constitute spoilers worthy of protection.

>>(Now, to be sure, I don't know if the people in that poll were
>>voting as editors or as readers.  On the one hand we don't have
>>any way of polling our readers per se, but on the other hand,
>>since we're the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit, *every*
>>reader is an editor, and vice versa.)

>>Since there's a small but vocal minority which is very strongly
>>opposed to the spoiler tags, clearly what we need is some custom
>>CSS magic which will turn them off for readers who think they're
>>ugly or unprofessional-looking or who otherwise don't want to see
>>them.

  Poll..? I assume that's in reference to the template on its nomination  to TFD somewhat a time back. No, that's not  liking it, its many  new  editors fooled into thinking this has a purpose at the time  of their arrival on the encyclopedia. A quick check depicted many of  these editors had not participated in wikipedia discussion, had not  amassed close of the thousand editting mark and had not a clue of what  they were talking about.

  One editor noted "Are you crazy...? This template has been along for  awhile !"  Chuck, the deletion nominator queried him on how that  had any relevance to its usefulness. Curiously, none of the editors in  keep (even the experienced ones) could rebute him and answer how the  template assisted the encyclopedia, its value or even how the template  achieved its "goal" from the outset.

  As I recall making a comment earlier on the wikipeida talkpage, none of  the defensive editors could answer ethier. "I'm sorry, but most people  like them". I don't paticularly concern myself too much in the practice  of  the matter on an emotional level, but I am very inclined to  question the relevance. As of my most recent e-mail, I asked how the  template assisted the encyclopedia or its goals or if there were any  edvidence of its informative capacity. The questions still haven't been  answered. -Zero

---------------------------------
Want to be your own boss? Learn how on  Yahoo! Small Business.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Spoiler Boilerplates

body:
Zero <megamanzero521 at Yahoo.com> wrote:
  >Hi, I'm George, and I'm a Wikipedia Editor, and a  I'm a Wikipedia reader, too.

>The dichotomy of "editors" not being "users" is false.  We're a subset
>of readership.  We should not use our judgement to assume what r>eaders
>want arbitrarily, but using common sense is different.  Spoiler
>warnings are common in other online forums, and have been for a long
>time, and they're there for a reason.  They're there because some
>people object to spoilers.  Sometimes a majority of readers object to
>spoilers.

  Indeed. However, I do recall the premise that wikipedia isn't a forum.  That's a strawman argument. It isn't possible for wikipedia to spoil an  reader because that is the point of wikipedia (to provide elaborate  summeries). An encyclopedia is an device through which to provide  knowledge and in this area, I paticularly, believe we excell.

  Readers object to spoilers..? What does that have to do with us..? Are they paying us..?

---------------------------------
Do you Yahoo!?
 Get on board. You're invited to try the new Yahoo! Mail Beta.


from_name: Aphaia

subject: [Foundation-l] New privacy policy

body:
> On 6/22/06, Anthere <Anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> > http://wikimediafoundation.org/w/index.php?title=Privacy_policy&oldid=14088
> >
> > may be found here.

> > Please, spread the word that all the translations in various languages
> > should be updated. Thanks in advance.

Please, /* deleted for redundancy */
The same version of the above is now found on meta
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Privacy_policy
and you are invited to translate it into your favorite language(s),
and if possible, your language version will be available on July 1st -
the date it will go alive.

I remarked all links to other languages than English with "outdated".
Please remove it after you finish your work.

Of course, you can work not only on wiki, but offline, if preferable.
Please note that 1) you are strongly recommended to have other editors
review and proofread it and
2) you need to put your final version on meta, to upload it to WMF
website, unless you have an account on that.

Other translation requests are available on
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Translation_requests

P.S. As for those translations' status, I totally second Delphine and
Mathieu. In our current curcumstance, only English version can be
considered "original" therefore "official and legally valid" one in my
opinion.

--
Aphaia
aka
Kizu Naoko
email: Aphaia @ gmail (dot) com


subject: [Foundation-l] New privacy policy


subject: [WikiEN-l] Spoiler Boilerplates

body:
Zero <megamanzero521 at Yahoo.com> wrote:  On 6/24/06, Geni  wrote:
>Are they paying us..?

>>Yes.

  :) -Zero

---------------------------------
How low will we go? Check out Yahoo! Messenger?s low  PC-to-Phone call rates.


from_name: jayjg

body:
On 6/23/06, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> Fred Bauder wrote:
> > On Jun 22, 2006, at 8:12 AM, Jimmy Wales wrote:
> >
> >> Will we have to sit through watching some troll be successively banned
> >> from one action after another as people cry "Why prevent him from
> >> editing articles about Chemotherapy? All he was doing was uploding
> >> goatse to articles on homosexuality?  He might be a good user."
> >
> > You exaggerate.
>
> Fair enough.  I was making an extravagant example.

We're getting better at this, but your example isn't that far off the
mark in some cases.

Jay.


subject: [WikiEN-l] What is "spam?"

body:
On 6/22/06, Will Sceptre Noble <tintower at tintower.tk> wrote:
> I had a friend who's email address was (let's call her Jane)
> janedotcodotuk at aol.co.uk.
>
> And in Nathan's case, Nathan and Nathanr was already taken.

And my user name (let's call it stevage) is also closely related to my
domain name (let's call it stevage.com), but do I go telling everyone?

Steve


from_name: Guy Chapman aka JzG

body:
On Fri, 23 Jun 2006 10:52:45 -0400, Rob <gamaliel8 at gmail.com> wrote:

>I think admins are generally able to ascertain when a block is
>warranted and when it is not.  Do we really need to add yet more
>policy to cover this?

Quite.  What part of "edit warring is bad" do people have such trouble
understanding?

Guy (JzG)
--
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG


subject: [WikiEN-l] Spoiler Boilerplates

body:
Zero <megamanzero521 at Yahoo.com> wrote:
  >Okay, since you insist:  How do spoiler tags assist the >encyclopedia?
>Answer:  Readers who (for whatever reason) want to read about a
>movie they have not yet seen, or a book they have not yet read,
>and who do not want to inadvertently learn of any "spoiler" plot
>details, appreciate the presence of these tags.  This is not a
>merely hypothetical concern; there's good evidence that there are
>real Wikipedia readers who fall into this category.

  So you're not going to explain how this nonsense assists the encyclopedia..? -Zero

---------------------------------
Do you Yahoo!?
 Next-gen email? Have it all with the  all-new Yahoo! Mail Beta.


from_name: Rob Church

body:
On 23/06/06, Jay R. Ashworth <jra at baylink.com> wrote:
> I've never tried it: *do* the tilde subs work in article namespace?

Yes, the pre-save transform is indiscriminate. Wikipedia is communism,
and equal rights and all that, after all.

Rob Church