from_name: Berto

body:
Yes, it's much wider. Why should I import an older tool version, since I am
to start now?
B?rto

----- ???????? ????????? -----
??: "Joakim Larsson" <to.joakim at gmail.com>
????: <wikipedia-l at wikimedia.org>
??????????: 29 ???? 2006 ?. 16:14
????: Re: [Wikipedia-l] import babel templates, how-to

WiktionaryZ do use a diffrent set of babel-templates then most Wikipedias.

2006/6/29, Sabine Cretella <sabine_cretella at yahoo.it>:
>
> Hi Berto,
>
> yes, I already thought about it. I need all the templates downloaded in
> a file (did/do not have time right now to do it, but I wanted to do the
> same) - then I can easily use the bot to upload them.
>
> Ciao, Sabine
>
> Berto schrieb:
> > Hi!
> >
> > is there anyway to import babel templates? (say from wiktionaryZ, with
> the
> > level-5 convention, too). They do not need any translation at all, so it
> > looks pretty stupid to do it manually.
> >
> > B?rto
> >
>
> Chiacchiera con i tuoi amici in tempo reale!
> http://it.yahoo.com/mail_it/foot/*http://it.messenger.yahoo.com
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>
_______________________________________________
Wikipedia-l mailing list
Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l


list: wikipedia-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Mark Williamson

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Moldovan wikipedia: when is this farce going to
	end?

body:
No, this issue was discussed here before, and it got a reaction from Anthere.

The difference is that people in charge simply ignore anythign with
"Moldovan" in it.

By the way, voting anomalies have gone farther than before.

While there's not anything wrong really with notifying various people
of a vote, when you specifically search out brand-new users of
Wikipedia, and ask them to vote, that's not exactly right. See
http://ro.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/Razvan2001 -- this
user has done that for 4 or 5 new users, and I doubt he is the only
one. If this tactic is to be tolerated -- ie, brand-new users with
less than 100 contribs on any project may vote -- then believe me, all
my friends will be registering and voting. It is on.

Mark

On 29/06/06, mboverload <mboverload at gmail.com> wrote:
> Are you sure this is the right mailing list?  Are you sure you shouldn't be
> on some wikimedia list?
>
> mboverload
>
> On 6/29/06, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > Blatant maliciousness? Please.
> >
> > As for people in charge, I'm guessing they turned their backs on this
> > discussion months ago, precisely because of mails like yours which are
> > trolling and accusing people, when this discussion is supposed to be
> > about whether or not to close mo.wiki.
> >
> > It seems to be that when you have to groups of people opposing one
> > another, sometimes the option to choose is the status quo, even if it
> > isn't the "right" thing to do.
> >
> > Mark
> >
> > On 29/06/06, Jacky PB <dpotop1 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> > >
> > > Is this real?
> > >
> > > Where are the administrators of wikipedia?
> > >
> > > This is a blatant show of maliciousness, and nobody
> > > says anything? A load of disinformation is really
> > > better than
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > --- Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com> wrote:
> > >
> > > > Another difference is Greater Romania POV.
> > > >
> > > > Articles on ro.wp tend to be written slightly
> > > > slanted towards a Romanian view.
> > > >
> > > > Romanian Wikipedians may deny this, but one has only
> > > > to compare the
> > > > Romanian and English articles on [[Moldova]],
> > > > [[Transnistria]], [[Igor
> > > > Smirnov]], [[URSS]]/[[USSR]], etc. to know.
> > > >
> > > > While some Moldovans share this opinion, the opinion
> > > > base in Moldova
> > > > is vastly different. While it would be best to work
> > > > together, in the
> > > > current situation ro.wp is dominated by a huge
> > > > majority of Romanians,
> > > > so any moderate or nationalist Moldovan (as opposed
> > > > to unionist), or
> > > > someone favouring closer ties to Russia, would
> > > > likely get little say
> > > > in that Wikipedia.
> > > >
> > > > This situation might be considered similar to the
> > > > reason why the
> > > > current Bosnian, Serbian, and Croatian Wikipedias
> > > > are incompatible for
> > > > a merger -- there are many POV articles on each
> > > > Wikipedia due to
> > > > systemic biases that people do not realise are
> > > > present.
> > > >
> > > > If Romanian Wikipedians tried to make their articles
> > > > conform to the
> > > > same POV standard as the English Wikipedia does,
> > > > this would not be an
> > > > issue.
> > > >
> > > > Mark
> > > >
> > > > On 29/06/06, Lorenzarius <lorenzarius at gmail.com>
> > > > wrote:
> > > > > I don't know any "Moldovan", but if the difference
> > > > between "Moldovan"
> > > > > and Romanian is merely a difference in the
> > > > alphabet used, we don't
> > > > > even need an external script for the conversions:
> > > > because MediaWiki
> > > > > already supports such conversions (this function
> > > > is introduced in
> > > > > version 1.4). This function is currently being
> > > > used on the Chinese (to
> > > > > convert between traditional/simplified Chinese)
> > > > and Serbian (to
> > > > > convert between Cyrillic/Latin alphabet)
> > > > Wikipedia. In fact the
> > > > > situation on zh: is much more complicated than
> > > > merely a difference in
> > > > > alphabet, and I can assure you that the initial
> > > > discussion on zh:
> > > > > (e.g. whether to split or not; whether a technical
> > > > solution is
> > > > > adequate enough) is no less painful than the
> > > > current one I see here.
> > > > > But as a native Chinese speaker, I think our use
> > > > of a technical
> > > > > solution to overcome a not-so-technical problem
> > > > works out pretty well
> > > > > so far and that we did indeed make a correct
> > > > decision to not to split.
> > > > >
> > > > > For more info:
> > > > > http://zh.wikipedia.org/
> > > > >
> > > >
> > > http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Transwiki:Wikimania05/Paper-ZZ1
> > > > >
> > > >
> > >
> > http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Automatic_conversion_between_simplified_and_traditional_Chinese
> > > > > http://sr.wikipedia.org/
> > > > > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serbian_Wikipedia
> > > > > --
> > > > > Larry Lo
> > > > > http://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Lorenzarius
> > > > > Tel: +852 95825791
> > > > > _______________________________________________
> > > > > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > > > > Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> > > > >
> > > >
> > > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> > > > >
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > --
> > > > Refije dirije lanm? yo paske nou posede pw?p bato.
> > > > _______________________________________________
> > > > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > > > Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> > > >
> > > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> > > >
> > >
> > >
> > > __________________________________________________
> > > Do You Yahoo!?
> > > Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
> > > http://mail.yahoo.com
> > > _______________________________________________
> > > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > > Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> > > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> > >
> >
> >
> > --
> > Refije dirije lanm? yo paske nou posede pw?p bato.
> > _______________________________________________
> > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> >
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

--
Refije dirije lanm? yo paske nou posede pw?p bato.


list: wikien-l

from_name: Jon Awbrey

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

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

u r so qwiki, i kant deride yer qwikiness here ...

ja

Guy Chapman aka JzG wrote:
>
> On Thu, 29 Jun 2006 16:30:09 -0400, Jon Awbrey <jawbrey at att.net>
> wrote:
>
> > a certain aesthetic distance,
> > however affected, and however
> > high the stilts that it takes
> > to achieve it [...]
>
> Certainly looks affected from here :-/
>
> Guy (JzG)
> --
> http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG

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: Steve Bennett

subject: [WikiEN-l] Redlinks or redirects?

body:
On 6/29/06, Bryan Derksen <bryan.derksen at shaw.ca> wrote:
> I say only redirect to an article if the article already contains some
> kind of substantial content about the subject the redirect is about. So
> if the author's page actually discusses the book in question go ahead
> and redirect, but if it doesn't then IMO it will only lead to confusion
> and frustration on the part of the reader.

Good point. It's a pity there is no way to add meta information about
redirects. Sometimes it would be helpful to have something like "Foo
is actually a slang term for Boo. Redirecting to Boo...". The
alternative is trying to make sure that every article contains every
major redirected term in bold in its first paragraph, which is rarely
the case.

There have certainly been cases where I've been redirected without
understanding why (usually because the topic is some synonym for some
obscure point discussed in the 14th paragraph...) It's not obvious how
to then fix the problem though - you almost need a "Topics discussed
in this article" box up the top.

Unlike a real encyclopaedia, we don't seem willing or able to have
incredibly short articles that say things like "Wreckage: temporary
name given to English pop group Ibex in 1970. See [[Ibex (group)]]".
You could never write "the perfect article" on a band which
technically existed for 1 month, and whose most interesting
characteristic is that Freddie Mercury broke it up shortly after
forming it. But nor is simply redirecting to another topic altogether
always a totally obvious thing for the reader to understand...

Steve


body:
AFAIK, it should be a transparent move for all users. If you are aware of
any differences pls tell me, so I can have the users know that they are
going to chenge some of their usual behaviours. All I know so far is that
there also is an XXX-5 level for people making a professional use of a
language.

B?rto

----- ???????? ????????? -----
??: "Joakim Larsson" <to.joakim at gmail.com>
????: <wikipedia-l at wikimedia.org>
??????????: 29 ???? 2006 ?. 16:46
????: Re: [Wikipedia-l] import babel templates, how-to

2006/6/29, Berto <albertoserra at ukr.net>:
>
> Yes, it's much wider. Why should I import an older tool version, since I
> am
> to start now?
> B?rto

My tought was that maybe becuse it shall be easy to ad and understand over
all wikis. But since you are aware of this, I say no more.

[[sv:User:Gr?n]]
_______________________________________________
Wikipedia-l mailing list
Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l


from_name: mboverload

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

body:
My brain just exploded.  Please don't try and use big words and acronyms to
make yourself sound smart.  Just talk regularly.  We don't think any less of
people who talk normal.  Please! =D

thx,
mboverload

> > On 6/29/06, Jon Awbrey <jawbrey at att.net> wrote:
> > > > Pending a properly controlled study of WikiPediatric epidemiology
> (Proposal Pending),
> > > > it is this observer's estimation that the most prevalent IOP is the
> one that inverts
> > > > the priorities of the superordinate policies cited above and the
> unofficial dictates
> > > > of what is here nomenclated as "De Facto Consensus" (DFC).  DFC must
> not be confused
> > > > with Genuine Consensus -- defined as the absence of dissent -- DFC
> as it's currently
> > > > observed in WP means that any three users, or evatars, coming to
> agreement in a half
> > > > hour period, can impose their absolute dictatorship over the
> direction of an article.
>
>


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

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

Guy Chapman aka JzG wrote:
>
> On Thu, 29 Jun 2006 17:08:10 -0400, Jon Awbrey <jawbrey at att.net>
> wrote:
>
> > u r so qwiki, i kant deride yer qwikiness here ...
>
> Indeed.  So, how about meeting us halfway by adopting a style which is
> rather more readable and line lengths set to more than a dozen
> characters?
>
> Guy (JzG)

and give up my dont b a dick tracy computer watch?
but tanks fer all the egs of "priority inversion".
no, the other p.i.

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: Lord Voldemort

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

body:
On 6/29/06, Jon Awbrey <jawbrey at att.net> wrote:
> and give up my dont b a dick tracy computer watch?
> but tanks fer all the egs of "priority inversion".
> no, the other p.i.

Can we grow up?  If you hate WP so much, fork and leave, or leave.
And Jon's style of writing is fine... if we can't read what is writen
in an educated manner, we probably shouldn't be writing an
encyclopedia. Let's just move on.  --LV


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Moldovan wikipedia, again

body:
That's sort of what the main page used to be -- see
http://mo.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Main_Page&oldid=10188

But then of course, the current "admin" (who doesn't fulfill any admin
duties, AT ALL, except to ban users he doesn't like) replaced it with
a huge "go away" sign.

If you mean make the whole domain a disambiguation and move Cyrillic
content elsewhere, I will agree to that, but content must be moved
FIRSt.

Mark

On 29/06/06, mboverload <mboverload at gmail.com> wrote:
> HEY!  I got an idea!
>
> Make mo.wikipedia  a DISAMBIGUATION PAGE.  Why wouldn't that work?
>
> mboverload
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

--
Refije dirije lanm? yo paske nou posede pw?p bato.


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Moldovan wikipedia, again

body:
If Wikipedias with no native contributors are so evil, why don't you
request locking of the over 100 Wikipedias for which this is the case?

You might say that none of them have any people writing, but that is
not true. Wikipedias such as the Lingala Wikipedia (ln.wp) are filled
with content created by non-native speakers, and you aren't
complaining about them. Why is that? Why don't you go on a crusade to
close the Lingala Wikipedia? Or the Maori Wikipedia?

Mark

On 29/06/06, Jacky PB <dpotop1 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> Hello Gerard,
>
> I don't really understand what you are implying.
>
> But I can repeat why we ask for the deletion of
> mo.wikipedia (all of these are already proven in
> previous messages):
>
> 1. There is no community. Nobody on wikipedia is both
> interested in having it and able to contribute.
>
> 2. All content is copied from ro.wikipedia and
> transliterated. There are better, already tested ways
> of changing script, if someone wants it.
>
> 3. In the current status, mo.wikipedia is in fact a
> heaven for trolls of all sorts.
>
> Of course, deletion needs not be permanent. As soon as
> the condition 1 becomes false (as soon as a community
> forms), the moldovan wikipedia can be re-created.
>
> Yours,
> Jacky
>
> --- Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Liviu Andronic wrote:
> > > ... The big issue comes mainly from the
> > desinformation that mo.wikipediacreates.
> > >
> > > The content that is currently on mo.wikipedia is
> > written in a language that
> > > is not used any more in the Republic of Moldova.
> > It could be argued that
> > > Moldovan is used by a minority in the territory of
> > Moldova (in private and
> > > personal matters), and by a part of population
> > (mainly Moldovan schools) in
> > > Transnistria.  Please note that Cyrillic Moldovan
> > is not used on a large
> > > scale (that is, generally speaking, you won't
> > encounter Moldovan Cyrillic
> > > anywhere in Moldova). At least for Moldova, I can
> > assure you, as I am a
> > > native Moldovan. As far as Transnistria is
> > concerned, I really doubt it.
> > >  Even the   official presidential website
> > > <http://www.president-pmr.org/>doesn't
> > > contain any Cyrillic Moldovan content. ...
> > >
> > Hoi,
> > Either the information is correct, and given that it
> > is said to be
> > information from the Romanian language Wikipedia it
> > should be both
> > correct and NPOV. If it is not correct or NPOV,
> > /both/ the Romanian and
> > the Moldovian language Wikipedia are to be
> > considered problematic. All
> > the rest is very much politics, posturing and
> > intransigence.
> >
> > I am sure that this continued existence is best
> > ignored. Consider you
> > are either a party to this dispute or you could not
> > care less. When  the
> > argument is that the mo wikipedia is occupied by
> > trolls, remember they
> > thrive by getting attention.
> >
> > Thanks,
> >    GerardM
> > _______________________________________________
> > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> >
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> >
>
>
> __________________________________________________
> Do You Yahoo!?
> Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
> http://mail.yahoo.com
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

--
Refije dirije lanm? yo paske nou posede pw?p bato.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Redlinks or redirects?

body:
On 6/29/06, Bryan Derksen <bryan.derksen at shaw.ca> wrote:
> In this case a disambiguation page would be able to hold this
> information, but I can see the problem where a non-ambiguous name comes
> in. Hopefully one can come up with enough information to warrant a
> section header for the topic, at least.

Hmm, good thoughts.

Steve


from_name: Ilmari Karonen

subject: [WikiEN-l] Oversight log

body:
Andrew Gray wrote:
> On 22/06/06, Mark Wagner <carnildo at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>Person A vandalizes a biographical article, replacing believable
>>claims to notability with unbelievable ones.  Person B, not realizing
>>that the article was vandalized, lists it for deletion.  Person C
>>reverts the vandalism.  Person A's edit is vanished.
>>
>>At this point, to anyone looking through the article history, it
>>appears that person B is attacking the subject of the article, trying
>>to get that article deleted.
>
> Does anyone do history deletions this way? I don't. You don't delete
> the revision where the material was *added*, you delete *the revisions
> containing the material* (which can be a real bastard if it wasn't
> caught for ages)

Sometimes people do, presumably by accident.  I've cleaned up after one
instance, which I could detect and fix since that was a case of ordinary
deletion.

--
Ilmari Karonen


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] OpenDocument file format

body:
Jakob Voss wrote:
> It has been asked multiple times at [[commons:Commons talk:File types]]
> to enable OpenOffice.org 2.0 formats (=OASIS OpenDocument Format) for
> file upload. Any objections? Can you please enable it?

Where specifically would you like them?

We've also gotten requests to disable uploading of document file formats in most
places, as they're only really relevant in a handful of meta-work wikis, not the
main content wikis.

-- 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/20060629/d9dc3192/attachment.pgp>


subject: [Wikitech-l] lot of blank pages and errors tonight

body:
Steve Summit wrote:
> I've been getting quite a few blank pages and error messages this
> evening, which disappear immediately upon reload. (This is
> en.wiktionary, if it matters, not wikipedia.)  I wonder if some
> number of the squid servers are indisposed?

Please see the post and response from the other day on this subject.

-- 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/20060629/2940f62a/attachment.pgp>


from_name: Lars Alvik

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Moldovan wikipedia, again

body:
I think this sound like the best solution. With a link in cyrilic on
ro: and mo redirecting to ro:

mvh.
Lars J. Alvik

Den 29. jun. 2006 kl. 17.28 skrev Igor Coropceanu:

> I agree with that statement, why should the Moldovan Wikipedia only
> use Cyrillic, that would imply that Moldovan is normally written in
> that alphabet, which is actually false as the vast majority of
> Moldovan speakers (i.e. speakers of Romanian in Moldvoa) use the
> latin script. But having a latin version of Moldovan would also be
> stupid as formal Moldovan and Romanian are identical. A mo-cyr or
> ro-cyr version could be created for those who want to read the
> Romanian encclopedia in Cyrillic (through a transliteration tool),
> but I suggest not implementing that until someone actually requests
> a Cyrillic Moldovan encyclopedia.
>
> Liviu Andronic <landronimirc at gmail.com> wrote:By all this I am
> trying to explain that current Cyrillic content has nothing
> to do on mo.wikipedia. If it has any right to exist (low quality
> content, no
> native contributors, no native people's support of its existance
> [at least
> not here, not on this mailing-list]), it should be somewhere on a
> mo-cyr.wikipedia.
>
>
>
> ---------------------------------
> Yahoo! Music Unlimited - Access over 1 million songs.Try it free.
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l


from_name: SPUI

subject: [WikiEN-l] SPUI requesting unblock

body:
I have been blocked for a week (initially indefinitely, then unblocked
by another admin and reblocked for a week by the initial admin) for the
contents of a page I made in January *2005* -
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:SPUI/jajaja . See
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:SPUI#Block and
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/Pedophilia_userbox_wheel_war&diff=prev&oldid=61198615
. I put {{unblock}} on my talk page three hours ago, with no response.
Deco posted on AN/I 2.5 hours ago -
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Administrators%27_noticeboard#Today.27s_SPUI_blocking
- again with no response. The blocking admin -
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Physchim62 - has no email set.

For this reason, I am more worried than before about
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Requests_for_arbitration/Highways/Proposed_decision#Block_length
. Any admin can simply claim my actions are disruption, and, even if the
block is overturned, it both remains for too long and creates yet
another block in the block log for a future blacking admin to use as
"evidence" that it's fine to block me.


from_name: Jesse W

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

body:
On Jun 28, 2006, at 7:26 PM, Jon Awbrey wrote:
> o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o
> In a way you are correct, since the things that I have identified so
> far
> are only the more superficial symptoms of a condition
Ah; we agree - the things you have identified so far are *not the real
problem*.  But you haven't yet (at least not in mail that has reached
me) said what the real, central, most important "condition" IS.  I, for
one, would really like to know.

Historically, the typical ones have been 1) Wikipedia is too leveling -
i.e. to work on Wikipedia you have to deal with too many idiots. 2)
Wikipedia is secretly run by some evil group. 3) Something else.  I
suspect your view of the problem is more in the direction of the first
one, but I'd really like to hear it directly from you.  I've asked for
this before, as anyone reviewing this thread can easily observe.

Jesse Weinstein

P.S.
> that I don't think
> is likely to improve a bit under this regime of defensiveness and
> denial.
You may be right, but getting a clear statement of just *what* you
think the "condition" is into the archives is a good thing anyway.


from_name: Daniel R. Tobias

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

body:
On 29 Jun 2006 at 14:14, Jon Awbrey <jawbrey at att.net> wrote:

> Steve Bennett wrote:
> >
> > On 6/29/06, Jon Awbrey <jawbrey at att.net> wrote:
> > > Pending a properly controlled study of WikiPediatric epidemiology (Proposal Pending),
> > > it is this observer's estimation that the most prevalent IOP is the one that inverts
> > > the priorities of the superordinate policies cited above and the unofficial dictates
> > > of what is here nomenclated as "De Facto Consensus" (DFC).  DFC must not be confused
> > > with Genuine Consensus -- defined as the absence of dissent -- DFC as it's currently
> > > observed in WP means that any three users, or evatars, coming to agreement in a half
> > > hour period, can impose their absolute dictatorship over the direction of an article.
> >
> > You seem to be constantly inventing new terms. Why?
>
> You seem to be constantly looking for things to talk about except what I'm saying.  Why?

Maybe because people are having trouble figuring out just what you're
saying?  Perhaps your points would be more understandable if you
spent more time giving specific examples of things that have happened
on Wikipedia that are not to your liking, rather than talking in
vague abstractions using lots of odd terminology?

--
== Dan ==
Dan's Mail Format Site: http://mailformat.dan.info/
Dan's Web Tips: http://webtips.dan.info/
Dan's Domain Site: http://domains.dan.info/


from_name: Erik Moeller

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Require confirmed email address to upload images?

body:
On 6/29/06, Platonides <Platonides at gmail.com> wrote:
> Account merging will be done based on e-mails (as you can set your password
> based on emails) because you can't compare passwords (due to the salt). The
> merging by password will be done if your local and global account have the
> same password when you login. Not really automatic. See the evil-plans for
> more info.

We're saying the same thing. As I wrote: "If your accounts use the
same password, the merging of old accounts into the global system can
be done transparently for the user at login time." There is no need
for a confirmed e-mail address to exist in order to merge accounts.

Erik


from_name: Gerard Meijssen

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Moldovan wikipedia, again

body:
Liviu Andronic wrote:
> ... The big issue comes mainly from the desinformation that mo.wikipediacreates.
>
> The content that is currently on mo.wikipedia is written in a language that
> is not used any more in the Republic of Moldova. It could be argued that
> Moldovan is used by a minority in the territory of Moldova (in private and
> personal matters), and by a part of population (mainly Moldovan schools) in
> Transnistria.  Please note that Cyrillic Moldovan is not used on a large
> scale (that is, generally speaking, you won't encounter Moldovan Cyrillic
> anywhere in Moldova). At least for Moldova, I can assure you, as I am a
> native Moldovan. As far as Transnistria is concerned, I really doubt it.
>  Even the   official presidential website
> <http://www.president-pmr.org/>doesn't
> contain any Cyrillic Moldovan content. ...
>
Hoi,
Either the information is correct, and given that it is said to be
information from the Romanian language Wikipedia it should be both
correct and NPOV. If it is not correct or NPOV, /both/ the Romanian and
the Moldovian language Wikipedia are to be considered problematic. All
the rest is very much politics, posturing and intransigence.

I am sure that this continued existence is best ignored. Consider you
are either a party to this dispute or you could not care less. When  the
argument is that the mo wikipedia is occupied by trolls, remember they
thrive by getting attention.

Thanks,
   GerardM


from_name: Simetrical

subject: [Wikitech-l] Interwiki/transwiki imports mostly working now

body:
On 6/29/06, Magnus Manske <magnus.manske at web.de> wrote:
> Now I'm waiting for people to complain about the spam ;-)

Nah, it's what everyone does (at least on enwiki, don't blame me if
they yell at you on de :P).  No one would know about Lupin's popups or
AWB or VandalProof if they didn't add a plug to default edit
summaries.


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

body:
On Jun 29, 2006, at 10:20 AM, Jon Awbrey wrote:
> of what is here nomenclated as "De Facto Consensus" (DFC).  DFC must
> not be confused
> with Genuine Consensus -- defined as the absence of dissent -- DFC as
> it's currently
> observed in WP means that any three users, or evatars, coming to
> agreement in a half
> hour period, can impose their absolute dictatorship over the direction
> of an article.
Ah!  This is more specific.  And I don't even particularly dispute your
claim that a preference for DFC exists, or even that such a preference
is a problem, although I do think you exaggerate the degree of the
problem.

The questions are - what is an alternative to DFC , why is DFC
preferred, and what can we do about that preference? (either within
Wikipedia, or in a fork of Wikipedia).  I will attempt to answer the
first question below, and leave the others to later.

What is an alternative to DFC?

"Genuine Consensus" is not possible; since the editing pool for
Wikipedia is theoretically unlimited, we can never be sure that
everyone who could edit an article does not disagree.  However, we
could require that any changes to an article be proposed before being
done and make sure that anyone who states a disagreement with the
proposed changes within a given period (anywhere from a half hour to
one month) changes their mind or the changes cannot be made.  A
disadvantage of this is that any article which a crackpot decided to
take an interest in would be impossible to change until the crackpot
decided to leave.  This proposal would strongly change the wiki quality
of Wikipedia, so it probably would be necessary to attempt this in a
fork.

It would also be possible to require that any changes to an article
which were objected to, by anyone, at any time, even long after they
were first entered, would be able to be removed, and could only be
re-entered if that person removed their objections.  A disadvantage of
this is that material could be removed, and be unable to be re-entered,
by someone objecting and then refusing to communicate further.  This
could lead to massive sections of the 'pedia being permanently removed.
  This also would have to be attempted in a fork.

Another possibility is to require a larger, but specific, number of
user accounts (with all the sockpuppeting issues that entails) to
determine the inclusion or removal of a given section of text.

I would be very curious to hear Mr. Awbrey's preference for an
alternative, either one of the ones above, or another one I have not
mentioned.

Jesse Weinstein


subject: [WikiEN-l] SPUI requesting unblock

body:
Erik Moeller wrote:
> On 6/30/06, SPUI <drspui at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>I have been blocked for a week (initially indefinitely, then unblocked
>>by another admin and reblocked for a week by the initial admin) for the
>>contents of a page I made in January *2005* -
>>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:SPUI/jajaja .
>
>
> The page was recently listed on MFD. You reverted the MFD notice. Why?

Hmmm - I was pretty sure I had kept it while reverting a blanking, but
on looking back at it, it appears I did remove it. My mistake.

> For the record, there is now a separate mailing list for unblock requests:
> http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/unblock-en-l

It was my understanding that this is not operational yet until more
admins get on it.


body:
Gregory Maxwell wrote:
> On 6/29/06, Lars Aronsson <lars at aronsson.se> wrote:
>
>> Tomasz never said this.  He said anonymous users should "have all
>> options available", not that they should have "more" than
>> registered users.  I don't know if you have a problem with reading
>> what others write, or if you are pushing some political agenda,
>> but the way you communicate is becoming irritating.
>>
>
> It is to afford them more respect when we contort our policy to
> minimize effort for them while maximizing the effort for our more
> established editors.
>
> I have a hard time listening to people who make loud an emotional
> complaints about exclusion when we talk about registration, because
> it's patently untrue. Registration excludes no one.   If you want to
> argue on the basis of more complicated editing/uploading dissuading
> new people from discovering the joy of contributing then I can follow
> that argument..  But to claim that we're discussion a policy of
> exclusion? Thats just trolling.
>
> We should discontinue using the word 'anonymous' for non-registered
> users, because they are among the least anonymous users on the system.
>
Hoi,
When registration excludes no-one it means that those people that do
have a reason not to register an e-mail address are excluded. There are
such people. It is fine for you not to see the arguments of others, you
paint yourself in a corner however by calling these other names. It does
not make your argument sympathetic, far from it, it hurts your cause.

Thanks,
    GerardM


body:
On 6/29/06, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
> I have a hard time listening to people who make loud an emotional
> complaints about exclusion when we talk about registration, because
> it's patently untrue. Registration excludes no one.   If you want to
> argue on the basis of more complicated editing/uploading dissuading
> new people from discovering the joy of contributing then I can follow
> that argument..  But to claim that we're discussion a policy of
> exclusion? Thats just trolling.

It's important noting the philosophy behind a change like the one
proposed. Many forums require registration and e-mail confirmation to
discourage spam and abuse. This is not the philosophy of the wiki,
where you typically develop complex measures of surveillance,
prevention and intervention rather than erecting barriers to entry.

But the change is not to proposed to make it harder to upload. The
change is proposed to make it easier to contact uploaders, which is a
legitimate concern. If this becomes an opt-in measure for each wiki
community (each of which may have its own reasons for wanting or not
wanting it), I really see no compelling reason against it.

One could make the argument (and I believe Kat did) that it is harsher
to uploaders to just delete their pictures without asking. The idea
here is not to _exclude_ people. The idea is to be nice to them. But I
think it's OK for Commons to be "harsh", because it follows a very
strict standard of freedom and it's important for people to learn
that. I'm not sure if the rest of the Commons community will agree,
but essentially, I think there needs to be a consensus-oriented
discussion on each wiki before a feature like this is activated.

Erik


subject: [WikiEN-l] SPUI requesting unblock

body:
Erik Moeller wrote:
> On 6/30/06, SPUI <drspui at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>>The page was recently listed on MFD. You reverted the MFD notice. Why?
>>
>>Hmmm - I was pretty sure I had kept it while reverting a blanking, but
>>on looking back at it, it appears I did remove it. My mistake.
>
> Why did you create the page, and how do you justify its continued
> existence in a website dedicated to creating an encyclopedia?

I created it to see what would happen if I kept increasing the font
size. I kept it around because I found it amusing. I justify its
continued existence because leaving it alone uses less disk space than
deleting it.


from_name: GerardM

body:
Hoi,
It is all well and good for a project to insist on a policy. However
there are two problems with doing it this way for the Commons project:
* The insistence of the Commons community that they are a law onto themselves
* The Commons serves as a resource to all projects whereby its
policies directly affect ALL other projects

The consequence of this is that arguments that are derived from  the
Commons community are made irrelevant because the arguments from other
projects are not heard either (deliberately).

If you want to be nice, you have to listen to the arguments of others.
In the past it was made quite clear that the Commons community does
not want to do that.

Thanks,
   GerardM

On 6/29/06, Erik Moeller <eloquence at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 6/29/06, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
> > I have a hard time listening to people who make loud an emotional
> > complaints about exclusion when we talk about registration, because
> > it's patently untrue. Registration excludes no one.   If you want to
> > argue on the basis of more complicated editing/uploading dissuading
> > new people from discovering the joy of contributing then I can follow
> > that argument..  But to claim that we're discussion a policy of
> > exclusion? Thats just trolling.
>
> It's important noting the philosophy behind a change like the one
> proposed. Many forums require registration and e-mail confirmation to
> discourage spam and abuse. This is not the philosophy of the wiki,
> where you typically develop complex measures of surveillance,
> prevention and intervention rather than erecting barriers to entry.
>
> But the change is not to proposed to make it harder to upload. The
> change is proposed to make it easier to contact uploaders, which is a
> legitimate concern. If this becomes an opt-in measure for each wiki
> community (each of which may have its own reasons for wanting or not
> wanting it), I really see no compelling reason against it.
>
> One could make the argument (and I believe Kat did) that it is harsher
> to uploaders to just delete their pictures without asking. The idea
> here is not to _exclude_ people. The idea is to be nice to them. But I
> think it's OK for Commons to be "harsh", because it follows a very
> strict standard of freedom and it's important for people to learn
> that. I'm not sure if the rest of the Commons community will agree,
> but essentially, I think there needs to be a consensus-oriented
> discussion on each wiki before a feature like this is activated.
>
> Erik
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


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

body:
On 6/29/06, Jon Awbrey <jawbrey at att.net> wrote:
> Pending a properly controlled study of WikiPediatric epidemiology (Proposal Pending),
> it is this observer's estimation that the most prevalent IOP is the one that inverts
> the priorities of the superordinate policies cited above and the unofficial dictates
> of what is here nomenclated as "De Facto Consensus" (DFC).  DFC must not be confused
> with Genuine Consensus -- defined as the absence of dissent -- DFC as it's currently
> observed in WP means that any three users, or evatars, coming to agreement in a half
> hour period, can impose their absolute dictatorship over the direction of an article.
>

You seem to be constantly inventing new terms. Why?

Steve


subject: [WikiEN-l] Redlinks or redirects?

body:
On 6/29/06, Delirium <delirium at hackish.org> wrote:
> This becomes irritating when you're going the other way---you've just
> read the article about the author, and now are going down the list of
> books at the bottom looking to read more.  If some articles exist and
> some don't, you can click on the blue links and get articles, and know
> from the red links that no article exists on those books yet.  The
> situation is considerably more confusing if they're all blue links, but
> some are articles while others redirect right back to the page you just
> read.

Ack, that's true. I can't stand links that lead back to the same
page.[1] The only solution I can see there is creating all the stubs,
and linking them to the author's article.

Steve

[1] Even more than I can't stand excessive pipe linking ("this
disaster was even greater than [[Hicksville train disaster of 1943|the
one]] that occurred twenty years earlier").


body:
On 6/29/06, GerardM <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
> If you want to be nice, you have to listen to the arguments of others.

Absolutely. But being nice is a matter of cooperation as well :-). I
cannot praise Duesentrieb enough for his work on CommonsTicker, which
is really an excellent tool for Commons and local wikis to work
together. Magnus' tools are also great in bringing the projects closer
together.

Certainly, if there is a strong argument that Commons should use
e-mail confirmation from people outside Commons, that should be heard
and given considerable weight.

It is also true, in general, that there are a lot of people who get
pissed when we delete images they upload to Commons, whether or not we
notify them. And of course they're right to be pissed when:
- we delete an image that is 20 years old and has no commercial value
- we delete a scan from a scientific journal, or a taxpayer-funded report
- we have to delete some images in accordance with peculiar national
copyright laws.

They are right to be angry and frustrated by the extent to which our
culture has become monopolized and commoditized. And while it is
understandable that they turn their anger and frustration against the
project where these unjust laws are enforced, we need to work together
in turning it against the lawmakers and the lobbyists that have passed
them in the first place. To what extent Wikimedia can become political
in these matters, I do not know. But it certainly should facilitate
political change and direct its tremendous community to the right
organizations.

I think a lot of tension we have is not the result of anything done by
Commons, but a result of the fundamental unfairness and imbalance in
international copyright law.

Erik


subject: [Wikitech-l] Sanity check on image uploads

body:
On 29 Jun 2006 14:21:46 +0200, Anders Wegge Jakobsen <wegge at wegge.dk> wrote:
>
>  I've been asked by some of the editors on dawiki of the possibilities
> to create a set of questions that can lead to the correct image
> license(s) for image uploads.

Well, damn me if I wasn't thinking of that just today.  I was even
working out a flowchart.  In fact, I started a sort of rudimentary
flowchart at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Can_I_use_this_work%3F
a while back.  Of course, Danish law probably differs significantly in
the specifics.

On 6/29/06, Plyd <wiki.vincent at amplyd.com> wrote:
> I think it's a good idea, but IMHO the "other" answer should stay.
> People who want to add unauthorized copyrighted pictures use it most
> of the time... and that makes it very easy after to sort and remove.
> If the "other" or "I don't know" is removed, I think those people will
> try to add it selecting a wrong licence, very difficult to check.

I was thinking of having that exist but lead to a "copyrighted" answer
(i.e., if you aren't sure we just assume the worst every time).  If
we're talking a software-level implementation, though, a abortive
upload should be logged: "User:Whatever attempted to upload a file
named XXX.jpg, but stopped after 4 steps.  [some brief gibberish here
to allow those in the know to see what he answered to the questions]".
 If the user initially gets to a "copyrighted" result and then
backtracks and claims he took it, you'll know something's up.


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

body:
On 6/29/06, Matt Brown <morven at gmail.com> wrote:
> Jon is free to write in any way he wishes, and the rest of us are free
> to draw any conclusions we like about him from his chosen style as
> well.

Of course. But there should really be a point, don't ya think? Else we
are just sitting taking shots at each other, _not_ doing anything
productive, which this list should probably be used for.  Pissing and
moaning about people's writing style does nothing constructive.  There
has to come a point when we can just move on.  --LV


from_name: Jay R. Ashworth

subject: [Wikitech-l] New diff feature for Wikipedia

body:
On Thu, Jun 29, 2006 at 10:28:12PM +0200, Jakob Voss wrote:
> Roman Nosov wrote:
> > I've been directed here by Brion, Robchurch and others on #wikimedia-tech.
> > So I propose a new feature for Wikipedia which people on
> > #wikimedia-tech mostly refer as blame page or blame map. I would
> > prefer to call it something like "Track contributions mode" (because
> > of similarity with MS Word track changes mode) or "Hall of fame" but
> > whatever. I have live prototype written in PHP&MySQL at
> > http://217.147.83.36:9000/ Example of "blame map" can be seen at
> > http://217.147.83.36:9000/history::171 two blame maps compared
> > http://217.147.83.36:9000/history::171=169
>
> Wow! That's cool and useful. I only ask myself how it scales with large
> articles and dozen of editors. de:Benutzer:Jah / meta:user:Jah
> implemented a similar function for offline use a year ago,[1] but you
> script looks much more developed. With blame maps you can finally find
> out who is responsible for which statement and directly ask him to cite
> his sources :-) Can you add something to give a link to the normal
> diff/edit where a specific paragraph was changed for the last time?

I concur: that is *outtahand* cool.  Is it possible to specify a
cutoff, either in edits-back-from-now, or after-a-given-date, and leave
older material uncolored?  (Specifically, this might be really cool for
patrolling... not necessarily on WP, mind you.)

Is this something that can be plugged into MediaWiki?  Or was that just
a mockup, and you're still early on?

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?


body:
On 6/29/06, Erik Moeller <eloquence at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 6/29/06, GerardM <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
> > If you want to be nice, you have to listen to the arguments of others.
>
> Absolutely. But being nice is a matter of cooperation as well :-). I
> cannot praise Duesentrieb enough for his work on CommonsTicker, which
> is really an excellent tool for Commons and local wikis to work
> together. Magnus' tools are also great in bringing the projects closer
> together.

Hoi,
When you use tools in stead of communication I agree, the point is
that the Commons community has in the past deliberately, pointedly and
repeatedly indicated that they are not interested in informing and
discussing proposed change to the Commons policies prior to aking that
change

Yes, do use all the tools available to you to make the process a
process of cooperation. But when policies are expliclitly enforced
without prior consultations you are wrong to call it  cooperation
because you ask for operation.

Thanks,
   GerardM

PS I only get pissed when I drink to much alcohol

> Certainly, if there is a strong argument that Commons should use
> e-mail confirmation from people outside Commons, that should be heard
> and given considerable weight.
>
> It is also true, in general, that there are a lot of people who get
> pissed when we delete images they upload to Commons, whether or not we
> notify them. And of course they're right to be pissed when:
> - we delete an image that is 20 years old and has no commercial value
> - we delete a scan from a scientific journal, or a taxpayer-funded report
> - we have to delete some images in accordance with peculiar national
> copyright laws.
>
> They are right to be angry and frustrated by the extent to which our
> culture has become monopolized and commoditized. And while it is
> understandable that they turn their anger and frustration against the
> project where these unjust laws are enforced, we need to work together
> in turning it against the lawmakers and the lobbyists that have passed
> them in the first place. To what extent Wikimedia can become political
> in these matters, I do not know. But it certainly should facilitate
> political change and direct its tremendous community to the right
> organizations.
>
> I think a lot of tension we have is not the result of anything done by
> Commons, but a result of the fundamental unfairness and imbalance in
> international copyright law.
>
> Erik
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


from_name: Steve Summit

body:
I've been getting quite a few blank pages and error messages this
evening, which disappear immediately upon reload. (This is
en.wiktionary, if it matters, not wikipedia.)  I wonder if some
number of the squid servers are indisposed?


from_name: Plyd

body:
On 29 Jun 2006 14:21:46 +0200, Anders Wegge Jakobsen <wegge at wegge.dk> wrote:
>
>  I've been asked by some of the editors on dawiki of the possibilities
> to create a set of questions that can lead to the correct image
> license(s) for image uploads. Furthermore, there is a request for
> enforcing a name for the photographer, so proper crediting can be
> done.
>
>  Looking at SpecialUpload.php, there are no hooks that is really
> suitable for this, and also I'm a little unsure about any effects of
> beginning to send people to new pages mid-upload, which would happen
> if added to any of the two existing hooks.
>
>  So I propose to add two hooks: One for adding fields to the initial
> form, and one for validating the contents before proceeding with the
> upload. Is there any reason that validation of license information
> should not be done in this way? Also, if a more suitable way of
> "quizzing" people exists, I'd be happy to hear about that.
>
> --
> // Wegge

I think it's a good idea, but IMHO the "other" answer should stay.
People who want to add unauthorized copyrighted pictures use it most
of the time... and that makes it very easy after to sort and remove.
If the "other" or "I don't know" is removed, I think those people will
try to add it selecting a wrong licence, very difficult to check.

Plyd


body:
On 6/29/06, GerardM <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
> When you use tools in stead of communication I agree, the point is
> that the Commons community has in the past deliberately, pointedly and
> repeatedly indicated that they are not interested in informing and
> discussing proposed change to the Commons policies prior to aking that
> change

The right place to discuss Commons policy in a multilingual community
with over 600 wikis are the Commons forums and mailing list. Everyone
is free to participate there. If policy is not discussed in the right
places _on_ Commons, then this is a failing of the Commons community.
But cooperation also means participation.

Imagine that we didn't have separate wikis, and only a single big one.
Surely the right place to discuss image policy would be the pages
about image policy? The separation of Commons and other projects is
essentially one that only exists in our heads, with the exception of
separate accounts and some minor user interface issues. Commons is
simply the section of the Wikimedia community that deals with
multimedia. And of course these people develop policies and practices
around multimedia. If you disagree with these policies and practices,
_get involved_.

Virtually all the active members of the Commons community also have a
"home wiki" where they are active. It is not some separate entity. It
is a subset of the Wikimedia community.

Erik


from_name: jf_wikipedia at mac.com

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

body:
On Jun 25, 2006, at 10:33 AM, Steve Bennett wrote:

> Is "gotcha" a big problem? Let's see:
> * You can only do it once, ever, to a single editor
> * You can only do it when the person has reverted 3 times in a single
> day, something we wish to discourage
> * The punishment is only banning for 24 hours.
>
> Sure, it could happen. But it's probably not worth worrying about.
>
> Steve

Exactly.

This rule has served us admirably so far and one that is really
simple to grasp: Don't want to be blocked, don't revert more than
three times in 24 hrs; and if you do, you will enjoy a forced
wikibreak, with a chance for you to assess if it is worth doing it
again. Sweet and simple. I do not see the need to change it...

-- Jossi


from_name: Guy Chapman aka JzG

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

body:
On Thu, 29 Jun 2006 16:30:09 -0400, Jon Awbrey <jawbrey at att.net>
wrote:

>a certain aesthetic distance,
>however affected, and however
>high the stilts that it takes
>to achieve it [...]

Certainly looks affected from here :-/

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


subject: [WikiEN-l] Nofollow

body:
On Jun 28, 2006, at 11:42 AM, Theresa Knott wrote:

> For some reason I've got it in my head that nofollow is set for talk
> pages and user pages. But is this actually true? We treat talk pages
> as lower quality than article pages, but does google do the same? If I
> see linkspam on a talk page do I need to remove it or is it OK to
> leave it there.

I do not see the metatag nofollow on talk pages, only rel="nofollow"
on HREFS

-- Jossi


from_name: Brianna Laugher

body:
On 29/06/06, Magnus Manske <magnus.manske at web.de> wrote:
> Brianna Laugher schrieb:
> > On 29/06/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >> I just sort of envisaged a "is this image fair use? No? [[Move it to
> >> Commons]]!" kind of  link appearing on images in the various
> >> Wikipedias. It doesn't seem like something that should be inherently
> >> restricted, either, since the action can be carried out manually by
> >> anyone...
> >>
> >
> > It doesn't need to be restricted, but it shouldn't be automatic. Many
> > images on local WPs have dodgy source/licensing and moving them to the
> > Commons is a very good opportunity to examine them at that point,
> > rather than just transfer them to Commons for the problem to come up
> > later.
> >
> > I have some support for this position :) see
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/commons-l/2006-May/000222.html .
> >
> Suggestion:
> 1. Copy image to commons (using my tool of course;-) and add a
> {{MovedToCommonsCheckPlease}} tag
> 2. Add {{NowCommons}} tag to the original image description
> 3. Delete image at the source wiki once the MovedToCommonsCheckPlease
> tag has been removed on commons

All I can say to that is "please for the love of God no". People
should take responsibility for verifying the source if they are so
eager to have it on Commons. Commons admins have more than enough to
do...and this method would just cause unnecessary duplication. Just
verify it in the first place, in the first place it was uploaded! What
is the rush? Commons isn't going anywhere. Let's take the time to get
at least this right, 'cause God knows Commons has enough copyvios
without needing to import old ones.

Brianna


subject: [WikiEN-l] Nofollow

body:
On Jun 28, 2006, at 12:16 PM, Theresa Knott wrote:

> How did you check it. Is it written up somewhere because i couldn't
> find anything on it.

Each link in an Talk page has the attribute rel="nofollow"

as in

Article name

But this applies to  links to articles only, not to links to user pages.

I better approach would be to add a meta tag

<meta name="robots" content="noindex,nofollow">

to all pages not in the article namespace.

In any case, note that many search engines ignore the nofollow tags
both in metatags and HREF tags.

-- Jossi


list: textbook-l

from_name: Cormac Lawler

subject:
[Textbook-l] wikiversity and private universities with multiple
	models

body:
On 6/29/06, John Goes <johnwgoes at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hello All,
>
> I'm a new to wikiversity, although I have been using wikipedia for quite
> some time now.  I actually stumbled on the wikiversity site today as I
> independently thought of an idea for an "internet university" and have been
> doing research on the idea, only to find that there have been efforts to do
> something similar for some time.
>
> I feel like I'm jumping into the middle of a discussion that I haven't heard
> much of, so please forgive me for my ignorance of most things that have been
> suggested and tossed about before.
>
> I get the sense that the idea for Wikiversity is rather vague and nebulous
> at the moment, with many conflicting ideas of where it should go and how it
> should evolve, especially vis-a-vis accreditation.
>
> The vision of a free wikiversity for everyone to attend, a respectable and
> revolutionary new way to learn and receive high degrees, while very
> egalitarian, seems like a very difficult task precisely because the idea is
> so centralized.  Every university, whether explicit or implict, has its own
> values and "opinions" on what constitutes a good education.  Any one
> organization is never going to be able to please everyone and fit everyone,
> even if nested in the internet.
>
> The approach I had originally considered was in reaction to MITs
> revolutionary decision to share their curriculum, lectures, ect with the
> public, effectively allowing one an MIT education if one applied oneself.
>
> The founding of wikiversity is clearly in response to a sense among many of
> the vast potential of a new model of learning.  Rather than arguing about
> the exact form of wikiversity, I think there is great potential for private
> setups, whether they be non for profit or otherwise, which can utilize
> resources such as wiki and MIT.
>
> My own idea is based on the system of Reed College.  At Reed students
> prepare in their first three years, through classes, for the writing of
> their thesis, which is a requirement for graduation.  For the entire senior
> year they write the thesis with the help and supervision of one or more
> professors.  A successful online university based on such a system might
> require academic supervisors, a virtual classroom in which to discuss the
> course material, and teachers, primarily present to assist the student when
> the student requests help, also serving an evaluative purpose.
>
> I see no reason why a student with a well written and perhaps important
> thesis should have a problem getting a degree; although the practical
> problems of this demand a creative solution.
>
> This is one idea and I'm sure there are many other possible formats, as
> there are many kinds of learners with their own goals and methods.  I think
> wikiversity would be most effective if it was able to operate in conjunction
> with this and other private efforts.
>
> Respectfully,
> John Goes

Thanks very much for this, John. I'm very happy you've "jumped in" to
the discussion after just discovering it today :-)

I think you're right in that Wikiversity is a bit vague and nebulous
in its design, but many of us have been arguing that this is quite
necessary thing for the creation of the project. A wiki-based centre
of learning is a complex thing - unless we opt for a wiki-based
repository of learning materials, which has been one of the more
conservative options put forward. Once we decide to go for a more
ambitious place where people can learn, it becomes more complicated,
and, as you say, becomes flavoured by individual people's perceptions
and expectations of what education is and how it is done. In allowing
for a flexible project structure, I am hoping that individual people
are able to pursue their own visions of what the best form of learning
is for their subject and for themselves.

As Michael says, there is really no point at this stage in going for
an accredited university - it is well beyond our current resources,
and possibly even the remit of the Wikimedia Foundation. However, we
will be setting up a resource that accredited universities (or other
centres of learning) can use in their own courses - and hopefully in
the process gain some valuable contributors from their students or
lecturers.

It occurs to me to ask what you've seen of Wikiversity so far - have
you seen it on Wikibooks or Meta? Have you seen the current proposal?
(It's at http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikiversity/Modified_project_proposal
if you haven't.)

I'm curious about your suggestions though - do you envisage a project
where people write their dissertations on Wikiversity, with feedback
from supervisors, or other students? How would you see it working
exactly?

Anyway, thanks for your input - it's always good to get a fresh perspective.

Cheers,
Cormac (User:Cormaggio)


from_name: Berto

body:
Hi!

> * The insistence of the Commons community that they are a law onto
themselves
> * The Commons serves as a resource to all projects whereby its
> policies directly affect ALL other projects
This is 100% true. Commons cannot be "the law" for the simple reason that
it's not them writing copyright laws. It's countries' lawmakers  in instead.
So no matter how compliant to law we decide to be, it's not the people at
commons who may write them or enforce them.

WmF will never (nobody in his mind would) accept the responsibility for
stored content. We all know what happened to sites that were held
responsible for copvios. But as long as it's the user being responsible as
the author of the upload, he cannot be requested to conform to a policy from
commons, because this is *very* deceptive (let alone the deletionist trend).
I do appreciate the monumental amount of work that people @ commons do to
give us all resources, yet a  person maybe induced to think that he/she is
not violating any law (because commons said it's okay), and later get in
trouble with the "real law", that does not even know about the very
existence of commons' policies. This IS a problem.

I do acknowledge that a much clearer solution for copyright problems must be
found, though. In the meantime, as a simple "user @ commons" I would really
appreciate a better catalogation system, instead of a stricter copy check,
if I was to make a choice myself. Yet, the problem with copvios exists...
and it's potentially risky for the whole community, so it must be addressed,
somehow. But since we all share the consequences, we should all share the
decisions.

It's a heavy step. We all are overloaded as things are, and caring about
commons is another HUGE mark in our to-do lists. If commons went their own
way it's probably even because this suited most of the community, as we
could simply use them, and eventually insult them if and when we did not
like what they did. So asking commons to share their policies also means
asking us all to share our time and work with them...

As per freedom... I honestly feel doubtful.

1) it's 100% true that *any* new step in an online process induces a loss in
traffic.
2) I really believe that much of the current deletions are simply due to the
absence of a contact that may explain the real copy situation.
3) I acknowledge that there are people (maybe only minorities, so what? It's
still traffic we loose) that really do not want (or cannot) register an
email address.
4) I think that people who see their files deleted are possibly going to
develop a vision of commons as "the copyright cops", instead of looking at
them as a resource provider.

Pls take the following as a "what if" case for study, because I am still
personally quite far from understanding what I'd consider the best solution.

What if:
1) we add an explanation in the login process, telling people that if they
have no email stated they have an added 80% of having their files losts in
commons, because of copy laws?
2) we add the same box on the upload pages for all users who do uploads
without having a registered email?

After all, people who do not have an email are already unable to use a
number of email-based features. This would end up in making marketing for
commons (everybody would be aware of their existence since their early steps
in a wiki), while not stopping a man from taking his risk, if he feels to do
so.

Just an early thought. Maybe someone can elaborate better, if the idea is
worth being elaborated.

B?rto


from_name: Jakob Voss

subject: [Wikitech-l] OpenDocument file format

body:
Hi!

It has been asked multiple times at [[commons:Commons talk:File types]]
to enable OpenOffice.org 2.0 formats (=OASIS OpenDocument Format) for
file upload. Any objections? Can you please enable it?

Filename extensions are .odt (text), .ods (spreadsheet), .odp
(presentation), and .odg (graphics), then there is .odc (chart), .odf
(formula), .odb (database), .odi (image), and the according templates
.ott, .ots, .otp, .otg, .otc, otf, .oti and finally .odm (text-master)
(see http://docs.oasis-open.org/office/v1.0/OpenDocument-v1.0-os.pdf
appendix C, page 697f.)

Greetings,
Jakob


from_name: Lorenzarius

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Moldovan wikipedia: hands waiving is not proof

body:
I don't know any "Moldovan", but if the difference between "Moldovan"
and Romanian is merely a difference in the alphabet used, we don't
even need an external script for the conversions: because MediaWiki
already supports such conversions (this function is introduced in
version 1.4). This function is currently being used on the Chinese (to
convert between traditional/simplified Chinese) and Serbian (to
convert between Cyrillic/Latin alphabet) Wikipedia. In fact the
situation on zh: is much more complicated than merely a difference in
alphabet, and I can assure you that the initial discussion on zh:
(e.g. whether to split or not; whether a technical solution is
adequate enough) is no less painful than the current one I see here.
But as a native Chinese speaker, I think our use of a technical
solution to overcome a not-so-technical problem works out pretty well
so far and that we did indeed make a correct decision to not to split.

For more info:
http://zh.wikipedia.org/
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Transwiki:Wikimania05/Paper-ZZ1
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Automatic_conversion_between_simplified_and_traditional_Chinese
http://sr.wikipedia.org/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serbian_Wikipedia
--
Larry Lo
http://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Lorenzarius
Tel: +852 95825791


from_name: xaosflux

body:
going all around, hitting refresh restores most.

xaosflux
----- Original Message -----
From: "Garion1000" <garion1000 at gmail.com>
To: "Wikimedia developers" <wikitech-l at wikimedia.org>
Sent: Thursday, June 29, 2006 8:43 PM
Subject: Re: [Wikitech-l] lot of blank pages and errors tonight

> On 6/30/06, Filip Maljkovic <dungodung at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> Steve Summit wrote:
>> > I've been getting quite a few blank pages and error messages this
>> > evening, which disappear immediately upon reload. (This is
>> > en.wiktionary, if it matters, not wikipedia.)  I wonder if some
>> > number of the squid servers are indisposed?
>> >
>> >
>> If it makes you feel any better, same happened to me at sr: wikipedia.
>>
>> Filip [dungodung]
>> _______________________________________________
>
>
> And to pile on...it happened to me this evening a lot on english
> wikipedia.
> I just thought it was my bad ISP. Guess not.
>
> Garion
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l


subject: [Wikitech-l] Poem extension on Wikisource

body:
Steve Bennett wrote:

> Some more background on this <poem> tag would help. Are there any
> other instances where we have purely semantic tags?

At least we have semantic templates, for instance [[Category:Quotation
templates]]. Community should be strong and intelligent enough to
enforce use of <poem> for poems only. But my experience tells me that
you can only enforce use of semantic markup if you can also recognice
differences in layout. Two different tags or templates that are rendered
the same will *always* be mixed up.

Greetings,
Jakob


body:
Erik Moeller wrote:
> On 6/29/06, GerardM <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> When you use tools in stead of communication I agree, the point is
>> that the Commons community has in the past deliberately, pointedly and
>> repeatedly indicated that they are not interested in informing and
>> discussing proposed change to the Commons policies prior to aking that
>> change
>>
>
> The right place to discuss Commons policy in a multilingual community
> with over 600 wikis are the Commons forums and mailing list. Everyone
> is free to participate there. If policy is not discussed in the right
> places _on_ Commons, then this is a failing of the Commons community.
> But cooperation also means participation.
>
> Imagine that we didn't have separate wikis, and only a single big one.
> Surely the right place to discuss image policy would be the pages
> about image policy? The separation of Commons and other projects is
> essentially one that only exists in our heads, with the exception of
> separate accounts and some minor user interface issues. Commons is
> simply the section of the Wikimedia community that deals with
> multimedia. And of course these people develop policies and practices
> around multimedia. If you disagree with these policies and practices,
> _get involved_.
>
> Virtually all the active members of the Commons community also have a
> "home wiki" where they are active. It is not some separate entity. It
> is a subset of the Wikimedia community.
>
> Erik
Hoi,
With over 13.000 edits to my name on Commons and with a user ID of 25,
you cannot say that I am not involved. I am also (for practical reasons)
an admin at Commons.

I disagree strongly that the Commons forums and mailing list are the
_only_ and the _only_right_  place to discuss policies about digital
media policies. The reason is that Commons is not a project like all the
others. Commons is a project that provides a _service_ to all the other
projects. People have been ambushed in the past by really stupid policy
changes and this has lost the Commons community a massive amount of
support. It is also incorrect to suggest that the commons community is
"the WMF community that deals with Multimedia". There are many more
people that deals with multimedia.

In previous e-mails about Commons it was made abundantly clear that many
in its community consider the people outside their coterie should not be
involved in the Commons policies. It is for this lack of social grace
that I lost my faith in the Commons community. It does its own thing and
I do not trust it to do right any more. This is also because I have seen
enough examples that can serve as proof to support me in this position.

I wish it was true that Commons were not some separate entity.  It is
because of their behaving like a separate entity that many people turned
away from Commons.

Thanks,
    GerardM


from_name: Steve Bennett

subject: [WikiEN-l] Redlinks or redirects?

body:
On 6/29/06, Chris L?er <chris at zandria.net> wrote:
>  From an editor's point of view: leave it as a redlink, so one can
> easily tell it needs work.
>
>  From a reader's point of view: write the stub, a little bit of
> information is always better than none. A little bit of easy-to-find
> information is also much better than having to search through a
> lengthy article on a related topic to which a redirect goes.
>
> Personally, I think we should write for our readers rather than for
> ourselves, and so I would go with the stub.

You've just about stated the solution: we need a colour other than
blue or red. Greylinks anyone?

Steve


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

body:
On Thu, 29 Jun 2006 17:08:10 -0400, Jon Awbrey <jawbrey at att.net>
wrote:

>u r so qwiki, i kant deride yer qwikiness here ...

Indeed.  So, how about meeting us halfway by adopting a style which is
rather more readable and line lengths set to more than a dozen
characters?

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


body:
Roman Nosov wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> I've been directed here by Brion, Robchurch and others on #wikimedia-tech.
> So I propose a new feature for Wikipedia which people on
> #wikimedia-tech mostly refer as blame page or blame map. I would
> prefer to call it something like "Track contributions mode" (because
> of similarity with MS Word track changes mode) or "Hall of fame" but
> whatever. I have live prototype written in PHP&MySQL at
> http://217.147.83.36:9000/ Example of "blame map" can be seen at
> http://217.147.83.36:9000/history::171 two blame maps compared
> http://217.147.83.36:9000/history::171=169

Wow! That's cool and useful. I only ask myself how it scales with large
articles and dozen of editors. de:Benutzer:Jah / meta:user:Jah
implemented a similar function for offline use a year ago,[1] but you
script looks much more developed. With blame maps you can finally find
out who is responsible for which statement and directly ask him to cite
his sources :-) Can you add something to give a link to the normal
diff/edit where a specific paragraph was changed for the last time?

Thank you and greetings,
Jakob

[1] http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Hauptautoren
An example: http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Hauptautoren/Stern


from_name: Bryan Derksen

subject: [WikiEN-l] Redlinks or redirects?

body:
Fred Bauder wrote:
> On Jun 29, 2006, at 10:03 AM, Steve Bennett wrote:
>> On 6/29/06, Bryan Derksen <bryan.derksen at shaw.ca> wrote:
>>> In this case a disambiguation page would be able to hold this
>>> information, but I can see the problem where a non-ambiguous name
>>> comes
>>> in. Hopefully one can come up with enough information to warrant a
>>> section header for the topic, at least.
>>>
>> Hmm, good thoughts.
>>
>> Steve
>
> Why would a section header be needed? Some software barrier?

The section header would be to generate an entry on the TOC. The
situation under discussion is one where we've got a redirect to an
article that's about a much more general subject, but which does discuss
the subject of the redirect within it. As a hypothetical example, a
redirect from [[Boba Fett]] to [[Bounty hunters in Star Wars]] where
[[Bounty hunters in Star Wars]] has a section with a header like
"===Boba Fett===" somewhere in it.

I brought up the possibility of a situation where you might have a
redirect like that but the topic being redirected is so trivial that
there isn't enough material to warrant its own section, which would make
it a lot harder for the reader to figure out why the redirect brought
them there and how they're supposed to find what they're looking for.

-------------- 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/20060629/1da33364/attachment.pgp


subject: [WikiEN-l] Redlinks or redirects?

body:
Steve Bennett wrote:
> On 6/29/06, Chris L?er <chris at zandria.net> wrote:
>> Personally, I think we should write for our readers rather than for
>> ourselves, and so I would go with the stub.
>
> You've just about stated the solution: we need a colour other than
> blue or red. Greylinks anyone?

Not exactly sure what you mean, but Wikipedia already allows you to
configure your preferences so that links to stubs (defined as articles
under a configurable number of bytes) have a different color than the
usual article link.

-------------- 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/20060629/8cb478ae/attachment.pgp


from_name: Erik Moeller

body:
Gerard,

this is getting very off-topic and we should move it somewhere else if
we want to continue the discussion :-). We should probably discuss
this privately at some point because I'm not sure what cases of
Commons users acting arrogantly in the way you describe it you're
referring to. Perhaps we should organize a cross-project meeting
between Commons users and those of other wikis, so that people can
express and share their concerns openly.

Erik


subject: [WikiEN-l] Redlinks or redirects?

body:
Steve Bennett wrote:
> [1] Even more than I can't stand excessive pipe linking ("this
> disaster was even greater than [[Hicksville train disaster of 1943|the
> one]] that occurred twenty years earlier").

Gah, hate those. I also particularly dislike ones that hide external
links; "for more information, click [http://www.gorgonzola.com/ here]."
That combines several pet peeves; directions to "click" somewhere (what
if I've printed the page?), uninformative link names, and external links
embedded in the article's text rather than at the end in a references or
external links section.

-------------- 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/20060629/3857c5f6/attachment.pgp


from_name: Francis Tyers

body:
On Thu, 2006-06-29 at 13:45 -0700, Mark Williamson wrote:
> Another difference is Greater Romania POV.
>
> Articles on ro.wp tend to be written slightly slanted towards a Romanian view.

I could believe this, but can you present some examples? (For
independent verification).

Fran


list: foundation-l

from_name: Peter Jacobi

subject: [Foundation-l] Wikimedia visual identity guidelines

body:
At common's deletion discussion the question surfaced, whether the Wikimedia
visual identity guidelines apply only to the trademark or also to the
Wikipedia logo.
Especially concerning the ''The logo should not be turned around or
distorted'' part.

See:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Template:Deletion_requests#Image:Bouncywikilogo.gif

Regards,
Peter


list: wikimedia-l


from_name: Samuel Klein

subject: [Foundation-l] Update : wmf-cc translation & promotion

body:
A mini-update from a subcommittee.

== The Babylonian #0 ==

Welcome to issue 0 of The Babylonian (temporary name), the WMF promotion &
translation subcommittee update from the month of June.  Thanks to all who
cooperated on the latest translation burst; including press releases, FAQ,
and sitenotices.

i.   Requests
ii.  News
iii. Thank yous
iv.  About this update

=== Requests ===
/*  New WMF privacy policy */
* Original: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Privacy_policy
* Now available in: English, Czech & Slovenian; French is almost done, too
(on meta).
* Requested in: all languages, especially Ar, Es, It, Ja, Pl, Tr, Zh
* Workplace: see subpages of http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Privacy_policy
* Description: The new policy will be official on July 1st, and is linked
from every Wikimedia wiki page.

/* Wikimedia Executive Director FAQ */
* Original: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Executive_Director_FAQ
* Now available in: English (original), Spanish and French
* Requested in: Ja, It, Pl, Zh; also in others

/* Wikimania site translations */
* Main Page:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Translation_requests/Wikimania/Main_Page_2
* Now available in : English, Japanese
* Other pages and messages are also requested for translation.  See
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Translation_requests/Wikimania

You can find other translation requests on
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Translation_requests

/* Fund drive banner campaign */
* Ideas for a text banner campaign for the next fund drive are requested.
This is a new idea that might work with or without a banner server (more
easily with; Amgine has been pushing for this)
* See
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fundraising_ideas#Banner_campaign

=== News ===

  * You can now send translation related email to the Promotion
& Translation subcommittee; our address is translator (at) wikimedia (dot)
org.  IRC contact is also available on
irc://freenode.net/#wikimedia-translation
  * There are efforts to produce web-banners for Wikimedia projects in many
langugaes, that websites can subscribe to to support the projects; text
notices about wikiprojects and events, small images, &c.  You can suggest
or link to suitable banner images or text on meta.
  *: New ideas for ads of all sorts are welcome; there are occasionally
groups who wish to provide free advertising space for Wiki[pm]edia, and it
would be nice if they did not always have to make their own ads, but could
also choose among existing ones (including ads in their audience's
language).  See http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Ads
  * There is increasing needs for help in this area, we as always invite
other Wikimedians to participate; english competence is preferable, but
not required. If you are interested in promotion or translation
activities, you may want to give a look to our pages on meta -- our parent
communications committee and its subcommittees:
  *: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Communications_committee
  *: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Communications_subcommittees
  * Wiki[m|p]edia needs good poster designs; the latest comes via Catherine
Munro : http://www.cafepress.com/brightplaces.62248324
Ideas for variations on the theme, and translations of it (perhaps into a
more familiar poetic form in each language) as well as quite different
types of posters, are welcome.
  *: See also the [[Poster design group]], where you can leave comments.

=== Thank yous ===
In June, we had a burst of translation requests: a press release on the
appointment of WMF General Council and interim Executive Director, the FAQ
about the latter's office, two Wikimania updates, and the latest
Board-approved version of the Wikimedia privacy policy.

There are no proper words to describe your contributions and thank
everyone: there are too many people and too many works to list in short.
For example, the sitenotice translation for Wikimania: from its release in
one language, within 24 hours, there were 21 language versions of the
sitenotice, and in the end close to 30.  The French team are quick
starters, and have begun to prepare their version for the latest notices
within a day; good team work was shown too, among the Spanish translators
with their careful translation processing with several reviews and
corrections; localisation efforts on the Wikimedia Foundation site by
Vipuser from the Chinese Wikipedia...

Your vigorous involvement continues to empower other contributors looking
for this information!

=== On these updates ===
* This is a newsletter of the Promotion & Translation subcommittee.  Its
content is released into the public domain.  It is temporarily called The
Babylonian; after the mutlilingual nature of sharing and promoting the
projects.  Other name ideas are welcome!
* Its editors are subcommittee members, contributing as individual
volunteers.  Submissions or notes about related initiatives are welcome on
the talk page:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Communications_subcommittees/PT
* Editors of this issue : Aphaia, Sj


from_name: Jon Awbrey

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

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

Daniel R. Tobias wrote:
>
> On 29 Jun 2006 at 14:14, Jon Awbrey <jawbrey at att.net> wrote:
>
> > Steve Bennett wrote:
> > >
> > > On 6/29/06, Jon Awbrey <jawbrey at att.net> wrote:
> > > >
> > > > Pending a properly controlled study of WikiPediatric epidemiology (Proposal Pending),
> > > > it is this observer's estimation that the most prevalent IOP is the one that inverts
> > > > the priorities of the superordinate policies cited above and the unofficial dictates
> > > > of what is here nomenclated as "De Facto Consensus" (DFC).  DFC must not be confused
> > > > with Genuine Consensus -- defined as the absence of dissent -- DFC as it's currently
> > > > observed in WP means that any three users, or evatars, coming to agreement in a half
> > > > hour period, can impose their absolute dictatorship over the direction of an article.
> > >
> > > You seem to be constantly inventing new terms. Why?
> >
> > You seem to be constantly looking for things to talk about except what I'm saying.  Why?
>
> Maybe because people are having trouble figuring out just what you're
> saying?  Perhaps your points would be more understandable if you
> spent more time giving specific examples of things that have happened
> on Wikipedia that are not to your liking, rather than talking in
> vague abstractions using lots of odd terminology?
>
> == Dan ==

Yes, that is a problem.  I'm trying to summarize the types of things that
I have seen happen repeatedly over the past six months, and I'm pretty much
discounting the first month's experience when I was still learning the ropes.

I wouldn't be bothering about it if it were just a few isolated incidents, and
when I have detailed a few of these, the response is always the "few bad apples"
defense.

But these are persistent, recurrent, and systematic patterns of events that
I've observed.  The first dozen times you see things going haywire, and by
that I mean people behaving contrary to the main Policies of Wikipedia,
you think all you have to do is read them the policies and they will
straighten up and fly right.  But that is not what happens, and in
my experience it only gets worse when you try to use WQAs, RFCs,
and so on, and that is because the people who intervene do not
bother to check the histories and do not care about the main
policies either, but simply wing it on the basis of their
own POVs and biases.

In trying to understand a systematic problem, you have to try and come up
with systematic hypotheses as to why the same damn things keep happening.

I pointed to one sort of thing that I see happening over and over,
and for ease of reference I gave it the name "priority inversion".
A priority inversion is when people spend more time worrying over
the dust under the couch than they do the elephant in the room.

One example of this is when 2 or 3 editors declare a consensus
about an issue and use that to trump the major Policies of WP,
namely NOR, NPOV, VERIFY, or the Guidelines that are listed
under the Five Pillars.

There are two things that are wrong with this kind of tactic:
(1) it is contrary to both the dictionary definition and the
WP definition of consensus, which means absence of dissent,
and (2) it violates the main [[WP:Policy]] pages that say
that NOR, NPOV, and VERIFY are non-negotiable and cannot
be trumped by other policies or by editors' consensus,
even a geunine univesal consensus of local editors.

For example, under the proper ordering of priorities
a statement that is relevant and sourced should not
be deleted in favor of an opinion that is unsourced
just because the source is not the favorite writer
of 2 or 3 editors or because the sourced statement
contradicts the personal POVs of 2 or 3 editors.
But this is actually the routine way that things
are done in WP.

Now, if you've never experienced a situation where the editors working on
a given article engaged in this kind of conduct, then you have been very
lucky, and you will not know what I mean.  But I can only report my own
observations that it happens quite a lot.  What it means is that the
quality of articles goes down in proportion to the non-compliance
with the primary WP policies.

Jon Awbrey

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: Jacky PB

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Where are the decision makers?

body:
I'm only saying that it is not normal that we are left here to quarrel.
Even in a free country, a court of law is not an anarchic exchange of oppinions.
There is a judge that:
1. lets the 2 parties expose their POV
2. asks questions
3. decides

We have been left at stage 1, which is not normal, but lets me express my personal oppinion (argumented) that you only spread FUD.

Dpotop

Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com> wrote: So it's not OK for me to accuse you of FUD, but it's OK for you to accuse me?

I have presented plenty of proof. I am done arguing with you here about this.

The decision makers have left, as I said. They are no longer listening.

Mark

On 29/06/06, Jacky PB  wrote:
>
>
> Hello everybody,
>
> It's been now some time we are providing actual proof
> in support of a petition to close the Moldovan
> wikipedia.
>
> However, it is obvious that something is wrong,
> because every single message of ours is simply buried
> under sequences of messages from Mark Williamson.
>
> Moreover:
> - Our messages are sequences of facts that can be
>   verified by anybody. Proof, in the scientific sense.
> - The edits of Mark have the sole goal of
>   discreditating the opposed camp. No proof, just
>   "their oppinion is biased, because they
>   have a hidden agenda". The very definition of FUD.
>
> Under these conditions, nobody says nothing! We are
> left here to exchange messages in an uncontrolled
> fashion, while the matter is really important.
>
> Where are the decision makers? Isn't there nobody
>
> Yours,
> [[:en:Dpotop]], [[:ro:Dpotop]]
>
>
>
> __________________________________________________
> Do You Yahoo!?
> Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
> http://mail.yahoo.com
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

--
Refije dirije lanm??? yo paske nou posede pw???p bato.
_______________________________________________
Wikipedia-l mailing list
Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l

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


from_name: brion at pobox.com

subject: [Wikitech-l] MediaWiki automated test run failure 2006-06-30

body:
An automated run of parserTests.php showed the following failures:

Running test Table security: embedded pipes (http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2006-April/034637.html)... FAILED!
Running test Link containing double-single-quotes '' (bug 4598)... FAILED!
Running test message transform: <noinclude> in transcluded template (bug 4926)... FAILED!
Running test message transform: <onlyinclude> in transcluded template (bug 4926)... FAILED!
Running test BUG 1887, part 2: A <math> with a thumbnail- math enabled... FAILED!
Running test Language converter: output gets cut off unexpectedly (bug 5757)... FAILED!
Running test HTML bullet list, unclosed tags (bug 5497)... FAILED!
Running test HTML ordered list, unclosed tags (bug 5497)... FAILED!
Running test HTML nested bullet list, open tags (bug 5497)... FAILED!
Running test HTML nested ordered list, open tags (bug 5497)... FAILED!
Running test Parsing optional HTML elements (Bug 6171)... FAILED!
Running test Inline HTML vs wiki block nesting... FAILED!
Running test Mixing markup for italics and bold... FAILED!

Passed 394 of 407 tests (96.81%) FAILED!


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

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

Rosa, Michael wrote:
>
> On 29 Jun 2006 at 14:14, Jon Awbrey <jawbrey at att.net> wrote:
>
> > For example, under the proper ordering of priorities a
> > statement that is relevant and sourced should not be deleted
> > in favor of an opinion that is unsourced just because the
> > source is not the favorite writer of 2 or 3 editors or because
> > the sourced statement contradicts the personal POVs of 2 or 3 editors.
> > But this is actually the routine way that things are done in WP.
>
> Cite please - preferable at least a dozen or so of examples, they should
> be easy to find if this is really the "routine way" of doing things on
> WP.  This is a persistent, recurrent and systematic pattern in your
> emails that I have observed, you describe something that you claim is
> taking place without giving any specific and real-life examples.
>
> Cheers,
> Michal

It's late here, so here is one recent example of what I mean.

Article:  Truth.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truth

Section:  Consensus theory.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truth#Consensus_theory

Edit: 01:30, 29 June 2006 FeloniousMonk (Talk | contribs) (rv to the last reasonable version)
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Truth&diff=61119905&oldid=61075749

This section had no sources at all for as long as it existed, so I went looking for some.
The ''Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy'' has no entry for "consensus theory of truth".
The ''Dictionary of Philosophy'' ed. by Runes has an entry under "consensus gentium"
that says it is Latin for "agreement of people", that it is "a criterion of truth"
to wit, "that which is universal among men carries the weight of truth".  When
I wikied "consensus gentium", it turned out it was a synonym for "argumentum
ad populum", and listed as a fallacy.  Inconvenient for a criterion of truth,
maybe, but I play 'em where they lie.  I added the reference to the article,
added corrections and details to several other references, and I also placed
{{fact}} tags on two unsourced claims of attribution.  All of these edits
and maintainance tags were reverted by Feloniuous Monk with no excuse but
"rv to last reasonable version".

Jon Awbrey

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