subject: [WikiEN-l] NPOV trainwreck

body:
I answered your question in good faith before, but now I will ignore
it as poisonous. I appreciate Guettarda's good faith comment, btw.

Sam Spade

On 12/5/05, JAY JG <jayjg at hotmail.com> wrote:
> Please don't try to re-direct the questions, Jack, and please don't try to
> make them about me.  You made insinuations about the Arbitration Committee,
> please clarify.  I'll repeat the questions:
>
> 1. Do you think that the Commitee is trying to "purge right wingers"?
> 2. Do you imagine that there are no "right wingers" on the committee itself?
> 3. Why would you insinuate that Cberlet is any more the "friend and
> colleague" of members of the Arbitration Committee than are any of the other
> parties to the case?
>
> Jay.
>
> >From: Sam Spade <samspade.thomasjefferson at googlemail.com>
> >
> >Are you saying your my friend or colleague? Are you a member of the
> >USAF? Just what exactly do we have in common, outside of our long
> >history of bitter conflict?
> >
> >Sam Spade
> >
> >On 12/5/05, JAY JG <jayjg at hotmail.com> wrote:
> > > >From: Sam Spade <samspade.thomasjefferson at googlemail.com>
> > > >
> > > >Please, ArbCom, review the evidence and rethink your
> > > >results. This purging of the "right wingers" is not what the ArbCom is
> > > >for.
> > >
> > > Do you think that the Commitee is trying to "purge right wingers"?  Do
> >you
> > > imagine that there are no "right wingers" on the committee itself?
> > >
> > > >I understand Cberlet is your friend and colleague, but for the
> > > >sake of integrity, please hold us to the same standard.
> > >
> > > Yes, this is exactly the kind of innuendo which has tainted this (and
> > > related) cases - the implication being that the Committee is making
> > > decisions based on alleged friendships.  Why would you insinuate that
> > > Cberlet is any more the "friend and colleague" of members of the
> >Arbitration
> > > Committee than any of the other parties to the case?
> > >
> > > Jay.
> > >
> > >
> > > _______________________________________________
> > > WikiEN-l mailing list
> > > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> > > To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> > > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
> > >
> >_______________________________________________
> >WikiEN-l mailing list
> >WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
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>
>
> _______________________________________________
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>


list: wikien-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Sam Spade

subject: [WikiEN-l] NPOV trainwreck

body:
Sam, I think a lot of the problem is that you think the ArbCom is
handling the CONTENT DISPUTE between Cberlet and other editors.

The arbcom, as presently structured, does not handle content disputes.
 They only handle behavior and policy.

Thus your dissatisfaction with the way the arbcom is handling the
content dispute.

-Matt

I see what your saying, but thats not what I'm about. I'm not
expecting the ArbCom to decide on where [[far right]] should redirect
to. I am requesting a balanced review of the evidence, early and
often. I am demanding community outrage (which is growing, btw) at the
biases, appointees, and lack of recusals. And I am speaking to the
arbiters as people about the frank facts of the matter, and what I
think needs to be done, for the sake of the encyclopedia.

Sam Spade


from_name: Fred Bauder

subject: [WikiEN-l] Two Comments on the Siegenthaler Situation

body:
I watched the CNN interview that Siegenthaler and Jimbo appeared on.
There was considerable emphasis on bad material still being in
history despite it being removed from the article itself. I don't
think it is unreasonable to remove clearly false material from
history when specifically asked.

In this particular case after Jimbo assuring Siegenthaler that the
history would be cleansed, it would not do to not do so. Sometimes
you must simply accept the consequences of whatever your spokesman said.

In the general case, most articles have something plainly wrong in
them, but that is simply the nature of a wiki.

Fred

On Dec 5, 2005, at 6:57 PM, Snowspinner wrote:

> 1: If we are going to begin protecting pages because of news
> coverage (Which is not unreasonable at all), we should have a
> protected template that makes that clear. After all, the first page
> people hit is also a place where they are going to want to try to
> edit - it's important to take those people and invite them to look
> at other pages. I've created [[Template:P-protected]] for this.
>
> 2: I understand the need to remove the Siegenthaler libel from the
> page history. On the other hand, I think A) It is a matter of
> important historical record at this point, and B) It sets an
> unseemly precedent. Can we move the deleted history out of that
> article and into an archive page, perhaps with a permanant front
> page that notes what it is, and that it is a collection of vandalism?
>
> -Phil Sandifer
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Tom Cadden

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: The difficulty of retaining volunteer writers

body:
Having been the victim of stalking myself I feel the utmost sympathy for Ed and SlimVirgin. Wikipedia needs to take seriously the fact that there are Wikistalkers out there who are driving users away. Two users I have immense respect for have left in the last week because of personal experiences. This is a growing problem which Wikipedia needs to face up to.

 Thom

Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote: slimvirgin at gmail.com wrote:
> On 12/2/05, Carbonite  wrote:
>
>>On 12/2/05, Poor, Edmund W  wrote:
>>
>>>By defending SlimVirgin against what FuelWagon HIMSELF conceded
>>>was an "accusation" (his words), I find myself hauled before the
>>>arbitration committee.
>>
>>For what its worth, FuelWagon has now turned Jayjg's ArbCom candidate
>>question page into his own personal battleground. FuelWagon's
>>"questions" span five sub-sections, have dozens of diffs and are filled with
>>endless rhetorical statements. However, this doesn't even begin to compare
>>with the 16 section response to his RfC a while back: (
>>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_comment/FuelWagon_2).
>>
>>Ed's right, the system's not working here.
>>
>
> I want to describe some of what FuelWagon has been doing so that
> people can see how hard it is to deal with this within the existing
> dispute-resolution structure.
>
> FuelWagon has been harassing Ed and myself, and a couple of others to
> a lesser extent, since July. It started because I blocked him for 3RR
> and then because I made a copy edit he didn't like of an article he
> had edited a lot. He responded with a stream of invective and
> talk-page disruptive, which Ed blocked him for, and that made Ed his
> victim too.
>
> I hate to think how many personal comments he has posted about Ed and
> me since then, but it amounts to thousands of words. He filed an RfC
> against me, which was deleted because he failed to show prior efforts
> at dispute resolution. He promptly copied and pasted it into his user
> subspace, so that he can still link to his various claims. He also
> created an "attack page" on me, where he makes a note of anything I do
> that he feels he can use against me. Carbonite opened an RfC against
> him, but he hijacked it and turned it into another attack page. He
> tried to intervene in the arbcom case against Ed, writing to Jimbo to
> have it re-opened when it had closed, then tried to have some kind of
> black mark put on Ed's mediation record.
>
> It has been very upsetting to be on the receiving end of it. I tried
> ignoring him, responding with reason, responding firmly. I stayed away
> from pages he edits, but he stalked me to pages I edit and began to
> revert me, so that I had to either let him have his own way, or get
> into a revert war with him and look as bad as he is.
>
> It changed the whole way I interact with people on Wikipedia. I found
> myself becoming sharper with people than I had previously been,
> because I was on edge all the time. I felt embarassed at having
> someone pursue me with accusations, because most people looking at it
> will think there's no smoke without fire. And yet when I tried to
> correct some of what he was saying, I ended up looking as silly as
> him, so mostly I had to let him get away with it.
>
> Several editors and admins have intervened and tried to persuade him
> to stop, including Ed Poor, Ann Heneghan, El C, Carbonite, Jayjg,
> Bishonen, Willmcw, Marskell, Aaron Brenneman, Mel Etitis, and
> Viriditas.
>
> FuelWagon's response was that he would leave me alone if I did 12
> things that he listed on his talk page
> http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:FuelWagon&oldid=25272763#ideal
> including that I make, in the "first-person narative [sic] form" an
> unqualified and unconditional apology in relation to the copy edit he
> didn't like, and he listed the various talk pages that the apology had
> to be posted on. He had a similar list of apologies that Ed had to
> make before he'd be satisfied.
>
> He also teamed up with other known trolls like Zephram Stark, Marsden,
> and Vizcarra, so that a gang of people began to pursue his various
> victims.
>
> I've resisted taking this to the arbcom because he will turn it into a
> circus, and also because I couldn't face going through all the diffs
> and having the whole thing repeated yet again. I've been on the verge
> a couple of times of writing to Jimbo for help, but didn't because
> that puts him on the spot. I've also been on the verge of leaving, but
> I don't want to let someone like that drive me away.
>
> Now, because Ed Poor recently blocked FuelWagon for three hours over a
> personal attack on me, FuelWagon has seized his chance and has taken
> Ed to the arbcom, where he will hold court for several weeks, perhaps
> several months, and all the allegations will have to be responded to.
> The only way I can defend Ed now is to present the case that I've not
> been able to face putting together. It's probably going to take me a
> week or more to put all the diffs together in a way that gets the full
> force of his behavior across without being unreadable for the
> arbitrators.
>
> There has to be a better way to deal with users like this. For
> example, we could set up a small committee of experienced editors, a
> subcommittee of the arbcom and subject to the arbcom's jurisdiction,
> whose job it is to identify when a user is trolling, stalking, or
> harassing, and we give that committee the power to deal with it there
> and then, using blocks of increasing length for each instance of it. I
> know this has drawbacks (accusations of cabalism), but I feel the
> benefits would greatly outweigh them.
>
> Sarah

Good day Sarah

When I read your report, I have the feeling to read what I have been
seeing happening hundred of times. Which is not good news :-( But I fear
it is part of the game.

What really strikes me in what you explain is this :

 > It changed the whole way I interact with people on Wikipedia. I found
 > myself becoming sharper with people than I had previously been,
 > because I was on edge all the time. I felt embarassed at having
 > someone pursue me with accusations, because most people looking at it
 > will think there's no smoke without fire. And yet when I tried to
 > correct some of what he was saying, I ended up looking as silly as
 > him, so mostly I had to let him get away with it.

And I think this is actually the worse point. The "victim" thinking he
is alone (or nearly alone) in the boat, knowing that most people
consider there is no smoke without fire, and as a result, the victim
behaving in a less relaxed fashion... which will further fuel comments
from those happy to tickle conflicts. A rolling ball...

I feel there is a general direction for failing to support the "victim"
during the conflict, either by lack of time, or by lassitude (because we
have seen that happening so many times) or by fear, to support her only
at the last point (when she is threatening to leave).

Sadly, most editors actually support the person inside themselves, but
do not say so either because they believe the "victim" is strong enough,
or because they fear becoming targets themselves.

Maybe the problem is not so much the trouble makers; maybe the problem
is that editors fail to show support to victims at the *right* time.

_______________________________________________
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list: foundation-l

from_name: Jimmy Wales

subject: [Foundation-l] Anons cannot create pages on english wikipedia?

body:
Kim Bruning wrote:
> Correlation!=Causation.
>
> Because this concentrates on a particular symptom of vandalism
> -as opposed to the actual cause- I'm expecting new pages patrol to
> become more difficult as the easy telltales are now hidden.

Well at least so far, it seems that there have been two effects:

1. fewer crappy pages created
2. the ones that are create are as easy to identify as ever, since some
of the anons are converting into 'anonymous redshirts' (i.e. users with
no userpage).

It will be interesting to try and gather some statistics about all this,
so we can proceed with actual data.


list: wikimedia-l


body:
Jan Kulveit wrote:
> This is interesting - is there some real statistic on how watched
> articles are? I'm affraid there may be tens of thousand virtually
> unwatched articles no active wikipedians care about.

I think it would be excellent for us to study this.  What I have long
dreamed of is a regularly published list of "the most read / least
watched articles".  Take the number of pageviews divided by the number
of watchers (plus one to prevent division by zero I guess).  Or some
more sophisticated variant of that to take into account minimum
thresholds of concern perhaps.

I think there are many cool tools yet to be developed, indeed yet to be
dreamed of.

--Jimbo


body:
David Gerard wrote:
>>Well at least so far, it seems that there have been two effects:
>>1. fewer crappy pages created
>
> How are we doing for anon edits in general? Has that number changed?

I have no idea.  I hope someone with access to the database and more
clueful than me will gather all kinds of interesting stats for us.

>>2. the ones that are create are as easy to identify as ever, since some
>>of the anons are converting into 'anonymous redshirts' (i.e. users with
>>no userpage).
>
> Oh, I do like that phrase!

And it immediately suggests a social rule of sorts: anonymous redshirts
are the ones you can use your phaser on without affecting the plot of
the show. :-)

--Jimbo


from_name: Fl Celloguy

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Experiment on new pages

body:
Does anyone have any idea how long this experiment will last? Just curious.
Also, would there be a way to estimate how effective this experiment is?
I.e. comparison of number of deleted new pages, etc. There should be a way
to measure the effectiveness of this experiment.

Thanks!

Flcelloguy
>From Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia.

_________________________________________________________________
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from_name: Martin Richards

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Experiment on new pages

body:
Should we have a page where anons can request a page be started? Otherwise
it might lead to some frustration.

Martin (User:Bluemoose)

----- Original Message -----
From: "Brion Vibber" <brion at pobox.com>
To: <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
Sent: Monday, December 05, 2005 7:13 PM
Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Experiment on new pages

> Jimmy Wales wrote:
>> SPUI wrote:
>>> Jimmy Wales wrote:
>>>
>>>> Today, as an experiment, we will be turning off new pages creation for
>>>> anonymous users in the English Wikipedia.
>>>
>>> Does this apply to all pages, or just articles? It seems that IPs should
>>> still be able to create talk pages, both for articles and for users.
>>
>> We'll have to ask Brion, but what you say sounds perfectly reasonable to
>> me.
>
> Talk pages are separately controlled, and anons can indeed still create
> them.
>
> I've gone ahead and turned on the restriction mode, per Jimmy's order.
> Notes:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_%28technical%29#Anon_page_creation_restriction
>
> -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l


from_name: Steve Block

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Experiment on new pages

body:
Martin Richards wrote:
> Should we have a page where anons can request a page be started?
> Otherwise it might lead to some frustration.

We do, [[Wikipedia:Requested articles]].  I would expect that a link
will be included in whatever text shows up when an anon tries to create
a page.

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from_name: David Gerard

subject: [WikiEN-l] A bold fix needed to the "omg backlog" problem

body:
Ray Saintonge wrote:
> Nathaniel Sheetz wrote:

>> On his userpage, George argues this better than me, but basically the
>> argument is that sometimes, nothing is better than something.  I'm
>> sure that
>> many of the articles in that backlog actually do more damage than good to
>> the project, because someone who finds them is going to judge the
>> quality of
>> wikipedia as a whole based on those articles.  Not finding anything,
>> on the
>> other hand, will probably not result in as great a negative reaction.

> This is pure speculation

Indeed. Evidence of this is sorely lacking.

>> That said, I'm not sure what should be done about it.  Deletion is
>> tempting,
>> but shouldn't be applied haphazardly.  I wouldn't be opposed to the
>> creation
>> of an AfD criterion (not CSD) that allowed for the deletion of truly
>> unorganized and difficult to use text.

> The implication is that sufficient information is already there, but
> it's badly written.  It sounds like the article is a candidate for
> rewriting and reorganization rather than deleting.

Yep. Using deletion as an editorial tool is abuse of the deletion
system. Try writing something instead. Yes, I know it resembles "effort".

- d.


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Adrenalin

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Why MO.wikipedia. - Moldovan,
	are written in cyrillic ?

body:
On 12/4/05, Arbeo M <arbeo_m at yahoo.de> wrote:
>  In a nutshell, Wikipedia currently delivers this message to users from Moldova:
>  "If you're using the Latin script (like your national constitution says and like the majority of your compatriots do) we'll call your language Romanian but in case you should use Cyrillic, then we'll consider your language Moldovan".

So, if you change the script, it become another language ?
Very strange point to me..

So, when Romanian language was written using Cyrillic (before
*1800s*), in your theory that language was called Moldovan ?

I would agree what Moldovan language is a artificial one, and was a
mistake of our parliamentary, but I'll never agree what it should be
written using Cyrillic, just because i was born in '88 and i never
wrote my language using Cyrillic script, and i never see people in my
country to wrote the Romanian language (what by mistake is called by
some ppl Moldovan) using Cyrillic script.

I'll suggest to remove the mo. subdomain at all, moving it to
mo-cyr.wikipedia.org would look like you'll save that actually-bad
joke with the hosting at the biggest free encyclopedia.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Experiment on new pages

body:
Thats not what I mean. If an anon wants to make a article, putting it on
that page won't be much help, as that is where people request that someone
else makes an article, we need a page where anons can say "I want to write
an article about foobar but I need someone to start it off so I can actually
make it".

----- Original Message -----
From: "Kelly Martin" <kelly.lynn.martin at gmail.com>
To: "English Wikipedia" <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
Sent: Monday, December 05, 2005 8:11 PM
Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Re: Experiment on new pages

> On 12/5/05, Steve Block <steve.block at myrealbox.com> wrote:
>> Martin Richards wrote:
>> > Should we have a page where anons can request a page be started?
>> > Otherwise it might lead to some frustration.
>>
>> We do, [[Wikipedia:Requested articles]].  I would expect that a link
>> will be included in whatever text shows up when an anon tries to create
>> a page.
>
> I've added links to [[Special:Userlogin]] and [[Wikipedia:Requested
> articles]] to [[Mediawiki:Nocreatetext]].
>
> Kelly
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Experiment on new pages

body:
Martin Richards wrote:
> Thats not what I mean. If an anon wants to make a article, putting it on
> that page won't be much help, as that is where people request that
> someone else makes an article, we need a page where anons can say "I
> want to write an article about foobar but I need someone to start it off
> so I can actually make it".

Can't they just create an account and then create the article, or am I
missing something?

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from_name: J.F. de Wolff

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: The Wiki meritocracy

body:
Sam Spade wrote:
>Are you saying that now that I have a F.A. I have a chance to become an admin?
>
>Sam Spade

I was simply echoing sentiments about what constitutes admin
material. I was not suggesting that this is valid, nor was I
suggesting that everyone who has created a WP:FA should automatically
become an admin.

Jfdwolff

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from_name: geni

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Experiment on new pages

body:
On 12/5/05, Anthere <Anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Martin Richards wrote:
> > Thats not what I mean. If an anon wants to make a article, putting it on
> > that page won't be much help, as that is where people request that
> > someone else makes an article, we need a page where anons can say "I
> > want to write an article about foobar but I need someone to start it off
> > so I can actually make it".
>
> You are correct.
> I suggest we hire someone to start pages requested by anons.
>
> Anthere

This is why I like the limiting orphans option because:

A) it effects everyone
B)if you really want to create an article you can create a link to it.

--
geni


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: A bold fix needed to the "omg backlog" problem

body:
On 12/5/05, Anthony DiPierro <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
> It'd probably be useful to put something in the software to actually
> force people to make the link, first.  Of course, then people will
> just put it in the sandbox or on their user page or something.  Maybe
> a force to put a link *from article space* when creating a page in
> article space.  I can't think of any example where you wouldn't want
> to have such a link.  This would slightly increase the difficulty of
> creating a new page, but that could be seen as a feature rather than a
> bug.
>
> Anthony

There are bound to be legit reasons for doing so that I have failed to think of.

--
geni


from_name: Wikipedia Romania (Ronline)

body:
> You probably don't know the history of the language well. In fact both
> Romanian and Moldovans has been Orthodox Christians and used Cyrillic
> script for several ages. The modern Latin script is relatively a news
> in both lands. So one can's speak in such a self-confindent way about
> Moldovan Cyrillics as "decreed in the unfree days". By the way, do you
> know much about the unfree days? They were not totally that "unfree".
> :) Be more neutral. ;)

For some reason, Slavic people seem to think that "Romania is really just a
Slavic language that has only recently tried to affirm itself as
Latin/Romance". Not only you, but others as well. Romanian, while influenced
by Slavic languages to a degree, is still overwhelmingly Romance and the
Latin alphabet is the best alphabet to represent it. Additionally, it
switched from Cyrillic *in the 1800s*. That's a long time ago! So modern
Latin script in Romania is not recent, especially relative to Moldova.
Additionally, Latin script is the *only* script used to write Romanian in
Romania. It's just like French is always written in Latin script, Romanian
is also always written in Latin script. Therefore, it's not OK to justify
the writing of Moldovan in Cyrillic just because Romanian was once written
in Cyrillic. It's true, Romanian national revival only came about in the
second half of the 19th century, and until then Romanians mostly used
Cyrillic, albeit a different form. But today, the Latin alphabet is the only
alphabet used in Romania.

Another point is the use of Cyrillic in Moldova. From what I gather - from
the media, from Moldovans - Moldova today is overwhelmingly Latin-script.
Aside from the disputed territory of Transnistria, very few people use
Cyrillic often.

>  - This gives the Moldovan internet user a bad impression of Wikipedia and
> irritates him or her because they can think that Wikipedia ignores what the
> independent nation of Moldova decides and rather goes by the standard from
> the Soviet era.
>
> Maybe it would be a good choice just to move the whole thing to
> __mo-cyr.wikipedia.org__, leaving at [[:mo:]] the two links -- to the
> Romanian and to the old-fashioned Cyrillic-written Moldovan.
>
> Sl.

Yes, that's a good idea.


from_name: Anthere

body:
slimvirgin at gmail.com wrote:
> On 12/5/05, Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>>I feel there is a general direction for failing to support the "victim"
>>during the conflict, either by lack of time, or by lassitude (because we
>>have seen that happening so many times) or by fear, to support her only
>>at the last point (when she is threatening to leave).
>>
>>Sadly, most editors actually support the person inside themselves, but
>>do not say so either because they believe the "victim" is strong enough,
>>or because they fear becoming targets themselves.
>
>
> Hello Anthere, I agree with you very much, and I'd like to try to come
> up with a solution. Following on from Steve Rubenstein's idea
> yesterday, I'm thinking it might be good to have a page where people
> can go to report harassment, and where editors can sign up if they're
> willing to be part of a fast-response team. Like bullying of any kind,
> the best thing is to nip it in the bud before the behavior becomes
> entrenched and before, as you say, the victim starts responding in a
> way that might make things worse.
>
> There are two difficulties. First, we need to come up with a working
> definition of "harassment". Often, editors who are subject to admin
> action claim they're being harassed, and editors whose contributions
> are being closely watched because of editing problems often feel the
> same. There's a page about it here
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Harassment  that describes some
> of the behavior, but I'd like to write something about the effect it
> can have on the victim.
>
> Secondly, I want to avoid pages that are made available to support
> victims turning into platforms for more attacks by the perpetrators,
> who may turn up to defend themselves in a way that in fact causes more
> grief. I know that the person who was following me around turned every
> query and every objection to his behavior into another opportunity to
> write a several-thousand-word essay repeating all his allegations. So
> the team of editors who sign up to help victims would have to be able
> to tell the difference between a genuine defense and an excuse for
> further attack.
>
> For both these reasons, it may take some time to get it right, but
> I'll let you know if I make progress, and thank you for your input,
> Anthere.
>
> Sarah

Thanks, I hope it gets better.
One suggestion. Unless I am wrong, the only page on which some one can
rather easily remove comments from another without backfiring (being
called a censor for example)... is one of his subpages, in particular
talk page. On a community page, it is far too easy for a harasser to get
support and get a voice, and turn the support page in yet another
harassing page. On one of your subpage, you may protect yourself better
and remove the crap with far less troubles.

Ant


from_name: Sam Korn

body:
On 12/5/05, Walter van Kalken <walter at vankalken.net> wrote:
> What is this:
>
> "This site has restricted the ability to create new pages. If you wish
> to create a new page, you must first create an account or log in
> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Userlogin>.
>
> If you'd rather not create an account or log in, consider listing a
> request for someone else to create the page here
> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requested_articles>."
>
> Since when is this wikimedia policy to restrict this?

Since a few hours ago. It is more of a test than anything else.  Brion
implemented it today on Jimbo's request a few hours ago, so that some
kind of results can be obtained.  There is certainly not consensus
support for it in the community, though a large faction certainly do
agree.  I think this is "wait and see" time.

--
Sam


from_name: Snowspinner

body:
1: If we are going to begin protecting pages because of news coverage
(Which is not unreasonable at all), we should have a protected
template that makes that clear. After all, the first page people hit
is also a place where they are going to want to try to edit - it's
important to take those people and invite them to look at other
pages. I've created [[Template:P-protected]] for this.

2: I understand the need to remove the Siegenthaler libel from the
page history. On the other hand, I think A) It is a matter of
important historical record at this point, and B) It sets an unseemly
precedent. Can we move the deleted history out of that article and
into an archive page, perhaps with a permanant front page that notes
what it is, and that it is a collection of vandalism?

-Phil Sandifer


from_name: Brian

subject: [Foundation-l] Jimbo's fantasy...

body:
Jimbo recently confessed his fantasy on #wikimedia:  to set aside January
15th as Wikipedia Day. This would at least involve turning off all new
account creation and anonymous editing, and just spending the day "cleaning
up" in all senses of the phrase. Others suggested setting aside an entire
month for this, or doing it one day out of every month.

So, can we make some form of this fantasy come true?

brian0918


subject: [Foundation-l] Jimbo's fantasy...


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Experiment on new pages

body:
Martin Richards wrote:
> Thats not what I mean. If an anon wants to make a article, putting it on
> that page won't be much help, as that is where people request that
> someone else makes an article, we need a page where anons can say "I
> want to write an article about foobar but I need someone to start it off
> so I can actually make it".

You are correct.
I suggest we hire someone to start pages requested by anons.

Anthere

> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Kelly Martin"
> <kelly.lynn.martin at gmail.com>
> To: "English Wikipedia" <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Sent: Monday, December 05, 2005 8:11 PM
> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Re: Experiment on new pages
>
>
>> On 12/5/05, Steve Block
>> <steve.block at myrealbox.com> wrote:
>>
>>> Martin Richards wrote:
>>> > Should we have a page where anons can request a page be started?
>>> > Otherwise it might lead to some frustration.
>>>
>>> We do, [[Wikipedia:Requested articles]].  I would expect that a link
>>> will be included in whatever text shows up when an anon tries to create
>>> a page.
>>
>>
>> I've added links to [[Special:Userlogin]] and [[Wikipedia:Requested
>> articles]] to [[Mediawiki:Nocreatetext]].
>>
>> Kelly
>> _______________________________________________
>> WikiEN-l mailing list
>> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
>> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
>> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: John Lee

subject: [WikiEN-l] Anons banned from creating articles

body:
http://news.com.com/Growing+pains+for+Wikipedia/2100-1025_3-5981119.html?tag=cd.top

"Thus, to avoid future problems, Wales plans to bar anonymous users from
creating new articles; only registered members will be able to do so.
That change will go into effect Monday, he said, adding that anonymous
users will still be able to edit existing entries."

Why were Wikipedians the last to know about this? I only saw some
discussion on the mailing list about this, but nothing final. Why do we
have to learn of this from the media instead of straight from Jimbo?
This is really disturbing.

John Lee
([[User:Johnleemk]])


from_name: Fastfission

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Experiment on new pages

body:
On a similar topic -- are there any tool for automatic monitoring new
page creation?

I was thinking about this in the shower today, and it didn't seem that
it would be very technically difficult (for a guy who knows some VB
and PHP) to hook up an (external) program which would monitor the
Special:Newpages RSS feed, then check the page content itself and
potentially flag it as something to attend to if it met a set of
variable characteristics -- i.e., is it less than 5 words long, does
it contain the word "fart" or "gay" or "penis", was it created by an
anon, is it wikified, and so forth. More complicated though still
quite feasible operations could involve automatically putting a sample
of the content through Google and seeing if anything comes up, or
potentially checking for incoming links, etc. At the end of the day
you could ideally run something which would check all of those marked
as "potential problems" to see if they had been edited extensively or
deleted, and then make it easy for the editor running the program to
take a look at what remained. All in all it wouldn't put any more
stress on the servers than a user who actually checked these things
manually, and would potentially catch things that were missed by other
diligant admins.

Anything like this exist? If not, I might try to cobble one together
in my (meager) spare time, though I warn you it'll be written in
Visual Basic... Seems like it would help with at least one problem in
relation to new pages, if not the more insidious one of false claims
disguised as encyclopedia articles.

FF


from_name: Nicholas Moreau

subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Anons cannot create pages on english wikipedia?

body:
The one bonus I found so far is the increased dialog between editors, in an
effort to improve the new articles. This can only be beneficial.

I'd personally recommend extending this to a week long trial.

Currently, an IP is either banned or unbanned. What if we had a middle
ground for problem IPs, which didn't allow them to create new articles, only
edit existing ones. It wouldn't be a cure-all, but it might be interesting
concept to play with.

Nick


from_name: MacGyverMagic/Mgm

body:
Edit screens also tell people to use reliable sources.
I would equally unforgiving with someone who adds unsourced edits as
someone who starts unsourced articles.

If anyone can verify it. Go ahead. But if it can't be verified, we
shouldn't be leaving it in Wikipedia. It breaks basic policy.

Mgm


from_name: Geoff Burling

subject: [WikiEN-l] If in doubt, don't delete

body:
On Mon, 5 Dec 2005, Tony Sidaway wrote:

> On 12/5/05, Geoff Burling <llywrch at agora.rdrop.com> wrote:
> > On Sun, 4 Dec 2005, Snowspinner wrote:
> > >
> > > I point out that the editor in question is subject to an arbcom case
> > > right now regarding deletion and the railroading of "policy" to "win"
> > > debates. I think this incident would prove valuable evidence in that
> > > case.
> > >
> > I admit I'm too busy trying to actually work on Wikipedia materials to
> > know anything about this case, but I feel confident in saying that whatever
> > cause Tony has been hauled before the ArbCom over is irrelevant to his
> > point here -- which is to argue that when in doubt, don't delete.
>
>
> You've misread Phil's words.  He is not referring to mem, and I
> haven't been "hauled up before arcom".

I realize that now. And that is one reason I don't take as large of a role
in Wikipedia as I ought to: most of the time I know I don't have enough
information to act on, & the remainder of the time I don't know even
that.

My apologies to all involved.

Geoff


from_name: Tim 'avatar' Bartel

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Anons cannot create pages on english wikipedia?

body:
Hi Wikipedians,

Walter van Kalken schrieb am 05.12.2005 21:48:
> "This site has restricted the ability to create new pages. If you wish
> to create a new page, you must first create an account or log in
> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Userlogin>.
>
> If you'd rather not create an account or log in, consider listing a
> request for someone else to create the page here
> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requested_articles>."
>
> Since when is this wikimedia policy to restrict this?

Please see
http://mail.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2005-December/033880.html

Bye, Tim.


body:
On point #2: Wouldn't the easiest way to kill two birds with one stone
be to write up a little bit about his accusations against Wikipedia,
the explanation of how they got there that Jimbo gave earlier (created
by anon, checked but not "checked", not super important, etc.), quote
the "libelous" material, then delete the original material from the
edit history?

The end result would be that the history of the material would be
there ("Siegenthaler's page said 'XYZ'."), but the unattributed,
this-is-a-fact version would not be.

Plus, it would be a very, very clever form of reflexivity, and
demonstrate our undiminishing openness, even on topics which make us
look bad.

FF

On 12/5/05, Snowspinner <Snowspinner at gmail.com> wrote:
> 1: If we are going to begin protecting pages because of news coverage
> (Which is not unreasonable at all), we should have a protected
> template that makes that clear. After all, the first page people hit
> is also a place where they are going to want to try to edit - it's
> important to take those people and invite them to look at other
> pages. I've created [[Template:P-protected]] for this.
>
> 2: I understand the need to remove the Siegenthaler libel from the
> page history. On the other hand, I think A) It is a matter of
> important historical record at this point, and B) It sets an unseemly
> precedent. Can we move the deleted history out of that article and
> into an archive page, perhaps with a permanant front page that notes
> what it is, and that it is a collection of vandalism?
>
> -Phil Sandifer
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


body:
Actually, now that I look (I admit, I have a tendency to speak before
I read), that's almost exactly what we have now, sans the description
of how it got that way.

FF

On 12/5/05, Fastfission <fastfission at gmail.com> wrote:
> On point #2: Wouldn't the easiest way to kill two birds with one stone
> be to write up a little bit about his accusations against Wikipedia,
> the explanation of how they got there that Jimbo gave earlier (created
> by anon, checked but not "checked", not super important, etc.), quote
> the "libelous" material, then delete the original material from the
> edit history?
>
> The end result would be that the history of the material would be
> there ("Siegenthaler's page said 'XYZ'."), but the unattributed,
> this-is-a-fact version would not be.
>
> Plus, it would be a very, very clever form of reflexivity, and
> demonstrate our undiminishing openness, even on topics which make us
> look bad.
>
> FF
>
> On 12/5/05, Snowspinner <Snowspinner at gmail.com> wrote:
> > 1: If we are going to begin protecting pages because of news coverage
> > (Which is not unreasonable at all), we should have a protected
> > template that makes that clear. After all, the first page people hit
> > is also a place where they are going to want to try to edit - it's
> > important to take those people and invite them to look at other
> > pages. I've created [[Template:P-protected]] for this.
> >
> > 2: I understand the need to remove the Siegenthaler libel from the
> > page history. On the other hand, I think A) It is a matter of
> > important historical record at this point, and B) It sets an unseemly
> > precedent. Can we move the deleted history out of that article and
> > into an archive page, perhaps with a permanant front page that notes
> > what it is, and that it is a collection of vandalism?
> >
> > -Phil Sandifer
> > _______________________________________________
> > WikiEN-l mailing list
> > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> > To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
> >
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: yet another image lost for posterity

body:
On 12/4/05, Puddl Duk <puddlduk at gmail.com> wrote:
> I think we have almost 600 fair use images in the pokeman category

That's true, and may or may not be a problem. The sheer number isn't
necessarily the problem, though -- images which are individually "fair
use" are still "fair use" whether there are two of them or 600 of
them. There is a case on this relating to Beanie Babies, I believe:
Ty, Inc., vs. Publications International, Ltd. (discussed at
http://www.ivanhoffman.com/beanie.html)

How the Twin Peaks and Seinfeld rulings apply to Wikipedia and
Wikiquote is unclear to me. Personally I'd be very, very suspicious of
having detailed pages about copyrighted material which is purely
descriptive (and not analysis, parody, etc.) or, at worse, relies upon
heavy use of copyrighted content (images, quotes), even if we are
non-profit. But I'm no lawyer, and this seems to be ground which is
not very clearly spelled out legally.

FF


from_name: Kelly Martin

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Experiment on new pages

body:
On 12/5/05, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 12/6/05, Fastfission <fastfission at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On a similar topic -- are there any tool for automatic monitoring new
> > page creation?
> >
>
> With the current level of NP patrol I don't think it is needed.

I fully disagree; and even if it's sufficient at this level it won't
be when it's twice what it is now.

Kelly


from_name: Kat Walsh

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Experiment on new pages

body:
On 12/5/05, Fastfission <fastfission at gmail.com> wrote:
> On a similar topic -- are there any tool for automatic monitoring new
> page creation?
>
> I was thinking about this in the shower today, and it didn't seem that
> it would be very technically difficult (for a guy who knows some VB
> and PHP) to hook up an (external) program which would monitor the
> Special:Newpages RSS feed, then check the page content itself and
> potentially flag it as something to attend to if it met a set of
> variable characteristics -- i.e., is it less than 5 words long, does
> it contain the word "fart" or "gay" or "penis", was it created by an
> anon, is it wikified, and so forth. More complicated though still
> quite feasible operations could involve automatically putting a sample
> of the content through Google and seeing if anything comes up, or
> potentially checking for incoming links, etc. At the end of the day
> you could ideally run something which would check all of those marked
> as "potential problems" to see if they had been edited extensively or
> deleted, and then make it easy for the editor running the program to
> take a look at what remained. All in all it wouldn't put any more
> stress on the servers than a user who actually checked these things
> manually, and would potentially catch things that were missed by other
> diligant admins.
>
> Anything like this exist? If not, I might try to cobble one together
> in my (meager) spare time, though I warn you it'll be written in
> Visual Basic... Seems like it would help with at least one problem in
> relation to new pages, if not the more insidious one of false claims
> disguised as encyclopedia articles.
>
> FF

Gmaxwell has a bot written in Python that usually runs in
#wikipedia-en-suspectedits which reads every diff as it comes through.
A diff gets announced if it contains various words considered
offensive (profanity, ethnic slurs), words considered offensive if not
used in context ("gay" in an article where the previous revision
contained neither "homosexual" nor "gay" nor other similarly related
words), added exclamation points (usually at the least poor
encyclopedic style!), and speedy delete notices; he's taken a few
other suggestions for improvement.

Unfortunately it's not running at the moment as toolserver is still
down, but it's a pretty useful tool to aid RC patrol.

(Yes, Gmaxwell is my significant other, but that's not why I'm
plugging the bot, honest. :-))

-Kat
[[User:Mindspillage]]

--
"There was a point to this story, but it has temporarily
escaped the chronicler's mind."  --Douglas Adams


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Erik Moeller

subject: [Wikitech-l] Wikidata (namespace changes) branch installable

body:
Those of you who want to take a look at the new namespace manager
(Special:Namespaces) and the associated functionality can now, thanks to
Avar, check out and install the WIKIDATA branch. You need a user with
bureaucrat rights to access [[Special:Namespaces]]. Pretty much all
operations there should work now, but I have not intensively debugged it
yet.

Aver has also adapted the update.php script. The web-installer upgrade
does not yet recognize customizations, but the command-line ugprade
should correctly import customized namespaces and settings into the new
system.

As noted before, the main user-visible changes are that
a) It will become trivial for any wiki community to maintain its own
namespaces,
b) Any namespace can have an arbitrary number of synonyms which redirect
all to a default name, allowing us, for example, to rename "Image:" to
"File:" and have "Image:" redirect there. Providing namespace names in
different languages on multi-language wikis would be another application.
c) Namespaces can have a default target (e.g. "Physics"), so that any
unprefixed link _from_ that namespace will be prefixed with that target.
This is primarily useful for Wikibooks. There's also an experimental
feature to hide namespaces from lists; I'm not sure yet if this is a
good idea.

 From an implementation point of view, we can now also make sure that
all namespace operations are safe. I haven't finished debugging that
code yet, but the basic idea should be visible in the save() function in
Namespace.php. Try adding a few duplicate names to the namespace manager
and you'll see that quite a bit of error checking is done there already,
and no operation is executed unless all operations can be successful.

I'll have to spend a couple more days debugging and tweaking things
before we can start thinking seriously about integration into HEAD, but
I encourage you to give it a whirl if you want and report issues.
There's probably still some serious breakage in a few places, but I'm
looking into that. The other thing I want to do is cache the namespace
definitions in memcached, so they don't have to be loaded on every
pageview. Help is always welcome.

I'd also like to have a safer way to access the $wgNamespaces array;
perhaps overloading in PHP5 can be used for this. I'd prefer this to
using a static method to return namespace objects.

More on the next steps for Wikidata soon.

Erik


from_name: Sam Spade

subject: [WikiEN-l] NPOV trainwreck

body:
I am making a very specific accusation: Due to a long history of
conflict with myself, JAYJG has no ability to be neutral in this case.
His lack of recusal is far more striking than that of Fred Bauder.
Both of them, along w other obvious concerns (Kelly Martin) makes this
case a very bad precedent regarding recusals.

Sam Spade

On 12/5/05, JAY JG <jayjg at hotmail.com> wrote:
> No, Fred, he's making a much broader accusation; in fact a series of broad
> accusations unsupported by any evidence.
>
> Jay.
>
> >From: Fred Bauder <fredbaud at ctelco.net>
> >
> >He is referring to my disclosure that I may have briefly encountered  Chip
> >Berlet when I was in the National Lawyers Guild. I did not  recuse on that
> >basis as there was very little if any actual  connection between us. I
> >don't think membership or even active  participation in the National
> >Lawyers Guild  forms a basis for  recusal as there are a number of reasons
> >why people join the National  Lawyers Guild and participate in it. Other
> >than involvement in legal  work there is absolutely no test for membership.
> >Successful  participation is another story. I soon found out that since I
> >did not  support the Gang of Four I was considered chopped liver.
> >
> >Fred
> >
> >On Dec 5, 2005, at 10:57 AM, JAY JG wrote:
> >
> >>Please don't try to re-direct the questions, Jack, and please don't  try
> >>to make them about me.  You made insinuations about the  Arbitration
> >>Committee, please clarify.  I'll repeat the questions:
> >>
> >>1. Do you think that the Committee is trying to "purge right wingers"?
> >>2. Do you imagine that there are no "right wingers" on the  Committee
> >>itself?
> >>3. Why would you insinuate that Cberlet is any more the "friend and
> >>colleague" of members of the Arbitration Committee than are any of  the
> >>other parties to the case?
> >>
> >>Jay.
> >
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Experiment on new pages

body:
Yes, I think I recall this now that you mention. It's not quite what I
had in mind, and I seem to recall someone had used it to create some
sort of magical RC monitoring program?

The streaming of such information would seem to be the first step to
figuring out innovative ways to use it. I made a suggestion to
BugZilla that the deletion log also be set up with an RSS feed -- you
could use it to keep track of which articles streamed out of Newpages
you didn't have to deal with -- though I have no pretension that such
a thing should be an urgent priority since there is no infrastructure
to take advantage of it at the moment.

FF

On 12/5/05, Kat Walsh <mindspillage at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 12/5/05, Fastfission <fastfission at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On a similar topic -- are there any tool for automatic monitoring new
> > page creation?
> >
> > I was thinking about this in the shower today, and it didn't seem that
> > it would be very technically difficult (for a guy who knows some VB
> > and PHP) to hook up an (external) program which would monitor the
> > Special:Newpages RSS feed, then check the page content itself and
> > potentially flag it as something to attend to if it met a set of
> > variable characteristics -- i.e., is it less than 5 words long, does
> > it contain the word "fart" or "gay" or "penis", was it created by an
> > anon, is it wikified, and so forth. More complicated though still
> > quite feasible operations could involve automatically putting a sample
> > of the content through Google and seeing if anything comes up, or
> > potentially checking for incoming links, etc. At the end of the day
> > you could ideally run something which would check all of those marked
> > as "potential problems" to see if they had been edited extensively or
> > deleted, and then make it easy for the editor running the program to
> > take a look at what remained. All in all it wouldn't put any more
> > stress on the servers than a user who actually checked these things
> > manually, and would potentially catch things that were missed by other
> > diligant admins.
> >
> > Anything like this exist? If not, I might try to cobble one together
> > in my (meager) spare time, though I warn you it'll be written in
> > Visual Basic... Seems like it would help with at least one problem in
> > relation to new pages, if not the more insidious one of false claims
> > disguised as encyclopedia articles.
> >
> > FF
>
> Gmaxwell has a bot written in Python that usually runs in
> #wikipedia-en-suspectedits which reads every diff as it comes through.
> A diff gets announced if it contains various words considered
> offensive (profanity, ethnic slurs), words considered offensive if not
> used in context ("gay" in an article where the previous revision
> contained neither "homosexual" nor "gay" nor other similarly related
> words), added exclamation points (usually at the least poor
> encyclopedic style!), and speedy delete notices; he's taken a few
> other suggestions for improvement.
>
> Unfortunately it's not running at the moment as toolserver is still
> down, but it's a pretty useful tool to aid RC patrol.
>
> (Yes, Gmaxwell is my significant other, but that's not why I'm
> plugging the bot, honest. :-))
>
> -Kat
> [[User:Mindspillage]]
>
> --
> "There was a point to this story, but it has temporarily
> escaped the chronicler's mind."  --Douglas Adams
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: mysekurity

body:
Anywhere I can see the video? The CNN video player isn't working for me...

On 12/5/05, Fred Bauder <fredbaud at ctelco.net> wrote:
>
> I watched the CNN interview that Siegenthaler and Jimbo appeared on.
> There was considerable emphasis on bad material still being in
> history despite it being removed from the article itself. I don't
> think it is unreasonable to remove clearly false material from
> history when specifically asked.
>
> In this particular case after Jimbo assuring Siegenthaler that the
> history would be cleansed, it would not do to not do so. Sometimes
> you must simply accept the consequences of whatever your spokesman said.
>
> In the general case, most articles have something plainly wrong in
> them, but that is simply the nature of a wiki.
>
> Fred
>
> On Dec 5, 2005, at 6:57 PM, Snowspinner wrote:
>
> > 1: If we are going to begin protecting pages because of news
> > coverage (Which is not unreasonable at all), we should have a
> > protected template that makes that clear. After all, the first page
> > people hit is also a place where they are going to want to try to
> > edit - it's important to take those people and invite them to look
> > at other pages. I've created [[Template:P-protected]] for this.
> >
> > 2: I understand the need to remove the Siegenthaler libel from the
> > page history. On the other hand, I think A) It is a matter of
> > important historical record at this point, and B) It sets an
> > unseemly precedent. Can we move the deleted history out of that
> > article and into an archive page, perhaps with a permanant front
> > page that notes what it is, and that it is a collection of vandalism?
> >
> > -Phil Sandifer
> > _______________________________________________
> > WikiEN-l mailing list
> > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> > To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
> >
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] NPOV trainwreck

body:
I tell you guys what I'd like, and what I'd be perfectly happy w.

How about we put this case on hold until after the "elections", or
whatever. That will give Nobs a chance to ruin or redeem himself (so
you can ban him for a month or a year/lifetime as appropriate). It
will also force Cberlet to interact on a civil basis ''before'' the
case is over. And it will give an end to any complaints of
impropriety. It strikes me as an "everybody wins" situation.

Sam Spade

On 12/5/05, Sam Spade <samspade.thomasjefferson at googlemail.com> wrote:
> I am making a very specific accusation: Due to a long history of
> conflict with myself, JAYJG has no ability to be neutral in this case.
> His lack of recusal is far more striking than that of Fred Bauder.
> Both of them, along w other obvious concerns (Kelly Martin) makes this
> case a very bad precedent regarding recusals.
>
> Sam Spade
>
> On 12/5/05, JAY JG <jayjg at hotmail.com> wrote:
> > No, Fred, he's making a much broader accusation; in fact a series of broad
> > accusations unsupported by any evidence.
> >
> > Jay.
> >
> > >From: Fred Bauder <fredbaud at ctelco.net>
> > >
> > >He is referring to my disclosure that I may have briefly encountered  Chip
> > >Berlet when I was in the National Lawyers Guild. I did not  recuse on that
> > >basis as there was very little if any actual  connection between us. I
> > >don't think membership or even active  participation in the National
> > >Lawyers Guild  forms a basis for  recusal as there are a number of reasons
> > >why people join the National  Lawyers Guild and participate in it. Other
> > >than involvement in legal  work there is absolutely no test for membership.
> > >Successful  participation is another story. I soon found out that since I
> > >did not  support the Gang of Four I was considered chopped liver.
> > >
> > >Fred
> > >
> > >On Dec 5, 2005, at 10:57 AM, JAY JG wrote:
> > >
> > >>Please don't try to re-direct the questions, Jack, and please don't  try
> > >>to make them about me.  You made insinuations about the  Arbitration
> > >>Committee, please clarify.  I'll repeat the questions:
> > >>
> > >>1. Do you think that the Committee is trying to "purge right wingers"?
> > >>2. Do you imagine that there are no "right wingers" on the  Committee
> > >>itself?
> > >>3. Why would you insinuate that Cberlet is any more the "friend and
> > >>colleague" of members of the Arbitration Committee than are any of  the
> > >>other parties to the case?
> > >>
> > >>Jay.
> > >
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > WikiEN-l mailing list
> > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> > To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
> >
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Experiment on new pages

body:
You would't be talking about '''CryptoDerk's VandalFighter''', would you?
Why not add to that code, which already exists? That would be a huge help,
and would be a big improvement.
-Mysekurity <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Mysekurity>

On 12/5/05, Fastfission <fastfission at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Yes, I think I recall this now that you mention. It's not quite what I
> had in mind, and I seem to recall someone had used it to create some
> sort of magical RC monitoring program?
>
> The streaming of such information would seem to be the first step to
> figuring out innovative ways to use it. I made a suggestion to
> BugZilla that the deletion log also be set up with an RSS feed -- you
> could use it to keep track of which articles streamed out of Newpages
> you didn't have to deal with -- though I have no pretension that such
> a thing should be an urgent priority since there is no infrastructure
> to take advantage of it at the moment.
>
> FF
>
>
>
> On 12/5/05, Kat Walsh <mindspillage at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 12/5/05, Fastfission <fastfission at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > On a similar topic -- are there any tool for automatic monitoring new
> > > page creation?
> > >
> > > I was thinking about this in the shower today, and it didn't seem that
> > > it would be very technically difficult (for a guy who knows some VB
> > > and PHP) to hook up an (external) program which would monitor the
> > > Special:Newpages RSS feed, then check the page content itself and
> > > potentially flag it as something to attend to if it met a set of
> > > variable characteristics -- i.e., is it less than 5 words long, does
> > > it contain the word "fart" or "gay" or "penis", was it created by an
> > > anon, is it wikified, and so forth. More complicated though still
> > > quite feasible operations could involve automatically putting a sample
> > > of the content through Google and seeing if anything comes up, or
> > > potentially checking for incoming links, etc. At the end of the day
> > > you could ideally run something which would check all of those marked
> > > as "potential problems" to see if they had been edited extensively or
> > > deleted, and then make it easy for the editor running the program to
> > > take a look at what remained. All in all it wouldn't put any more
> > > stress on the servers than a user who actually checked these things
> > > manually, and would potentially catch things that were missed by other
> > > diligant admins.
> > >
> > > Anything like this exist? If not, I might try to cobble one together
> > > in my (meager) spare time, though I warn you it'll be written in
> > > Visual Basic... Seems like it would help with at least one problem in
> > > relation to new pages, if not the more insidious one of false claims
> > > disguised as encyclopedia articles.
> > >
> > > FF
> >
> > Gmaxwell has a bot written in Python that usually runs in
> > #wikipedia-en-suspectedits which reads every diff as it comes through.
> > A diff gets announced if it contains various words considered
> > offensive (profanity, ethnic slurs), words considered offensive if not
> > used in context ("gay" in an article where the previous revision
> > contained neither "homosexual" nor "gay" nor other similarly related
> > words), added exclamation points (usually at the least poor
> > encyclopedic style!), and speedy delete notices; he's taken a few
> > other suggestions for improvement.
> >
> > Unfortunately it's not running at the moment as toolserver is still
> > down, but it's a pretty useful tool to aid RC patrol.
> >
> > (Yes, Gmaxwell is my significant other, but that's not why I'm
> > plugging the bot, honest. :-))
> >
> > -Kat
> > [[User:Mindspillage]]
> >
> > --
> > "There was a point to this story, but it has temporarily
> > escaped the chronicler's mind."  --Douglas Adams
> > _______________________________________________
> > WikiEN-l mailing list
> > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> > To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
> >
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] David Hager is listed as convicted rapist

body:
This is the same issue which came up with the [[Category:Soviet
spies]]*. I think it would be a good policy (it may already be one)
that categories which deal with extremely POV topics that avoid mixing
the "crime" with the "person". "Criminals" is semantically not
different in English from "People convicted of a crime" though in a
psychological sense it certainly is.

FF

*(which, by the way, was ruled "lack of consensus" on CFD after a
slurry by a slurry of paleoconservative editors rallied by the
aforementioned Nobs, most of whom had no idea what they were really
voting on, in my mind)

On 12/5/05, Anthony DiPierro <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
> On 12/4/05, JAY JG <jayjg at hotmail.com> wrote:
> > >From: Keith Old <keithold at gmail.com>
> > What about, say, a criminal was killed before conviction by a court - say
> > [[Michael Robert Ryan]]?
> >
> > Regards,
> >
> > Jay.
>
> If the person is dead, they certainly can't sue us for libel (of
> course, they can't sue *us* for libel anyway, only the person who
> actually added the libelous statement).
>
> But the NPOV issues are more serious.  I don't see how a category such
> as "criminals" can possibly be NPOV.  "Convicted criminals" maybe.
> "Indicted criminals" might be possible.  "Alleged criminals" would
> probably be way too broad (might as well redirect it to "List of
> people").
>
> Anthony
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Rowan Collins

subject: [Wikitech-l] Writing to CVS

body:
On 05/12/05, Stephen Bain <stephen.bain at gmail.com> wrote:
> Apologies in advance for another newbie question, this is the first
> time I've worked with CVS. I've finished my patch, and posted it at
> MediaZilla:
> http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=04028

You need to be granted rights to the CVS repository to do this -
although, like a wiki, you can revert most things in CVS, you could
also cause a lot of havoc, so this isn't an automatic right. The
easiest thing is just to wait for someone else to check your code over
and submit it for you, but if you seem trustworthy, the main
developers have generally been fairly generous in giving out such
rights.

> How do I add this to the CVS, and more importantly, in which package
> do I add my changes? Since the feture request is for a Special: page,
> almost all the code is self-contained, and so it should be fairly safe
> to upload.

Well, you would add it - if you had the required permissions - to the
same place all the software is, i.e. in the 'phase3' module. Unless
what you're writing is intended to be an extension, not part of the
generally distributed code, in which case it goes in a separate module
called 'extensions', IIRC.

If this is just your first patch, my advice would be to wait and see
if anyone reviews the patch on bugzilla (which someone has labelled
'need-review' for you) and either checks it in or points out a fatal
flaw.

--
Rowan Collins BSc
[IMSoP]


from_name: Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Deletion debate on the Icelandic & English Wikipedia

body:
There's a deletion debate on the Icelandic & English Wikipedia that
I'd like to bring your attention to, it concerns an article on an
Icelandic individual which has been getting front page coverage in
Icelandic newspapers recently and is for those reasons as well as
others, in my opinion, clearly notable enough to have an encyclopedia
article about.

The articles in question are
http://is.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stef%C3%A1n_H._%C3%93feigsson and
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stef%C3%A1n_H._%C3%93feigsson and the
deltion listing (both by the same user) are at
http://is.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spjall:Stef%C3%A1n_H._%C3%93feigsson#Atkv.C3.A6.C3.B0agrei.C3.B0sla
and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Stef%C3%A1n_H._%C3%93feigsson


subject: [WikiEN-l] Deletion debate on the Icelandic & English Wikipedia


from_name: Anthere

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Anons cannot create pages on english wikipedia?

body:
Walter van Kalken wrote:
> What is this:
>
> "This site has restricted the ability to create new pages. If you wish
> to create a new page, you must first create an account or log in
> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Userlogin>.
>
> If you'd rather not create an account or log in, consider listing a
> request for someone else to create the page here
> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requested_articles>."
>
> Since when is this wikimedia policy to restrict this?
>
>
> Waerth/Walter

Just to clarify once and for all.

The policy has been decided by Jimbo. This is within his role as a moral
leader. This is within your role to criticize, accept, complain or do
whatever you feel is best as people and as community.

But this is not a Foundation decision, or rather, this has not been a
decision by the board. So, I would not call it a wikimedia policy.

Currently, it is limited to the english wikipedia.

I am not entirely sure there has been a system set into place to analyse
the impact of such a decision. It is probably to the english-community
to try to measure this the best they can and to appreciate the benefits
and drawbacks itself.

I suppose other communities will be given the opportunity to make their
own decisions according to cultural background and state of development.

Anthere


from_name: Jonathan Leybovich

subject:
[Foundation-l] Jihad in Defense of Objectivity (Was: Enforcing
	WP:CITE)

body:
Gerard Meijssen wrote:
> There is a difference between stronger citation
> standards and better
> citation technology. I am all for better citation
> technology. I am
> completely against raising the entry level of people
> to contribute to
> the Wikipedia project.

I agree we should avoid alienating new users as much
as possible.  So what do you think of introducing new
citation/evidence mark-up which the renderer will then
use to automatically flag "evidence holes" within an
article (see mock-up:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:WikiTextrose_article_citations.png
)?  This would probably be an immediate milestone for
the project as it is something we could implement
without Wikidata.

> I am well aware of what Wikidata is. Wikidata is the
> implementation of
> relational technology within the Mediawiki software.
> Off itself it
> provides you with no functionality. A database
> design is necessary to
> consider if it possible to create the functionality
> that you describe.

I'll put together a datamodel diagram once the
functional requirements of the system are more
well-defined.  I've deferred doing so because I wanted
to get feedback from the rest of the community first,
including their reaction to the basic concept.  I'll
have a high-level entity-relationship diagram up soon,
though.

Anthony DiPierro wrote:
> Introducing detailed citation features would require
either abanoning
> that simplicity or abandoning the concept of writing
the wikitext
> directly.  Both of these would be significantly
detrimental to the
> Wikipedia project in the short term.

The mark-up would look something like:

[[cite:ISBN:123456789:p. 10|"cited
text"|"paraphrase/article text"]]

To me that doesn't seem more complicated than most
other basic wiki mark-up.

Ray Saintonge wrote:
>
> This is all theoretically very interesting, and I
cannot oppose it.
> Nevertheless until someone is ready to code this it
won't happen .
> Meanwhile, many of us who concern ourselves with
content still have to
> go on with life without waiting for you to do the
coding, which could
> take a long time.
>
> What would you suggest that we non-technical people
do in the meantime?

Erik M?ller is working on Wikidata right now, which
may be functional before the end of the year.  Once
this is done hopefully I can put together the
beginnings of a prototype.

In the meantime people can help by updating the Meta
project pages: [[m:Wikicite]] [[m:WikiTextrose]] .
Fleshing out the functionality of the system is
particularly important at this stage.  Think of how
you would use citation data.  What would be the best
way to visualize/present it?  What kind of searches
would you like to be able to do with it?  Once you
have some ideas create mock-ups or rough sketches of
them and add those to the project page.  People with
expertise in library science could also help by
creating lists for the sorts of data we should be
capturing in the "card catalog" portion of the
database.  I've been using the "Functional
Requirements for Bibliographic Records" as a starting
point: http://www.oclc.org/research/projects/frbr/
(SJ- can you confirm whether this is an appropriate
reference?).  If someone could use it to begin to put
together the list of attributes we need for the "card
catalog" that would be very helpful.

> > Using the text relationship database, editors can
now
> > see at a glance what is authoritative within a
> > particular literature.  The article renderer now
takes
>
> It is less cut-and-dried than this; one useful
comparative view would
> be
> the authority-ranking of major essays/articles in a
field assuming
> School-of-thought A is correct in its assumptions,
and the
> authority-tree
> assuming some rival School B is correct in its
assumptions.

Certainly, though this depends on the field.  In
mathematics I'd bet there is relatively little
contention; in the physical sciences probably more so,
and much more so in the social sciences.  Hopefully we
can come up with formulas sophisticated enough to
identify such patterns (maybe including schools of
thought).  I would like to see a visualization of
citation data for someone like Edward Said, for
example :)

> > virtuous circle begins- a citation based upon a
work
> > of popular history is exchanged for one relying
upon a
> > more specialized work, which is later exchanged
for a
> > scholarly monograph or journal article, which in
turn
> > encourages reference to primary sources, etc.  By
this
> > process Wikipedia becomes not just accurate, but
> > scholarly and state-of-the-knowledge.
>
> By this process, the claims of the popular works are
also being
> verified
> or disproven by Wikipedia authors over time;
hopefully that information
> can be passed on to the book editors/publishers --
as they too enter
> the
> digital age.

Right, and not necessarily just popular works if the
Wikipedian is armed with strong enough data.  I think
we would all be proud the day such a feedback loop is introduced.

__________________________________________
Yahoo! DSL ? Something to write home about.
Just $16.99/mo. or less.
dsl.yahoo.com


from_name: David Gerard

subject: [WikiEN-l] NPOV trainwreck

body:
Sam Spade wrote:

> So you deny a history of conflict with me?

You know, if you want a recusal, you should probably be posting some
really convincing diffs to the arbcom case talk page rather than
complaining in distinctly the wrong venue. I mean, you could keep
complaining here too, but even then those really convincing diffs would
help show you're complaining about a real problem rather than the case
seeming not to go your way.

(Note that saying "I annoyed him so he must hate me so he should recuse"
or variations on such has generally not been accepted as a recusal reason.)

- d.


subject: [WikiEN-l] A note on how the list moderation works

body:
Hermione1980 wrote:
>   David Gerard <fun at thingy.apana.org.au> wrote:

>   >* When we go through the mod queue (I hit it most weekdays), we take any
>>first posts and (in general) accept the post and unmoderate the poster.

> Really? I've posted twice and was told both times my message had to
> go through the mod queue (waiting to see if this one does).

Looks like this one went straight through. Occasionally we miss ticking
the "unmoderated" box. Note that checking each morning, the queue will
typically contain one message from a human buried in 100 pieces of spam
- please excuse the occasional human error!

- d.


from_name: Sam Korn

subject:
[WikiEN-l] [[Wikipedia:Articles for creation]] for anonymous
	creation of articles

body:
On 12/5/05, M. Creidieki Crouch <creidieki at gmail.com> wrote:
> Since anonymous users have been experimentally prevented from adding
> new articles, I have created [[Wikipedia:Articles for creation]].
> This allows users to request that a page be created, and list initial
> content.  I hope that this will dampen the effect of this policy
> change on the creation of legitimate articles.  I hope that others
> will consider adding this to their watchlist and helping out with this
> task; any registered user can fulfill these requests, or state why
> they think a request should not be fulfilled (article already exists
> under different name, etc.).

Um, in what way is this easier than, well, creating an account?

--
Sam


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Experiment on new pages

body:
On 12/5/05, SJ <2.718281828 at gmail.com> wrote:
> This is a great idea.  Also someone to create accounts for them once
> anons aren't allowed to make new accounts.
>
> ++SJ

Of course, that facility is already coded into MediaWiki.

--
Sam


body:
Sam Korn wrote:
> On 12/5/05, M. Creidieki Crouch <creidieki at gmail.com> wrote:

>>Since anonymous users have been experimentally prevented from adding
>>new articles, I have created [[Wikipedia:Articles for creation]].

> Um, in what way is this easier than, well, creating an account?

Some people really object to creating an account. Anons don't get no
respect in general, but sincere contributors who don't want to create an
account do exist.

- d.


subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Why do we not make it clear that Wikipedia is a
	work	in progress?

body:
Brion Vibber wrote:

> Why is there not a big, fat, clear warning at the top of every article that this
> is a work in progess, has not been formally reviewed, may contain factual
> inaccuracies or vandalism, and *should not* be used for reference without a very
> large grain of salt?
> I've gotten tired of having to remind people (even Wikipedians) that Wikipedia
> is still a draft, and that we have *ZERO* reviewed-and-vetted-for-the-public
> pages yet. We don't even have a review system in place yet.

Perhaps make the puzzle-globe covered in the letter "beta"!

- d.


from_name: Ashar Voultoiz

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Writing to CVS

body:
Stephen Bain wrote:
> Thanks to all who replied to my previous message:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2005-December/032856.html
> In the end I used TortoiseCVS, which recommended WinMerge for diffs.
>
> Apologies in advance for another newbie question, this is the first
> time I've worked with CVS. I've finished my patch, and posted it at
> MediaZilla:
> http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=04028
>
> How do I add this to the CVS, and more importantly, in which package
> do I add my changes? Since the feture request is for a Special: page,
> almost all the code is self-contained, and so it should be fairly safe
> to upload.

Congratulations ! You have coded your first hack for MediaWiki :)

You cant directly add code to CVS unless you have write access. The
actual patch submitted in bugzilla with keywords 'patch, need-review'
will be reviewed and commented by regulars.

Once it is flagged as 'reviewed' it might be added to the next version
of MediaWiki (1.6?).

For special pages, you can maybe convert it to an extension. That would
be easier to have it included in the live code. I personally like your
idea and think it should be in the main code (but god^Wbrion know if it
will really be included).

cheers,

--
Ashar Voultoiz - WP++++
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Hashar
http://www.livejournal.com/community/wikitech/
IM: hashar at jabber.org  ICQ: 15325080


subject: [WikiEN-l] NPOV trainwreck

body:
So you deny a history of conflict with me?

Sam Spade

On 12/5/05, JAY JG <jayjg at hotmail.com> wrote:
> Jack, in my experience when editors involved in a case doesn't see it going
> the way they want, they almost inevitably claim that one or more of the
> arbitrators is biased against them, based on some long-standing (but
> undocumented) hatred for them.  It's not quite as common for them to claim
> there is a vast community consensus supporting their viewpoint - I give you
> credit for having the chutzpah to do the latter.
>
> Regards,
>
> Jay.
>
> >From: Sam Spade <samspade.thomasjefferson at googlemail.com>
> >
> >I am making a very specific accusation: Due to a long history of
> >conflict with myself, JAYJG has no ability to be neutral in this case.
> >His lack of recusal is far more striking than that of Fred Bauder.
> >Both of them, along w other obvious concerns (Kelly Martin) makes this
> >case a very bad precedent regarding recusals.
> >
> >Sam Spade
> >
> >On 12/5/05, JAY JG <jayjg at hotmail.com> wrote:
> > > No, Fred, he's making a much broader accusation; in fact a series of
> >broad
> > > accusations unsupported by any evidence.
> > >
> > > Jay.
> > >
> > > >From: Fred Bauder <fredbaud at ctelco.net>
> > > >
> > > >He is referring to my disclosure that I may have briefly encountered
> >Chip
> > > >Berlet when I was in the National Lawyers Guild. I did not  recuse on
> >that
> > > >basis as there was very little if any actual  connection between us. I
> > > >don't think membership or even active  participation in the National
> > > >Lawyers Guild  forms a basis for  recusal as there are a number of
> >reasons
> > > >why people join the National  Lawyers Guild and participate in it.
> >Other
> > > >than involvement in legal  work there is absolutely no test for
> >membership.
> > > >Successful  participation is another story. I soon found out that since
> >I
> > > >did not  support the Gang of Four I was considered chopped liver.
> > > >
> > > >Fred
> > > >
> > > >On Dec 5, 2005, at 10:57 AM, JAY JG wrote:
> > > >
> > > >>Please don't try to re-direct the questions, Jack, and please don't
> >try
> > > >>to make them about me.  You made insinuations about the  Arbitration
> > > >>Committee, please clarify.  I'll repeat the questions:
> > > >>
> > > >>1. Do you think that the Committee is trying to "purge right wingers"?
> > > >>2. Do you imagine that there are no "right wingers" on the  Committee
> > > >>itself?
> > > >>3. Why would you insinuate that Cberlet is any more the "friend and
> > > >>colleague" of members of the Arbitration Committee than are any of
> >the
> > > >>other parties to the case?
> > > >>
> > > >>Jay.
> > > >
> > >
> > >
> > > _______________________________________________
> > > WikiEN-l mailing list
> > > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> > > To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> > > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
> > >
> >_______________________________________________
> >WikiEN-l mailing list
> >WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> >To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> >http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Brock Batsell

body:
M. Creidieki Crouch wrote:

>
>[[Wikipedia:Requested articles]] asks for someone else to write an
>article for you.  It's a very good page that serves a necessary
>purpose.  But there's an additional, separate problem now: an
>anonymous user has already written several sentences or paragraphs,
>and needs to turn this into an article.  That's what
>[[Wikipedia:Articles for creation]] is for.  IP users can post their
>text to this page, and a registered user will put it into an article
>(if appropriate), or offer other help.
>
>
>-- Creidieki
>
>
Thanks for the clarification ? I understand its purpose now.

--bbatsell


from_name: Kim Bruning

subject: [Foundation-l] Anons cannot create pages on english wikipedia?

body:
On Mon, Dec 05, 2005 at 02:27:21PM -0800, Daniel Mayer wrote:
>
> For the record, I very strongly support this. This is due to the fact that almost all, not just
> most, new pages created by anons on the English Wikipedia are borderline to complete crap. Thus it
> is sad, but necessary to limit the amount of needless clean-up work that those on new page patrol
> have to do.

Correlation!=Causation.

Because this concentrates on a particular symptom of vandalism
-as opposed to the actual cause- I'm expecting new pages patrol to
become more difficult as the easy telltales are now hidden.

Let's see if that prediction comes out. Anyone care to place
bets? :-)

read you soon,
	Kim Bruning

--
[Non-pgp mail clients may show pgp-signature as attachment]
gpg (www.gnupg.org) Fingerprint for key  FEF9DD72
5ED6 E215 73EE AD84 E03A  01C5 94AC 7B0E FEF9 DD72


body:
Jimmy Wales wrote:

> Well at least so far, it seems that there have been two effects:
> 1. fewer crappy pages created

How are we doing for anon edits in general? Has that number changed?

> 2. the ones that are create are as easy to identify as ever, since some
> of the anons are converting into 'anonymous redshirts' (i.e. users with
> no userpage).

Oh, I do like that phrase!

> It will be interesting to try and gather some statistics about all this,
> so we can proceed with actual data.

Always a useful thing to gather in an experiment ;-)

- d.


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: stuff. (performance, squids, leaks)

body:
Domas Mituzas wrote:
<snip>
> We still have that memory leak and are somewhat lost with it..

Cant you just have the squids killed every day ?

I managed some huge DNS servers and we restarted bind every eight hours
on resolver, every week on sunday for nameserver. That worked well and
prevented leaks.

<snip>
> BTW, it took a while today to detect a serious packet loss in our
> upstream providers.
> It does slightly affect client network performance, but quite stalls
> communication
> between our distributed clusters. Looking for such problems becomes a
> bit of witch hunt :)

What about that nagios box ? :o) Get me a small server and i will flood
you with 'packet loss > 0.2%' email & irc notices :o)

cheers,

--
Ashar Voultoiz - WP++++
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Hashar
http://www.livejournal.com/community/wikitech/
IM: hashar at jabber.org  ICQ: 15325080


from_name: M. Creidieki Crouch

body:
> Perhaps I'm missing something, but what is the difference between this
> and [[Wikipedia:Requested articles]], which is well-established and has
> been around for a very long time?  It is even linked to from the warning
> anon editors see.

[[Wikipedia:Requested articles]] asks for someone else to write an
article for you.  It's a very good page that serves a necessary
purpose.  But there's an additional, separate problem now: an
anonymous user has already written several sentences or paragraphs,
and needs to turn this into an article.  That's what
[[Wikipedia:Articles for creation]] is for.  IP users can post their
text to this page, and a registered user will put it into an article
(if appropriate), or offer other help.

If you look at how things have been going in the first day, I think
we've created several useful articles or redirects, and posted a lot
of advice on peoples' talk pages about why some articles may not be
appropriate.  I give articles the benefit of the doubt when deciding
whether to create them, and I hope others do the same.  I encourage
you to take a look at the page, and consider it among the maintenance
tasks you consider doing.

-- Creidieki


from_name: Domas Mituzas

subject: [Wikitech-l] stuff. (performance, squids, leaks)

body:
Hello folks,

lately again we've had some stuff going on...

Though Brion was implementing that anon-blocking stuff (yay, more
blocking - faster performance!)
we were targeting other performance issues as well.
Tim did rewrite ip block code (did cut 50ms or so ;-) as well as made
lots of other nice stuff,
and now we implemented Mark's idea to run diskless squids (well, they
have disks, but no
cache on them).

Lots of our new servers have joined object cache running (hehe,
again) Tugela, instead of
memcached. It's interesting to see how it should grow. Sadly, no
expiration (memory->disk)
of objects happened yet in a week, so we can't measure anything.
BerkeleyDB standalone
might be a bit faster than memcached, though, benchmarks on same
hardware were not
conducted.

~22G of data is cached in object cache now - parser objects, image
metadata, diffs,
sessions, user objects, 'you have new messages' bits and language
objects. So far we didn't
notice any of glitches that forced us to remove Tugela from service
before (some cosmetic
patches were done).  Anyway, we have more RAM, that didn't cost
millions, we use it.

Anyway, today with squids running from memory only we managed to
achieve 0.09s
average response times for logged in users, at least those who go
directy to Florida.
Before that Squid efficiency was really distorted by somewhat
blocking async i/o (if it
really existed there), poor sibling relations and memory leak.

We still have that memory leak and are somewhat lost with it.. Squid
'accounts' for 1G
memory, uses >2G, and it grows, until restarted. We need to solve
that, but nobody has
every really touched valgrind at such loads (eh, today squid servers
were serving like
 >700 requests per second each), and I'm not sure if anyone touched
valgrind properly
at all ;-) We'll soon have a bunch of servers suitable for squid
task, but still, using them
more efficiently would help. We will always lack resources at some
place :-)

Guidelines could help, as well we could simply provide our sources, a
bit of configuration
and load documentation. *shrug*.

Another troubling part is sibling relations - right now each proxy
marks others as siblings
and proxy-only, that is shouldn't save contents into cache.
Eventually they do not talk
to each other at all and hit backend, and all have their separate
caches.
I'm not sure if that's related with equal object expiration times or
any other hypothesis.
If anyone has had experience with squids in such setups, where
there're lots of objects
and lots of servers and efficiency was managed, it would be sure nice
to hear it.
It is still strange that it blocks quite a bit at some housekeeping
operations on i/o.

BTW, it took a while today to detect a serious packet loss in our
upstream providers.
It does slightly affect client network performance, but quite stalls
communication
between our distributed clusters. Looking for such problems becomes a
bit of witch hunt :)

So much of today's experiences and joys ;-)

Cheers,
Domas


from_name: Jan Kulveit

body:
On Mon, Dec 05, 2005 at 02:27:21PM -0800, Daniel Mayer wrote:
...
> For the record, I very strongly support this. This is due to the fact
> that almost all, not just  most, new pages created by anons on the
> English Wikipedia are borderline to complete crap. Thus it is sad,
> but necessary to limit the amount of needless clean-up work that
...

A. Creating new crap article now consists of typing the name of the
article, typing the article + clicking one button.

B. Creating new article with compulsory registration adds aditional
requirement of creating one crap account.
Necessary effort consists of typing a random user name, 2x random
password + clicking one button.

C. Creating new article with compulsory registration with unique
email adds requirement to crate one crap email.
Necessary effort consists of typing a normal email into jetable.org,
and clicking one button.

and so on....

In long term perspective we'll achieve the same ammount of harder
to spot vandalism. Effort required from vandals will increase e.g.
twice, from one click to two clicks.

Look from
http://www.usemod.com/cgi-bin/mb.pl?SoftSecurity
viewpoint.

>
> Anons will still be able to edit existing articles. This is fine
> since existing articles are much more likely to be watched by users and
> decently linked from other pages.
>

This is interesting - is there some real statistic on how watched
articles are? I'm affraid there may be tens of thousand virtually
unwatched articles no active wikipedians care about.

IMO Wikipedia should less try to mimic what works for traditional
encyclopedias (like the CITE madness) and concentrate more on
inner proceses which works here - and improve software to aid them /
identify where they fail. For example, locating various more likely
dangerous  articles, such as
*unwatched articles
*articles with high (external readers/wikipedian readers) ratio

> It is also my hope that this will help push the English Wikipedia,
> however little, a bit from emphasizing growth and a bit more toward
> emphasizing quality.
>

I'm affraid it only pushes us from SoftSecurity which works to
HardSecurity which can not work for us.

Jan Kulveit
[[User:Wikimol]]


from_name: Walter van Kalken

body:
What is this:

"This site has restricted the ability to create new pages. If you wish
to create a new page, you must first create an account or log in
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Userlogin>.

If you'd rather not create an account or log in, consider listing a
request for someone else to create the page here
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requested_articles>."

Since when is this wikimedia policy to restrict this?

Waerth/Walter


from_name: Matthew R. Howard, Sr.

subject: [WikiEN-l] Experiment on new pages

body:
Mathieu Amo wrote:

>2005/12/5, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com>:
>
>
>>Today, as an experiment, we will be turning off new pages creation for
>>anonymous users in the English Wikipedia.
>>
>>
>
>I totally disagree with this.
>Disabling the creation of pages by anonymous contributors will not
>solve the problems of "nonsense pages" ; those pages will only be more
>difficult to track and to delete if they are created by registered
>users. The fact that some of the vandals will be annoyed by the need
>of creating an account and simply wander away is negligible compared
>to the increase of the workload created by this. And here, I'm only
>talking about the bad things ; we will also loose a lot of good new
>pages.
>
>Simply, the fact is you're not looking at the right place. This is a
>problem we cannot solve locally ; by doing this, you are only trying
>to settle the symptoms instead of going directly to the reason of the
>problem. We should inform people ; we should warn them about the
>danger of writing lies.
>Internet users are not stupid. We should put a warning, that, when an
>anonymous create a new article, will explain that he is entirely
>responsible for what he writes ; that he can be traced down ; that he
>may be sued if he writes slanderous content.
>We're Wikipedia. We do not forbid people to do something. We explain
>to them why it's bad.
>
>But, as you said, it's an experiment, so we'll see the results. Keep us posted.
>
>Solensean.
>
>--
>He was born with a gift of laughter and a sense that the world was
>mad. And that was all his patrimony.
>Sabatini, Rafael.
>
>Wikip?dia, l'encyclop?die libre.
>http://fr.wikipedia.org
>_______________________________________________
>WikiEN-l mailing list
>WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
>To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>
>
>
>
>
I am emphatically 100% with you on this one. Make them aware that there
are consequences. Unfortunately, most users do not, and will not beleive
this (see here: http://www.oxegen.ie/mb/viewtopic.php?t=50261 ) hell,
even in our recent scandal dealy, the ISPs refuse to co-operate. I'm not
exactly sure what an appropriate responce would be, other than either a
show of force, or, attempting to scale our RC patrol appropriately. I'm
going to go with the option most suited to my talents. I should be done
with a PHP system of tracking, and dealing with vandals within the next
week or two. Any PHP gurus, I could use some help ;]


from_name: geni

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Experiment on new pages

body:
On 12/6/05, Fastfission <fastfission at gmail.com> wrote:
> On a similar topic -- are there any tool for automatic monitoring new
> page creation?
>

With the current level of NP patrol I don't think it is needed.

--
geni


from_name: Tony Sidaway

body:
On 12/5/05, David Gerard <fun at thingy.apana.org.au> wrote:
> Note that checking each morning, the queue will
> typically contain one message from a human buried in 100 pieces of spam
> - please excuse the occasional human error!
>

Wait! There are humans on this list?  What kind of moderator are you?


from_name: Daniel Mayer

subject: [Foundation-l] Jimbo's fantasy...

body:
--- Frieda Brioschi <ubifrieda at gmail.com> wrote:
> I'd love to do it one day per month.
>
> But I'd prefer turning off new articles creation (for users and anonyms) too.

A monthly clean-up holiday (at least for the English Wikipedia)
 I think that is an absolutely
wonderful idea! We could kick it off with a whole week in, heck, the whole month of January. After
that it could be the 15th of each month.

At the very least it will give us a chance to catch a breath; keeping up with all the vandalistic
and dodgy edits to articles on en.wikipedia?s recent changes was like trying to take a sip from a
fire hose. I thus stopped even looking at RC some time ago.

I hope some good will come from this whole embarrassing episode. Our entire history thus far has
emphasized quantity over quality. It is high time that some balance is put into that equation. We
could also use these clean-up holidays to reflect on how better to keep a good balance. Team
editing works pretty well, but team patrol is very hard to do so far. We need better tools to
enable that.

-- mav

> 2005/12/6, Brian <brian0918 at gmail.com>:
> > Jimbo recently confessed his fantasy on #wikimedia:  to set aside January
> > 15th as Wikipedia Day. This would at least involve turning off all new
> > account creation and anonymous editing, and just spending the day "cleaning
> > up" in all senses of the phrase. Others suggested setting aside an entire
> > month for this, or doing it one day out of every month.
> >
> > So, can we make some form of this fantasy come true?

__________________________________________
Yahoo! DSL ? Something to write home about.
Just $16.99/mo. or less.
dsl.yahoo.com


subject: [Foundation-l] Jimbo's fantasy...