subject: [Foundation-l] UMP Convention

body:
On 05/10/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 10/5/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:

> > We're a top-20 website, and the only one that's run on a shoestring.
> > This is barely the beginning.
> > ("Google? ... Oh, yes. We were going to use their ads but their
> > servers couldn't possibly send them fast enough.")

> We've leveled off in terms of growth (it's still there but not at the
> rate it used to be). Unless we come up with something new (a way to
> make commons effectively searchable might be one) we may have pretty
> much reached our natural level of webpresence.

Using the self-selected and inherently bogus Alexa numbers, Wikipedia
is still slowly climbing in page rank and steadily increasing in page
views per million. Are you quite sure about that slowing? Is it the
first derivative or the second derivative that's going down?

(I mention only Wikipedia here, not any other project, because Alexa
goes by domain.)

It feels like the press are only just getting their heads around our existence.

> If that is the case it may be time to look to other areas. Mobile
> phones. Book form. Provideing stock photos and information for non
> profits (and to a degree profits).

I'm not saying that ridiculous growth has been good for us; in fact, I
think it hasn't. en: could certainly do with just a little less of the
public glare, though that's not going to happen - we're way too useful
to the actual readers, and we'll only get better in breadth of
coverage and quality in the areas already covered.

In stock photos: Commons has I understand plans for much better
categorisation. The plans to make categories in MediaWiki work more
like tags will help (if they can ever work around MySQL being
basically crap at it without reworking the entire wiki engine). You
describe Commons to a journalist and they go "oh, like Getty Images?"
and you answer "yep, we're nothing like there yet but we want
something that good." Where "good" means an editor in a hurry can
search Commons, find a pic and slap it in the paper labeled "(c)
Photographer, reusable under cc-by-sa." You would, with a moment's
thought, see just *how much* press editors would love something like
that they don't have to pay Getty Images rates for.

- d.


list: wikimedia-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: David Gerard

subject: [Foundation-l] UMP Convention


list: commons-l

subject: [Commons-l] [Foundation-l] UMP Convention

body:
I just wrote the following in a message on Wikimedia/Wikipedia
popularity to foundation-l:

> In stock photos: Commons has I understand plans for much better
> categorisation. The plans to make categories in MediaWiki work more
> like tags will help (if they can ever work around MySQL being
> basically crap at it without reworking the entire wiki engine). You
> describe Commons to a journalist and they go "oh, like Getty Images?"
> and you answer "yep, we're nothing like there yet but we want
> something that good." Where "good" means an editor in a hurry can
> search Commons, find a pic and slap it in the paper labeled "(c)
> Photographer, reusable under cc-by-sa." You would, with a moment's
> thought, see just *how much* press editors would love something like
> that they don't have to pay Getty Images rates for.

The conversation came from one particular journalist and watching his
eyes light up at the idea of a free photo repository that was any
bloody good.

So. I've never used Getty Images or a similar stock photo database.

* What does Commons need in terms of indexing to be that *usable*?
* How are we for subject area coverage? (I have no idea what searches
are popular.)
* Do we have a list of taglines print editors can slap on photos and
be working within the licence? Shorter the better, obviously.
("Working within the license" here meaning that it would be clear to a
judge that when the paper put the photographer's name and "Reusable
under Creative Commons cc-by-sa 1/2/2.5" they were communicating it
enough for any sensible person and not even the most querulous
cc-by-sa user would have a real case. Though that's  verging on
lawyering without a licence. But anyway.)

etc. What question have I missed? What do we need to be a useful image
repository for consumers such as commercial print media? Imagine that
much open content circulating, and spreading the notion of openness
...

- d.


list: wikitech-l

from_name: brion at pobox.com

subject: [Wikitech-l] MediaWiki automated test run failure 2006-10-06

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

Running test TODO: Table security: embedded pipes (http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2006-April/034637.html)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: Link containing double-single-quotes '' (bug 4598)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: Template with thumb image (with link in description)... FAILED!
Running test Template infinite loop... FAILED!
Running test TODO: message transform: <noinclude> in transcluded template (bug 4926)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: message transform: <onlyinclude> in transcluded template (bug 4926)... FAILED!
Running test BUG 1887, part 2: A <math> with a thumbnail- math enabled... FAILED!
Running test TODO: HTML bullet list, unclosed tags (bug 5497)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: HTML ordered list, unclosed tags (bug 5497)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: HTML nested bullet list, open tags (bug 5497)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: HTML nested ordered list, open tags (bug 5497)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: Parsing optional HTML elements (Bug 6171)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: Inline HTML vs wiki block nesting... FAILED!
Running test TODO: Mixing markup for italics and bold... FAILED!
Running test TODO: 5 quotes, code coverage +1 line... FAILED!
Running test TODO: HTML Hex character encoding.... FAILED!
Running test TODO: dt/dd/dl test... FAILED!

Passed 420 of 437 tests (96.11%) FAILED!


list: foundation-l

from_name: geni

subject: [Foundation-l] UMP Convention

body:
On 10/5/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> Using the self-selected and inherently bogus Alexa numbers, Wikipedia
> is still slowly climbing in page rank and steadily increasing in page
> views per million. Are you quite sure about that slowing? Is it the
> first derivative or the second derivative that's going down?
>

Alexa rank is staying pretty steady though. We are growing but not at
the rate we once were.

> It feels like the press are only just getting their heads around our existence.

I beg to differ. In any case we have not for the most part relied on
the press for growth.

>
> In stock photos: Commons has I understand plans for much better
> categorisation. The plans to make categories in MediaWiki work more
> like tags will help (if they can ever work around MySQL being
> basically crap at it without reworking the entire wiki engine).

So is everyone else. The results so far have been indiferent. A lot of
people out there are looking for an effective way of searching images.
Whoever finds it is going to be able to cash in big time.

>You
> describe Commons to a journalist and they go "oh, like Getty Images?"
> and you answer "yep, we're nothing like there yet but we want
> something that good." Where "good" means an editor in a hurry can
> search Commons, find a pic and slap it in the paper labeled "(c)
> Photographer, reusable under cc-by-sa."

If you want that you are going to have to remove GFDL as one of the
standard image upload options.

>You would, with a moment's
> thought, see just *how much* press editors would love something like
> that they don't have to pay Getty Images rates for.
>

They are one user certianly

--
geni


subject: [Foundation-l] UMP Convention


subject: [Foundation-l] UMP Convention

body:
On 06/10/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 10/5/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:

> > In stock photos: Commons has I understand plans for much better
> > categorisation. The plans to make categories in MediaWiki work more
> > like tags will help (if they can ever work around MySQL being
> > basically crap at it without reworking the entire wiki engine).

> So is everyone else. The results so far have been indiferent. A lot of
> people out there are looking for an effective way of searching images.
> Whoever finds it is going to be able to cash in big time.

Yes, well, there is that! However Getty does it is good enough for
people to pay real money for, fwiw.

> >You
> > describe Commons to a journalist and they go "oh, like Getty Images?"
> > and you answer "yep, we're nothing like there yet but we want
> > something that good." Where "good" means an editor in a hurry can
> > search Commons, find a pic and slap it in the paper labeled "(c)
> > Photographer, reusable under cc-by-sa."

> If you want that you are going to have to remove GFDL as one of the
> standard image upload options.

I'd like it myself, but then I tend to make my photos PD or
copyleft-self (GFDL+cc-by-sa-any). People who would quite like to see
"(c) Me Memememe Meeee - reusable under cc-by-sa" will licence their
work accordingly.

(Personally I consider the GFDL a pretend-open licence for print use
of images; it's technically free content, but the compliance
requirements are onerous.)

> >You would, with a moment's
> > thought, see just *how much* press editors would love something like
> > that they don't have to pay Getty Images rates for.

> They are one user certianly

My point is that I think it would be worth it so people see more open
content out in the world.

- d.


subject: [Foundation-l] UMP Convention


body:
On 10/5/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> * Do we have a list of taglines print editors can slap on photos and
> be working within the licence? Shorter the better, obviously.
> ("Working within the license" here meaning that it would be clear to a
> judge that when the paper put the photographer's name and "Reusable
> under Creative Commons cc-by-sa 1/2/2.5" they were communicating it
> enough for any sensible person and not even the most querulous
> cc-by-sa user would have a real case. Though that's  verging on
> lawyering without a licence. But anyway.)
>

title is a problem. other than that It think:

(c)whoever used under creative commons Attribution-ShareAlike
creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5

Would probably do. We might be able to make it shorter by registering
say atsa.cc (depends about how strict the Territory of Cocos (Keeling)
Islands are about inforceing their registration rules) and hosting a
copy of the lisence there.
--
geni


subject: [Foundation-l] UMP Convention

body:
On 10/6/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 06/10/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> Yes, well, there is that! However Getty does it is good enough for
> people to pay real money for, fwiw.
>

most of the users will likely have learned to use the system. Most of
our current users will not wish to do that.

>
> I'd like it myself, but then I tend to make my photos PD or
> copyleft-self (GFDL+cc-by-sa-any). People who would quite like to see
> "(c) Me Memememe Meeee - reusable under cc-by-sa" will licence their
> work accordingly.
>
> (Personally I consider the GFDL a pretend-open licence for print use
> of images; it's technically free content, but the compliance
> requirements are onerous.)
>

Of course. The problem is that a lot of uploads at the moment are GFDL
because that is the licence people think they are most familiar with.
Mind you perhaps the GFDL wiki lisence will be better (I see that
creative commons has one)

> My point is that I think it would be worth it so people see more open
> content out in the world.
>

And I agree but I look more to new uses. How can we use free content
in ways that content has never been used before.

That said newspapers and other traditional media give us a way to
reach out to an audience that doesn't really know about us but has the
power vastly improve the extent of our content. In some ways the
combined IP of AP and getty is nothing to that held by out parents and
grandparents.

--
geni


subject: [Foundation-l] UMP Convention


subject: [Foundation-l] UMP Convention

body:
On 06/10/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:

> That said newspapers and other traditional media give us a way to
> reach out to an audience that doesn't really know about us but has the
> power vastly improve the extent of our content. In some ways the
> combined IP of AP and getty is nothing to that held by out parents and
> grandparents.

Open content: a way for the little people to actually use their
automatic copyright grant.

- d.


subject: [Foundation-l] UMP Convention


from_name: Steve Summit

subject: [Wikitech-l] Throttling rebuildall.php?

body:
Mike O wrote:
> My ISP keeps killing the rebuildall.php script.  ...it regularly spikes
> the CPU utilization to between 70% and 90%. ... The script might run
> about 60 seconds max. Is there anyway to throttle it so that it works
> slower or uses less CPU time? I tried forcing the priority to stay low
> (using the 'nice' command and adjusted priority to 19, the lowest
> possible), and even so, as I said, I think the ISP has some script
> running that kills the process after a max of about 4000 articles indexed.

It might be possible to throttle it, but it probably wouldn't be
useful to.

It would be good to know whether your ISP is killing the
process because of sustained high CPU usage, or overall CPU time.
If it's overall CPU time, then throttling won't help, because it's
going to take as many CPU cycles to do the job as it takes to do
the job, and spreading them out over a longer period, though it
will obviously reduce the load average, won't reduce the overall
time.

Try running the command

	ulimit -a

on the same account where rebuildall.php runs, to see if there
are any CPU time or other limits being imposed on you.

If the script is being killed because it's spiking the load
average, and even when you've niced it, this is shortsighted on
your ISP's part.  It's a characteristic of the Unix (and Linux)
schedulers that if a process is 100% CPU-intensive, and if there
are no other CPU-intensive processes competing with it, it will
gobble up 100% of the CPU, even if it is maximally niced.
There's nothing wrong with this, and one shouldn't feel guilty
about "gobbling up" the CPU in this way.  The CPU is there to be
used, so if no one else needs it, your process might as well use
all of it.  If and when other processes start up that need some
CPU, Unix/Linux will share it with them fairly, or more-than-fairly
if you've done the polite thing and niced your process down.


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [Foundation-l] Mywikipediaspace

body:
Jimmy Wales wrote:

>Lars Aronsson wrote:
>
>
>>Not in all that detail, no.  But that would be judged by the
>>encyclopedic qualities of the text, not by the commercial motives
>>behind it.  There certainly are notable hotels that deserve
>>articles of their own, even if it's almost always a good idea to
>>avoid writing about yourself.  What I wrote is that commercial
>>companies are free to pay someone to write *good* articles for
>>Wikipedia.  And prices and phone numbers are not part of any good
>>article that I can think of.
>>
>>
>No, actually, they are not free to do that, and I consider it deeply
>unethical if they do.  They are free to pay someone to write whatever
>they like, and put it on their own website, and release it under the GNU
>FDL.  They are not free to edit Wikipedia for pay.
>
If someone gets paid by someone else to write a Wikipedia article that
falls within established criteria, how will we ever know that they have
been paid unless they announce it?

Ec


subject: [Foundation-l] Mywikipediaspace


list: wikien-l

subject: [WikiEN-l] List of banned books

body:
Matt Brown wrote:

>On 10/4/06, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
>
>
>>In general, I find the {{fact}} tagging to be overdone in Wikipedia.  A
>>better option is to nuke the unsourced material. Sometimes {{fact}} is
>>warranted, I don't mean that it is always a bad idea.  But it is overdone.
>>
>>
>Personally, I tag something with {{fact}} when I believe it to be
>correct but it's unsourced and I don't know where to verify it myself.
> If I believe it's actually wrong, I prefer to move it to the talk
>page pending verification.
>
That's more sensible.

The overdone tagging goes both ways.  Sometimes the proper bold act is
just to remove the tag, and other times to remove the alleged information.

Ec


from_name: Tony Jacobs

body:
>From: "Parker Peters" <onmywayoutster at gmail.com>
>Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
>To: wikien-l at wikipedia.org, jwales at wikia.com
>Subject: [WikiEN-l] Quitting Wikipedia and wanted you to know why.
>Date: Thu, 5 Oct 2006 21:38:18 -0500
>

There's a lot of truth in that email.  I'm disappointed with David's
response, which is to question the examples given, and basically evade the
point.  The point is not wrong, and it's that we've allowed ourselves to
develop a culture of disrespect, contempt, and dickishness.  We haven't made
it a priority to insure that Wikipedians, especially admins, treat one
another with respect and dignity at all times.  We're actually developing a
reputation as a place of arrogance and nastiness, a place of heavy-handed
thugishness, a place where people treat each other quite badly.  That's bad
for the project.

Rather than defensively trying to say why Parker Peters is wrong, we should
be introspectively asking what we can do to make Wikipedia a better work
environment.  I see no reason why Wikipedians shouldn't set a standard for
excellent treatment of contributors.  In Jimbo's Statement of Principles, I
read #7: "Anyone with a complaint should be treated with the utmost respect
and dignity."  We seem to be very quick to revert to the final sentence of
the paragraph, which says, "I must not let the "squeaky wheel" be greased
just for being a jerk."  The trouble is in being too quick to decide that
someone is "just a jerk".  When you decide someone's just a jerk - they
often become one, and I don't blame them!

I've seen admins treat regular users like dog shit way too many times.  Why
doesn't ArbCom come down on admins who fail to respect contributors?  Why
isn't that a high priority?  We're not in an early development stage at this
point, where the whole cowboy, run-and-gun mentality is all that valuable.
We've reached a plateau where other things start to matter a lot - things
like maintaining an atmosphere in which good writers will want to contribute
their valuable time.  Wikipedia's grown up a bit, and we should really start
acting like grownups.

The email from Parker Peters makes me sad, because it hits so close to home.
  If we don't start demanding civility, not in some hollow sense where we
manage to avoid personal attacks, but in a real sense that involves treating
people with actual dignity, we're going to start seeing a lot more fallout.

I'm not citing any examples, or getting specific, not because I can't (I
could go on and on), but because I don't want people to focus on attacking
whatever particular case I bring up.  The point is that more and more people
are thinking of Wikipedia as a place to go and get showered with abuse, with
little or no provocation.  Is that what we want?

I suggest we take a cue from those great philosophers from San Dimas, and
make it a site policy to "Be excellent to each other".

Tony Jacobs/GTBacchus


subject:
[Foundation-l] Ensuring veracity of articles based on
	print	sources

body:
Andrew Gray wrote:

>On 03/10/06, James Hare <messedrocker at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>>For those books not mentioned in Google, we would of course do our best to
>>compile a list. Then once the list is made, knowing Google, it would only be
>>a matter of time that the list of old books would be listed on Google,
>>therefore making my testing mechanism work.
>>
>>
>It would be simpler just to toss the name into copac.ac.uk or
>catalog.loc.gov and see if it appears! But this still doesn't tell us
>anything beyond "I am claiming this book supports me".
>
Absolutely!   And that claim is only sometimes a hoax.  It can as easily
be a good-faith misinterpretation of the information.

>It still doesn't get past the fact that I belive David when he says
>"This band does indeed appear on page seventeen of Australian Indie
>Rock Monthly, August 1979", but am slightly less inclined to believe
>the unknown chap claiming he's found something earthshattering in a
>1937 issue of a Russian underground newspaper...
>
It takes a long time to build trust, and there are still many long
standing Wikipedians whose judgement I would question on some issues but
I would trust on others.  I'm sure we all keep personal lists of that
source.  The newbie who quotes the 1937 Russian newspaper in support of
his point could very well be right.  It would a gross assumption of bad
faith to reject his citation solely on the basis that he is a newbie.

>Fundamentally, use of an offline (or subscription, etc) source is a
>good and sensible thing, but it requires a modicum of trust that we're
>getting a reliable link between the page and the information quoted;
>we can't get around this by preparing lists of reliable and unreliable
>texts, we can only get around this by someone "trusted" saying yes,
>I've looked at that, it's there.
>
Everything should be checked and re-checked independently, but that's
only an ideal.  We're already having difficulties getting software that
gives us a stable version that has only been checked for common
vandalism.  In time we should go much further than that, and allow
statistically based algorithms that will give a measure of probably
accuracy based on the review of multiple readers.

Ec


body:
Charles Matthews wrote:

>From: <charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com>
>Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
>To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
>Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Quitting Wikipedia and wanted you to know why.
>Date: Fri, 6 Oct 2006 11:00:02 +0100
>
>"Tony Jacobs" wrote
>
> > We're actually developing a
> > reputation as a place of arrogance and nastiness, a place of
>heavy-handed
> > thugishness, a place where people treat each other quite badly.
>
>That rep has always been there, actually. There have always been admins who
>have treated vandal-chasing as central. The vandals have complained, the
>trolls are definitive loudmouths when it comes to their own grievances. I
>don't know how you would judge whether matters are getting worse or better,
>just from the hubbub.

I can only speak about my own impressions.  It's possible that I've just
been sticking my nose into different places lately, and picking up different
smells.  I'd still rather address how we can be more respectful and civil
than argue over whether those who see us as disrespectful are worth
listening to.  Some of them are; that's enough for me.  Why couldn't we have
a reputation, even among trolls, as a place that won't tolerate nonsense,
but will at least treat you with dignity while they show you the door?
Wouldn't that be better?  I know that some admins manage to deal with
vandals and trolls without enraging them, and I'll agree it's tricky, but
it's worthwhile.  I know some trolls, too, and I know that being treated
abusively makes them feel vindicated, and want to troll again.  When they're
treated with dignity, it sort of brings them up short, and takes the
satisfaction out of it.

>
> >  Why
> > doesn't ArbCom come down on admins who fail to respect contributors?
>Why
> > isn't that a high priority?
>
>Why don't we get the cases brought that mean we could do that? We have a
>clear policy on civility. Some people do reckon that long service gives
>them some rights in how they talk to others. They are certainly wrong about
>that, and should note well that ArbCom doesn't have binding precedents, and
>may well up the tariff of punishment for shooting off your mouth. As far as
>I can see, this causes a large outcry when it is proposed, but it may well
>happen.
>

Not being much of an ArbCom lurker, I can't speak as to which cases you're
brought, and in fairness, I /have/ seen ArbCom admonish admins regarding
civility more than once.  Still, it seems to me that the admin community in
general does not have the impression that there's much sanction against
incivility.  I see admins shitting on users repeatedly, with very little
visible discouragement.  I try to speak out when I see it, and will continue
to do so.  I hope others will do the same; eventually the community's voice
is even louder than ArbCom's.  Nonetheless, I hope arbitrators will take
seriously the idea that the way our admins treat users is a very important
part of Wikipedia's public face, and that administrative arrogance is a
liability to the project.

Tony Jacobs/GTBacchus


from_name: Mike O

subject: [Wikitech-l] Throttling rebuildall.php?

body:
My ISP keeps killing the rebuildall.php script. I watch it using the 'top' shell command and it regularly spikes the CPU utilization to between 70% and 90%. It stays there for a few seconds then drops, and goes back again, cycling like that. The script might run about 60 seconds max. Is there anyway to throttle it so that it works slower or uses less CPU time? I tried forcing the priority to stay low (using the 'nice' command and adjusted priority to 19, the lowest possible), and even so, as I said, I think the ISP has some script running that kills the process after a max of about 4000 articles indexed.

Mike O

--
_______________________________________________
Surf the Web in a faster, safer and easier way:
Download Opera 9 at http://www.opera.com

Powered by Outblaze


from_name: Sarah

subject: [WikiEN-l] RFA has gone weird

body:
On 10/6/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> As I said, it'd be nice if most editors could get it without
> ever-increasing requirements on RFA. Should there be a requirement
> beyond "will not go batshit with the tools"?
>
Do we want to lower the requirements, though? We have 1,000 admins,
most of whom aren't that active and don't need to be. The requirements
need to be *right*, but that needn't mean lower. We're still promoting
people who don't know the policies several months after promotion, and
I'm talking about the basic ones e.g. don't block when you're involved
in a content dispute. Against that, I saw someone lose an RfA (or he
was losing the last time I looked), because he wasn't putting the
correct tags on vandals' pages when he reverted them, which was
absurd. So it's a question of drawing up sensible criteria. I don't
like the "no big deal" thing, because it's prescriptive; the reality
is that adminship *is* regarded as a big deal.

Sarah


from_name: daniwo59 at aol.com

subject: [WikiEN-l] Parker Peters's comments

body:
Originally, I planned to answer Parker Peters's email. I wanted to say
something, at least, but I didn't want it to be trite. I didn't want to defend
some admin actions while agreeing with him about others. There will be (have
been?) plenty of people to do that. In the end, all of that is irrelevant,
because it is his perception of the problem that really matters, not whether the
problem is truly relevant in particular instance X or Z. It is a macro-issue,
and it deserves macro-answers, or alternately, macro-changing in our  thinking.

I think the real issue can be boiled down to a single statement: "Wikipedia
is big ... really, really big." As of yesterday, Alexa ranks us the number 12
website in the world, and we are still climbing. In English alone, we have
close  to 1.5 million articles and 6 million total pages. We have over 2.4
million users and close to 600 thousand images. I don't know how  many edits we
are getting per day, per hour, per second, but I can  only assume that it is a
very substantial number.

No single person, or even small group of people, can tend to something this
big, or even familiarize themselves with all its nooks and crannies. Yet we
have  to. That is the challenge.

There are 1,015 people with admin powers, and for various reasons it is
assumed that the burden of responsibility lies with them (it really doesn't,
since it should rest on the entire community, but that is a different story). Of
these thousand or so people, some are more active than others. Some can be
found  patrolling the projects every hour of every day, while others pop in for a
few  minutes every few months, and still others are gone for good.

As such, the burden is overwhelming. There is so much to do, so much that
needs tending, but we've grown faster than our admnistrative structure, and the
fissures are beginning to show. By piling on the load, it is only natural
that  admins (and here I mean people who perform admin tasks, whether they are
admins  or not) begin to feel frustrated and burn out. It is especially onerous
when  every action is going to be viewed by people who will challenge it--and
the  admin--any way they can. Do you risk making all the rapid decisions that
need to  be made, one after the other, even if it means that some bad
decisions will  inevitably be made? Do you risk maintaining old procedures, which once
worked  quite well but are starting to buckle under the weight, or do you
experiment  with something new and untested? If there is to be change, what are
the  priorities? If there is to be discussion about change, at what point do we
end  the talking and decide to act?

These are some of the real issues that Parker Peters is raising. Note that
they are dilemmas, and the nature of a dilemma is that there is no right
answer,  except perhaps from the safety of hindsight. And yet, decisions have to be
made.

Danny


from_name: Parker Peters

subject: [WikiEN-l] Quitting Wikipedia and wanted you to know why.

body:
I expected this sort of response from David Gerard. It saddens me to see it,
but I knew it would come.

This sort of attitude and obsessiveness is precisely why I am leaving.

David, I saw an email sent to this list on the admin who was removing the
unblock request from the page of a user he himself had blocked. YOU declared
it a nonissue. I'm sure that the affected user, who by our arbcom rules is
the "only" one allowed to make such an arbcom case, is completely unable to
do so since they are BLOCKED.

This is a larger problem I have with our policies, though. Every policy we
have on the matter is designed to make it impossible for an aggrieved user
to make any protest against abuse.

Parker.

On 10/6/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 06/10/06, Parker Peters <onmywayoutster at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > But I'm quitting. It's sad to say, I know, and even sadder that due to
> my
> > reasons for quitting, I can't trust leaving a goodbye message on my user
> > page or mailing from my normal account. But for the things I am about to
> > say, I know that several admins and possibly those higher up in the
> project
> > would ban me just for saying it. I know this message may never reach
> this
> > list either, but I'm at least going to try. I'm doing it this way
> because
> > someday, I might want to come back, and I'd like to be able to come back
> > under the same username I left.
>
>
> Being banned for speaking out? I know of no cases. The claim was most
> frequently heard from the hydra commonly tagged "Enviroknnot", but he
> was banned for being a pathological fuckwit and for assuming no-one
> could possibly work out it was him every time just by looking at the
> way he always came back making the same edits to the same bunch of
> articles.
>
>
> > I saw a thread earlier today which I thought was monstrous - a user
> whose
> > talk page was locked for "unblock template abuse", whose only crime or
> > "abuse" of the template was removing the template after the blocking
> admin
> > consistently and maliciously removed it. This thread was stopped by the
> > assertion of David Gerard that the person who started the thread was
> > "Enviroknot." I don't give a damn who started the thread, if the
> question is
> > valid, the question is valid. I looked at the user in question, and I
> see
> > plenty of problems with the way it was handled, and at least two admins
> who
> > deserve at the least a stern censure and at the most, de-adminning for
> > abusive behavior. We NEED users to bring these problems up. We NEED to
> cull
> > the herd of abusive administrators.
>
>
> We have the Arbitration Committee for that. If you don't say anything,
> they don't know.
>
>
> > WE, the admins of wikipedia, broke it. We broke it by being stuck-up
> jerks.
> > We broke it by thinking we are better than normal editors, by getting
> full
> > of ourselves.
>
>
> If you are an admin then I am a notorious troll living in Houston.
>
>
> - d.
> _______________________________________________
> 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:
I'll respond below for you. Thanks for taking the time to write a thoughtful
response.

Parker

On 10/6/06, Tony Jacobs <gtjacobs at hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> >From: "Parker Peters" <onmywayoutster at gmail.com>
> >Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> >To: wikien-l at wikipedia.org, jwales at wikia.com
> >Subject: [WikiEN-l] Quitting Wikipedia and wanted you to know why.
> >Date: Thu, 5 Oct 2006 21:38:18 -0500
> >
>
> There's a lot of truth in that email.  I'm disappointed with David's
> response, which is to question the examples given, and basically evade the
> point.  The point is not wrong, and it's that we've allowed ourselves to
> develop a culture of disrespect, contempt, and dickishness.  We haven't
> made
> it a priority to insure that Wikipedians, especially admins, treat one
> another with respect and dignity at all times.  We're actually developing
> a
> reputation as a place of arrogance and nastiness, a place of heavy-handed
> thugishness, a place where people treat each other quite badly.  That's
> bad
> for the project.

That is precisely what I was saying.

Rather than defensively trying to say why Parker Peters is wrong, we should
> be introspectively asking what we can do to make Wikipedia a better work
> environment.  I see no reason why Wikipedians shouldn't set a standard for
> excellent treatment of contributors.  In Jimbo's Statement of Principles,
> I
> read #7: "Anyone with a complaint should be treated with the utmost
> respect
> and dignity."  We seem to be very quick to revert to the final sentence of
> the paragraph, which says, "I must not let the "squeaky wheel" be greased
> just for being a jerk."  The trouble is in being too quick to decide that
> someone is "just a jerk".  When you decide someone's just a jerk - they
> often become one, and I don't blame them!

I don't blame them either. I've seen editors who get some incredibly
insulting things put into their user pages or talk pages and respond by
namecalling, to see the admin who made the original insult block them for
"incivility" with a lightning fast trigger finger. The only possible
explanation is that it was planned: the admin knew that the user was being
targeted and prodded, and was waiting for any excuse they could come up with
to drop a block.

I've seen our warning system misused and abused countless times; every POV
warrior seems to think it is their duty to send a "warning" for "vandalism"
if they see an edit they don't agree with, and then to abuse the person even
more if they are told that a good-faith edit isn't vandalism. Even worse,
thanks to the crummy and unreliable codes of "vandalism", these bad-faith
"warnings" can't be removed by the user without receiving more harassment
and abuse.

That is, until it escalates, when their friend the admin can be called in to
block whoever the POV warrior is attacking.

I've seen admins treat regular users like dog shit way too many times.  Why
> doesn't ArbCom come down on admins who fail to respect contributors?

Because, by design of the system, no arbcom case can ever be brought, and
even if it were, arbcom is FIRMLY on the side of the admin every time. Think
about it. In order to bring a case to arbcom, you have to (A) be the
aggrieved party, (B) have someone else sign on to the case at least twice
(you have to RFC beforehand or arbcom will just dismiss it), and (C) be a
"user in good standing."

How do the problem admins game the system? Three ways.
#1 - Make sure that the aggrieved party remains blocked. There are plenty of
ways to do this. Provoking them into incivility is one; the more times the
better, because it makes it very easy for the admin to say "oh they're just
an incivil jerk." As an added bonus, continually blocking the user makes
arbcom's rubber stamps more sympathetic to the admin, because the admin's
argument becomes "see how many times they've been blocked for incivility,
they're just harassing me."

#2 - Make sure that nobody else signs on to the case. Easiest way? Attack
solitary users, one at a time. Attack newbies as well. If they do find their
way into the dispute resolution system, they'll make mistakes, they'll sign
on to the wrong side or file in the wrong place, and the admin can
wikilawyer it away.

And remember: contradicting another admin is "incivil." That's why our
unblock policies have changed to require that the unblocking admin "talk to"
the original blocking admin. Well, that and to put yet another bureaucratic
roadblock into the system so that all the blocking admin has to do is stay
silent and nobody will unblock before the block period is up.

#3 - Again, the "in good standing" bit. Most likely, a user will try to come
back. Then, the admin gets to tag on "block evasion" or some other nonsense,
even if their only "evasion" is to try to file the report with arbcom or
admins noticeboard.

  Why isn't that a high priority?

Again, because the system is designed so that a user being hounded has no
chance to ever file the case, much less see it completed.

 We're not in an early development stage at this
> point, where the whole cowboy, run-and-gun mentality is all that valuable.
> We've reached a plateau where other things start to matter a lot - things
> like maintaining an atmosphere in which good writers will want to
> contribute
> their valuable time.  Wikipedia's grown up a bit, and we should really
> start
> acting like grownups.

I agree. But the system is designed to protect admins at all costs, no
matter how abusive.

The email from Parker Peters makes me sad, because it hits so close to home.
>   If we don't start demanding civility, not in some hollow sense where we
> manage to avoid personal attacks, but in a real sense that involves
> treating
> people with actual dignity, we're going to start seeing a lot more
> fallout.

We already have. We lose prospective new editors to this problem every day.
Not just the worst cases: we lose editors who edit once, see someone post a
derogatory comment about their edit, and walk away because wikipedia isn't a
civil place.

I'm not citing any examples, or getting specific, not because I can't (I
> could go on and on), but because I don't want people to focus on attacking
> whatever particular case I bring up.  The point is that more and more
> people
> are thinking of Wikipedia as a place to go and get showered with abuse,
> with
> little or no provocation.  Is that what we want?

It's not what I want, and that's why I'm leaving. Because that's what it has
become.

I suggest we take a cue from those great philosophers from San Dimas, and
> make it a site policy to "Be excellent to each other".

That would make an "excellent" idea.


body:
I've given my responses as to why arbcom doesn't bother with these cases in
another response, Jimbo.

But here's the short side:
you've put up so many roadblocks to starting an arbcom case, and there are
so many items an abusive administrator can throw in the way of one, that
there is no chance for any of these cases to possibly see arbcom attention.

Our dispute resolution system is a joke.

On 10/6/06, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
>
> charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com wrote:
> >> Why doesn't ArbCom come down on admins who fail to respect
> >> contributors?  Why isn't that a high priority?
> >
> > Why don't we get the cases brought that mean we could do that? We
> > have a clear policy on civility. Some people do reckon that long
> > service gives them some rights in how they talk to others. They are
> > certainly wrong about that, and should note well that ArbCom doesn't
> > have binding precedents, and may well up the tariff of punishment for
> > shooting off your mouth. As far as I can see, this causes a large
> > outcry when it is proposed, but it may well happen.
>
> I back Charles 100% on this.
>
> I am on the ArbCom mailing list, and take an active part in it.  I can
> assure everyone that the ArbCom takes a very dim view of admins behaving
> badly.  The thing is, unless cases are brought, then the ArbCom doesn't
> see it.
>
> It's pretty easy to say "thuggish admins going wild"... but what is
> needed are specific examples and cases.
>
> There is no doubt in my mind that some of what has been raised in this
> thread is valid.  As the community has grown, it has become harder to
> maintain the distinction between the kindness and love of Wikipedia and
> the hostility you find in most of the Internet.
>
> But, I think we still do a pretty good job, even though as humans of
> course we could always do better.
>
> --Jimbo
> _______________________________________________
> 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: Jimmy Wales

subject: [Foundation-l] Mywikipediaspace

body:
Daniel Mayer wrote:
> No it is not a policy and it never will if I have anything to do with it. I'm sure Jimmy was
> talking about companies paying PR firms and similar ilk to promote them by writing sanitized and
> glowing Wikipedia articles about the company paying the bill.

That's right.

> I would *love* to see many groups pay or otherwise get people to edit Wikipedia to add NPOV and
> verified content; esp in areas and in languages we now have poor coverage in.

Absolutely.

There are two entirely separate issues here.  Imagine that a grant is
secured to hire people as "evangelizers" and initial admins in, say,
African languages.  Great.  Or, imagine that a health education
organization decides that the best way to educate the public on health
issues is to have staff contribute their work to Wikipedia.  Great.

Now imagine that someone sets up a website that strongly implies that
paying him will get a company a good article in Wikipedia, and follows
that up by posting blatant PR puffery and claiming that it is NPOV.
That's a very serious problem, especially in an era when we are seeing
increasing attention paid to "how to manipulate wikipedia for the good
of your client" by the lower dregs of the PR industry.

We can not and should not engage in witch hunts related to this.  But we
can and should stand firm on the ethical principles.

--Jimbo


subject: [Foundation-l] Mywikipediaspace


body:
On 06/10/06, Parker Peters <onmywayoutster at gmail.com> wrote:

> But I'm quitting. It's sad to say, I know, and even sadder that due to my
> reasons for quitting, I can't trust leaving a goodbye message on my user
> page or mailing from my normal account. But for the things I am about to
> say, I know that several admins and possibly those higher up in the project
> would ban me just for saying it. I know this message may never reach this
> list either, but I'm at least going to try. I'm doing it this way because
> someday, I might want to come back, and I'd like to be able to come back
> under the same username I left.

Being banned for speaking out? I know of no cases. The claim was most
frequently heard from the hydra commonly tagged "Enviroknnot", but he
was banned for being a pathological fuckwit and for assuming no-one
could possibly work out it was him every time just by looking at the
way he always came back making the same edits to the same bunch of
articles.

> I saw a thread earlier today which I thought was monstrous - a user whose
> talk page was locked for "unblock template abuse", whose only crime or
> "abuse" of the template was removing the template after the blocking admin
> consistently and maliciously removed it. This thread was stopped by the
> assertion of David Gerard that the person who started the thread was
> "Enviroknot." I don't give a damn who started the thread, if the question is
> valid, the question is valid. I looked at the user in question, and I see
> plenty of problems with the way it was handled, and at least two admins who
> deserve at the least a stern censure and at the most, de-adminning for
> abusive behavior. We NEED users to bring these problems up. We NEED to cull
> the herd of abusive administrators.

We have the Arbitration Committee for that. If you don't say anything,
they don't know.

> WE, the admins of wikipedia, broke it. We broke it by being stuck-up jerks.
> We broke it by thinking we are better than normal editors, by getting full
> of ourselves.

If you are an admin then I am a notorious troll living in Houston.

- d.


body:
Tony Jacobs wrote:
> Why couldn't we have a reputation, even among trolls, as a place that
> won't tolerate nonsense, but will at least treat you with dignity
> while they show you the door?  Wouldn't that be better?  I know that
> some admins manage to deal with vandals and trolls without enraging them,
> and I'll agree it's tricky, but it's worthwhile.  I know some trolls,
> too, and I know that being treated abusively makes them feel vindicated,
> and want to troll again.  When they're treated with dignity, it sort of
> brings them up short, and takes the satisfaction out of it.

There's a fine line here, and I don't want to sound like I'm
arguing on the "there's no problem here" side of it, because I
agree, hotheadedness and snideness are always wrong, and more
civility is always nice.

The problem, of course, is that there's one breed of troll
(arguably this is the very definition of a troll) that
absolutely thrives on being talked to and treated *with* dignity.
You engage these trolls in "civilized discourse" at your peril,
because that's just what they want, and if you let them, they'll
drag you down into a never-ending, mind-rotting, Alice-down-a-
rabbit-hole "debate" that neither you nor the project has time
for and that won't accomplish anything positive in the end.
Furthermore, along the way they're liable to trick you into
something that will make you look bad in the eyes of the peanut
gallery.

As long as "treat you with dignity while they show you the door"
can sometimes mean "treat you with dignity while they show you
the door, IMMEDIATELY" (without passing GO, collecting $200,
or spending minute one discussing the possibility), I have no
argument with what you wrote.


body:
charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com wrote:
>> Why doesn't ArbCom come down on admins who fail to respect
>> contributors?  Why isn't that a high priority?
>
> Why don't we get the cases brought that mean we could do that? We
> have a clear policy on civility. Some people do reckon that long
> service gives them some rights in how they talk to others. They are
> certainly wrong about that, and should note well that ArbCom doesn't
> have binding precedents, and may well up the tariff of punishment for
> shooting off your mouth. As far as I can see, this causes a large
> outcry when it is proposed, but it may well happen.

I back Charles 100% on this.

I am on the ArbCom mailing list, and take an active part in it.  I can
assure everyone that the ArbCom takes a very dim view of admins behaving
badly.  The thing is, unless cases are brought, then the ArbCom doesn't
see it.

It's pretty easy to say "thuggish admins going wild"... but what is
needed are specific examples and cases.

There is no doubt in my mind that some of what has been raised in this
thread is valid.  As the community has grown, it has become harder to
maintain the distinction between the kindness and love of Wikipedia and
the hostility you find in most of the Internet.

But, I think we still do a pretty good job, even though as humans of
course we could always do better.

--Jimbo


subject: [WikiEN-l] List of banned books

body:
Matt Brown wrote:
> On 10/4/06, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
>> In general, I find the {{fact}} tagging to be overdone in Wikipedia.  A
>> better option is to nuke the unsourced material. Sometimes {{fact}} is
>> warranted, I don't mean that it is always a bad idea.  But it is overdone.
>
> Personally, I tag something with {{fact}} when I believe it to be
> correct but it's unsourced and I don't know where to verify it myself.
>  If I believe it's actually wrong, I prefer to move it to the talk
> page pending verification.

That's reasonable.  I would recommend that more caution be used, of
course, if the statement is one that we believe to be true, but *if
false* would be in some way hurtful to someone.

--Jimbo


subject: [WikiEN-l] RFA has gone weird

body:
David Gerard wrote:
> As I said, it'd be nice if most editors could get it without
> ever-increasing requirements on RFA...
> (Now, that's an interesting question: how voting pages of this
> sort get ever-increasing requirements, and what to do about it.
> FAC is another.)

It's an interesting aspect of human nature.  Those requirements
*always* tend to creep.  When you have people whose job it is to
set and enforce policy, and once they've set and enforced a given
level of policy, they *have* to raise the bar or invent new
policies, to give themselves something to do.  It's what they do.

If everything's humming along smoothly with the bar at a given
level, and everyone is so used to it that there's hardly any
enforcement to do, it's remarkably difficult to sit back and say,
"Wow, everything's working so well, I guess we can go home early."
It's hard to let a system just "sit there and work".  There's an
overwhelming urge to say, "Okay, what more can we do?"

Somehow, these proclivities are no less present when the
regulators and monitors are volunteers whose available time
for the task is limited and precious.  And if anything, it's
the self-appointed regulators and monitors who have the greatest
tendency to get overly passionate about the job and go overboard
with the requirements.

As I believe H.G. Wells once wrote, "The lawgiver, of all beings,
most owes the law allegiance.  He of all men should behave as
though the law compelled him.  But it is the universal weakness
of mankind that what we are given to administer we presently
imagine we own."


body:
Admins are only taken to arbcom by other admins.

Welcome to the basic problem: in zeal to "protect admins from harassment by
trolls" we've made it nearly impossible for a normal user, being abused by
an admin, to protest. Protesting on your talk page leads to being blocked
for "incivility", leads to the admin's friends removing your unblock request
or just denying it, and by the time it goes up to Arbcom, what you have is
not a record of an admin who is pursuing a user, but rather a record of
someone who "has consistently been blocked by multiple admins for incivility
and vandalism and is trying to file an RFA to harass an admin."

The most egregious account I've seen was brought to us a few days ago, where
an admin blocked a user and then tag-teamed with a non-admin to repeatedly
remove the user's unblock requests, and finally got a third party to lock
the user's talk page for "unblock abuse."

I call that abusive. I know David came up with the red herring that the
reporter is "enviroknot", but I don't care who brought it up: that is
abusive behavior.

On 10/6/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 06/10/06, Parker Peters <onmywayoutster at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Because, by design of the system, no arbcom case can ever be brought,
> and
> > even if it were, arbcom is FIRMLY on the side of the admin every time.
> Think
> > about it. In order to bring a case to arbcom, you have to (A) be the
> > aggrieved party, (B) have someone else sign on to the case at least
> twice
> > (you have to RFC beforehand or arbcom will just dismiss it), and (C) be
> a
> > "user in good standing."
>
>
> Admins are never taken to arbcom? Admins are never deadminned? Welcome
> to 2006 where this is not the case.
>
>
> - d.
> _______________________________________________
> 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:
Parker Peters wrote:
> I've given my responses as to why arbcom doesn't bother with these cases in
> another response, Jimbo.
>
> But here's the short side:
> you've put up so many roadblocks to starting an arbcom case, and there are
> so many items an abusive administrator can throw in the way of one, that
> there is no chance for any of these cases to possibly see arbcom attention.

What are the blocks you see, and how should we remove them?

Clearly, there is no intention to make it difficult for anyone to start
an arbcom case.

--Jimbo


body:
"But let's play along for now", eh?

I see your mind is already made up. That, my dear David, is why I am not
about to let you have my username.

Regardless, since there are other admins and people on this list who are
willing to take this seriously and examine it in good faith, I'll answer
your question. Please keep a civil tongue in your head, sarcastic and nasty
responses are not what I'm looking for.

- I've blocked many obvious vandals in my time. The taggers, the page
blankers, the ones who want to put "hi" or "fuck" or "penis" on as many
pages as they can, that sort of thing.

- I've welcomed new users. I really wish our welcome message included item
links to the dispute resolution areas (broken as they are) these days. I
think it would help new users who get into a conflict when being bold, since
bold behavior often leads to conflicts with others. For that matter, why
isn't a welcome message automatically generated on the creation of any new
account's talk page, so they'd instantly see a "You have new messages" bar
and be able to see the welcome message? Why not do that instead of waiting
for an admin to come along and do it?

Too many new users, especially the ones that get targeted for abuse by pov
warriors, never get to see the welcome message because abusive admins and
users don't bother with it, they go straight into the "warnings" to try to
establish some excuse for blocking or other bad behavior.

- I've blocked a few people for less obvious vandalism - changing a date to
be wrong, altering a fact in a way that isn't truthful. I've unblocked a few
of these people when they left a message on their page or emailed me to
apologize and admit they just had their facts wrong. WP:AGF and civility are
very important when dealing with these sorts of things!

- I've screwed up and blocked someone in a conflict of interest. Twice. I
apologized later, but the damage was done. In one case I didn't apologize
until the 24 hours was up, because I didn't calm down quick enough and
nobody - thanks to the "contact the blocking admin first" stupidity we have
these days - was willing to unblock once I logged out. I got two "I want to
talk to you about this case" messages, but since I didn't respond, nobody
unblocked. In the second case, I unblocked after 10 hours, but only after
another admin contacted me on IRC. Their statement was that they wouldn't
unblock as it would be "incivil" to me to do so, but they thought I should
reconsider.

It's a stupid policy that leaves final decision on unblocking in the hands
of a hothead who just has to ignore any messages in order to make the block
stick.

Yes, it does bother me that I did this, and yes, this is partially why I'm
leaving, or at least taking a decently long wikibreak. Because I'd seen this
behavior in others, but catching myself doing it makes me unhappy with
myself, and realizing that I did it in part because I'd absorbed the "admins
are gods" culture in Wikipedia makes me worry I'd do it again on another bad
day.

- I've edited a lot.

- I've seen plenty of edit wars and enforced 3RR. Three times in my memory
someone's unblocked someone that I blocked for 3RR/edit warring when they
were tag-teaming someone else. Yes, they technically didn't violate 3RR.
Were they trying to provoke the other guy into it? Damn skippy they were.
Policy says you block both sides in an edit war, not just the 3RR violator,
and I was following that.

Every time, the unblocking admin "happened" to be one of their friends, or
at least it would appear that way since they made similar edits, showed up
on each other's talk pages a fair amount (usually to "suggest" that this or
that editor is close to a 3RR violation), and had the same interest-group
and language userblocks.

I'm sorry, but when all it takes is getting two of your buddies together to
tag-team someone you disagree with, 3RR doesn't work. It's just another tool
for the pov warriors to use to hold on to an article.

Plus, it was hard to decide which version to lock it to. And it was even
more annoying that after I locked it down to the supposed "wrong" version,
their friend who unblocked them comes along and uses his admin rights to set
it to their "preferred" version. But I knew full well that if I were to take
this to dispute resolution, or even leave a message on the user they'd
provoked to 3RR suggesting it, they and their friend the admin would start
their own RFC/RFAr case about how I was in a "conflict of interest" because
I was the one who'd blocked them, and their admin friend would accuse me of
wheel warring if I put it back or reblocked. And no matter the facts, it's
the one who makes the first accusation that sticks 90% of the time.

- I've never been involved in an arbcom case. I've read plenty. Half of
them, I'm sad to say, read like a drumhead trial more than an attempt to
look seriously at a case. No, I'm not counting the egregious examples, the
definite trolls and abusers. I'm counting only the ones where I think wrong
was done on both sides, and yet only one side got the book thrown at them,
with the other side who were just as wrong being excused because they were
"opposing a troll."

On 10/6/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 06/10/06, Parker Peters <onmywayoutster at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > I expected this sort of response from David Gerard. It saddens me to see
> it,
> > but I knew it would come.
> > This sort of attitude and obsessiveness is precisely why I am leaving.
>
>
> In your first email you stated you were an admin. Could you please
> tell of conflicts you dealt with? Leave names out if you like.
>
> (By the way, it's pretty much inconceivable I or anyone is going to
> somehow permanently ban an admin for speaking out on wikien-l; you
> should correct that one next time around. But let's play along for
> now.)
>
>
> - d.
> _______________________________________________
> 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: Stephen Streater

body:
On 6 Oct 2006, at 04:27, Draicone wrote:

> To be honest, I fully agree with you. There are too many editors, not
> just sysops, who feel they are better than the rest. There are too
> many sysops, then, taking the wrong decisions and not worrying about
> it. And there are too many people following along, taking their word
> for it and assuming nothing has gone wrong.

There are a few Admins who don't consider the
consequences of their actions, but there are many
more Admins and editors who are entirely reasonable.

I have explored the system and have not been banned,
it was not initially clear what the limits of "anyone can edit"
and "be bold" were. Perhaps a simple page of exceptions
would be handy. Some of these issues are still being
worked on by the community.

In my RfA, I put forward a strong case for Admins to
behave more like mentors than judges, juries and policemen.
Unfortunately, this was derailed for a completely different
reason - basically a question of whether I had been too
bold. Despite calls for my banning, this has not happened.
In fact, the most unhelpful RfA opposer has since left Wikipedia
- by giving people a hard time, she was given a hard time,
which is never fun.

I do feel there is a tendency for some people to provoke
a marginal situation by ignoring the needs of the out-of-line
users. This can make it worse to the point they feel they can
justify a banning. This is exactly the opposite of the consensus
building we should be striving for. A recent example of this is
the question of notability, where the "obviously right" people
didn't want to discuss the issue with the "I've got a better way"
person.

With a bit of goodwill, the [[WP:NOTABILITY]] page will
work, and people will all have learned to listen a bit more.

> Wikipedia is, as you say, broken.

Maybe. But there are many great articles and good
improvements to existing articles every day.

And will I ever be made an Admin? Who can say.


from_name: charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com

body:
Draicone wrote

> Wikipedia is, as you say, broken.

Actually WP is more popular than ever. The Alexa ranking has been spiking (up to #12) in the world, and the evidence is that the penetration rate with Internet users is going past 5% and up to 6% (no, I don't believe everything I read there, but trends are trends).

Does such humongous popularity put strain on the volunteers? Damn right. Is the system broken? No way. Things go on that should not, in an anywhere-near-perfect world. But that's nothing new here.

Charles

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from_name: Oldak Quill

body:
On 06/10/06, Parker Peters <onmywayoutster at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> And every one of the admins on wikipedia, myself included, has been guilty
> of it at one point. Some are more guilty than others. Some are jerks 100%
> of
> the time. Some have become so obsessed with their pet sockpuppet, be it
> Enviroknot, Freestylefrappe, Willy on Wheels,  Entmoots,  Pigsonthewing,
> JarlaxleArtemis, Karmafist, Lir, PoolGuy, or whatever else their pet
> sockpuppet of the week is that they are no longer useful

While you may have some valid points concerning the overzealous use of
blocking, I can't agree that "every one of the admins... has been guilty at
one point". Some admins prefer to avoid using blocks and getting involved in
arbitration for the reasons you state.

Your notion that users are blocked for speaking out is not true, I've not
seen it and can't imagine it happening without the blocker being chastised.
I, for one, have "spoken out" against over-zealous use of blocking,
anonymous editors' rights, etc. and have only, in response, received
civilised discussion.
--
Oldak Quill (oldakquill at gmail.com)


body:
On 6 Oct 2006, at 10:04, Tony Jacobs wrote:

>> From: "Parker Peters" <onmywayoutster at gmail.com>
>> Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
>> To: wikien-l at wikipedia.org, jwales at wikia.com
>> Subject: [WikiEN-l] Quitting Wikipedia and wanted you to know why.
>> Date: Thu, 5 Oct 2006 21:38:18 -0500
>>
>
> There's a lot of truth in that email.  I'm disappointed with David's
> response, which is to question the examples given, and basically
> evade the
> point.  The point is not wrong, and it's that we've allowed
> ourselves to
> develop a culture of disrespect, contempt, and dickishness.  We
> haven't made
> it a priority to insure that Wikipedians, especially admins, treat one
> another with respect and dignity at all times.  We're actually
> developing a
> reputation as a place of arrogance and nastiness, a place of heavy-
> handed
> thugishness, a place where people treat each other quite badly.
> That's bad
> for the project.
>
> Rather than defensively trying to say why Parker Peters is wrong,
> we should
> be introspectively asking what we can do to make Wikipedia a better
> work
> environment.  I see no reason why Wikipedians shouldn't set a
> standard for
> excellent treatment of contributors.  In Jimbo's Statement of
> Principles, I
> read #7: "Anyone with a complaint should be treated with the utmost
> respect
> and dignity."  We seem to be very quick to revert to the final
> sentence of
> the paragraph, which says, "I must not let the "squeaky wheel" be
> greased
> just for being a jerk."  The trouble is in being too quick to
> decide that
> someone is "just a jerk".  When you decide someone's just a jerk -
> they
> often become one, and I don't blame them!
>
> I've seen admins treat regular users like dog shit way too many
> times.  Why
> doesn't ArbCom come down on admins who fail to respect
> contributors?  Why
> isn't that a high priority?  We're not in an early development
> stage at this
> point, where the whole cowboy, run-and-gun mentality is all that
> valuable.
> We've reached a plateau where other things start to matter a lot -
> things
> like maintaining an atmosphere in which good writers will want to
> contribute
> their valuable time.  Wikipedia's grown up a bit, and we should
> really start
> acting like grownups.
>
> The email from Parker Peters makes me sad, because it hits so close
> to home.
>   If we don't start demanding civility, not in some hollow sense
> where we
> manage to avoid personal attacks, but in a real sense that involves
> treating
> people with actual dignity, we're going to start seeing a lot more
> fallout.
>
> I'm not citing any examples, or getting specific, not because I
> can't (I
> could go on and on), but because I don't want people to focus on
> attacking
> whatever particular case I bring up.  The point is that more and
> more people
> are thinking of Wikipedia as a place to go and get showered with
> abuse, with
> little or no provocation.  Is that what we want?
>
> I suggest we take a cue from those great philosophers from San
> Dimas, and
> make it a site policy to "Be excellent to each other".

It's the respect of other contributors which is sometimes lacking.

Ultimately, this place has to be fun.


from_name: Rory Stolzenberg

subject: [WikiEN-l] Absolutely amazing...

body:
Posted simultaneously at WT:RFA

I just saw the current message above the backlog tag at CAT:CSD. It reads:
<!-- Remove the comments around the line below this message (Adminbacklog)
to add a backlog tag. To remove the backlog tag, put comments tags around
it. Usually, the tag is added if there are 100 or more articles (or 200
articles & images combined) in this category. -->
When did it become acceptable to have 100 articles or 200 total things in
CAT:CSD? Since we now have backlogs more often, that means we should raise
the criteria for what is actually a backlog? Is this why we're unnecessarily
raising our standards on RfA, because if we don't have as many "backlogs,"
but still have just as many pages waiting to be processed, then we don't
need as many admins? This is appalling. We might as well stop promoting
admins and just delete the backlog tag, then we wouldn't have any "backlogs"
and nobody would have to do anything! Wouldn't that be nice? Ugh. This is
just silly. We need to stop dicking around and start actually being
productive. We're here to run an encyclopaedia, not pretend we're doing so
and accomplishing absolutely nothing.


from_name: Shinjiman

subject: [Wikitech-l] Comments on the new wikipedias

body:
Brion Vibber <brion at ...> writes:

>
> Minh Nguyen wrote:
> > Gerard, please note that Wikipedia hasn't standardized on ISO 639-2 like
> > Wiktionary has. Otherwise, you'd be using "eng.wikipedia.org" instead of
> > "en.wikipedia.org".
>
> With rare exceptions, we follow RFC 3066 for language codes; this is the
> standard used on the web for the Content-Language HTTP header, HTML 'lang'
> attribute, etc.
>
> This uses, roughly, in priority order:
> * 2-letter ISO 639-1 code
> * 3-letter ISO 639-2 code
> * One of the specially registered 'i-*' codes
> * Non-standard 'x-*' codes
>
> ISO 639-3 codes will most likely end up in there sooner or later.
>
> Where no standard codes are available, we've sometimes ended up using
something
> else; in this case we *should* be using the ISO 639-3 3-letter code. If
there
> are exceptions that are definitely wrong, we probably want to fix that.
>
>  > Maybe someday; I still remember going to
>  > "en2.wikipedia.org" way back when, so the URLs certainly aren't permanent.
>
> That was crude load-balancing before we had something better set up. :) It's
> redirected if you've got really old URLs from that period.
>

Hi all,

I think the RFC 3066 is deprecated, and replaced by RFC 4646 and RFC 4647.
Some of existing language codes that using in the software will be changed,
following by the RFC 4646. for example, 'zh-yue' becomes 'yue' and the tags
like 'zh-hans' and 'zh-hant' becomed valid, according to the RFC 4646. If the
language code is changed, not only the domain name are going to change, the
name that used in the php files (MessagesXx.php, names.php, and several php
files used in the extensions) should also be changed.

Shinjiman


from_name: Brion Vibber

body:
Shinjiman wrote:
> I think the RFC 3066 is deprecated, and replaced by RFC 4646 and RFC 4647.

Thank you for saying something productive and to the point. We can look into this.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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subject: [WikiEN-l] Parker Peters's comments

body:
Mgm,

I could agree with that. I think that maybe there ought to be multiple
grades of admin, who have specific abilities. Part of the problem right now
is that so many admins wield what might as well be "absolute power" when
compared to a normal user.

For instance, why not have a "first grade" admin who have the power only to
semiprotect articles (to protect from systemic anon-ip/newuser vandalism),
not to lock talk pages at all (including user talk pages) and to impose
blocks up to 48 hours but no longer? Make them ask for help if they see
anything that needs anything longer or appears to be a problem?

You could have a lot more of those less-powerful admins handling many of the
issues without worry about whether they went nuts, because even if they went
nuts, there's be a lot less permanent damage they could do.

Parker

On 10/6/06, MacGyverMagic/Mgm <macgyvermagic at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Some adminship requests get opposed because the user aren't familiar in a
> specific field of administrator work. If we could specifically give people
> the tools they have the knowledge for, more requests would succeed.
> Perhaps
> it's time to run that plan to give people separate admin tools.
>
> Mgm
>
>
> On 10/6/06, daniwo59 at aol.com <daniwo59 at aol.com> wrote:
> >
> > Originally, I planned to answer Parker Peters's email. I wanted to say
> > something, at least, but I didn't want it to be trite. I didn't want to
> > defend
> > some admin actions while agreeing with him about others. There will be
> > (have
> > been?) plenty of people to do that. In the end, all of that is
> irrelevant,
> > because it is his perception of the problem that really matters, not
> > whether the
> > problem is truly relevant in particular instance X or Z. It is a
> > macro-issue,
> > and it deserves macro-answers, or alternately, macro-changing in
> > our  thinking.
> >
> > I think the real issue can be boiled down to a single statement:
> > "Wikipedia
> > is big ... really, really big." As of yesterday, Alexa ranks us the
> number
> > 12
> > website in the world, and we are still climbing. In English alone, we
> have
> > close  to 1.5 million articles and 6 million total pages. We have over
> 2.4
> > million users and close to 600 thousand images. I don't know how  many
> > edits we
> > are getting per day, per hour, per second, but I can  only assume that
> it
> > is a
> > very substantial number.
> >
> > No single person, or even small group of people, can tend to something
> > this
> > big, or even familiarize themselves with all its nooks and crannies. Yet
> > we
> > have  to. That is the challenge.
> >
> > There are 1,015 people with admin powers, and for various reasons it is
> > assumed that the burden of responsibility lies with them (it really
> > doesn't,
> > since it should rest on the entire community, but that is a different
> > story). Of
> > these thousand or so people, some are more active than others. Some can
> be
> > found  patrolling the projects every hour of every day, while others pop
> > in for a
> > few  minutes every few months, and still others are gone for good.
> >
> > As such, the burden is overwhelming. There is so much to do, so much
> that
> > needs tending, but we've grown faster than our admnistrative structure,
> > and the
> > fissures are beginning to show. By piling on the load, it is only
> natural
> > that  admins (and here I mean people who perform admin tasks, whether
> they
> > are
> > admins  or not) begin to feel frustrated and burn out. It is especially
> > onerous
> > when  every action is going to be viewed by people who will challenge
> > it--and
> > the  admin--any way they can. Do you risk making all the rapid decisions
> > that
> > need to  be made, one after the other, even if it means that some bad
> > decisions will  inevitably be made? Do you risk maintaining old
> > procedures, which once
> > worked  quite well but are starting to buckle under the weight, or do
> you
> > experiment  with something new and untested? If there is to be change,
> > what are
> > the  priorities? If there is to be discussion about change, at what
> point
> > do we
> > end  the talking and decide to act?
> >
> > These are some of the real issues that Parker Peters is raising. Note
> that
> > they are dilemmas, and the nature of a dilemma is that there is no right
> > answer,  except perhaps from the safety of hindsight. And yet, decisions
> > have to be
> > made.
> >
> > Danny
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > WikiEN-l mailing list
> > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> > To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
> >
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


body:
No.

I am asserting that polices, while they may have been well intentioned, have
the net effect of being a bureaucratic nightmare that makes it a virtual
impossibility that any course of action against an admin by a non-admin will
succeed.

That policies which were designed to safeguard admins from deliberate
harassment have become twisted into opposition of any investigation of admin
conduct whatsoever.

I'm forwarding this to en-l because I want these words to be clear to
everyone.

Cheers,
Parker.

On 10/6/06, charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com <charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com>
wrote:
>
> You are asserting that
>
> Every policy
>
> (not some but all)
>
> is designed
>
> (i.e. deliberately set up)
>
>
> to make it impossible
>
> (not inconvenient, time consuming, legalistic)
>
> for an aggrieved user to make any protest against abuse.
>
> (you say _any protest_, not just an effective protest leading to action).
>
> Well, that's hooey. Anyone can start an RfC. Show me an admin who sits on
> an RfC and I'll take action on that myself.
>
> Charles
>
> -----------------------------------------
> Email sent from www.ntlworld.com
> Virus-checked using McAfee(R) Software
> Visit www.ntlworld.com/security for more information
>
>


body:
"Tony Jacobs" wrote

> We're actually developing a
> reputation as a place of arrogance and nastiness, a place of heavy-handed
> thugishness, a place where people treat each other quite badly.

That rep has always been there, actually. There have always been admins who have treated vandal-chasing as central. The vandals have complained, the trolls are definitive loudmouths when it comes to their own grievances. I don't know how you would judge whether matters are getting worse or better, just from the hubbub.

>  Why
> doesn't ArbCom come down on admins who fail to respect contributors?  Why
> isn't that a high priority?

Why don't we get the cases brought that mean we could do that? We have a clear policy on civility. Some people do reckon that long service gives them some rights in how they talk to others. They are certainly wrong about that, and should note well that ArbCom doesn't have binding precedents, and may well up the tariff of punishment for shooting off your mouth. As far as I can see, this causes a large outcry when it is proposed, but it may well happen.

Charles

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from_name: David Gerard

subject: [WikiEN-l] RFA has gone weird

body:
There's a notable lack of RFA candidates ... and so the talk page is
full of suggestions for how to raise the bar.

I've commented on [[WT:RFA]]:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia_talk:Requests_for_adminship&diff=79819642&oldid=79781417

Adminship is supposed to be "no big deal", as pretty much all admin
actions are reversible; the idea is that if you're not going to go
batshit with the tools, there's no reason for you not to have them.
(I've actually lowered my personal bar for adminship after a couple of
cases where people I had severe qualms about got their admin bit and
proceeded to do okay with a bit of peer pressure the collegial advice
of others.) The social and technical skills required are about those
of a message board moderator, and whereas there are adults you'd never
want to have that job, the skills are easily acquired by e.g. a
sensible teenager.

And particularly this year, the ArbCom has had no compunction in
removing the admin bit from those who need it removed. Removal is a
big deal, but the AC is there for the social decisions that are big
deals.

So the ever-expanding lists of requirements don't make sense. The
lists above appear to be marks of the ideal admin, who is a bit like
the ideal editor with added technical powers (and similarly doesn't
exist). And this stuff really doesn't have a lot of bearing on whether
they are likely to go batshit with the admin tools. They make
adminship into a much bigger deal than it should be.

I personally think most people need three months' experience to get a
feel for the place. But beyond that, in an ideal world every Wikipedia
editor who's been around enough to get a feel for the place would have
admin powers.

Please enlighten me as to why it is good for adminship to be a
big-deal artificially scarce commodity.

- d.


from_name: Kim van der Linde

subject: [WikiEN-l] List of banned books

body:
Jimmy Wales wrote:
> Kim van der Linde wrote:
>> That would amount to deleting around 90% of the article as unsourced........
>
> Go for it!

Nah, not me anymore. I have been harassed a bit to much for bold actions
in the past.

Kim
--
http://www.kimvdlinde.com


from_name: Anthere

subject: [Foundation-l] UMP Convention

body:
David Gerard wrote:
> On 05/10/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>>The problem is that most goverments hold the copyright on things of
>>significant value and as such are unlikely to release them directly
>>into the public domain. Most will consider it enough to allow use for
>>non comercail uses or for educational uses. Or will produce something
>>like the british crown copyright system.
>
>
>
> The results of this approach was, I thought, the precise point Anthere
> was making to quite a lot of the members of the very popular
> centre-right political party in France. After catching their attention
> with 10% of French voters being Wikipedia users. (Must find out the UK
> numbers.)
>
>
> - d.

yes, precisely David.

For our stats in France, we use largely our biggest stats organization,
Mediametrie.

French population is 60 millions, with 50% connected to the net and 25%
using it daily.

Below, stats for august 2006

Rang Marque		unique visitors
Google  		16 687 000
Orange  		12 695 000
MSN/Windows Live  	12 397 000
Free  			11 621 000
Yahoo!  		9 312 000
PagesJaunes		8 777 00
Microsoft  		8 182 000
eBay  			7 373 000
Mappy  			7 052 000
Voila  			7 043 000
TF1 Network  		5 859 000
Lycos Europe  		5 406 000
Cdiscount.com  		5 324 000
L Internaute  		4 974 000
Alice  			4 837 000
01net. Network		4 810 000
voyages-sncf.com	4 709 000
ViaMichelin  		4 490 000
La Redoute		4 476 000
Wikipedia		4 443 000
Skyrock Network  	4 438 000
Rue du Commerce		3 778 000
Meteo France 		3 750 000
Amazon  		3 732 000
AOL(*)  		3 711 000
PriceMinister		3 548 000
AlloCine  		3 356 000
Credit Agricole  	3 353 000
LA POSTE  		3 265 000

In this list, apart from american websites

Orange: we met them 2 weeks ago. They are interested by a datafeed;

La Redoute: invited us to present Wikipedia 2 weeks ago.

PriceMinister (equivalent of french ebay): was present at the UMP panel
I attended.

Rue du commerce: contacted us for business opportunities 1 year ago.
Typically a datafeed except it did not really existed back them. They
wanted a tech and legal contact. There was no real feedback from us (no
tech in french. No legal interested. End of the story).

Imho, we could have opportunities with (excluding US) about half of that
list (if someone had the time and cash to contact them and make them
propositions).


subject: [Foundation-l] UMP Convention


subject: [WikiEN-l] RFA has gone weird

body:
"David Gerard" wrote

> Please enlighten me as to why it is good for adminship to be a
> big-deal artificially scarce commodity.

I'm not aware of discussion (recent, anyway) of what would be an ideal number of admins. What are the criteria for that? One per 1000 articles as a rule of thumb?

Charles

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subject: [WikiEN-l] RFA has gone weird

body:
On 06/10/06, charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com
<charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com> wrote:
> "David Gerard" wrote

> > Please enlighten me as to why it is good for adminship to be a
> > big-deal artificially scarce commodity.

> I'm not aware of discussion (recent, anyway) of what would be an ideal number of admins. What are the criteria for that? One per 1000 articles as a rule of thumb?

As I said, it'd be nice if most editors could get it without
ever-increasing requirements on RFA. Should there be a requirement
beyond "will not go batshit with the tools"?

(Now, that's an interesting question: how voting pages of this sort
get ever-increasing requirements, and what to do about it. FAC is
another.)

- d.


from_name: Mark Wagner

subject: [WikiEN-l] Parker Peters's comments

body:
On 10/6/06, Parker Peters <onmywayoutster at gmail.com> wrote:
> Mgm,
>
> I could agree with that. I think that maybe there ought to be multiple
> grades of admin, who have specific abilities. Part of the problem right now
> is that so many admins wield what might as well be "absolute power" when
> compared to a normal user.
>
> For instance, why not have a "first grade" admin who have the power only to
> semiprotect articles (to protect from systemic anon-ip/newuser vandalism),
> not to lock talk pages at all (including user talk pages) and to impose
> blocks up to 48 hours but no longer? Make them ask for help if they see
> anything that needs anything longer or appears to be a problem?

Gradations are the wrong way to go about it.  You may be giving people
the tools they don't need, while at the same time denying them the
tools they do.  For example, I do a lot of work dealing with problem
uploads.  That means I need the ability to delete, undelete, and view
deleted pages, and the ability to edit protected pages.  On the other
hand, I've got little use for protecting, unprotecting, and
semi-protecting pages, or for blocking and unblocking users.  Your
"first grade" admin tools would be useless to me.

On the other hand, a newpages patroller needs the ability to block
users, delete pages, and protect pages from creation, but is unlikely
to need to undelete pages, unblock users, protect or unprotect
existing pages, or edit protected pages.  A recent-changes patroller
needs the abilities of a newpages patroller, but also the ability to
protect or semi-protect pages.  A toolset tailored to my needs would
be nearly useless to either of them.

The correct way to get rid of the appearance of "absolute power" is to
have users specify the tools they want as part of their RfA
application, and re-apply if they find they need a different set of
tools.

--
Mark
[[User:Carnildo]]


from_name: Gerard Meijssen

body:
Hoi,
WiktionaryZ does not follow RFC 3066 because it is unusable for its
purposes. The RFC 3066 is unusable for the languages that are not
addressed by it. To link into the projects of the Wikimedia Foundation
we can include the code used by the Wikimedia Foundation.

The practice of using codes that are made up and that are not
distinguishable from ISO-639 codes is against the terms of use. The
codes qaa to qtz are the codes where you are free to do what you want to do.
Thanks,
    GerardM

Brion Vibber wrote:
> Minh Nguyen wrote:
>
>> Gerard, please note that Wikipedia hasn't standardized on ISO 639-2 like
>> Wiktionary has. Otherwise, you'd be using "eng.wikipedia.org" instead of
>> "en.wikipedia.org".
>>
>
> With rare exceptions, we follow RFC 3066 for language codes; this is the
> standard used on the web for the Content-Language HTTP header, HTML 'lang'
> attribute, etc.
>
> This uses, roughly, in priority order:
> * 2-letter ISO 639-1 code
> * 3-letter ISO 639-2 code
> * One of the specially registered 'i-*' codes
> * Non-standard 'x-*' codes
>
> ISO 639-3 codes will most likely end up in there sooner or later.
>
> Where no standard codes are available, we've sometimes ended up using something
> else; in this case we *should* be using the ISO 639-3 3-letter code. If there
> are exceptions that are definitely wrong, we probably want to fix that.
>
>
>  > Maybe someday; I still remember going to
>  > "en2.wikipedia.org" way back when, so the URLs certainly aren't permanent.
>
> That was crude load-balancing before we had something better set up. :) It's
> redirected if you've got really old URLs from that period.
>
> -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


body:
On 6 Oct 2006, at 11:00, charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com wrote:

> "Tony Jacobs" wrote

>>  Why
>> doesn't ArbCom come down on admins who fail to respect
>> contributors?  Why
>> isn't that a high priority?
>
> Why don't we get the cases brought that mean we could do that? We
> have a clear policy on civility. Some people do reckon that long
> service gives them some rights in how they talk to others. They are
> certainly wrong about that, and should note well that ArbCom
> doesn't have binding precedents, and may well up the tariff of
> punishment for shooting off your mouth. As far as I can see, this
> causes a large outcry when it is proposed, but it may well happen.

I've been meaning to bring a case for some time,
but no one is ever uncivil to me!


subject: [Commons-l] Flexible tagging on Commons

body:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Using_Ultimate_Wiktionary_for_Commons

GerardM here outlines a way to use WiktionaryZ work for what I
mentioned last night.

- d.


from_name: Stan Shebs

subject: [WikiEN-l] Parker Peters's comments

body:
Parker Peters wrote:

>Part of the problem I think with admins who get on power trips is that one
>day, they went from being an un-powerful little normal editor, to the next
>day being able to do all these amazing things.
>
Oh sure, the ability to delete an unsourced picture of a penis is
definitely an "amazing thing"...

By the power of this mop I declare my dominion over the Wikiverse!!

:-)

Stan


from_name: Valentina Faussone

subject: [Foundation-l] UMP Convention

body:
> We've leveled off in terms of growth (it's still
> there but not at the
> rate it used to be). Unless we come up with
> something new (a way to
> make commons effectively searchable might be one) we
> may have pretty
> much reached our natural level of webpresence.
>
> If that is the case it may be time to look to other
> areas. Mobile
> phones. Book form. Provideing stock photos and
> information for non
> profits (and to a degree profits).

Nice ideas. May I point out that the quality level of
wikipedia articles is far more effective than the
quality of many pictures we upload on commons?
That is to say, the guys on commons are running a very
important project and they challenge a great effort,
but maybe we should all focus on providing better
quality photos, and not just *more* photos. Many of
them are dark, dull and with ugly subjects: that is a
great minus for some subjects (like food) than for
others.
Plus I totally and entusiastically agree on making
commons searchable like any other image bank.
It's pointless having a treasure if you don't know how
to find it out.

Tinette

__________________________________________________
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subject: [Foundation-l] UMP Convention


body:
Charles, I apologize for sending it directly to the list, but you obviously
had misread my words and I was worried that others might have as well. I am
not "exaggerating" or "shifting" my position. I would ask at this time that
you please calm down and perhaps take a breather.

I believe that the policies are problems. Starting with the number of
roadblocks to starting an RFC - the requirement of "evidence of trying to
resolve the difference beforehand" (hard to do when an admin is blocking
you!), the requirement of finding a second user to sign on with you
(especially if they become fearful of being blocked).

They may at one point have been well intentioned, but they do not help the
situation today.

Parker

On 10/6/06, charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com <charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com>
wrote:
>
> Note: this was an offlist mail to me, which has been sent back to the
> whole list. Black mark for etiquette on that.
>
> I advise everyone against answering private mails from this poster.
>
> Well, and what you say is absolutely not what you wrote to the list, then.
> You will gain no respect at all from exaggerating and then shifting position
> when challenged.
>
> Charles
>
> >
> > From: "Parker Peters" <onmywayoutster at gmail.com>
> > Date: 2006/10/06 Fri PM 04:59:18 BST
> > To: "English Wikipedia" <wikien-l at wikipedia.org>
> > Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Quitting Wikipedia and wanted you to know why.
> >
> > No.
> >
> > I am asserting that polices, while they may have been well intentioned,
> have
> > the net effect of being a bureaucratic nightmare that makes it a virtual
> > impossibility that any course of action against an admin by a non-admin
> will
> > succeed.
> >
> > That policies which were designed to safeguard admins from deliberate
> > harassment have become twisted into opposition of any investigation of
> admin
> > conduct whatsoever.
> >
> > I'm forwarding this to en-l because I want these words to be clear to
> > everyone.
> >
> > Cheers,
> > Parker.
> >
> > On 10/6/06, charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com <
> charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com>
> > wrote:
> > >
> > > You are asserting that
> > >
> > > Every policy
> > >
> > > (not some but all)
> > >
> > > is designed
> > >
> > > (i.e. deliberately set up)
> > >
> > >
> > > to make it impossible
> > >
> > > (not inconvenient, time consuming, legalistic)
> > >
> > > for an aggrieved user to make any protest against abuse.
> > >
> > > (you say _any protest_, not just an effective protest leading to
> action).
> > >
> > > Well, that's hooey. Anyone can start an RfC. Show me an admin who sits
> on
> > > an RfC and I'll take action on that myself.
> > >
> > > Charles
> > >
> > > -----------------------------------------
> > > Email sent from www.ntlworld.com
> > > Virus-checked using McAfee(R) Software
> > > Visit www.ntlworld.com/security for more information
> > >
> > >
> > _______________________________________________
> > WikiEN-l mailing list
> > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> > To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
> >
>
> -----------------------------------------
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> Visit www.ntlworld.com/security for more information
>
> _______________________________________________
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> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Joseph Reagle

subject: [WikiEN-l] List of banned books

body:
On Thursday 05 October 2006 03:41, Matt Brown wrote:
> Personally, I tag something with {{fact}} when I believe it to be
> correct but it's unsourced and I don't know where to verify it myself.
>  If I believe it's actually wrong, I prefer to move it to the talk
> page pending verification.

Which jives with the Template page which I found very instructional:

[[ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Fact
   Regarding the unsourced or poorly sourced information:
    1. if it is likely true, but needs specificity, you may use
       {{specify}}
    2. if it is not doubtful, you may use {{fact}} or {{citequote}} tag
       to ask for better citation in order to make the article complete.
    3. if it is doubtful but not too harmful to the whole article, you
       may use {{verify source}} tag to ask for source verification.
    4. If it is doubtful and (quite) highly harmful, you may move it to
       the talk page and ask for a source.
    5. If it is very doubtful and very harmful, you may remove it
       directly without the need of moving it to the talk page first.
]]


subject: [WikiEN-l] RFA has gone weird

body:
On 06/10/06, Sarah <slimvirgin at gmail.com> wrote:

> Do we want to lower the requirements, though? We have 1,000 admins,
> most of whom aren't that active and don't need to be. The requirements
> need to be *right*, but that needn't mean lower. We're still promoting
> people who don't know the policies several months after promotion, and
> I'm talking about the basic ones e.g. don't block when you're involved
> in a content dispute. Against that, I saw someone lose an RfA (or he
> was losing the last time I looked), because he wasn't putting the
> correct tags on vandals' pages when he reverted them, which was
> absurd.

Yeah. It's measuring the wrong things.

> So it's a question of drawing up sensible criteria. I don't
> like the "no big deal" thing, because it's prescriptive; the reality
> is that adminship *is* regarded as a big deal.

I know it is, but it still *shouldn't* be. I realise that admin on
Wikipedia is by its nature a bigger deal than board mod on some small
web forum, but there's a lot of others to help and I'm glad to see
there is peer pressure.

- d.


from_name: Kat Walsh

subject: [WikiEN-l] Parker Peters's comments

body:
On 10/6/06, MacGyverMagic/Mgm <macgyvermagic at gmail.com> wrote:
> Some adminship requests get opposed because the user aren't familiar in a
> specific field of administrator work. If we could specifically give people
> the tools they have the knowledge for, more requests would succeed. Perhaps
> it's time to run that plan to give people separate admin tools.

I think it's somewhat ridiculous to oppose an admin candidate for not
showing obvious familiarity with some aspect of admin work that s/he
may not even be interested in. (Opposing for showing that someone has
repeatedly gone about it all wrong is a different matter.) I expect
that anyone who has acted reasonably and responsibly in whatever they
have done to that point will not suddenly go crazy when approaching a
new task, and whatever beginners' mistakes may be made by someone who
is generally acting like a reasonable person are probably easy to fix.
No one should *have* to know everything before becoming an admin, just
show themselves willing and able to find out how to do something
before doing it.

-Kat
who would be content to have adminship only for deleting and viewing
deleted pages, really

--
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