references:
<bd4c411e0702090937y3482dadcm2a9d0f99b70eefd3@mail.gmail.com>
	<eqiicb$7rs$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<8731ce350702091249m7dda10a8xa245add927a07f64@mail.gmail.com>
	<fb7fdd9c0702091255t504a9529q90b208eec594f2a6@mail.gmail.com>
	<eqlnhi$e7d$2@sea.gmane.org>

body:
> Where's your evidence for that last sentence?
>
> As far as I'm aware, this theory has never been put to practice, so I
> don't see how you can make such a claim.

I think the amount of effort we have to put in to cleaning up regular
vandalism is evidence enough. Using the same system for assigning
admin powers as we use for assigning editing powers *will* result in
large amounts of admin vandalism, that's just simple extrapolation.
Saying that cleaning up admin vandalism will be harder than cleaning
up regular vandalism is a logical deduction, it's not based on
evidence, you're right, but it is based on very solid reasoning.


list: wikien-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Gurch

subject: [WikiEN-l] Admin burnout

body:
Timwi wrote:
> Of course, when making this assessment you are assuming the current
> MediaWiki software. Unfortunately, the current software is inefficient
> at undoing large amounts of activity. For example, the User
> Contributions page should have an "undo all of this user's
> contributions" button, especially if it isn't many. At the same time,
> this undoing of all contributions should also be undoable with a single
> command. There should also be a selective feature, e.g. undo only all
> image uploads or undo only the article edits that involve adding an
> external link. All of these are non-trivial to code, which is why no-one
> has done it yet, but it would make cleaning up after vandalism much more
> efficient, even if the vandal is himself an admin.
>
> Timwi

Oh god... imagine viewing AntiVandalBot's contributions and hitting the
"Undo" button by mistake. If you're lucky, it only vandalizes half of
Wikipedia; if you're unlucky, you kill the servers in the process.

For administrators at least, this is not an issue; going down a list of
20 or 30 contributions clicking the "rollback" link next to each takes
very little effort.

-Gurch


from_name: Matthew Brown

subject: [WikiEN-l] Admin burnout

body:
On 2/10/07, Kat Walsh <mindspillage at gmail.com> wrote:
> it's very insulting for a reasonable, productive user to be opposed
> for "lack of experience" for not having a 3000+ edit count and I've
> seen it happen far too often.

Especially since the ways people normally get 3000+ edit counts
quickly is repetitive actions, like vandalfighting and semi-automatic
fixes.  3000 edits of real article creation is a lot of work, and yet
someone who actually produces real content tends to get dumped on.

-Matt


from_name: Timwi

subject: [WikiEN-l] Your comments on wikien-l regarding adminship

body:
Cheney Shill wrote:
> --- Kelly Martin <kelly.lynn.martin at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> I've already explained this elsewhere, so I'll only give a quick
>> summary here. Wikipedia does something _right_ by letting everyone
>> edit. The underlying philosophy is that everyone starts out as
>> innocent
>
> This is equivalent to saying existing users have superior
> knowledge to new users.

I'm sorry, I don't understand how.

> You're claiming that the same thing you claim is wrong about the
> admin approval, to be suspicious of the admins intent, reliability,
> and knowledge, is actually being applied, at the very least, to every
> new user.

Well yes... who else do you think it is applied to? Clearly not the
admins :-p

> It seems the ruling policy, NPOV, is inherently suspicious
> and it's not really a problem to be suspicious from the
> ground up.

I honestly don't see what NPOV has to do with anything in this thread.
What you're saying is not making much sense to me I'm afraid.

Timwi


from_name: Thomas Dalton

references:
<bd4c411e0702090937y3482dadcm2a9d0f99b70eefd3@mail.gmail.com>
	<eqiicb$7rs$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<a4359dff0702091319s5494dd52yebf530b1ce2fc9c3@mail.gmail.com>
	<eqlo7v$g43$1@sea.gmane.org>

body:
> There are two flaws in your logic. First, if your adminship bit is
> removed, how do you "unblock" yourself? So no, you don't need an extra
> "super-admin" level to do de-sysoppings, you can just allow admins to do
> it. Second, your argument would equally apply to page deletion (you can
> publish any crap because if anyone deletes it you can just undelete
> it!), and yet admins can all delete *and* undelete and it still works
> (because they largely follow a certain policy).

So not only do you want to make everyone admins, you want to make
everyone stewards? If anyone can desysop anyone else, then all it
takes is one bot to remove everyone's sysop bits, and we have to wait
for a dev, or steward, or whatever rank is high enough to avoid the
bot's grasp, to revert it (which could be made quite easy, but it
could be a significant wait until someone is available to do it). The
cleanup of the damage the bot has done in this time (or, probably
multiple bots to make it harder to undo) couldn't start until this dev
had been found.

Whatever way you look at it, you're going to need a significant number
of people with greater powers than everyone else, it's unavoidable. At
what level of power you draw the line can change, but you still have
to draw the line somewhere, and wherever that is, you'll have the same
problems with selection.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Admin burnout

body:
William Pietri wrote:
> geni wrote:
> As to the first, that's why I said "almost", but I gather you mean that
> a rogue with the sysop bit can cause vastly more cleanup work than a
> regular editor. Is that right?
>
> As to the second, isn't that a chicken and egg problem? All of those
> things evolved around having to deal with editorial vandalism. If you
> rule out any improvement that requires similar evolution, it seems like
> a generic argument for stasis. If the argument had been applied at the
> beginning, it would have ruled out open editability, period.
>
> If the problem is that the current structure hasn't evolved to deal with
> Y, where Y is a potential harm from an otherwise good X, then isn't the
> solution is to allow a controlled amount of X to allow the structure to
> evolve? Or at least to see if the cost of mediating Y ends up being
> under the benefit of X?
>
> William

And add to that the fact that the project has been running for six years
with virtually no Y (possibly even none at all), whereas X happens every
few seconds?

-Gurch


body:
Erik Moeller wrote:
>
> I don't like your specific proposal much because I think the constant
> re-appointed would be process overkill, as would be the restriction on
> objections. Wikis don't scale that well to accommodate processes above
> a certain complexity.

I get the impression that you did not quite understand my proposal then,
because I don't quite see how it increases process or the complexity
thereof. Under my proposal, RfA would go away, and a process to desysop
(hopefully) already exists and is obviously applied to a vastly smaller
set of people (only those who misbehave as opposed to everybody).

Timwi


from_name: geni

subject: [WikiEN-l] Admin burnout

body:
On 2/11/07, William Pietri <william at scissor.com> wrote:
> As to the first, that's why I said "almost", but I gather you mean that
> a rogue with the sysop bit can cause vastly more cleanup work than a
> regular editor. Is that right?
>

I can think of attack lines that would force a rollback the database
or weeks of cleanup.

They do exist.

> As to the second, isn't that a chicken and egg problem? All of those
> things evolved around having to deal with editorial vandalism. If you
> rule out any improvement that requires similar evolution, it seems like
> a generic argument for stasis. If the argument had been applied at the
> beginning, it would have ruled out open editability, period.
>
> If the problem is that the current structure hasn't evolved to deal with
> Y, where Y is a potential harm from an otherwise good X, then isn't the
> solution is to allow a controlled amount of X to allow the structure to
> evolve? Or at least to see if the cost of mediating Y ends up being
> under the benefit of X?
>
> William

You want to try dealing with vandels who you can't effectively block
and can hit every page one wikipedia? Admins are to a large extent our
solution to problem editing. The same solution won't work for problem
admins. You are free to suggest ways of dealing with that but remeber
they need to be >99.98% effective.

--
geni


from_name: Kat Walsh

subject: [WikiEN-l] Admin burnout

body:
On 2/9/07, Michael Snow <wikipedia at earthlink.net> wrote:
> I am more concerned that we have a process to choose quality
> administrators, rather than invent a way to get large numbers of
> mediocre-to-poor ones. The current system badly needs to be redesigned
> to accomplish the former and avoid the latter. A natural byproduct of
> this may well be that we get more administrators because the process is
> not so tortuous.

I agree with this. Over the past year or so I have been hesitant to
nominate anyone because I prefer not to push anyone I like into the
process unless they ask for it. Particularly anyone who does not have
a stratospheric edit count or extreme activity in policy formation;
it's very insulting for a reasonable, productive user to be opposed
for "lack of experience" for not having a 3000+ edit count and I've
seen it happen far too often.

-Kat

--
Wikimedia needs you: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Fundraising
* *  * *  * *  * *  * *  * *  * *  * *  * *  * *  * *  * *  * *  * *
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Mindspillage | (G)AIM:Mindspillage
mindspillage or mind|wandering on irc.freenode.net | email for phone


subject: [WikiEN-l] Deleting orphaned unfree images

body:
> I guess the articles I tend to edit must be unusually low traffic if you
> feel 24 hours is sufficient to conclusively determine consensus on some
> editorial question. Sorry for butting in.

It's enough time to determine if more time is needed. Admins are
selected for their good judgement - try trusting them. The deleting
admin just needs to click on the link to the article in the fair use
rationale (if it doesn't state the article [and it's not just that the
image page has been edited recently], then the image should be deleted
straight away), and see if the removal was controversial. If some
controversy starts after the 24 hours is up, then the image can be
re-uploaded, or undeleted. Neither is much work. I would imagine any
admin would undelete an image under such circumstances if asked.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Admin burnout (deputy admins)

body:
On 2/11/07, Timwi <timwi at gmx.net> wrote:
> I think you got this backwards. If the RfA process is so strict and
> everyone then "trusts" the people who are made admins, surely that makes
> it much easier for those admins to wreak havoc (whether intentional or
> not). Surely *that* makes the whole project more unworkable.
>
> Adminship should not have anything to do with trust at all.

You have no choice:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3ALog&type=delete&user=&page=

There is nop humane way to check to see if all those deleations were
correct and within policy.

--
geni


body:
On 2/11/07, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton at gmail.com> wrote:
> It's enough time to determine if more time is needed. Admins are
> selected for their good judgement - try trusting them. The deleting
> admin just needs to click on the link to the article in the fair use
> rationale (if it doesn't state the article [and it's not just that the
> image page has been edited recently], then the image should be deleted
> straight away), and see if the removal was controversial. If some
> controversy starts after the 24 hours is up, then the image can be
> re-uploaded, or undeleted. Neither is much work. I would imagine any
> admin would undelete an image under such circumstances if asked.

So some knocks out the image 00.01 sunday with the result that no one
notices before 00.01 monday and image gets deleted when it should not
have been. No 7 days means it is generaly fairly safe to assume that
any contrivery will be mentioned on the page or is all over.

--
geni


subject: [WikiEN-l] "About Wikipedia" in navigation sidebar

body:
On 2/11/07, Tim Starling <tstarling at wikimedia.org> wrote:
> Steve Bennett wrote:
> > Current events: Weird, never even noticed this before. Do people
> > actually click it?
>
> Yes, it's always been one of our most popular pages.

Because people go to WP to find out background on current news
stories, I suspect.

-Matthew


body:
> You have no choice:
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3ALog&type=delete&user=&page=
>
> There is nop humane way to check to see if all those deleations were
> correct and within policy.

Well, we can do deletion log patrol, just as we do recent changes
patrol at the moment. Spotting the vandalism isn't too hard, it's
cleaning up after it when you have no greater powers than the vandals
which is hard. It's not impossible, and if we would get significant
gain out of giving everyone access to the delete button then it might
be worth it, but we would get very little gain, so it's simply not
worth the hassle.


body:
> So some knocks out the image 00.01 sunday with the result that no one
> notices before 00.01 monday and image gets deleted when it should not
> have been. No 7 days means it is generaly fairly safe to assume that
> any contrivery will be mentioned on the page or is all over.

And for those 7 days we are breaking the law. Copyright violation is
illegal, and having an unlicensed image on Wikipedia without it being
acceptable under fair use (and if it isn't used on any pages, then it
isn't acceptable under fair use) is copyright violation.

IANAL, but I think we can justify 24 hours of violation while we work
out what we should do, I don't think we can justify 7 days. Not when
it is so easy to undo a deletion.


body:
On 2/11/07, William Pietri <william at scissor.com> wrote:
> I thought the theory was that editors check that work, yes? We trust
> editors to check each other, and I had assumed that the same mechanism
> was the main check on administrative error and malfeasance.

Nah. Unless you are rather unluckly or do something stupid you would
be unlikely to be caught slipping in a few non legit deletions along
with the legit ones.

--
geni


body:
On 2/11/07, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton at gmail.com> wrote:
> > So some knocks out the image 00.01 sunday with the result that no one
> > notices before 00.01 monday and image gets deleted when it should not
> > have been. No 7 days means it is generaly fairly safe to assume that
> > any contrivery will be mentioned on the page or is all over.
>
> And for those 7 days we are breaking the law.

who is we? see DMCA safe harbour.

> Copyright violation is
> illegal, and having an unlicensed image on Wikipedia without it being
> acceptable under fair use (and if it isn't used on any pages, then it
> isn't acceptable under fair use) is copyright violation.
>
> IANAL,

Neither am I but we have people who know rather a lot about copyright
involved in our deletion policies. I think it is safe to say if there
was a problem they would have told us.

>but I think we can justify 24 hours of violation while we work
> out what we should do, I don't think we can justify 7 days. Not when
> it is so easy to undo a deletion.

The foundation doesn't have to do anything until it gets a DMCA takedown notice.

--
geni


subject: [WikiEN-l] Admin burnout

body:
On 2/11/07, Rich Holton <richholton at gmail.com> wrote:
> If there are things that admins can do NOW that could cause us to have
> to roll-back two weeks, then there is an immediate problem NOW,

Since most of the attacks use fundimental admin powers that have more
legit uses there isn't much to be done.

Rollback wouldn't be two weeks but to the last copy saved before the
attack began.

> not
> connected to any change in our selection procedure for admins. No
> selection procedure will be 99.98% effective, and the damage of
> attempting to achieve that is just too great.
>

Current system appears to be pretty close. depending on how you define
it iw has a rate of 100 or 99.91%.

> Sleepers are certainly possible through the current RfA process. You
> don't think someone determined enough to want to damage Wikipedia in the
> way you're describing couldn't jump through the RfA hoops?
>

I would be impressed if someone managed it.

> So, shall we remove the admin bit from anyone who admits to knowing how
> to cause such damage?

No we need people who know what can be done so they can spot and stop
it. Of course by then then it would likely be too late but it is
better than nothing

>Or shall we immediately take steps to make it so
> such damage is impossible?

For various reasons that would be rather tricky and the devs have
other priorities.

--
geni


from_name: stvrtg

subject: [WikiEN-l] Sanger and CZ

body:
On 2/11/07, Cheney Shill <halliburton_shill at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> I'm not saying it's correct, or non-biting, or good-faithy,
> or open, but Wikipedia takes the same approach as CZ when
> it comes to publishing internal issues on your blog or
> otherwise making them public.  In fact, if you read the
> recommendation on this list regarding how to keep
> Microsoft-like pay-off incidents (known as wikilobbying)
> quiet, it would be fairly obvious that WP and CZ share far
> more in common than they differ.

Maybe true, but comparisons of that kind will inevitably lead to comparisons

of personal character, in which case I have to agree with Glen that the tone

seems inappropriate, even if the methods are similar.

Besides, theres nothing wrong with taking a few bucks to edit out some
criticism, or put some dimming star's article on the front page. ;)

The whole point of CZ is greater reliability, but:

   The article below may contain errors of fact, bias, grammar, etc. The
Citizendium
   Foundation and the participants in the Citizendium project make no
representations
   about the reliability of this article or, generally, its suitability for
any purpose. We make
   this disclaimer of all Citizendium article versions that have not been
specifically approved."

Sort of says it all.

-SV


subject: [WikiEN-l] Admin burnout

body:
geni wrote:
> You want to try dealing with vandels who you can't effectively block
> and can hit every page one wikipedia?

When I left, the delay between me hitting the "save" button to post my
de-adminship request on Meta and the sysop bit being removed was about
150 seconds. That included time spent indicating to the steward handling
the request, via IRC, that I really did want to be de-adminned.

So I fail to see where this inability to block comes in. That's a lot
quicker than the response time for the average AIV request, for example.
The stewards know what to do; in an emergency, they would be able to act
just as fast, if not faster.

Bryan Derksen wrote:
 > I can think of an approach right off the top of my head to cause major
 > havoc using my admin powers that I wouldn't be able to undo with any
 > conventional tools.

If the servers were being exceptionally responsive, you might just
manage 40 edits/actions before you were stopped, assuming someone using
IRC noticed your first action (which, if they are intended to have the
effect you suggest, is pretty likely). No matter what those actions are,
they can be reversed, usually quickly. Simply making as many blocks or
deletions as possible would have no lasting effect. Changing the various
MediaWiki pages could do all sorts of things, but such changes can be
reverted like any others (at most, someone would need to disable
JavaScript and select a custom skin in order to do so). About the worst
you could do is try to do history merges on pages with long edit
histories (which are still reversible, just tedious to do), but the
amount of time they take you'd be lucky if you finished *one* in three
minutes. Also, attempting this on a page with a very long history will
likely just return a database timeout error (as does attempting to clear
a very large watchlist, for example), inconveniencing nobody but yourself.

-Gurch


from_name: Stan Shebs

body:
Thomas Dalton wrote:
>> Fortunately I had local copies - stamp scanning and
>> post-scan cleanup is sufficiently laborious that without the backups, I
>> probably wouldn't have troubled to redo the work.
>>
>
> If you're a long time WP admin, you have access to the undelete option
> on the image page. No need to rescan anything, even if you didn't have
> local copies.
>
Now I do, certainly - this incident predates the image undeletion feature.

Stan


body:
Thomas Dalton wrote:
>> Now I do, certainly - this incident predates the image undeletion feature.
>>
>
> It's irrelevant, then, isn't it?
>
If I thought so, then I wouldn't have posted it, eh? :-) My point was to
show a real-life example showing how much the system can screw up when
everybody operates on a hair trigger; delays of a few days are a chance
to correct errors instead of compounding them. Note that some people
(Matthew Woodcroft most recently) are also proposing entirely scrubbing
revisions that are deemed copyvios, which would make images unrecoverable.

Ironically, many of my stamp scans are probably PD, but I haven't been
able to find a clear statement of the stamps' legal status, so I'm
conservative and assume they're fully copyrighted.

Stan


list: foundation-l

from_name: luke brandt

subject: [Foundation-l] Clearing up Wikimedia's media licensing policies

body:
Ray Saintonge wrote:
> The first clause in the quotation is remarkable for its ambiguity.  My
> first inclination was to read this as indicating that property is
> essential to the definition of culture, or that a society that does not
> believe in capital does not have a culture.  A more acceptable
> interpretation is that a culture does not exclude the existence of
> property.  In other words
>
>> A free culture is not a culture - without property
>>
>> A free culture is not - a culture without property
>>
> Having artists be paid is acceptable in both circumstances.  In
> accounting terms, property is an asset on the balance sheet; getting
> paid belongs in the revenue portion of the financial statements.
>
> Ec

Hi, and thanks for your thoughts. In clarifying the quote how do you
think you should take into account the second sentence - seemingly the
counterpoint and twin of the first in the quotation, which is in
essence: "A culture without property ... is anarchy, not freedom."  - luke


list: wikimedia-l


list: commons-l

from_name: Gerard Meijssen

subject: [Commons-l] Sound files

body:
Hoi,
I read this in digest mode so let me answer things together.

The reason why .ogg files are not great is because indeed it is a lossy
algorithm. There is some great software to analyse pronunciation files;
a program called "praat" is worth mentioning it is even licensed under
GPL. There is even functionality in there to do with IPA transcription.

Gregory's proposal to use Ogg/FLAC is not helpfull. This is not the
format that is used to analyse pronunciation files. The notion that a
specific quality was "the gold standard" at the time is indeed that. It
used to be, times have changed.

The Shtooka program that we are talking about CAN create both a WAV and
an OGG file. It just needs asking. It would be helpful if we learn
sooner rather than later what the outcome is of this request.

Thanks,
    GerardM


list: wiktionary-l

subject: [Wiktionary-l] [Commons-l] Sound files


from_name: William Pietri

body:
Thomas Dalton wrote:
>> If I thought so, then I wouldn't have posted it, eh? :-) My point was to
>> show a real-life example showing how much the system can screw up when
>> everybody operates on a hair trigger; delays of a few days are a chance
>> to correct errors instead of compounding them. Note that some people
>> (Matthew Woodcroft most recently) are also proposing entirely scrubbing
>> revisions that are deemed copyvios, which would make images unrecoverable.
>>
>
> Your example does indeed show that it's a good thing to wait before
> deleting, but only because it's difficult to undelete. It is now easy
> to undelete, so your example is irrelevant. I know you think otherwise
> - that doesn't make you right.

Hi, Thomas. You seem both very determined to win this argument, and very
reluctant to explain why it matters so much.

Could you tell me more about what's motivating you here?

Thank,s,

William


from_name: Tim Starling

body:
Steve Bennett wrote:
> Current events: Weird, never even noticed this before. Do people
> actually click it?

Yes, it's always been one of our most popular pages.

http://hemlock.knams.wikimedia.org/~leon/stats/wikicharts/index.php?lang=en&wiki=enwiki&ns=all&limit=100&month=01%2F2007&mode=view

5th if you don't count the special pages.

-- Tim Starling


subject: [WikiEN-l] Admin burnout

body:
Thomas Dalton wrote:
>> So, shall we remove the admin bit from anyone who admits to knowing how
>> to cause such damage? Or shall we immediately take steps to make it so
>> such damage is impossible?
>>
>
> You're misunderstanding the nature of risk. Our aim is not to remove
> all risk, that's impossible. Our aim is to reduce risk to the minimum
> possible while stilling being able to make our encyclopaedia as well
> as possible.

Is that our aim?

Long ago, I used to work for market makers. These days, I do a lot of
work for Internet companies. In both lines of work, risk management is
essential. In both, the aim is to take as many well-managed,
likely-profitable risks as possible. That's how things get better, and
that's where a lot of your best information comes from.

The risk management strategy you describe strikes me as a good one for
something much more settled, like a water utility.

Do you really think Wikipedia should be that risk-averse? I had thought
it a much more dynamic enterprise, at least for the next few decades.

William


from_name: Erik Moeller

subject: [Wiktionary-l] [Commons-l] Sound files

body:
On 2/11/07, Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
> Gregory's proposal to use Ogg/FLAC is not helpfull. This is not the
> format that is used to analyse pronunciation files.

Looking at Wikipedia, there don't seem to be any patent issues with
WAV. However, the format is typically used without compression, wheres
Ogg FLAC would be lossless compression. Conversion between the two is
trivial for anyone who works with audio, so in light of the fact that
we're talking about thousands of pronunciation files, it seems
reasonable to give preference to FLAC.

--
Peace & Love,
Erik

DISCLAIMER: This message does not represent an official position of
the Wikimedia Foundation or its Board of Trustees.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Admin burnout

body:
On 2/11/07, Gurch <matthew.britton at btinternet.com> wrote:
> geni wrote:
> > You want to try dealing with vandels who you can't effectively block
> > and can hit every page one wikipedia?
>
> When I left, the delay between me hitting the "save" button to post my
> de-adminship request on Meta and the sysop bit being removed was about
> 150 seconds. That included time spent indicating to the steward handling
> the request, via IRC, that I really did want to be de-adminned.
>
> So I fail to see where this inability to block comes in. That's a lot
> quicker than the response time for the average AIV request, for example.
> The stewards know what to do; in an emergency, they would be able to act
> just as fast, if not faster.
>

Experience when we had something that certainly appeared to be a rouge
admin suggests otherwise

> If the servers were being exceptionally responsive, you might just
> manage 40 edits/actions before you were stopped, assuming someone using
> IRC noticed your first action (which, if they are intended to have the
> effect you suggest, is pretty likely).

Um no. I've carried out actions that directly match the first stage of
some attacks. No one noticed.

> No matter what those actions are,
> they can be reversed, usually quickly.

That simply isn't the case

> Simply making as many blocks or
> deletions as possible would have no lasting effect. Changing the various
> MediaWiki pages could do all sorts of things, but such changes can be
> reverted like any others (at most, someone would need to disable
> JavaScript and select a custom skin in order to do so).

Haveing the goatse on every page would not be good for wikipedia's
reputation but that isn't the most lethal attack line.

> About the worst
> you could do is try to do history merges on pages with long edit
> histories (which are still reversible, just tedious to do), but the
> amount of time they take you'd be lucky if you finished *one* in three
> minutes. Also, attempting this on a page with a very long history will
> likely just return a database timeout error (as does attempting to clear
> a very large watchlist, for example), inconveniencing nobody but yourself.
>
> -Gurch
>

I have deleted some pages with histories of over 1000 edits from time
to time (Biology comes to mind). There are ways to do it and there was
no comment by anyone.

--
geni


subject: [WikiEN-l] - category clutter on biographical articles

body:
On 2/11/07, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> Cool Cat wrote:
>
> >Based on this discussion I wrote an Essay, feel free to comment/expand
> >
> >http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Do_not_write_articles_using_categories
> >
> >
> >
> The general principle of avoiding excessive categories is sound.  The
> art is in getting cleaning up the excesses without upsetting a lot of
> people, and causing a lot of flame wars.  Patience can be your friend.
>
> Ec

But what is excessive? Since you have very little idea exactly what
groupings people will be looking for I would tend to  argue that it is
worth risking a little over categorisation.

--
geni


from_name: GerardM

subject: [Wiktionary-l] [Commons-l] Sound files

body:
Hoi,
By insisting on having flac you add a complication that does not add any
value. Why would you use FLAC when the reason for having it in the first
place is that people use the wav file in their applications.
Thanks,
    GerardM

On 2/11/07, Erik Moeller <erik at wikimedia.org> wrote:
>
> On 2/11/07, Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Gregory's proposal to use Ogg/FLAC is not helpfull. This is not the
> > format that is used to analyse pronunciation files.
>
> Looking at Wikipedia, there don't seem to be any patent issues with
> WAV. However, the format is typically used without compression, wheres
> Ogg FLAC would be lossless compression. Conversion between the two is
> trivial for anyone who works with audio, so in light of the fact that
> we're talking about thousands of pronunciation files, it seems
> reasonable to give preference to FLAC.
>
> --
> Peace & Love,
> Erik
>
> DISCLAIMER: This message does not represent an official position of
> the Wikimedia Foundation or its Board of Trustees.
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wiktionary-l mailing list
> Wiktionary-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiktionary-l
>


subject: [Wiktionary-l] [Commons-l] Sound files

body:
On 2/11/07, GerardM <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hoi,
> By insisting on having flac you add a complication that does not add any
> value.

The value is the compression. Disk space and bandwidth aren't free.

--
Peace & Love,
Erik

DISCLAIMER: This message does not represent an official position of
the Wikimedia Foundation or its Board of Trustees.


body:
geni wrote:
> On 2/11/07, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:
>
>>> i, Thomas. You seem both very determined to win this argument, and very
>>> reluctant to explain why it matters so much.
>>>
>> Comments like this are the reason William should be an admin.  And
>> probably an arbitrator.  And maybe even a vice-Jimbo.
>>
>>
>
> You view not assuming good faith as a good thing?
>

Hi, Geni and Guy.

Although I appreciate his comments at the same time I feel they were too
kind, I think I was assuming good faith. I just couldn't understand the
goal of Thomas's proposal, and his vehemence seemed out of proportion to
the apparent harm. When I and another fellow had asked him directly what
problem he was trying to solve, he didn't answer.

If I weren't assuming good faith, I'd just have put him in the category
of "difficult person" and stopped responding to him. In this case, the
best he's-acting-in-good-faith theory I could come up with was that
there was some other factor that I was missing. So I asked.

What would you prefer I have done? And just to be clear, that's a
sincere question, not rhetorical snark.

Thanks,

Wiliam


subject: [Wiktionary-l] [Commons-l] Sound files

body:
Hoi,
Disk space is dirt cheap and, it is not as if we would serve it to the
punters. The wav files would be there for when scientists want this stuff.
Thanks,
    GerardM

On 2/11/07, Erik Moeller <erik at wikimedia.org> wrote:
>
> On 2/11/07, GerardM <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Hoi,
> > By insisting on having flac you add a complication that does not add any
> > value.
>
> The value is the compression. Disk space and bandwidth aren't free.
>
> --
> Peace & Love,
> Erik
>
> DISCLAIMER: This message does not represent an official position of
> the Wikimedia Foundation or its Board of Trustees.
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wiktionary-l mailing list
> Wiktionary-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiktionary-l
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] Admin burnout

body:
Thomas Dalton wrote:
>> Is that our aim?
>>
>> Long ago, I used to work for market makers. These days, I do a lot of
>> work for Internet companies. In both lines of work, risk management is
>> essential. In both, the aim is to take as many well-managed,
>> likely-profitable risks as possible. That's how things get better, and
>> that's where a lot of your best information comes from.
>>
>> The risk management strategy you describe strikes me as a good one for
>> something much more settled, like a water utility.
>>
>> Do you really think Wikipedia should be that risk-averse? I had thought
>> it a much more dynamic enterprise, at least for the next few decades.
>>
>
> Risk management is always about balancing risk and reward. How
> risk-averse you are determines where you put that balance (in other
> words, how much reward you require to make the risk worthwhile), but
> you have to put the balance somewhere. It's never wise to take a risk
> that offers no reward. Being not at all averse to risk is never a good
> idea.
>

That's all true, and I agree completely.

Remind me who was advocating taking risks that offer no reward?

Also, my question wasn't about whether one should balance risks and
rewards, but what the right level of risk tolerance is for Wikipedia.
I'm saying that I expect Wikipedia would be pretty hungry for
well-managed risk. Unless people feel that the era of innovation at
Wikipedia is more or less over, in which case the minimum-risk strategy
you suggest seems more appropriate.

Thanks,

William


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] WYSIWYG (or WYSIWYM or WYSIWYM) status?

body:
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Evan Prodromou wrote:
> On Fri, 2007-09-02 at 11:59 -0800, Brion Vibber wrote:
>> These are dead-ends, don't waste your time or money on anything that
>> tries to tack on an HTML editor widget and requires translating back and
>> forth (an inherently lossy operation which will never work correctly
>> over thousands of edits of an article's lifetime).
>
> This is distressing news. Does this mean that we're not doing Wikiwyg?
>
> 	http://www.wikiwyg.net/
>
> Are Wikia and SocialText still working on that project?

Last I heard they gave it up and are sponsoring another, apparently
identical project. I don't expect it to fare any better.

- -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com / brion @ wikimedia.org)
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subject: [WikiEN-l] Sanger and CZ

body:
Stephen Bain wrote:
> On 2/11/07, stvrtg <stvrtg at gmail.com> wrote:
>> The whole point of CZ is greater reliability, but:
>>
>>    The article below may contain errors of fact, bias, grammar, etc. The
>> Citizendium
>>    Foundation and the participants in the Citizendium project make no
>> representations
>>    about the reliability of this article or, generally, its suitability for
>> any purpose. We make
>>    this disclaimer of all Citizendium article versions that have not been
>> specifically approved."
>>
>> Sort of says it all.
>
> Add it to this list:
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Non-Wikipedia_disclaimers
>

Put Citizendium in that list alongside a whole lot of sources that people
have actually heard of? A list of "places which are often regarded as
reliable"? I think that's giving them a bit more credit than they deserve.

I'm inclined to think that even mentioning them on this list is giving
them more credit than they deserve, but I'll be tolerant for now.

-- Tim Starling


body:
Thomas Dalton wrote:
>> Hi, Thomas. You seem both very determined to win this argument, and very
>> reluctant to explain why it matters so much.
>>
>> Could you tell me more about what's motivating you here?
>>
>
> I think reducing the time before unused unfree images can be deleted
> would improve Wikipedia. What else would my motivation be?
>

I was thinking your motivation was to reduce some real-world harm. E.g.,
images sitting for a week causes difficulty X to person Y. I gather
you're saying it's a more abstract thing, an aesthetic preference?

The reason I'm pursuing this is that I think it's easy for experts to
forget how opaque and frustrating Wikipedia can seem to non-experts. The
real-world harm that I'm eager to prevent is frustrating average and
newbie editors, for whom getting something undeleted is not the
relatively minor thing it is for one of us.

William


subject: [WikiEN-l] Sanger and CZ

body:
On 2/11/07, Oskar Sigvardsson <oskarsigvardsson at gmail.com> wrote:
> What instantly struck me when reading that post (and a few more) was
> how lucky we are to have gotten Jimbo instead of Larry. We love you,
> Jimbo!
>

It is certainly the case that Jimbo has proven to be a very effective
head of the project.

> We are obviously only hearing one side of the story, but even so it's
> pretty crazy. Hearing from the former CZ editor in the comments
> backing him up helped, of course. It does really help to show the
> difference between Wikipedia and Citizendium; if someone put up a page
> listing something that needed to be done on wikipedia, it would be a
> helpful contribution; if he/she did that on citizendium, it's an
> arrogant teenager who doesn't know his place and should let the
> grownups do all the decisions.
>

That isn't quite true. If someone turns up saying "I think wikipedia
should be run like this" they will at best be ignored. We tend to
expect people to have some serious editing under their belt before
getting involved in that side of the project.

> Another thing, about that "if I don't micromanage things, it won't get
> done!" attitude, has he never heard of wikipedia? If nothing else,
> wikipedia has shown that there are plenty of people that are willing
> to step up and manage things, and work together. I mean, wikipedia is
> a hell of a lot bigger than citizendium (article, community and
> policy-wise), and we can manage it fine. It isn't an anarchy, it's a
> quite well ordered society, with very little input from Jimbo.
>

Partly because nine times of ten it is less effort to directly solve
whatever the problem is rather than try and manage solving it.

--
geni


body:
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Rob Church wrote:
> On 11/02/07, Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com> wrote:
>> Last I heard they gave it up and are sponsoring another, apparently
>> identical project. I don't expect it to fare any better.
>
> Such beautiful cynicism, so poetic, so carefree.
>
> Probably, if anybody ever wants this kind of functionality done, we
> need to direct them to start helping us defining the parser behaviour.

Well I've been advocating that since the second I heard of such
projects. If they start doing it, let me know. ;)

- -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com / brion @ wikimedia.org)
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body:
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Simetrical wrote:
> On 2/11/07, Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com> wrote:
>> Rob Church wrote:
>>> Probably, if anybody ever wants this kind of functionality done, we
>>> need to direct them to start helping us defining the parser behaviour.
>> Well I've been advocating that since the second I heard of such
>> projects. If they start doing it, let me know. ;)
>
> I think a lot of people have *started* doing it.  It's *finishing*
> that's the tricky bit.  :P

Ok, if they *stop* doing it let me know! ;)

Seriously, though, we should all get together and make a concerted effort.

I would recommend making a start by looking at the XML structure used by
Magnus' conversion tools; if we need to adapt that further to integrate
properly or if we can just poke around with that?

Having a clear data model is a definite must; making the parser for it
clean and fast can follow. :)

- -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com / brion @ wikimedia.org)
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from_name: Oskar Sigvardsson

subject: [WikiEN-l] Sanger and CZ

body:
On 2/11/07, Glen S <wikiglen at gmail.com> wrote:
> Tell me, have any of you read this:
> http://daveydweeb.com/2007/02/07/citizendium-isnt-interested-in-your-opinion/
>
> I was shocked when I read it... that is, until I read Sanger's response
> beneath it... then I was absolutely dumbfounded. With a guy with that
> attitude at the helm, I'm expecting the CZ project to fizzle out VERY
> quicky.

What instantly struck me when reading that post (and a few more) was
how lucky we are to have gotten Jimbo instead of Larry. We love you,
Jimbo!

We are obviously only hearing one side of the story, but even so it's
pretty crazy. Hearing from the former CZ editor in the comments
backing him up helped, of course. It does really help to show the
difference between Wikipedia and Citizendium; if someone put up a page
listing something that needed to be done on wikipedia, it would be a
helpful contribution; if he/she did that on citizendium, it's an
arrogant teenager who doesn't know his place and should let the
grownups do all the decisions.

Another thing, about that "if I don't micromanage things, it won't get
done!" attitude, has he never heard of wikipedia? If nothing else,
wikipedia has shown that there are plenty of people that are willing
to step up and manage things, and work together. I mean, wikipedia is
a hell of a lot bigger than citizendium (article, community and
policy-wise), and we can manage it fine. It isn't an anarchy, it's a
quite well ordered society, with very little input from Jimbo.

Makes me glad I'm a contributor here, and not there, s'all I'm saying.

--Oskar


from_name: Gregory Maxwell

subject: [Commons-l] Sound files

body:
On 2/11/07, Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hoi,
> I read this in digest mode so let me answer things together.
>
> The reason why .ogg files are not great is because indeed it is a lossy
> algorithm. There is some great software to analyse pronunciation files;
> a program called "praat" is worth mentioning it is even licensed under
> GPL. There is even functionality in there to do with IPA transcription.
>
> Gregory's proposal to use Ogg/FLAC is not helpfull. This is not the
> format that is used to analyse pronunciation files. The notion that a
> specific quality was "the gold standard" at the time is indeed that. It
> used to be, times have changed.
>
> The Shtooka program that we are talking about CAN create both a WAV and
> an OGG file. It just needs asking. It would be helpful if we learn
> sooner rather than later what the outcome is of this request.

The Ogg/Flac is lossless, so it removes your concerns about lossyness.
It can be uploaded today, so it removes the problems of not being
uploadable. It is compressed (losslessly) so it's not quite so bad on
our storage and bandwidth. Shtooka already outputs Flac, and could be
trivially altered to output ogg/flac, if you'd like I will do this for
you. Any number of Ogg/Flac files can be quickly converted to wav with
a single command.

I am very hesitant and concerned about the prospects of permitting
uncompressed files: I think people will use them where they are
completely inappropriate because they are a bit easier to playback.
Flac or Ogg/Flac should be substantially smaller than wav and won't
drive people to use uncompressed formats for bad reasons.


subject: [Commons-l] Sound files

body:
On 2/11/07, Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hoi,
> The problem is that existing academic software like "praat" use .wav
> files. I do sympathise up to a point that storage is used. However, the
> price of a terabyte of storage is such that this is not that relevant.
> Both an .ogg and a .wav file would be saved. The first is to enable
> science to do its thing, the second is for our punters.

I'm quite confidence that anyone using praat can type "flac -d *.ogg"
to decode all their files before starting pratt the first time.

In any case, praat should be enhanced to work with Ogg/Flac files. A
frequent problem with wavs in this application space is they have no
metadata. Ogg/Flac and Flac would be good independent of the
advantages of compression. I'm looking at the source right now, and it
appears that it would only need a few minor changes to get in basic
flac support.


from_name: Evan Prodromou

body:
On Fri, 2007-09-02 at 11:59 -0800, Brion Vibber wrote:

> These are dead-ends, don't waste your time or money on anything that
> tries to tack on an HTML editor widget and requires translating back and
> forth (an inherently lossy operation which will never work correctly
> over thousands of edits of an article's lifetime).

This is distressing news. Does this mean that we're not doing Wikiwyg?

	http://www.wikiwyg.net/

Are Wikia and SocialText still working on that project?

~Evan

________________________________________________________________________
Evan Prodromou <evan at prodromou.name>
http://evan.prodromou.name/
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from_name: Daniel P. B. Smith

subject: [WikiEN-l] Sanger and CZ

body:
> Tell me, have any of you read this:
> http://daveydweeb.com/2007/02/07/citizendium-isnt-interested-in-
> your-opinion/
>
> I was shocked when I read it... that is, until I read Sanger's
> response
> beneath it... then I was absolutely dumbfounded. With a guy with that
> attitude at the helm, I'm expecting the CZ project to fizzle out VERY
> quicky.

In any case, Wikipedia's success surely involves a large element of
unrepeatable luck. The right idea _at the right time_, and a huge
element of first-mover advantage or whatever the heck they call it.

There's only one Wikipedia, and everyone who thinks that if they
build another one they will come is likely to be disappointed.


from_name: Keitei

subject: [WikiEN-l] Sanger and CZ

body:
On Feb 11, 2007, at 11:15, Fred Bauder wrote:
> The premise of Citizendium is that certified expertise is important
> in producing the product. There are potential problems, for
> example, in law, most of the real experts are working, rates run
> $200 a hour and more. To be sure, lawyers have fun too, and a few
> might find editing an encyclopedia fun, but would even 5 genuine
> experts be available? We accept 14 year olds here. I have voted for
> people who said they were 14 years old to be arbitrators. But I
> will be a lot more comfortable when that person has some life
> experience.

Finding experts isn't the only potential problem. Being an expert
doesn't mean one can use English as effectively as is required for an
authoritative encyclopedia. Sure, experts can say, "this is factually
accurate," but can they explain in an encyclopedic tone the basics of
their field? Reading the biology article (the PDF version), I'd have
to say, so far, the answer is no. I'm astounded at the tone of the
article, a tone which insults my intelligence and treats me, the
reader, as if I were eight. It reads like a textbook, not a neutral
collection of information. And if the "authors", the ones who could
clean this up and make it more encyclopedic, are treated like they
don't matter, I don't think it is going to get much better. Unless
Citizendium has a hidden army of English majors. Which it might. But
maybe they are only allowed to edit linguistics articles.

I won't contest that maybe the editing atmosphere is more relaxed and
enjoyable, but I will contest that the outcome is the same or better.
It doesn't seem that Citizendium is going to achieve the critical
mass it requires either, but time will tell.

--keitei


from_name: Rob

subject: [WikiEN-l] A "Wikipedia-Free Zone"

body:
On 2/9/07, Daniel R. Tobias <dan at tobias.name> wrote:
> Comic book artist and web forum owner John Byrne has declared his
> forum to be a "Wikipedia-Free Zone" and banned all links to Wikipedia
> regardless of content or context:
>
> http://www.byrnerobotics.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=16456&PN=1&totP
> osts=105
>
> It seems his grievance against Wikipedia is that he was unable to
> bully it into suppressing all mention of controversies and criticisms
> of him in his article, and rebuffed his Daniel-Brandt-ish demand that
> the John Byrne article be either deleted or permanently locked.

When Byrne complained to Jimbo a year or two ago, Jimbo, in a
proto-wp:office action, blanked the article and requested it be
rewritten with scrupulous attention to sources.  So it was rewritten,
the bulk of it by me initially, and it was stripped of anything
resembling rumor and innuendo and sourced almost entirely with
published interviews of Byrne himself.  And he's still angry.  Both
before and after Byrne has refused to answer, despite repeated
requests from myself, Jimbo, and members of his own forum, exactly
what problems he had with the article.  My best guess is that he
thought there shouldn't be an article at all or that it was a stubborn
point of honor for him to not identify the problems, as we should have
caught them ourselves.   At least Brandt came up with specific, though
ludicrous and impossible, demands from time to time.  You do the best
you can, but some people won't be happy unless they are provided with
veto power over whatever anyone says about them.  Case in point is
Byrne's message board, a place where thoughtcrime is rigorously
controlled, manned by sycophants and widely mocked in the comic book
community.


from_name: Matthew Brown

body:
On 2/11/07, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton at gmail.com> wrote:
> The real world harm is that of copyright violations.

The copyright is already violated if it's actually the case.  It
doesn't matter if we delete it in 24 hours or 7 days.  Reasonable time
taken to investigate the issue is quite OK, in my opinion.

-Matt


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject:
[Foundation-l] precisions about the recent WMF "fair use"
	decision

body:
David Monniaux wrote:

>Kat Walsh said:
>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Administrators%27_noticeboard#Important_notice_regarding_fair_use_that_all_administrators_should_see
>
>" There are some works, primarily historically important photographs and
>significant modern artworks, that we can not realistically expect to be
>released under a free content license, but that are hard to discuss in
>an educational context without including the media itself. "
>
>
>I do agree that there are various kinds of important situations that, in
>order to be properly discussed in an educational fashion, need a
>photograph (or at least, omitting one reduces significantly the interest
>of the article).
>
>To me, these include, among others:
>* recent works of art
>* military operations and hardware
>* spacecraft
>(this list is non exhaustive, I'm just taking examples).
>
>In all the cases in the above list, we can include written descriptions
>(this is what people used to do before it was easy to reprint pictures).
>However, having images is profitable. Also, in all those cases, there is
>little hope that we should get "free" photographs, simply because of we
>will not obtain an authorization from the artist or because our
>photographers will not be allowed to photograph inside the museum, or
>inside a war theater, or a spacecraft.
>
I have no problem encouraging surreptitious photography in museums. Of
course, the photographer does it at his own risk to his relation to
museum authorities.  Whether the publication of such pictures infringes
on copyrights depends on the specific objects photographed.

>The usual answer (at least on these mailing-list) on such cases is that
>we should delete the pictures, and it's the fault of the artist or the
>organizations that could have authorized some free pictures if we don't
>have pictures in the article about their activities. In a sense, that
>makes sense: we're effectively devoting some free space to describe what
>they do, so they should be graceful and give us a photograph.
>
The answer that we should delete these pictures is not unanimous.  At
the same time I would reject the idea that the artist is somehow
blameworthy for refusing these permissions.  They owe us nothing.  Those
who receive benefits from existing copyright laws have a head start in
convincing the artists that that system is the best; reversing that
trend will require a full generation of re-education.

>Now, it seems (but I may be mistaken, and this is why I'm asking for
>precisions) that we may carve an exemption for "significant modern
>artworks".
>
>I suspect that the adjective "significant" was added so as to exclude
>all the album covers and other "pop culture" artwork, and that what is
>meant is that we should have, say, photographs of Picasso's Guernica and
>similar works.
>
"Significant" is just as subjective a term as "notable".  At least if
you use the latter you can merge the two problems into one.  I have no
problem with including album covers.  Have there even been any broad
general complaints from the industry about including these?

>To me, this is troubling. An article discussing a painting on Wikipedia
>is, in effect, free advertisement for a number of people:
>* the museum owning the painting, because it attracts visitors
>* the artist's family, in countries with a _droit de suite_ (this is a
>clause in EU law that says that under some circumstances and within a
>limited period of time, the artist or its heirs obtain a little share of
>the resale price of the works of the artist).
>These people can authorize free pictures.
>
I agree that the artist has these potential benefits, but the original
painting is unique, and the number of visitors to the museum or the
number of possible resales is limited.  The advertising value is,
nevertheless, incidental.  Most of our audience has no reasonable hope
of ever visiting that museum.  The question of who may give permission
is relatively easy as long as the artist is still alive.  For the next
70 years (more or less, depending on the jurisdiction) there is a huge
legal limbo about who may give permission.  If there are 10
grandchildren it may often be that any one of them may give the
permission.  If one grandchild has taken upon himself the right to
publish his grandfather's art for his own sole benefit there is nothing
to pevent a non-benefitting cousin from granting a free licence.

>Thus, I'm puzzled: it seems that we're doing a favor to museums and the
>heirs of various "modern artists", and supporting the speculation that
>declares that certain works are more "significant" than others, without
>any support from the people whose work we promote.
>
The "non-significant" ones stand to gain even more from our publicity.
Without our efforts no-one would even think of going to see their art.
At least someone like Picaso is so hugely famous that he will already
draw attention without us.  The complaint against the big record
companies is already being voiced by musicians like Gilberto Gil who
would like to have more control over their music and its distribution.
Between the artist and his audience there is a large number of others,
including producers and retailers, that stands to lose big from the
effects of a technology that renders them redundant.  We only owe to
them as long as they do something useful.

>As an example, I remember processing some emails on behalf of the
>Foundation: some artist wanted us to carry pictures of his work, but at
>the same time didn't want to give a free license. In short, he wanted us
>to give them free promotion without giving something back. (I'm unsure
>whether this artist would be considered "significant", but he apparently
>considered himself to be so.)
>
Fair enough.  The marketplace can be brutal.  The significance of one
person's art is left to the judgement of others.  The situation there
seems like an arts counterpart to No Original Research.  Our most
important benefit from that policy is protection from the illusions of
grandeur exhibited by some original thinkers.  A simple answer here
might be, "If he merits an article he merits having it illustrated."

>I would thus be glad if we could have some clarification about the
>extent of this exemption for fair use, and why we seem to give 'carte
>blanche' for "significant modern art".
>
In a changing environment we need to avoid clarifications that would be
too strict or rigid.  In what Kat said about fair use there are some of
us who would see that stand as minimal and others who would see it as
maximal.  At this point it may be better to preserve the dynamic by
avoiding "clarifications".  Fair use is only one aspect of the
situation, one which many contributors invoke too conveniently.  I'm
inclined to believe tha Sonny Bono's copyright extension to 95 years in
the United States may have brough the copyright house of cards to a
tipping point.  The conjunction between that and a technology that
permits a kind of production and distribution that was previously
impossible, have brought forth a range of profound questions about
copyright that were previously meaningless.

In all this EU law creates a lot of anomalous problems.  The EU
obsession for homogenization appears to make it very difficult for any
member to seek its own imaginative solutions to the problems.  The
industries that have for so long had the ear of the centralizing
bureaucrats seem to frown on any kind of change that would put them at a
disadvantage.  Is any EU member willing to defy the will of the
bureacracy with the will of its own democratically elected government.

Ec


from_name: Rich Holton

subject: [WikiEN-l] Admin burnout

body:
Thomas Dalton wrote:
>> Remind me who was advocating taking risks that offer no reward?
>
> No-one. I phrased that wrong, sorry. I meant a negative expectation,
> ie. less reward than risk, which is how I assess the expectation of
> this proposal, rather than no reward at all.
>
>> Also, my question wasn't about whether one should balance risks and
>> rewards, but what the right level of risk tolerance is for Wikipedia.
>> I'm saying that I expect Wikipedia would be pretty hungry for
>> well-managed risk. Unless people feel that the era of innovation at
>> Wikipedia is more or less over, in which case the minimum-risk strategy
>> you suggest seems more appropriate.
>
> I agree, we have to take significant risks for Wikipedia to work.
> Allowing everyone to edit is an enormous risk, and we frequently lose
> time because of it (ie. we have to fix vandalism). However, the gain
> in terms of good contributions is even more enormous, so we consider
> it an acceptable risk. The risk of allowing large numbers of people
> access to admin tools without the strict standards we employ at the
> moment is extremely high, and the reward is very small, so (in my
> opinion, according to the values I've placed on the risk and reward
> and the balance between them that I've determined) it's not an
> acceptable risk.
>
You do realize that for much of Wikipedia's history, the route to being
an admin was much less strict than we have now. Despite this, and
despite the fact that there are relatively very few cases of people
being "de-adminned", cases of rogue admins doing huge damage are either
non-existent or very rare, depending on what you consider "huge damage".

Why is it that those admins, let in under much less strict processes,
have not resulted in all the nastiness that are predicted if we somehow
relax the process again?

-Rich
user:Rholton


from_name: ikiroid

subject: [WikiEN-l] A "Wikipedia-Free Zone"

body:
>
> Well, you can't make everyone happy, but you can cater to them to the
> point that the irrationality (if that's a word) of their feelings become
> apparent, in which case most third parties support your actions instead of
> their reaction.
>


body:
David Monniaux wrote:

>Geni said:
>
>
>>>/ To me, these include, among others://
>>>
>>>
>/>/ * military operations and hardware
>
>
>>US military photos and trade fairs. Also various open days. About the
>>only think you won't get is NK stuff such as Ch'onma-ho
>>
>>
>So, only US hardware and activities. So much for NPOV. (There are tons of interesting things
>that you won't see unless you're in operations. Trade fairs will show only small arms.)
>
>
>>/ * spacecraft
>>
>>
>>NASA for a lot of stuff and countries tend to put a lot of their space
>>hardware on display
>>
>>
>NASA => only US
>
>You've therefore made the point that our current policies favor the broadcasting of the
>activities of the US government. So much for NPOV. :-)
>
As much as I enjoy blaming the United States for most of the world's
ills, this is one point where that would have no justification.

If the Europeans want to whinge about the availability of American
material being a violation of NPOV they have one excellent solution:
Make their own material free.

Ec


from_name: Bryan Derksen

body:
Stephen Bain wrote:
> The waiting periods were indeed introduced for images to allow for
> human review. But none were introduced for articles, templates,
> portals etc. The reason was that those pages could be reviewed after
> they were deleted, whereas images couldn't. But since June, images can
> also be undeleted. There is no other factor that makes images special.
> Either waiting periods should be introduced for all types speedy
> deletion, or they should be removed for images.

While I would generally support any increases in waiting periods for
deletion (I once seriously proposed extending the duration of AfD to 30
days), there's also a third option; leave waiting periods the way they
are right now. It seems to work reasonably well.


from_name: Stephen Bain

body:
On 2/11/07, Bryan Derksen <bryan.derksen at shaw.ca> wrote:
>
> Images might be orphans due to vanadalism on some other article, and
> there's no way to check that directly from the image page itself. If
> orphaned fair use images were more rapidly deleted then vandalism on the
> low-traffic pages that use them becomes a lot more destructive.

As Thomas said above, for images claimed as fair use, one simply needs
to check the fair use rationale on the image description page to see
which articles the image is claimed to be fair use in. If there is no
such rationale, then the image is speedy deleteable anyway.

> And it's not necessarily that easy to reupload an image. The original
> uploader might be long gone from Wikipedia, or he might not have
> retained a local copy of it, etc.

Completely unnecessary: image undeletion has been available since June
last year. It's as trivial to undelete an image mistakenly deleted as
it is to undelete an article mistakenly deleted.

On a tangential note, I proposed last month that all the "waiting
periods" in the image criteria be removed, since they were only added
in the first place because image undeletion didn't exist at the time.
The only good argument I heard against the proposal was that bots like
OrphanBot need some waiting period in which to do their business. I
don't see why images can't simply be put into a pool for bots like
OrphanBot to work on, then put into another pool to be deleted
immediately - with no further delays - once the bots are done.

--
Stephen Bain
stephen.bain at gmail.com


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Andrew Gray

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] precisions about the recent WMF "fair use"
	decision

body:
On 10/02/07, David Monniaux <David.Monniaux at free.fr> wrote:
> Andrew Gray a ?crit :
> > Bear in mind that copyright is not related to your right not to have
> > your image used in a defamatory or misleading manner - whatever rights
> > the law gives you in this regard you retain whether you hold the
> > copyright or not.
> Actually, it is.
>
> Proof: the Wikimedia Foundation *copyrights* its logos under *unfree
> licenses* exactly for that reason: for being able to control their use
> more effectively than through trademark law solely.

Sorry, by "your image" here I meant "the photograph of you" (ie, the
image in question). Images which aren't a photographic representation
of a person don't tend to be covered by these protections, hence the
workarounds...

--
- Andrew Gray
  andrew.gray at dunelm.org.uk


from_name: Thomas Dalton

body:
>Fortunately I had local copies - stamp scanning and
> post-scan cleanup is sufficiently laborious that without the backups, I
> probably wouldn't have troubled to redo the work.

If you're a long time WP admin, you have access to the undelete option
on the image page. No need to rescan anything, even if you didn't have
local copies.


from_name: Simetrical

body:
On 2/11/07, Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com> wrote:
> Rob Church wrote:
> > Probably, if anybody ever wants this kind of functionality done, we
> > need to direct them to start helping us defining the parser behaviour.
>
> Well I've been advocating that since the second I heard of such
> projects. If they start doing it, let me know. ;)

I think a lot of people have *started* doing it.  It's *finishing*
that's the tricky bit.  :P


from_name: David Strauss

subject: [Foundation-l] Featured Article

body:
I'd answer, but I don't want to encourage posting MediaWiki questions to
the Foundation listserv. Please use the MediaWiki listserv or other
MediaWiki-specific resources, like #mediawiki.

Wilson Abigaba wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I installed mediawiki 1.6 and am trying to put featured article, popular
> article, etc on the home page, just like wikipedia.
> Any ideas on how I can do that?
>
> Thanks in advance,
>
> regards,
> Wilson
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l


subject: [Foundation-l] Featured Article


subject: [WikiEN-l] Admin burnout

body:
> When I left, the delay between me hitting the "save" button to post my
> de-adminship request on Meta and the sysop bit being removed was about
> 150 seconds. That included time spent indicating to the steward handling
> the request, via IRC, that I really did want to be de-adminned.
>
> So I fail to see where this inability to block comes in. That's a lot
> quicker than the response time for the average AIV request, for example.
> The stewards know what to do; in an emergency, they would be able to act
> just as fast, if not faster.

The reason Stewards respond so quickly is because they don't have very
much to do - everything is designed so that local admins and crats do
as much of the work as possible. If it became necessary to desysop
people much more often (as often as we currently block people, if the
most radical suggestion were to be implemented), meta's requests for
permissions page would become just like AIV. The solution would, of
course, be creating more stewards. Once we've done that, the problem
has just moved up a level.

Whatever you do, you have to have a small number of carefully selected
people with more power than everyone else. What level of power you
make the cutoff point is up to you, but you have to make it somewhere,
and wherever you make it, you'll get the same complaints we're getting
now about RfA. It's unfortunate that this is the case, but that's
life.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Admin burnout

body:
> So, shall we remove the admin bit from anyone who admits to knowing how
> to cause such damage? Or shall we immediately take steps to make it so
> such damage is impossible?

You're misunderstanding the nature of risk. Our aim is not to remove
all risk, that's impossible. Our aim is to reduce risk to the minimum
possible while stilling being able to make our encyclopaedia as well
as possible. Talking about the level of risk of a certain thing is
meaningless, you have to take about the level of risk compared to the
gain from it. The gain from 1000 admins is enormous compared to the
risk of 1000 admins. The gain from 10000 admins is much small compared
to the risk of 10000 admins. In my opinion, and apparently in the
majority opinion, that gain is not worth the risk.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Admin burnout

body:
> You're misunderstanding the nature of risk. Our aim is not to remove
> all risk, that's impossible. Our aim is to reduce risk to the minimum
> possible while stilling being able to make our encyclopaedia as well
> as possible. Talking about the level of risk of a certain thing is
> meaningless, you have to take about the level of risk compared to the
> gain from it. The gain from 1000 admins is enormous compared to the
> risk of 1000 admins. The gain from 10000 admins is much small compared
> to the risk of 10000 admins. In my opinion, and apparently in the
> majority opinion, that gain is not worth the risk.

I don't generally reply to myself to correct typos, but that email is
full of them!

stilling -> still
take about -> talk about
small -> smaller

I shouldn't type with cold fingers... sorry!


subject: [WikiEN-l] Sanger and CZ

body:
I haven't read many of the links, but I think this comment from Larry
sums it all up:

"Authors are not welcome to engineer editorial policy."


from_name: Gwern Branwen

subject: [WikiEN-l] Admin burnout

body:
Rich Holton <richholton at gmail.com> writes:

> Thomas Dalton wrote:
>>> Remind me who was advocating taking risks that offer no reward?
>>
>> No-one. I phrased that wrong, sorry. I meant a negative expectation,
>> ie. less reward than risk, which is how I assess the expectation of
>> this proposal, rather than no reward at all.
>>
>>> Also, my question wasn't about whether one should balance risks and
>>> rewards, but what the right level of risk tolerance is for Wikipedia.
>>> I'm saying that I expect Wikipedia would be pretty hungry for
>>> well-managed risk. Unless people feel that the era of innovation at
>>> Wikipedia is more or less over, in which case the minimum-risk strategy
>>> you suggest seems more appropriate.
>>
>> I agree, we have to take significant risks for Wikipedia to work.
>> Allowing everyone to edit is an enormous risk, and we frequently lose
>> time because of it (ie. we have to fix vandalism). However, the gain
>> in terms of good contributions is even more enormous, so we consider
>> it an acceptable risk. The risk of allowing large numbers of people
>> access to admin tools without the strict standards we employ at the
>> moment is extremely high, and the reward is very small, so (in my
>> opinion, according to the values I've placed on the risk and reward
>> and the balance between them that I've determined) it's not an
>> acceptable risk.
>>
> You do realize that for much of Wikipedia's history, the route to being
> an admin was much less strict than we have now. Despite this, and
> despite the fact that there are relatively very few cases of people
> being "de-adminned", cases of rogue admins doing huge damage are either
> non-existent or very rare, depending on what you consider "huge damage".
>
> Why is it that those admins, let in under much less strict processes,
> have not resulted in all the nastiness that are predicted if we somehow
> relax the process again?
>
> -Rich
> user:Rholton

Because Wikipedia is more of a target now? and those who would seek adminship
can no longer be trusted to be self-selected well-meaning geeks? For
much of Wikipedia's history, the rest of the world really didn't care
about the avenues to power in Wikipedia because they wouldn't try to
take them even if they were easy.

I daresay things have changed since those early days.

--
Gwern
Inquiring minds want to know.


from_name: Edward Z. Yang

body:
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

Magnus Manske wrote:
> However, it worked OK (last time I checked) with most of our wiki code
> except conditional/calculation template functions.

I'd recommend modeling those off of XSLT. <xsl:if> and <xsl:choose>
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.6 (MingW32)
Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org

iD8DBQFFz3ROqTO+fYacSNoRAs0iAJ4wdCws8h95WyW4LU2+IHrb1yYAAgCeMiPN
CX8ZD4bzVMMh9EbViF3LhE4=
=eFDg
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----


from_name: Samuel Klein

subject: [Foundation-l] Use of logos within Wikimedia sites

body:
On Sun, 11 Feb 2007, Anthere wrote:
>
> geni wrote:
>> On 2/9/07, Samuel Klein <meta.sj at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> Since we also have the benefit of an official Foundation logo, perhaps
>>> the project logos can themselves be open-use.  What are the problems we
>>> are trying to avoid, and what things that we want are being held back
>>> due to licensing issues?
>>
>> the foundation wishes to be able to raise money by lisenceing the use
>> of the logo to third parties
>
> yes.
> Plus another reason: avoiding other parties to misuse the logo (such as
> using it to promote a right wing encyclopedic website) and as such
> damaging our image.
>
> These two reasons (image and possibility to raise money) explain why the
> Foundation will not put the logos under a free licence.

The first reason you mention (misuse, misrepresenting the projects) sounds
like a trademark matter, not a copyright matter.

As to the second reason: free use by wikiProjects, on-wiki, and in other
non-commercial ways, would not prevent raising money by licensing logos to
people selling something.

An -NC license makes sense here, as does trademark protection; I don't see
why derivatives should not be allowed beyond these points.

SJ


body:
> Now I do, certainly - this incident predates the image undeletion feature.

It's irrelevant, then, isn't it?


body:
> If I thought so, then I wouldn't have posted it, eh? :-) My point was to
> show a real-life example showing how much the system can screw up when
> everybody operates on a hair trigger; delays of a few days are a chance
> to correct errors instead of compounding them. Note that some people
> (Matthew Woodcroft most recently) are also proposing entirely scrubbing
> revisions that are deemed copyvios, which would make images unrecoverable.

Your example does indeed show that it's a good thing to wait before
deleting, but only because it's difficult to undelete. It is now easy
to undelete, so your example is irrelevant. I know you think otherwise
- that doesn't make you right.


from_name: Anthony

subject: [WikiEN-l] Sanger and CZ

body:
On 2/11/07, Keitei <nihthraefn at gmail.com> wrote:
> Finding experts isn't the only potential problem. Being an expert
> doesn't mean one can use English as effectively as is required for an
> authoritative encyclopedia. Sure, experts can say, "this is factually
> accurate," but can they explain in an encyclopedic tone the basics of
> their field?

Not necessarily, and in Citizendium they don't have to.  That's why
there are *authors* in addition to *editors*.

I think Fred Bauder is correct that most of this is pretty ho-hum if
you take off your Wikipedia hat and put on your Citizendium hat.

All this said, I'm currently sitting back and waiting for Citizendium
to figure out whether or not it's going to be a fork, and what kind of
copyright policies are going to be adopted.  I'm afraid to touch
articles based on Wikipedia, because CZ isn't making any attempt to
follow the GFDL (something Larry Sanger himself seems to think is
acceptable), and I'm afraid to touch articles not based on Wikipedia,
because there is still a vocal group of CZers that are trying to get
these articles licensed under a noncommercial-only license.

Anthony


from_name: Delirium

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] precisions about the recent WMF "fair
	use"	decision

body:
Andrew Gray wrote:
> On 10/02/07, David Monniaux <David.Monniaux at free.fr> wrote:
>
>> Andrew Gray a ?crit :
>>
>>> Bear in mind that copyright is not related to your right not to have
>>> your image used in a defamatory or misleading manner - whatever rights
>>> the law gives you in this regard you retain whether you hold the
>>> copyright or not.
>>>
>> Actually, it is.
>>
>> Proof: the Wikimedia Foundation *copyrights* its logos under *unfree
>> licenses* exactly for that reason: for being able to control their use
>> more effectively than through trademark law solely.
>>
>
> Sorry, by "your image" here I meant "the photograph of you" (ie, the
> image in question). Images which aren't a photographic representation
> of a person don't tend to be covered by these protections, hence the
> workarounds...
>

Though even there it's not clear that the workarounds are necessary or
beneficial.  Sun recently freely licensed the copyright on their Java
mascot ("Duke"), and is controlling use exclusively through the
trademark that they retain on it.  Mozilla, meanwhile, has been famously
tightfisted with their Firefox logo, and it has led to a great deal of
rancor within the open-source/free-software community, arguably
outweighing any benefit they've gained from that control.

-Mark


from_name: Jeremy Tobacman

subject:
[Wikitech-l] Web hosting donation offer (Re:
	[Ticket#2007021010009983])

body:
We received an offer through OTRS for co-location services (see below).  Can
someone in-the-know please reply?  I've cc'ed the guy who made the offer.

Ilan, thank you-- people who read this list will know how to answer.

Jeremy

"ILAN" <ilan at wserv.co.il> wrote:

> Hello,
>
> My name is Ilan Goldman from Goldman Computerization Solutions Company.
>
> We provide web hosting services in Israel.
>
> We can donate your organization co location services in Israeli
datacenter.
>
> BR
>
> Ilan Goldman
>
> +972-54-6216766
>


body:
On 2/11/07, Bryan Derksen <bryan.derksen at shaw.ca> wrote:
> Stephen Bain wrote:
> > On a tangential note, I proposed last month that all the "waiting
> > periods" in the image criteria be removed, since they were only added
> > in the first place because image undeletion didn't exist at the time.
> > The only good argument I heard against the proposal was that bots like
> > OrphanBot need some waiting period in which to do their business. I
> > don't see why images can't simply be put into a pool for bots like
> > OrphanBot to work on, then put into another pool to be deleted
> > immediately - with no further delays - once the bots are done.
>
> Waiting periods gives more opportunity for human review. I usually turn
> this issue around and ask why we _shouldn't_ have a waiting period. The
> length of a queue doesn't alter the throughput; the same amount of
> deletion can be done with a queue or without one, and with the same
> amount of work.

Work is not increased in all cases; for example when a non-admin tags
an image as being eligible for deletion, an admin must later review
the image and delete it or not. This would still be necessary whether
or not there was a fixed waiting period. But work is increased where
an admin must tag an image, then wait a week to come back and delete
it. We empower admins to decide whether things meet the criteria

The waiting periods were indeed introduced for images to allow for
human review. But none were introduced for articles, templates,
portals etc. The reason was that those pages could be reviewed after
they were deleted, whereas images couldn't. But since June, images can
also be undeleted. There is no other factor that makes images special.
Either waiting periods should be introduced for all types speedy
deletion, or they should be removed for images.

--
Stephen Bain
stephen.bain at gmail.com


body:
Simetrical wrote:
> On 2/11/07, Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com> wrote:
>
>> Rob Church wrote:
>>
>>> Probably, if anybody ever wants this kind of functionality done, we
>>> need to direct them to start helping us defining the parser behaviour.
>>>
>> Well I've been advocating that since the second I heard of such
>> projects. If they start doing it, let me know. ;)
>>
>
> I think a lot of people have *started* doing it.  It's *finishing*
> that's the tricky bit.  :P
>

As one of the many people who's done so, I agree. :)  The problem is
that ~80% of wikimarkup is pretty straightforward to parse using
standard methods, another 10-15% can be done without huge difficulty
using known-but-less-standard methods, and the remaining 5% doesn't fit
well at all into any of the normal models of lexing/parsing.  And I'm
not even talking about the mess with template substitution, which is a
whole different can of worms.  Relatively recent improvements in tool
infrastructure, like Bison adding GLR parsing, help somewhat, but the
last few percent is still a tough nut to crack.  It's annoying and
tricky enough work that I think it will only get done if: 1) someone is
paid to do it; or 2) someone can find a way to work it into a school
project.

-Mark


subject: [Wikitech-l] Another offer for help with web hosting costs

body:
Just received in the OTRS donations queue:

From: "Manny V." <manny.v at hostdime.com>
To: <info at wikimedia.org>
Cc: <kayla at surpasshosting.com>
Subject: Re: Orlando Data Center
Created: 02/11/2007 07:23:39
I sent this email below but never received a response.

"Florence Devouard, Chairwoman of the Wikimedia foundation has told an
audience at the Lift07 conference that Wikipedia has the financial resources
to run its servers for another 3-4 months, and that without further funding
Wikipedia "might disappear"."

----- Original Message -----
From: "Manny V." <manny.v at hostdime.com>
To: <info at wikimedia.org>
Sent: Saturday, January 06, 2007 9:24 AM
Subject: Orlando Data Center

> Hello,
>
> We own and operate central florida's biggest data center in terms of
> bandwidth
> and domains hosted. Currently over 500,000
>
> We realized wikipedia is a FL based corp. We would love to help with your
> hosting
> costs.
>
> Thank you for your attention,
>
> ::____________________________________________::
>
> Manny V.
> HostDime.com, Inc
> http://www.HostDime.com > AIM: DimeNoc Manny
> 407.756.1126 ext 210
>
> DimeNoc : Orlando, FL : 32801 : 407.756.1126
>
> Web Hosting > Dedicated Servers > Solutions >


from_name: geni

body:
On 2/11/07, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton at gmail.com> wrote:
> Your example does indeed show that it's a good thing to wait before
> deleting, but only because it's difficult to undelete. It is now easy
> to undelete, so your example is irrelevant. I know you think otherwise
> - that doesn't make you right.

Oh well I think that is enough messing around. Orphan fair use is
currently being handled by bot. So the judgment of admins isn't much
involved one way other other.

Strangely despite a give away deletion pattern no one noticed for
several days which also rather shoots down the theory that admins
monitor each other's deletions.

--
geni


subject:
[Foundation-l] precisions about the recent WMF "fair
	use"	decision

body:
Not only do I agree, but I believe a similar issue surrounds fair use.
Accusations of U.S. centrism are indefensible when they're based on
restrictive laws in non-U.S. countries.

Now, that doesn't mean there aren't practical advantages to
accommodating other countries' needs, but the lack of doing so is hardly
"U.S. centrism."

Ray Saintonge wrote:
> As much as I enjoy blaming the United States for most of the world's
> ills, this is one point where that would have no justification.
>
> If the Europeans want to whinge about the availability of American
> material being a violation of NPOV they have one excellent solution:
> Make their own material free.
>
> Ec


from_name: Fred Bauder

subject: [WikiEN-l] Sanger and CZ

body:
>-----Original Message-----
>From: Glen S [mailto:wikiglen at gmail.com]
>Sent: Saturday, February 10, 2007 10:34 PM
>To: wikien-l at lists.wikimedia.org
>Subject: [WikiEN-l] Sanger and CZ
>
>Tell me, have any of you read this:
>http://daveydweeb.com/2007/02/07/citizendium-isnt-interested-in-your-opinion/
>
>I was shocked when I read it... that is, until I read Sanger's response
>beneath it... then I was absolutely dumbfounded. With a guy with that
>attitude at the helm, I'm expecting the CZ project to fizzle out VERY
>quicky.
>
>Glen

If you go to Citizendium and participate you need to wear your Citizendium hat. I'm an old hand at that. When I post on this list, edit Wikipedia, act as an administrator, as an arbitrator, propose policies, I wear my Wikipedia hat. That is, I accept the premises of Wikipedia; if I consider how policy might be better, I think of that while accepting the premises. I suppose part of that comes from legal training, but basically, if you want to play football (American), you've got to try to move the ball towards the right goalposts, pass only behind the line of scrimmage, and tackle without grabbing the runner's facemask.

I'm writing on Citizendium and having fun doing it. I'm not sure about being an editor. I'm qualified in law--I can remember working on the law article on Wikipedia and having to deal with some rather difficult editors, including a developer who thought that status gave him a lot of clout, apparently he had taken a law course or two. Although lawyers can present a quite nasty face when they are advocating for your opponent, it is quite remarkable how well they get along when they are together talking about the basics of law. Only problem is, at this point I interested in a lot of other things I would rather write about, and haven't practiced law for 10 years. Yet, I might like working with a small group of professionals on encyclopedia articles.

The premise of Citizendium is that certified expertise is important in producing the product. There are potential problems, for example, in law, most of the real experts are working, rates run $200 a hour and more. To be sure, lawyers have fun too, and a few might find editing an encyclopedia fun, but would even 5 genuine experts be available? We accept 14 year olds here. I have voted for people who said they were 14 years old to be arbitrators. But I will be a lot more comfortable when that person has some life experience.

Bottom line, Citizendium operates from different premises. They are promising, but remain untested. Only a fair trial will determine the merit of the approach.

Fred


body:
> Hi, Thomas. You seem both very determined to win this argument, and very
> reluctant to explain why it matters so much.
>
> Could you tell me more about what's motivating you here?

I think reducing the time before unused unfree images can be deleted
would improve Wikipedia. What else would my motivation be?


subject: [WikiEN-l] Admin burnout

body:
> Is that our aim?
>
> Long ago, I used to work for market makers. These days, I do a lot of
> work for Internet companies. In both lines of work, risk management is
> essential. In both, the aim is to take as many well-managed,
> likely-profitable risks as possible. That's how things get better, and
> that's where a lot of your best information comes from.
>
> The risk management strategy you describe strikes me as a good one for
> something much more settled, like a water utility.
>
> Do you really think Wikipedia should be that risk-averse? I had thought
> it a much more dynamic enterprise, at least for the next few decades.

Risk management is always about balancing risk and reward. How
risk-averse you are determines where you put that balance (in other
words, how much reward you require to make the risk worthwhile), but
you have to put the balance somewhere. It's never wise to take a risk
that offers no reward. Being not at all averse to risk is never a good
idea.


from_name: Guy Chapman aka JzG

subject: [WikiEN-l] Admin burnout

body:
On Sun, 11 Feb 2007 16:41:43 +0000, "Thomas Dalton"
<thomas.dalton at gmail.com> wrote:

>Risk management is always about balancing risk and reward.

And the values of both are culturally constructed (i.e. arbitrary) as
is the balance between them.  I know one of the more prominent risk
theorists, he has a hard time getting people to accept the validity of
the concept of plain bad luck.

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


body:
On Sun, 11 Feb 2007 08:21:00 -0800, William Pietri
<william at scissor.com> wrote:

>Hi, Thomas. You seem both very determined to win this argument, and very
>reluctant to explain why it matters so much.

Comments like this are the reason William should be an admin.  And
probably an arbitrator.  And maybe even a vice-Jimbo.

William is probably my favourite Wikipedian; he knows this :-)

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


body:
On 2/11/07, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:
> On Sun, 11 Feb 2007 08:21:00 -0800, William Pietri
> <william at scissor.com> wrote:
>
> >Hi, Thomas. You seem both very determined to win this argument, and very
> >reluctant to explain why it matters so much.
>
> Comments like this are the reason William should be an admin.  And
> probably an arbitrator.  And maybe even a vice-Jimbo.
>

You view not assuming good faith as a good thing?

--
geni


subject: [WikiEN-l] Admin burnout

body:
> >Risk management is always about balancing risk and reward.
>
> And the values of both are culturally constructed (i.e. arbitrary) as
> is the balance between them.  I know one of the more prominent risk
> theorists, he has a hard time getting people to accept the validity of
> the concept of plain bad luck.

Exactly - that cultural construction is what people are talking about
when they say someone is more or less risk-averse than someone else.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Admin burnout

body:
On Sun, 11 Feb 2007 17:09:01 +0000, "Thomas Dalton"
<thomas.dalton at gmail.com> wrote:

>> And the values of both are culturally constructed (i.e. arbitrary) as
>> is the balance between them.  I know one of the more prominent risk
>> theorists, he has a hard time getting people to accept the validity of
>> the concept of plain bad luck.

>Exactly - that cultural construction is what people are talking about
>when they say someone is more or less risk-averse than someone else.

Up to a point.  There are two issues: first, the /value/ of risk and
the /value/ of reward are subjective; second, the perceived /balance/
between them differs.

To say that different individuals are more or less risk averse is only
half the story - they may be identically risk averse but have formed
different judgments of the value of risk in a given context.

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


body:
On Sun, 11 Feb 2007 17:07:01 +0000, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:

>> >Hi, Thomas. You seem both very determined to win this argument, and very
>> >reluctant to explain why it matters so much.

>> Comments like this are the reason William should be an admin.  And
>> probably an arbitrator.  And maybe even a vice-Jimbo.

>You view not assuming good faith as a good thing?

William always assumes good faith. See
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:TIGERS

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


from_name: Marc Riddell

subject: [WikiEN-l] Admin burnout

body:
on 2/11/07 5:16 PM, Thomas Dalton at thomas.dalton at gmail.com wrote:

> The main difference between Wikipedia then and Wikipedia now is that
> we now have people reading who don't contribute. Contributors know
> what to expect, they don't mind a little vandalism because they know
> how to fix it. Readers need what's visible at the moment to be right,
> not just something hidden away in the history. When Wikipedia first
> started, the only people that read it were those that contributed too,
> that is no longer the case. Originally, Wikipedia was made by geeks,
> for geeks. Now it is made by geeks for the world (for a suitable
> definition of geek - there are so many definitions out there, I'm sure
> one fits). We have a responsibility to our readers.

Thomas,

Excellent observation - interesting fact.

Thank you,

Marc


from_name: jayjg

subject: [WikiEN-l] Category:Jews -> Category:Jewsih people

body:
On 2/11/07, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> Yonatan Horan wrote:
>
> >http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashkenazi_Jews#Specific_diseases
> >
> >I suggest you look at that. In addition to that, I remember seeing some
> >research papers published on Ashkenazi Jews and will look for them if you
> >really see the need. Just to support the above point, my cousin who is an
> >Ashkenazi Jew has Familial Dysautonomy and my other cousin who is also an
> >Ashkenazi Jew has Crohn's Disease.
> >
> >-Yonatan
> >
> >On 2/9/07, Mets501 <mets501wiki at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >
> >>>Jewish is not only a religion but also a race. Someone can be an atheist and
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>still Jewish. For example, I personally don't really believe in god but I'm
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>still a Jew.
> >>>
> >>>Yonatan
> >>>
> >>>
> >>Judaism is not a race.  There is nothing biologically which separates a
> >>Jew(ish person) from a non-Jew(ish person).
> >>It is OK to call it a culture, but not a race.
> >>--Mets501
> >>
> I respectfully hold that treating Jews as a race is fraught with
> problems.  The epidemiological evidence cited may very well suggest
> racial characteristics among the Ashykenazim, but that says nothing
> about the Sephardim.  To what extent do they share the same congenital
> diseases?  I would even suggest that Ashkenazim and Sephardim are
> racially more different than Catholics and Protestants.

You'd be wrong, though.

http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/full/97/12/6769

Jay.


from_name: Teofilo Folengo

subject:
[Foundation-l] Ilustrating contemporary art articles without
	permission images

body:
Until now, the scarce contemporary art articles featuring illustrations at
all on the French Wikipedia have been those using
permissions-to-Wikipedia-only, for example :
http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kim_Prisu

Supposing that permission images will no longer be allowed on any Wikimedia
project worldwide, how can we illustrate such articles, in the case of
artists whose art is a way of earning a living and who are therefore
unlikely to suscribe CC-BY-SA or GFDL licences ?

A user who wrote an article on Contemporary African Art says he is in touch
with African artists and able to take pictures. He asks what sort of
agreement should be made with the artists before publishing on Wikipedia :
http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikip%C3%A9dia:Le_Bistro_multim%C3%A9dia/semaine_6_2007#images_d.27art

What should I answer him ?


from_name: Gerard Meijssen

subject: [Commons-l] Sound files

body:
Hoi,
The problem is that existing academic software like "praat" use .wav
files. I do sympathise up to a point that storage is used. However, the
price of a terabyte of storage is such that this is not that relevant.
Both an .ogg and a .wav file would be saved. The first is to enable
science to do its thing, the second is for our punters.
Thanks,
    GerardM

http://www.fon.hum.uva.nl/praat/

Gregory Maxwell schreef:
> On 2/11/07, Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Hoi,
>> I read this in digest mode so let me answer things together.
>>
>> The reason why .ogg files are not great is because indeed it is a lossy
>> algorithm. There is some great software to analyse pronunciation files;
>> a program called "praat" is worth mentioning it is even licensed under
>> GPL. There is even functionality in there to do with IPA transcription.
>>
>> Gregory's proposal to use Ogg/FLAC is not helpfull. This is not the
>> format that is used to analyse pronunciation files. The notion that a
>> specific quality was "the gold standard" at the time is indeed that. It
>> used to be, times have changed.
>>
>> The Shtooka program that we are talking about CAN create both a WAV and
>> an OGG file. It just needs asking. It would be helpful if we learn
>> sooner rather than later what the outcome is of this request.
>
> The Ogg/Flac is lossless, so it removes your concerns about lossyness.
> It can be uploaded today, so it removes the problems of not being
> uploadable. It is compressed (losslessly) so it's not quite so bad on
> our storage and bandwidth. Shtooka already outputs Flac, and could be
> trivially altered to output ogg/flac, if you'd like I will do this for
> you. Any number of Ogg/Flac files can be quickly converted to wav with
> a single command.
>
> I am very hesitant and concerned about the prospects of permitting
> uncompressed files: I think people will use them where they are
> completely inappropriate because they are a bit easier to playback.
> Flac or Ogg/Flac should be substantially smaller than wav and won't
> drive people to use uncompressed formats for bad reasons.
>


subject: [Wiktionary-l] [Commons-l] Sound files