subject: [Wikipedia-l] generic markup and miscoded templates

body:
Tom Parmenter wrote:
> I have started a conversation in [[Wikipedia talk:WikiProject
> U.S. Counties]] about the fact that the templates for country, state,
> county, and city all use the wrong markup, that is, sections headed
> with === instead of ==.  I think this is important, but god knows
> there are going to be a lot of erroneous articles.  I wish I'd noticed
> before there were so many counties done by the redoubtable Ram-Man.

Level-three headers (===) are well established as the standard header on
Wikipedia. If you hate this so much, better to simply redefine it to
pump out ideologically correct <H2> tags instead of <H3> rather than to
prescribe the change of thousands of pages and demand a change in markup
behavior.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


list: wikipedia-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: lcrocker at nupedia.com

subject: [Wikipedia-l] ads on user pages

body:
> The user hfastedge has on his page an ad for some kind
> of service he's offering...

We do have a policy here that user pages don't have all
the same rules as encyclopedia pages, and we generally have
let people get away with just about anything, but I don't
think we've ever discussed ads in particular.  I don't
personally have much problem with it.  It's been understood
that user pages are kind of personal space and not subject
to Wikipedia policy except for copyright violations and
outright obscenity.  If a user wants to hype a business,
I don't think that's too out of line.


from_name: Jimmy Wales

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Fwd: Re: Wikipedia/OneLook

body:
Brion VIBBER wrote:

> Stephen Gilbert wrote:
> > Jimbo mentioned setting up and RDF feed for external
> > indexing of Wikipedia articles. I hope there's some
> > interest in doing so.
>
> What should such a thing look like?

Something like this:
http://dmoz.org/rdf/content.example.txt

Except there are no "topic"s (those are "tree pages" on dmoz).

Just a bunch of "ExternalPage" sections, like this:

<ExternalPage about="http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oktoberfest">
  <d:Title>Oktoberfest - Wikipedia</d:Title>
  <d:Description>Encyclopedia article about 'Oktoberfest' from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia</d:Description>
</ExternalPage>

It'll be up to the end users of RDF data to figure out how to get it into their
search engines.  They have experience with this, I think.  I do, anyway.  :-)

--Jimbo


body:
> Level-three headers (===) are well established as the standard
> header on Wikipedia. If you hate this so much, better to simply
> redefine it to pump out ideologically correct H2 tags instead of
> H3 rather than to prescribe the change of thousands of pages and
> demand a change in markup behavior.

I don't think it's "well established" at all.  I always use
== for my first subheads, and many others do as well.  There's
a nice simple correspondence between ==/H2, ===/H3, etc.  H1
is reserved for the article title.  If we shifted === to
produce H2 as you suggest, then what whould == produce?

I have heard complaints that people think H2 is rendered too
large; that can be fixed with stylesheet changes, and I'm
certainly open to doing that.  But let's settle on a standard
for reasons other than mere inertia.


from_name: koyaanisqatsi at nupedia.com

subject: [Wikipedia-l] ads on user pages

body:
I don't think ads should be up there: suppose I want to put up an ad for something someone else finds patently offensive, or link my user page to amazon.com or kiddie porn?  I think--and this is just my /opinion/--that user pages are a friendly service intended to make the editing a little more personable, and we really shouldn't abuse wikipedia for profit.  And yes, I do consider it abuse.

I would /very much/ like to hear what others, especially Jimbo, think about this.

kq

Vicki wrote:
>He's wrong, imho, but I'd like some comments, so it doesn't look like a
>private argument
>between the two of us. Conversely, if I've misunderstood and ads on user
>pages are cool,
>I want to know that.


subject: [Wikipedia-l] ads on user pages

body:
Jimmy wrote:
>The only concern I have about banning advertisements in user pages is
>that it commits us to enforcing content-based restrictions on those
>pages, which are generally NOT incluced in our NPOV mission.

Fair enough.  I still wouldn't put up ads for paypal donations for myself, but I can laissez-faire with the best of them.  :-)

kq


from_name: Brion VIBBER

body:
lcrocker at nupedia.com wrote:
>>Level-three headers (===) are well established as the standard
>>header on Wikipedia. If you hate this so much, better to simply
>>redefine it to pump out ideologically correct H2 tags instead of
>>H3 rather than to prescribe the change of thousands of pages and
>>demand a change in markup behavior.
>
> I don't think it's "well established" at all.  I always use
> == for my first subheads, and many others do as well.

Well, let's take a look:

SELECT COUNT(*) FROM cur WHERE cur_text REGEXP '[^=]== [^=]+ ==[^=]'
Articles that use ==: 1430

SELECT COUNT(*) FROM cur WHERE cur_text REGEXP '[^=]=== [^=]+ ===[^=]'
Articles that use ===: 4260

SELECT COUNT(*) FROM cur WHERE cur_text REGEXP '[^=]==== [^=]+ ====[^=]'
Articles that use ====: 1008

SELECT COUNT(*) FROM cur WHERE cur_text REGEXP '[^=]===== [^=]+ =====[^=]'
Articles that use =====: 1

SELECT COUNT(*) FROM cur WHERE cur_text REGEXP '[^=]====== [^=]+ ======[^=]'
Articles that use ======: 1

SELECT COUNT(*) FROM cur WHERE cur_text REGEXP '[^=]== [^=]+ ==[^=]' and
cur_text REGEXP '[^=]=== [^=]+ ===[^=]'
Articles that use both == and ===: 376

SELECT COUNT(*) FROM cur WHERE (NOT (cur_text REGEXP '[^=]== [^=]+
==[^=]')) and cur_text REGEXP '[^=]=== [^=]+ ===[^=]'
Articles that use ===, but not ==: 3883

So there are more than twice as many pages using === as there are using
==, and more than *ten times as many* pages using === but not == as
there are using both == and === (and that would thus need to be
changed). That's what I call "well established".

>  There's
> a nice simple correspondence between ==/H2, ===/H3, etc.  H1
> is reserved for the article title.  If we shifted === to
> produce H2 as you suggest, then what whould == produce?

We already discarded the = header entirely (which used to work in Usemod
days) to little weeping, requiring anyone who might have used it to
change to == or ===. The exact correspondence between level numbers
isn't particularly relevant as long as they're supposed to be hierarchical.

> I have heard complaints that people think H2 is rendered too
> large; that can be fixed with stylesheet changes, and I'm
> certainly open to doing that.

Certainly.

 > But let's settle on a standard
> for reasons other than mere inertia.

Got something against inertia? That Wikipedia has it is good; it keeps
the project going. :)

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


body:
Stephen Gilbert wrote:
> Jimbo mentioned setting up and RDF feed for external
> indexing of Wikipedia articles. I hope there's some
> interest in doing so.

What should such a thing look like?

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


from_name: Jim McKeeth

subject: [Wikipedia-l] ads on user pages

body:
The ad in question:

----

List of my unique contributions to wikipedia
http://tacos.sus.mcgill.ca/~hperes/uniwiki/name.html

BTW, if u would like to have this feature for yourself, please email me at
hu.peress at mail.mcgill.ca . The high tech field is very tough for a young
graduate to get into, and I have to ask for a paypal DONATION suggested at:
("$5 for bi-daily updates from the wikipedia data to your page and $10 for
daily" per year). This includes one personalized feature request that I
will custom code,and the ability to choose features from among the pool of
other users custom code. This also includes support.

The purpose of this project is to assist me in my graduate research on AI
and huministic-intelligent systems.

----

I think this is fine.  If it had been a flashing banner add for a dating
service it would be different.  He is only saying that if someone else
wants him to spend the time to put together a page similar to one he has he
will do it for a reasonable fee.  Don't know what the rule should be, but I
think this should be acceptable.

-Jim

At 01:37 PM 9/25/2002 -0700, lcrocker at nupedia.com wrote:

> > The user hfastedge has on his page an ad for some kind
> > of service he's offering...
>
>We do have a policy here that user pages don't have all
>the same rules as encyclopedia pages, and we generally have
>let people get away with just about anything, but I don't
>think we've ever discussed ads in particular.  I don't
>personally have much problem with it.  It's been understood
>that user pages are kind of personal space and not subject
>to Wikipedia policy except for copyright violations and
>outright obscenity.  If a user wants to hype a business,
>I don't think that's too out of line.
>
>
>
>
>
>[Wikipedia-l]
>To manage your subscription to this list, please go here:
>http://www.nupedia.com/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l


from_name: Tom Parmenter

body:
I have started a conversation in [[Wikipedia talk:WikiProject
U.S. Counties]] about the fact that the templates for country, state,
county, and city all use the wrong markup, that is, sections headed
with === instead of ==.  I think this is important, but god knows
there are going to be a lot of erroneous articles.  I wish I'd noticed
before there were so many counties done by the redoubtable Ram-Man.

Tom Parmenter
Ortolan88


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [Wikipedia-l] ads on user pages

body:
Vicki Rosenzweig wrote:

> At 12:56 PM 9/25/02 -0700, Jimbo wrote:
>
>> The only concern I have about banning advertisements in user pages is
>> that it commits us to enforcing content-based restrictions on those
>> pages, which are generally NOT incluced in our NPOV mission.
>
> We do generally have a rule that Wikipedia isn't the place to stash your
> home page, but that's different.
>
> So, would it be reasonably cool for me to include a note that while I
> edit
> the Wiki stuff for free, I'm available for professional editing
> services of other
> material?

Yes, why not?  And you would probably be more successful at it than our
friend "hfastedge" because people have already seen your work, and have
an idea of the quality of work that they would be getting.  Our new
friend has been with us less than a week, and the material on his user
page gives the impression of a freshman psychology student who is very
certain about how to fix people's problems

By raising this issue you've sent several of us to view his user page
who otherwise would have ignored him completely.  That gives him a
marketing benefit that he could not generate himself.  In reading his
page I became completely turned off by his using "u" for "you", and the
more I read the less I understood.  I think his marketing strategy is
faulty.

Ec


from_name: Vicki Rosenzweig

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Deletion

body:
At 05:12 AM 9/25/02 -0600, you wrote:
>At 06:39 AM 9/25/02 +0200, Andre Engels wrote:
>
> >Well, I don't know where I fall, but since my name seems to be one of those
> >coming up in the debates - examining my motives doesn't change them. My
> >motive is that there are some articles that in my opinion are worse than
> >no article, and I keep with that opinion.
>
>Yes you make many deletions, as I see from the log, most of which are fully
>justified. I only found one or two deleted entries that seemed interesting
>to me. (Although some substantial topics I'm not aware of the significance
>of may be there). [[infant mortality (computer)]], fascinating topic
>although it ought to be expanded to include all devices. [[Abermud]], the
>father of them all, although not the grandaddy, that was Adventure. I guess
>I want to see interesting topics remain, even if undeveloped.
>
> >But we ARE justifying and we ARE not just prepared to make a record, the
> >record is actually being made. Have you ever even looked at
> >[[Wikipedia:Deletion log]]? You'll find EVERY deletion of the past three
> >weeks there, with the justification given.
>
>Since it is such a rich resource for good articles perhaps it might extend
>back beyond 3 weeks and include an easy way to recover the text, small
>though it may be.
>
> >
> >> I find returning to Wikipedia and finding articles deleted (and
> >> unrecoverable) quite unpleasant.
>
>I just need to remember to "watch" any short articles I guess.
> >
> >And I find coming to Wikipedia and seeing an article called "Bronx Zoo"
> >with as its text "the zoo in the bronx" quite unpleasant.
>
>A close case...the Bronx Zoo will be an article, but much more extensive
>than that. Many deletions are of titles that will never make an article, I
>would probably prefer titles that will remain, but we all have talked
>extensively of that, I think without any real referent in experience other
>than anecdotal, thus unconclusively. I guess what would suffice is to
>ensure that somewhere, for example, in this case, in perhaps the article on
>New York City, an empty link remains to [[Bronx Zoo]], just as a pointer to
>encourage an article.

If you checked "what links here", there is at least one link, in the article on
the Bronx. It's been there, waiting for me or someone to write a real article,
for many months now.

I removed the text but left the empty article because I wasn't sure of what to
do--since it is a real article--but I had rather see nothing at all than
"the zoo in
the bronx" without even links to zoo or bronx.
--
Vicki Rosenzweig
vr at redbird.org
http://www.redbird.org


subject: [Wikipedia-l] html?

body:
Adam Williamson wrote:

>On Sun, 2002-09-22 at 18:28, Ray Saintonge wrote:
>
>>Frankly I though AdamW was a little too aggressive in his approach on
>>the issue.  Your explanation about not knowing that it was happening is
>>very normal, and the simple explanation of the problem and how to fix it
>>is all it takes to correct it.
>>
>If I was, then sorry, there was no intention to be - as you say, many
>people use HTML mail not because they *chose* to but because that was
>the mailer default and they didn't even know about the plain text / HTML
>distinction, which is why I point it out to people, along with some
>reasons why they may want to change to plain text. That's all I was
>trying to do.
>
Nothing personal about it.  Sometimes it's just a matter of tone, and
that too is a matter of perceptions.  When newbies are involved in this
kind of issue I prefer to give them the benefit of the doubt.  Those of
us who may have been around a little longer can be expected to have a
thicker skin.  Your later postings in this seemed calmer.
Peace.


subject: [Wikipedia-l] ads on user pages

body:
The user hfastedge has on his page an ad for some kind of service he's
offering.
I deleted it, with an explanation that even the people providing the server
don't get to
run ads on the Wikipedia. In response, I found the following on my talk page:

"OK. feel free to comment on my talk page, or on the ideas for wikipedia i
have on my user page. But please don't change my advertisment again. Just
because wikipedia is open source does not mean that money shouldnt be made
off it. To think so demonstrates a terribly FLAWED chain of reasoning.

"Your changing of that section is understandable, but doing it again will
send me off. If you cannot comprehend that at SOME POINT money has to be
made, then I suggest you discontinue talk with me on this matter, or you
approach me with the intent of curiosity, and an open mind. Try the service
out if you are more curious, as I said, you'll get a free customized
feature of your request, and you will be able to request more customized
features from the pool of users. User:hfastedge"

He's wrong, imho, but I'd like some comments, so it doesn't look like a
private argument
between the two of us. Conversely, if I've misunderstood and ads on user
pages are cool,
I want to know that.
--
Vicki Rosenzweig
vr at redbird.org
http://www.redbird.org


body:
Tom Parmenter wrote:
> |From: Brion VIBBER <brion at pobox.com>
> |Level-three headers (===) are well established as the standard header on
> |Wikipedia. If you hate this so much, better to simply redefine it to
> |pump out ideologically correct <H2> tags instead of <H3> rather than to
> |prescribe the change of thousands of pages and demand a change in markup
> |behavior.
>
> It's not that I *hate* them.  I don't.  It's that you aren't supposed
> to start in the middle, with H3, but at the beginning with H1, title
> of article, H2, second level header, etc.  That isn't "ideologically
> correct", that is standard markup, SGML, HTML, XML, SDML, you name
> it.

The HTML standard neither prescribes nor proscribes such strict
hierarchical use of the header tags, though it does note that "some
people consider skipping heading levels to be bad practice". The levels
are certainly *not* defined as hierarchical, but simply as a range "with
H1 as the most important and H6 as the least".

See:
http://www.w3.org/TR/1998/REC-html40-19980424/struct/global.html#h-7.5.5

So there's no justification for the level-two crusade based on the
transformation of wiki to HTML markup. If you want to enforce this
personal preference as part of wiki markup, then speak up and explicitly
say so. The parser can be adjusted accordingly.

 >  If numbering doesn't work right?

Automatic section numbering is dubious at best.

 >  If any
> number of existing or imaginable passes over Wikipedia articles don't
> work right?

Passes of what?

 >  And, if not, then why do we have generic markup at all?

Such as?

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject: [Wikipedia-l] ads on user pages

body:
At 12:56 PM 9/25/02 -0700, Jimbo wrote:

>The only concern I have about banning advertisements in user pages is
>that it commits us to enforcing content-based restrictions on those
>pages, which are generally NOT incluced in our NPOV mission.

We do generally have a rule that Wikipedia isn't the place to stash your
home page, but that's different.

So, would it be reasonably cool for me to include a note that while I edit
the Wiki stuff for free, I'm available for professional editing services of
other
material?

Vicki

--
Vicki Rosenzweig
vr at redbird.org
http://www.redbird.org


subject: [Wikipedia-l] embassies and diplomats

body:
Hello,

I wanted to revisit the issue that the red links brought up, and the Spanish fork before that: the non-English wikipedias often feel left out, snubbed, and/or ignored.  I don't want to debate whether they should or not, because it's not productive and people never want to be told how they should feel anyway.  That they do feel that way is a problem, regardless of whether we think it should be.

I've been talking with one of the contributors to the French wikipedia, and I think the other wikipedias feel isolated because of a general lack of communication about policy and software issues.  I'd like to propose a few ideas we've come up with to deal with the problem:

1: we could ask for volunteer wikipedia diplomats: polyglots who are willing to inform various communities about policy and software discussions taking place that may affect them.  This idea would require people willing to help and keep up on the issues, and probably be a burden.  I can't imagine many people with enough zeal to do it: mav and the indefatigable Ram-Man, if s/he is bilingual, and not many others (including myself).

2: we could create a special page on each wikipedia to post relevant issues to, in English.  This is not an ideal solution, even though many people speak English: it would be preferable to post fluently in that wiki's language, and also we'd have several pages to update each time and might forget one.  However, this solution is better than the de facto one we have now, which is to take whatever action people on the list agree on, and then field complaints from people who aren't on the list (not everyone speaks English, of course, so please don't say that they should just sign up).  :-)

3: We could create a page on the English wikipedia posting a summary of the current issues and pointing people towards wherever the discussion is taking place (talk pages, list, etc.).  Then we could post a link to it in each wikipedia requesting that interested people follow the page.  This would be burdensome for them, because they would have to visit the link periodically and check for pages, and because the people who do speak English would have to translate for the others.

4: we could create that page mentioned above but modify the "watch this page" function to allow people on any wiki to watch a page on any other wiki.  That's a good idea, but I imagine people active on several wikipedias would eventually have their watch page turn into a confusing mess.  So it might call for multiple watch lists, a less-than-great solution unless they're all available from any wikipedia.  Also, it still requires translators.

5: we could post a link on each wikipedia labeled "policy discussion."  Like "user talk:" at the top right, it could indicate when the page has changed since your last visit.  Still requires translators.

6: we could install the software on the non-English wikipedias, explain how to change options, etc., and let them adminsitrate it themselves.  Doesn't require English, does require ComputerSpeak.

I think a good general suggestion would be to change agreed-on options only on the English wikipedia, since it's typically only English-speaking people who agree to it, and then to post that the new option is available to the other wikipedias as well--but not mandatory.

I do not think I'm exaggerating the issue; and if you've ever spent much time in a place where you do not speak the language and others don't speak English, then I'm sure you'll agree.  It's quite easy to feel frustrated.  And, of course, a series of misunderstandings is what led to the Spanish fork.

I'm very interested in comments and other ideas.

kq


from_name: Larry Sanger

subject: [Wikipedia-l] embassies and diplomats

body:
I think this is a very important issue.  It is why I set up intlwiki-l in
the first place, and I'm sorry that hasn't been used more by way of
inter-wikipedia deliberations.

So, in addition to KQ's many good suggestions, I'd add:

* Cross post to Intlwiki-l more, if an issue has international importance.

--Larry


subject: [Wikipedia-l] embassies and diplomats

body:
P.S. We also have to make it clear that *ALL* languages are acceptable on
intlwiki-l.


from_name: Adam Williamson

subject: [Wikipedia-l] html?

body:
On Sun, 2002-09-22 at 18:28, Ray Saintonge wrote:

> Frankly I though AdamW was a little too aggressive in his approach on
> the issue.  Your explanation about not knowing that it was happening is
> very normal, and the simple explanation of the problem and how to fix it
> is all it takes to correct it.

If I was, then sorry, there was no intention to be - as you say, many
people use HTML mail not because they *chose* to but because that was
the mailer default and they didn't even know about the plain text / HTML
distinction, which is why I point it out to people, along with some
reasons why they may want to change to plain text. That's all I was
trying to do.
--
adamw


in_reply_to:
<3D922C2D.9080409@pobox.com> (message from Brion VIBBER on Wed,
	25 Sep 2002 13:35:41 -0800)

body:
|From: Brion VIBBER <brion at pobox.com>
|Date: Wed, 25 Sep 2002 13:35:41 -0800
|
|Tom Parmenter wrote:
|> I have started a conversation in [[Wikipedia talk:WikiProject
|> U.S. Counties]] about the fact that the templates for country, state,
|> county, and city all use the wrong markup, that is, sections headed
|> with === instead of ==.  I think this is important, but god knows
|> there are going to be a lot of erroneous articles.  I wish I'd noticed
|> before there were so many counties done by the redoubtable Ram-Man.
|
|Level-three headers (===) are well established as the standard header on
|Wikipedia. If you hate this so much, better to simply redefine it to
|pump out ideologically correct <H2> tags instead of <H3> rather than to
|prescribe the change of thousands of pages and demand a change in markup
|behavior.
|
|-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
|

It's not that I *hate* them.  I don't.  It's that you aren't supposed
to start in the middle, with H3, but at the beginning with H1, title
of article, H2, second level header, etc.  That isn't "ideologically
correct", that is standard markup, SGML, HTML, XML, SDML, you name
it.

I wonder why I'm getting all this attitude from you when I am trying
to deal with this in a polite manner, carefully explaining it on the
talk page, announcing the issue here on the list.

If you read what I wrote on the talk page, you'd see I understand the
issue, both sides, quite well.

The reason H3 has become the "standard" is that H2 is so godawful big
that everyone is intimidated out of using it.  There's nothing
standard about bad markup.

Can the rhetoric and discuss the issue.  Does it matter if article
headers start in the middle?  If numbering doesn't work right?  If any
number of existing or imaginable passes over Wikipedia articles don't
work right?  And, if not, then why do we have generic markup at all?

Tom Parmenter
Ortolan88


from_name: Andre Engels

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Deletion

body:
> >But we ARE justifying and we ARE not just prepared to make a record, the
> >record is actually being made. Have you ever even looked at
> >[[Wikipedia:Deletion log]]? You'll find EVERY deletion of the past three
> >weeks there, with the justification given.
>
> Since it is such a rich resource for good articles perhaps it might extend
> back beyond 3 weeks and include an easy way to recover the text, small
> though it may be.

I don't consider this 'a rich resource for good articles'. There may certainly
be a number of titles that are worth of being made into an article quickly,
but there are a large number in between that are deleted because they are
simply a mis-spelling that has been corrected, or a 'redirect making place
for a move'. My own method if I want to look for non-existing articles to
write about, is to go to page 10 or so of the 'Wanted pages', and scan it.
It has the advantage that everything will indeed be linked-to, non-existing
pages, and the format makes quick scanning a lot easier.

Then again, I should of course not be putting you down for having different
preferences, and if there would be a way to get those old lists for you to
scan, it would be good.

> >And I find coming to Wikipedia and seeing an article called "Bronx Zoo"
> >with as its text "the zoo in the bronx" quite unpleasant.
>
> A close case...the Bronx Zoo will be an article, but much more extensive
> than that.

Well, my point here is: There might well be a 'real' article on the Bronx
Zoo on Wikipedia once, but if so, whoever makes it will probably do so by
replacing rather than extending this sub-stub. I would have reacted exactly
the same (although in this case it wasn't me who did the deletion, I just
chose the example because it was very recent and showed in my opinion clearly
what I meant) when it had been "the McDonald's in the bronx" at "Bronx
McDonalds" (an obvious non-article) but also when it had been "the second
king called Sargon" at Sargon II (which is high at the mostwanted list at
the moment).

> Many deletions are of titles that will never make an article, I
> would probably prefer titles that will remain, but we all have talked
> extensively of that, I think without any real referent in experience other
> than anecdotal, thus unconclusively. I guess what would suffice is to
> ensure that somewhere, for example, in this case, in perhaps the article on
> New York City, an empty link remains to [[Bronx Zoo]], just as a pointer to
> encourage an article.

Well, in that respect you can sleep quietly - there are _three_ links
remaining to Bronx Zoo - from "List of zoos", "American bison" and "Bronx".

Andre Engels


from_name: The Cunctator

subject: [Wikipedia-l] "In memoriam"

body:
In making statements about how much one should care about September 11,
it's a good idea to remember that people had different experiences
regarding it. That's all I'll say about that.

Now, on to action.

One: we're not actually talking about innumerable pages.

About the only page that is expressly not NPOV and can't be reasonably
reconfigured as such is [[September 11, 2001 Terrorist Attack/In
Memoriam]].

All tribute/comments for individual casualties have been moved to the
Talk page for the individual, which while perhaps not perfect, is
certainly within the scope of Talk (opinion which relates to and informs
the entry).

Two: what to do? The best solution, as far as I can see it, is to
have http://sep11.wikipedia.org/ set up with some version of the In
Memoriam page as the homepage, and an automatic redirect from the
www.wikipedia.org/ url to that.

About the only other pages sep11.wikipedia.org needs to contain
(non-NPOV) are the tributes (note: not the biographical entries).
Everything else should transparently link back to wikipedia.

If we can set it up cleanly it would be a good template for other
projects.


from_name: Fred Bauder

subject: [Wikipedia-l] ads on user pages

body:
At 05:22 PM 9/25/02 -0400, you wrote:
>At 12:56 PM 9/25/02 -0700, Jimbo wrote:
>
>>The only concern I have about banning advertisements in user pages is
>>that it commits us to enforcing content-based restrictions on those
>>pages, which are generally NOT incluced in our NPOV mission.
>
>We do generally have a rule that Wikipedia isn't the place to stash your
>home page, but that's different.
>
>So, would it be reasonably cool for me to include a note that while I edit
>the Wiki stuff for free, I'm available for professional editing services of
>other
>material?
>
>Vicki

Sounds good.

Fred


from_name: Stephen Gilbert

subject: [Wikipedia-l] ads on user pages

body:
--- Vicki Rosenzweig <vr at redbird.org> wrote:
> He's wrong, imho, but I'd like some comments, so it
> doesn't look like a
> private argument
> between the two of us. Conversely, if I've
> misunderstood and ads on user
> pages are cool,
> I want to know that.

Well... I'm undecided. It's clearly a service offered
by a single Wikipedian, rather than an official
Wikipedia money-making scheme. It's just a text ad,
not a big banner. And it is related to Wikipedia. I
know Eloquence has a bit on his user page to Paypal
him some money and he'll work on more Wikipedia
articles.

On the other hand, I'm concerned that allowing such
personal mini-ads will get out of control. Wikipedia
has a fairly high Google PageRank (my user page comes
up #3 or 4 in a search for "stephen gilbert"), and
people might think a link from Wikipedia would be a
good way to boost the visibility of their site.

For now, though, I can't say I'm strongly opposed to
mentioning his service. Now his ideas for the complete
restructuring of Wikipedia, on the other hand... :)

Stephen G.

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body:
--- Jimmy Wales <jwales at bomis.com> wrote:
> Something like this:
> http://dmoz.org/rdf/content.example.txt
>
> Except there are no "topic"s (those are "tree pages"
> on dmoz).
>
> Just a bunch of "ExternalPage" sections, like this:
>
> <ExternalPage
> about="http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oktoberfest">
>   <d:Title>Oktoberfest - Wikipedia</d:Title>
>   <d:Description>Encyclopedia article about
> 'Oktoberfest' from Wikipedia, the free
> encyclopedia</d:Description>
> </ExternalPage>
>
> It'll be up to the end users of RDF data to figure
> out how to get it into their
> search engines.  They have experience with this, I
> think.  I do, anyway.  :-)

We'd probably want to do a little filtering. Right
now, OneLook is indexing over 60,000 "words" (meaning
article titles) from Wikipedia. Maybe there could be a
raw feed and a filtered feed?

Stephen G.

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subject: [Wikipedia-l] ads on user pages

body:
--- Vicki Rosenzweig <vr at redbird.org> wrote:
>We do generally have a rule that Wikipedia isn't the
> place to stash your
> home page, but that's different.
>
> So, would it be reasonably cool for me to include a
> note that while I edit
> the Wiki stuff for free, I'm available for
> professional editing services of
> other
> material?

Sure, I think so.

Stephen

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body:
--- Brion VIBBER <brion at pobox.com> wrote:
> Level-three headers (===) are well established as
> the standard header on
> Wikipedia. If you hate this so much, better to
> simply redefine it to
> pump out ideologically correct <H2> tags instead of
> <H3> rather than to
> prescribe the change of thousands of pages and
> demand a change in markup
> behavior.

I have to disagree. Level-three headers were certainly
more common earlier on, but I see more level-two
headers these days, and I've changed many from level
three to level two myself. Redefining === would not
help.

Stephen

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body:
--- Brion VIBBER <brion at pobox.com> wrote:
> We already discarded the = header entirely (which
> used to work in Usemod
> days) to little weeping, requiring anyone who might
> have used it to
> change to == or ===. The exact correspondence
> between level numbers
> isn't particularly relevant as long as they're
> supposed to be hierarchical.

My understanding about the discarding of = headers:
a) not many people knew they would work (I didn't...)
b) single equals signs could conceivably be used in
articles for purposes other than markup :), and
c) the article title was already in <h1>, so any
subheadings should logically be in <h2>

Stephen

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body:
--- Stephen Gilbert <canuck_in_korea2002 at yahoo.com>
wrote:
> I have to disagree. Level-three headers were
> certainly
> more common earlier on, but I see more level-two
> headers these days, and I've changed many from level
> three to level two myself. Redefining === would not
> help.

I just saw your database querry, which shows level 3
as more common. So don't flame me. :)

Stephen

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subject: [Wikipedia-l] Naming Conventions (names and titles)

body:
On Wed, 2002-09-25 at 09:34, Rob Brewer wrote:
> At 04:44 23/09/02 -0500, Tesla Coil wrote:
>
> >In no case is it [[Edward Stanley, 14th Earl of Derby]] and
> >[[Edward Stanley, 15th Earl of Derby]]. "English-speakers do
> >not put family names as part of the title."
>
> ...which is quite clearly untrue, at least when referring
> in formal terms to historical figures. The Dictionary of
> National Biography, for example, lists peers by their family
> name, as in: CAVENDISH, Spencer Compton, Marquis of Hartington
> and 8th Duke of Devonshire.

I think Tesla was referring to that specific standard form of quoting a
title, where I believe he's correct - you would indeed *not* cite the
surname in that particular formulation.
--
adamw


from_name: Daniel Mayer

subject: [Wikipedia-l] http://tribute.wikipedia.org/

body:
On Wednesday 25 September 2002 05:44 pm, The Cunctator wrote:
> About the only page that is expressly not NPOV and can't be reasonably
> reconfigured as such is [[September 11, 2001 Terrorist Attack/In
> Memoriam]].
>
> All tribute/comments for individual casualties have been moved to the
> Talk page for the individual, which while perhaps not perfect, is
> certainly within the scope of Talk (opinion which relates to and informs
> the entry).

Who the hell did this? I'm on record for wanting these pages moved but it the
ultimate of rude behavior to delete a tribute page created by someone who
lost a family member or friend in 9/11. Now when come back all they see is a
blank page since talk links are non-obvious. Shouldn't we consider the
feelings of the people who created these pages?

> Two: what to do? The best solution, as far as I can see it, is to
> have http://sep11.wikipedia.org/ set up with some version of the In
> Memoriam page as the homepage, and an automatic redirect from the
> www.wikipedia.org/ url to that.

Moving would be a good idea along with having URL redirects, but I think a
9/11 project would be way too focused. Why not set-up
http://tribute.wikipedia.org/ instead? Then that would be the place for all
mannor of tribute pages.

> About the only other pages sep11.wikipedia.org needs to contain
> (non-NPOV) are the tributes (note: not the biographical entries).
> Everything else should transparently link back to wikipedia.

I'm still /very/ uncomfortable with having wiki redirects going from
Wikipedia which aims to be NPOV to an inherently POV project (which includes
Metapedia). This is just way too seemless and it could be a way for people to
get around our NPOV policy if the transition is so transparent.

I strongly suggest that if we are going to have inter-wiki redirects and page
moves, then this would be a feature only available to sysops. That way the
work can get done but we don't have to worry much about people abusing the
inter-wiki redirects.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)


body:
On Wed, 2002-09-25 at 11:30, Fred Bauder wrote:

> titles)]]. I doubt that very many of the people in question deserve much of
> an entry or mention

The goodly readers of Who's Who would no doubt disagree ;)

> and those that do are generally known by their common
> names, although, for example, Elizabeth Windsor, is almost unrecognizable
> by her common name.

Well, that's why there's yet *another* convention for monarchs :)
--
adamw


subject: [Wikipedia-l] "In memoriam"

body:
On Wed, 2002-09-25 at 18:49, Jeroen Heijmans wrote:
> Last week I've tried to remove the "in memoriam" parts of the 9/11 pages
> by putting them on meta. This move was reverted (twice, I countered) by
> The Cunctator. However, I have not heard any _good_ arguments from him
> (or anybody else) for keeping them.

<snip very good argument>

I don't normally post "me too!"s, but in this case - 100% agreed.
--
adamw


subject: [Wikipedia-l] "In memoriam"

body:
I think there's a lot of good encyclopedia material in
Cunc's 9/11 pages. I understand that it happened in
your backyard, C., and so it hit you harder than a lot
of people. I hope you don't take my comments badly.

My biggest concern about the collection of pages is
that it shows a heavy American bias. The events of
September 11, 2001 were tragic, but not unique.
Atrocities are all too common in the world, and yet
only 9/11 has a collection of memorial pages on
Wikipedia.

I know that a counter-argument can be made that other
people could put up other memorials, but I'm against
that too. Memorials are not encyclopedia articles.

I think the pages should be moved to the meta and
linked to from the main Sept. 11 page. I'm not in
favour of "sept11.wikipedia.org"; the meta is where we
post our personal materials. Another option would be a
completely separate wiki with a non-Wikipedia domain
name.

Stephen Gilbert

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from_name: Rob Brewer

body:
At 19:06 25/09/02 +0100, Adam Williamson wrote:
>On Wed, 2002-09-25 at 09:34, Rob Brewer wrote:
> > At 04:44 23/09/02 -0500, Tesla Coil wrote:
> >
> > >In no case is it [[Edward Stanley, 14th Earl of Derby]] and
> > >[[Edward Stanley, 15th Earl of Derby]]. "English-speakers do
> > >not put family names as part of the title."
> >
> > ...which is quite clearly untrue, at least when referring
> > in formal terms to historical figures. The Dictionary of
> > National Biography, for example, lists peers by their family
> > name, as in: CAVENDISH, Spencer Compton, Marquis of Hartington
> > and 8th Duke of Devonshire.
>
>I think Tesla was referring to that specific standard form of quoting a
>title, where I believe he's correct - you would indeed *not* cite the
>surname in that particular formulation.

I may have misunderstood Tesla... I understood Tesla to be quoting from
[[Wikipedia:Naming conventions (names and titles)]], and took it as a
complaint. I'll look in to the convention when I have time.

Rob


subject: [Wikipedia-l] embassies and diplomats

body:
Giskart wrote:
> [cut]
>In your proposals thou have not used the most logical solution (of al
>least a part of the solution), Intlwiki-l

Yes, you and Larry both mentioned that.  I forgot about it.  It's of course a good idea to use it since it exists already.  :-)

kq


body:
At 11:22 25/09/02 +0100, you wrote:
>On Wed, Sep 25, 2002 at 09:34:44AM +0100, Rob Brewer wrote:
> > Thus we would have [[Spencer Cavendish, 8th Duke of
> > Devonshire]]
>
>It seems to me a better alternative would be [[Spencer Cavendish]] (assuming
>no other Spencer Cavendish has an article)

Not that I know of. The family does have a plague of Williams that might
require disambiguation if more than one was consdiered article-worthy.
Most sources that use his personal name at all use the full "Spencer
Compton Cavendish", which may be a better choice. To complicate matters,
for most of his political career he was known by the courtesy title
Marquess of Hartington.

>and a [[8th Duke of Devonshire]]
>redirect to it. It makes it easier to find the page.

Thanks for the advice.

Rob


from_name: Jeroen Heijmans

subject: [Wikipedia-l] "In memoriam"

body:
Last week I've tried to remove the "in memoriam" parts of the 9/11 pages
by putting them on meta. This move was reverted (twice, I countered) by
The Cunctator. However, I have not heard any _good_ arguments from him
(or anybody else) for keeping them.

The arguments were:

* "I take it pretty personally" - Cunctator seemed to agree himself that
this isn't a very good reason
* "these are among the most popular pages on the site" - that is not a
good reason. We are an encyclopedia, and no matter how many visitors we
get for a page, if it's not an encyclopedia article, it must go. We
could probably put some pornographic images here or music downloads -
that would bring visitors - but they're not encyclopedia material.

Brion suggested that these could stay, provided a way was found to make
them useful. I think that is impossible. "In memoriams" are by
definition NPOV and do not provide any information useful for an
encyclopedia.

Some have mentioned the pages should go to some special wiki - that's
fine with me, but I *very strongly* feel they should leave Wikipedia
now. The meta is the best place for them now. I've already brought this
up some months ago, and I agreed then to wait until after September 11,
2002. It is now September 25, and time to move on with these pages -
there has been plenty of time to think of other/better solutions. As
I've said before, I don't think we should give 911 any special treatment
anymore - there's no reason for that.

Jeronimo


from_name: Axel Boldt

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Biographies of unimportant people (was: "In memoriam")

body:
Jimmy Wales <jwales at bomis.com> wrote:

> lcrocker at nupedia.com wrote:

> > I'm already on record that I support allowing biographies of anyone
> > at all in Wikipedia, with no regard to whether their accomplishments
> > or fame would merit their inclusion in a more traditional reference.
>
> I agree, except that I can see some problems with disambiguation and
> namespace.

I disagree, for several reasons.

First, I see an encyclopedia as a compendium of all human knowledge that
is interesting or useful to a significant number of people. My dream last
night, and the fact that I keep my notebook in the right drawer of my
desk, are both stored in my brain, so they are part of human knowledge.
They are interesting/useful to me, but not to anyone else, therefore they
don't belong in an encyclopedia. A biography of an unimportant person is
interesting/useful to almost no one, therefore it doesn't belong either.

Second, facts about unimportant people are not checkable. I could write
that my father once fell from a horse, and no one could ever disprove this
false claim. If an important person falls from a horse, it leaves a trail.

Third, and related, it is impossible to write a biography of an
unimportant person from a NPOV, since essentially only the very partial
point of view of the immediate family and friends exists.

Axel

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body:
(re providing an RDF feed)
Stephen Gilbert wrote:
> We'd probably want to do a little filtering. Right
> now, OneLook is indexing over 60,000 "words" (meaning
> article titles) from Wikipedia. Maybe there could be a
> raw feed and a filtered feed?

What kind of filtering would you suggest?

Assuming our intention is to provide an index of encyclopedia articles,
it might be reasonable to, for instance, filter out certain kinds of
redirects:
* to an article that's identical except for case; since searches are
usually case-insensitive they're redundant (though harmless)
* to a page in a non-article namespace (talk, user, wikipedia, image)
* to a non-existent page

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Tomasz Wegrzanowski

subject: [Wikitech-l] DISTINCT missing in SpecialWantedpages.php

body:
Number of links to article is counted, instead of number of other articles
that link to it. Difference is important, because on some pages there is
enormous number of links to the same article. For example on
alphabetical lists of cities in Poland, there are so many links to
voivodships pages that they immediately become "most wanted".
Most wanted article with these settings has value 609, without 69.

Query:
        $sql = "SELECT bl_to, COUNT( bl_to ) as nlinks " .
          "FROM brokenlinks GROUP BY bl_to HAVING nlinks > 1 " .
          "ORDER BY nlinks DESC LIMIT {$offset}, {$limit}";

Should be changed to something like that:
        $sql = "SELECT bl_to, COUNT( DISTINCT bl_from ) as nlinks " .
          "FROM brokenlinks GROUP BY bl_to HAVING nlinks > 1 " .
          "ORDER BY nlinks DESC LIMIT {$offset}, {$limit}";


body:
--- Axel Boldt <axelboldt at yahoo.com> wrote:

> > lcrocker at nupedia.com wrote:
>
> > > I'm already on record that I support allowing
> biographies of anyone
> > > at all in Wikipedia, with no regard to whether
> their accomplishments
> > > or fame would merit their inclusion in a more
> traditional reference.
> >
> > I agree, except that I can see some problems with
> disambiguation and
> > namespace.
>
> I disagree, for several reasons.
>
> First, I see an encyclopedia as a compendium of all
> human knowledge that
> is interesting or useful to a significant number of
> people. My dream last
> night, and the fact that I keep my notebook in the
> right drawer of my
> desk, are both stored in my brain, so they are part
> of human knowledge.
> They are interesting/useful to me, but not to anyone
> else, therefore they
> don't belong in an encyclopedia. A biography of an
> unimportant person is
> interesting/useful to almost no one, therefore it
> doesn't belong either.
>
> Second, facts about unimportant people are not
> checkable. I could write
> that my father once fell from a horse, and no one
> could ever disprove this
> false claim. If an important person falls from a
> horse, it leaves a trail.
>
> Third, and related, it is impossible to write a
> biography of an
> unimportant person from a NPOV, since essentially
> only the very partial
> point of view of the immediate family and friends
> exists.

I'm with Axel. I think a project with the goal of
world-wide biographies could be interesting, but
Wikipedia is not such a project.

Stephen

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body:
--- Brion VIBBER <brion at pobox.com> wrote:
> (re providing an RDF feed)
> Stephen Gilbert wrote:
> > We'd probably want to do a little filtering. Right
> > now, OneLook is indexing over 60,000 "words"
> (meaning
> > article titles) from Wikipedia. Maybe there could
> be a
> > raw feed and a filtered feed?
>
> What kind of filtering would you suggest?
>
> Assuming our intention is to provide an index of
> encyclopedia articles,
> it might be reasonable to, for instance, filter out
> certain kinds of
> redirects:
> * to an article that's identical except for case;
> since searches are
> usually case-insensitive they're redundant (though
> harmless)
> * to a page in a non-article namespace (talk, user,
> wikipedia, image)
> * to a non-existent page

Exactly what I was thinking. If an external
meta-index needs further filter the results, it can be
the responsibility of that particular index.

Stephen G.

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from_name: Toby Bartels

body:
Fred Bauder wrote:

>I doubt that very many of the people in question deserve much of
>an entry or mention and those that do are generally known by their common
>names, although, for example, Elizabeth Windsor, is almost unrecognizable
>by her common name.

I believe that there is a technical sense in which Elizabeth has no surname.
That is, while the royal family, as an abstract entity unto itself,
has the name "Windsor", its individual members do not.

I think that the most important thing is to establish a list
of all the reasonably likely forms that naive links will take
and a policy that they should all be created,
as redirects or disambiguation pages (depending).
Which of these forms is chosen as the naming convention
is less important (as long as its an unambiguous one).

-- Toby


body:
Tom Parmenter wrote:

>I have started a conversation in [[Wikipedia talk:WikiProject
>U.S. Counties]] about the fact that the templates for country, state,
>county, and city all use the wrong markup, that is, sections headed
>with === instead of ==.  I think this is important, but god knows
>there are going to be a lot of erroneous articles.  I wish I'd noticed
>before there were so many counties done by the redoubtable Ram-Man.

I think that having good HTML produced is moderately important.
And I think that making editing easy and intuitive is very important.
What is not important, however, is that the number of equal signs
in the latter match up precisely with the number in the tag in the former.

When rendering a page, we should first measure all of the header markups
and then render the shortest as <h2>, the next as <h3>, and so on.
(Anybody that really needs a header of a specific size
can still create this by putting the HTML tag in directly.)
Then you can start with == or ===, or even = or =========,
and it will still render as <h2> if it's the shortest one.

Best of all, the code to do this detection already exists in PediaWiki;
it's being used to decide what style of automatic header numbering to use.
(Not that I've ever looked at the code), but this should be an easy one.

Tom is happy, because good HTML is being produced.
[I forget who the principal opponent is] is happy,
because current articles don't have to be rewritten.
At least I hope that y'all're happy; responses?

-- Toby


from_name: Brion VIBBER

subject: [Intlwiki-l] [Wikipedia-l] embassies and diplomats (fwd)

body:
Pursuant to KQ's suggestions, I've started a page on the English wikipedia:

   http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Embassy

This is indended to serve a few purposes:

* Summarize current cross-language issues (software conversion,
interface localization, interlanguage linking, ...?)

* Link to the equivalent embassy page on the other language wikis
(please make them!)

* Link to the Intlwiki-L list, reminding that it's available

* List 'Wikipedia Ambassadors': polyglots who can keep an eye on
discussions across the various wikis and lists they frequent and act as
go-betweens and representatives when big decisions are being made.

On this last, I'm assuming that in general there is at least one person
on each language wiki who's already participating in at least one
other-language wiki and can keep an eye on the local embassy without too
much trouble. The embassy can thus serve as a communications post for
people who need to deal with that specific wiki; drop a message there
and somebody hopefully can decode and reply to it, or else find the
specific ambassador you need and contact them directly.

I look forward to expanding this system, and hope it turns out useful!

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


from_name: Bryan Derksen

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Biographies of unimportant people (was: "In
  memoriam")

body:
At 09:07 PM 25/09/02 -0700, Stephen Gilbert wrote:
>I'm with Axel. I think a project with the goal of
>world-wide biographies could be interesting, but
>Wikipedia is not such a project.

I also agree. One of the first things I did when the new Wiki software came
along with its lovely User:  subspace was to delete my old "home article"
completely; I don't belong in an encyclopedia, I'm nobody important (yet
:). Yes, Wikipedia has effectively unlimited space, but even so there are
things which aren't IMO appropriate for inclusion in an encyclopedia no
matter how big it is. They distract rather than inform. Encyclopedias are
an overview of human knowledge, not the sum total of it; that's what the
_rest_ of the library is for.


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: http://tribute.wikipedia.org/

body:
On Wednesday 25 September 2002 09:32 pm, I wrote:
> Who the hell did this? I'm on record for wanting these pages moved but it
> the ultimate of rude behavior to delete a tribute page created by someone
> who lost a family member or friend in 9/11. Now when come back all they see
> is a blank page since talk links are non-obvious. Shouldn't we consider the
> feelings of the people who created these pages?

Maybe I should check things before I write; It looks like redirects
automatically point a visitor from the "article" page to the talk page.
Therefore nobody will be greeted by a blank page.

Opps, sorry...

Daniel Mayer (aka mav)


body:
On Wednesday 25 September 2002 09:32 pm, you wrote:
> I'm with Axel. I think a project with the goal of
> world-wide biographies could be interesting, but
> Wikipedia is not such a project.
>
> Stephen

I hate to post "me toos", but I also agree with Axel.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)


body:
On 9/25/02 10:07 PM, "Daniel Mayer" <maveric149 at yahoo.com> wrote:

> On Wednesday 25 September 2002 05:44 pm, The Cunctator wrote:
>> About the only page that is expressly not NPOV and can't be reasonably
>> reconfigured as such is [[September 11, 2001 Terrorist Attack/In
>> Memoriam]].
>>
>> All tribute/comments for individual casualties have been moved to the
>> Talk page for the individual, which while perhaps not perfect, is
>> certainly within the scope of Talk (opinion which relates to and informs
>> the entry).
>
> Who the hell did this? I'm on record for wanting these pages moved but it the
> ultimate of rude behavior to delete a tribute page created by someone who
> lost a family member or friend in 9/11. Now when come back all they see is a
> blank page since talk links are non-obvious. Shouldn't we consider the
> feelings of the people who created these pages?

You shouldn't get upset before you know what you're talking about.

Take a look at the treatment on pages such as
[[William M. Feehan]] and [[John Kevin McAvoy]]. If the only content of the
page was the tribute, the page itself was moved to keep clear the edit
history.


from_name: Jimmy Wales

subject: [Wikipedia-l] embassies and diplomats

in_reply_to: <200209260042.g8Q0gp611131@ross.bomis.com>; from koyaanisqatsi@nupedia.com on Wed, Sep 25, 2002 at 05:42:51PM -0700

body:
koyaanisqatsi at nupedia.com wrote:
>That they do feel that way is a problem, regardless of whether we think it should be.

I agree.

> 1: we could ask for volunteer wikipedia diplomats: polyglots who are
>willing to inform various communities about policy and software
>discussions taking place that may affect them.

I think this is a sensible suggestion, although like you, I wonder if
many people have "enough zeal" to do this regularly.

I like most of your other suggestions, too, although I wonder if we
would keep them up after a period of good intentions.

It seems likely to me that the software will stabilize in major
respects on the current codebase.  Policy almost never changes in any
major ways.

--Jimbo


body:
Stephen Gilbert wrote:
> We'd probably want to do a little filtering. Right
> now, OneLook is indexing over 60,000 "words" (meaning
> article titles) from Wikipedia. Maybe there could be a
> raw feed and a filtered feed?

That sounds sensible.  In the past when I've done ad hoc data
importing from UseMod into Bomis, I filtered out stubs and redirects.

It's not really possible to know all the things that a potential user
of bulk link data might want, and not advisable to make this too
complicated, but a simple "raw" and "filtered" version would be good.
"raw" contains everything, "filtered" takes out the stubs (by some
conventional definition that we use elsewhere) and the redirects.

--Jimbo


body:
Axel Boldt wrote:
> First, I see an encyclopedia as a compendium of all human knowledge that
> is interesting or useful to a significant number of people. My dream last
> night, and the fact that I keep my notebook in the right drawer of my
> desk, are both stored in my brain, so they are part of human knowledge.
> They are interesting/useful to me, but not to anyone else, therefore they
> don't belong in an encyclopedia. A biography of an unimportant person is
> interesting/useful to almost no one, therefore it doesn't belong either.

I am sympathetic to this idea, though not wholly convinced that it
would be a good idea to try to formulate policy around it.  Where do
we stop, and why?

How about the mayor of New York City?  Famous enough.  How about the
mayor of Atlanta, Georgia?  Probably.  Mayor of Juneau, Alaska?
How about the city councilpersons?

It seems that virtually every college town (all the ones that I lived
in) has _the_ local semi-professional permanent activist/student.  These
folks are always making the news locally.  Why not an article about them?

It just seems very hard to me to be able to draw any particular line.
Many professors are well-known and important _in their field_, but
completely unknown otherwise.  Most authors are unknowns, but some are
not.

> Second, facts about unimportant people are not checkable. I could write
> that my father once fell from a horse, and no one could ever disprove this
> false claim. If an important person falls from a horse, it leaves a trail.
>
> Third, and related, it is impossible to write a biography of an
> unimportant person from a NPOV, since essentially only the very partial
> point of view of the immediate family and friends exists.

That's probably mostly true, but then again, if an article just sticks
to the basic facts, it should be fine.

My grandmother is not a famous person.  Yet, she founded a private
school that existed for many years and had a great impact on many
people in her community.  If you were writing a history of that
community, then if it was sufficiently detailed enough, you'd want to
include her story.

--Jimbo


body:
Bryan Derksen wrote:
> I also agree. One of the first things I did when the new Wiki software came
> along with its lovely User:  subspace was to delete my old "home article"
> completely; I don't belong in an encyclopedia, I'm nobody important (yet
> :).

Neither am I, and I wouldn't want an article about me in the
Encyclopedia now.  But after I die (don't worry, that's at least 200
years from now I hope!) everyone better write long glowing memoriams
to me, NPOV be damned! ;-)

As I say, I'm sympathetic to this viewpoint (and to the opposite
viewpoint!)  but the biggest problem I see is that there's no
particular way to draw the line.

I would say that it's not a problem -- no one would bother writing
detailed articles about random people who are not the least bit
famous.  But someone surely will, if for no other reason than to annoy
us.

--Jimbo


body:
Giskart wrote:
> Brion VIBBER wrote:
>> Pursuant to KQ's suggestions, I've started a page on the English
>> wikipedia:
>>
>>   http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Embassy
and now Esperanto:
      http://eo.wikipedia.com/wiki/Vikipedia_Ambasadorejo

> A good idea be would  it not be better to use the meta-wikipedia for
> this ? Now it is used to put stuff on that is out of please on the
> English wikipedia.  I see a future for the Meta - wikipedia as the
> central conectionpoint between all wikipedias. A truly international,
> multi-lingual wiki for essays and other non-encycopedia stuff but also
> as the centre for international co-ordination. For Embassys or some
> respresantation.  You can make different "Main Page"s on the same wiki.
> Somthing like this; http://meta.wikipedia.com/wiki.phtml?title=Hoofdpagina
 >
> I think there will be more active in the Embassy pages if the are all on
> 1 wiki. Then there are only  only 2 wikipedias to monitor. . If the
> Embassy pages are all on the home-wikipedias i think some will be
> forgotten and the traffic, if any, will only be downstream from the
> English to the others but not upstream.

My experience with Meta has been that I check it somewhere between very
rarely and never, which makes it useless for me for discussion or site
announcements. On the other hand, the wikis I participate in *editing* I
check rather regularly (en, eo quite frequently, fr at least few times a
week; I check de for the bug reports page), and so I'm much more likely
to notice big news / help requests / policy discussions there. Likewise
the mailing lists (eg intlwiki-l) come directly to my inbox once I've
subscribed, so it's tough to ignore them.

I doubt I'm alone in this, so I would expect to have an easier time
getting ahold of, say, the French wikipedia community by writing on a
page on the French wiki which will appear to all French wikipedians in
their RecentChanges list than by writing on a page on meta which if I'm
lucky someone (an "ambassador") will remember to check. If I want to get
ahold of _everyone's_ attention, that's what intlwiki-l is for. The
people who are subscribed to these mailing lists (the "ambassadors") are
guaranteed to receive that, and they can then make sure there is
appropriate local discussion on their home wikis and that everybody's
voices are heard on the mailing list.

Someone unable or intimidated to post directly to the big list can leave
a request at their local "embassy", which the local ambassador can send
on to the mailing list.

But you're welcome to prove me wrong, I've been hoping we could do
something useful with meta for a long time. :)

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


from_name: Giskart

subject: [Wikipedia-l] embassies and diplomats

body:
koyaanisqatsi at nupedia.com wrote:

>[cut]
>
>I'm very interested in comments and other ideas.
>
>kq
>
>
>
>

I am very happy that you understand that this is sensitive.

In your proposals thou have not used the most logical solution (of al
least a part of the solution), Intlwiki-l
Make a Wikipedia newsletter or somthing like that, an announcement and
send it to Intwiki-l and give time for the responds. For every Wikipedia
there should be at least 1 "diplomat" who can bring the information to
the home-wikipedia and can give feedback.
See also here, a recent posting from my about this;
http://www.nupedia.com/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2002-September/005344.html

About translations; the best hope i think is that every wikipedia
attempts to get hold of a speaker of Esperanto. If you have 1 and
he/she/it  is willing to do translations this can work very good.  (I am
learing it now but Wikipedia is a very big distraction)

Giskart


body:
I'm happy too. Everyone wins! Can we do this easily?

Stephen G.

--- Toby Bartels <toby+wikipedia at math.ucr.edu> wrote:
> Tom Parmenter wrote:
>
> >I have started a conversation in [[Wikipedia
> talk:WikiProject
> >U.S. Counties]] about the fact that the templates
> for country, state,
> >county, and city all use the wrong markup, that is,
> sections headed
> >with === instead of ==.  I think this is important,
> but god knows
> >there are going to be a lot of erroneous articles.
> I wish I'd noticed
> >before there were so many counties done by the
> redoubtable Ram-Man.
>
> I think that having good HTML produced is moderately
> important.
> And I think that making editing easy and intuitive
> is very important.
> What is not important, however, is that the number
> of equal signs
> in the latter match up precisely with the number in
> the tag in the former.
>
> When rendering a page, we should first measure all
> of the header markups
> and then render the shortest as <h2>, the next as
> <h3>, and so on.
> (Anybody that really needs a header of a specific
> size
> can still create this by putting the HTML tag in
> directly.)
> Then you can start with == or ===, or even = or
> =========,
> and it will still render as <h2> if it's the
> shortest one.
>
> Best of all, the code to do this detection already
> exists in PediaWiki;
> it's being used to decide what style of automatic
> header numbering to use.
> (Not that I've ever looked at the code), but this
> should be an easy one.
>
> Tom is happy, because good HTML is being produced.
> [I forget who the principal opponent is] is happy,
> because current articles don't have to be rewritten.
> At least I hope that y'all're happy; responses?
>
>
> -- Toby
> [Wikipedia-l]
> To manage your subscription to this list, please go
> here:
> http://www.nupedia.com/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l

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subject: [Wikipedia-l] FAQ work

body:
I'm planning to re-organize and expand the Wikipedia
FAQ. To avoid clogging up the mailing list, see the
FAQ talk page
(http://www.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Wikipedia_talk:FAQ)
if you're interested in discussing or helping.

Stephen G.

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subject: [Wikipedia-l] Proposed solution to deletion dilemma

in_reply_to: <E079C39257D0D845AC39E2CA261C43E00703AC@sm-nyny-xm04.nena.wdpr.disney.com>; from Edmund.W.Poor@abc.com on Thu, Sep 26, 2002 at 01:02:59PM -0400

body:
Poor, Edmund W wrote:
> Solution B: Create a "marked for deletion" function, with a timer. A
> standard period of time after being marked, say, 24 hours, the software
> automatically deletes it -- unless someone removes it from the deletion
> queue. (Variation: any edit to a "marked" article automatically clears
> the "delete me" flag.

I think that's pretty neat.  I'd up it from 24 hours to 7 days, but
other than that, I think it sounds grand.

(easy for me to say, of course, since I wrote none of the code)

--Jimbo


from_name: lcrocker at nupedia.com

subject: [Wikipedia-l] SQL errors -- Server load?

body:
You Wrote:
> I've been getting errors like the following on an occasional
> basis for the last week or so. Might it be that we're not yet
> out of the woods on the server load issue?
> *Warning*: open(/tmp/sess_d951b98b197c77c47e75c3217ffce7cd, O_RDWR)
> failed: Too many open files in system (23) in
> */usr/local/apache/htdocs/w/wiki.phtml* on line *7*
> *Warning*: Failed opening 'Setup.php' for inclusion
> (include_path='.:/usr/local/lib/php') in
> */usr/local/apache/htdocs/w/wiki.phtml* on line *12*

I suspect this is caused not by too much load overall, but by
people accessing several of the foreign wikis at once.  The
APC cache software warns about the problem, since it keeps an
open file for each PHP source file, and each wiki uses 20-30
files.  I'll kick up that number and restart the server.


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Moving a page to a redirect

body:
> I thought I heard someone mention that a page move to an
> existing redirect was possible?

"Move" is only allowed when either the destination page doesn't
exist at all, or else it does exist, and contains nothing but
a redirect to the source page and has no history.  So if you
move a page somewhere, you can usually move it back without
having to delete the old name.  But you can't move a page on top
of a redirect to something else, and you can't move a page onto
a name with any history.


body:
--- Jimmy Wales <jwales at bomis.com> wrote:
> Axel Boldt wrote:
> > First, I see an encyclopedia as a compendium of all
> > human knowledge that is interesting or useful to a
> > significant number of people. My dream last night, and
> > the fact that I keep my notebook in the right drawer of my
> > desk, are both stored in my brain, so they are part of human
> > knowledge. They are interesting/useful to me, but not to
> > anyone else, therefore they don't belong in an encyclopedia.
> > A biography of an unimportant person is interesting/useful
> > to almost no one, therefore it doesn't belong either.
>
> I am sympathetic to this idea, though not wholly convinced that it
> would be a good idea to try to formulate policy around it.  Where do
> we stop, and why?

I don't see a need to formulate any policy. It's all implicit in the
overall goal of writing an encyclopedia, properly understood.
Certain things are simply not contained in encyclopedias, period.

Axel

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subject: [Wikipedia-l] Deletions and respect.

body:
Please, I ask you, if you want to delete a page, show some simple courtesy,
as set out in the guidelines.

1) List page on Votes for deletion.
2) Wait.

Several of you have stopped doing this on a regular basis.

Most of the time the deletion decisions themselves are unassailable.
However:

* 15:01 Sep 26, 2002 Jheijmans deleted "Organizational structure of
Jehovah's Witnesses" (created today, but then cleared because not needed)

The JW pages are in the process of being edited. The deletion of this page
was entirely inappropriate.

* 14:56 Sep 26, 2002 Jheijmans deleted "Talk:Knocking her dead one on the
nose each and every double trey" (talk of removed page)
* 14:56 Sep 26, 2002 Jheijmans deleted "Talk:Gamefoolz" (talk of removed
page)

Both Talks were of real interest, from a meta perspective. They should have
been moved to meta, or moved to the Wikipedia:Historical Wikipedia pages
space. Or at least so the argument goes. An argument/move which I was unable
to make, since they were deleted summarily.

I have trouble with the idea that people who are incapable of respecting the
uncomplicated and clear deletion policy, after having been reminded of the
basic procedures, should be allowed to delete pages.

Of course, if there were soft deletes, this wouldn't be an issue.


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Deletions and respect.

body:
--- The Cunctator <cunctator at kband.com> wrote:
> Please, I ask you, if you want to delete a page,
> show some simple courtesy,
> as set out in the guidelines.
>
> 1) List page on Votes for deletion.
> 2) Wait.
<snip>

>
> * 14:56 Sep 26, 2002 Jheijmans deleted
> "Talk:Knocking her dead one on the
> nose each and every double trey" (talk of removed
> page)
> * 14:56 Sep 26, 2002 Jheijmans deleted
> "Talk:Gamefoolz" (talk of removed
> page)
>
> Both Talks were of real interest, from a meta
> perspective. They should have
> been moved to meta, or moved to the
> Wikipedia:Historical Wikipedia pages
> space. Or at least so the argument goes. An
> argument/move which I was unable
> to make, since they were deleted summarily.
>
> I have trouble with the idea that people who are
> incapable of respecting the
> uncomplicated and clear deletion policy, after
> having been reminded of the
> basic procedures, should be allowed to delete pages.

I added the those two talk pages to the Votes for
Deletion page. Jheijmans saw them, agreed, and deleted
them, thus following the deletion policy.

Stephen G.

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from_name: Larry Sanger

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Deletions and respect.

body:
On Thu, 26 Sep 2002, The Cunctator wrote:

> Please, I ask you, if you want to delete a page, show some simple courtesy,
> as set out in the guidelines.
>
> 1) List page on Votes for deletion.
> 2) Wait.
>
>
> Several of you have stopped doing this on a regular basis.
>
> Most of the time the deletion decisions themselves are unassailable.
[snip reasonable-sounding description of a few hasty deletes]
> I have trouble with the idea that people who are incapable of respecting the
> uncomplicated and clear deletion policy, after having been reminded of the
> basic procedures, should be allowed to delete pages.

You raised this issue just a few days ago and presumably everyone who has
used the delete function in a manner with which you disapprove is now
familiar with your views about hasty deletion.  It seems clear, having
looked at the ensuing exchange, that they disagree with you, Cunc--not
necessarily that there is an issue of respect or lack thereof here.

This is not at all to deny that, in perhaps every case listed, the delete
was questionable.

> Of course, if there were soft deletes, this wouldn't be an issue.

I sure hope we get them soon.  This will remove any further grounds for
this sort of power struggle.

--Larry


body:
Brion VIBBER wrote:

> Pursuant to KQ's suggestions, I've started a page on the English
> wikipedia:
>
>   http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Embassy
>
A good idea be would  it not be better to use the meta-wikipedia for
this ? Now it is used to put stuff on that is out of please on the
English wikipedia.  I see a future for the Meta - wikipedia as the
central conectionpoint between all wikipedias. A truly international,
multi-lingual wiki for essays and other non-encycopedia stuff but also
as the centre for international co-ordination. For Embassys or some
respresantation.  You can make different "Main Page"s on the same wiki.
Somthing like this; http://meta.wikipedia.com/wiki.phtml?title=Hoofdpagina

I think there will be more active in the Embassy pages if the are all on
1 wiki. Then there are only  only 2 wikipedias to monitor. . If the
Embassy pages are all on the home-wikipedias i think some will be
forgotten and the traffic, if any, will only be downstream from the
English to the others but not upstream.

giskart


from_name: tarquin

body:
Toby Bartels wrote:

>I think that having good HTML produced is moderately important.
>And I think that making editing easy and intuitive is very important.
>What is not important, however, is that the number of equal signs
>in the latter match up precisely with the number in the tag in the former.
>
>When rendering a page, we should first measure all of the header markups
>and then render the shortest as <h2>, the next as <h3>, and so on.
>(Anybody that really needs a header of a specific size
>can still create this by putting the HTML tag in directly.)
>Then you can start with == or ===, or even = or =========,
>and it will still render as <h2> if it's the shortest one.
>
That is certainly a very clever solution.
However, I'm concerned that users may be confused by 3= producing
different results in different circumstances.

There are thousands of pages with spelling mistakes, thousands of "it's"
that we can't even do a search for, and thousands of pages that use
bolded text instead of headings -- these all need to be changed, and
WikiWeeders like myself are gradually working through them.
I don't think that adding the changing of top-level 3= to the list is a
big deal.
(there are also thousands of page titles to be bolded, names of novels
and films italicized, links to be fixed, <BR> to be replaced with * & so on)

I would also like to add my vote to the "please change the stylesheet to
H2 is smaller" issue. :) -- I agree with whoever said that the current
H2 font size is the reason people don't use 2=


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Deletions and respect.

body:
The Cunctator wrote;

>Waiting four minutes is not following the deletion
policy.

If the page is question was junk then there is no time
limit. And the "policy" you speak of is the "one week
rule" for listed items which you know very well that
you wrote yourself on the votes for deletion page and
I later bolded. I stated in the edit summary that I
agreed with it but that it "needed to have list
approval". I don't remember getting this approval.

http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_policy_on_permanent_deletion_of_pages

No mention here of a time period.

Here is the link to your addition to the votes for
deletion page;

http://www.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Wikipedia:Votes_for_deletion&diff=177211&oldid=177189

The way I understand how to use the votes for deletion
page is to list page titles whose content has to be
moved, copyright violations and anything else there is
doubt about. Utter junk should be deleted on sight,
otherwise there would be at least a dozen page titles
added to the vote for deletions page every day.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)

=====

__________________________________________________
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from_name: Poor, Edmund W

body:
We can solve the dilemma Cunctator mentioned with soft deletes of one
sort or another.

Problem #1: There are way too many micro-stubs and nonsense pages that
have to be deleted.

Problem #2: Once in a while, our hard-working Volunteer Deletion Crew
accidentally deletes something that another contributor (like Cunctator)
wishes they'd been able to look at before deletion.

Solution A: Replace delete by a "soft delete" that erases the current
text but keeps the article history. A link to the article shows the
?-mark (or red line) same as a hard delete.

Solution B: Create a "marked for deletion" function, with a timer. A
standard period of time after being marked, say, 24 hours, the software
automatically deletes it -- unless someone removes it from the deletion
queue. (Variation: any edit to a "marked" article automatically clears
the "delete me" flag.

Ed Poor


from_name: MacLaine of LOCHBUIE

subject: [Wikipedia-l] 624th Field Artillery Observation Battalion

body: Looking for any member of this unit.           Thanks


from_name: koyaanisqatsi at nupedia.com

subject: [Wikipedia-l] embassies and diplomats

body:
Jimmy wrote:
>I think this is a sensible suggestion, although like you, I wonder if
>many people have "enough zeal" to do this regularly.
>
>I like most of your other suggestions, too, although I wonder if we
>would keep them up after a period of good intentions.
>
>It seems likely to me that the software will stabilize in major
>respects on the current codebase.  Policy almost never changes in any
>major ways.

Yes, that may be.  I do still think it's worth the effort, though.  :-)  ... If I spoke Spanish any better, I would be an ambassador to the Spanish wikipedia.

kq


body:
--- Imran Ghory <ImranG at btinternet.com> wrote:
> On 25 Sep 2002, at 19:53, Axel Boldt wrote:
>
> >A biography of
> > an unimportant person is interesting/useful to almost no one,
> > therefore it doesn't belong either.
>
> How do you measure the importance of someone ?

Like I just did: a person is unimportant if his or her biography
is interesting/useful to almost no one.

Axel

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from_name: Tesla Coil

body:
On 25 Sept 2002, Rob Brewer wrote:
>>>> In no case is it [[Edward Stanley, 14th Earl of Derby]] and
>>>> [[Edward Stanley, 15th Earl of Derby]]. "English-speakers do
>>>> not put family names as part of the title."
>>>
>>> ...which is quite clearly untrue, at least when referring
>>> in formal terms to historical figures. The Dictionary of
>>> National Biography, for example, lists peers by their family
>>> name, as in: CAVENDISH, Spencer Compton, Marquis of Hartington
>>> and 8th Duke of Devonshire.
>>
>> I think Tesla was referring to that specific standard form of quoting a
>> title, where I believe he's correct - you would indeed *not* cite the
>> surname in that particular formulation.
>
> I may have misunderstood Tesla... I understood Tesla to be quoting
> from [[Wikipedia:Naming conventions (names and titles)]], and took
> it as a complaint. I'll look in to the convention when I have time.

I was quoting [[Wikipedia:Naming conventions (names and titles)]],
but only as a citation of what seems to be Wikipedia "Legal Code"
on entry titles.

I considered referring to Oxford's Dictionary of National Biography
in this context myself, but I'm not certain how much it helps on
the issue.  There, you'll have an entry WATSON-WENTWORTH, CHARLES,
second Marquis of Rockingham - but other articles will name him as
Lord Rockingham, or simply Rockingham, no Charles Watson-Wentworth
about it.  On whether the Wikipedia entry title should be [[Lord
Rockingham]] or [[Charles Watson-Wentworth]] this could argue for
either position.  About all I can say of it is that anyone finding
[[Charles Watson-Wentworth|Lord Rockingham]] too inconvenient or
complicated to write in an article would the more easily surrender
before the task of navigating the Dictionary of National Biography
in writing said article.

Returning to "English-speakers do not put family names as part of
the title."  Looking through a biography last night, I noticed it
included a portrait identified as "John Montagu, Earl of Sandwich."
The book was published in Great Britain, and though I suppose that
no guarantee it adheres to Queen's English, I have my doubts this
is anything of a hard and fast rule.

The real question here is whether to recognize that Edward Stanley,
the 14th Earl of Derby is for many persons *The* [[Earl of Derby]],
or that the [[Earl of Derby]] is a *title* that has been conferred
to many persons and that its movement may prove history by itself.


body:
Andre Engels wrote:
> Alternatively - since the old versions appear to be saved at the system
> anyway, what about creating a 'restore' function on the Deletion log?

If I go do that right now, will everyone SHUT THE FARDELS UP? :)

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


from_name: The Cunctator

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Deletions and respect.

body:
On Thu, 2002-09-26 at 14:04, Stephen Gilbert wrote:
>
> --- The Cunctator <cunctator at kband.com> wrote:
> > Please, I ask you, if you want to delete a page,
> > show some simple courtesy,
> > as set out in the guidelines.
> >
> > 1) List page on Votes for deletion.
> > 2) Wait.
> <snip>
>
> >
> > * 14:56 Sep 26, 2002 Jheijmans deleted
> > "Talk:Knocking her dead one on the
> > nose each and every double trey" (talk of removed
> > page)
> > * 14:56 Sep 26, 2002 Jheijmans deleted
> > "Talk:Gamefoolz" (talk of removed
> > page)
> >
 pages to the Votes for
> Deletion page. Jheijmans saw them, agreed, and deleted
> them, thus following the deletion policy.

Jheijmans only waited two (or, in the case of Gamefools, 4) hours. That
is not nearly sufficient. Rather, it is a problem.


body:
I've been getting errors like the following on an occasional basis for
the last week or so. Might it be that we're not yet out of the woods on
the server load issue?

*Warning*: open(/tmp/sess_d951b98b197c77c47e75c3217ffce7cd, O_RDWR)
failed: Too many open files in system (23) in
*/usr/local/apache/htdocs/w/wiki.phtml* on line *7*

*Warning*: Failed opening 'Setup.php' for inclusion
(include_path='.:/usr/local/lib/php') in
*/usr/local/apache/htdocs/w/wiki.phtml* on line *12*

*Fatal error*: Undefined class name 'outputpage' in
*/usr/local/apache/htdocs/w/wiki.phtml* on line *14*

*Warning*: open(/tmp/sess_d951b98b197c77c47e75c3217ffce7cd, O_RDWR)
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subject: [Wikipedia-l] Deletions and respect.

body:
On Thu, 2002-09-26 at 14:31, The Cunctator wrote:
> On Thu, 2002-09-26 at 14:04, Stephen Gilbert wrote:
> >
> > --- The Cunctator <cunctator at kband.com> wrote:
> > > * 14:56 Sep 26, 2002 Jheijmans deleted
> > > "Talk:Knocking her dead one on the
> > > nose each and every double trey" (talk of removed
> > > page)
> > > * 14:56 Sep 26, 2002 Jheijmans deleted
> > > "Talk:Gamefoolz" (talk of removed
> > > page)
> > >
>  pages to the Votes for
> > Deletion page. Jheijmans saw them, agreed, and deleted
> > them, thus following the deletion policy.
>
> Jheijmans only waited two (or, in the case of Gamefools, 4) hours. That
> is not nearly sufficient. Rather, it is a problem.
>
I erred. Jeihmans only waited four minutes (for "Knocking") and two
hours (for "Gamefoolz").

Waiting four minutes is not following the deletion policy.


body:
On Thu, 2002-09-26 at 15:33, Daniel Mayer wrote:
> The Cunctator wrote;
>
> >Waiting four minutes is not following the deletion
> policy.
>
> If the page is question was junk then there is no time
> limit. And the "policy" you speak of is the "one week
> rule" for listed items which you know very well that
> you wrote yourself on the votes for deletion page and
> I later bolded. I stated in the edit summary that I
> agreed with it but that it "needed to have list
> approval". I don't remember getting this approval.
>
The page in question was not junk.


subject: [Wikipedia-l] re: Deletions and respect

body:
On Thu, 2002-09-26 at 15:40, Jeroen Heijmans wrote:
> >
> >
> >Both Talks were of real interest, from a meta perspective. They should have
> >been moved to meta, or moved to the Wikipedia:Historical Wikipedia pages
> >space. Or at least so the argument goes. An argument/move which I was unable
> >to make, since they were deleted summarily.
> >
> I don't see that if the talks were of any use why they weren't moved to
> meta along with their articles. Somebody apparently found that
> necessary, I was just cleaning up.

Why? Because you deleted it in four minutes.


from_name: Anthere

body:
Yes, that sounds good to me. We'll see how it can
work. I'll do the page on the fr.wiki tomorrow :-) How
are the phase III switching going on ?

I have a question, hum, two very hypothetical
questions maybe
- is it possible that the software propose different
special pages depending on the wiki? This being with
the potential idea that this page on homewikis could
be a special page, so helping access. If the page is
burried ina 3 levels hierarchy, wikipedians wont check
it. But though that page could interest us, it would
not interest en.wiki. So, how much of this might be
possible. I said might :-)
- is it possible to watch several wikis from the same
place ? I know there's the issue of confusion if it's
a common list, or the issue of the multiplication of
lists (could be solved by a drop-down (?) menu anyway.
The core question is just, is it possible ?

--- Brion VIBBER <brion at pobox.com> wrote:
> Pursuant to KQ's suggestions, I've started a page on
> the English wikipedia:
>
>    http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Embassy
>
> This is indended to serve a few purposes:
>
> * Summarize current cross-language issues (software
> conversion,
> interface localization, interlanguage linking, ...?)
>
> * Link to the equivalent embassy page on the other
> language wikis
> (please make them!)
>
> * Link to the Intlwiki-L list, reminding that it's
> available
>
> * List 'Wikipedia Ambassadors': polyglots who can
> keep an eye on
> discussions across the various wikis and lists they
> frequent and act as
> go-betweens and representatives when big decisions
> are being made.
>
>
> On this last, I'm assuming that in general there is
> at least one person
> on each language wiki who's already participating in
> at least one
> other-language wiki and can keep an eye on the local
> embassy without too
> much trouble. The embassy can thus serve as a
> communications post for
> people who need to deal with that specific wiki;
> drop a message there
> and somebody hopefully can decode and reply to it,
> or else find the
> specific ambassador you need and contact them
> directly.
>
> I look forward to expanding this system, and hope it
> turns out useful!
>
> -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
>
> [Wikipedia-l]
> To manage your subscription to this list, please go
> here:
> http://www.nupedia.com/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l

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body:
--- The Cunctator <cunctator at kband.com> wrote:

> What's your quantifiable metrics of "interesting", "useful", and
> "almost no one"?

Did I say I have or need one?

Axel

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subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Biographies of unimportant people (was: "In
	memoriam")

body:
On Thu, 2002-09-26 at 16:53, Axel Boldt wrote:
>
> --- Imran Ghory <ImranG at btinternet.com> wrote:
> > On 25 Sep 2002, at 19:53, Axel Boldt wrote:
> >
> > >A biography of
> > > an unimportant person is interesting/useful to almost no one,
> > > therefore it doesn't belong either.
> >
> > How do you measure the importance of someone ?
>
> Like I just did: a person is unimportant if his or her biography
> is interesting/useful to almost no one.

What's your quantifiable metrics of "interesting", "useful", and "almost
no one"?


subject: [Wikipedia-l] embassies and diplomats

body:
--- Jimmy Wales <jwales at bomis.com> wrote:
>
> koyaanisqatsi at nupedia.com wrote:
> >That they do feel that way is a problem, regardless
> of whether we think it should be.
>
> I agree.
>
> > 1: we could ask for volunteer wikipedia diplomats:
> polyglots who are
> >willing to inform various communities about policy
> and software
> >discussions taking place that may affect them.
>
> I think this is a sensible suggestion, although like
> you, I wonder if
> many people have "enough zeal" to do this regularly.
>
> I like most of your other suggestions, too, although
> I wonder if we
> would keep them up after a period of good
> intentions.
>
> It seems likely to me that the software will
> stabilize in major
> respects on the current codebase.  Policy almost
> never changes in any
> major ways.
>
> --Jimbo

Hello Jimbo,

Rather true for software issues. I hope the switch to
phase III software will help settle things down, in
particular if it allows to fit better to regional or
cultural differences. May sound ridiculous, but really
it is not. Also, if we, for example, can easily change
options ourselves, or add a sysop ourselves...that can
make a difference

Rather true for policy issues. Your major rules are
already set up and unlikely to change. We are still
trying to agree on ours anyway. Minor issues are very
much cultural. So unlikely to be shared. Still...maybe
consistency would be interesting.

Not true for general information issues.
I remember an exchange on the main list about
copyright issues. We are concerned somehow...we share
images no ?
I found once the page you discussed money issues
(tee-shirt stuff and so on). I say once, because I
have no idea where to find it again. Hey, no surprise
some got nervous reading it :-) Still, some questions
arose on the fr.wiki about why *you* were .org and we
were .com (ain't that funny retrospectively ?)
Just this week, doing the php translation, we wonder
over how to understand, and how to translate

"booksources"=> "Book sources",
"booksourcetext" => "Below is a list of links to other
sites that sell new and used books, and may also have
further information about books you are looking for.
Wikipedia is not affiliated with any of these
businesses, and
this list should not be construed as an endorsement."

not affiliated with these businesses ? construed as an
endorsement ? a?e a?e a?e

what is that supposed to imply ??? somehow, just
listing them, isnot that a "sort of" affiliation ?
Er, I think here, when a site such as Amazon has a
link on your site, it is clear to most you have a deal
together. Especially on a dot com.

Oh well...whatever...

Have a good evening anyway

Anth?re

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body:
I thought I heard someone mention that a page move to an existing
redirect was possible?
ie
if [[A]] redirects to [[B]],
then moving [[A]] to [[B]] should give no error message and just
overwrite the redirection page at [[B]].

this doesn't seem to be working
(I understand our coders have a heavy workload, so I'm not pressing for
this urgently -- I'm just wondering if it's *supposed* to be working but
isn't.)


subject: [Wikipedia-l] embassies and diplomats

body:
Anthere wrote:
 > Still, some questions
> arose on the fr.wiki about why *you* were .org and we
> were .com (ain't that funny retrospectively ?)

That's just the simplest way to deal with moving the various wikis from
the old server (which the developers don't have direct access to) to the
new server (which the developers do have direct access to). As wikis get
moved over, they get the .org address (which points always to the new
server).

> not affiliated with these businesses ? construed as an
> endorsement ? a?e a?e a?e
>
> what is that supposed to imply ??? somehow, just
> listing them, isnot that a "sort of" affiliation ?
> Er, I think here, when a site such as Amazon has a
> link on your site, it is clear to most you have a deal
> together. Especially on a dot com.

That's exactly why we have the disclaimer: we _don't_ have any kind of
deal with Amazon, or Barnes & Noble, or Pricescan, or the Library of
Congress or whoever else Wikipedia unilaterally chooses to link to there.

We _aren't_ advertising their services in exchange for money, we _don't_
get a cut of the sale if you buy a book from them. We link to them
because we think they might be useful to the reader, not because we
(or is it Jimbo's Mercedes fund ;) are being paid to link them.

(And really, those links should be able to vary by language.)

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


from_name: Andre Engels

body:
> Poor, Edmund W wrote:
> > Solution B: Create a "marked for deletion" function, with a timer. A
> > standard period of time after being marked, say, 24 hours, the software
> > automatically deletes it -- unless someone removes it from the deletion
> > queue. (Variation: any edit to a "marked" article automatically clears
> > the "delete me" flag.

Jimbo reacted:

> I think that's pretty neat.  I'd up it from 24 hours to 7 days, but
> other than that, I think it sounds grand.
>
> (easy for me to say, of course, since I wrote none of the code)

I'm not so enthousiastic. On the one hand, those who want to save deletions
are completely right if they say that 24 hours is too short. On the other
hand, I don't want an entry like "Wut!" (which I just a few minutes ago
deleted as the Wikipedia description of Hangzhou) to remain in the database
for a full 7 days. I would very much prefer the other option - not letting
the deletions be definitive, and having a definite delete only for copyright
violations and extreme cases such as the goatse.cx case.

Alternatively - since the old versions appear to be saved at the system
anyway, what about creating a 'restore' function on the Deletion log?

Andre Engels


body:
At 02:26 PM 26/09/02 -0800, Brion VIBBER wrote:
>Andre Engels wrote:
>>Alternatively - since the old versions appear to be saved at the system
>>anyway, what about creating a 'restore' function on the Deletion log?
>
>If I go do that right now, will everyone SHUT THE FARDELS UP? :)

If that feature gets implemented, I promise that I will never request that
feature again. :)