from_name: Rob Lanphier

subject: [Wikitech-l] OpenID Support

body:
As one of the past advocates for OpenID as a possible solution to the
"single signon problem", I wholeheartedly agree with what Brion wrote
below.  OpenID solves an interesting problem, just not the problem that
the most active contributors to the site seem to be interested in
solving.

The spec below tries to address the problem head on:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Single_login_specifications

Rob

On Tue, 2006-02-07 at 19:34 -0800, Brion Vibber wrote:
> Brion Vibber wrote:
> > Evan Prodromou wrote:
> >> Really? I'd think that an Interwiki-namespaced username would solve that
> >> problem nicely,
> >
> > No, it solves a different problem.
> >
> >> without requiring a big name-clash-fixing step when the
> >
> > That step is inherent in the requirement of a single namespace.
>
> Sorry to be short about this, but we've had enough fights over this issue in the
> past, and as far as I'm concerned the decisions have been made. I'll get flak no
> matter whether I implement the previously-agreed conversion specification or
> something new, so it's lose-lose for me personally. ;)
>
>
> However to summarize, my view on why a single namespace is Good includes a few
> points:
>
>
> * Encourages community cohesiveness across diverse projects:
>
> Many people are active in multiple projects. While they may be numerically a
> minority, these are among the most active contributors, and thus key to the
> projects' success.
>
> One of the things making it hard now to pop over to another projects is that you
> have to register another account; if you instead have a "foreign" account saying
> you're from another web site, this makes you stand out even more as not belonging.
>
> We want the Wikimedia projects to be able to share people and content easily and
> freely. Being an equal user on every project helps break down those borders,
> where having a freakish foreign username would build them up.
>
>
> * Related to that, we have projects specifically for sharing:
>
> Commons and Meta are important. They should be as closely integrated as possible
> to make media content sharing and community-wide issue discussion as easy to
> dive into as possible. Being given a foreign name when you go there makes it a
> foreign place instead of just a special part of the wiki.
>
>
> * Avoids the 'tld problem':
>
> Even though we all know top-level domains in the DNS system are supposed to be
> disambiguators, everybody ends up trying to register their name in every
> possible domain -- if you don't, the others mostly go to squatters, SEO scum,
> and phishers who have no legitimate claim to the name.
>
> The disambiguators are unsatisfying, and aren't necessarily enough to pass
> casual inspection -- especially when you legitimately have a hundred accounts
> named 'Angela' or 'Brion Vibber' which _mostly_ are the same person already.
>
> It makes more sense in my view to recognize that the disambiguators don't work
> that well when they're needed and make more trouble when they're not, and just
> jump straight to a single namespace.
>
>
> When we add OpenID/whatever in the future later, that'll allow identification
> from 'foreign' sites in a limited way which is useful. (Eg a post on the
> LiveJournal article claiming to be from Brad Fitzpatrick could be verified as
> really having from from Brad's LJ account, and a post on LJ about Wikipedia
> claiming to be from Jimbo Wales could be verified as really coming from Jimmy's
> Wikimedia account.) But that works because it's *all about* the boundary, and
> drawing attention to the foreign boundary is what you want in that case. That's
> not, I think, what we want inside Wikimedia.
>
> -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l


list: wikien-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Pedro Sanchez

subject: [WikiEn-l] Alternative names for the Counter Vandalism Unit

body:
> From: The Cunctator <cunctator at gmail.com>
> To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at wikipedia.org>
> Date: Tue, 7 Feb 2006 13:36:50 -0500
> Subject: [WikiEN-l] Alternative names for the Counter Vandalism Unit
> On 2/7/06, Jay Converse <supermo0 at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 2/7/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
> > >
> > > On 2/6/06, The Cunctator <cunctator at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > > Pretty much the best kinds of project names are ones that are either
> > > > expressly positive (i.e. their name assumes good faith, doesn't create
> > > > an us/them dichotomy), or failing that are ironicly ugly (like
> > > > "bureaucrat", "benevolent dictator", or "spelling nazi" or "mediation
> > > > cabal").
> > >
> > > Vandalism Cleaning Brigade?
> > > Grafitti Purging Workforce?
> Okay in that they're simply descriptive.
>
> > > Slaves for an Unvandalised Wikipedia?
> Good.
>
> > > The Anti-vandalism Superheroes?
>
> That's both us/them and not ironicly ugly.
>
> > > Vandalism Posse?
>
> Us/them.
>
> Other ideas--positive:
>
> The Fencepainting Project (Shades of Tom Sawyer, with other
> neighborhood-building connotations.)
> Welcome Mat Project (the vast amount of vandalism is
> newbie-ish--enfolding handling vandalism into the concept of welcoming
> new users makes sense to me. I.e. there are no strangers, just friends
> we haven't met (and indoctrinated).)
>
> Ironically positive:
> Care Bear Brigade (I know this was discussed and negged earlier, but
> it's hilarious.)
>
> Ugly:
> Users for Mindless Conformity.
>

Again, [[Wikipedia:Cleaning up vandalism]]. Simple. descriptive. Non
us/them. And it's already on the works


from_name: charles matthews

subject: [WikiEN-l] No more blocking people for who they *are*?

body:
 "Steve Bennett" wrote

>Could we agree
not to ever again block people for what they are?

Easy to say that in the context that Wikipedia is not under siege, and has
its reputation pretty much intact.  What about the guy who arrives in the
middle of an election and annouces "I'm being funded to remove all your bias
on candidates' pages"?

Charles


from_name: John Lee

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Why has everything gone to hell?

body:
David Gerard wrote:

>>Consensus doesn't scale.
>>
>>
>
>
>We've recently seen the numbers from Gmaxwell and Kim Bruning that
>show that this is not at all the case with articles - except a couple
>of hundred articles (out of 900k+) which appear to be pathological.
>*Mostly*, people leave articles to others who know about the area, and
>those who know about an area mostly manage to thrash out a consensus.
>The failures of consensus in article editing get a lot of attention
>but they are the *exception*.
>
>
The problem is that this exception takes up an exceptional amount of
time that could be well spent on other endeavours. And occasionally,
they degenerate into a really, really big mess that won't stop without
intervention from someone in a position of authority (the autofellatio
and Gdansk controversies I alluded to are the two examples I can think
of off the top of my head).

John Lee
([[User:Johnleemk]])


from_name: Ben Emmel

subject: [WikiEN-l] WikiNews Coverage of U.S. Congress Editing

body:
BoingBoing and digg have the story now.
http://www.boingboing.net/2006/02/07/wikinews_uncovers_te.html

There's some serious investigative journalism going on in our sister
project. They've got a very good low-down on the whole situation.

And looky here! The story was submitted to the blog by a man named...Jimmy
Wales. Imagine that.

--
Ben Emmel
Wikipedia - User:Bratsche
bratsche1 at gmail.com
"A fool sees not the same tree that a wise man sees."
-- William Blake


list: foundation-l

from_name: Rémi Kaupp

subject:
[Foundation-l] Arbitration on fr : Picture of cannabis on a user
	page

body:
Dear Foundation people,

I have a request from the arbitration committee on fr.wikipedia. It is
visible on
http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikip?dia:Comit?_d'arbitrage/Arbitrage/Traroth-Zippo
(in French, I can translate bits if needed).

Basically, User:Zippo has put an picture of a cannabis flower in a quite
large size on his user page. User:Traroth started this RfAr on the basis
that in many countries, incitement to consumption of such drugs is
prohibited. I decided to put the image in a folding box while the
arbitration is going on.

The problem that we (the French ArbCom) are not competent for legal matters
and would really like some advice from the Foundation on this topic. The
question comes down to : "Is a user allowed to show a cannabis picture on
his user page ?"

Thank you,

R?mi Kaupp
http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Korrigan


list: wikimedia-l


from_name: Ilya N.

body:
Yes...they had an entire IRC fest going on the day the story broke, and I
hear Amgine has been interviewing senators. Very good job indeed.

Makes me proud to be a semi-contributor to wn ;)

On 2/7/06, Ben Emmel <bratsche1 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> BoingBoing and digg have the story now.
> http://www.boingboing.net/2006/02/07/wikinews_uncovers_te.html
>
> There's some serious investigative journalism going on in our sister
> project. They've got a very good low-down on the whole situation.
>
> And looky here! The story was submitted to the blog by a man named...Jimmy
> Wales. Imagine that.
>
> --
> Ben Emmel
> Wikipedia - User:Bratsche
> bratsche1 at gmail.com
> "A fool sees not the same tree that a wise man sees."
> -- William Blake
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

--
~Ilya N.
http://w3stuff.com/ilya/ (My website; DarkLordFoxx Media)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Ilyanep (on Wikipedia)
http://www.wheresgeorge.com - Track your money's travels.


from_name: Josh Gordon

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: No more blocking people for who they *are*?

references:
<C00E9D68.135F4%wgfinley@dynascope.com>
	<20060208013300.HJP16720.omta01sl.mx.bigpond.com@skyringstudy>
	<af9c32bf0602071742y23f9baa3ge3faa0f357dbdb3b@mail.gmail.com>
	<f80608430602071755n26763301h7c0a2c7abb7802a5@mail.gmail.com>

body:
On 2/7/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 2/8/06, Ilya N. <ilyanep at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Why not cut vandals some slack? I mean they don't know that adding a
> > penis to an article is harming a reputable resource. They think it's
> > fun. So why ban them?
> >
>
> We do cut them some slack. Normaly they get at least two warnings.
>
>

I'm not sure why. If someone shows up and the first thing he does is stick
his penis in an article, an immediate block -- a short one -- is far more
efficient and equitable than our current practice of giving a warning, then
another warning, then a couple days later another warning. I don't think
anyone accidentally puts penis in an article; and those who do so should be
shown unambiguously that we are not amused.

jpgordon


from_name: geni

body:
On 2/7/06, charles matthews <charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com> wrote:
>  "Steve Bennett" wrote
>
> >Could we agree
> not to ever again block people for what they are?
>
> Easy to say that in the context that Wikipedia is not under siege, and has
> its reputation pretty much intact.  What about the guy who arrives in the
> middle of an election and annouces "I'm being funded to remove all your bias
> on candidates' pages"?
>
> Charles

Let them edit for a few day intill AGF has been exusted and them block
them for dissruption. Or do what we did with newsmax (revert
repeatedly untill they give up).

--
geni


body:
Kirill Lokshin wrote:

>On 2/7/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>>>Consensus doesn't scale.
>>>
>>>
>>We've recently seen the numbers from Gmaxwell and Kim Bruning that
>>show that this is not at all the case with articles - except a couple
>>of hundred articles (out of 900k+) which appear to be pathological.
>>*Mostly*, people leave articles to others who know about the area, and
>>those who know about an area mostly manage to thrash out a consensus.
>>The failures of consensus in article editing get a lot of attention
>>but they are the *exception*.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>>With policy, this hinders change greatly, but it's unlikely to be a
>>>major problem in the near future. With wheel warring or serious edit
>>>wars, however, the fact that consensus doesn't scale is wasting a lot of
>>>our time here. It takes being hauled in front of the arbcom to get any
>>>results.
>>>
>>>
>>Yeah. It's getting policy consensus to scale that's tricky. Continuous
>>reference to basic principles - "we're here to write an encyclopedia",
>>"NPOV", "don't be a dick", etc - may be a useful touchstone for either
>>deriving a lot of the crufted policy from first principles or getting
>>rid of it.
>>
>>
>
>Those numbers really don't show as much as one might think, though.
>OF COURSE any individial article will, on average, have only a handful
>of editors.  The problem is that Wikipedia is increasingly becoming
>large enough to make reinventing the wheel on every individual article
>untenable.  Thus, we get attempts to create policy/guidelines/style
>guides/whatever centrally and apply them to a (large) group of
>articles at the same time, which means consensus needs to form not
>among a few editors of an article, but among all active editors in a
>field.
>
>This is most obvious in AFD, incidentally; attempts to delete all
>schools/Pokemon/roads/etc. get a lot more people involved than have
>edited any single one of the articles in question.
>
>Kirill Lokshin
>
>
Not to mention that ludicrous conclusions on AfDs are often reached --
you won't believe how many times I've heard "'''Keep''' all schools" or
"'''Keep''', this school exists". Surprisingly, these people often "win".

John Lee
([[User:Johnleemk]])


subject: [WikiEN-l] Why has everything gone to hell?

body:
On 2/7/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 2/7/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > > with it. When was the last time we had a major policy change? It was the
> > > > 3RR, I think, and that was over a year ago. Pretty much everything since
> > > > then has been tinkering around the edges (although things like
> > > > [[WP:PROD]] haven't made me lose all hope yet).
> > >
> > > Not entirely. We also had the speedy deletion of unsourced images.
> >
> > There have been a load of changes to speedy deletion (A7 & copyvios
> > being the most obvious)
> >
> > The 3RR waas del facto policy already. The only chnage was it switched
> > to being inforced.
>
> Apparently no one is going to mention semi-protection.
>
> Steve

I think that was more softwear rather than policy.
--
geni


from_name: Steve Bennett

body:
On 2/7/06, Pedro Sanchez <pdsanchez at gmail.com> wrote:
> > The Fencepainting Project (Shades of Tom Sawyer, with other
> > neighborhood-building connotations.)

Like it.

> > Welcome Mat Project (the vast amount of vandalism is
> > newbie-ish--enfolding handling vandalism into the concept of welcoming
> > new users makes sense to me. I.e. there are no strangers, just friends
> > we haven't met (and indoctrinated).)

Yeah...but...there are real vandals after all.

> > Ironically positive:
> > Care Bear Brigade (I know this was discussed and negged earlier, but
> > it's hilarious.)

Too cryptic.

> Again, [[Wikipedia:Cleaning up vandalism]]. Simple. descriptive. Non
> us/them. And it's already on the works

Didn't see this. It's perfect.

Steve


subject: [WikiEN-l] Most immature war ever? Are we embarrassed yet?

body:
On 2/7/06, Ryan Delaney <ryan.delaney at gmail.com> wrote:
> Like it or not, these rules don't apply to Jimbo. Did you forget that Jimbo
> retains the power to ban anyone from Wikipedia, and that there is no appeal
> or discussion if he chooses to do so? Everyone who edits is here because he
> and the board permit them to. And anyone who reverts his block of a user is
> wheel warring. By definition, Jimbo cannot participate in a wheel war
> because anyone who undoes his block is wrong.

For what it's worth, I think the reason that Jimbo can't get into a
wheel war is because he is a bigger wheel than anyone else. As was
demonstrated - they can attempt to block him, but he just desysops
them and hence wins. Rendering any attempted wheel war totally
pointless.

Presumably if there were other people with desysopping powers (I
imagine there are), then he could wheel war with *them*, but there are
probably yet more means at his disposal...

> Personally, I like it, because I think there has to be /someone/ who can
> step into shit heaps like this and just flush the whole thing down the
> toilet where it belongs; and that's exactly what he did.

Personally, I like it too. I'm pleasantly surprised that he's actually
willing to soil his shoes in this way.

(that's a vote of support for Jimbo here :))

Steve


from_name: Tim 'avatar' Bartel

subject: [Foundation-l] .EU domain name

body:
Hi wikipedians,

Michael Bimmler schrieb am 07.02.2006 21:03:
> I just did a Whois for wikimedia.eu and I got "Firestorm Forces Ltd"
> as applicant.
> Are they somehow connected to "us"?

No, they are the bad guys.
Firestorm Forces Ltd = Infochannel Group

Please read
http://britannia.gotdns.org/wikipedistik/2006/01/11/infochannel-group-und-die-wikipedia/
(german only)

Bye, Tim.

--
But we made our own fun, mostly. I recall a time, many years later, when
American children seemed unable to amuse themselves without a fortune in
electrical and electronic equipment.
We had no fancy equipment and did not miss it.       -- Heinlein, Friday
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subject: [Foundation-l] .EU domain name

body:
Hi wikipedians,

Michael Bimmler schrieb am 07.02.2006 21:03:
> I just did a Whois for wikimedia.eu and I got "Firestorm Forces Ltd"
> as applicant.
> Are they somehow connected to "us"?

No, they are the bad guys.
Firestorm Forces Ltd = Infochannel Group

Please read
http://britannia.gotdns.org/wikipedistik/2006/01/11/infochannel-group-und-die-wikipedia/
(german only)

Bye, Tim.

--
But we made our own fun, mostly. I recall a time, many years later, when
American children seemed unable to amuse themselves without a fortune in
electrical and electronic equipment.
We had no fancy equipment and did not miss it.       -- Heinlein, Friday
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subject: [Foundation-l] .EU domain name

body:
Hi wikipedians,

Michael Bimmler schrieb am 07.02.2006 21:03:
> I just did a Whois for wikimedia.eu and I got "Firestorm Forces Ltd"
> as applicant.
> Are they somehow connected to "us"?

No, they are the bad guys.
Firestorm Forces Ltd = Infochannel Group

Please read
http://britannia.gotdns.org/wikipedistik/2006/01/11/infochannel-group-und-die-wikipedia/
(german only)

Bye, Tim.

--
But we made our own fun, mostly. I recall a time, many years later, when
American children seemed unable to amuse themselves without a fortune in
electrical and electronic equipment.
We had no fancy equipment and did not miss it.       -- Heinlein, Friday
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subject: [Foundation-l] .EU domain name

body:
Hi wikipedians,

Michael Bimmler schrieb am 07.02.2006 21:03:
> I just did a Whois for wikimedia.eu and I got "Firestorm Forces Ltd"
> as applicant.
> Are they somehow connected to "us"?

No, they are the bad guys.
Firestorm Forces Ltd = Infochannel Group

Please read
http://britannia.gotdns.org/wikipedistik/2006/01/11/infochannel-group-und-die-wikipedia/
(german only)

Bye, Tim.

--
But we made our own fun, mostly. I recall a time, many years later, when
American children seemed unable to amuse themselves without a fortune in
electrical and electronic equipment.
We had no fancy equipment and did not miss it.       -- Heinlein, Friday
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subject: [WikiEN-l] Comparison with other wikis

body:
On 2/7/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 2/7/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Didn't work with Kelly Martin. In practice it is those who have been
> > directly elected by the community who hold the strongest position.
> > Jimbo apointees have the problem that they instantly pick up oposition
> > in the form of people wanting to blame "the cabal" for things. Elected
> > people have the advantage that when under pressure they can show that
> > community supported them. Apointees can't.
>
> Ok, good points, replace "appointed by" with "approved by". In other
> words, exactly the same procedure as for appointing ArbCom members.
> And not by coincidence.
>
> Steve

Ok you have fun creating 60 odd subpages.

--
geni


subject: [WikiEN-l] "Wheel war" (Worst. Userbox. Ever.)

body:
Intentionally or not, it looks like this kid started a very, very ugly
debate with some poor judgment. A week's block isn't the end of the
world...

Steve

On 2/7/06, Sam Fentress (Asbestos) <asbestos999 at gmail.com> wrote:
> Jimbo claims he blocked him for voting "Keep" on a TFD...
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Log&type=&user=&page=User:Joeyramoney
>
> The vote in question:
> "Keep, i guess* i put it on my user page as just a joke, but i can see how
> some would be offended by it."
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Templates_for_deletion/Log/2006_February_5&diff=prev&oldid=38350734


subject: [WikiEN-l] Comparison with other wikis

body:
On 2/7/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> Didn't work with Kelly Martin. In practice it is those who have been
> directly elected by the community who hold the strongest position.
> Jimbo apointees have the problem that they instantly pick up oposition
> in the form of people wanting to blame "the cabal" for things. Elected
> people have the advantage that when under pressure they can show that
> community supported them. Apointees can't.

Ok, good points, replace "appointed by" with "approved by". In other
words, exactly the same procedure as for appointing ArbCom members.
And not by coincidence.

Steve


body:
Hi all,
  Just a thought in the wake of the pedophile thing. Could we agree
not to ever again block people for what they are? No matter how
disgusting, unpleasant, immoral etc. Such things always being at least
somewhat objective, we should stick instead to only blocking people
for actions.

In other words: If someone says, "I'm a pedophile", then by policy
this should not be a reason to block them. If, on the other hand, they
are trolling, and it works, then that becomes a blockable action -
trolling.

I worry that there is a genuine slippery slope where "I am a
pedophile" gets confused with "I am a terrorist", then "I am a member
of Hamas" then "I support Eta"  and so on and so forth. Is it not
better to simply say "We do not block people for statements of who
they are or what they believe"?

Steve


body:
On 2/7/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > with it. When was the last time we had a major policy change? It was the
> > > 3RR, I think, and that was over a year ago. Pretty much everything since
> > > then has been tinkering around the edges (although things like
> > > [[WP:PROD]] haven't made me lose all hope yet).
> >
> > Not entirely. We also had the speedy deletion of unsourced images.
>
> There have been a load of changes to speedy deletion (A7 & copyvios
> being the most obvious)
>
> The 3RR waas del facto policy already. The only chnage was it switched
> to being inforced.

Apparently no one is going to mention semi-protection.

Steve


from_name: MacGyverMagic/Mgm

body:
On 2/7/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Hi all,
> Just a thought in the wake of the pedophile thing. Could we agree
> not to ever again block people for what they are? No matter how
> disgusting, unpleasant, immoral etc. Such things always being at least
> somewhat objective, we should stick instead to only blocking people
> for actions.
>
> In other words: If someone says, "I'm a pedophile", then by policy
> this should not be a reason to block them. If, on the other hand, they
> are trolling, and it works, then that becomes a blockable action -
> trolling.
>
> I worry that there is a genuine slippery slope where "I am a
> pedophile" gets confused with "I am a terrorist", then "I am a member
> of Hamas" then "I support Eta"  and so on and so forth. Is it not
> better to simply say "We do not block people for statements of who
> they are or what they believe"?
>
> Steve

I've been saying this all along. It's simply not allowed by policy to block
someone for who they are instead of their wiki actions.

Mgm


subject: [WikiEN-l] Comparison with other wikis

body:
Steve Bennett wrote:

>>Until now Jimbo has had to step in whenever
>>people (especially cabal members) need to be told to cool off. He
>>shouldn't have to. Jimbo's role is being the face of the foundation and
>>being the last court of appeal. He has to handle all the Wikimedia
>>projects -- he shouldn't be spending his time tackling problems on the
>>English Wikipedia.
>>
>>
>
>Agree. I suspect the only issue is getting people to trust the
>authority and good sense of other people. They *must* be appointed
>directly by Jimbo for that to happen, I think.
>
>Steve
>
>
Or he could just give imprimatur to the elected bureaucrats. :p

John Lee


from_name: Hedley

body:
I think it is fair to say that Jimbo should never be over-ruled in he blocks
somebody. The main reason is that, although there is always the argument
that a block may be unfair or that it may be 'uncalled for', Jimbo deals
with a whole side of Wikipedia that not many of us are 'in the know' about.
And that side is the legal side of things. If there's ever a legal problem
with Wikipedia, he is the first to know, and I'm sure I'm right in saying
that sometimes it just isn't possible for him to go into specifics about it
all. He often steps in and blanks pages, and blocks users, and that's
because he is - no matter how much of a Wiki system this is - the person
who, along with the other board members, essential runs Wikipedia. He's at
the top of the tree.

If a serious legal threat ever comes along to Wikipedia, and he blocks
somebody to eliminate that legal threat, we don't want to be put at risk by
a sysop coming along and unblocking because the block is 'possibly unfair'.
I'd say that, when Jimbo steps in, it's pretty important. He doesn't edit 24
hours a day and when he gets involved in using his sysop capabilities on
Wikipedia, it's for a very good reason.

Simply put, if Jimbo needs to get involved in a 'wheel war', he doesn't need
his actions to be undone. He's busy enough as it is, I'm sure, and I'm
absolutely confident, as many of us are, that he is always doing what is
best for Wikipedia and its future.

The moral of the story? Instead of talking about how immature the
'wheel war' is, we should be trying to move on from it, and we should be
making it yesterday's news today.

It was mentioned earlier in this thread that 'these rules' don't apply to
Jimbo, and that is something I agree with. Without Jimbo, Angela and the
rest of the Wikimedia Foundation, there is no Wikipedia. We need to trust
their actions, and get back to building Wikipedia, not questioning it.


from_name: Andrew Gray

body:
On 07/02/06, Ryan W. (Merovingian) <bigwiki at earthling.net> wrote:
> Although I think you're right, I don't think any admins blocked people just
> for believing certain things.

This entire fiasco kicked off when someone announced they'd blocked a
user for describing themselves as a pedophile. There was no other
contributory evidence to support a blocking, nor were any other
reasons given.

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


from_name: Jimmy Wales

body:
Ben Emmel wrote:
> BoingBoing and digg have the story now.
> http://www.boingboing.net/2006/02/07/wikinews_uncovers_te.html
>
> There's some serious investigative journalism going on in our sister
> project. They've got a very good low-down on the whole situation.
>
> And looky here! The story was submitted to the blog by a man named...Jimmy
> Wales. Imagine that.

Actually, Xeni emailed me to ask for an update so I sent her the link.
:)  We're friends and had dinner last week and talked about it.

--
#######################################################################
#    Office: 1-727-231-0101       |  Free Culture and  Free Knowledge #
#    http://www.wikipedia.org     |     Building a free world         #
#######################################################################


body:
charles matthews wrote:
> "Steve Bennett" wrote
>> Could we agree not to ever again block people for what they are?
>
> Easy to say that in the context that Wikipedia is not under siege, and
> has its reputation pretty much intact.

And I think this gets to the crux of the matter.  I don't care who
anyone is, but I do care about actions and statements which may bring
Wikipedia into disrepute in any of a variety of ways.  We have always
been united in the community on two principles which are somewhat in
tension:

1. Wikipedia is not a free webhosting service, your userpage is not your
own infinite free-speech zone where you can pontificate about anything,
no matter how bad it makes Wikipedia look.

2.  Wikipedia is a diverse community with extensive tolerance for what
people put on their userpages.  We try to get people to change with
reason and kindness rather than hardcore measures, whenever we can.

Now, achieving balance between these two is a difficult matter.  But I
think that people who self-identify as pedophiles (with a userbox or
otherwise) could bring Wikipedia into serious disrepute, and I have a
real problem with that disruption.

>What about the guy who arrives in the middle of an election and
>annouces "I'm being funded to remove all your bias on candidates' >pages"?

And what about the guy who says "I am a Nazi Party member, and I am here
to make sure that the POV that Jews are evil is properly represented in
the encyclopedia"... or the guy who says "I am a pedophile, and I edit
articles related to pedophilia to make sure that the articles show how
healthy it is."

--
#######################################################################
#    Office: 1-727-231-0101       |  Free Culture and  Free Knowledge #
#    http://www.wikipedia.org     |     Building a free world         #
#######################################################################


from_name: Jesse W

body:
Very well said.  That's basically my method, and AFAIK, I haven't made
any particular enemies (with the possible exception of people upset
about the images with no source deletions).

And, just for the record - I suggest as a possible rename for the CVU:
Janitors On Speed

	Jesse Weinstein

On Feb 7, 2006, at 11:31 AM, Stan Shebs wrote:
> To keep things in perspective, if it weren't for the mailing list,
> I wouldn't even have heard about the wheel war. 99+% of editors
> and I daresay, at least 90% of admins are just working away and not
> getting into fights of any sort; I personally am content just
> exercising admin powers to revert random vandalism and whack unwanted
> images, and using the bit of spare time left over to add some of my
> own content.
>
> While the conflicts do matter and need to be resolved, let's not get
> overly focussed on those. It would be interesting to see the results
> of a "friendliest admin" contest for instance - who has managed to
> do the most admin actions with the least amount of complaint, and
> what's their secret? Are we holding up fighters as exemplars, or
> diplomats? War is exciting, but peacetime is more productive.


body:
Delirium wrote:
>  It's been suggested in the past
> that saying "I'm a neo-Nazi" ought to be a bannable offense.  Does that
> complete the list?  Neo-Nazis and pedophiles out; everybody else ok?
> Well, I suppose "I support suicide bombings" is probably out too.  Is
> the ArbCom going to be in charge of making these decisions?

I think you meant your question to be rhetorical, but the answer is of
course "yes".  There is a question of what is good or bad for the
project as a whole, and we all agree (right?) that people acting in a
disruptive way or in a way that causes harm to our charitable mission
can be banned from the project.  (I say "can be" because it is
frequently our judgment that although we could ban certain people, it's
easier on net to do something else.)

In a great many cases, what counts as disruption or harm to the project
as a whole will come down to some very difficult judgment calls.  And
yes, the ArbCom is tasked with making those judgment calls.

--Jimbo

--
#######################################################################
#    Office: 1-727-231-0101       |  Free Culture and  Free Knowledge #
#    http://www.wikipedia.org     |     Building a free world         #
#######################################################################


from_name: Robert Scott Horning

subject:
[Foundation-l] Fundraising and change to the wikipedia traffic
	rating

body:
db wrote:

>About wikipedia traffic rating:
>Wikipedia is now one of the 25 (NOT 35) most visited
>websites in the world:
>http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details?&range=3m&size=large&compare_sites=&y=t&url=wikipedia.org#top
>
>Can we update this information on the wikimedia
>foundation homepage?
>http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Home
>
>-d
>
>
Since this topic has been brought up, I'd like to make mention that the other sister projects aren't doing too bad either

Wikibooks:

http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details?&compare_sites=&y=t&q=&url=wikibooks.org

happens to be in the top 6,000 websites, and is one of the leading e-text websites that has independent measure on Alexa.  Gutenberg.org is the only one that ranks higher at the moment that I can tell from, and that is a close call.  Wikibooks simply blows out of the water almost all other e-text websites of any kind, for profit or not.

Wikinews has very similar stats, Wiktionary is actually outperforming Wikibooks currently, and Wikiquote is almost dead even with Wikibooks.

BTW, you can look at Wikispecies for your own enjoyment.

All of them have shown recent growth as well, and not all of this growth can be directly attributed to spin-off from Wikipedia.

Wikimedia.org is in the top 1000 at the moment by itself, although it would be hard pressed to see what the traffic is between Meta and Commons as Alexa lumps them together for traffic ratings.
--
Robert Scott Horning


from_name: Matt Brown

subject: [WikiEN-l] Comparison with other wikis

body:
On 2/7/06, Peter Mackay <peter.mackay at bigpond.com> wrote:
> If we are talking about doing things legally, that is. If Tony Blair decided
> to turn the UK into a one-party fascist state using illegal means, an
> exciting possibility that would raise many British eyebrows, then the Queen
> would probably find herself unable to intervene. It would depend on which
> side the military decided to support, I suppose,

Officers of the British armed forces swear an oath to the Queen only,
I believe, which might have some import in such an unlikely
circumstance.

-Matt


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Branko Kokanovic

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: regarding texvc (and tex localization bugs)

body:
OK, I did a patch about texvc and localization
This patch doesn't affect wiki in any way, it just add a little extra
functionality to texvc. I'll describe now how it work:

There's another global variable "$wgTeXPreambleAdditional". If it
isn't set, or is empty, nothing happens. If it is set (for example:
$wgTeXPreambleAdditional = "\usepackage[T2A]{fontenc}";
)

it will be passed as argument to texvc, which will add that extra
preamble line while generating tex. This will allow to add support to
T2A font encoding. So
1.Variable is totally optional,
2.This way, more then one line can be embedded to preamble (for
example: $wgTeXPreambleAditional = "\foo1\n\foo2";
)
works OK,
3. Every user/wikipedia can set their own preambles in LocalSettings.php.
4. It doesn't change md5 hash, so existing pictures can be used.
5. It works in png and Math ML mode.

I don't know if this patch is made "wiki way" (if you know what I mean
- whole logic, coding...), so please tell me if anything is wrong. I
tested it, and as far as I can tell, it works fine:/

I hope it will be added to CVS (if that happens, and after that, it
remains just to add in every wikipedia their own specific preambles:)

P.S. One more thing - I don't know if I made diff file right. Please
don't take that bad:(
P.P.S. Just an idea, this patch can also be used for this:
http://bugzilla.wikipedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=3252
and similar bugs/wishes...

Cheers, Kokanovic Branko

2006/2/6, Branko Kokanovic <branko.kokanovic at gmail.com>:
> hi all (my fist post here)
> First, my understanding (from irc and bugzilla) is that there's nobody
> working on texvc. I was going to fix bug (or to add feature, if you
> like it better) which can be found on more places in bugzilla:
> http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=615
> http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=798
> http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=2458
> ...
>
> Problem is regarding UTF and localization, but since every languages
> has its own latex package, i was thinking of somehow general approach.
> OK, I'm not going to go into details right now, first I'm interested:
> Am I allowed to work on texvc?
> To whom to consult for details (if any)?
> Will you accept my patches (of course, if they work:) (I don't want to
> do it just for myself)?
> If my mail is on wrong mailing list, where to ask?
>
> Thanks in advance, Kokanovic Branko
>


from_name: Ray Saintonge

body:
Robert Scott Horning wrote:

> db wrote:
>
>> About wikipedia traffic rating:
>> Wikipedia is now one of the 25 (NOT 35) most visited
>> websites in the world:
>> http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details?&range=3m&size=large&compare_sites=&y=t&url=wikipedia.org#top
>>
>>
>> Can we update this information on the wikimedia
>> foundation homepage?
>
> Since this topic has been brought up, I'd like to make mention that
> the other sister projects aren't doing too bad either
>
> Wikibooks:
>
> http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details?&compare_sites=&y=t&q=&url=wikibooks.org
>
>
> happens to be in the top 6,000 websites, and is one of the leading
> e-text websites that has independent measure on Alexa.  Gutenberg.org
> is the only one that ranks higher at the moment that I can tell from,
> and that is a close call.  Wikibooks simply blows out of the water
> almost all other e-text websites of any kind, for profit or not.
>
> Wikinews has very similar stats, Wiktionary is actually outperforming
> Wikibooks currently, and Wikiquote is almost dead even with Wikibooks.
>
> BTW, you can look at Wikispecies for your own enjoyment.
>
> All of them have shown recent growth as well, and not all of this
> growth can be directly attributed to spin-off from Wikipedia.
>
> Wikimedia.org is in the top 1000 at the moment by itself, although it
> would be hard pressed to see what the traffic is between Meta and
> Commons as Alexa lumps them together for traffic ratings.

I was curious about that too, and looked at all that before I saw
Robert's answer.  Two other tidbits!  The second most popular language
for Wiktionary is Russian.  For Wikisource it's Arabic!

Ec


from_name: Josh Hoyt

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: OpenID Support

body:
Brion Vibber <brion at ...> writes:
> evan at ... wrote:
> > Why not use OpenID FOR the Wikimedia single-login?
>
> It doesn't solve our specified requirement (single Wikimedia-wide namespace
> so a single username works on all 600+ Wikimedia wikis transparently, no muss
> no fuss).

Brion,

Hi. I'm an engineer at JanRain, Inc. We have been developing Internet identity
systems for a while now. We specialize in OpenID.

I think that OpenID can meet your stated requirement. Is there a list somewhere
of the other requirements for your authentication solution? I think that
regardless of your requirements, there is an existing technology out there that
can meet them. We are willing to do a lot of engineering to help wikimedia use
an existing technology.

It seems to me that a wikimedia.org OpenID server would provide the namespace
that you are looing for. It would also provide your users with an Internet-wide
identifier at the same time.

Josh


from_name: Matt R

body:
--- Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
> Just a thought in the wake of the pedophile thing. Could we agree
> not to ever again block people for what they are? No matter how
> disgusting, unpleasant, immoral etc. Such things always being at least
> somewhat objective, we should stick instead to only blocking people
> for actions.

I agree. For concreteness, I would mention [[User:LuxOfTKGL]]. I don't know how
valuable an editor he was, but his user page would seem to be an example of a
non-trolling self-declared pedophile.

There is a pragmatic argument: if we ban people on sight for admitting
extreme/objectionable views, then people will not admit those views, but will
edit anyway. It's much preferable that we know who these people are. We also
lose an editor, of course.

-- Matt

Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Matt_Crypto
Blog: http://cipher-text.blogspot.com

___________________________________________________________
Yahoo! Photos ? NEW, now offering a quality print service from just 8p a photo http://uk.photos.yahoo.com


from_name: brion at pobox.com

subject: [Wikitech-l] MediaWiki automated test run failure 2006-02-08

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

Running test BUG 361: URL within URL, not bracketed... FAILED!
Running test External links: invalid character... FAILED!
Running test Bug 2702: Mismatched <i> and <a> tags are invalid... FAILED!
Running test A table with no data.... FAILED!
Running test A table with nothing but a caption... FAILED!
Running test Link containing "#<" and "#>" % as a hex sequences... FAILED!
Running test Magic links: PMID incorrectly converts space to underscore... FAILED!
Running test Template with thumb image (wiht link in description)... FAILED!
Running test Link to image page... FAILED!
Running test BUG 1887: A ISBN with a thumbnail... FAILED!
Running test BUG 1887: A <math> with a thumbnail... FAILED!
Running test BUG 561: {{/Subpage}}... FAILED!
Running test Simple category... FAILED!
Running test Section headings with TOC... FAILED!
Running test Media link with nasty text... FAILED!
Running test Bug 2095: link with pipe and three closing brackets... FAILED!
Running test Sanitizer: Validating the contents of the id attribute (bug 4515)... FAILED!

Passed 264 of 281 tests (93.95%) FAILED!


from_name: The Cunctator

body:
On 2/7/06, Ilya N. <ilyanep at gmail.com> wrote:
> Yes...they had an entire IRC fest going on the day the story broke, and I
> hear Amgine has been interviewing senators. Very good job indeed.
>
> Makes me proud to be a semi-contributor to wn ;)
>
Sorry for the me-too!-ness, but this is bad-ass. Still needs some work
to get it into pyramid structure, but wow.


body:
On 2/8/06, Sean Barrett <sean at epoptic.org> wrote:
> Don't forget, Steve, to consider all aspects of a policy, including the
> public relations concerns.  As a top-ten Web site with some minor
> oopsies already on our record, we need to be careful about how eagerly
> we hand the media any sort of "haven for pedophiles"-shaped club to beat
> us with.
>
> With that caveat, you will see a related statement come from our ArbComm
> ruling.
>

Being a top ten webiste would slightly kill the servers. Better hope
for some bad publicity.

--
geni


body:
--- Jake Nelson <duskwave at gmail.com> wrote:

> Peter Mackay wrote:
> > In this case, he may have been serious. The guy identifies as "16-ish".
> > Isn't he allowed to have feelings for others of a similar age? Describing
> > himself as a "paedophile" might have been unwise, but not necessarily
> > anything we should run around being headless chickens over.
>
> I don't want to get into the morass of definitions for these things, but
> pedophilia relates to prepubescent children, not those of a similar age
> to "16-ish". The term for a fixation on teenagers is ephebophilia, and
> it doesn't apply to a 16-ish person either.
>
> Just thought I'd clarify that.

To clarify further, as our article on [[pedophilia]] says, "In addition to its
strictest medical sense, the term `pedophile' is frequently used to denote
either an ephebophile or a perpetrator of child sexual abuse. Such broader
definitions are often used by the general public, and include many people who
do not meet the medical criteria for diagnosis of pedophilia."

-- Matt

Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Matt_Crypto
Blog: http://cipher-text.blogspot.com

___________________________________________________________
To help you stay safe and secure online, we've developed the all new Yahoo! Security Centre. http://uk.security.yahoo.com


from_name: Justin Cormack

subject: [WikiEN-l] Comparison with other wikis

body:
On 7 Feb 2006, at 21:33, Philip Welch wrote:
>
> Yes, but much like Jimbo, the Queen's authority rests in the
> respect others have for her. If she dismissed the Government and
> dissolved Parliament (she can still do that, right?), how the
> people of the UK respond determines the ultimate result. If they
> overwhelmingly choose to ignore the Crown and vote the fascists
> back in, I suspect the Queen would be over.

As an anti-monarchist, I would be out there forking the UK anyway if
she tried.

Justinc


from_name: geni

body:
On 2/8/06, Ilya N. <ilyanep at gmail.com> wrote:
> I'd like to quickly butt in to point out that I'm 14 and totally not
> happy with the pedophile thing.
>
> Yes, we should require maturity. In older times, the encyclopedists
> were the finest academics of all time.
>
> Why not cut vandals some slack? I mean they don't know that adding a
> penis to an article is harming a reputable resource. They think it's
> fun. So why ban them?
>

We do cut them some slack. Normaly they get at least two warnings.

--
geni


subject: [WikiEN-l] Comparison with other wikis

body:
John Lee wrote:

> Geoff Burling wrote:
>
>> He had this utopian belief corrected after a couple of years when the
>> Wiki
>> was rocked by a severe flamewar over a "trivial matter" that had gone as
>> far as the opposing sides each creating bots to revert the edits of the
>> other side. (For the record, the controversy was over whether to keep or
>> delete a node that was a parody of the movie "Fight Club", called
>> "BoogerClub".) As he spent time not only to get to the bottom of the
>> matter, but also to bring himself up to date with the Wiki & the
>> community,
>> he discovered that the struggle to keep the Wiki usable & in order had
>> burned out his assistants in their long, hard & unappreciated efforts.
>
A lot of the most bitter fights are over trivial matters

>> Ward said he was able to help his assistants by adding a simple bit of
>> code which prevented bots from functioning on his Wiki -- which stopped
>> the spamming immediately & brought a cease-fire to the major flamewar,
>> but the damage had been done. People left, & WikiWiki "plateaued" in
>> growth, losing something of its original excitement & attraction.
>
> "Self-regulating" would be a true anarchist model whereby everyone can
> do anything, I think. Certainly something based on consensus.
> Consensus doesn't scale. I think the moral about burned-out old
> editors is a good one, though. We need to carefully avoid placing
> people on a pedestal because of their past accomplishments. If you're
> wrong, you're wrong. I think the solution is to expand the number of
> "super-trustable" users who will have real authority around Wikipedia.
> Right now only the arbcom has any authority, because authority is
> derived only from Jimbo and/or the Board.

Yes, but we really have paradoxical situations.  While most of us would
probably like to see a more democratic system it depends on all
individuals having enough vision to look beyond their personal
concerns.  Appointing trusted people may in some cases be the only
solution, and if you trust them when they are appointed you also need to
trust them in the exercise of their duties.  In those circumstances if
Jimbo goes ahead and exercises his powers without consulting his
appointee he undermines that person's authority.  Quite often an
understanding on the problem between Jimbo and the person would be
within easy reach.  When substantive agreement is there the appointee
should be the one to put it into effect.

A project leader needs to have a broad overview.  He also needs a track
record of at least trying to build consensus.  He needs to build up a
stock of good will that will often need to be used when there is need to
act decisively.  He will often need to confront people, and some of them
will try to complain directly to Jimbo..Unless the appointee develops a
track record  of consistently abusing his powers, Jimbo will need to
stand behind him.

> My proposal: Give the 'crats authority. Right now both 'crats and
> admins are theoretically equal to normal editors, only with a few more
> tools. I think this is the right attitude to take towards admins,
> because adminship should be no big deal. But bureaucratship is far
> from "no big deal", and I think this should be reflected in that
> bureaucrats should have some higher standing in the community. They
> should be able to step in and desysop in cases like wheel wars. They
> should be able to say, "Ok, that's it, let's cut the crap" -- much
> like the arbcom or Jimbo would/should. (This raises the problem of
> 'crat wheel warring, but presumably because of the huge big dealness
> of this, we'll only have a limited number of 'crats at any one time,
> anyhow.)

Even where there are multiple bureaucrats, one would probably still need
to be recognized as the chief bureaucrat to avoid that situation.

Ec


from_name: Pedro Sanchez

body:
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: The Cunctator <cunctator at gmail.com>
> To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at wikipedia.org>
> Date: Tue, 7 Feb 2006 17:39:14 -0500
> Subject: Re: [WikiEn-l] Alternative names for the Counter Vandalism Unit
> On 2/7/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> (OT: There aren't barbarian hordes riding in from the North to ravage
> the Empire. The worst anyone can do with Wikipedia, really, is piss
> people off for a while (which I recognize is not meaningless). But
> it's not physical property destruction or personal physical harm.)

OT: There are words that have several meanings. Historical ethnic
group that sacked rome is just one of the meanings for Vandal.


from_name: rose.parks at att.net

subject: [WikiEN-l] What ever happened to Article Validation? Erratum

body:
Dear All,

     Well, I found the site. There is a proposed project called "Stable Versions" at:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Stable_versions

This is a site where various options are being discussed. As I said before, this was mentioned in the current edition of PC Magazine.

                        As Ever,

                           Ruth Ifcher

--

 -------------- Original message ----------------------
From: rose.parks at att.net
> Dear All,
>
>      Interesting. In the February 21, 2005, issue of PC Magazine, it mentions
> that Jimmy will soon establish a Stable Versions systems. " There is another
> independent project in the works, that requires a change to MediaWiki software
> that Wikipedia uses. This can be found at:
> [http:en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Stable_versions]
> But, when I go there, I don't find it.
>      Anybody?
>
>                 As Ever,
>
>                 Ruth Ifcher
>
> --
>
>
>  -------------- Original message ----------------------
> From: geni <geniice at gmail.com>
> > On 2/7/06, Oskar Sigvardsson <oskarsigvardsson at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > Wait, wait? Is the code both insecure and and non-optimal? That's two
> > > very excellent reasons not to implement it.....
> > >
> > > --Oskar
> > >
> >
> > We don't know how optimal it would have been since we never gave it a
> > test run. Last I heard it was being rewriten in a different way which
> > should be more secure.
> > --
> > geni
> > _______________________________________________
> > WikiEN-l mailing list
> > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> > To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l


from_name: David Schor

subject: [WikiEN-l] (no subject)

body:
User Dschor has been unjustly blocked by Fred Bauder.  Please remove
the block.  Thanks.


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Habj

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Creating guidelines

body:
On 2/7/06, [LiM] Manop <manop at 6tub1.com> wrote:
>
> When I was a Wikipedian newbie, I wrote many guidelines on Thai WP
> including major policies and those manual of styles . Most of them I
> adopted from EN and modified for Thai users. I started writing those
> one by one. Although they're not complete at first but useful enough
> for new Wikipedians.
>
> To me those are the things which make people talking in the same page.
> When there are "enough" users, that time the guidelines will be
> rewriten to match the community.

Well, obviously in some wikis this rewriting thing doesn't really happen -
not as much as needed. Pages growing old and outdated, not really updated
with the exception of robots throwing in interwiki links och an occasional
user adding a sentence (s)he feels is missing... the "NPOV" page was first
transferred to svwiki in November 2002, an early version of the page called
"Policy" (now "Policy and guidelines") arrived in december same year, "What
Wikipedia is not" was transferred in August 2003, the first version of the
"Copyright"-page that consisted of more than one line arrived from enwiki +
frwiki in October 2003, etc.

It looks to me like people worked with these things the first year or so.
After a while people started reworking a bit and adding new pages. There
became a tendency of writing "policies" as "rules" - "you should do this and
that", "it should be done in this way" etc. The tone speaking down, from the
people who knew how to do things to those do don't. After early 2004 or so,
nothing much seems to have happened in most of these pages. Oldies used them
to tell newbies how things should be. When talking about the not updated
guideline and guideline-like pages  with one of the oldies, I got the
response "well, there should be a balance. People shouldn't be too
encouraged to edit in these pages". Then there has been the tendency to look
to enwiki for "rules" which is not always so easy, since not everybody is as
good in English as they might think. Looking to enwiki for "rules" means
that you always expect they will be written by someone else.

Are there any other wikis where some users feel that the Wikipedia namespace
in general (not only guidelines) is underdeveloped, and hasn't kept the pace
with the rest of the wiki?

How does one make users feel that they are welcome to, and should, edit and
update the pages in the Wikipedia namespace and also create new ones when
needed?

Howcome people at, for instance, enwiki bothers with these pages? The most
common response I get from my local wikicommity is "it's boring, I'd rather
write articles".

/Habj


from_name: Daniel Mayer

body:
There is already discussion about this type of thing at:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki_talk:Anonnotice

Please continue there.

--- db <djbaniel at yahoo.com> wrote:

> About fundraising:
>
> It is already pretty clear (see
> http://fundraising.wikimedia.org/ongoing/index.php/2006-02/)
> that Jimmy's personal appeal is more effective at
> generating funds than the wikimedia fundraising page
> (http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Fundraising). If
> we are going to continue with a fundraising link on
> every wikipedia page, shouldn't we change the link
> back to Jimmy's personal appeal until we find
> something else that is even more effective?
>
> About wikipedia traffic rating:
> Wikipedia is now one of the 25 (NOT 35) most visited
> websites in the world:
>
http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details?&range=3m&size=large&compare_sites=&y=t&url=wikipedia.org#top
>
> Can we update this information on the wikimedia
> foundation homepage?
> http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Home
>
> -d
>
> __________________________________________________
> Do You Yahoo!?
> Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
> http://mail.yahoo.com
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
http://mail.yahoo.com


from_name: Delirium

subject: [WikiEN-l] Wheel warring

body:
Alphax (Wikipedia email) wrote:

>And
>I don't recall him *ever* flaming people on this mailing list; but that
>hasn't stopped people from attacking *him*, and to be honest, he
>deserves better.
>
>
If you'd like to be reminded, here's an exchange I had in mind, from
December 16, 2005:

1. Jimbo says that he thinks anyone who saw the Seigenthaler article
should've seen that the mistakes were "blatantly obvious" and
"transparently outlandish".

2. Anthony DiPierro replies that they were not obvious to him.

3. Jimbo replies: "Anthony, I'm not normally one to state harsh
opinions.  But frankly, if you don't find those errors to be blindingly
obvious, you need to find another hobby.  Writing an encyclopedia is
quite frankly beyond you."

Note that several other of us had also expressed agreement with
Anthony's point in #2, so Jimbo explicitly and publicly flamed a handful
of dedicated and long-time Wikipedia contributors.

-Mark


from_name: Peter Mackay

subject: [WikiEN-l] Thoughts from a relative newbie

body:
> From: wikien-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org
> [mailto:wikien-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org] On Behalf Of Fred Bauder
> Sent: Wednesday, 8 February 2006 00:04

> My thinking is that if a person presents themselves in an
> obnoxious way that they are being disruptive. After all
> Hitler, if he were alive, could edit anonymously.

He would have to. He would be speedily kicked off if he used his real name.

But he could bring some great insights to the [[Nazism]] article.

His contributions might tend to be long and rambling and turgid and ranting
and dogmatic, but we're used to that here.

His RFA, otherwise known as the Night of the Brownscreens, and subsequent
career as admin would go down in wikilegend.

Peter


from_name: - Essjay -

subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Thomas est né - Thomas is born

body:
Ooooh! Congratulations to Anthere! We'd better see some freely licensed pics
uploaded to Commons before long! : - )

Essjay

On 2/8/06, Delphine M?nard <notafishz at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Bonjour,
>
> Thomas Devouard, le fils de Florence (Anthere) est n? hier soir. Il
> p?se 3,4 kg et mesure 51 cm. Il dort beaucoup et est bien sur le plus
> beau b?b? du monde (dixit sa maman). Comme le dit la formule
> consacr?e, la maman et le b?b? se portent bien.
>
> Thomas Devouard, Florence's son (Anthere) was born yesterday. He
> weighs 3,4 kg and is 51 cm tall. He sleeps a lot and is of course the
> most beautiful baby in the world (says his mother). As the saying
> goes, both mother and baby are doing great.
>
>
> Delphine
> --
> ~notafish
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>

--
Essjay
-----
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Essjay
Wikipedia:The Free Encyclopedia
http://www.wikipedia.org/


subject: [WikiEN-l] Wheel warring

body:
> From: wikien-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org
> [mailto:wikien-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org] On Behalf Of John Lee

> I think we're all here to have fun. I know I enjoy clerking
> for the arbcom and writing articles -- otherwise I wouldn't
> be clerking and I wouldn't have 20+ featured articles to my
> name. What's wrong is having fun without involving the
> encyclopedia at all -- i.e. spending all or most (>90%) of
> your time userboxing. I firmly believe these kinds of users
> are in the minority, however. There are many userbox fanatics
> who do great work around here, some of whom are admins
> ([[User:Firefox]] and [[User:Karmafist]] come to mind).

I certainly don't exclude fun from my idea of Wikipedia. Heaven forfend we
should be a race of dour, grey-faced editors humourlessly churning out
articles. But when it's a *choice* between having fun and writing an
encyclopaedia, fun *must* come second. It's the gravy on the meat, the icing
on the top, the pom-pom on the beret. Not essential, but well, fun.

Peter (Skyring)


subject: [WikiEN-l] Wheel warring

body:
> From: wikien-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org
> [mailto:wikien-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org] On Behalf Of John Lee

> Unfortunately, cool heads rarely prevail in wheel/edit wars.
> This is why I proposed on [[Wikipedia talk:Bureaucrats]] that
> 'crats be given the authority to desysop/block in a
> wheel/edit war to defuse it and get discussion flowing again.
> This doesn't have to indicate that the warriors' initial
> actions were wrong -- all it indicates is that their warring
> was wrong. No need for legalism when the existing rules are
> already being disobeyed. Just give the rules teeth -- I can
> think of so many loopholes in Phil Welch's proposal that it
> just wouldn't be workable -- it'd basically make mistakes
> close to unpardonable.

It would inevitably add to the workload of the ArbCom. Your suggestion has a
lot of merit, because having Jimbo step in to stomp on fingers should be a
last resort (and as you point out, he could be doing something else at the
time), and if a problem has reached wheel-warring stage, then admins aren't
going to be able to fix it decisively in the heat of battle.

While I don't like the legalese and penalty clauses, I do like the basic
thrust of Phil Welch's proposal - that an admin action may be reversed ONCE
by another admin and after that discussion is mandatory. Make it a
guideline.

Peter (Skyring)


body:
> From: wikien-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org
> [mailto:wikien-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org] On Behalf Of Steve Bennett

> So I would support a delineation of project-oriented vs
> non-project-oriented userboxes. It may be helpful to
> deliberately prevent people from getting lists of all
> "X-like" people, where X is non-project oriented.

All the fuss over a paedophilia template. The reality is that an "I am in
school" template would be far more useful for paedophiles.

Peter (Skyring)


subject: [WikiEN-l] Comparison with other wikis

body:
> From: wikien-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org
> [mailto:wikien-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org] On Behalf Of Guettarda

> > If people had WWJD (What Would Jimbo Do) in mind when they start
> > fighting over stuff, a lot of this crap would just go away.

> Actually I think the aura of the God-King has either faded
> for a lot of people, or they never had a sense of it in the
> first place (cf, Karmafist wheel warring with Jimbo).  Our
> constitutional monarchy model has problems .

That may be because it isn't a constitutional monarchy. If the monarch's
power is unfettered and he intervenes directly in minor matters that are
otherwise the province of government, then it is a dictatorship. A
benevolent dictatorship, I trust.

Peter (Skyring)


from_name: Dan Jacobson

subject: [WikiEN-l] acronym sweep needed

body:
There should be an acronym sweep done of wikipedia. E.g, right at the
start of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TSCM we are hit with ELINT,
SIGINT and ECM. More acronyms that an offline reader has no way of
figuring out. Don't depend that we can click, or even mouseover, e.g.,
on our PDA offline.

Sweep for any (perl regexp) m at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/[A-Z]+@
links that don't have an "(Explanation ...)" following in the text. Or
better yet make sure they are all spelled out right in the file name.

P.S., in your articles that are "(Redirected from bla bla)", use real
HTTP redirects or something, anything to not have the same hundreds of
kilobytes end up on the user's disk but just in a different filename.
Indeed, he now has to remember that he has already read the article
and cannot depend on link colors alone etc.

P.S., Looking at e.g., http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sustainability in e.g.,
lynx or plucker, there seems to be ads for political parties festooned
across the top. Only in firefox does one see they are inoffensively at
the side. Perhaps move them to the bottom.

P.S., the "personal appeal for donations" line looks small in firefox,
but big in text browsers... also it is in the critical search engine
indexing top of page area... I bet it might be all one sees in some
search engines page preview snippet... Perhaps move to bottom.

Sending to wikien-l, the only place I ever got a reply.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Wheel warring

body:
> From: wikien-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org
> [mailto:wikien-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org] On Behalf Of Philip Welch

>
> > While I don't like the legalese and penalty clauses, I do like the
> > basic thrust of Phil Welch's proposal - that an admin action may be
> > reversed ONCE by another admin and after that discussion is
> mandatory.
> > Make it a guideline.
>
> We already have a guideline and it's not stopping anyone. A
> credible threat of desysopping will stop people one way or another.

The threat is credible now. Ask the half-dozen who just discovered this.

Peter (Skyring)


body:
But if we're going to discuss something for all projects, shouldn't we do it
here or on Meta, rather than on en.wikipedia? I took the original email to
be suggesting a change for all projects.

Essjay

On 2/8/06, Daniel Mayer <maveric149 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> There is already discussion about this type of thing at:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki_talk:Anonnotice
>
> Please continue there.
>
> --- db <djbaniel at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> > About fundraising:
> >
> > It is already pretty clear (see
> > http://fundraising.wikimedia.org/ongoing/index.php/2006-02/)
> > that Jimmy's personal appeal is more effective at
> > generating funds than the wikimedia fundraising page
> > (http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Fundraising). If
> > we are going to continue with a fundraising link on
> > every wikipedia page, shouldn't we change the link
> > back to Jimmy's personal appeal until we find
> > something else that is even more effective?
> >
> > About wikipedia traffic rating:
> > Wikipedia is now one of the 25 (NOT 35) most visited
> > websites in the world:
> >
>
> http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details?&range=3m&size=large&compare_sites=&y=t&url=wikipedia.org#top
> >
> > Can we update this information on the wikimedia
> > foundation homepage?
> > http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Home
> >
> > -d
> >
> > __________________________________________________
> > Do You Yahoo!?
> > Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
> > http://mail.yahoo.com
> > _______________________________________________
> > foundation-l mailing list
> > foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
> >
>
>
> __________________________________________________
> Do You Yahoo!?
> Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
> http://mail.yahoo.com
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>

--
Essjay
-----
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Essjay
Wikipedia:The Free Encyclopedia
http://www.wikipedia.org/


subject: [WikiEN-l] Comparison with other wikis

body:
> From: wikien-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org
> [mailto:wikien-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org] On Behalf Of Philip Welch

> >>> If people had WWJD (What Would Jimbo Do) in mind when they start
> >>> fighting over stuff, a lot of this crap would just go away.
> >
> >> Actually I think the aura of the God-King has either faded
> for a lot
> >> of people, or they never had a sense of it in the first place (cf,
> >> Karmafist wheel warring with Jimbo).  Our constitutional monarchy
> >> model has problems .
> >
> > That may be because it isn't a constitutional monarchy. If the
> > monarch's power is unfettered and he intervenes directly in minor
> > matters that are otherwise the province of government, then it is a
> > dictatorship. A benevolent dictatorship, I trust.
>
> I'm sure that if Tony Blair decided to turn the UK into a
> fascist one- party state, Queen Elizabeth would come down and
> say "no, stop, you're being stupid."

This is a long established principle. Bagehot talked of three rights
belonging to the monarch: "the right to be consulted, the right to
encourage, and the right to warn"

She has far more experience than any current politician in the processes of
government, and her advice would be valuable. But she can do no more than
warn. If she dismissed the Government and selected another more to her
liking, then without the support of the House of Commons, that replacement
would soon run out of money.

If we are talking about doing things legally, that is. If Tony Blair decided
to turn the UK into a one-party fascist state using illegal means, an
exciting possibility that would raise many British eyebrows, then the Queen
would probably find herself unable to intervene. It would depend on which
side the military decided to support, I suppose, and the [[King's Own
Queens]] regiment might find itself in an impossible position. Well, more
impossible.

> This is a big argument for constitutional monarchies being
> better than republics, incidentally.

Well, I dunno. What happens if the Queen decides to turn the UK into a
fascist one-party state? It's not as if it hasn't happened before.

Peter (Skyring)


from_name: Steve Bennett

body:
On 2/8/06, Conrad Dunkerson <conrad.dunkerson at worldnet.att.net> wrote:

> Bomb 'jokes' are illegal because they create a risk of panic which could
> lead to injuries. Ditto shouting 'fire' in a crowded theater unless it
> actually is on fire. Likewise verbal plans or exhortations to commit
> criminal acts. Everything else is 'free speech' and allowed in most
> countries.

I quite specifically said I thought it was ok to block someone for
trolling. If someone lets slip, in the midst of editing an article on
a WWII aircraft, that they like small boys, no harm done. If someone
creates a mass argument by publicly declaring with a userbox that
they're a pedophile, block them (as Jimbo did) for disruptive
trolling.

There's no particular right to free speech in Wikipedia user pages
that I'm aware of.

Steve


body:
On 2/8/06, W. Guy Finley <wgfinley at dynascope.com> wrote:
> I have it, lets form a committee to review all of his edits, maybe even stop
> by his house and see if he actually IS a pedophile before we do anything!
> Yes, yes, wonderful idea!!  After all, it's far more vital to the project
> that people be allowed to make bold statements such as condoning or making
> light of molesting children on their user page than risk losing the
> incredibly valuable contributions such a person is bound to make to the
> project.

If such a person was discreetly making valuable changes to pages
unrelated to children or pedophilia, yes it would be a shame to lose
them under anti-pedophilia hysteria.

I'm sure I'll sooner or later get accused of supporting pedophiles,
but I'm just trying to be slightly rational here.

> Have I crossed into the frakking Bizarro world here or something?  What the
> hell is this NONSENSE??  The guy puts on his page "I am a pedophile" i.e. "I
> molest children" and his "joke" is more important than the obvious
> disruption it causes?  More important than the blatant insensitivity to

No, it's not. Disruption is bad.

> those who have had someone in their family molested or perhaps even molested
> themselves?  The fact that this has absofrakkinglutely NOTHING to do with
> CREATING AN ENCYCLOPEDIA???
>
> Yes, by all means, let's protect and hold up this fine example of a
> contributor to our project, send him out on the press stops with Jimbo!

Not blocking is not the same thing as protecting.

Steve


body:
> From: wikien-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org
> [mailto:wikien-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org] On Behalf Of Sean Barrett
>
> - From what mandate does your authority as spokesman for the
> community derive?  There are, after all, vast numbers of
> people who disagree with you, including those elected from
> the community to arbitrate serious disagreements.  (That
> those of us directly appointed by Jimbo disagree with you is
> hardly remarkable.)
>
> It seems to me that considerable evidence suggests that you
> will be disappointed in the outcome this affair and in any
> similar affairs to come.  Both the Board and the Arbitration
> Committee have endorsed the fact that Jimbo has the powers of
> a GodKing and occasionally will use them.  And the consensus
> of the community seems to me to be a vehement "whatever."

Jimbo stepped in to defuse an unpleasant situation. He then quickly directed
the ArbCom to investigate and act. While I wish that the silly situation
hadn't got to the stage it did, I think he did exactly the right thing once
it had, and it is now in the hands of the ArbCom, who have the direct
support of both the community and Jimbo.

The challenge is to find some way of minimising the necessity for Jimbo to
intervene directly again. Few doubt that he should have the ability to
intervene in emergency, but if he were to do so as a matter of everyday
business, then wikiadministration would rapidly become complex and tense.
Well, more so than it is now.

Peter (Skyring)


from_name: Fred Bauder

subject: [WikiEN-l] Block of Dschor

body:
He emailed me and said he would confine his edits to his user pages
and the arbitration and I have unblocked him based on that.

Fred

On Feb 8, 2006, at 8:20 AM, David Gerard wrote:

> David Schor wrote:
>
>
>> User:Dschor was improperly blocked for a violation of WP:Point.
>> There was no such violation.  The administrator who placed the block
>> failed to WP:AGF.
>>
>
> and:
>
>
>> User Dschor has been unjustly blocked by Fred Bauder.  Please remove
>> the block.  Thanks.
>>
>
>
> Interested parties may care to look at:
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/
> Pedophilia_userbox_wheel_war/Evidence#Statement_by_User:Dschor
>
> - and also at Doc glasgow's rebuttal:
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/
> Pedophilia_userbox_wheel_war/
> Evidence#Rebuttal_evidence_relating_to_Dschor:
>
> This led to a temporary injunction:
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/
> Pedophilia_userbox_wheel_war/
> Proposed_decision#Dschor_banned_from_editing_outside_RfAr
>
> Dschor banned from editing outside RfAr
>
> 1) As Dschor has continued to make edits relating to the pedophilia
> template which he was blocked for recreating and was unblocked only to
> respond to this case, pending resolution of this matter he is banned
> from editing any pages other than these Arbitration pages and his own
> user and talk page. He may be briefly blocked should he edit any other
> page.
>
> Enacted on 23:42, 7 February 2006 (UTC)
>
>     Support:
>
>        1. Mindspillage (spill yours?) 14:35, 7 February 2006 (UTC)
>        2. Raul654 14:46, 7 February 2006 (UTC)
>        3. Sam Korn (smoddy) 15:30, 7 February 2006 (UTC)
>        4. SimonP 19:21, 7 February 2006 (UTC), this needs to stop
>        5. Fred Bauder 20:55, 7 February 2006 (UTC)
>        6. James F. (talk) 23:26, 7 February 2006 (UTC)
>        7. ?Matthew Brown (T:C) 09:16, 8 February 2006 (UTC)
>
>     Oppose:
>
>     Abstain:
>
>
> - d.
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Daniel R. Tobias

body:
On 7 Feb 2006 at 22:19, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 2/7/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Apparently no one is going to mention semi-protection.
>
> I think that was more softwear rather than policy.

Softwear?  Is that something like underwear?

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


subject: [WikiEN-l] Comparison with other wikis

body:
> From: wikien-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org
> [mailto:wikien-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org] On Behalf Of Philip Welch
>
> >> I'm sure that if Tony Blair decided to turn the UK into a fascist
> >> one- party state, Queen Elizabeth would come down and say
> "no, stop,
> >> you're being stupid."
> >
> > This is a long established principle. Bagehot talked of
> three rights
> > belonging to the monarch: "the right to be consulted, the right to
> > encourage, and the right to warn"
> >
> > She has far more experience than any current politician in the
> > processes of government, and her advice would be valuable.
> But she can
> > do no more than warn. If she dismissed the Government and selected
> > another more to her liking, then without the support of the
> House of
> > Commons, that replacement would soon run out of money.
>
> Yes, but much like Jimbo, the Queen's authority rests in the
> respect others have for her. If she dismissed the Government
> and dissolved Parliament (she can still do that, right?), how
> the people of the UK respond determines the ultimate result.
> If they overwhelmingly choose to ignore the Crown and vote
> the fascists back in, I suspect the Queen would be over.

We had pretty much this situation in Australia in 1975. The Governor-General
acted (using his own powers rather than the trifling powers of the Queen, I
might add) and speedily put the decision in the hands of the people. If the
people had re-elected the dismissed Government, then the Governor-General
would have personally been history and as an office would inevitably have
seen its powers diminished.

In a republican democracy like Australia, it is right and proper that the
people should have the final say. Sovereignty resides in the people rather
than any one person or group.

But Wikipedia isn't a republic and it isn't a democracy. Sovereignty resides
in the hands of Jimbo. However, with a purely voluntary membership, that
sovereignty is worth about as much as the community is willing to
acknowledge, because the citizens of this community may leave if they feel
uncomfortable.

I think it is a measure of the success of Jimbo's
administration/sovereignty/GodKingness that new citizens are flocking over
the borders, rather than leaving in droves.

Peter (Skyring)


subject: [WikiEN-l] Comparison with other wikis

body:
On 2/8/06, Mark Gallagher <m.g.gallagher at student.canberra.edu.au> wrote:
>
> G'day Steve,
>
> >>Until now Jimbo has had to step in whenever
> >>people (especially cabal members) need to be told to cool off. He
> >>shouldn't have to. Jimbo's role is being the face of the foundation and
> >>being the last court of appeal. He has to handle all the Wikimedia
> >>projects -- he shouldn't be spending his time tackling problems on the
> >>English Wikipedia.
> >
> > Agree. I suspect the only issue is getting people to trust the
> > authority and good sense of other people. They *must* be appointed
> > directly by Jimbo for that to happen, I think.
>
> I suspect it still wouldn't happen.  Witness [[User:God of War]]'s
> actions on the CSD page; he's decided that Jimbo's word can't trump
> consensus, and "consensus" is on his side, and therefore Jimbo can't
> change the CSD to include particularly stupid templates.
>

To be fair the change is completely incosistant with the general scope
of CSD policy

> What do we do about users --- most of them newbies, most of them bound
> up in some way with the userbox debacle --- who think Wikipedia is a
> democracy, and any opposition is rogue admins gone Fascist?  Standing
> over them and saying "Jimbo says such-and-such!  Respect his authority,
> damnit!" probably wouldn't do much good.
>
>
> --
> Mark Gallagher

Prevent admins and Jimbo from doing silly things would be a start

--
geni


from_name: Josh Gordon

subject: [WikiEN-l] blocked username

body:
That would likely be [[User:Thejesusgod]].

-- jpgordon

On 2/8/06, Chris Jenkinson <chris at starglade.org> wrote:
>
> David Altmayer wrote:
> > My usename has been blocked, and I believe that it is not in violation
> of
> > the WP:Username policy.
>
> What is the username you chose?
>
> Chris
>
> --
> Chris Jenkinson
> chris at starglade.org
>
> "Mistrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful."
>   -- Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] Wheel warring

body:
On 2/8/06, Alphax (Wikipedia email) <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
> Delirium wrote:
> > Philip Welch wrote:
> >
> >> You're acting like Jimbo is just another admin. He's not. He's Jimbo.
> >>
> > All the more reason that it's distasteful for him to get involve in
> > wheel-warring.  These sorts of petty power-fights, combined with his
> > flaming of several users on the mailing list as "unqualified" to edit
> > Wikipedia, reduce my confidence in his ability to lead Wikipedia.
> >
>
> Jimbo is one of the few clear voices of sanity that prevails on this
> crazy project. Writing articles is not the only way that people can
> contribute to Wikipedia, and Jimbo has done much in the media to
> highlight just how good we are for what could have been so chaotic. And
> I don't recall him *ever* flaming people on this mailing list; but that
> hasn't stopped people from attacking *him*, and to be honest, he
> deserves better.
>
> --
> Alphax

His recent record is not the most impressive. People are going to
complain about this.

--
geni


subject: [WikiEN-l] Wheel warring

body:
On 2/8/06, Alphax (Wikipedia email) <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
> John Lee wrote:
> <snip>
> > There are many userbox fanatics who do great work around here, some
> > of whom are admins ([[User:Firefox]] and [[User:Karmafist]] come to
> > mind).
> >
>
> [[User:FireFox]] you mean, and [[User:Karmafist]] was desysopped in the
> latest wheel war...
>
> --
> Alphax - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax
> Contributor to Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia
> "We make the internet not suck" - Jimbo Wales
> Public key: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax/OpenPGP
>

Merovingian racked up 66% support in the election with this userpage:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Merovingian&oldid=35010047

--
geni


from_name: Gordon Mohr (@ Bitzi)

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: OpenID Support

body:
Gerard Meijssen wrote:
> Gordon Mohr wrote:
>> You could settle on one master namespace (wikipedia.org?), then
>> gradually roll sites over to only accepting logins from that
>> namespace, giving people the option along the way of merging
>> their old separate identity histories into the new master
>> login(s). I suspect OpenID could help with the cross-domain
>> logins, even if a final single namespace is the only one
>> accepted for logins.
>
> Given that you suggest "wikipedia.org", you do not appreciate that the
> uploading of pictures into Commons is one of the more pressing issues.
> There are MANY projects and wikipedia is only one.. :(

Picking any one namespace as the starting space does not rule out
any application on any Wikimedia project.

In any unification -- completely independent of technology used --
it would be natural to start with the one existing namespace.
Maybe the largest/most-active, or perhaps the namespace which
overlaps all others the most, or perhaps the namespace with the
most unique names. You'd then work outward resolving conflicts
with other namespaces one by one. And, despite starting with the
largest (or most-overlapping or most-unique), that namespace
wouldn't necessarily win most conflicts. (It might lose most,
because its size means a longer tail of seldom-used accounts.)

I'm guessing the Wikipedia projects are still largest (and also
have the most overlap with others and the most unique names), but
would be interested in pointers to any numbers which suggest
otherwise.

(If existing project names are loaded with politically undesirable
semantics, perhaps the best course would be to pick a relatively
cryptic, semantically-unloaded 'name' for the unified login --
"WMLX" or some such, which is vaguely but not really an
abbrieviation. Then start rolling other legacy namespaces into it. )

My point is the same: you can pick a single namespace, and wind up
with a single namespace at the end of the transition, completely
independent of the technology used.

Some people seem to be assuming that OpenID/YADIS *necessarily*
means allowing signins from multiple and/or foreign namespaces. By
my understanding, that's not the case.

I can't tell which of the three options listed at
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Single_login_poll had the most
developer support, but SUL-2 and SUL-3 both seem to suggest a
transition phase where global and local coexist for a while. That
would seem a natural application of the OpenID/YADIS approach,
with a single global namespace exporting itself to any number of
projects which accept global logins, but still have legacy local
logins as well.

>> I'd also guess that after starting to unify, there could be a
>> backlash when people start losing their logins. Multiple
>> namespaces might then seem more appealing.
>>
>> Is there a page or past thread capturing prior discussion and
>> decisions about the single-signon goal?
>>
>> - Gordon
>
> The discussion on single-signon is old. It has been discussed to death.
> It has had special announced IRC chats dedicated to this subject and you
> can find the relevant stuff on Meta. A decision has been taken to
> implement this. Which is great given the problems that there is always
> someone new, who thinks that OpenID for instance had not been looked into.

I thank Rob Lanphier for providing a link to the
Single_login_specifications page at Meta.

- Gordon


from_name: charles matthews

body:
 "Stan Shebs" wrote

> Does everybody automatically believe everything they
> read on user pages or something?

I don't.  We could easily get to a point where there was enough public
attention, and enough swirling rumours, that the content of user pages was
an issue, credible to old WP-hands or not.  I suppose the optimists will
point out that it could well have happened already, but has not.

Charles


from_name: Chip Berlet

body:
It's all about the Social Contract.

Using the cubicle analogy, it's always better in an office to make it clear what is acceptable in writing, and then posting it for all to see. That's the whole idea of an employee contract in the workplace. "Harassment based on race or gender will not be tolerated." Is a typical rule in the workplace.

We need to make our boundaries more clear and have a few more rules of use, especially about user pages and their content. I just went through an arbitration that resulted in one editor being banned for a year, not for our editing conflict, but because he turned his user page into a shrine for personal attacks on me.

Maybe we need an Asimov corollary based on the Three Rules of Robotics.

1. Wikipedians must never post material that calls for illegal activity or the harming of human beings or, through inaction, allow such text to remain unchallenged.

2. Wikipedians must follow the posted guidelines and defend Wikipedia as a collaborative community without violating rule 1.

3. Wikipedians have a right to defend their edits and protect their reputation in a reasonable and collaborative way without violating the other rules.

We do not block people for who they are, but for what they post and for behavior that threatens Wikipedia as a community.

Calling for attacks on Jews or any group, suggesting illegal activity, calling for terrorism, all fall outside the boundaries of the above rules.

-cberlet

________________________________

From: wikien-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org on behalf of Peter Mackay
Sent: Wed 2/8/2006 8:26 AM
To: 'English Wikipedia'
Subject: RE: [WikiEN-l] No more blocking people for who they *are*?

> From: wikien-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org
> [mailto:wikien-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org] On Behalf Of Jimmy Wales

<<SNIP>>

How do we maintain NPOV and avoid charges that we are a haven for
paedophiles, neo-Nazis and supporters of terrorism?

Peter (Skyring)

_______________________________________________
WikiEN-l mailing list
WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l


from_name: geni

subject: [WikiEN-l] Comparison with other wikis

body:
On 2/8/06, Geoff Burling <llywrch at agora.rdrop.com> wrote:
> BTW, the Wikipedia article on "wheel warring" (or whatever it is called)
> sucks. I've read it several times, & all I've learned from it is that
> it has something to do with two or more people obtaining root on the
> same machine -- which surprises me, as this term has been thrown around
> an awful lot lately. Maybe someone who's experienced or seen a "wheel war"
> can provide a better explaination.
>
> Geoff

I think the term was first used by ed poor way back and it has stuck
for the lack of anything better.
--
geni


from_name: Josh Hoyt

subject: [Wikitech-l] OpenID Support

body:
On 2/7/06, Rob Lanphier <robla at robla.net> wrote:
> The spec below tries to address the problem head on:
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Single_login_specifications

Thanks for that link. I'm still digesting this whole issue, but it
seems to me that most of the discussion about single-sign-on is about
the namespace, and the choice of sign-on protocol seems like a
separate issue. I don't have an opinion on the namespace issues, and
if I did, it wouldn't matter, because I have not been involved in that
discussion. I do have knowledge about protocols, and what I am
suggesting is that OpenID is a technically appropriate protocol to use
regardless of intended user experience and regardless of the political
and social issues.

I will be educating myself on the discussions that have already taken
place, and commenting further once I have a better understanding.

Josh


list: commons-l

from_name: Matt Brown

subject: [Commons-l] Trademark worries, again

body:
I'm not sure if we have a policy or not.

Personally, drawn logos like this are unacceptable for commons, and
contrary to established practise which is to use them under fair use
on the en: Wikipedia.

I am inclined to also count in this category photos of an object
bearing a trademarked logo in which the whole intent is to picture the
logo.  Quite aside from trademark law, such images are likely to count
as copyright infringement if the subject is copyrighted, which
many/most logos will be.  Logos first used in the United States when
the law requiring a copyright statement for copyright protection was
still in effect may not be protected by copyright law, but I'd say we
should simply be safe and avoid all marginal cases.

Aside from those cases, I would personally not bar an image from
commons because a trademarked logo or indeed other trademarked aspect
appears in it.

Any photo in which a trademarked item appears in it MAY not be usable
in all commercial contexts, but I do not think that commons should
only consist of images safe to use in commercial advertising.

In an encyclopedia context, or any reference work, such appearance of
trademarked items is quite legal, I believe.

-Matt

On 2/8/06, Alphax (Wikipedia email) <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
> We need a policy on trademarked images to be clearly defined, and if
> there is one, it needs to be publicised somewhere prominant - are
> trademarked logos which claim to be under a free license really free, or
> are they violating copyright? Case in point, I've just deleted
> http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Exquisite-redhat.png and moved
> it to en: per an offical request from Redhat.
>
> --
> Alphax - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax
> Contributor to Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia
> "We make the internet not suck" - Jimbo Wales
> Public key: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax/OpenPGP
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Commons-l mailing list
> Commons-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/commons-l
>
>
>
>


from_name: Ray Saintonge

body:
Delirium wrote:

> W. Guy Finley wrote:
>
>> Stupendous, molesting children is "embarrassing".  Don't think I
>> could have
>> seen a bigger understatement or marginalization of the issue all
>> day.  This
>> just in "American Bishops Find Pedophiliac Priests to be 'embarrassing'"
>> Yeah, that would go over well.
>
> No; someone *claiming* to be a pedophile, almost certianly falsely, is
> "embarrassing".
>
> In any case, there are plenty of things people find really offensive.
> Try telling someone in Saudi Arabia that we allow unrepentant
> homosexuals on the site (homosexuality has status in law actually more
> severe than pedophilia), and then see if they want their kids to read
> it.  Or even in the enlightened west, you might find a lot of people
> shocked that we allow open Satanists!

Or Stalinists?

Ec


from_name: Tim Starling

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Most immature war ever? Are we embarrassed yet?

body:
Steve Bennett wrote:
> On 2/7/06, Ryan Delaney <ryan.delaney at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>Like it or not, these rules don't apply to Jimbo. Did you forget that Jimbo
>>retains the power to ban anyone from Wikipedia, and that there is no appeal
>>or discussion if he chooses to do so? Everyone who edits is here because he
>>and the board permit them to. And anyone who reverts his block of a user is
>>wheel warring. By definition, Jimbo cannot participate in a wheel war
>>because anyone who undoes his block is wrong.
>
>
> For what it's worth, I think the reason that Jimbo can't get into a
> wheel war is because he is a bigger wheel than anyone else. As was
> demonstrated - they can attempt to block him, but he just desysops
> them and hence wins. Rendering any attempted wheel war totally
> pointless.

Any steward could have taken the action that Jimbo took, although I imagine if they had done so they
would have enjoyed less community support. Wheel warring is by definition limited to technical
powers -- if a steward had de-stewarded Jimbo then he would have been within his rights to demand
that a sysadmin rectify the situation. Demands aren't wheel warring though.

-- Tim Starling


from_name: The Cunctator

subject: [WikiEN-l] Should we be declaring war on vandals?

body:
On 2/6/06, Joanne <joannebennaoj at gmail.com> wrote:
> In my opinion, CVU activities and people could benefit from another name and
> structure (and there are people working on that), but regarding CVU as the
> source of all evil, like the Cunctator appears to do, is not likely the way
> to accomplish anything...

I don't regard it as the source of all evil, nor have I said that I do.

I do think declaring war on vandals is the wrong approach.
I do think that the name should be changed.


body:
> From: wikien-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org
> [mailto:wikien-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org] On Behalf Of W. Guy Finley

> Umm, no.  Some things just aren't funny -- try going into an
> airport and joking about having a bomb and see how far your
> "I was just joking!" excuse gets while you're being cuffed
> and hauled to jail.  "Joking" that you are a pedophile is no
> different in my mind.

In this case, he may have been serious. The guy identifies as "16-ish".
Isn't he allowed to have feelings for others of a similar age? Describing
himself as a "paedophile" might have been unwise, but not necessarily
anything we should run around being headless chickens over.

Pete, acting like a grown-up


from_name: Sean Barrett

subject: [WikiEN-l] Throwing out the first ball

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

Peter Mackay stated for the record:

> Perhaps admins should publicly swear an oath of allegiance to Jimbo?
>
> Pete, enjoying the prospect of the solemn twilight ceremony, the massed
> bands, the arena full of hushed spectators, the flags, the bunting...

Only if the Arbiters get to wear swords and funny hats ... and capes!  I
want a cape!

- --
 Sean Barrett     | Those who cannot remember the
 sean at epoptic.org | past are condemned to learn
                  | it from Oliver Stone movies.
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from_name: Rob Smith

body:
On 2/8/06, Chip Berlet <c.berlet at publiceye.org> wrote:
>
> It's all about the Social Contract.
> ... suggesting illegal activity...all fall outside the boundaries of the
> above rules.

Right. Suggesting others are involved in a lynching
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Harry_Magdoff_and_espionage&diff=34950836&oldid=34254772
isn't suggesting illegal activity: it's the privelege of a notable expert.

nobs