from_name: Alphax (Wikipedia email)

subject: [WikiEN-l] New York Times article

body:
Steve Bennett wrote:
> On 6/22/06, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:
>> The missing piece of data is: what proportion of anonymous editors are
>> good contributors?  If it's very small, then it's a non-issue.
>
> I have a theory that for any change made by an anon editor:
>
> - if it's a deletion, it's probably vandalism
> - if it's the addition of more than a sentence, it will probably be
> unsourced and get reverted
> - if it's only a net change of plus or minus 5 characters, it's
> probably a useful copy-edit
>

Sceptre's second law: If only five bytes have been added to an article
in a diff by an IP, it will almost always be the word "gay".

--
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

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list: wikien-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Sam Pointon

subject: [WikiEN-l] New York Times article

body:
On 23/06/06, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
> "gay" takes only 5 bytes now? What an ingenious unicode storage format
> we must have :)

Most anons are not so grammar illiterate as to not use spaces,
correctly, though. See point above about most useful anon
contributions being copyedits - they are obviously all grammar pedants
and would not stoop so low as to add unparsable vandalism to articles!

--Sam


from_name: Fred Bauder

subject: [WikiEN-l] Oversight log

body:
On Jun 23, 2006, at 4:51 PM, George Herbert wrote:

> On 6/22/06, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
>
>> I think people are seriously underestimating the seriousness of some
>> personal privacy violations.
>>
>
> I am curious as to what situations could have happened here.
>
> Coming from almost 20 years experience in Usenet, having trolls and
> kooks show up and sometimes post people's home addresses and phone
> numbers and work contact info including boss and so on... most of
> these blow over without any notable harm other than people's
> sensitivity.
>
> I would be less happy with my Social Security Number or Drivers
> License going up somewhere, but I've had my home address and phone
> number spammed by nuts.
>

You take your victim as you find them. If you kill a person with a
thin skull it is still manslaughter.

Some of our editor are not very tough characters. Perhaps they have
led sheltered scholarly lives.

We do what we can to prevent harassment.

Fred


from_name: George Herbert

subject: [WikiEN-l] Spoiler Boilerplates

body:
On 6/23/06, Zero <megamanzero521 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Zero <megamanzero521 at Yahoo.com> wrote:
>   >Hi, I'm George, and I'm a Wikipedia Editor, and a  I'm a Wikipedia reader, too.
> >The dichotomy of "editors" not being "users" is false.  We're a subset
> >of readership.  We should not use our judgement to assume what r>eaders
> >want arbitrarily, but using common sense is different.  Spoiler
> >warnings are common in other online forums, and have been for a long
> >time, and they're there for a reason.  They're there because some
> >people object to spoilers.  Sometimes a majority of readers object to
> >spoilers.
>
>   Indeed. However, I do recall the premise that wikipedia isn't a forum.
> That's a strawman argument. It isn't possible for wikipedia to spoil an
> reader because that is the point of wikipedia (to provide elaborate
> summeries). An encyclopedia is an device through which to provide
> knowledge and in this area, I paticularly, believe we excell.

It is perfectly possible to spoil a reader.  Lots of people are
interested in a movie without wanting to see the plot twist, or a
book, etc.  Voluminous ancedotal evidence from Usenet responses on SF
topics is that if you post a spoiler without a warning, huge
quantities of people who were interested enough to be looking at
discussions and reviews, but hadn't gotten around to seeing/reading
the material yet, object.

WP can and should provide plot summaries and related spoiler type
content.  Doing it with the sorts of warning flags that people expect
in other electronic media is just being fair and consistent, though.

>   Readers object to spoilers..? What does that have to do with us..? Are they
> paying us..?

Well... either WP exists for the readers, in which case their opinions
on spoilers matter, or it exists for the editors, in which case the
opinions of editors here that we like spoilers matter, or it exists
for you, in which case your opinion that spoilers are for wimps should
overrule the other two categories.

I know WP isn't about voting per se, but I think you're outconsensused.  8-)

--
-george william herbert
gherbert at retro.com / george.herbert at gmail.com


from_name: Zero

subject: [WikiEN-l] Spoiler Boilerplates

body:
Zero <megamanzero521 at Yahoo.com> wrote:Steve wrote:

  >Speaking of strawmen!  *Everything* we do is for our readers!
>If not for them, who else?

  Yes, of course we do everything for the reader - in an informative  manner so far as it assists them to comprehend the subject being  depicted. Not construct baseless assumptions based upon a networking  site's reluctance to disclose information. Those sites aren't an  encylclopedia intent upon the distribution of knowledge. -Zero

---------------------------------
Want to be your own boss? Learn how on  Yahoo! Small Business.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Spoiler Boilerplates

body:
Zero <megamanzero521 at yahoo.com> wrote:  On 6/23/06, Zero  wrote:
> Zero  wrote:
>   >Hi, I'm George, and I'm a Wikipedia Editor, and a  I'm a Wikipedia reader, too.
> >The dichotomy of "editors" not being "users" is false.  We're a subset
> >of readership.  We should not use our judgement to assume what r>eaders
> >want arbitrarily, but using common sense is different.  Spoiler
> >warnings are common in other online forums, and have been for a long
> >time, and they're there for a reason.  They're there because some
> >people object to spoilers.  Sometimes a majority of readers object to
> >spoilers.
>
>   Indeed. However, I do recall the premise that wikipedia isn't a forum.
> That's a strawman argument. It isn't possible for wikipedia to spoil an
> reader because that is the point of wikipedia (to provide elaborate
> summeries). An encyclopedia is an device through which to provide
> knowledge and in this area, I paticularly, believe we excell.

>>It is perfectly possible to spoil a reader.  Lots of people are
>>interested in a movie without wanting to see the plot twist, or a
>>book, etc.  Voluminous ancedotal evidence from Usenet responses >>on SF
>>topics is that if you post a spoiler without a warning, huge
>>quantities of people who were interested enough to be looking at
>>discussions and reviews, but hadn't gotten around to seeing/reading
>>the material yet, object.

>>WP can and should provide plot summaries and related spoiler type
>>content.  Doing it with the sorts of warning flags that people expect
>>in other electronic media is just being fair and consistent, though.

It  is certainly possible to spoil a reader. Just not in an encyclopedia  which thrive on the informative distribution of knowledge. People  object in large numbers...? There's a great deal of articles lacking  spoilers. I've seen nor heard not a peep from readers that read the  encyclopedia about that.

  Usenet..? Usenet isn't wikipedia. -Zero

   -Zero

---------------------------------
Yahoo! Messenger with Voice. PC-to-Phone calls for ridiculously low rates.


list: commons-l

from_name: Platonides

subject:
[Commons-l] An interactive copyright tutorial as a
	requirementfor uploading?

body:
>*Users can simply try answers until they find the correct one
The software could realise it and... deny him tutorial access for some
hours? set him as can't-upload until an admin verifies him?

>*What if they're not reviewed?
Users on queue without uploading permission should automatically get it if
nobody reviewed him (either accepting or denying) for X days. That would
ensure we *do* allow people. If we fail to get everybody reviewed, we're
like now :-)

>*There's too much work for admins
We're talking of adding a 'can upload' permission. Also add an can review
permission, automatically got after N uploads and no copyright problem.
Admins could always add/remove this permission.

>When users come to Commons, do they set their UI language
I'd like local interwikies to [[commons: ]] have the ?uselang=<projectlang>
appended. This is tecnically available, a simple configuration issue, the
only problem would be breaking the interwikies-are-equal-on-all-wikipedias
system. A second parameter on the software (giving the user/wiki language)
would do too.

>* Takes away from the wiki notion of doing things "quickly".
Agree, but it's easier to upload 2x copyvios than detecting x copyvios. This
would help reducing the difference.

People could log in to the irc and explicity ask someone to verify their
uploads or they could also be checked in the channel. The irc channel is
quite dead.

A problem i see is the correct answer. This is a wiki, everyone should be
able to edit and propose changes, i easily think on discussions about the
accuracy of 'correct answers' but they shouldn't be too easy to find...

Another problem would be people creating new accounts to bypass this limit
system.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Spoiler Boilerplates

body:
Zero <megamanzero521 at Yahoo.com> wrote:Steve wrote:

> So you're not going to explain how this nonsense assists the encyclopedia..?

>>Sorry for being thick, but I honestly thought I just did.

>>What did you mean by "assist the encyclopedia"?  Did you mean
>>"assist in the editing and creation process", or, "add to the sum
>>of qualities that make the encyclopedia useful to readers"?

Oh  I'd appreciate an explanation on both, although I'm inclined to believe  there's none for the latter and its nelligible for the former. If  spoilers were as useful as thought, then it would have inserted as a  point in the style guidlines and made a policy quite awhile ago. I  happen to think the German wikipedia (Deutch Wiki) have this situation  in much more sensible posistion. -Zero

---------------------------------
Sneak preview the  all-new Yahoo.com. It's not radically different. Just radically better.


from_name: Kirill Lokshin

subject: [WikiEN-l] Spoiler Boilerplates

body:
On 6/23/06, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 6/23/06, Kirill Lokshin <kirill.lokshin at gmail.com> wrote:
> > I suspect, though, that it matters to our *readers*  (you know, those
> > people we're supposed to be writing this thing for).  It costs us
> > nothing to add a template to an article about a movie noting that the
> > surprise ending is revealed; and while most readers may not care,
> > there are some that, desiring to avoid reading such materials, will
> > thank us for our foresight in providing such a warning.
>
> And it would be so nice if we would say "THE ENDING IS REVEALED IN THE
> NEXT PARAGRAPH"
>
> The boat sinks.
>
> "YOU CAN START READING AGAIN"
>
> As opposed to stamping "Somewhere in this article, the plot of this
> film may be discussed" indiscriminately on all film or TV articles.
> Which is worth zero to anyone.

Indeed.  Some people tend to cover too much of the article with such
tags; in most cases, there should only be a paragraph or two that
really needs them.

(There are, of course, extreme cases, such as [[Darth Vader]], but
these tend to be quite rare and can be handled as exceptions to the
general rule.)

--
Kirill Lokshin


subject: [WikiEN-l] Spoiler Boilerplates

body:
On 6/23/06, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
> The cases that bug me more are long books, where knowing the ending
> would really put you off reading it. Or certain films like Fight Club,
> the Sixth Sense, Unbreakable etc...it's not so much "knowing how the
> film ends", but "knowing the secret that totally changes your
> interpretation of the film".

Given that the consensus forming around the new fiction MoS guideline
(can't recall what the exact name was) to reduce plot summary in favor
of more real-life information, this should begin to be less of a
problem.  Certainly, even for something like the Sixth Sense, it
should be possible to discuss casting, production, critical reception,
and so forth without needing to reveal anything; only the section
dealing with the plot itself -- and possibly only a part of that --
would be eligible for these tags.

--
Kirill Lokshin


subject: [WikiEN-l]And you thought Pokémon was trivial...

body:
On 6/23/06, Bryan Derksen <bryan.derksen at shaw.ca> wrote:
> As I've argued before when this sort of suggestion has come up, we can't
>  let the perfect be the enemy of the good. Articles lacking sources
> aren't unacceptable, IMO, they're simply _unfinished_. They'd need to be
> properly verified before they were accepted for any sort of polished
> compilation, sure, but Wikipedia as a whole is not that compilation. It
> is the raw materials for one.

Is there a project or such of people who can go around focusing on
adding references?

Would adding references be a useful thing to encourage as class
projects for college students, etc?

--
-george william herbert
gherbert at retro.com / george.herbert at gmail.com


from_name: Conrad Dunkerson

subject: [WikiEN-l] 3RR policy proposal: No "Gotcha" rule

body:
* jayjg wrote:

> On the contrary, the practice is to always warn new editors when they
> have violated 3RR, and offer them the chance to revert themselves and
> avoid any sanction.

That is the practice of many admins, but is not universal. Some people do
indeed get blocked under 3RR without having any idea what it is.


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Steve Bennett

subject: [Wikitech-l] Wikimarkup request: -- to em-dash

body:
On 6/23/06, Jay R. Ashworth <jra at baylink.com> wrote:
> On Fri, Jun 23, 2006 at 12:44:09AM -0600, Chad Perrin wrote:
> > > Clearly, if this is done, it needs to be considered whether surrounding
> > > spaces should be eaten by the parser.
> >
> > Agreed.  I vote "no".
>
> Oh; you're voting "no, the parser should *not* automagically replace
> '--' and/or ' -- ' with —", then?
>
> Might this, perhaps, be just a subst type thing that happens once when
> a page is saved?

No other wiki markup used in article space works that way.[1]

Steve
[1] except subst:


from_name: Michael Bimmler

subject: [WikiEN-l] Oversight -- Really new or not?

body:
On 6/23/06, Alphax (Wikipedia email) <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
> Ilya N. wrote:
> > Hi,
> >
> > You'll have to pardon me as I've been on break for a little bit.
> >
> > I'm just wondering how oversight is much different than an admin just
> > deleting an article and restoring all but the selected revision.
> >
> > It's not like the revision is deleted in the database.
> >
> > So why have a separate permissions group?
> >
>
> Because we have 950 admins, and at least one of them is a member of
> Wikitruth and has been undeleting stuff to get it posted there.
>
Um, I'm not exactly a en-wp-insider (coming rather from dewp), and I
don't want to critisize anything but: If a sysop is found to undelete
stuff to post it afterwards on Wikitruth etc., why isn't he just
desysopped (/why isn't a desysopping/ArbCom procedure started)?
Regards
Michael


subject: [WikiEN-l] And you thought Pok�mon was trivial...

body:
Zero <megamanzero521. at Yahoo.com> wrote:  On 6/23/06, George William Herbert
 wrote:

  >Is there a project or such of people who can go around focusing on
>adding references?

>Would adding references be a useful thing to encourage as class
>projects for college students, etc?

That  would be a ideal wiki-project to implement, certainly more useful than  these sub projects that pop up every five minutes for the lastest fad  down the street.

  I find this is more of a problem in controversial topics, such as the  Tony Sidaway article and the Rape article (why are there no references  for Rape..?). Video game articles, such as the brand I muck about in  tend to be more lineant, as the reference is the subject itself and  thus inline citations can be made from in-game quotes or the  like.  This is rarely done, however, although I commonly reference  the material I write and contribute to. -Zero

---------------------------------
Want to be your own boss? Learn how on  Yahoo! Small Business.


from_name: Sam Korn

subject: [WikiEN-l] Oversight log

body:
On 6/23/06, Mark Ryan <ultrablue at gmail.com> wrote:
It still hasn't been explained why the
> Arbitrators were selected as the main repositories of these powers.
> Does the removal of revisions crop up frequently in arbitrations
> undertaken by the ArbCom? Or has the ArbCom somehow morphed into
> something more than an Arbitration Committee, to be some sort of
> Content Management Committee?
>
> The Concise Oxford English Dictionary defines 'arbitrator' as "an
> independent person or body officially appointed to settle a dispute".
>
> Also, [[Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee]] says nothing about the
> ArbCom having any role beyond resolving disputes.

If anyone can suggest a bunch of people who as a body have sufficient
respect and trust among the community who could replace the ArbCom in
this role, I for one would be completely happy to pass it up.  I agree
that the Arbitration Committee should be primarily about resolving
disputes.  What is /de facto/ true, however, is that the Committee is
a collection of editors whom Jimbo knows and trusts and therefore, to
some degree, some expansion of the remit is bound to occur.

It's not great, no, and in an ideal world it would not be to the
Arbitration Committee that these powers were granted.  I have no great
desire for them.  Yet purely from a practical standpoint (i.e. only so
many hours in a developer-day), the delegation of these powers to
editors is necessary, and the Arbitration Committee is the only
current body that can fill the role needed.

--
Sam


body:
On 6/23/06, Jay R. Ashworth <jra at baylink.com> wrote:
> On Sat, Jun 24, 2006 at 01:46:41AM +1000, Brianna Laugher wrote:
> > > No other wiki markup used in article space works that way.[1]
> > >
> > > Steve
> > > [1] except subst:
> >
> > and ~~~ / ~~~~ / ~~~~ . oh wait, article space.
> > *mutters* technicality!
>
> I've never tried it: *do* the tilde subs work in article namespace?

Yeah, I've occasionally cleaned up other people's signatures. I've
almost done it myself, but not yet.

~~~~


body:
On 6/23/06, Matt Brown <morven at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 6/23/06, Michael Bimmler <mbimmler at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Um, I'm not exactly a en-wp-insider (coming rather from dewp), and I
> > don't want to critisize anything but: If a sysop is found to undelete
> > stuff to post it afterwards on Wikitruth etc., why isn't he just
> > desysopped (/why isn't a desysopping/ArbCom procedure started)?
>
> Because we don't know which admin has done this, just that it happened.
>
okay, I see...
Michael
> -Matt
> _______________________________________________
> 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: Uwe Brauer

subject: [Wikitech-l] texvc improvements?

body:
>>>>> "Jitse" == Jitse Niesen
>>>>> <jitse.niesen at gmail.com> writes:

   >>
   >> I am not sure whether is the right place to discuss it, but are
   >> there any plans to improve the implementation of texvc for the
   >> display of mathematical formula [...]

   Jitse> My plans for the display of formulae are described on
   Jitse> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Blahtex . The main goal is to
   Jitse> implement the generation of MathML. As a consequence, inline
   Jitse> expressions will use the same font size as the surrounding
   Jitse> text.

   Jitse> We have no immediate plans for \label{} and \ref{}, but I
   Jitse> agree that this would be very useful. I've made a note of
   Jitse> your suggestion.

By label and reference you mean the enumeration of equations+label+ref?
I am not sure that if you would support the possibility of enumerate
equations that this automatically would imply to support ref and label

By the way do you know of wikitex?
http://wikisophia.org/wiki

The philosophy seems different, since this implementation really runs tex,
but may be it would be useful to try to merge both approaches?

Regards

Uwe Brauer


body:
On 6/23/06, Zero <megamanzero521 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>  On 6/23/06, George William Herbert wrote:
>   >Is there a project or such of people who can go around focusing on
> >adding references?
>
> >Would adding references be a useful thing to encourage as class
> >projects for college students, etc?
>
> That  would be a ideal wiki-project to implement, certainly more useful than
> these sub projects that pop up every five minutes for the lastest fad  down the street.

Quick poking around finds:
WikiProject Fact and Reference Check

This project seems somewhat aligned with this goal, but it seems to
combine fact checking with reference addition activities.

It also seems, as a project, to be not moving very quickly at the moment.

Would working within that structure be useful, or a new project?

--
-george william herbert
gherbert at retro.com / george.herbert at gmail.com


body:
On 6/23/06, Lord Voldemort <lordbishopvoldemort at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 6/23/06, Matt Brown <morven at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Because we don't know which admin has done this, just that it happened.
>
> Yet. To quote Saw2 "Oh yes, there will be blood."  (But not really,
> desysopping won't physically harm anybody...
Sure. But desysopping somebody needs less time/skills than preparing a
legal action against him ;-) (and it's something against which he
cannot file an appeal)

Michael


body:
Zero <megamanzero521 at Yahoo.com> wrote:

  >  On 6/23/06, George William Herbert wrote:

  > That would be a ideal wiki-project to implement, certainly more  useful than these sub projects that pop up every five minutes for the  lastest fad down the street.

>>Quick poking around finds:
>>WikiProject Fact and Reference Check

>>This project seems somewhat aligned with this goal, but it seems to
combine fact checking with reference addition activities.

>>It also seems, as a project, to be not moving very quickly at the moment.

>>Would working within that structure be useful, or a new project?

  I would certianly believe so. Its sounds pretty good, but I would go as  so far to advocate that sourcing many articles in wikipedia should be a  policy. Not sourcing major articles with largely dubious facts and  summeries is unacceptable and should be a blockable offense with  possibility of arbitration and ultimately an indefinite block on the  egregious offender.

  However, the current policy, which allows editors to remove dubious  content which lacks sources is okay, but leaves the editting space open  to edit conflicts over disputed material. Unsourced articles are a  large factor in why wikipedia needs much work from its editors. -Zero

--
-george william herbert
gherbert at retro.com / george.herbert at gmail.com
_______________________________________________
WikiEN-l mailing list
WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l

 __________________________________________________
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from_name: Guy Chapman aka JzG

subject: [WikiEN-l] Non-office OFFICE actions

body:
On Fri, 23 Jun 2006 12:17:55 +0100, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:

>No UK law against mention spent convictions. Otherwise tabloids would
>never be out of court. Foundation doesn't have any UK assets and there
>is not reason for any of the board memeber to enter the UK.

That is the crucial question, isn't it?  Without the text of the
complaint to OTRS we can't know whether the article was stated to be
biased or whether it was the apparently (but without legal advice not
definitely) baseless claim of protection under ROA.

If it was accuracy there is no reason not to start rebuilding from the
known verifiable facts.  Which, it has to be said, are mainly about
the criminal conviction.

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


from_name: Bryan Derksen

body:
Steve Bennett wrote:
> On 6/23/06, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
>> In my opinion, any such statement should be removed on sight by any
>> editor, with a firm statement on the talk page that Wikipedia is not the
>> place for idle speculation or original research.
>
> You have made this request several times, but it is a hell of a long
> way from common accepted practice. Are we actually going to clamp down
> on this and make it enforced law?

If it was made "enforced law" it'd result in a purge of proportions
unmatched in Wikipedia's history.

As I've argued before when this sort of suggestion has come up, we can't
 let the perfect be the enemy of the good. Articles lacking sources
aren't unacceptable, IMO, they're simply _unfinished_. They'd need to be
properly verified before they were accepted for any sort of polished
compilation, sure, but Wikipedia as a whole is not that compilation. It
is the raw materials for one.

The German Wikipedia didn't wipe everything that didn't make it into the
DVD version, to take an example, I don't see why English Wikipedia
should do anything like that either.

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from_name: Simetrical

body:
On 6/23/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
> Thanks for this explanation. I don't quite follow the logical step
> that was made between "one common and important use" and "the way this
> should work", but, hey. In practice, in Wikipedia, this "common and
> important" use is basically never used - we certainly don't want ASCII
> art in our articles.

True, in general.  The *idea* was to make things a bit less confusing,
which I think probably failed.  YMMV.


subject:
[WikiEN-l] Category:<Subjective-pejorative>, weak consensus,
 and ! NPOV

body:
Cobb wrote:
>> Garion1000 wrote:
>
>>> On 6/22/06, Cobb wrote:
>>>
>>> In summary, the system is broken. But you won't get any sense on this
>>> mailing list, because most of the people here don't actually edit
>>> Wikipedia these days. They just pontificate and have faith in some
>>> mystical power of the Wiki.
>
>> Excuse me? I know editcount doesn't mean everything. But I would hate
>> counting the editcount of regular posters on this mailing list. Even if
>> only counting (main) edits.
>
> "These days".
>
> Some of the pontificators here should throw themselves
> back into editing from a newbie's point of view. Pick some craphole
> area of Wikipedia and try editing, and imagine that you don't know
> anyone else... don't have tame admin buddies to call on. Imagine
> facing up to a group of editors who know the ins and outs of the
> process and how to game it. It might wake some people up.
>

I wonder how the people with "tame admin buddies" got that way? Not
possibly from being Good Editors perhaps?

> Regarding my point about AFD... which seems to be misunderstood
> by Jesse W.
>
> The Wikipedia AFD process is complicated and crufty. Putting an
> article up for AFD should be easy as adding {{afd|reason}} (don't make
> technical arguments in response to this. I'm just telling you how it should
> work). Putting something up for deletion should be almost as easy as
> creating a new page.

It is. Stick {{prod|reason}} on it.

> Currently the AFD process is obscure and
> technical. It doesn't help that there are inclusionist editors who seem
> to want to make it as unintuitive as possible and keep it that way,
> and frustrate any attempts to change it.

Calling someone an "inclusionist" or "deletionist" doesn't help. There
are two reasons why:

- Inclusionists will inevitably vote "keep" for some bad articles, and
have bad articles undeleted because the closing admin didn't listen to
their whinging
- Deletionists will inevitably vote "delete" for some good articles, and
have good articles not undeleted because the closing admin didn't listen
to their whinging

> Pure wiki deletion might
> offer an improvement... but something tells me that it's going
> nowhere due to being too simple and easy to use.
>

Deletion is too hard in some cases and too easy in others. Short of
putting deletion debates before a panel of experts, deletion will always
get it wrong on occasion.

>> JesseW wrote:
>> Also, as I mentioned above, we have a number of areas that are
>> well-patrolled by non-nutballs who *do* follow our polices and guidelines,
>> and editors who don't want to fight can also toil in those areas, and leave
>> the work of defending the articles against crazies to others.
>
> And this is an argument against what? Some bits of Wikipedia aren't too
> bad, so that's ok.
>

Could you rephrase that so it's coherent?

--
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

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subject: [WikiEN-l] Spoiler Boilerplates

body:
Zero <megamanzero at Yahoo.com> wrote:
  On 6/23/06, Ryan  wrote:

>More importantly, why waste time arguing about this at all, when we >could be
>out writing articles? - Ryan

  Sure. I'm doing clean-up on various articles on a number of tabs as I  follow various e-mails. Also see [[Special:Contributions/Megaman  Zero]]; they speak for themselves. -Zero

---------------------------------
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 Get on board. You're invited to try the new Yahoo! Mail Beta.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Non-office OFFICE actions

body:
Guy Chapman aka JzG wrote:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gregory_Lauder-Frost has been stubbed
> following an OTRS query
> https://secure.wikimedia.org/otrs/index.pl?Action=AgentTicketZoom&TicketID=310629
>
> This article originally stated that Lauder-Frost was cleared on appeal
> of charges of theft.  This turns out to be a lie: he was convicted.

Per [[WP:LIVING]], we can't say that without a source.

> His supporters assert that the theft may now not be mentioned
> (although they were perfectly happy for the lie to be in there, it
> seems),

That shouldn't be in there either.

> because it is a "spent" conviction under the rehabilitation of
> offenders act.  This appears to be a novel interpretation, since the
> text of the act as posted to Talk only prevents publication with
> malicious intent.
>

I assume that this is a piece of UK law, which probably doesn't apply to
Wikipedia since the servers and the WMF are based in Florida. However,
IANAL, and the UK has some wacky defamation/anti-libel laws, so anything
could happen.

> They have argued long and hard for removal of this conviction from the
> article.  I do not think neutral biography can omit it.
>

Provided it's sourced, of course.

> Lauder-Frost has had his solicitors write to one editor (who made no
> significant edits to the article as far as I can see) and has
> contacted the Foundation; Brad is involved.  User Sussexman has been
> blocked for alluding to these legal threats before they were made - he
> is clearly in contact with Lauder-Frost.
>

Well, legal threats are grounds for immediate and indefinate blocking.

> I think they are gaming the system.  They wanted a long puff piece
> about Lauder-Frost, when it was trimmed and the truth of his
> conviction added they wanted it deleted.
>

It's been AFD'ed twice, and kept both times. At present it's
semi-protected, which is the appropriate action to take when extensive
IP/sockpuppet vandalism has taken place.

--
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

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from_name: Steve Summit

subject: [WikiEN-l] Spoiler Boilerplates

body:
Zero wrote:
> how are we as editors to know this..? As I do recall in a previous
> encounter concerning a lad I went to school with, he and I posessed
> very different views on what a "spoiler" was.
>
> As neutral editors, we also have a differing capacity on content is a
> plot twist or what is considered the climax. It is only reasonable to
> conclude this is what happens. This template simply smacks of what
> intrepretation is left to the editor.

But all sorts of interpretation is left to editors -- what facts
to present, how best to present them, in which order, etc.

I'm sorry you don't like the spoiler templates.  But the simple
fact is that most people *do*.  We had a poll on this a little
while back and the results were something like 7:1 in favor of
keeping them.  Many, many editors expressed the very strong
opinion that spoiler warnings are "obviously" a good thing.

I say this not to suggest that you're wrong for having a contrary
opinion (which is of course your and everyone's right) but to
make the point that to most people it's reasonably obvious where
a spoiler template ought to go, and what sorts of thing
constitute spoilers worthy of protection.

(Now, to be sure, I don't know if the people in that poll were
voting as editors or as readers.  On the one hand we don't have
any way of polling our readers per se, but on the other hand,
since we're the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit, *every*
reader is an editor, and vice versa.)

Since there's a small but vocal minority which is very strongly
opposed to the spoiler tags, clearly what we need is some custom
CSS magic which will turn them off for readers who think they're
ugly or unprofessional-looking or who otherwise don't want to see
them.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Spoiler Boilerplates

body:
Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:  On 6/24/06, Zero  wrote:
>  As I recall making a comment earlier on the wikipeida talkpage, none of  the defensive editors could answer ethier. "I'm sorry, but most people  like them". I don't paticularly concern myself too much in the practice  of the matter on an emotional level, but I am very inclined to question  the relevance. As of my most recent e-mail, I asked how the template  assisted the encyclopedia or its goals or if there were any edvidence  of its informative capacity. The questions still haven't been answered.  -Zero

>>The template assists the encyclopaedia and its goals as follows:
>>* It builds trust in our readership - trust that we value them and
their enjoyment of reading us
>>* It would allow us to collect information on which movies/books/tv
shows are deemed "spoilable"

>>It is informative as follows:
>>* It describes the specific presence and nature of a spoiler within a
given article
>>* It permits a separation of the plot, separating that which spoils
from that which doesn't.
>>* It allows readers who do not wish to be "spoilt" to read the whole
rest of the article without fear. -Steve

  "Read the article without fear"....? What on earth are you talking about...?

  "Trust in our readership"...? As if sweating day and night making them  articles of good quality weren't trustworthy enough! -Zero

---------------------------------
How low will we go? Check out Yahoo! Messenger?s low  PC-to-Phone call rates.


from_name: Stephen Bain

subject: [WikiEN-l] Non-office OFFICE actions

body:
On 6/23/06, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:
>
> They have argued long and hard for removal of this conviction from the
> article.  I do not think neutral biography can omit it.

Without being familiar with the subject, if it explains why he stopped
being publicly politically active, then it's quite plainly something
which ought to be included.

The legal questions are best left to the UK lawyers among us, if it
should be debated publically at all.

> Lauder-Frost has had his solicitors write to one editor (who made no
> significant edits to the article as far as I can see) and has
> contacted the Foundation; Brad is involved.  User Sussexman has been
> blocked for alluding to these legal threats before they were made - he
> is clearly in contact with Lauder-Frost.
>
> I think they are gaming the system.  They wanted a long puff piece
> about Lauder-Frost, when it was trimmed and the truth of his
> conviction added they wanted it deleted.

I don't think it really hurts to stub the article until the dispute
blows over, it may help prevent users from getting indignant and
making the article "worse" in order to spite Lauder-Frost (this sort
of thing has happened many times when the subjects or articles try to
influence the content).

The old versions are all there in the history, of course, for anyone
who wants to look at them.

--
Stephen Bain
stephen.bain at gmail.com


body:
maru dubshinki <marudubshinki at gmail.com> wrote:  On 6/23/06, Steve Bennett  wrote:
> This is where the divide seems to hit. Those who work in the
> Foundation Office, and receive complaints from the outside world, tend
> to have a harsher view of things, arguing that all unsourced
> statements about living people, for instance, should be immediately
> removed. Those who do a lot of editing without hearing from the
> outside world tend to find this position untenable and impractical.
> Worse, they (we?) tend to just ignore it, since the number of people
> advocating it is tiny, and they haven't really made much significant
> noise about it yet.
>
> I'm yet to see any meaningful common ground found between these
> positions, but I'm optimistic we can find a solution.
>
> Steve

>>There's plenty of common ground- this is an immediatist/eventualist
>>split, after all, and we all know that one day the Immediate moment
>>will have become the eventual. (In other words, as time passes and
>>articles improve, this issue will become less and less important until
>>it only makes sense in rare individual articles). ~maru

  That actually sounds feasible. I would advocate that spoilers be  removed from all articles save for ones that had not been fully  released to the public, such as a video game in development. I really  only think that's when it wouldn't be silly. - Zero

---------------------------------
Do you Yahoo!?
 Next-gen email? Have it all with the  all-new Yahoo! Mail Beta.


list: foundation-l

from_name: Anthere

subject:
[Foundation-l] Opinions/suggestions for "outside" members of
	the board?

body:
Fred Bauder wrote:
> On Jun 19, 2006, at 5:07 AM, Jimmy Wales wrote:
>
>
>>To continue the ongoing board development conversation....
>>
>>The board is considering adding some prominent person from outside the
>>core Wikipedia community to the board and seeks brainstorming ideas of
>>what type of person could be good, as well as mentions of names who we
>>might want to approach.
>>
>>Larry Lessig - head of Creative Commons
>>
>>Mitch Kapor - head of Mozilla Foundation (Firefox), founder of EFF,
>>and
>>extremely passionate about the Wikipedia mission (and he edits
>>Wikipedia, and he is absolutely fascinated by and supportive of our
>>community model)
>>
>>Richard Stallman - needs no introduction
>>
>>Eben Moglen - main legal mastermind of the FSF
>>
>>Comments on these names are welcome... as are further ideas of course!
>>
>
>
> I have always viewed Jimbo's suggestion that we "distribute a paper
> encyclopedia to African children" as quixotic but I have in
> connection with a possible board member wondered if we could create a
> series of documents which focus on public health which would prove
> useful in Africa, possibly also in China and other regions, and be
> worth distributing as part of a public health education campaign.
> There was lately a cholera epidemic in Angola which affected most of
> the country. There is a lot of ignorance involved in this sort of
> situation. I don't see this project so much directed to children as
> to local decision makers. It would contain information about disease
> and disease prevention, etc. The question, bottom line, is would a
> project of this nature actually prove effective? Or should we first
> see if we could even mobilize around it? One of the good aspects
> regarding this possible board member is that he is a hands on,
> computer literate guy with experience in give and take.
>
> Fred

I might be interested in the guy name ;-)

Regarding "would a project of this nature actually prove effective", I
am giving a presentation end of august in an international health forum
(http://www.hcuge.ch/genevahealthforum/) and this is exactly the type of
question I hope can receive a beginning of an answer.

I do not really believe we can mobilize around it before setting up a
framework around. We need partners for such project and these partners
input will be essential to define which content should be included or
not included, and what the audience would be.

However, admittedly, what I would worry about is, if a framework is set,
with partners and of course, a deadline, I am not sure we would succeed
to mobilize enough and in a sufficiently effective way to respect the
limits. I think we can do huge things, but generally, we are bad with
deadlines because a volunteer may come and go.

Also, one of the reasons why Wikipedia typically is successful is that
it can be build by tiny bits. Doing just a bit is easy. A little step
that most of us can climb without too much efforts. It is much more of a
problem to participate to a long term project, in which significant
amounts of efforts must be brought be each contributor.

Ant


list: wikimedia-l


from_name: Andrew Gray

subject: [WikiEN-l] Non-office OFFICE actions

body:
On 23/06/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:

> > I assume that this is a piece of UK law, which probably doesn't apply to
> > Wikipedia since the servers and the WMF are based in Florida. However,
> > IANAL, and the UK has some wacky defamation/anti-libel laws, so anything
> > could happen.
>
> No UK law against mention spent convictions. Otherwise tabloids would
> never be out of court. Foundation doesn't have any UK assets and there
> is not reason for any of the board memeber to enter the UK.

This is a surprising interpretation of the Rehabilition of Offenders
Act 1974, given my well-thumbed copy of Law for Journalists devotes an
entire chapter to warning readers to be careful about it. I'm not
saying it is impermissible, but there are certainly some legal
strictures involved.

As always, I'm glad wikien-l is not a forum for legal advice.

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


from_name: Timwi

subject: [Wikitech-l] patrolling improvement

body:
Anders Wegge Jakobsen wrote:
>
>  I'd be happy to see the code for that. Patrolling 15 edits after an
> editor who is hit by the mysterical "No preview button" bug, can be a
> chore.

You mean 15 edits to the same article?

You do know that you can view diffs between revisions that are several
edits apart, right?


body:
Steve Bennett wrote:
> On 6/22/06, Timwi <timwi at gmx.net> wrote:
>
>>That is not true. Space-indented text is still subject to some parsing,
>>e.g. ''' for bold.
>
> Let's be honest here: space indented text is *weird*. What's the
> historical context behind it? Why is it monospaced, coloured,
> surrounded with a border, and why doesn't it wrap? It's such an odd
> layout choice for something so easy to do by accident.
>
> (it would all sort of make sense except for the lack of wrapping...maybe)

This "weirdness" comes from the fact that this particular wiki markup is
not really defined in terms of what visible output it produces, but only
in terms of what HTML it produces -- namely <pre>. (Note that this is
not the same as wiki <pre>.) The reason HTML <pre> disables
word-wrapping is so that you can do things like this:

	http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Family_tree_of_the_Greek_gods

Imagine this would word-wrap. It would destroy the whole thing :)

Timwi


subject: [WikiEN-l] Spoiler Boilerplates

body:
On 6/23/06, Zero <megamanzero521 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>   Readers object to spoilers..? What does that have to do with us..? Are they paying us..?

They don't have to.  This is a project to distribute a _free_
encyclopedia, remember?

--
Kirill Lokshin


subject: [WikiEN-l] Spoiler Boilerplates

body:
Zero wrote:
> Poll..? I assume that's in reference to the template on its nomination
> to TFD somewhat a time back.

That sounds about right.

> No, that's not liking it, its many new editors fooled into thinking
> this has a purpose at the time of their arrival on the encyclopedia.
> A quick check depicted many of these editors had not participated
> in wikipedia discussion...

Hang on a sec.  A minute ago you were complaining that the
decision to keep the spoiler templates was being paternalistically
made by a bunch of editors who didn't necessarily know what
"readers" wanted.  Now you're complaining that the people
participating in the poll didn't have enough experience to make
them "real editors" -- but I guess that makes them readers.

It's simple: six out of seven poll respondents said, "We like the
spoiler templates.  They're useful.  Keep them."  What more do
you want?

> One editor noted "Are you crazy...? This template has been along for
> awhile !"  Chuck, the deletion nominator queried him on how that had
> any relevance to its usefulness. Curiously, none of the editors in keep
> could rebute him

Perhaps the "Are you crazy?" editor didn't happen back to see the
question.  Perhaps people thought it was too obvious to need answering.

> As I recall making a comment earlier on the wikipeida talkpage, none
> of the defensive editors could answer ethier. "I'm sorry, but most
> people like them".

Yup.  Most people do.

> As of my most recent e-mail, I asked how the template assisted the
> encyclopedia or its goals or if there were any edvidence of its
> informative capacity. The questions still haven't been answere

Okay, since you insist:  How do spoiler tags assist the encyclopedia?
Answer:  Readers who (for whatever reason) want to read about a
movie they have not yet seen, or a book they have not yet read,
and who do not want to inadvertently learn of any "spoiler" plot
details, appreciate the presence of these tags.  This is not a
merely hypothetical concern; there's good evidence that there are
real Wikipedia readers who fall into this category.


body:
Tony Sidaway <f.crdfa at gmail.com> wrote:  On 6/23/06, Conrad Dunkerson  wrote:
Some people do
> indeed get blocked under 3RR without having any idea what it is.

>>If they are blocked, they would presumably be aware that they had >>been
>>engaged in edit warring.  It's pretty difficult to get oneself blocked
>>f one persistently fails to misbehave.

  I'm inclined to agree with Tony on this matter. Tea and crumpets are good for the mind, good for body, good for the spirit.

  Joining the Harmonious editing club might assist in refraining from  edit warring. My "membership" has assisted in keeping the urge to  revert in content disputes to an appropriate manner. -Zero

---------------------------------
Yahoo! Sports Fantasy Football ?06 - Go with the leader. Start your league today!


subject: [WikiEN-l] "the experiment" - did it work?

body:
On 6/23/06, Anthony DiPierro <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
> Anyway, yes, it's possible for anyone to nominate an article for
> speedy deletion.  This is why I think your argument that "AfC is less
> work for us, the established Wikipedia community, than is putting crap
> new articles through AfD" is a strawman.

Sorry, but I stop discussing when I hear the S word. I may have
misunderstood you. I may have being arguing a different point. But I
don't intentionally misrepresent people's positions in order to win an
argument.

Steve


subject: [WikiEN-l] Spoiler Boilerplates

body:
Zero wrote:
> Indeed. However, I do recall the premise that wikipedia isn't a forum.
> That's a strawman argument. It isn't possible for wikipedia to spoil
> an reader...
>
> Readers object to spoilers..? What does that have to do with us..?
> Are they paying us..?

Speaking of strawmen!  *Everything* we do is for our readers!
If not for them, who else?


subject: [WikiEN-l] semi-stuff (was Re: New York Times article)

body:
On 6/23/06, Matt Brown <morven at gmail.com> wrote:
> I noticed this the other day, when I saw someone removing the tag from
> an article because "it hadn't passed through the Good Articles process
> properly".  And here I was thinking that the point of the thing was
> that it was to be a largely process-free way of tagging articles that
> seemed reasonably good.

It was. Then, astonishingly, it turned into an exact mirror of the FA
process. In fact, there's very little difference between an FA and a
GA as far as I can tell, except that a short article can be a GA but
not an FA.

> Generally because certain people can never see a good idea that they
> don't think could be improved with more process, formality, forms and
> bureaucracy.

There is that. Also, is there a Wikipedia law yet that says "whenever
a process is introduced that rates anything according to some
criteria, its standards will rise faster than the standards of the
things being rated"?

Seems to be true for RfA, FPC, FAC, GAC...

Steve


subject: [WikiEN-l] Spoiler Boilerplates

body:
On 6/23/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 6/24/06, Kirill Lokshin <kirill.lokshin at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 6/23/06, Zero <megamanzero521 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> > >   Readers object to spoilers..? What does that have to do with us..? Are they paying us..?
> >
> > They don't have to.  This is a project to distribute a _free_
> > encyclopedia, remember?
> >
>
> However we also host it which costs money.

But it doesn't affect our primary mission -- which has always been to
*give away* the encyclopedia we're writing -- in the least.

--
Kirill Lokshin


from_name: geni

subject: [WikiEN-l] Non-office OFFICE actions

body:
On 6/23/06, Andrew Gray <shimgray at gmail.com> wrote:
> This is a surprising interpretation of the Rehabilition of Offenders
> Act 1974, given my well-thumbed copy of Law for Journalists devotes an
> entire chapter to warning readers to be careful about it. I'm not
> saying it is impermissible, but there are certainly some legal
> strictures involved.
>
> As always, I'm glad wikien-l is not a forum for legal advice.

Well there is some fairly solid stuff about how you are allowed to get
hold of the information.

--
geni


body:
On 6/23/06, J?rgen Herz <jherz at myrealbox.com> wrote:
> Huh? I'd suggest reading [[Dash (punctuation)]] to see that en dashes
> aren't that rare. But in any case this is a quite english centric point
> of view.
> In German for example (and I guess that's not the only language where
> this is valid, but that's the language I know well) em dashes are even
> more rare than en dashes in English.

Interesting point. It reinforces my belief that this ought to be an
optional feature. Particularly for wikis that contain a lot of
unescaped C code...:)

> So please be careful when using "rare" and "unintuitive". That's beside
> I prefer using JS for inserting such special chars and that I think of
> interpreting -- or --- to be quite insecure if done by a machine.

I'm definitely guilty of only thinking from an English mindset. Fwiw,
in French, I believe emdashes are even more common, used where we
might use parentheses or commas. Dunno about endashes.

Steve


from_name: George Herbert

subject: [WikiEN-l] Spoiler Boilerplates

body:
On 6/23/06, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 6/24/06, George Herbert <george.herbert at gmail.com> wrote:
> > The dichotomy of "editors" not being "users" is false.  We're a subset
> > of readership.  We should not use our judgement to assume what readers
> > want arbitrarily, but using common sense is different.  Spoiler
>
> Of course we should. We're here to write an encyclopaedia. For
> readers. Who will never tell us what they want. We have to make
> thousands of assumptions in that process. What fonts to use? Unicode
> or ASCII? Should [[Georgia]] be about the US state or the country? Or
> neither? Are photos or diagrams better? Should we use thumbnails or
> larger images?
>
> A bit of intuition, discussion, and yes, common sense, go a long way
> in answering these quetsions.

We're linguistically haggling over where we define "arbitrary" and
"common sense", not a substantiative disagreement, Steve.

If no other internet communications medium used spoiler warnings, and
some editor came up with them out of the blue, and started tagging
articles with them, that would be arbitrary.

Them being in use "everywhere" and commonly accepted practice, and
their use in WP being subject to ongoing positive discussions, makes
them common sense.  By definition, pretty much - they're already
common enough that their use can't be considered arbitrary.

Chosing not to use them is a perfectly valid point of discussion, and
could be a valid end choice on a policy basis if an argument and
consensus were reached.  But using them now is common sense.

--
-george william herbert
gherbert at retro.com / george.herbert at gmail.com


subject: [WikiEN-l] Non-office OFFICE actions

body:
On 6/23/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 6/23/06, Andrew Gray <shimgray at gmail.com> wrote:
> > This is a surprising interpretation of the Rehabilition of Offenders
> > Act 1974, given my well-thumbed copy of Law for Journalists devotes an
> > entire chapter to warning readers to be careful about it. I'm not
> > saying it is impermissible, but there are certainly some legal
> > strictures involved.
> >
> > As always, I'm glad wikien-l is not a forum for legal advice.
>
> Well there is some fairly solid stuff about how you are allowed to get
> hold of the information.
>
>
> --
> geni
>

However if we look at say:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/manchester/3025035.stm

If I've read the act correctly the conviction became spent over a year
ago. Yet the BBC is still publishing that to people within the UK.

--
geni


subject: [WikiEN-l] Spoiler Boilerplates

body:
Zero wrote:
> [scs wrote:]
>> Okay, since you insist:  How do spoiler tags assist the encyclopedia?
>> Answer:  Readers who (for whatever reason) want to read about a
>> movie they have not yet seen, or a book they have not yet read,
>> and who do not want to inadvertently learn of any "spoiler" plot
>> details, appreciate the presence of these tags.  This is not a
>> merely hypothetical concern; there's good evidence that there are
>> real Wikipedia readers who fall into this category.
>
> So you're not going to explain how this nonsense assists the encyclopedia..?

Sorry for being thick, but I honestly thought I just did.

What did you mean by "assist the encyclopedia"?  Did you mean
"assist in the editing and creation process", or, "add to the sum
of qualities that make the encyclopedia useful to readers"?


from_name: Zero

subject: [WikiEN-l] Spoiler Boilerplates

body:
George Herbert <george.herbert at gmail.com> wrote:
 On 6/24/06, George Herbert  wrote:

  >We're linguistically haggling over where we define "arbitrary" and
>"common sense", not a substantiative disagreement, Steve.

>If no other internet communications medium used spoiler warnings, >and
>some editor came up with them out of the blue, and started tagging
>articles with them, that would be arbitrary.

>Them being in use "everywhere" and commonly accepted practice, >and
>their use in WP being subject to ongoing positive discussions, makes
>them common sense.  By definition, pretty much - they're already
>common enough that their use can't be considered arbitrary.

>Chosing not to use them is a perfectly valid point of discussion, and
>could be a valid end choice on a policy basis if an argument and
>consensus were reached.  But using them now is common sense.

  Yes, that sounds sensible. They are widely accepted now, as its  (presumely) the "in" and "hip" thing to do about the internet. I, as an  long-time and experienced editor am troubled by this attack upon our  status as an encyclopedia and conveyance as a knowlegeable resource.  And so I come with the spirit of advocacy to query and discuss the  usefulness and relevance of a silly template with my fellow editors,  hopefully in light of good outcome for the encyclopedia and its value  as a informative resource. -Zero

---------------------------------
Do you Yahoo!?
 Get on board. You're invited to try the new Yahoo! Mail Beta.


from_name: Kat Walsh

subject: [WikiEN-l] New York Times article

body:
On 6/23/06, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 6/22/06, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:
> > The missing piece of data is: what proportion of anonymous editors are
> > good contributors?  If it's very small, then it's a non-issue.
>
> I have a theory that for any change made by an anon editor:
>
> - if it's a deletion, it's probably vandalism

Or someone who sees something false about them or someone they know in
an article. We get complaints mailed to Wikimedia all the time that "I
was trying to remove this false statement about me and then I was
blocked for vandalism!"

Or someone who is really confused. A German usability study found some
people who clicked "edit" and got confused submitted a blanked page.
(Yes, I scratched my head when I read that, too.)

See http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProjekt_Usability/Test_Februar_2006
-- text is in English.

> - if it's the addition of more than a sentence, it will probably be
> unsourced and get reverted

Most logged-in users' additions are unsourced, too. Actually additions
of a few sentences are usually at least on the right track (note: my
watchlist is mainly classical music; YMMV). Not sourced, generally,
true, but mostly verifiable if someone went to go find a cite; also
often well-meaning but misguided insertion of opinions or original
research.

Of course, text dumps of full paragraphs or articles, generally
unwikified, are too often copyvio. :-/

> - if it's only a net change of plus or minus 5 characters, it's
> probably a useful copy-edit

Generally agreed. (Sometimes it's sneaky vandalism. :-P)

> Anon make a lot of typo corrections, but are rarely bold enough to fix
> major problems in articles.

...though when they are, they are often accused of vandalism,
especially as most haven't gotten the memo about talk pages or edit
summaries yet.

On the whole I am in favor of as few restrictions on anonymous editing
as necessary. It may be true that most vandalism comes from anons (I
don't have data for this). However, it doesn't follow that most anon
contributions are vandalism. (I don't have data for this either, but I
suspect most of it is not. The majority of it may well be in need of
cleanup or sourcing, but that could be said of most newbie edits,
logged-in or not.) And raise your hand if you *didn't* make a few anon
edits before signing up. Anyone? A few? I think I would have been put
off if most of the things I wanted to edit when I initally saw the
site were semiprotected.

I do like semi-protection as a defense against the hordes of drive-by
vandals who come by in bursts for some reason or another. But I think
we should keep it to a minimum, and be careful not to use protection
-- full or semi -- where it has not been shown to be needed.

(IMO, the most problematic edits don't come from newbies, anyway, but
from more seasoned users who have an agenda to push and know how to
game the system... but perhaps that's colored by my doing more dispute
resolution than RC patrol.)

-Kat

--
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Mindspillage  |  G/AIM:LucidWaking
mindspillage or mind|wandering on irc.freenode.net | email for phone
The good traveller has no fixed plans, and is not intent on arriving
-- Lao-Tzu        Wikia: creating communities - http://www.wikia.com


from_name: Brianna Laugher

subject: [Commons-l] some updated statistics

body:
On 19/06/06, Magnus Manske <magnus.manske at web.de> wrote:
> Brianna Laugher wrote:
> > On 18/06/06, Magnus Manske <magnus.manske at web.de> wrote:
> >
> >> Brianna Laugher wrote:
> >>
> >>> Another write-me-some-code request:
> >>> for any image in [[category:duplicate]], where the replacement image
> >>> has a different file extension, remove {{duplicate|Image:...}} and
> >>> replace with {{superseded|Image:...}} (if it's not already there) with
> >>> edit summary '{{duplicate}} is only for exactly identical images,
> >>> please don't use it for different file types, they cannot be
> >>> identical'.
> >>>
> >> Done (in commons_dupes.php).
> >>
> > That's perfect, except it puts a "Template:" prefix even before the
> > image one...???
> >
> It replaces the "duplicate" template, whereever that is...

It still is not working correctly. It sends me to pages like this:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Template:Image%3ABRUNTAL_PRAPOR.jpg&action=edit

it's actually creating a new page in the template namespace for some reason....

also at the moment everything appears to be "green", even
JPG/SVGs...and is it possible to force it to stay within one
horizontal screen instead of three? scrolling sideways sucks...

cheers,
Brianna


from_name: Anders Wegge Jakobsen

subject: [Wikitech-l] patrolling improvement

body:
Timwi <timwi at gmx.net> writes:

> Anders Wegge Jakobsen wrote:
> >
> >  I'd be happy to see the code for that. Patrolling 15 edits after an
> > editor who is hit by the mysterical "No preview button" bug, can be a
> > chore.
>
> You mean 15 edits to the same article?
>
> You do know that you can view diffs between revisions that are several
> edits apart, right?

 Sure, but can I patrol them?

--
// Wegge
Min begrundelse for at betragte Arne Wilstrup som en paphat:
<http://wiki.wegge.dk/Usenet_personligheder>
Bruger du den gratis spamfighther ser jeg kun dine indl?g *EN* gang.


from_name: fireislandparadise

body:
On 6/23/06, Conrad Dunkerson <conrad.dunkerson at worldnet.att.net> wrote:
>
> * jayjg wrote:
>
> > On the contrary, the practice is to always warn new editors when they
> > have violated 3RR, and offer them the chance to revert themselves and
> > avoid any sanction.
>
> That is the practice of many admins, but is not universal. Some people do
> indeed get blocked under 3RR without having any idea what it is.

Is there any reason not to write a warning into policy? All this means is
that for people making complaints at ANI/3RR they must first warn the
violator and wait for her or him to disregard the warning. Certainly it's
not a bad thing to build an assumption of good faith into the policy. Right
now you've had one edit warrier trying to trap another into violating 3RR
which isn't what the policy is intended to do. The only exception to the
warning rule should be someone who makes a complaint on the board, if they
are involved in an edit war and complain about someone else then their edits
in that dispute should also be checked for 3RR violation even if they
weren't warned.


from_name: Steve Bennett

body:
On 6/23/06, Timwi <timwi at gmx.net> wrote:
> This "weirdness" comes from the fact that this particular wiki markup is
> not really defined in terms of what visible output it produces, but only
> in terms of what HTML it produces -- namely <pre>. (Note that this is
> not the same as wiki <pre>.) The reason HTML <pre> disables
> word-wrapping is so that you can do things like this:
>
>         http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Family_tree_of_the_Greek_gods
>
> Imagine this would word-wrap. It would destroy the whole thing :)

Ok, so indented space is hardcoded as meaning <PRE> and <PRE> doesn't line wrap.

Pity. Even if indented space just guaranteed <TT> or something (which
does line wrap?) then you could always turn off line wrapping by some
other means on the rare cases (like that one) where it was really
wanted.

Steve


subject: [Wikitech-l] patrolling improvement

references:
<d45df5100606210816la98bb75k1819a1a91eb31ec3@mail.gmail.com>
	<m3zmg5dwag.fsf@obelix.wegge.dk> <e7hc2b$rp$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<m3bqsjd85l.fsf@obelix.wegge.dk>

body:
On 23 Jun 2006 20:44:06 +0200, Anders Wegge Jakobsen <wegge at wegge.dk> wrote:
> Timwi <timwi at gmx.net> writes:
>
> > Anders Wegge Jakobsen wrote:
> > >
> > >  I'd be happy to see the code for that. Patrolling 15 edits after an
> > > editor who is hit by the mysterical "No preview button" bug, can be a
> > > chore.
> >
> > You mean 15 edits to the same article?
> >
> > You do know that you can view diffs between revisions that are several
> > edits apart, right?
>
>  Sure, but can I patrol them?

Depends what you mean by patrol. If the end result, after 37 edits
with 16 different editors, is that one sentence has been added, and
it's a good one, then theoretically speaking, you would want to mark
the lot as "patrolled, good edit", yes.

Whether the patrolling extension works like that I don't know.

Steve


subject: [Wikitech-l] patrolling improvement

references:
<d45df5100606210816la98bb75k1819a1a91eb31ec3@mail.gmail.com>
	<m3zmg5dwag.fsf@obelix.wegge.dk> <e7hc2b$rp$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<m3bqsjd85l.fsf@obelix.wegge.dk>
	<f1c3529e0606231155g7f5654fcw30617df1bb9a57bf@mail.gmail.com>

body:
"Steve Bennett" <stevage at gmail.com> writes:

> On 23 Jun 2006 20:44:06 +0200, Anders Wegge Jakobsen <wegge at wegge.dk> wrote:
> > Timwi <timwi at gmx.net> writes:
> >
> > > Anders Wegge Jakobsen wrote:
> > > >
> > > >  I'd be happy to see the code for that. Patrolling 15 edits after an
> > > > editor who is hit by the mysterical "No preview button" bug, can be a
> > > > chore.
> > >
> > > You mean 15 edits to the same article?
> > >
> > > You do know that you can view diffs between revisions that are several
> > > edits apart, right?
> >
> >  Sure, but can I patrol them?
>
> Depends what you mean by patrol. If the end result, after 37 edits
> with 16 different editors, is that one sentence has been added, and
> it's a good one, then theoretically speaking, you would want to mark
> the lot as "patrolled, good edit", yes.
>
> Whether the patrolling extension works like that I don't know.

 It does not, hence my question.

--
// Wegge
Min begrundelse for at betragte Arne Wilstrup som en paphat:
<http://wiki.wegge.dk/Usenet_personligheder>
Bruger du den gratis spamfighther ser jeg kun dine indl?g *EN* gang.


body:
On 6/23/06, Ben Yates <bluephonic at gmail.com> wrote:
> Five hundred!  It took me years to get there, and I spend far too much
> time on Wikipedia.  What about 75?
>

At the arcom elections the minium was 150 edits. From that experence i
would suggest a limit of 100.

--
geni


subject: [WikiEN-l] Non-office OFFICE actions

body:
On 23/06/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 6/23/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 6/23/06, Andrew Gray <shimgray at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > This is a surprising interpretation of the Rehabilition of Offenders
> > > Act 1974, given my well-thumbed copy of Law for Journalists devotes an
> > > entire chapter to warning readers to be careful about it. I'm not
> > > saying it is impermissible, but there are certainly some legal
> > > strictures involved.
> > >
> > > As always, I'm glad wikien-l is not a forum for legal advice.
> >
> > Well there is some fairly solid stuff about how you are allowed to get
> > hold of the information.
>
> However if we look at say:
> http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/manchester/3025035.stm
>
> If I've read the act correctly the conviction became spent over a year
> ago. Yet the BBC is still publishing that to people within the UK.

a) You will note that I did not say "you cannot ever publish this
material". You just need to have a good reason to. I would not place
my money on all occurences in Wikipedia being good.

b) Bound over to keep the peace is spent one year after the binding
expires, assuming no recidivism, and that article says nothing about
how long he was bound over for.

c) Now's the fun part. That article is clearly in an archive and can
be proven* to have been untouched for three years. That simple fact
opens up huge new vistas of legal questions, and nobody knows what the
answers to any of them are...

This field is complex. I don't know what I'm talking about, but I
recognise that fact. I would be really quite grateful if you did the
same.

* the BBC, bless them, archive every single alteration made to their
site at commitment, so you could prove this if you had to
--
- Andrew Gray
  andrew.gray at dunelm.org.uk


body:
On 6/23/06, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> We are no longer a struggling tiny project which needs to go out of our
> way to get every possible beneficial scrap of work from anyone.  We seek
> to have diverse participation from a wide range of people with different
> viewpoints, but we should also remember, always, how many good users we
> use when we are too "co-dependent" with our trolls.

Sorry to make a habit of it, but I disagree with you. At Wikipedia, I
see a small number of people working on a massive number of pages, and
the more help we get with that task, the better.  We have a constant
stream of people who come past, add a few pages, then leave - but
there is little manpower to maintain those pages. I frequently edit
pages which have not been touched in a year or more.

Sure, our US popular culture sections are totally under control, and
do not need manpower. However, pick a different area, like French
cuisine, or even any aspect of French culture, and to me it feels very
much like a "struggling tiny project". I see the same small handful of
names again and again. If there was a useful editor in this area who
was going to be banned for image uploading, I would definitely mount
an argument for retaining him without image privileges.

Maybe others see things differently, but I do not feel a massive
influx in people contributing raw, valuable text to our encyclopaedia,
which is something we're quite short of. We have lots of people
joining us to help delete, categorise, clean, or write about their own
pet topic - but do we really have so many helping to expand on our
existing topics?

Steve


body:
On 6/23/06, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> In my opinion, any such statement should be removed on sight by any
> editor, with a firm statement on the talk page that Wikipedia is not the
> place for idle speculation or original research.

You have made this request several times, but it is a hell of a long
way from common accepted practice. Are we actually going to clamp down
on this and make it enforced law?

I agree with you that we are going to "get hoaxed", but I'm not sure
that insisting on sources is even going to help that much - not all
sources can be easily checked, and even those that can be, aren't
necessarily checked very often.

Steve


from_name: poore5 at adelphia.net

subject: [WikiEN-l] Oversight log

body:
---- George Herbert <george.herbert at gmail.com> wrote:
<Snip>
> What worries me is the apparent prevailing opinion that this is such a
> terrible, serious problem.  I don't see it that way, based on my prior
> internet experience.  I don't see it that way, based on the cases I
> have seen on Wikipedia in the last year.  I don't see it as necessary
> to exaggerate how serious a problem it is, to justify continuing to
> remove the material and block or ban accounts which post it.

English poet Thomas Gray: ?Where ignorance is bliss, / ?Tis folly to be wise.??

Sydney Poore aka FloNight


subject: [WikiEN-l] Spoiler Boilerplates

body:
On 6/23/06, Zero <megamanzero521 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> How on earth can a encyclopedia spoil a reader by being an encyclopedia...? Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, not a forum for netquitette relations. I humbly beg the community to clarify upon this matter and reconsider carefully the precense of this useless template upon wikipedia.

This is a perennial argument. Yes, we are an encyclopaedia. No, I
don't feel that that goal is impaired by us warning the user "You may
not want to read the following paragraph". For the same reason,
warnings when users will encounter graphic violent or pornographic
images seems appropriate.

Quite personally, I do avoid reading articles about certain books and
TV shows, because I know the spoiler warnings aren't well implemented.
Therefore, my experience as a reader is diminished, and Wikipedia's
goal is hampered to a small extent.

But hey, others disagree, and it's not ruining my life either.

Steve


from_name: Ryan Delaney

subject: [WikiEN-l] Spoiler Boilerplates

body:
On 6/23/06, Zero <megamanzero521 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> Obviously we all work toward building a great encyclopedia. But what do
> these have to do with that quality...? I'm quite confused by this. Days of
> discussion and not user in support of the template in question can provide
> one. Was there some demand by readers to implement this...? This seems quite
> utterly out of the boundries of a neutral editor at wikipedia to decide
> upon.
>

More importantly, why waste time arguing about this at all, when we could be
out writing articles?

Ryan


from_name: Guy Chapman aka JzG

body:
On Fri, 23 Jun 2006 21:32:22 +0200, "Steve Bennett"
<stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:

>I agree with you that we are going to "get hoaxed", but I'm not sure
>that insisting on sources is even going to help that much - not all
>sources can be easily checked, and even those that can be, aren't
>necessarily checked very often.

It's a recipe for FUTON bias.  I remember an article on Tuatafa Hori;
it was vigorously asserted that there was a source, a rare French book
as I recall, which was published in very small numbers and is not
available in more than a handful of libraries.  Assuming good faith
took a bit of a dent...

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


subject: [WikiEN-l] Non-office OFFICE actions

body:
On Fri, 23 Jun 2006 11:24:29 -0600, Fred Bauder <fredbaud at ctelco.net>
wrote:

>I suggest focusing on his political activities. If they are not
>notable, the personal details of his life are not either.

Tony Sidaway closed the last "real" AfD as keep because he was
secretary of the Monday Club.  I thought this a tenuous claim to fame,
myself.  Actually the theft, appeal, imprisonment and custody battle
for his daughter which the theft funded are far and away the most
interesting things about him.  Otherwise he's just a generic "darkies
go home" far-right Tory.

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


subject: [WikiEN-l] Non-office OFFICE actions

body:
On Fri, 23 Jun 2006 21:17:41 +0100, "Andrew Gray" <shimgray at gmail.com>
wrote:

>* the BBC, bless them, archive every single alteration made to their
>site at commitment, so you could prove this if you had to

I suspect the reason is precisely that - well, you could prove it if
you had to :-)

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


subject: [WikiEN-l] Spoiler Boilerplates

body:
On Fri, 23 Jun 2006 15:49:09 -0400, "Kirill Lokshin"
<kirill.lokshin at gmail.com> wrote:

>I suspect, though, that it matters to our *readers*  (you know, those
>people we're supposed to be writing this thing for).

The boat sinks...

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


from_name: maru dubshinki

body:
On 6/23/06, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
> This is where the divide seems to hit. Those who work in the
> Foundation Office, and receive complaints from the outside world, tend
> to have a harsher view of things, arguing that all unsourced
> statements about living people, for instance, should be immediately
> removed. Those who do a lot of editing without hearing from the
> outside world tend to find this position untenable and impractical.
> Worse, they (we?) tend to just ignore it, since the number of people
> advocating it is tiny, and they haven't really made much significant
> noise about it yet.
>
> I'm yet to see any meaningful common ground found between these
> positions, but I'm optimistic we can find a solution.
>
> Steve

There's plenty of common ground- this is an immediatist/eventualist
split, after all, and we all know that one day the Immediate moment
will have become the eventual. (In other words, as time passes and
articles improve, this issue will become less and less important until
it only makes sense in rare individual articles).

~maru


from_name: Mark Gallagher

body:
G'day Cobb,

> stevertigo. Thu, 22 Jun 2006 10:11:12 -0700 (PDT), wrote:
>
>>I dont know what else to say. Either we have a culture
>>which respects NPOV or we do not.
>
> We don't. We have policies and guidelines... but the
> admins who close AFDs don't read them, and if they
> do they don't act on them. We have a deletion process
> that is deliberately opaque and awkward to prevent
> people from using it and getting the idea that deleting
> anything from WIkipedia is a good thing.

Utter bollocks.  The vast majority of complaints about those of us who
close AfDs come from people who wouldn't know policy if they tripped
over it.  "He didn't count votes!  Make him count votes!"

> We also have large chunks of Wikipedia with hardly
> any editors applying the basic rules of Wikipedia.
> These areas are controlled by organised groups
> who make Wiki-life extremely difficult for anyone
> who tries to clean it up. Editors with the best
> intentions but without the stomach for a fight try their
> best and end up being driven off after being
> reported for vandalism or 3RR violations, or
> just being wiki-stalked and hassled on any
> article they edit.

Oh, yes?  I assume you have an example at the ready, because surely
no-one would have the gall to pull a statement like that out of their
arse with no proof of it being true.

> To clean up these areas, any legitimate editor
> has to have the patience of a saint and an
> encylopedic (heh) knowledge of the Wikipedia
> rules system. He's got to be able to put up with the
> most extreme provocation and obvious bad faith...
> all the while smiling sweetly and assuming good
> faith while dozens of sock-puppets play stupid
> games. He's got to have the support of a group
> of editors, or a tame admin, to help him out too.

Most Wikipedians find that the support of other editors is trivial to
achieve, if they're willing to treat their fellow Wikipedians with
respect.  If it was not, we would not have thousands of editors who have
been here for months, years.

As for knowledge of the Wikipedia rules, that's rot, too.  Knowing how
to behave appropriately in a collaborative environment is useful (hint:
don't be a dick), and having respect for our core principles, like
neutrality and respect for copyright, even more so.  Wikipedia has too
many rules, true, but you can get by quite happily without them if you
just use common sense and keep in mind our principles.

I suspect, from what (admittedly little) I've seen from you, that you
have neither the backing of policy nor common sense when you ride out on
your high horse desperate to delete someone else's hard work.  Despite
this minor issue, which others would consider crippling, you still
insist on stamping your foot and complaining that you never get your own
way.  And as for "consensus building", well, it's a beautiful dream, but
you actually have to talk to people (as opposed to ranting at them for
being too stupid to agree with you).

> Naturally, most editors don't have this. So the
> way Wikipedia is set up right now, under the
> auspices of welcoming newbies, is a vandal
> paradise that treats legitimate editors
> as an endless renewable resource. it uses them
> up and throws them away by giving them little or
> no support and instead it defends the rights of
> vandals to edit. It even makes the finding out
> of who is socking up a tedious and officious
> process... just for that extra kick in the teeth
> for legitimate editors who do play by the rules
> and are faced with those who don't.

Given the state of your earlier paragraphs, I'm rather surprised to find
this one makes a modicum of sense.

I don't think we're too supportive of vandals or trolls.  We have a
tendency to give some trolls more time than they deserve if they're
clever enough to take up wiki-lawyering, but that's a by-product of the
Process Wonk faction on Wikipedia.  We *are*, however, guilty --- very
guilty indeed --- of taking good editors for granted.  It *is* important
not to go biting newbies and generally being bureaucratic dicks for fear
of them turning out to be "vandals", but we shouldn't do that at the
expense of good editors.  There's no reason, however, for that to be an
either-or proposition; any time legitimate editors are treated poorly
for the sake of deliberately harmful editors, it's basically a stuff-up.
  We aren't forced to choose between a newbie who could potentially be a
good editor, and current good editors; and when we do, we're making a
Mistake, regardless of which side we take.

As for the time it takes to run a checkuser, well, there are certain
people who consider privacy important.  Crazy, I know.  What, do they
have something to hide?  All right-thinking, red-blooded human beings
owe it to themselves --- and us, damn it! --- to look under the beds of
these people immediately, in case a Commie is hiding there.

> In summary, the system is broken. But you won't
> get any sense on this mailing list, because most
> of the people here don't actually edit Wikipedia
> these days. They just pontificate and have faith
> in some mystical power of the Wiki.

True, dat.  It's left to people like you, the brave reformers fighting
the good fight against us crusty old bureaucrats to try to pull
Wikipedia out of its death spiral.  Cobblers---sorry, I mean Cobb---we,
who are about to die, salute you!

--
Mark Gallagher
"What?  I can't hear you, I've got a banana on my head!"
- Danger Mouse


subject: [WikiEN-l] Non-office OFFICE actions

body:
On 6/23/06, Andrew Gray <shimgray at gmail.com> wrote:
> This field is complex. I don't know what I'm talking about, but I
> recognise that fact. I would be really quite grateful if you did the
> same.
>

Yeah ok I conceed the point

--
geni


from_name: Mark Ryan

subject: [WikiEN-l] Oversight log

body:
Okay, I appreciate that listing the article name may prompt
investigative types to go searching for the deleted revisions on
dumps. But to close off all public record of this potentially
GFDL-violating tool is very worrying to me.

Is there *any* reason not to have a bare log of oversight actions?
Even without the page title, I'd like to see who removes an edit and
when, with a reason (like "Personal Information"). Perhaps with some
sort of unique tag (in the style of the autoblocks). This information
would in no way give away the version removed or from what page it was
removed, and it would reveal who was using the tools the most. Like:

22:17, 23 June 2006 Jimbo Wales removed a revision (ID #123456789).
Reason given was: "Personally identifiable information"

Any reason why that is unacceptable?

~Mark Ryan


from_name: Jitse Niesen

subject: [Wikitech-l] texvc improvements?

body:
On 6/20/06, Uwe Brauer <oub at mat.ucm.es> wrote:
>
> I am not sure whether is the right place to discuss it, but are there
> any plans to improve the implementation of texvc for the display of
> mathematical formula [...]

My plans for the display of formulae are described on
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Blahtex . The main goal is to implement
the generation of MathML. As a consequence, inline expressions will
use the same font size as the surrounding text.

We have no immediate plans for \label{} and \ref{}, but I agree that
this would be very useful. I've made a note of your suggestion.

Jitse


body:
On 6/23/06, Simetrical <Simetrical+wikitech at gmail.com> wrote:
> So what to do with leading spaces?  Well, one common and important use
> for leading spaces is to make some kind of chart or diagram, to indent
> elements so they fit together properly.  HTML provides the <pre> tag
> for that: it overrides the default space-compressing behavior and
> PREserves all spaces, line breaks, etc. exactly as entered.  So, if
> you knew HTML, you could make such a chart with <pre>, but what if you
> didn't?  Well, with this markup, just try entering it and presto, it
> will work, because your leading spaces clue the parser into the fact
> that you want it to display with spacing preserved.

Thanks for this explanation. I don't quite follow the logical step
that was made between "one common and important use" and "the way this
should work", but, hey. In practice, in Wikipedia, this "common and
important" use is basically never used - we certainly don't want ASCII
art in our articles. A much more "common" use would actually be to
allow quoting of other material. Grey box, border and indent: yes.
Monospace and no word-wrap: no. As I say, on the rare instances that
someone actually wants ascii art, they could always use <PRE>
manually.

But yeah, that's just the way things work out. I seem to recall we had
a discussion about a syntax element to make quoting easier recently,
but nothing much came out of it.

Steve


subject: [WikiEN-l] Non-office OFFICE actions

references:
<oh4n92psoq7kh0i8pfj4uajbtol35h9e4l@4ax.com>
	<449BB1B8.4010206@gmail.com>
	<f80608430606230417l2eb80df4ud49e76cc6f402cb@mail.gmail.com>
	<8g8o92t8src8i7d1vnd63bs97332kvstmr@4ax.com>
	<266BE410-3DEE-4CE1-8A53-42E7C30CD0E4@ctelco.net>
	<1fko92105urho03bj2tb0bimt8e7jgfta8@4ax.com>
	<2171AA54-EA67-499F-BA41-5FB41BEEA1F0@ctelco.net>

body:
On Fri, 23 Jun 2006 15:17:18 -0600, Fred Bauder <fredbaud at ctelco.net>
wrote:

>I'm sorry, but I was a divorce lawyer. While this case is a little
>extreme, a person acting nutty during a highly contested divorce is
>not notable.

How about a person who was a prominent member of the Law'n'Order
party, a rentamouth for the far right, who was caught with his fingers
in the till to the tune of over ?100,000 - with the public purse as
victim?

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


body:
On 6/23/06, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 6/24/06, maru dubshinki <marudubshinki at gmail.com> wrote:
> > There's plenty of common ground- this is an immediatist/eventualist
> > split, after all, and we all know that one day the Immediate moment
> > will have become the eventual. (In other words, as time passes and
> > articles improve, this issue will become less and less important until
> > it only makes sense in rare individual articles).
>
> Uh, is it not true that the number of bad articles is growing faster
> than the number of good articles? I'd always taken that as a given,
> based on our still rapid growth in sheer number of articles.
>
> Also, I'm just generally not comfortable with the situation that the
> Foundation Office wants things one way, but everyone else seems to
> want them another way (and everyone else is winning)...
>
> Steve

Yeah, but our growth in articles is also slowing down from the
exponential growth rates we'd previously enjoyed (or so my tea-leaf
reading of the statistics would indicate).

As for your second point, so what? The Foundation Office exists for
the sake of the "everyone else", not the other way around.

~maru


subject: [WikiEN-l] semi-stuff (was Re:  New York Times article)

body:
G'day Jimmy,

> Mark Gallagher wrote:
>
>>We've all seen users completely blocked because of a regrettable
>>tendency to upload copyvios or create POV forks or move-war.  Now, they
>>could be otherwise intelligent people who think they know about
>>copyright law but don't; or useful contributors when they're being
>>supervised by other people on controversial articles, but who feel free
>>to let rip on their "own" fork articles; or people who insist on
>>treating the "move" button as a toy and causing unnecessary work for
>>admins and unnecessary stress for non-admins.  In that last case, Curps'
>>bot caught at least one offender, but that's hardly reliable.
>
> It is unclear to me that there really are that many cases of people who
> are extremely annoying in some areas, but whose help would be so
> valuable in other areas.

Images is the obvious case.  There are *many* editors on Wikipedia who
have no clue about copyright ("it was on the web, therefore it's public
domain"; "the picture looks fair [i.e. pretty], therefore it comes under
Fair Use"; etc.), but are otherwise extremely good editors.  Some of
them might get blocked for being idiots, and we lose their valuable
efforts.  For the most part, though, people look and say "do we *really*
want to do send away this excellent editor?"  We shouldn't have to make
that choice.

There's other editors who are incredibly good at, say, numismatics, or
trams (AmE: "shopping baskets"), but who *also* have a deep and abiding
love for Joseph McCarthy and tend to rant about left-wing conspiracies
in the space where our neutral article on the man is supposed to go.
I'm not convinced that banning them from highly emotive areas of
Wikipedia only isn't worth it, if we get to keep their calm and rational
work on the mating habits of an obscure species of ape, say.

>>It would be nice to be able to prevent certain people from doing
>>obnoxious things without blocking them completely.  We shouldn't have to
>>block otherwise sane users because of a minor foible.
>
> Perhaps.  But "being an idiot" is not normally a tendency which is
> confined to easily identifiable areas of activity.

We have admins with such qualities.

(Come to that, it might be nice to prevent certain admins from blocking,
deleting, protecting, or saying "I'm an admin, I know these things" ;-))

> I am not totally opposed to the concept, but we have to think carefully.
>  Every change to the tools gives rise to changes in the equilibria.
> Will we have to sit through watching some troll be successively banned
> from one action after another as people cry "Why prevent him from
> editing articles about Chemotherapy? All he was doing was uploding
> goatse to articles on homosexuality?  He might be a good user."

A fair point, and while it's one I'd be keen to argue ... erm ... well,
I see the way that A7 is being used to argue for borderline deletions.
And I see the way that semi-protection requested needlessly.  And I see
the way that people on AfD complain when someone removes {{prod}} from
an article.  And I see the way that Good Articles has become a
stepping-stone to Featured Article status, rather than a recognition of
good articles in their own right.  And ... let's face it, whenever
someone comes up with a good idea (not that I'm saying this is a good
idea; just that I thought of it ;-)), someone else will come along with
a way to bollocks it up completely.

The question is: is it worth it?

--
Mark Gallagher
"What?  I can't hear you, I've got a banana on my head!"
- Danger Mouse


subject: [WikiEN-l] Spoiler Boilerplates

body:
On 6/23/06, Zero <megamanzero521 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Well that's another hassle. They are not only inappropriate, they're being used incorrectly. What does it matter to the encycloepdia if someone reads a plot twist...? That's what we do.

We spoil stories? As a reader, I don't like it when the encyclopaedia
spoils my future appreciation of something. As an editor, I wish to
avoid readers that experience.

But look, I'm against graphic pornography in Wikipedia, as well. Not
because I'm some kind of prude, but because it makes Wikipedia less
pleasant, and less useful to certain readers.

Steve


subject: [WikiEN-l] Spoiler Boilerplates

body:
On 6/23/06, Kirill Lokshin <kirill.lokshin at gmail.com> wrote:
> I suspect, though, that it matters to our *readers*  (you know, those
> people we're supposed to be writing this thing for).  It costs us
> nothing to add a template to an article about a movie noting that the
> surprise ending is revealed; and while most readers may not care,
> there are some that, desiring to avoid reading such materials, will
> thank us for our foresight in providing such a warning.

And it would be so nice if we would say "THE ENDING IS REVEALED IN THE
NEXT PARAGRAPH"

The boat sinks.

"YOU CAN START READING AGAIN"

As opposed to stamping "Somewhere in this article, the plot of this
film may be discussed" indiscriminately on all film or TV articles.
Which is worth zero to anyone.

Steve


body:
My problem is that not requiring a warning encourages gaming by making it
easier for a more savvy edit warrior to take advantage of another editor and
play "gotcha". This is particularly the case as most editors aren't aware of
the new "unrelated reverts" interpretation. If someone is savvy enough to
complain on ANI/3RR they should be capable of giving someone a warning
first, especially if they are a participant in the edit war.

On 6/23/06, Zero <megamanzero521 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>
>
> Tony Sidaway <f.crdfa at gmail.com> wrote:  On 6/23/06, Conrad
> Dunkerson  wrote:
> Some people do
> > indeed get blocked under 3RR without having any idea what it is.
>
> >>If they are blocked, they would presumably be aware that they had >>been
> >>engaged in edit warring.  It's pretty difficult to get oneself blocked
> >>f one persistently fails to misbehave.
>
>   I'm inclined to agree with Tony on this matter. Tea and crumpets are
> good for the mind, good for body, good for the spirit.
>
>   Joining the Harmonious editing club might assist in refraining
> from  edit warring. My "membership" has assisted in keeping the urge
> to  revert in content disputes to an appropriate manner. -Zero
>
>
>
> ---------------------------------
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> today!
> _______________________________________________
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>


subject: [WikiEN-l] Oversight log

body:
On 23/06/06, jayjg <jayjg99 at gmail.com> wrote:
> How would it violate GFDL, and what would the "worrying" consequences be?

I said it was "potentially GFDL-violating". Surely you, as a member of
the ArbCom, know of the attribution requirements of the GFDL. Carnildo
pointed out an example of one such situation earlier in this thread.
And I'm a little concerned that you don't seem to think violation on
our part of the GFDL would be worrying in itself.

> Of what benefit would that information be, and to whom?  What would
> the subsequent action be, some editor saying "why did Jimbo remove
> that revision on June 23"?  He's already said why, Personal
> Information.  This suggestion would just turn the log into a fishing
> expedition for distrustful editors.

I see what you mean about the fishing trip. But I still feel a listing
of these actions would be beneficial purely for the statistics it
would show.

I think you are under the mistaken delusion that members of the ArbCom
are automatically trusted by the community. I know less than the half
the people given this oversight power, and of those, I trust even
fewer. These people (including yourself) have been given access to
what was effectively a developer-only action, and are asking the rest
of us to "just trust you" that you'll all make sure you're all doing
the right thing. That doesn't cut the mustard with me. I trust the
developers I used to get to do this manually far more than most of the
people now afforded this power. If User X is doing 95% of the
oversight revision deletions, I'd like to know about it.

This is different to the CheckUser logs because this has content
implications, not privacy implications.


body:
On 6/23/06, Ben Yates <bluephonic at gmail.com> wrote:
> Five hundred!  It took me years to get there, and I spend far too much
> time on Wikipedia.  What about 75?

Heh. It took me 5 weeks, of which 2 had a grand total of 4 edits between them.

100-150 sounds reasonable to me, in line with "assuming good faith" -
we can always revoke these hypothetical priveleges again once they've
demonstrated bad faith or simple incompetence.

Steve