from_name: Karl Wick

subject:
[Textbook-l] WikiBooks Interview with Mark Horner of the Free High
	School Science Text (FHSST) project

body:
The following interview is with Mark Horner, the person heading the
Free High School Science Text (FHSST) project. This project has the
goal of providing free science textbooks to all of the high school
students in South Africa. These books, currently under development,
are being uploaded to and/or developed on Wikibooks.

Karl: Mark, thank you for taking time out of your Ph.D. research to
answer these email questions. Our first one: Tell us just a bit about
yourself. Where are you from? Where are you now? What is your research
about?

Mark:

Firstly, thanks for the opportunity to talk about the project. I
really appreciate it.
I'd also like to say up front that I am not the only person
responsible for where things
stand and a lot of people have done a lot to help and keep things going.

I am a South African PhD student registered at the University of Cape
Town (UCT, http://www.uct.ac.za). I am currently spending some time at
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (http://www.lbl.gov)
in California where I work on the STAR experiment which is housed at Brookhaven
National Laboratory in NY as part of the RHIC facility
(http://www.bnl.gov/RHIC/). My research is to try
deduce the properties of the medium created in the Au+Au collisions by extending
the work in this preprint: http://arxiv.org/abs/nucl-ex/0501016. Here is a
more user friendly link: http://www.bnl.gov/RHIC/heavy_ion.htm

Before I start to bore everyone, I think that's enough about what I do
as a "day job". Unfortunately it doesn't leave me
as much time as I would like for FHSST.

K: How did the Free High School Science Text project get started?

M:

I was a summer student at CERN in October 2002 and the PhD students in my group
were all discussing how it would be so much better to have a consolidated set of
notes for Physics 3. I floated the idea of a collaborative effort to
write either a 3rd year
Physics textbook or a high school textbook and there was more
enthusiasm for the high
school book. The reason we thought there was an opening for a high
school book at all
came down to an experience I had at the Grahamstown Science Festival
(http://www.scifest.org.za/) in 2002. I was demonstrating
some wave properties as part of the UCT stand when a group of school
students came to me with a notebook
and a pen and asked me to write down everything I'd told them during
the demonstration.
They said they didn't have textbooks and had understood more about
waves during the
demonstration than during their lessons. That was quite an eye-opener.

I also feel that education really is the key to any sort of
sustainable, peaceful future for any
country and that's one of my personal motivations for not giving up. I
believe that an investment in
education is an investment in your own future. Southern Africa is
relatively stable for the first time and now is our opportunity to try
to add momentum to
the education movements.

Another thing that I really like about the project is that it isn't
competing with other education
initiatives, but developing a resource for them to use. Education
initiatives need all the support
they can get and forming yet another tutoring organisation won't have
the same impact as developing content
all other initiatives can use. I like to think we are filling a useful
and fundamental niche.

K: Who is working on the project? Are they educators, students, someone else?

M:

Anyone and everyone who wants to. We try to accomodate anyone who
wants to make a contribution.
Most of the work has been written by graduate students  but we do have
teachers, undergrads, professors
and industry professionals amongst our contributors. We also have a
very widespread contributor base. For
a long time we had mostly South Africans but that has changed quite a
lot over the last 2-3 months.

K: How many people are currently involved?

M:

We have a relatively long list of contributors but only about 25
active contributors at any one time. We are always
looking for people who are interested in making a contribution of any
sizei; every bit counts and it certainly adds up
over time.

K: What is the timetable for the first book to be done? When do you
expect to see the books printed and in use in the classroom?

M:

We should have Physics finished by the end of this year and released
for print by
the middle of next year. Its very difficult to put timelines on
development because
we have a wide range of volunteers and things take time. There will be
some pilot distributions
during 2006 and we should have a few thousand copies of Physics,
Mathematics and Chemistry in
circulation for the beginning of the 2007 school year (January in SA).

K: Where does the funding come from for this project?

M:

At the moment we haven't tried very hard to raise any money. Our
hosting is free on Savannah as we use
the GFDL. All the recruiting has been by word-of-mouth or email. We
have registered a non-profit
organisation in South Africa which is, for practical purposes, a
prerequisite for receiving funding from
any corporate sponsors.

We are currently working on our first real attempt to raise money. We
need to have someone employed
by the organisation at least part-time in 2006 as we will need to run
pilot distributions, raise money,
organise printing, run competitions and many other things that the
current volunteer administrators
just won't be able to keep up with.

We will approach
large corporations, who do sponsor education initiatives, as well as
the national lottery. A more grass-roots
approach we would also like to try get moving is that schools raise
money from their local communities to order
our books directly from the printer. A project where we match the
money raised might help get communities more
active in supporting their schools. Obviously we will do our best to
raise money to completely cover the costs
of distributing to schools in extremely poor areas and these schools
will be our priority.

K: What would be your definition of success for this project?

M:

Two things:
1) We make a complete set of textbooks available free of royalties and they
are widely used in SA schools. They will always be available through
print-on-demand for anyone who can raise
money for a print. Even through print-on-demand we estimate that the
cost of the books would be less than 40% of
current books.

2) Widespread adoption of our content as a starting point for other
education initiatives to build their
own books, exercises, lesson plans etc. We already have had some
success on this front and so the future
looks really bright.

K: Can you describe the FHSST textbook development process?

M:

I am nervous of calling anything our development process before we
actually finish a book but here is
our (my) current feeling for how it is going to go. We need 3 pieces
to meet the spirit of the syllabus in SA. We
must have the core content with worked examples, we must have
experimental and project activities and
we must introduce a large body of information regarding real world applications.

Each book has a single coordinator who is also a member of the
administration team.
Our first approach is to collect all the core content with worked
examples. To do this we assign individuals
small sections to write with basic guidelines. The coordinator tries
to keep things as coherent as possible
given that it is being written by a large group of people. We try to
keep the language usage and style
as consistent as possible.

Once the core content, which is not specific to SA, is done we rotate
editing of chapters through the authors, checking
everything. Hopefully every chapter would be read by at least 5 people
and checked thoroughly. These editors would have
stricter style guidelines to impose.

While this is going on we contact individuals and companies with a
call for essays of real-world applications for the books.
These are modular and country specific. To make a version for another
country I would replace all the essays with essays from
people in that country.

Then it goes to one qualified editor to check that the text is
coherent and consistent and the experiments and projects are
added.

Then we will trial the book with a few teachers and get final feedback
from them. This would be last set of changes before
we pilot the books with students.

K: How did the partnership with Tuxlabs come about?

M:

They had just got close to the 100 mark for labs built and were
looking for proper education content
to put on their servers since their labs are not necessarily connected
to the internet. They did some searching online and decided we had the
most content that was
actually going to be useful to them and so they phoned us one day to
ask if we'd be keen to meet. One of
our objectives is to try to work with other organisations, educational
initiatives competing is a real waste
of resources. After a meeting we agreed that we'd help them as much as we could.

They had been trying to hire people to write content but the prospect
of a free license had scared most
potential authors off.

K: What role do you think the Wikibooks community can play in the
development of these books?

M:

I think that a large community like Wikibooks could be an incredible
resource for writing
the core content and developing worked examples. Harnessing the power
of such a large
community effectively would allow us to develop books very quickly. I
think Wikibooks could ultimately
play a massive role in addressing educational deficiencies all over the world.

The Wikibooks logo says "Think free. Learn free.", so I think we're
all in the same business, making knowledge
available to all. We've just picked a specific group that needs
specific information which
should make a massive difference to their future.

K: I think an email of mine convinced you to start the development of
the FHSST Biology book directly online. How do you think that
developing a book from scratch on Wikibooks will effect the process?

M:

I think there are two massive benefits which come to mind immediately,
ease of development
for people of different technological backgrounds and a large
community of active individuals who
care about the same things.

Let me elaborate, we found that there can be significant teething
problems for people from a Windows/Word
only background to move to working on LaTeX documents available via
CVS. We do not want to restrict volunteers
to people who know how to use CVS and LaTeX. Different scientific
communities use different software. Amongst
mathematicians and physicists I have found that CVS and LaTeX are
quite common, but amongst the biologists they
are almost unheard of. Forcing CVS and LaTeX use would severely
decrease our potential contributor base. Contributing
through Wikibooks requires a browser and a small learning curve
regarding syntax. Its a much smaller hurdle than
learning all LaTeX syntax, how to use CVS and all the other nuances
that show up. The online help also reduces the workload on the
administrators of FHSST to help individual authors.

I hope that development on Wikibooks will prove to be faster, more
efficient and less stressful for everyone involved.

A large fraction of people aren't really interested in developing free
textbooks. Wikibooks brings together
a large number of like-minded people which is great. There is a
community of people out there who are dedicated
to this worthy cause and we can definitely achieve more working together.

My only concern, and it may stem from not having spent enough time working on
Wikibooks and getting a good feel for things, is how to create a
feeling of community around a single book. As part
of the FHSST project we have a mailing list for each book for general
discussion. I know about talk
pages and watching a page on Wikibooks but I feel that mailing lists
get the core discussions to
people faster, requiring less active effort on the part of the author.
To produce a
textbook, cohesion and consistent notation and language style are very important
and I think the best way to ensure this is to get the authors involved in
discussion. These issues aren't as important for a project like Wikipedia but
to produce a textbook that will be used in a classroom they need to be
addressed. By doing so we address one of the first concerns raised by
people when
they hear that the books were written by volunteers.

K: Who will be the people using these books first? All public high
school students in South Africa, or all high school students in
general?

M:

In reality we will need to build a base of support and prove ourselves before we
will be able to raise enough money to print books for all students,
though that is the ultimate
goal. We will make our books available from the printer at the cost of
only the printing so students/schools who can afford them
can just order them directly. For the schools that really need them we
will need to raise money
to cover printing costs. We would like to support as many other
education initiatives as possible
and so we would like to distribute books to schools that are involved
with partner education initiatives
first. These initiatives include tuXlabs and iKamva
(http://www.ikamva.kabissa.org/), specifically because the tuXlabs
schools will have the FHSST
content available on their computers and the iKamva tutors will have
helped trial the FHSST content.

>From that base we would need to demonstrate that our texts are well
received by the students, make a difference and have the support
of the teachers all on a large scale. When we can do this we can raise
money to expand into more rural schools, though we
won't be restricting use in schools in more affluent areas but we'll
first go where we are needed most.

K: The FHSST website states that the primary goal of the project is to
provide free science texts to high school students in South Africa.
Providing these texts to Wikibooks will make them available to the
whole world. What effect do you think this will have?

M:

Ultimately it would be great if there were FHSST textbooks used in all
countries. All
we would have to do is replace the essays with ones more relevant to
that country. In a sense
we have a modular textbook. It would also be nice to make a
translation project. All
of this must wait until we at least have some books written. If we
spread ourselves too thin I think
things might fall apart and nothing will be achieved.

Our objective is to write books to make a difference in SA but at no
point did we not want to make them available
to everyone, we are well aware of the implications of the GFDL. Our
focus was just to make an investment
in education in our country. The way I see it an investment in
education is an investment in your own future.

K: Are the books being written according to South African curriculum
standards? Are these closely related to those of other countries?

M:

I am not a curriculum expert so I can't comment much on how the SA
curriculum compares to other countries.
We have adopted the approach of  fulfilling all the syllabus
requirements and more. Everything that is mentioned
in the SA syllabus will be contained in our books and more. We felt
that if we wrote a book which wasn't
adequate preparation for a student to enter university then we have
failed. We have included
any topics which we feel can be introduced in high school and would
help better prepare students
for university. This content will all be labelled as optional if it is
not in the syllabus. Hopefully it will help all
the motivated, diligent students out there that want to know more and
go further. We have taken some guidance
regarding additional content from the UK syllabus as well as from
university students.

It also means that if the syllabus should change by any reasonable
amount in the next few years, our books
should still have sufficient scope to cover the changes. This would
save unnecessary reprinting of books.

K: What will happen to the other high school science textbooks
currently being used in South Africa? Are most of the books used
currently imported from outside the country?

M:

A large number of textbooks are written and printed locally, however, they are
still costly.
One key point to note is that we have a new syllabus, with an
outcomes-based structure, starting with a phased implementation in
2006 and so all schools will need new books
to cater for significant changes in the syllabus.

It has been asked of me how I feel about competing with publishing
houses for their market and
for the most part I feel that our target audience are precisely the
people who fall outside the
real market for big publishing houses. Its clear that they haven't
stepped up to the challenge of
getting books to all students and I feel education is too important
for us to stand idly by.

In the long run our efforts to strengthen communities would enlarge
the potential markets for the
big publishing houses and when schools have more than adequate
financial resources they will buy the
books they feel are best for the students and not the cheapest books.
This would mean that it would
be a more than fair competition for a large publishing house.

K: What percentage of South Africans achieve at least a high school
level of education?

M:

This I had to research and I found a nice page documenting the situation in
South Africa. Here is a short quote and the link.

"While 65% of whites over 20 years old and 40% of Indians have a high school
or higher qualification, this figure is only 14% among blacks and 17% among
the coloured population."

http://www.southafrica.info/ess_info/sa_glance/education/education.htm

One note to avoid confusion, the term coloured has a different meaning
in SA to what it
does in the US. I refer you to this page for an
explanation of what it means in a South African context:

http://www.southafrica.info/ess_info/sa_glance/demographics/population.htm

K: How would you compare and contrast FHSST to the MIT OpenCourseWare
project (Massachusetts Institute of Technology plan to make its course
materials available on the web)?

M:

We have quite different target audiences, although I think that
web-based coursework is a great idea.
We hope to eventually make a difference to kids who've never seen a
computer. We really want to support initiatives working in
extremely poor areas. By educating people in those areas you work
towards sustainable development. In a
few educated generations the communities might be strong enough,
economically, to support schools with computers
and internet access but there are many schools who have nothing like that now.

Of course, the content will also be available for free on the Web, for anyone
with access to a computer to download and print in any/all countries.

K: What are the biggest challenges that you see facing the FHSST project?

M:

At the moment we have many ideas and some good solid plans but we
don't have the time to carry
them out. If we manage to raise sufficient funding then we will hire
someone to work on the project
at least part-time. This will improve our turnaround time for all
administrative issues. It will also
allow us to do more active recruiting and have a single person to
start negotiating prices for printing
etc. We can also put some of our ideas, like scientific writing
competitions to raise content rapidly, into
action.

Once we have books we need to overcome the "you get what you pay for"
stigma but this will be relatively
easy if we can gain the support of organisations like the South
African Institute of Physics, a few members of which
are already involved with our Physics book.

Then we need to raise lots of money, but at least we'll be able to
print books for less than $3 per book!

K: What are the enemies to education and learning today? How are they
different in South Africa than in other (more developed) countries?

M:

Thats quite a question! There are many symptoms for problems in
education but I think
that we can bring it all down to one thing, complacency. People must
never become complacent
about education. If you do you'll only notice in 15 - 20 years time
and then it takes as long to
fix. The world needs to treat education as a mission critical
endeavour all the time, at all levels.
A strong education system will support so many other facets of society
by producing well-rounded,
well educated individuals.

It is not just about the government worrying about education;
communities need to support their schools and
never lose sight of the fact that the next generation will strengthen
or weaken their own society.

It is a concern that worldwide it seems corporations can monopolise
textbook markets, politics can affect what science is taught,
teacher and school budgets are being cut and there is no massive
outcry from the public.

We can't solve all these problems at once but, by working together, we
can create a community to support
education and hopefully turn the tide.

K: Mark, thank you very much for your effort and contribution in the
FHSST project, and your time in answering all of these questions.

M:

Thank you for the opportunity. I apologise that it took me so long to
answer all your questions.
I really hope that we can add something to the Wikibooks community by
ensuring that all the content we develop
is available on Wikibooks and is of high enough quality to be useful
to everyone.


list: wikitech-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Darwin Sadeli

subject: [Wikitech-l] The image dump seems to be corrupted

body:
Hi,

I encountered a problem when trying to download the english wikipedia
image dumps. First of all, the web page states that the size of the
dump is 16.7 GB. However, when I tried to download using wget, only
about 700 MB was downloaded. When I tried to extract the tar file, it
stops abruptly, giving error message that the end of file is
corrupted.

So, I wondered if the image dumps are actually corrupted or my method
of downloading is actually wrong and certain steps are required to
download the image dump. Please help! Thank you in advance for your
kind assistance.

Regards,
Darwin Sadeli


list: wikien-l

from_name: Roozbeh Pournader

subject: [WikiEN-l] Copyright situation

body:
I am having a problem with several Iran-related articles and photos.
Someone ([[User:Zereshk]]), who has posted a lot of text and pictures
copyrighted in Iran to the Wikipedia is claiming that:

"Iranian websites are not legally protected under International
copyright laws. Iran is not a member of WTO, nor a signatory to the
Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works,
and correspondingly does not adhere to International Copyright laws
itself. [...] Wikipedia (an American company) is not legally
responsible for anything even if something was copied from a website
from Iran." [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Roozbeh#Copyright_tags_are_unwarranted]

For the record, there are copyright laws in Iran, and it protects art,
literature, and software first distributed in Iran. There is no
restriction about material produced by the government either. The
government can claim copyright on things. I have a few books
copyrighted by the Iranian government and several websites of the
government claim copyright protection.

I seriously believe that the Wikimedia foundation should either: a)
refrain from using copyrighted material from Iran, or, b) stop
providing its content to readers in Iran.

Otherwise, it would be infringing the Iranian copyright law.

I wanted to ask here for any advice on where to pursue the matter, a
list, a wiki page, or with the foundation authorities. I need an
answer about this. If the Wikimedia foundation thinks it can copy
material copyrighted in Iran freely and provide them to Iranian
readers freely, I would want to know that. (It will also help us in
the Persian Wikipedia if that is the case, we will have a vast source
of free information that way.)

Roozbeh


from_name: Alphax

subject: [WikiEN-l] block open proxies only for non-logged-in users please

body:
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: RIPEMD160

David Gerard wrote:
> We have many remarkably high-quality editors, and even administrators and
> developers, on Wikipedia who are of high-school age. But just ask them
> about their schoolmates ...
>

I might add that University students are no different.

- --
Alphax                      |   /"\
Encrypted Email Preferred   |   \ /     ASCII Ribbon Campaign
OpenPGP key ID: 0xF874C613  |    X   Against HTML email & vCards
http://tinyurl.com/cc9up    |   / \
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.1 (MingW32)
Comment: Using GnuPG with Thunderbird - http://enigmail.mozdev.org

iD8DBQFC8b2R/RxM5Ph0xhMRA9MJAKCVC95PSX1rXp+5jEmVpwZKKnbhzwCgofQY
nt5OOYvWXS51p/O1+q/Zaho=
=l6dJ
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----


from_name: Setten, Joost van

subject: [Wikitech-l] Question: using Category namespace functions

body:
Hi there,

I have a question concerning the functions of the category namespace. This namespace automatically generates a list with subcategories and articles which are linked to this category. I have got the following question:

Is it possible to use these functions within another namespace? And if yes, how is this possible?

I really appreciate your help!

Thanks in advance !!!

Best regards,

Joost
The Netherlands

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from_name: steve v

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Example vs. Original research

body:
I had read that the 666 was on *The Queen's Tiara.

:\
SV

--- Skyring <skyring at gmail.com> wrote:

> On 8/3/05, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> > Skyring wrote:
> > > The difference is that some people actively
> argue that the earth is
> > > not a sphere, whereas those who argue that Paris
> is not the capital of
> > > France so far have kept their activities secret.
> > >
> > > If a fact is contentious, then it should be
> backed up with a cite.
> >
> > I can't agree with you that flat earthers
> constitute a sufficiently
> > respectable or large position that we need to
> treat the roundness of the
> > earth as the sort of fact that necessitates a
> citation.
>
> Why not? We put a bit of effort into debunking the
> Apollo hoax people,
> and they are equally round the bend wacko. There's a
> lot of material
> on wikipedia that is aimed at countering laughable
> notions. Take a
> look at Papal Tiara, for example - a featured
> article, apparently, yet
> it goes into some detail in countering the VFD claim
> - namely that
> there is an inscription on the Pope's crown which
> adds up to 666. This
> is just bizarre - there's no writing on the tiara
> and even if you
> could tot it up and get 666, then so bloody what?
>
> It's not just a cite, either. This thing has its own
> article, complete
> with photographs and circles and arrows and notes on
> the back
> explaining what the circles and arrows mean. Perhaps
> rather than
> voicing opposition to a notional cite, you should
> look into what sort
> of rubbish is appearing on your own site.
>
> If you want to appear consistent, that is.
> --
> Peter in Canberra
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

____________________________________________________
Start your day with Yahoo! - make it your home page
http://www.yahoo.com/r/hs


subject: [WikiEN-l] VFD (consolodated)

body:
Any newbie who has created an article which doesnt
quite fit may face VFD, which is (IIRC an old
comparison) like going to a restaurant only to be
introduced to the trash cans.

But I've since come to understand that just like
everybody needs an asshole, every Wikipedia needs a
VFD. The problem is when Montezuma's kicks in, and the
wholesome nutrition is flushed out with the dross and
detritus. WP needs some kind of anti-Montezuma's type
remedy --which just has to work and doesnt have to be
of a particular brand (or color). ATS, its great to
see people expressing their distaste for the subject,
and support the notion that WP needs a new "exit
strategy" --or at least a better working one.

But it's worrisome that the grand mailing list ppl are
rather incapable, disorganized, and without leadership
to do anything about it --such that Ed's rage against
the machine seems to be something symbolic of a
greater frustration rel. process failures to enforce
consensus, and how consensus is too weak to change
systemic trends. On the one hand its validating: WP,
even if it is more wiki than encyclopedia, isnt bad.
On the other hand, its frustrating because things,
ideally, could be so much more ideal.

-SV

Ray (Eclect) wrote: "that Ed's horoic effort" - Was
this a clever mix of horror and heroic?

--- Alex Regh <Alex.Here at gmx.net> wrote:

> Hi!
>
> On Mon, 01 Aug 2005 19:03:00 -0400, Daniel P. B.
> Smith wrote:
>
> >I suspect that very FEW newbies stumble across it.
>
> Even if they do, I suspect that they are more likely
> to stumble over the page
> of a single article, not the fast mess VfD as such
> is. And on single pages,
> VfD doesn't necessarily look that bad.
>
> Those newbies that start digging themselfs into
> policy pages and formal ways
> of resolving problems are probably the kind of
> people who have seens lots of
> crap before they ever came to WP.
>
> So I do suspect that the impact of VfD on Newbies is
> quite limited.
>
> Alex
> --
> If you don't go over the top,
> you can't see what's on the other side.
>         --- Jim Steinman ---
>
> Alex' Assorted Homepages: www.alexsite.de
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

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subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: NPOV: Fetus personhood - end of thread - I mean it

body:
Take your pick:

 Human fetus.
 Fetal being.
 Fetal person.
 Human tissue.
 Late third-trimester human tissue.
 Early first-trimester embryonic person.

SV

--- Habj <sweetadelaide at gmail.com> wrote:

> On 7/31/05, steve v <vertigosteve at yahoo.com> wrote:
> >  Not to say that a certain
> > political view is a crank view, but the view that
> the
> > fetus isnt human *is* a crank view --or mere
> political
> > terminology. What's the difference from an NPOV?
>
> FWIW, the clippings off my toe nails are also, by
> definition, human.
> Human doesn't equal life. Whether or not a featus is
> a life - that was
> the question, right?
>
> /Habj
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

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from_name: Tom Ritchford

subject: [Wikitech-l] *.caribbean-forum.com

body:
There seem to be a lot of these... is there not some Apache or
otherwise rule that can eliminate people who simply take Wikipedia
images with no accreditation?

Or, is it super-easy to add sites to the "using bandwidth without
contributing the the community" list?

On 8/3/05, Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com> wrote:
> Lars Sanders wrote:
> > This one seems to be dynamically proxying (?) direct from the
> > Wikipedia servers. You can see the "Recent Changes" live:
> >
> > http://anguilla.caribbean-forum.com/encyclopedia.php?title=Special:Recentchanges
> > http://dominica.caribbean-forum.com/encyclopedia.php?title=Special:Recentchanges
>
> Got em.
>
> -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>
>
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] I better shut up (was vfd RFC)

body:
Its just not the way to do things which are systemic
and process-related. These socially-based processes
need to be looked at wholistically to see how they
work in relation to what WP needs. Weve got Arbcom,
Medcom, RFC, VFD, Cleanup, etc. etc. etc, but little
general oversight powers to reform these. Perhaps even
a VFD committee would be useful:

Ive noticed a lot of one-time registrants can
influence a VFD - Lost Liberty Hotel should have been
toast, but without definitive process, consensus wound
up keeping it. (Thats an article which I think I'll
delete unilaterally. Again.)

Single leader = definitiveness, closed debate
Open democracy = open debate, lack of cohesion
It's somewhat cyclical.

SV

--- JAY JG <jayjg at hotmail.com> wrote:

>
> >The other 5% is making it a truly poisonous source
> of acrimony in the
> >Wikipedia-writing community. IMO. See further up
> the thread.
>
> Deleting the page seems like throwing the baby out
> with the bathwater to me.
>
> Jay.
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

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body:
Technical salvation:

Voting on *article quality rank* will allow for some
degree of handling. People might even be able to
mass-delete entire ranks of low-quality articles,
provided theyve seen enough votes. The difference
being that its not from removed from the article at
VFD, but part of the article's local aspects, just
like discussion, watch, etc. This removes the need for
executioners, and leaves only the trashtakers, who
dont need to argue, if they follow the guidelines.
Central lists would be viewable via sorted RC.

SV

--- Delirium <delirium at hackish.org> wrote:

> David Gerard wrote:
>
> >I'm not sure the current operation of VFD could
> fairly have been predicted
> >early enough to strangle it at birth. We need a
> deletion mechanism, but not
> >this one.
> >
> >
> It seemed to work well enough for the 8-10 months I
> was actively
> involved in voting/discussing/closing entries there.
>  There were still
> complaints, but mostly from "inclusionists" who
> disliked it simply
> because it was a venue for deleting articles.
>
> Is it significantly worse now, or just scales badly,
> or have the
> inclusionists simply gotten louder voices?  I must
> confess I haven't
> messed with it in 6 months or so just because I lost
> interest in most
> meta-pages and went back to writing articles. =]
>
> -Mark

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from_name: Cyberjunkie

subject: [WikiEN-l] Is this right?

body:
Hear, hear!

--en:Cyberjunkie

-----Original Message-----
From: Jimmy Wales [mailto:jwales at wikia.com]
Sent: Wednesday, 3 August 2005 9:26 PM
To: Skyring; English Wikipedia
Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Is this right?

Skyring wrote:
> I just took a look at [[George VI of the United Kingdom]], which has
> been protected by jtdirl, citing persistent vandalism. jtdirl is a
> participant on the lame edit war running on this and similar pages,
> and has naturally protected it in his preferred version.

An anonymous ip number vandalized the page repeatedly and the vandalism
has been reverted repeatedly by a few different people.  Eventually,
jtdirl protected the page.

This is so routine and boring that I can only interpret this email as
yet another instance of you harassing jtdirl -- you've already been in
trouble for this in the past -- doing it on the mailng list isn't likely
to be given any sympathy.

--Jimbo


from_name: Ryan Delaney

body:
Stephen Bain wrote:

>On 8/4/05, neil klopfenstein <rebrane at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>>The worst thing about VfD, in my opinion, is that once an article is
>>listed, it "can't" be merged/redirected/whatever else. It seems like
>>the majority of the articles on VfD are either no-brainer speedies or
>>no-brainer merges.
>>
>>My idea for a comprehensive VfD reform: create a 'problem article' tag
>>which replaces {{vfd}} and {{d}}. Admins can delete these articles if
>>they're problematic, editors can remove the tag if they substantially
>>rewrite the article or redirect it. Anything that keeps the problem
>>article tag for a week gets deleted.
>>
>>
>>
>
>Someone could tag an article {{vanity}}, for example, and an admin
>could delete it on sight, just like articles tagged {{delete}}, as
>long as it was clearly a vanity page. The ambiguous ones (and there
>are relatively few of those) could be shuffled off elsewhere, and
>dealt with on an individual basis.
>
>I like that idea.
>
>
>
I don't see how this idea will be able to deal with the case load.
Almost a thousand articles are nominated to VfD each week, and for the
vast majority of them, rightly so. More likely, the tagged articles
would just get forgotten and dropped into the abyss, I think.

- Ryan


from_name: David Gerard

body:
Delirium (delirium at hackish.org) [050804 11:18]:

> It seemed to work well enough for the 8-10 months I was actively
> involved in voting/discussing/closing entries there.  There were still
> complaints, but mostly from "inclusionists" who disliked it simply
> because it was a venue for deleting articles.

I think this paragraph exemplifies the current VFD's work in generating
acrimony in the Wikipedia-writing community.

- d.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Shrinking VFD (was I better shut up)

body:
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: RIPEMD160

Phroziac wrote:
> If VFD were kept, how about un-inlining the closed vfds, and giving
> links to them instead? Would make the CSDs clutter it somewhat less.
>

Several people use combinations of Javascript and CSS which allow this
to be done. With one click they can hide all closed VFDs.

- --
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Comment: Using GnuPG with Thunderbird - http://enigmail.mozdev.org

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1bnsi26CuWmSzFfuTgi0TQI=
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-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----


from_name: Stephen Bain

body:
On 8/4/05, Andrew Gray <shimgray at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 04/08/05, Delirium <delirium at hackish.org> wrote:
>
> > Is it significantly worse now, or just scales badly ...
>
> Some numbers:
> ...
> ie, 860 over a week at the end of July, versus
> ...
> at the end of January, a mere 468. Numbers don't included cases where
> many pages were listed together (there was one last week with over
> 20!), but I suspect they scale to the rest of VfD - so almost doubling
> in six months?
>

Remember the good old days when the whole of VfD fit on one page?

--
Stephen Bain
stephen.bain at gmail.com


subject:
[WikiEN-l] Why VFD is vexatious,
	pernicious and a collossal pain in the neck

body:
Poor, Edmund W (Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com) [050805 01:01]:

> We also insist on displaying "works in progress", which provides the
> tension. I think this is what provides the vector which spreads the
> poison which David Gerard was talking about (like mosquitoes carrying
> malaria).

I think that is a lot of the essential problem. That's one reason I'm keen
on the article rating scheme (if someone can write code Brion can live
with), as it'll greatly reduce the pressure to make the work-in-progress
presentable to the outside world as finished product.

(User:Geogre also came up with an idea that uses article rating as part of
a deletion mechanism, which is something I feared, but I think his proposal
is actually pretty good. See [[Wikipedia:Version System sketch]].)

- d.


list: textbook-l

from_name: Kit Langton

subject: [Textbook-l] Re: Wikiversity

body:
We should all take out our life savings and pool it all together..
then we can build a huge wikibook mansion and anyone can do anything
they want when they are in the house... and we can all fly and save
the world!!! WHAT ARE WE WAITING FOR!!! ROXORZ!!!

On Aug 4, 2005, at 3:48 AM, kelvSYC wrote:

>> A week ago, he asked for the creation of the english version of
>> wikiversity, which I opposed, as wikiversity is not a recognised
>> wikimedia foundation project and still under discussion (in spite
>> of the existence of german wikiversity). Aya other option was to
>> move all wikiversity content to meta. I only said
>> 1) content should be protected (ie, deleting it would be vandalism)
>> 2) the community should be asked its opinion before changing
>> deletion rules
>> 3) wikiversity is still under discussion.
>>
>> There is NO way this will (should) change overnight, and any new
>> project (if started) will be done slowly and carefully. Threats of
>> deleting content are not correct.
>>
>>
>
> Seems like a unilateral decision by [[User:Aya]] when I checked at
> [[Wikiversity]].  It doesn't have my backing at the very least, and
> it appears to have not been the backing of the majority.
> Nevertheless, Wikiversity has been target to many a vandal attack
> lately...
>
>
>> That goes for ANY changes to do on Wikibooks. They should be done
>> slowly, only after reaching community consensus, and certainly not
>> imposed. There is no hierarchy and no one has more rights than
>> others.
>> I'll add that many editors are currently very busy at Wikimania
>> and not able to answer requests for speedy decisions.
>>
>
> I have to admit that I was shocked to hear Wikiversity was
> protected, since it made no sense to me.  Still, WV still suffers
> from scoping issues that are still not fully resolved at this
> time.  One thing that I still do not understand is why Wikiversity
> is effectively a book in Wikibooks while the remainder of Wikibooks
> is effectively a section of Wikiversity...
>
> As for sweeping changes, Aya is admittedly more radical than most
> (he had proposed to delete [[WB:VFD]] at one point), although this
> is pretty standard in a community where "community consensus"
> usually means "after a few months, the only person saying anything
> on the subject is yourself".  Thus much of Wikibooks' own policy is
> typically done by "consensus of one" (merging [[Wikibooks:What
> Wikibooks is not]] into [[Wikibooks:Deletion policy]]), or in which
> policies are made but are virtually nonenforceable
> ([[Wikibooks:Naming conventions]]) without the use of a potentially
> dangerous bot.
>
> The community in Wikibooks also seems to be very polarized - there
> seems to be a separate community that deals with BOTM/COTM and
> another group actively discussing policy issues - lately a few in
> the BOTM/COTM regulars have accused me of unilaterally changing
> policy even though they have been thoroughly discussed (even
> predating BOTM and COTM) but were virtually unenforceable.
>
> Still, at least something had to be done - the decision to make Aya
> a bureaucrat was a needed one (even if I disagree with someone
> requesting bureaucratship - I still believe it should be a
> nominated post), if only to bring more admins to the project to
> deal with huge admin backlogs.  The decision to overhaul policy was
> needed over huge issues in Wikibooks stemming from forking of
> Wikipedia content and whether biographies were instructional material.
> _______________________________________________
> Textbook-l mailing list
> Textbook-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/textbook-l
>


list: foundation-l

from_name: Robert Scott Horning

subject: [Foundation-l] Wikiversity

body:
Angela wrote:

>Despite claims to the contrary,
>http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Wikiversity was certainly _not_ protected
>at the advice of the Wikimedia Foundation.
>
>Perhaps it was advised by one member of that foundation, but other
>Board members were not consulted. I am disgusted this approach would
>be taken with no consensus from the community.
>
>Wikiversity has been running for a long time on Wikibooks and I see no
>agreement whatsoever for it to be suddenly shut down like this.
>
>Protection is a defense against vandalism, not a way of expressing one
>person's point of view on whether or not a sub-project of Wikibooks
>should exist. Please remove the misleading statements about protection
>and explain why you ever thought the Foundation would propose such an
>awful measure on a popular set of pages like Wikiversity.
>
>Angela.
>
>
The following is a formal reply from Aya about this issue:

    After having put some more thought into this, I would say that my
    protecting the page was the wrong thing to do in this case, since,
    although I feel that knowingly using Wikibooks as a free
    content-provider to host texts which are not part of the Wikibooks
    project (Wikimania05 <http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Wikimania05> is
    another example), are tantamount to vandalism, there should be some
    formal clarification. I will not do it again, and I strongly
    recommend that others do not, until we have some sort of official
    Wikibooks:Vandalism policy
    <http://en.wikibooks.org/w/index.php?title=Wikibooks:Vandalism_policy&action=edit>,
    which states when page protecting and IP/account blocking are
    justified. The correct action would have been to mark it as a VfD,
    but I didn't really want it all to be deleted, since a lot of work
    has gone into it already, and it seems a shame to delete it all. I
    shall start work on such a policy when time permits. - Aya
    <http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/User:Aya> ^T
    <http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/User_talk:Aya> C
    <http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/Aya> 16:43, 4
August 2005 (UTC)

I'll let him speak for himself.  I'm just relaying this because Aya is
not on this mailing list.

--
Robert Scott Horning


list: wikimedia-l

subject: [Foundation-l] Wikiversity


from_name: Skyring

subject: [WikiEN-l] Is this right?

body:
On 8/4/05, Cyberjunkie <swatso at optusnet.com.au> wrote:
> Hear, hear!
>
> --en:Cyberjunkie

Ah, yes! Mr Anonymous Editor. Good to hear from you again.
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Contributions&target=211.29.1.21

--
Peter in Canberra


subject: [WikiEN-l] Copyright situation

body:
On 8/5/05, Puddl Duk <puddlduk at gmail.com> wrote:

> This has come up before on the copyright problems page. Even if we are
> legally able (at the moment) to violate Iran's copyright laws, I don't think
> that we should.

What advantage would there be in doing so? Surely there's nothing in
any Iran-related article that HAS to be sourced this way.

--
Peter in Canberra


from_name: Jack Lynch

body:
Where are the inclusionists in this discussion? Silly me, I was
worried that simply placing a tag on an article for the next admin to
delete violates the recent consensus ''against'' such an increase in
speedy deletion? Not to mention all the stubs and articles sure to be
lost in such a maelstrom of deletion? That said, I don't think were
too far off from a good idea ;)

Jack (Sam Spade)

>>My idea for a comprehensive VfD reform: create a 'problem article' tag
>>which replaces {{vfd}} and {{d}}. Admins can delete these articles if
>>they're problematic, editors can remove the tag if they substantially
>>rewrite the article or redirect it. Anything that keeps the problem
>>article tag for a week gets deleted.
>>
>>
>>
>
>Someone could tag an article {{vanity}}, for example, and an admin
>could delete it on sight, just like articles tagged {{delete}}, as
>long as it was clearly a vanity page. The ambiguous ones (and there
>are relatively few of those) could be shuffled off elsewhere, and
>dealt with on an individual basis.
>
>I like that idea.


from_name: Dan Grey

body:
Heh, y'know we could do the pure wiki deletion thing right now,
without the links-going-red thing. I've not checked but I bet a lot of
VfD candidates don't have many incoming links.

The only problem with articles that could need deletion, I believe, is
the chance of them showing up in searches. Diskspace etc doesn't
matter. To stop stuff getting searched whenever the index is updated,
is just to blank the article.

We could delete VfD again and do this right now. Debates about
blanking held on talk pages. We could put a blank articles make links
red thing in later.

Dan

PS: "More likely, the tagged articles
would just get forgotten and dropped into the abyss, I think" - not if
they had a category on them and we had a DPL.


from_name: Ben E.

body:
I don't know if this is a totally acceptable choice. Some articles are
simply not appropriate for the encyclopedia (borderline spam comes to mind,
and articles with an inherent POV also could be used as an example). Keeping
inappropriate blank articles would seem almost as an endorsement that we
want the subject material in Wikipedia. Also, wouldn't these articles
artificially inflate the total article count?
 Ben/Bratsche

 On 8/5/05, Dan Grey <dangrey at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Heh, y'know we could do the pure wiki deletion thing right now,
> without the links-going-red thing. I've not checked but I bet a lot of
> VfD candidates don't have many incoming links.
>
> The only problem with articles that could need deletion, I believe, is
> the chance of them showing up in searches. Diskspace etc doesn't
> matter. To stop stuff getting searched whenever the index is updated,
> is just to blank the article.
>
> We could delete VfD again and do this right now. Debates about
> blanking held on talk pages. We could put a blank articles make links
> red thing in later.
>
>
> Dan
>
> PS: "More likely, the tagged articles
> would just get forgotten and dropped into the abyss, I think" - not if
> they had a category on them and we had a DPL.
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

--
Bratsche-It means "viola!"


body:
That would make sense, I think. But we'd have to keep those articles out of
disambig pages. Think of the confusion someone would have if they clicked on
a person's name, and ended up on [[WP:VAIN]]? A category for these pages
would help, too, in case someone wanted to improve some to a point past a
pure vanity article.
 Ben/Bratsche

 On 8/5/05, Phroziac <phroziac at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> With the PWDS, they wouldn't show up as existing.
> Why can't we just redirect ones that aren't encyclopedic to something
> live WP:VAIN for vanity pages?
>
> On 8/5/05, Ben E. <bratsche1 at gmail.com> wrote:
> > I don't know if this is a totally acceptable choice. Some articles are
> > simply not appropriate for the encyclopedia (borderline spam comes to
> mind,
> > and articles with an inherent POV also could be used as an example).
> Keeping
> > inappropriate blank articles would seem almost as an endorsement that we
> > want the subject material in Wikipedia. Also, wouldn't these articles
> > artificially inflate the total article count?
> > Ben/Bratsche
> >
> > On 8/5/05, Dan Grey <dangrey at gmail.com> wrote:
> > >
> > > Heh, y'know we could do the pure wiki deletion thing right now,
> > > without the links-going-red thing. I've not checked but I bet a lot of
> > > VfD candidates don't have many incoming links.
> > >
> > > The only problem with articles that could need deletion, I believe, is
> > > the chance of them showing up in searches. Diskspace etc doesn't
> > > matter. To stop stuff getting searched whenever the index is updated,
> > > is just to blank the article.
> > >
> > > We could delete VfD again and do this right now. Debates about
> > > blanking held on talk pages. We could put a blank articles make links
> > > red thing in later.
> > >
> > >
> > > Dan
> > >
> > > PS: "More likely, the tagged articles
> > > would just get forgotten and dropped into the abyss, I think" - not if
> > > they had a category on them and we had a DPL.
> > > _______________________________________________
> > > WikiEN-l mailing list
> > > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> > > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
> > >
> >
> >
> >
> > --
> > Bratsche-It means "viola!"
> > _______________________________________________
> > WikiEN-l mailing list
> > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
> >
>
>
> --
> signature
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

--
Bratsche-It means "viola!"


from_name: Geoff Burling

body:
On Fri, 5 Aug 2005, Stephen Bain wrote:

> On 8/4/05, neil klopfenstein <rebrane at gmail.com> wrote:
> > The worst thing about VfD, in my opinion, is that once an article is
> > listed, it "can't" be merged/redirected/whatever else. It seems like
> > the majority of the articles on VfD are either no-brainer speedies or
> > no-brainer merges.
> >
> > My idea for a comprehensive VfD reform: create a 'problem article' tag
> > which replaces {{vfd}} and {{d}}. Admins can delete these articles if
> > they're problematic, editors can remove the tag if they substantially
> > rewrite the article or redirect it. Anything that keeps the problem
> > article tag for a week gets deleted.
> >
>
> Someone could tag an article {{vanity}}, for example, and an admin
> could delete it on sight, just like articles tagged {{delete}}, as
> long as it was clearly a vanity page. The ambiguous ones (and there
> are relatively few of those) could be shuffled off elsewhere, and
> dealt with on an individual basis.
>
You've just described how the present works -- in theory. Vanity
pages, spam, articles with negligible content all get listed as
Speedy Delete. The rest go to VfD.

VfD will always be a contentious forum, if for no other reason than
we are discussing whether to knife someone's baby; in effect, a
vote to delete an article can be perceived by its original contributor
as a criticism that their work is "unimportant." Add to that the
diverse philosophies present on Wikipedia, & that the size of the
Wikipedia community has grown to the point where cliques or factions
have begun to emerge, & Wikipedia has come to the point where VfD will
always be a hotly controversial topic unless we agree to accept all
articles that do not meet the criteria of a Speedy Delete -- in effect,
removing it entirely.

Although it wouldn't help to streamline the process for actually
deleting an article; last time I looked at the instructions, I found
them so intimidating that I gave up & went back to just contributing
material.

Geoff


from_name: Phroziac

body:
With the PWDS, they wouldn't show up as existing.
Why can't we just redirect ones that aren't encyclopedic to something
live WP:VAIN for vanity pages?

On 8/5/05, Ben E. <bratsche1 at gmail.com> wrote:
> I don't know if this is a totally acceptable choice. Some articles are
> simply not appropriate for the encyclopedia (borderline spam comes to mind,
> and articles with an inherent POV also could be used as an example). Keeping
> inappropriate blank articles would seem almost as an endorsement that we
> want the subject material in Wikipedia. Also, wouldn't these articles
> artificially inflate the total article count?
>  Ben/Bratsche
>
>  On 8/5/05, Dan Grey <dangrey at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > Heh, y'know we could do the pure wiki deletion thing right now,
> > without the links-going-red thing. I've not checked but I bet a lot of
> > VfD candidates don't have many incoming links.
> >
> > The only problem with articles that could need deletion, I believe, is
> > the chance of them showing up in searches. Diskspace etc doesn't
> > matter. To stop stuff getting searched whenever the index is updated,
> > is just to blank the article.
> >
> > We could delete VfD again and do this right now. Debates about
> > blanking held on talk pages. We could put a blank articles make links
> > red thing in later.
> >
> >
> > Dan
> >
> > PS: "More likely, the tagged articles
> > would just get forgotten and dropped into the abyss, I think" - not if
> > they had a category on them and we had a DPL.
> > _______________________________________________
> > WikiEN-l mailing list
> > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
> >
>
>
>
> --
> Bratsche-It means "viola!"
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

--
signature


from_name: Ed W

subject: [Wikitech-l] *.caribbean-forum.com

body:
Tom Ritchford wrote:

>There seem to be a lot of these... is there not some Apache or
>otherwise rule that can eliminate people who simply take Wikipedia
>images with no accreditation?
>
>

Usually the cheapest trick is to look through the logs for image
downloads where the "referrer" is not another page on your own site.

Of course you can work around this, but it catches the really obvious stuff.

Someone with access to the wikipedia logs could probably troll through
and catch the worst offenders quite easily

Ed W


subject: Fwd: [WikiEN-l] I better shut up (was vfd RFC)

body:
This got sent to dan for some reason instead of to the mailing list,
or him and the mailing list.

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Phroziac <phroziac at gmail.com>
Date: Aug 5, 2005 12:09 PM
Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] I better shut up (was vfd RFC)
To: "Ben E." <bratsche1 at gmail.com>

We could use what links here to see what links to it and remove them. :)

On 8/5/05, Ben E. <bratsche1 at gmail.com> wrote:
> That would make sense, I think. But we'd have to keep those articles out of
> disambig pages. Think of the confusion someone would have if they clicked on
> a person's name, and ended up on [[WP:VAIN]]? A category for these pages
> would help, too, in case someone wanted to improve some to a point past a
> pure vanity article.
>
> Ben/Bratsche
>
>
>
> On 8/5/05, Phroziac <phroziac at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > With the PWDS, they wouldn't show up as existing.
> > Why can't we just redirect ones that aren't encyclopedic to something
> > live WP:VAIN for vanity pages?
> >
> > On 8/5/05, Ben E. <bratsche1 at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > I don't know if this is a totally acceptable choice. Some articles are
> > > simply not appropriate for the encyclopedia (borderline spam comes to
> mind,
> > > and articles with an inherent POV also could be used as an example).
> Keeping
> > > inappropriate blank articles would seem almost as an endorsement that we
> > > want the subject material in Wikipedia. Also, wouldn't these articles
> > > artificially inflate the total article count?
> > >  Ben/Bratsche
> > >
> > >  On 8/5/05, Dan Grey <dangrey at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > >
> > > > Heh, y'know we could do the pure wiki deletion thing right now,
> > > > without the links-going-red thing. I've not checked but I bet a lot of
> > > > VfD candidates don't have many incoming links.
> > > >
> > > > The only problem with articles that could need deletion, I believe, is
> > > > the chance of them showing up in searches. Diskspace etc doesn't
> > > > matter. To stop stuff getting searched whenever the index is updated,
> > > > is just to blank the article.
> > > >
> > > > We could delete VfD again and do this right now. Debates about
> > > > blanking held on talk pages. We could put a blank articles make links
> > > > red thing in later.
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > Dan
> > > >
> > > > PS: "More likely, the tagged articles
> > > > would just get forgotten and dropped into the abyss, I think" - not if
> > > > they had a category on them and we had a DPL.
> > > > _______________________________________________
> > > > WikiEN-l mailing list
> > > > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> > > > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
> > > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > --
> > > Bratsche-It means "viola!"
> > > _______________________________________________
> > > WikiEN-l mailing list
> > > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> > > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
> > >
> >
> >
> > --
> > signature
> > _______________________________________________
> > WikiEN-l mailing list
> > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
> >
>
>
>
> --
> Bratsche-It means "viola!"

--
signature

--
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body:
I agree, if it gets searched for theres a good chance it belongs here.
Oh, and i meant that message got sent to BEN, not dan. hah.

On 8/5/05, Dan Grey <dangrey at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 05/08/05, Ben E. <bratsche1 at gmail.com> wrote:
> . Keeping
> > inappropriate blank articles would seem almost as an endorsement that we
> > want the subject material in Wikipedia. Also, wouldn't these articles
> > artificially inflate the total article count?
>
> I see where you're coming from - just the title itself existing could
> be seen as an endorsement - but I don't think it's a problem, because
> who would ever find them? Stuff that deserves blanking/deletion is
> unlikely to be searched for, and probably has no incoming links.
>
>
> Dan
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

--
signature


subject: [WikiEN-l] What's wrong with the world?

body:
>From [[ minority ]]:

''This article is about the concept of a minority. For
an entry on the [[Green Day]] single, see [[Minority
(song)|Minority]].''

!

SV

____________________________________________________
Start your day with Yahoo! - make it your home page
http://www.yahoo.com/r/hs


subject: [WikiEN-l] What's wrong with the world?

body:
Simply freezing content seems rather unwiki, but here
"lock" is just a misnomer for "extended protection,"
allowing sysops only to edit them. The idea is that WP
has gotten too big and fast to monitor all vandalism
quickly, and dormant/stagnant pages present an easy
target.

As long as there are certain degrees between
'completely open' and 'completely closed,' and a means
(other than just talk pages) for non-admins to request
changes on "locked" pages, it should be fine.

And yes, a disfork linking a pop-band like "Green Day"
from a general article like "minority" IS a problem.

SV

--- Zachary Harden <zscout370 at hotmail.com> wrote:

> There's nothing wrong in my opinon with this.
> However, I am worried about
> Jimbo's announcement about locking some articles.
> See
>
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/computing/20050805-1259-media-wikipedia.html
>
> Regards,
>
> Zachary Harden
>
>
> >From: steve v <vertigosteve at yahoo.com>
> >Reply-To: English Wikipedia
> <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> >To: wikien-l at wikimedia.org
> >Subject: [WikiEN-l] What's wrong with the world?
> >Date: Fri, 5 Aug 2005 12:49:06 -0700 (PDT)
> >
> > >From [[ minority ]]:
> >
> >''This article is about the concept of a minority.
> For
> >an entry on the [[Green Day]] single, see
> [[Minority
> >(song)|Minority]].''
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

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


subject: [WikiEN-l] What's wrong with the world?

body:
Examples:

:''For the metal band, see [[United States of
Discontent]]''
'''United States''' is a country in [[North America]]n
continent....

:''For the [[Slobulus]] music single regarding
roosters and alarm clocks, see [[Queen Elizabeth Loves
the Cock]]''
[[Majesty|Her Majesty]] '''Queen Elizabeth II'''
(Elizabeth Alexandra Mary [[House of
Windsor|Windsor]]), styled '''''HM The Queen'''''
(born [[21 April]] [[1926]]) is the [[Queen regnant]]
and [[head of state]] of...

Need I continue?

SV

--- Phroziac <phroziac at gmail.com> wrote:
> There's nothing wrong with the minority thing, but
> it is pretty funny.

____________________________________________________
Start your day with Yahoo! - make it your home page
http://www.yahoo.com/r/hs


body:
On 8/4/05, neil klopfenstein <rebrane at gmail.com> wrote:
> The worst thing about VfD, in my opinion, is that once an article is
> listed, it "can't" be merged/redirected/whatever else. It seems like
> the majority of the articles on VfD are either no-brainer speedies or
> no-brainer merges.
>
> My idea for a comprehensive VfD reform: create a 'problem article' tag
> which replaces {{vfd}} and {{d}}. Admins can delete these articles if
> they're problematic, editors can remove the tag if they substantially
> rewrite the article or redirect it. Anything that keeps the problem
> article tag for a week gets deleted.
>

Someone could tag an article {{vanity}}, for example, and an admin
could delete it on sight, just like articles tagged {{delete}}, as
long as it was clearly a vanity page. The ambiguous ones (and there
are relatively few of those) could be shuffled off elsewhere, and
dealt with on an individual basis.

I like that idea.

--
Stephen Bain
stephen.bain at gmail.com


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Mark Williamson

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Deletion mechanism on wikis other than en:?

body:
Only the very largest Wikipedias have votes or other formal
mechanisms. Generally, from what I have seen, most Wikipedias only
delete pages if they're obviously vandalism or something else of the
type that would be speedily deleted on en:.

I think that this is because they have few enough articles that they
don't worry so much about whether or not an article really belongs --
they welcome anything they can get.

Mark

On 05/08/05, David Gerard <fun at thingy.apana.org.au> wrote:
>
> There's a big debate on en: right now about what to use as a deletion
> mechanism. The current [[:en:WP:VFD]] mechanism is very controversial -
> I and many others think it creates more acrimony than it's worth, and
> [[:en:user:Ed Poor]] actually deleted the page a couple of days ago!
> While it was quickly undeleted, it's set in motion debates about what to
> use for a deletion mechanism. Because I don't think anyone questions that
> we needsome sort of deletion mechanism for stuff that isn't obvious
> immediate speedy deletes - just that VFD is scaling badly and getting very
> acrimonious.
>
> So. What do other Wikipedias use as their deletion procedure?
>
>
> - d.
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

--
SI HOC LEGERE SCIS NIMIVM ERVDITIONIS HABES
QVANTVM MATERIAE MATERIETVR MARMOTA MONAX SI MARMOTA MONAX MATERIAM
POSSIT MATERIARI
ESTNE VOLVMEN IN TOGA AN SOLVM TIBI LIBET ME VIDERE


subject: [WikiEN-l] Couldn't make Wikimania? Do not fear!

body:
Live audio from the Wikimania presentations is being streamed from:

http://freematrix.us/radio/wikimania

It's well worth a listen. So you know what's coming up, check the
programme here:

http://wikimania.wikimedia.org/wiki/Programme

Dan


from_name: mauro barbolini

subject: [Foundation-l] Wikiversity

body:
I aqm an Italian fellow ana I live in Italy , Salutami a sorata
----- Original Message -----
From: "Robert Scott Horning" <robert_horning at netzero.net>
To: "Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List" <foundation-l at wikimedia.org>
Sent: Friday, August 05, 2005 10:45 AM
Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Wikiversity

> Angela wrote:
>
> >Despite claims to the contrary,
> >http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Wikiversity was certainly _not_ protected
> >at the advice of the Wikimedia Foundation.
> >
> >Perhaps it was advised by one member of that foundation, but other
> >Board members were not consulted. I am disgusted this approach would
> >be taken with no consensus from the community.
> >
> >Wikiversity has been running for a long time on Wikibooks and I see no
> >agreement whatsoever for it to be suddenly shut down like this.
> >
> >Protection is a defense against vandalism, not a way of expressing one
> >person's point of view on whether or not a sub-project of Wikibooks
> >should exist. Please remove the misleading statements about protection
> >and explain why you ever thought the Foundation would propose such an
> >awful measure on a popular set of pages like Wikiversity.
> >
> >Angela.
> >
> >
> The following is a formal reply from Aya about this issue:
>
>     After having put some more thought into this, I would say that my
>     protecting the page was the wrong thing to do in this case, since,
>     although I feel that knowingly using Wikibooks as a free
>     content-provider to host texts which are not part of the Wikibooks
>     project (Wikimania05 <http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Wikimania05> is
>     another example), are tantamount to vandalism, there should be some
>     formal clarification. I will not do it again, and I strongly
>     recommend that others do not, until we have some sort of official
>     Wikibooks:Vandalism policy
>
<http://en.wikibooks.org/w/index.php?title=Wikibooks:Vandalism_policy&action
=edit>,
>     which states when page protecting and IP/account blocking are
>     justified. The correct action would have been to mark it as a VfD,
>     but I didn't really want it all to be deleted, since a lot of work
>     has gone into it already, and it seems a shame to delete it all. I
>     shall start work on such a policy when time permits. - Aya
>     <http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/User:Aya> ^T
>     <http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/User_talk:Aya> C
>     <http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/Aya> 16:43, 4
> August 2005 (UTC)
>
> I'll let him speak for himself.  I'm just relaying this because Aya is
> not on this mailing list.
>
> --
> Robert Scott Horning
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


subject: [Foundation-l] Wikiversity


from_name: Matt R

body:
--- Dan Grey <dangrey at gmail.com> wrote:

> Live audio from the Wikimania presentations is being streamed from:
>
> http://freematrix.us/radio/wikimania
>
> It's well worth a listen. So you know what's coming up, check the
> programme here:
>
> http://wikimania.wikimedia.org/wiki/Programme

Hurrah! (Although "Server is full, try again later") :(

What's the time zone in Frankfurt? UTC + 2?

-- Matt

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


body:
On 05/08/05, Matt R <matt_crypto at yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
>
> Hurrah! (Although "Server is full, try again later") :(

Brief technical gremlins, should be sorted now! But if it does happen
again, just try again and it'll connect to a different server.

>
> What's the time zone in Frankfurt? UTC + 2?

Yeah.

> -- Matt
>

BTW, there should be downloadable audio files of anything you've
missed soon here:

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimania:Broadcasting

Dan


from_name: Rowan Collins

body:
On 04/08/05, Setten, Joost van <Joost.van.Setten at ordina.nl> wrote:
> I have a question concerning the functions of the category namespace. This namespace automatically generates a list with subcategories and articles which are linked to this category. I have got the following question:
>
> Is it possible to use these functions within another namespace? And if yes, how is this possible?

Well, the first answer is "no" - the category: namespace's special
functionality is  a hard-coded special case. But depending what you
actually want to do, it may not be that much work to:
* rename the namespace (very simple, since namespace-names are defined
in LanguageXX.php)
* duplicate the namespace by finding references to it in the code, and
expanding them to apply also to another namespace; note that the way
the category-memberships are stored in the database may also need
fiddling with...

But the big question that arises, is why you want to do this at all -
the categories are not forced into a strictly hierarchical structure,
so you can have any number of "category trees" within the one
namespace. In other words, why don't you just put the pages you want
to have this facility in the existing Category namespace?

--
Rowan Collins BSc
[IMSoP]


subject: [WikiEN-l] What's wrong with the world?

body:
There's nothing wrong with the minority thing, but it is pretty funny.
I completely agree with locking completed articles. Why should they be
edited if they're done?

On 8/5/05, Zachary Harden <zscout370 at hotmail.com> wrote:
> There's nothing wrong in my opinon with this. However, I am worried about
> Jimbo's announcement about locking some articles. See
> http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/computing/20050805-1259-media-wikipedia.html
>
> Regards,
>
> Zachary Harden
>
>
> >From: steve v <vertigosteve at yahoo.com>
> >Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> >To: wikien-l at wikimedia.org
> >Subject: [WikiEN-l] What's wrong with the world?
> >Date: Fri, 5 Aug 2005 12:49:06 -0700 (PDT)
> >
> > >From [[ minority ]]:
> >
> >''This article is about the concept of a minority. For
> >an entry on the [[Green Day]] single, see [[Minority
> >(song)|Minority]].''
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

--
signature


from_name: Walter Vermeir

subject: [Foundation-l] Good audio and/or video recording of Jimbo

body:
Of Thomas Edison there is an video recording

http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Edison

A speech about the light bulb.

But from Jimbo we have only photo's.

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Jimmy_Wales

Can someone try to get a good audio recording of one the speeches of Jimbo
and/or a video recording for Wikipedia?  (Ogg Vorbis / Ogg Theora )

Walter


from_name: Chris Lüer

subject: [WikiEN-l] What's wrong with the world?

body:
At 04:14 PM 8/5/2005, SPUI wrote:

>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Search?search=Green+Day+-+Minority&go=Go
>gives no relevant results in the first page.

But the Google site search does:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=site%3Awikipedia.org+Green+Day+Minority&btnG=Google+Search

         Chl


body:
On 05/08/05, Ben E. <bratsche1 at gmail.com> wrote:
. Keeping
> inappropriate blank articles would seem almost as an endorsement that we
> want the subject material in Wikipedia. Also, wouldn't these articles
> artificially inflate the total article count?

I see where you're coming from - just the title itself existing could
be seen as an endorsement - but I don't think it's a problem, because
who would ever find them? Stuff that deserves blanking/deletion is
unlikely to be searched for, and probably has no incoming links.

Dan


from_name: Poor, Edmund W

subject: [WikiEN-l] Anti-elitism

body:
I created a new page, this time I did it right. Angela would be proud.

[[Wikipedia:anti-elitism]] is based on a couple of Internet articles
that
old guy, whatsisname, some philosophy professor who helped out for a few

months in Wikipedia's early days. Oh, yeah, Larry Sanger.

I was wondering where all this VFD-RFC-RFA stuff was really heading, so
I
dipped into MeatBall, and that led me to the social dynamics of wikis -
which ended up with Larry's critique of Wikipedia's anti-elitism.

He sees it as causing our 2 biggest problems:
1. a perception of unreliability (justified or not)
2. an often unpleasant an even hostile working atmosphere

Well, I'm off to my 5:30 P.M. irc meeting. Do check out the proposed
policy
page, if you're interested in the big picture. Sanger's no slouch.

Ed Poor


subject: [WikiEN-l] Anti-elitism

body:
Poor, Edmund W wrote:

>I was wondering where all this VFD-RFC-RFA stuff was really heading, so
>I
>dipped into MeatBall, and that led me to the social dynamics of wikis -
>which ended up with Larry's critique of Wikipedia's anti-elitism.
>
>He sees it as causing our 2 biggest problems:
>1. a perception of unreliability (justified or not)

Obviously.

>2. an often unpleasant an even hostile working atmosphere

Yeah right. Like the editorial boards of academic journals,
conference committees and such are all friendly and peaceful.

         Chl


from_name: Jtkiefer

subject: [WikiEN-l] Anti-elitism

body:
Poor, Edmund W wrote:

>I created a new page, this time I did it right. Angela would be proud.
>
>[[Wikipedia:anti-elitism]] is based on a couple of Internet articles
>that
>old guy, whatsisname, some philosophy professor who helped out for a few
>
>months in Wikipedia's early days. Oh, yeah, Larry Sanger.
>
>I was wondering where all this VFD-RFC-RFA stuff was really heading, so
>I
>dipped into MeatBall, and that led me to the social dynamics of wikis -
>which ended up with Larry's critique of Wikipedia's anti-elitism.
>
>He sees it as causing our 2 biggest problems:
>1. a perception of unreliability (justified or not)
>2. an often unpleasant an even hostile working atmosphere
>
>Well, I'm off to my 5:30 P.M. irc meeting. Do check out the proposed
>policy
>page, if you're interested in the big picture. Sanger's no slouch.
>
>Ed Poor
>_______________________________________________
>WikiEN-l mailing list
>WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>
>
Looks like an interesting topic, please don't delete the page before I
get back from work and get a chance to look at it. :) just kidding Ed,
definately looks like an interesting proposal.

-Jtkiefer


subject: [WikiEN-l] What's wrong with the world?

body:
Pop-culture is serious, to some extent. Having a seperate article
about every single pokemon is rediculous, for example.

On 8/5/05, Zachary Harden <zscout370 at hotmail.com> wrote:
> I can also point out that someone can do that to the God Save the Queen
> article, and your right, it can go on. Though, I do know what we want to do
> is write a serious encyclopedia, it seems that alot of people come here and
> write about pop-culture.
>
> Regards,
>
> Zachary Harden
>
>
> >From: steve v <vertigosteve at yahoo.com>
> >Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> >To: Phroziac <phroziac at gmail.com>,English Wikipedia
> ><wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> >Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] What's wrong with the world?
> >Date: Fri, 5 Aug 2005 13:19:45 -0700 (PDT)
> >
> >Examples:
> >
> >:''For the metal band, see [[United States of
> >Discontent]]''
> >'''United States''' is a country in [[North America]]n
> >continent....
> >
> >:''For the [[Slobulus]] music single regarding
> >roosters and alarm clocks, see [[Queen Elizabeth Loves
> >the Cock]]''
> >[[Majesty|Her Majesty]] '''Queen Elizabeth II'''
> >(Elizabeth Alexandra Mary [[House of
> >Windsor|Windsor]]), styled '''''HM The Queen'''''
> >(born [[21 April]] [[1926]]) is the [[Queen regnant]]
> >and [[head of state]] of...
> >
> >Need I continue?
> >
> >SV
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

--
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from_name: SPUI

subject: [WikiEN-l] What's wrong with the world?

body:
steve v wrote:
>>From [[ minority ]]:
>
> ''This article is about the concept of a minority. For
> an entry on the [[Green Day]] single, see [[Minority
> (song)|Minority]].''
>
> !

If someone does want information on the single, what else would they
type? Not everyone knows how disambiguations work.


subject: [WikiEN-l] What's wrong with the world?

body:
"Green Day - Minority", of course

On 8/5/05, SPUI <drspui at gmail.com> wrote:
> steve v wrote:
> >>From [[ minority ]]:
> >
> > ''This article is about the concept of a minority. For
> > an entry on the [[Green Day]] single, see [[Minority
> > (song)|Minority]].''
> >
> > !
>
> If someone does want information on the single, what else would they
> type? Not everyone knows how disambiguations work.
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

--
signature


subject: [WikiEN-l] What's wrong with the world?

body:
Phroziac wrote:
>
> On 8/5/05, SPUI <drspui at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>steve v wrote:
>>
>>>>From [[ minority ]]:
>>>
>>>''This article is about the concept of a minority. For
>>>an entry on the [[Green Day]] single, see [[Minority
>>>(song)|Minority]].''
>>>
>>>!
>>
>>If someone does want information on the single, what else would they
>>type? Not everyone knows how disambiguations work.
 > "Green Day - Minority", of course

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Search?search=Green+Day+-+Minority&go=Go
gives no relevant results in the first page.


from_name: Fred Bauder

subject: [WikiEN-l] Anti-elitism

body:
On Aug 5, 2005, at 2:51 PM, Poor, Edmund W wrote:

> I created a new page, this time I did it right. Angela would be proud.
>
> [[Wikipedia:anti-elitism]] is based on a couple of Internet articles
> that
> old guy, whatsisname, some philosophy professor who helped out for
> a few
>
> months in Wikipedia's early days. Oh, yeah, Larry Sanger.
>
> I was wondering where all this VFD-RFC-RFA stuff was really
> heading, so
> I
> dipped into MeatBall, and that led me to the social dynamics of
> wikis -
> which ended up with Larry's critique of Wikipedia's anti-elitism.
>
> He sees it as causing our 2 biggest problems:
> 1. a perception of unreliability (justified or not)
> 2. an often unpleasant an even hostile working atmosphere

Larry Sanger did many good things for Wikipedia, set many important
policies which have served us well. However, as anyone who tangled
with him learned from experience, an "often unpleasant and even
hostile working atmosphere"  was often part of working with him. He
did not respect other people and believed he could bulldoze them,
based on his authority as a Wikipedia administrator and as an expert
in academic philosophy. His contributions may have correctly parroted
was is being taught in freshman philosophy courses, I grant that, but
there is no doubt that perspective can be improved on.

Fred

>
> Well, I'm off to my 5:30 P.M. irc meeting. Do check out the proposed
> policy
> page, if you're interested in the big picture. Sanger's no slouch.
>
> Ed Poor
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Bryan Derksen

subject: [WikiEN-l] What's wrong with the world?

body:
Phroziac wrote:

>There's nothing wrong with the minority thing, but it is pretty funny.
>I completely agree with locking completed articles. Why should they be
>edited if they're done?
>
>
A "done" article? There's no such thing.

I hope Jimbo's just been misleadingly quoted, personally. I would like
to see a system whereby versions of an article can be marked as "nice"
so that it's really easy to get to the most recent "nice" version.
Perhaps even have the "nice" version be the default one shown to
non-logged-in users and/or users who set a preference for that, with the
edit link still taking the user to the current version instead. But I
think officially permanently locking an article because someone thinks
that it's "done" is a tremendously bad idea. Article protection is a
very blunt instrument, blunter even than user bans, and I believe using
it this way would damage Wikipedia far worse than any vandalism it might
prevent.


subject: [WikiEN-l] What's wrong with the world?

body:
Zachary Harden wrote:

> And how can we mark it as even nice? A template could disrupt the
> page, but IMHO, any type of mark on the article page is just asking
> for trouble. Plus, I still do not know how can one define a "done"
> article on here and how many will be protected on a trial basis.

Something based on the version rating system that almost got enabled in
the most recent version of WikiMedia would be best, IMO - it's my
understanding that the basic code is all there, it just needs tweaking
and polishing. Trying to kludge something together with the existing
functions probably wouldn't work well since there's no way to attach
arbitrary metadata to specific versions of a page.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Anti-elitism

body:
Wikipedia is starting to get unpleasant.

On 8/5/05, Chris L?er <chris at zandria.net> wrote:
> Poor, Edmund W wrote:
>
> >I was wondering where all this VFD-RFC-RFA stuff was really heading, so
> >I
> >dipped into MeatBall, and that led me to the social dynamics of wikis -
> >which ended up with Larry's critique of Wikipedia's anti-elitism.
> >
> >He sees it as causing our 2 biggest problems:
> >1. a perception of unreliability (justified or not)
>
> Obviously.
>
> >2. an often unpleasant an even hostile working atmosphere
>
> Yeah right. Like the editorial boards of academic journals,
> conference committees and such are all friendly and peaceful.
>
>          Chl
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

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subject: [WikiEN-l] What's wrong with the world?

body:
By the way, the pop culture thing is just because the younger people
that come around want to write about what they care about, and well,
alot of them don't care about much but pokemon, or green day :) Just
give them space if you don't like it.

On 8/5/05, Andrew Gray <shimgray at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 05/08/05, Haukur ?orgeirsson <haukurth at hi.is> wrote:
>
> > For an example see [[Yggdrasil]] which has
> > a large Popular Culture section and a disambiguation
> > entry, both of which could be summarized with
> > "a bunch of things in a bunch of games/novels/etc.
> > have been named after the mythological Yggdrasil".
>
> I was about to cite the "Popular Culture" section of [[Space Shuttle
> program]] here, but it seems someone finally decided to purge it last
> month, and create [[Space Shuttles in fiction]]... it had grown to a
> truly silly size -
> http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Space_Shuttle_program&diff=18685575&oldid=18683806
>
> [[Space station]], whilst no-where near as long, has a section which
> basically seems to consist of "X work of fiction contained a space
> station". The potential for expansion of this, given the prevalence of
> articles about sf books and individual TV episodes, is not a cheering
> one... time to purge a little, I think.
>
> --
> - Andrew Gray
>   andrew.gray at dunelm.org.uk
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

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from_name: Ben Yates

subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia and the future of open source

body:
Hey; I just wrote an article (jist: wikipedia will soon be more
important than linux) and wanted to get feedback from people who have
a detailed knowledge of wikipedia (namely, the people on this list).

http://wikip.blogspot.com/2005/08/future-of-open-source-5-years-ago.html

Cheers,

Ben Yates


from_name: Cyberjunkie

subject: [WikiEN-l] Is this right?

body:
Well, that confirms my opinion of you. You persist only to besmirch
others'.

--Cyberjunkie

-----Original Message-----
From: Skyring [mailto:skyring at gmail.com]
Sent: Friday, 5 August 2005 3:05 AM
To: English Wikipedia
Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Is this right?

On 8/4/05, Cyberjunkie <swatso at optusnet.com.au> wrote:
> Hear, hear!
>
> --en:Cyberjunkie

Ah, yes! Mr Anonymous Editor. Good to hear from you again.
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Contributions&target=2
11.29.1.21

--
Peter in Canberra


from_name: Anthony DiPierro

subject: [WikiEN-l] What's wrong with the world?

body:
>I am worried about Jimbo's announcement about locking some articles. See
>http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/computing/20050805-1259-media-wikipedia.html

"'There may soon be so-called stable contents. In this case, we'd freeze the
pages whose quality is undisputed,' he said."

The way I read this, there would be a stable version and a current version,
much like the linux kernel or just about any large bit of source code.  If
that's what he meant, it sounds like a good idea.

Of course, it worries me if this quote is accurate, because it makes it
sound like he plans on imposing this idea upon the community.  We all know
how long it takes to implement something this major by any means other than
edict.

>Simply freezing content seems rather unwiki, but here
>"lock" is just a misnomer for "extended protection,"
>allowing sysops only to edit them.

Both are incredibly "unwiki", the whole basis of a wiki is that anyone can
directly edit it, not just sysops, and not just by proposing edits and
hoping one of the editors implements them.  But the goal of Wikipedia is to
be a free encyclopedia, not a wiki.  Wiki is just a means to that end.

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from_name: steve v

subject: [WikiEN-l] What's wrong with the world?

body:
Seems like a cool idea. But given any "Wikipedia 1.0"
agenda, and putting aside for a moment the aspects of
being entirely unwiki and oxymoronical, there are a
few general ways that this could take shape AISI:

* Unwikipedia academic fork: Separate parallel wiki
with Google ads and paid academics working on
polishing wikipedia articles. Code would allow for
easy viewing and merging of Wikipedia and Unwikipedia
articles

* Ghost of Nupedia (aka. Nupedia's Monster): On-wiki
institution of Nupedia-style credentialism. Ranking of
academic degrees by type: conservative American Ivy
League institutions first, everyone else second, all
the way down to mail-order degrees from North Korea.

* Perma-Protectionism: Sysops are pruned by
credentialsm (or less so trust), and allowed to
protect and lock pages at will, banning anyone who
even hints at a crackpot theory, poor spelling, or
youthful ignorance.

* Paranoid Web of Trust: People get ranks (in addition
to barnstars) and parade them proudly. Everyone sucks
up to the Board members, and they eventually get
military-style badges made to pin on their ?&?
Wikimedia Nohat-logo sweatshirts.

* PATRIOT ACT : Uniting and Strengthening Wikipedia by
Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and
Obstruct Trollism Act of 2005

-SV

--- Bryan Derksen <bryan.derksen at shaw.ca> wrote:

> Zachary Harden wrote:
>
> > And how can we mark it as even nice? A template
> could disrupt the
> > page, but IMHO, any type of mark on the article
> page is just asking
> > for trouble. Plus, I still do not know how can one
> define a "done"
> > article on here and how many will be protected on
> a trial basis.
>
> Something based on the version rating system that
> almost got enabled in
> the most recent version of WikiMedia would be best,
> IMO - it's my
> understanding that the basic code is all there, it
> just needs tweaking
> and polishing. Trying to kludge something together
> with the existing
> functions probably wouldn't work well since there's
> no way to attach
> arbitrary metadata to specific versions of a page.
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

____________________________________________________
Start your day with Yahoo! - make it your home page
http://www.yahoo.com/r/hs


subject: [WikiEN-l] Archives

body:
>I think he is reffering to the guy who got a private mail forwarded to
>the list and wished his name off it. That sort of thing. I think that
>those rare cases can be handled on a case by case basis and removed by
>a developer.

A way to post without revealing one's email address (or even better to
reveal an alternate email address) would be nice, though.  I read the list
using my main email account, but I don't want that address accessible via
google (spam sucks), so in order to post I have to log in to my hotmail
account, which is a huge pain in the ass.  In fact, I usually make my
replies private rather than public because I'm too lazy to log in to hotmail
to reply to the list.  Of course, even then I have to put a disclaimer at
the bottom asking people I reply to not to forward my post to the list
without first removing my email address.

In other words, mailing lists are so 1995.

Anthony

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from_name: Phroziac

subject: [WikiEN-l] Archives

body:
By the way, check your hotmail, i sent you an invite to gmail, just
incase that might be easier then using your hotmail ;)

Anyway, you could always, depending on your email client, set up an
account on it to send mail from your ISP account, and spoof the email
address to show your hotmail address in headers.

Or, you could get a good spam blocking tool. I used to use one that
had like 99% accuracy after i trained it, I think it was spam
assassin. I don't use it anymore because I don't get alot of spam
anymore, I switched isps and started using gmail, and, I now use my
new pseudonym in email also, which is harder for my dad to remember
when he does dumb things with it. (Send this to 3 friends (or 3 of
your sons email accounts) for <whatever>, so we can spam them for
life!).

On 8/5/05, Anthony DiPierro <anthonydipierro at hotmail.com> wrote:
> >I think he is reffering to the guy who got a private mail forwarded to
> >the list and wished his name off it. That sort of thing. I think that
> >those rare cases can be handled on a case by case basis and removed by
> >a developer.
>
> A way to post without revealing one's email address (or even better to
> reveal an alternate email address) would be nice, though.  I read the list
> using my main email account, but I don't want that address accessible via
> google (spam sucks), so in order to post I have to log in to my hotmail
> account, which is a huge pain in the ass.  In fact, I usually make my
> replies private rather than public because I'm too lazy to log in to hotmail
> to reply to the list.  Of course, even then I have to put a disclaimer at
> the bottom asking people I reply to not to forward my post to the list
> without first removing my email address.
>
> In other words, mailing lists are so 1995.
>
> Anthony
>
> _________________________________________________________________
> Express yourself instantly with MSN Messenger! Download today - it's FREE!
> http://messenger.msn.click-url.com/go/onm00200471ave/direct/01/
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

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from_name: Zachary Harden

subject: [WikiEN-l] What's wrong with the world?

body:
There's nothing wrong in my opinon with this. However, I am worried about
Jimbo's announcement about locking some articles. See
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/computing/20050805-1259-media-wikipedia.html

Regards,

Zachary Harden

>From: steve v <vertigosteve at yahoo.com>
>Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
>To: wikien-l at wikimedia.org
>Subject: [WikiEN-l] What's wrong with the world?
>Date: Fri, 5 Aug 2005 12:49:06 -0700 (PDT)
>
> >From [[ minority ]]:
>
>''This article is about the concept of a minority. For
>an entry on the [[Green Day]] single, see [[Minority
>(song)|Minority]].''


from_name: Jack Lynch

body:
I think the idea of blanking the article and redirecting is a
brilliant one. It is easilly reversable, and allows quick decisions to
be made by anyone, which can just as easilly be discussed and
reverted, or not. The only thing we would need is a handful of pages
to redirect to. I strongly endorse this idea and suggest it be brought
before the community to '''discuss''' (rather than instantly vote on
;)

Jack (Sam Spade)

Heh, y'know we could do the pure wiki deletion thing right now,
without the links-going-red thing. I've not checked but I bet a lot of
VfD candidates don't have many incoming links.

The only problem with articles that could need deletion, I believe, is
the chance of them showing up in searches. Diskspace etc doesn't
matter. To stop stuff getting searched whenever the index is updated,
is just to blank the article.

We could delete VfD again and do this right now. Debates about
blanking held on talk pages. We could put a blank articles make links
red thing in later.

Dan