subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia moderators and moral authority (was	Re:
 Repost: clear guidelines and the power to enforce)

body:
The Cunctator wrote:

>On 11/11/02 12:21 PM, "Poor, Edmund W" <Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com> wrote:
>
>
>
>>What it comes down to is a tough choice between two choices:
>>
>>(1) We are building a free encyclopedia. Therefore, we use Wiki software.
>>
>>(2) We are maintaining a Wiki community. If we make some good encyclopedia
>>articles, that's nice too.
>>
>>
>>
>This is a false dilemma.
>http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/false-dilemma.html
>
>We have one choice:
>
>(1) We are building a free Wiki encyclopedia.
>
>
>

Cunc, I think your above reasoning should also be applied to the
following (that you posted a while ago)

(a) we are one multi-lingual encyclopedia
(b) we are many encyclopedias, one in each of many languages


list: wikipedia-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Gareth Owen

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia moderators and moral authority (was Re: Repost: clear guidelines and the power to enforce)

body:
The Cunctator <cunctator at kband.com> writes:

> On 11/11/02 12:21 PM, "Poor, Edmund W" <Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com> wrote:
>
> > What it comes down to is a tough choice between two choices:
> >
> > (1) We are building a free encyclopedia. Therefore, we use Wiki software.
> >
> > (2) We are maintaining a Wiki community. If we make some good encyclopedia
> > articles, that's nice too.
>
> This is a false dilemma.

Hardly.  Time and time again the desire to be actually productive has bashed
up a misplaced desire to bend over backwards for people who are utterly
disruptive.

I recommend new entry in "What Wikipedia is not"

        Wikipedia is not an experiment in anarchism.

Really, I wish Jimbo were an actual dictator, of the Torvalds school, and be
judgmental.  Its fair enough that Jimbo's not like that, I just wish he were.

All it would take is such a leader to say
"Julie : you're productive and intelligent and educated.  Please stay.
 Helga : you're a kook.  Don't let the door hit your ass on the way out."

No one is here by force, no one can't leave if they don't care for the policy.

Value judgements *aren't* inherently bad.
Discrimination on the grounds of talent and intelligence isn't a problem.
There is nothing wrong with intolerance towards those people who are
disrupting your reasonable goals and wasting your time and resources.
If someone is behaving like a child, say
  "You're behaving like a child.  Stop it, or get lost"
Then -- if they don't quit -- kick the bastards out.

Allow me to add to add to our melange of bad analogies:
I love to play team sports, and these have rules much like wikipedia's.
If a player continually breaches them, the referee ejects them from the game.
You don't reason with them.  You don't change the rules to take on board their
opinions, you kick them out, and get on with the game.  As a referee I can
assure you, any other course of action is a recipe for disaster.

ObRhetoricalQuestion :
  How did the Linux kernel -- run by a dictator -- get so far ahead of
  GNU/Hurd, run by a bunch of committees trying not to offend anybody?
--
Gareth Owen
"And Cunct, please stop being such a prick."
                        -- wikipedia-l gains a new mantra (Wed Nov  6 2002)


from_name: Anthere

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Database Lock is getting old

body:
--- Daniel Mayer <maveric149 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Can somebody unblock the database at least for
> logged-in users?
>
> An uneditable wiki is a dead wiki

time to work on the international wikip?dias...;-)

__________________________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
U2 on LAUNCH - Exclusive greatest hits videos
http://launch.yahoo.com/u2


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Giskart

subject: [Wikitech-l] Soft Bans?

body:
Jaap van Ganswijk wrote:
[cut]
> By the way, I think people should not be allowed
> to edit articles on Wikipedia when they don't
> have logged in. That way you also have a better
> handle on vandals.
[cut]

Er zal dan wel minder vandalisme zijn maar dan leg je de lat wel een
stuk hoger voor mensen om mee te werken. Hoe eenvoudig de registratie
ook is, het zal mensen tegenhouden. En er zijn anonieme medewerkers die
zeer waardevolle bijdragen leveren. Het zou zeer jammer zijn om die uit
te sluiten.

There will by less vandalism but you make it more difficult for people
to work at wikipedia.  How simple the recording also is, it will stop
men. And there are anonymous users who provide very good contributions.
It would be very unfair to exclude those.


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikipedia-l] server

body:
On Mon, 11 Nov 2002, Zoe wrote:
>
> Who locked the database, why, and when will it be unlocked?  If solving the lag problem is to make it impossible to update, what' s the point of having a wikipedia?

Me, as I explained on the list, and because IT WASN'T RUNNING AT ALL. A
read-only wiki was better than no wiki, no?

It was supposed to automatically unlock after a couple hours, as  stated
in the lock message, which it did  not because I accidentally used a
12-hour time instead of a 24-hour time.  I've been stuck in class for the
last four hours, and nobody else apparently checked up on it.  I've
now unlocked it manually.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


from_name: The Cunctator

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Our options; *your* opinion requested

body:
On Mon, 2002-11-11 at 17:50, Matthew Woodcraft wrote:

> [1] Deleting pages is a separate issue. If history-preserving delete
> isn't working yet, I think we should do without the ability to delete
> pages until such a time as it is -- it's just too divisive. We can live
> with just blanking them.
>
> If/when we have history-preserving delete, then I see no good reason not
> to make it available to all users.

We have history-preserving delete. It's available only to sysops.

I don't think that's terrible terrible, but mainly because I expect that
sysop capacity will be something automatically granted to all
semifrequent users.


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Once again: Please revoke my sysop status

body:
On Mon, 11 Nov 2002, Jeroen Heijmans wrote:
> Once again, because my previous post did not result in any action:
>
> To those with the power to do so: could you please revoke my sysop status?
> I no longer have the will and the time to carry the responsibility that
> comes with administratorship. Reading discussions (e.g. on Wikipedia-L) is
> taking too much time and bringing too little enjoyment or satisfaction for
> me to continue doing it. I'd much rather withdraw myself from that and
> focus on writing and editing instead, without being "bothered" by the -
> implicit - responsibilities of a sysop.

Done.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


from_name: Krzysztof P. Jasiutowicz

subject: [Wikipedia-l] (Wikipedians groups) Small Request

body:
On 11-11-2002, Christopher Mahan wrote thusly :
> ASB wrote:
> Also, re the Wikipedians/Anti-Americans I think that if we're going
> to
> letp eople categorise themselves, they sohuld be able to categerise
> themselves into whatever they want to. Moving these pages to
> metapedia is
> a nice idea, but at the moments accounts aren't universal (as in
> you have
> to register to each wiki seperately), so it could be annoying.
> --------------------
> I agree. The work of wikipedia, in my opinion, would be better served
> if people were able to create and join focus groups of like minded
> people.
> I also think one advantage would include the ability for viewers to
> see the varied makeup of the wikipedia contributors and thus decide
> for themselves theusefulness of the encyclopedia to them
Yes, yes it is a reminiscence of previous threads and discussions about
creating editor teams and give them some (software ?) tools to cooperate
and perhaps certify articles and might be set policies.

Wikiprojects are a good start that can be further worked on.

Regards,
Kpjas.


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re:  server

body:
On Mon, 11 Nov 2002, Daniel Mayer wrote:

> On Monday 11 November 2002 02:39 pm, Zoe wrote:
> > Who locked the database, why, and when will it be unlocked?  If solving the
> > lag problem is to make it impossible to update, what' s the point of having
> > a wikipedia? Zoe
>
> Yes, an uneditable wiki is a major joke. Our articles are always readable via
> Google cache. Could it be possible to allow editing by at least logged-in
> users?

Okay, mav, YOU try to keep the the damn site up while everybody complains
at you. I look forward to your solution, which I expect to be ready
and running immediately.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Lir yet again

body:
On 11-11-2002, elian wrote thusly :
> Daniel Mayer <maveric149 at yahoo.com> writes:
>
> > We usually move hopelessly POV stuff to Meta. I vote for moving ALL the
> > Wikipedia/foo pages there (even the geographic based categories). IMO the
> > Wikiepdians page at en.wiki should be a alphabetic list with a link to the
> > the chronological "history" list that states when each user joined.
> No, the geographical categories are really useful. If you need an
> information about a country specific topic, you can ask someone there,
> f.e. I would even suggest to add more categories. Wikipedia has become
> quite anonymously. I think it would be useful for example to set up pages
> like "people mainly interested in philosophical topics" or "music
> freaks". As Wikipedia grows, we will need small communities of people
> working in one field together instead of individuals filling up the
> articles.
elian : The geographical categories seems quite useful and logical. I take
your point. But let's admit that they are hardly ever used the way you
are proposing.
Wikiprojects or editor teams yes but it needs more discussion. As a side
note there seems to be relatively little community spirit now in
Wikipedia(s) ?
> This would be also a step towards a more efficient dealing with "content
> trolls", ie. people who step in, holding obscure views and imposing
> their agenda onto wikipedia. One of the main problems with these people is
> that they get away a long time with their behavior because the people who
> try to control are not able to judge what is rubbish and what is not.
>
> An example: in the German wikipedia I would love to have some economy
> students who could at least tell which parts of the content added by our
> "Freiwirtschaft"-adherent to the articles about economy are mainstream
> view and which need to be marked as minority view.

> Don't deny people this possibility to organize!
Yes. It is a good idea but it should be given proper attention and
suitable software tools.
Perhaps phpBB forums, that Cuncatator has proposed, can be a temporary
solution for further integration with Wikipedias and further customization.

Regards,
Kpjas.


from_name: koyaanisqatsi at nupedia.com

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Locked database

body:
Zoe Wrote:
>>Why is it, that when I try to edit a page, I'm getting a notice that
the database is locked, but Recent Changes show that updates have been
made at the exact same time I'm told that I can't do any updates?
Have I been singled out?<<

No, Zoe, you have not been singled out.  Why would you be?

If it's any consolation, I can't edit either.

kq


from_name: Toby Bartels

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia moderators and moral authority

body:
Larry Sanger wrote:

>Our collective experience is more than enough proof that we need
>*consistent* enforcement, Erik, not *stronger* enforcement.

You're talking about consistency regarding people like Helga and Lir, right?
(I think that we're already pretty consistent about vandalism.)
I agree with you and Ed (if you're saying what I think you are)
that we need to design policies for these situations
so that they can begin to be enforced consistently.
I don't think that this requires a new class of administrator,
since the situations come up rarely enough that
ordinary adminstrators can deal with them
(or could if given the power to ban logged in users,
a change that would be useful even only for vandals).
But a consistent policy on what the authority to ban should be
would be a very good idea.

>Your interest is obviously not in reducing
>power but in keeping power distributed among a lot of different people who
>use it in totally different, inconsistent ways, and none of which has any
>particular respect among other users.  Virtually anyone can, for the
>asking, get sysop privileges and start banning IPs and locking pages.
>That certainly appears to be mob rule and by golly, in my experience on
>Wikipedia lately I have to say it certainly *feels* like mob rule.

It doesn't feel like mob rule to me,
because adminstrators don't abuse their power.
When we have mistakes, it's because the policies either aren't clear
(and in that case we need a change, we need to write clear policies)
are aren't understood (and in that case we don't need a change,
since the mistake can be undone by another administrator).

>Erik Moeller wrote:

>>Larry Sanger wrote:

>>>In that case, we can always collect a list of people who have been
>>>driven away or who have quietly stopped editing so much out of disgust
>>>with having to deal with people who just don't get it.

>>That's not the kind of list I'm talking about, because it only tells us
>>about the reactions, not the actual actions. You may say that these people
>>were driven away by silly eedjots, but I cannot tell whether this is true
>>without looking at the actual conflicts.

>Be serious--look at what you just wrote.  Does anyone other than you
>really need it to be proven?  It's *obvious* to anyone who has observed
>very many of the people who have left the project in disgust.

It's obvious to me only because I've looked at the conflicts,
and then only in those cases where I *have* looked at the conlficts
(which is all of the cases that I know about, which is very few).
If Erik hasn't seen the conflicts, then they should be pointed out to him
(this is where viewing deleted pages without undeleting them would be useful)
so that it can become obvious to him.

>It's also
>quite obviously the fact that we have to tolerate a bunch of people who
>just don't want to play by the rules--even after being told what the rules
>are and that those rules are indeed not going to be changed--that a lot of
>highly qualified people see the website and decide not to participate.

And it's not obvious to me that this actually happens at all.
Who are the "highly qualified" people that decide not to participate?
You know them, I suppose; Erik and I don't.

>But in the mouths of any libertarian or anarchist

(quoted for context of the word "ideology" below)

>The result of this ideology is that *anyone* who is distinguished in any
>way that results in their having more authority--whether officially or
>unofficially--will be opposed as an evil "elite" or "cabal" by you and
>people like you.

Although Erik claims not to be one of them (and I believe him),
I suspect that we do have a lot of libertarians and anarchists here,
and if you want people to have moral authority among these users,
then it won't be helpful to give them extraordinary powers.
(Of course, the anarchists will prefer to say
"community trust" rather than "moral authority",
but you don't have to let them in on that -_^.)

>>>Well, the times I'm concerned about aren't necessarily times when people
>>>are shouting against the majority, but when they write nonsense, brazen
>>>political propoganda, crankish unsupported stuff, and so forth--in other
>>>words, violating community standards.

>>Do you mean nonsense in the sense of "something that just isn't true"
>>or in the sense of simple noise, like crapflooders? How do you plan to
>>define / recognize "crankish unspported stuff"?

>Do you really think it would resolve anything in our discussion if I were
>to supply you with an answer to these questions?  No, you seem to want to
>ask rhetorical questions, and the point of the questions is: there are no
>clear standards whereby we can determine when community standards are
>violated.

I think that it's an important practical question
if your system of moderators is to be used.
What will the standards by which moderators decide
whether or not community standards have been violated?
Specifically (for Erik's question), how will they decide
when something is "crankish unsupported stuff"?
You answer this practical question in general below:

>Some standards are explicitly stated and have been vigorously debated and
>shaped to something well-understood and -agreed by Wikipedia's old guard
>and best contributors; for example, NPOV, having lower-cased titles, and
>not signing articles.  Other standards are specific to a field and some of
>them are known (and indeed perhaps knowable) only to people who have given
>adequate time studying the subject.  There are certainly clear standards
>of both sorts, and the fact that there are borderline cases, where we're
>not sure what to say, hardly impugns the idea that there are such clear
>standards.

:except for the borderline cases, which is a pretty good start.
And if the borderline cases are rare, then the answer to that could be
case law, as you mentioned in your original moderator proposal,
so now the general question is completely answered.
But you didn't answer the specific question,
about detecting "crankish unsupported stuff",
which IMO is still a reasonable practical question.

>(As an aside, [[Neutral point of view]] has specific implications for the
>case that you raise; where the implications are unclear, we use our
>judgment and engage in debate.)

Well, we do now.  What will the moderators do,
when there are only 3 of them at one time,
and nobody besides Jimbo can overrule the trifecta
until their term of office is over?
(after which they still leave their precedent in case law).
It might be better to clarify the implications now, where possible.
We don't have to figure this out immediately,
but I think that it's important to Erik,
so if you have ideas, then it will help you to mention them.
(It will also help Erik to read [[Wikipedia:NPOV]]
and come up with specific examples, hypothetical or not,
of the sort of thing that still worries him after reading that.)

>>>Erik Moeller wrote:

>>>>I am, like many others, a big believer in the concept of "soft
>>>>security".

>>>Why don't you explain exactly what that means here on the list, and why
>>>you and others think it's such a good thing?

>>The idea of soft security has evolved in wikis, and it is only fair to
>>point you to the respective page at MeatballWiki for the social and
>>technical components of soft security:
>>http://www.usemod.com/cgi-bin/mb.pl?SoftSecurity

>I'm not particularly interested in going to the website to find out what
>you mean.

Then you're not particularly interested in engaging in discussion with him.
That's your right.

>If you want to introduce an unfamiliar term into a debate, it
>is polite to define it.  Use information from that Usemod page to make
>your case, but don't expect me to go there and provide you arguments
>against it here on Wikipedia-L.

I went to the web page, and it means pretty much what I thought that it did
(I had previously just figured out the meaning from context on this list).
I'd copy down the definition for you, but there is no definition;
it's a vague concept, so instead I'll list examples and nonexamples.
And of course, I'll have to define what each of the examples is.

Actually, rather than put all that text into this post,
let me just point you to two web pages that have it already:
<http://www.usemod.com/cgi-bin/mb.pl?SoftSecurity> (for the examples)
and <http://www.usemod.com/cgi-bin/mb.pl?HardSecurity> (for the nonexamples).
Both pages have some stuff after the lists of examples,
but you can ignore all of that (although you might find it interesting).

I think that this is an entirely reasonable way to carry on a discussion.
It's not like I've put down a dozen links that you need to hunt through;
I've put down two links that clearly and up front say what I want to say.
If you don't want to continue the discussion under these terms,
then that's your choice.

>Erik, two things.  First, we already have banning and deletion.
>From what you say I infer that Wikipedia has LONG AGO decided
>against using SoftSecurity.  Those of you who promote it apparently are
>trying to change it.

Rather, Wikipedia has decided against using *only* soft security.
It still uses many soft security measures,
the most obvious being the ability of any user
to undo the changes done by any other user
(on the same level of Ed's hierarchy of power).

>It's very hard to abuse power in an environment when a sizable
>minority of the contributors are virtually drooling with the opportunity
>to catch someone in an act of abuse of power.  (I oughta know.)

Well, but you never really *tried*, now did you?  ^_^

>You say that you're disgusted by the thought that we are already banning
>innocent users.  The best way we have of ensuring against that is by
>adopting my proposal; it would provide for a totally open, regular,
>rational method of imposing sanctions, quite unlike the present system.

But your proposal isn't about banning vandals, is it?
Surely you're not saying that 3 moderators at a time
is better than every administrator going after the vandals!
And the banning of innocent users is primarily occurring
as a side effect of the war against vandalism.
This is an important, but I think different, issue.
One possible solution is to automatically unban after, say, a week.
Erik (or maybe it was somebody else) has suggested a technical fix
that would improve this (but possibly worsen other things),
on a different thread.

>My point was that peer pressure
>*did* indeed work pretty well under my tenure.  It seems to be working
>considerably less well now.  Whether my official presence had anything to
>do with it, I don't know or care; I do know that the problem is far worse
>than it was.

>Again, you could ask the many people who have left or who have stopped
>contributing as much.

We should also ask the people that *haven't* done this.
(Not me; I wasn't around when Larry was official.)

>>>I don't want to see
>>>something that I've helped build wear away into something awful.

>>Again, I'm not seeing that happen.

>Then, frankly, Erik, you haven't been paying attention, or your ideology
>is blinding you to facts that seem obvious to the many others who have
>commented on them on Wikipedia-l.

I've been paying attention, but I'm not seeing it happen either.
Perhaps I'm blinded by my ideology; perhaps you're blinded by yours.
Since I can't tell in either case, I'm just going to have to give
each of our impressions equal weight.

>>>But one reason I'm worried about the current state of Wikipedia is
>>>that we might have some expert reviewers coming in to do some good
>>>work here, only to be attacked by some eedjit who gets his jollies out
>>>of attacking an expert precisely because she's an expert.  That *will*
>>>happen, almost certainly, if the Wikipedia peer review project gets
>>>going.

These experts will be in a much better position
than Julie was to ignore their attacks.
They make their edits, approve the article,
and if the eedjit messes it up, still Recylopediasifter will be OK.
So while they'll no doubt be just as annoyed
(since they'll have to undo the eedjit every time that
the article comes back around on their schedule for review,
assuming that nobody else has dealt with it in the meantime),
they won't have to leave the project, since Wikipedia isn't the project.

>>Well, I can predict that I'm going to "attack" experts myself if they
>>add non-NPOV content, fail to cite sources properly, insist on their
>>authority to make their point etc.

>Good luck.  Remember, experts know more about their areas than you do.
>That's why we call them experts.  So don't embarrass yourself too badly.

First, the people on Recyclopediasifter will be PhDs, not experts.
While these characteristics tend to go together, they're not the same thing.

More importantly, if Erik attacks an expert (not just a PhD, but an expert)
for not citing sources and arguing fallaciously (argument by authority),
and if the expert comes back and cites sources and argues validly
and proves her point beyond any doubt, leaving her critics in the dust,
then I for one will not consider Erik to have lost any face.
(Nor the experpt, because while she was in danger for a moment there,
in the end she made good.)

OTOH, if Erik tells an expert that she isn't being NPOV,
and the withering force of her vast knowledge proves that she is,
then, yeah, he should be embarrassed.  That's the risk of debate.

>>My view on experts and what makes an expert is very different from
>>yours, but I believe both views can coexist in a good certification
>>system.

>I'm a Ph.D. epistemologist.  My dissertation adviser was (still is) an
>expert on the concept of expertise, and I've read several papers on this
>area of social epistemology as part of a graduate course.  In addition, I
>gave careful thought to this subject while working on Nupedia.  Now, what
>is [it] that you think [is] my view of what experts are and what makes an
>expert?

(I'm not sure if I parsed the last sentence correctly, so please check it.)
I get the strong impression from what I've read of your opinions,
here and on Nupedia, that you think that experts are usually correct
and that academic degrees are strong evidence of expertise.
I get the (weaker) impression that Erik doesn't believe these things.
But rather than go by my impressions (or Erik's, since you asked him),
we'd probably get further if each of you just came out and said
*what* your views on experts and what makes an expert *are*.

>>>The whole reason behind a random sample is precisely to forestall the
>>>sort of "elitism" and abuse of power that you fear.

>>I know, and I respect this good intention. I just don't think it's the
>>right approach, it will only lead to less informed decisions. Better keep
>>the decision process open to (almost) everybody (we need to prevent vote
>>flooding as well), that way we can reduce abuse of power the most
>>effectively. That's why K5's moderation system works and Slashdot's
>>doesn't.

>I just have no idea why you say the system I proposed would "lead to less
>informed decisions."  Perhaps you should reread the proposal (even though
>it was, as I said, just a rough outline); I even went so far as to suggest
>that perhaps there would be a body of Wikipedia "case law" developed, that
>moderators could consult.  This would lead to *less* informed decisions
>than in the present case, when virtually anyone can have the power to ban
>and delete?

Why can't we start developing the case law anyway,
either under the present system of discussion and consensus,
or under Erik's voting proposal?
In fact, I claim that we *have*been* developing such case law,
in the form of the precedents and customs that we bring up
every time discussion of a new content based banning takes place,
and also bring up in the talk discussions that precede such efforts.

-- Toby


from_name: erik_moeller at gmx.de

subject: [Wikitech-l] Watchbox patch committed

body:
> Not that i have objections against this change, but changes to the
> software/userinterfase of the Wikipedias should be announced formaly and
> well in advance.
> Somthing like this;
> Give 3 weeks notice.

This is way too long. I don't have time to track each individual patch
over three weeks, especially since patches become obsolete quite quickly
as other changes are committed. Besides, intwiki-l is not for feature
discussion (see the list description). wikitech-l is, and if feature
discussion concerns wikipedia policies, it should be copied/moved to
wikipedia-l.

Notice that the above policy is not used by anyone else either, so I don't
even see why you bring it up. Members of the international Wikipedias that
want to take part in feature discussions should subscribe to wikitech-l
and/or wikipedia-l, if we spread this stuff over three lists, we'll never
get anything done.

What I can agree on is to send strings that need to be translated to
intwiki-l before committing a change, and to wait a few days for
translations to come in, then to commit the change together with the
translations. But if not all translations come in within a reasonable
amount of time, they will have to be added later, meaning that the user
interface will have some English in it until the translations are
submitted. If you check some of the international Wikipedias, you will
notice that this is the case for quite a few of them, for features with
which I had nothing to do.

Regards,

Erik


subject: [Wikitech-l] Watchbox patch committed

body:
> Actually, I did object.

You said you liked the idea and made an alternative suggestion ("it
*might* make more sense"). I explained why I preferred my solution, and
that both could coexist. You posted no further reply, so I consider your
objection obsolete.

Regards,

Erik


subject: [Wikipedia-l] voting

body:
On Mon, 2002-11-11 at 18:19, Bridget [name omitted for privacy reasons] wrote:
> We must end the nonsense. Never again must a page like,
> "Anti-American Wikipedians" be deleted on the say-so of some elitist.
> We must vote on such issues. Never again should the name of Munchen or
> Colombo be decided by some American with administrative powers. We
> must vote on such issues and we must start this voting process soon.

Quite declaratively put. But where's the fire? The Anti-American
Wikipedians page was deleted, but then it was undeleted. I'd say the
only problem is that you're not a sysop; then you could have undeleted
it yourself.

The only other problem is that, as I see it, there's a basic
inconsistency in having both meta and the Wikipedia: namespace, since
they serve overlapping functions, and overlapping functionality leads to
conflict. But I'm willing to go with the implicit rule of "If it annoys
somebody, put it on meta."


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Sidebar change, comments?

body:
On Mon, 2002-11-11 at 18:32, Erik Moeller wrote:
> > "What links here" doesn't need a question mark
>
> Alright, I hear you. I'll apply the patch without the questionmark.
>
If you really want to apply the patch immediately, would you please do
it as an alternate skin?

Thanks.


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Arms race.

body:
People have stated that the percentage of vandalism by anonymous users
has gone up recently.

Is this simply because we have instituted IP blocking, and increasingly
use it?

It's hardly unlikely. In fact, it's what normally happens when hard
security measures are taken.


from_name: Daniel Mayer

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Re:  server

body:
On Monday 11 November 2002 06:15 pm, Brion wrote:
> On Mon, 11 Nov 2002, Daniel Mayer wrote:
> > On Monday 11 November 2002 02:39 pm, Zoe wrote:
> > > Who locked the database, why, and when will it be unlocked?  If solving
> > > the lag problem is to make it impossible to update, what' s the point
> > > of having a wikipedia? Zoe
> >
> > Yes, an uneditable wiki is a major joke. Our articles are always readable
> > via Google cache. Could it be possible to allow editing by at least
> > logged-in users?
>
> Okay, mav, YOU try to keep the the damn site up while everybody complains
> at you. I look forward to your solution, which I expect to be ready
> and running immediately.
>
> -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

The point was that the lock went way too long. You have already explained why
- it was a goof-up your end between 12 and 24 hour time. Big deal, human
error. I was just pointing out that the lock was lasting way to long and
should be lifted by somebody with the power to do so. Everything else was
just an idea or two on how IMO a db lock should work along with a touch of
ironic sarcasm to bring my point home.

Please don't read that as being criticism - I deeply respect the work you have
done on PediWiki and as a general contributor.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)


from_name: Alexander Stephen Bradbury

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re:  Wikipedians groups (was small Small Request and other titles)

body:
It seems to me though, quite oppressive to let people state their
religion, but not say they're anti-american. If the anti-american page had
never been created, I'm sure many wouldn't care if somebody made a
democratic page, or something more 'acceptable' to most people. Not that
being democratic or anti american are mutually exclusive. People can
assert their religion, and numerous other things, why not their dislike of
america. This is censorship, it seems in a way non-NPOV to me. My point
is, we should let EVERYBODY categorise themselves into whatever wikipedian
group they want, or let nobody, or maybe restrict it to geographical.
Though that would be by no means perfect, as it may not be such a good
thing to only let people categorise themselves by their nationality. I
know I'm being rather picky, but I feel it's an important aspect of the
project. End of rant.

ASB

--
<signature>
There are only 10 types of people in this world;
Those that know binary...and those that don't
</signature>


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Wikipedia moderators and moral authority

body:
Mav wrote in part:

>If you want to establish *clear consequences* for breaking the rules then how
>about we add to each edit window a statement saying "By saving this page you
>agree to the rules and conditions of using this website" (rules and
>conditions would link to our policy page). Of course we would have to redo
>the policy page so that only real policies are on it. The policies listed IMO
>should be; NPOV, no copyright violations, 'we are an encyclopedia' and yes
>Wikipetiquette.

I like this idea, although rather than change the main policy page,
we should have one specific [[Wikipedia:Absolute policies]] page,
and link to that.  This page should be locked.
(If we're really paranoid, then we could link to
a specific spot in the page's history.)

We can then discuss what should be on that page,
which should always be kept very short.
I agree with the first 2 of your 4 suggestions,
and I await others' opinions.

-- Toby


body:
Ed Poor wrote:

>Jimbo has supreme power.

>The developers have all the rights of sysops, plus the "can" revoke anyone's
>sysop status, ban a signed-in user and permanently erase any version of any
>article. (This doesn't mean they're "authorized" to, just that the power is
>in their hands.)

>The sysops can protect or "delete" a page and ban any IP, even one used by
>a signed-in contributor, as was done temporarily to Lir. Sysops can edit a
>protected page.

>Ordinary signed-in users have immunity from banning, although they might have
>to jump through hoops if their IP is blocked. They can't delete pages, edit
>protected pages or block IPs. They get a user page.

>The non-signed-in can edit any page except the few protected pages, and they
>don't get a user page. They can be blocked by any sysop.

I disagree with your assessment of the current situation
only in that I believe that the bottom 2 levels are really the same.
You're talking about power here, what people can do if they so choose.
(For instance, you list the developers' *power* to permanently delete pages,
because they can, even though they don't have the *authority* to do so.)
Well, an anonymous user can sign in, quite easily.
There's really no difference; even I make anonymous edits occasionally.
But this doesn't mean that I'm shifting levels back and forth,
because at any time that I want to use my adminstrator powers,
I can sign in and do so.

>This is what Jimbo will most likely do:
>* don't fix it, 'cause it ain't broken.
>Larry and others are saying:
>* it's broken, so fix it or I'll leave, or
>* it's broken, and you didn't fix it, so I'm leaving
>I'm saying:
>* it's broken, so let's all put our heads together and find a way to fix it
>before it falls apart completely

I say:
* it's not broken, except in the sense that it's a hierarchy at all,
but it can still be improved; I'm no conservative.

Whatever happened to mav's suggestion of automatic old hand status?
That makes the difference between the bottom two levels smaller
(where "bottom two" is defined after I merge Ed's old bottom two).

And since the only reason that administrators can't ban logged in users
is that we have no way to figure out what their IP numbers are,
let's open that up to all administrators.
After all, developers don't have more power than other administrators
because we decided that they should have more authority,
and then gave them the power to back that up;
rather, they have more power because they have direct access to the database.
If that's power that needs to be used (other than for coding, of course),
then the authority should devlove to all administrators,
and we should find a way to give us the power to back that authority up.

This still leaves the problem that banning can be cast too wide --
this *is* broken, but it's a technical problem of getting the right peron --
and the problem of when we should ban other than for vandalism --
that's not broken, since we discuss it on the list,
but it can be improved, primarily by coming up with clear policies.

-- Toby


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Fucking Asshole

body:
Ed Poor wrote:

>What would happen if a signed-in user started writing the following all over
>Wikipedia? How would we deal with it? (Purely a hypothetical case, I assure
>you ;-)

>"I hate everybody and everything. I will destroy Wikipedia, and you can't stop
>me. Your own stupid rules forbid it, BWAH HA HA HA!"

That's clearly vandalism, of a fairly ordinary sort,
so the user should be banned; there's no doubt there.
The only problem is that, due to a technical feature
(that you can't find out the user's IP number
without looking directly into the database),
most administrators don't have the power to ban the user.
(We all have the authority, however; we all may ban vandals.)

I suppose that the administrators might take a closer look
and realise that there were mitigating circumstances,
such as we have here, where the vandal is a trusted user
(in fact an administrator himself) that we know will clean his mess up,
and was simply trying to make a point, however "poor"ly (as he later admits).
With clear guidelines and policies about how banning works, however,
we might be in a situation where we're not allowed to make an exception.
*That*'s an important point.

-- Toby


from_name: Larry Sanger

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Survey replies

body:
I'd better report on two private replies I received to my survey.
Further replies to my survey should go to the list.  Here were the two
replies.

First reply:
Issue 1: Yes, it is a serious problem and it exists.
Issue 2: The Moderators Option

Second reply:
>ISSUE 1.  The problem or lack thereof.
I don't agree with either your pro or your con.  Yes, there is a
problem, yes people can often be guided not to be a problem, yes it's
happened before, no it's not happening now (and I'm part of the
problem in that regard, b/c I've not been active on the pedia lately
and would have made considerable strides towards calming e.g. Lir if
at all possible).

>ISSUE 2.  What to do about the problem, if anything.
>The Status Quo, Plus Clearer Principles Option: We need to debate and
>settle upon some clear principles about when sanctions are to be meted out
>by our sysops.
yes.  we do.  I think we've grown past the point where community norms
are obvious, and the more we grow the less obvious they will be (and
the less normative also).

The only consensus I see developing is the need for more clearly stated
community standards.  I certainly agree with that myself.

Larry
--
"We have now sunk to a depth at which the re-statement of the obvious is
the first duty of intelligent men." --George Orwell


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Repost: clear guidelines and the power to enforce them

body:
Ortolan88 wrote:

>Toby Bartels wrote:

>>I like the idea that people come from outside the discussion
>>to impose civility in this fashion by moderating.

>Larry Sanger has been doing it recently, generally to good effect
>(against me, as it happens).  I would add that anyone doing this sort
>of graybeard oversight will have to forego the luxury of sarcasm, even
>in the comment line, and resist the temptation to chime in on every
>little point.  Those things reduce the value of the outside
>intervention and make it seem less disinterested (neutral).

Right.  You can't be a moderator if you're a participant.

Of course, now the word "moderator" is associated with
Larry's proposal of a new class of superuser,
in addition to or replacing the ordinary sysops,
with powers to back up their (hoped for) moral authority,
and limited to a small number at a time (say 3),
but rotating randomly to everybody eventually.
I'm opposed to all of that (except the random rotation,
if it must happen at all).

*However*, nothing is stopping any of us, *right*now*,
even those of us that are *not*sysops*,
from using the respect that we have gained in the past,
and the moral authority that this confers upon us,
to act as Ed has been doing since he arrived,
as moderators in a purely etymological sense of the term,
without the need for any special powers or official appointments.

-- Toby


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Multilingual Wikipedia

body:
The Cunctator wrote:

>Tarquin wrote:

>>The Cunctator wrote:

>>>This is a false dilemma.

>>Cunc, I think your above reasoning should also be applied to the
>>following (that you posted a while ago)
>>(a) we are one multi-lingual encyclopedia
>>(b) we are many encyclopedias, one in each of many languages

>Simply put, (b) doesn't in itself provide any reason for the various
>participants of different languages to work together, whereas (a) does.

I'm going to agree with Cunc on this one,
even though I opposed him in the multilingual discussion.

The reason that the discussion was so surreal, IMO,
is not that anybody was presenting anybody with a false dichotomy,
but that everybody was choosing (a) while accusing the others of choosing (b).
In the end, I think that we realised that were simply arguing about
how best to go about reaching the goal of (a),
and then only accused our opponents of advocating a plan
that would *unintentionally*result* in (b).

-- Toby


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Fucking Asshole

body:
Ed Poor wrote:

>If we have a standard on not showing the goat man's naked butt, then we have
>a standard. All I'm saying is: let's refine and enshrine our standards.

Do we have a standard on not showing the goat man's naked butt?
We have standards on not violating copyright and on vandalising;
either of these alone is sufficient for those specific cases.
I personally wouldn't want to enshrine an additional standard.

-- Toby


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Enough for now

body:
Well, folks, I've had enough for now.  I can't continue these
conversations, because they are taking far too much of my time; I couldn't
do them justice if I wanted to.  You also won't see me much anytime soon
on Wikipedia itself.  I really do apologize to those (few, no doubt) who
thought I was a positive influence recently.  I wish I had the time,
energy, and patience to continue, and I hope you'll keep fighting the good
fight.

I will continue to work on Sifter-l, though.

Larry
--
"We have now sunk to a depth at which the re-statement of the obvious is
the first duty of intelligent men." --George Orwell


body:
Ed Poor wrote in part:

>I don't understand your "functionality" vs. "authority" distinction.

>I maintain that Wikipedia has *de facto* five levels of AUTHORITY.

>There are five levels of POWER in our community.

I don't know exactly what "functionality" is supposed to mean,
but there is definitely a difference between power and authority.
You alluded to it in your description of the developer level,
although not with exactly those terms.

Power is purely factual; it's what you can do if you decide to.
Authority is normative; it's what you're authorised to do.
Power without authority, if acted upon, is abuse of power.
Authority without power cannot be acted upon, but should be;
to rectify this, authority must be backed up with power.

"functionality", AFAICT, could mean either of these,
or something else entirely.

-- Toby


list: sifter-l

source: wayback-mbox

subject: [Sifter-l] Last call re names!

body:
Last call for input about names--anything else to say?  I will try to
please everyone as much as possible.

--Larry

=======

OK, here are the proposed names so far, in categories.

First, a new one, which is kind of interesting:

infomni.org

info + omni

Names that at least one person has supported:
* encyclofilter.org  It's there!
* encyclops.org  I've decided I kind of like this one!
* encyclosifter.org
* gnupedia.org (Jimbo owns this and might agree to let us use it)
* hyperpedia.org (.com owned by  Carl Steadman and used as alias)
* infomni.org
* metapedia.org (.com owned by Martin Irvine and unused)
* pediafilter.org  Cumbersome, but accurate.
* recyclopedia.org
* ultrapedia.org (.com owned by David Max and unused)

Other ideas:
* entrypicker.org (.com avail).  ;-)
* infocyclo.org/com.  It's available!  It's also kind of annoying.
* infofilter.org.  (.com taken)
* infosifter.org.  (.com is taken)
* revencyclo.org/com.

Other ideas and comments?

Some various principles for choosing a name have been proposed:

1. Don't use "sifter" or "filter" in the name because that implies the
process rather than the product.

2. Don't use names where the .com variant is unavailable.  It would be too
easy for the owner of the .com name to set up a confusing mirror, or even
a fork, at that name.

3. Try to make it relatively short.

4. Try to make it relatively descriptive.

5. Try to make it attractive.

Good luck to us trying to think of a name that fits all the constraints!

Larry
--
"We have now sunk to a depth at which the re-statement of the obvious is
the first duty of intelligent men." --George Orwell


from_name: Pierre Abbat

body:
On Monday 11 November 2002 20:13, Daniel Mayer wrote:
> Can somebody unblock the database at least for logged-in users?

According to the lock notice:

Our poor little database is under too much load. Some of you people, go away!
;) Editing is temporarily disabled to keep things afloat; should be back
online by 12:00 UTC.

No edits have completed since 16:33 local, which is 21:33 UTC. It is now 1:37
UTC. Why does it have to stay locked for over ten more hours??

phma


from_name: Magnus Manske

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia moderators and moral authority	(wasRe:
 Repost: clear guidelines and the power to enforce)

body:
The Cunctator wrote:

>On 11/11/02 12:48 PM, "Poor, Edmund W" <Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com> wrote:
>
>
>
>>Your solution to the "dilemma" I posed fails to take the bull by the horns.
>>
>>Our goal is NOT to build a free Wiki encyclopedia, but rather to build a free
>>encyclopedia. Our choice of the Wiki Way is a means to the end, not an end in
>>itself.
>>
>>
>
>Hardly. There's a reason this is called "Wikipedia". The Wiki software is
>what distinguishes this project from other projects such as Nupedia, which
>also had the goal to build a free encyclopedia.
>
>
Well, I myself started at the "gnupedia" project, which later changed
its name to "GNE" and vanished soon afterwards. By that time, I had
already switched to Nupedia, which still dies a lonely and forgotten
death, and came to wikipedia, 'cause that's where the action and the fun
was. Today, I seem rather attracted to the soon-to-be "Larrypedia" project.
To cut it short, my goal was always to work on a free encyclopedia. Wiki
is just the tool that got the best results so far.
It seems that's what Ed Poor feels like too. Jimbo probably as well, as
he started with Nupedia. But, we might be a minority ;-)

Magnus


subject: [Wikitech-l] Bottleneck: Internal link resolution

body:
Hi,

> I address this issue as a non-techie.  I have worked on some very
> link-heavy pages, such as the ones for the Academy Awards whose loading
> time increases with the addition of more data.
>     1. Is it likely that a technical solution will soon be found for the
> slow loading?

I'll try to look closer into it in the next few days, but I'd appreciate
some help from the long-term developers. Another thing I'm currently
trying to improve is the speed of the Orphaned Pages special, which takes
an awful lot of time on my local install (possibly because of a missing
index in the table).

>     2. Are there ways in which data could be better organized to
> minimize the effects of slow loading?
>     3. Should articles like the Academy Awards listings be broken down
> to more manageable sizes, and if so, how does one determine optimum sizes?

With the current software, it's simply a matter of the number of links.
The more links, the slower the page will load. The volume of the actual
text content does not matter. So you could try to break collections of
links into different sections on separate pages.

But in general I am against such workarounds. We should try to improve the
software ASAP. Do you think I could convert you into a developer? We need
all the help we can get, and I'd be willing to teach as far as I
understand.

Regards,

Erik


from_name: Tom Parmenter

in_reply_to:
<20021111224442.21858.qmail@web14505.mail.yahoo.com> (message
	from Throbbing Monster Cock on Mon, 11 Nov 2002 14:44:42 -0800 (PST))

body:
So, having truncated your name out of respect for Tarquin, why not
change it out of respect for Isis?


from_name: elian

subject: [Wikipedia-l] about agendas

body:
Hello,

I want to speak of agendas in two senses: first of the agendas some people
try to impose upon wikipedia and second of an agenda as a suggestion for
better organization of this mailinglist.

First: concerning trolls, obstructive users and so on:
I see Wikipedia first of all as a scientific project with the remarkable
feature that not only scientists are working at it but also "normal"
people. But that doesn't mean that we should give up the standards of
scientific research. Wikipedia is big and attractive enough - we don't
need contributors who can't behave according to the rules set in
Wikiquette and NPOV. More than more restrictive and/or
effective banning rules we need rules for ourselves:
- Don't give people seeking attention the desired attention (this for
the Anti-American page)
- Warn politely and _ignore_!
- Ban if people violate warnings and continue with their behaviour.
- Don't attack a sysop because of a quick ban if the banned person
contributed nothing remarkably to wikipedia other than quarrels.

Last week I read in another enclycopedia (about theory of science) -
ethics of science, Mertons four norms I think we should adopt:
- the quality of research should not be judged by social characteristics
of the researcher (like race, religion...)
- results of research should be open and free, not secret ;-)
- the working attitude of the scientific community should be organized
scepticism. Each source or belief should be critically examined.
- the researcher should have no interest in the outcomes of his research.

These are ideal norms (like our NPOV), but I think people whose sole
interest is to "prove" something (that USA are evil, that "Freiwirtschaft"
will solve all economical problems, that Karl the Great didn't exist at
all, that the Beatles were the greatest rockband ever) have no place in
Wikipedia.

==============

Second: discussion here often seems to be unproductive. A subject is
discussed, several ideas are presented and nothing is done in the end
until the same subject comes up a little bit later again.
What I propose is some sort of agenda, maybe with a corresponding page at
Meta wikipedia. Items can be put there and removed when they are solved
for the moment. I'd also like to see f.e. Erik's software patches put
there. It's often difficult to distinguish between "just an idea" and an
"I'll do it if nobody refuses" up to an "I just implemented it, it's
now already on the server."

It easier to solve a clearly defined problem than to keep track of
differing opinions presented in no clear order.

An example agenda for actual issues (I added some new which I consider as
necessary)
* Solution for dealing with uncooperative users needed.
* the question of www.wikipedia.org
* technical: identifying and removing bottlenecks in the software, tuning
the database, implement more intelligent caching/ switching to Postgres
(I fear that the constant slowliness of the software may drive more
(especially new!) contributors away than Lir & Co. will ever do)
* adjusting the focus of the mailinglists: creation of enwiki-l.
(Problems with users of the English wikipedia are of absolutely no interest
for us international people who have to subscribe to wikipedia-l because
people forget to inform the international community of important
decisions.)
* designing an emergency plan for an attack of automatized vandalism by
bots which can happen any time!
* decide on a decision making process.
This project has become too big for the fuzzy decision making process used
till now.
* getting a clear policy for unclear copyright issues

Discussions are great, often necessary but in the end we should solve the
problems! How to organize this is another question... I imagine groups of
people willing to solve a problem, discussing it, work out possible and
clear defined solutions and present this as a result to the whole
community who should decide then upon which solution is to be taken
(without big discussion - for this they should have joined the working
group)
proposed steps:
* put an item on the agenda (maybe also assign a priority)
* form a working group of all people interested in and work out solutions.
* present the solutions (with pro and contra arguments) to the community
* let the community decide
* implement the solution
* remove item from the agenda

This procedere requires a lot of discipline but discipline is something we
all have in abundance, don't we? ;-)

Since Ed mentioned my name as one of the frustrated contributors who might
be driven away by Lir & Co, one clarification: I will never leave because
of some trolls, but if most discussions here continue to go in circles
without other results than the status quo I will restrict my activities to
my field of expertise in the German wikipedia, unsubscribe all
mailinglists other than the German and give up the German embassy.

I really like politics but if this here remains a debating club I better
go to write articles.

greetings,
elian
--
heidegger, n. A ponderous device for boring through thick layers of
substance. "It's buried so deep we'll have to use a heidegger."


subject: [Wikipedia-l] 1770 > 1911 > 2002

body:
I just added a quotation to [[1911 Encyclopedia Britannica]].  It
reads in part:

      One leaps from one subject to another, fascinated as much by the
      play of mind and the indiosyncrasies of the authors as by the
      facts and dates.  It must be the last encyclopeaedia in the
      tradition of [[Denis Diderot|Diderot]] which assumes that
      information can be made memorable only when it is slightly
      coloured by prejudice. -- Sir Kenneth Clark


from_name: Bridget

from_email: Bridget

subject: [Wikipedia-l] how to stop vandal bots

body:
Code a means by which all edits by a certain user can be undone.

---------------------------------
Do you Yahoo!?
U2 on LAUNCH - Exclusive medley & videos from Greatest Hits CD
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subject: [Sifter-l] RE: name

body:
I really don't like any of the current ideas for a name but would like to
suggest  that we at least wait to see the results of Jimbo's email to the the
Nupedia community.

There seems to be a lot of overlap between Nupedia and this project and we
should, IMO, try to meld the vitality of Wikipedia with the standards of
Nupedia in a revived Nupedia (if the current Nupedia is not resurrected).

So if nothing else is going to happen with Nupedia (which I suspect is the
case) we should use the name Nupedia (which is almost as good as gnupedia,
but that name is taken).

There are just way too many cyber-squatters on too many good domain names.

--Daniel Mayer (aka mav)


from_name: Jonathan Walther

subject: [Wikipedia-l] windshield police

body:
On Mon, Nov 11, 2002 at 09:40:19PM -0800, Toby Bartels wrote:
>>Capitalists are never anarchists; the accumulation of wealth in private
>>hands invariably involves coercion.
>
>(Actually, this statement is a category error.)
>But why in the world are we talking about it here?
>Even the post that you responded to didn't mention
>capitalism, or anarcho-capitalists, or anything like that.
>Is this some other discussion, drifted over from [[Anarchism]] or something?
>Is that why TMC is trying to score rhetorical points over nobody?

There was a mention of anarcho-capitalism in the post I replied to, but
I edited it out when I replied.  My bad.  Anarchism isn't the same thing
as believing in no government; that is a part of it, but there is a
whole lot more to it.  Right now I am working on a definition of
Anarchism that doesn't use the words "government" or "property" at all.

Jonathan

--
                     Geek House Productions, Ltd.

  Providing Unix & Internet Contracting and Consulting,
  QA Testing, Technical Documentation, Systems Design & Implementation,
  General Programming, E-commerce, Web & Mail Services since 1998

Phone:   604-435-1205
Email:   djw at reactor-core.org
Webpage: http://reactor-core.org
Address: 2459 E 41st Ave, Vancouver, BC  V5R2W2
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subject: [Wikipedia-l] windshield police

body:
Jonathan Walther wrote:

>Capitalists are never anarchists; the accumulation of wealth in private
>hands invariably involves coercion.

(Actually, this statement is a category error.)
But why in the world are we talking about it here?
Even the post that you responded to didn't mention
capitalism, or anarcho-capitalists, or anything like that.
Is this some other discussion, drifted over from [[Anarchism]] or something?
Is that why TMC is trying to score rhetorical points over nobody?

-- Toby


subject: Re: [Sifter-l] RE: name

body:
On Mon, 11 Nov 2002, Daniel Mayer wrote:

> I really don't like any of the current ideas for a name but would like
> to suggest that we at least wait to see the results of Jimbo's email
> to the the Nupedia community.
>
> There seems to be a lot of overlap between Nupedia and this project
> and we should, IMO, try to meld the vitality of Wikipedia with the
> standards of Nupedia in a revived Nupedia (if the current Nupedia is
> not resurrected).

I don't think Jimbo does in fact plan to make such an e-mail anytime soon;
I'll cc him in case he wants to tell us differently.

I want to move forward with the least amount of controversy and the
greatest amount of productivity.  If Nupedia wants to take over the
project in the future, grand.  Let's get moving anyway.

Larry
--
"We have now sunk to a depth at which the re-statement of the obvious is
the first duty of intelligent men." --George Orwell


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: problem accessing site

body:
Matsunaga, Richard wrote:
> Hi there,
>
> I get the following when I try to access the site. I have tried clearing
> my cache to no avail.
>
>
> *Warning*: Host 'localhost.localdomain' is blocked because of many
> connection errors. Unblock with 'mysqladmin flush-hosts' in
> */usr/local/apache/htdocs/w/DatabaseFunctions.php* on line *19*
> Could not connect to DB on 127.0.0.1
>
> *Host 'localhost.localdomain' is blocked because of many connection
> errors. Unblock with 'mysqladmin flush-hosts'*
>
> If this error persists after reloading and clearing your browser cache,
> please notify the Wikipedia developers <mailto:wikitech-l at nupedia.com>.

So it is not changed to "wikidown AT bomis.com" ?

If sombody is reporting a problem whit wikipedia to wikitech-l like the
message says and the are not a listmember it have to wait until i aprove
it, like this one. That is not good.


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: windshield police (Was: Wikipedia moderators and moral authority)

body:
On Mon, Nov 11, 2002 at 09:54:11PM -0800, Throbbing Monster Cock wrote:
>> If this is your true position then their is no
>> reason to try and reason with you because your
>> frame of reference is totally unreasonable.
>
>My "true position" is that there are no absolute
>morals, and that all frames of reference are equal.

That's the morality of a sociopath, and not conducive to cohesive
communities.

Jonathan

--
                     Geek House Productions, Ltd.

  Providing Unix & Internet Contracting and Consulting,
  QA Testing, Technical Documentation, Systems Design & Implementation,
  General Programming, E-commerce, Web & Mail Services since 1998

Phone:   604-435-1205
Email:   djw at reactor-core.org
Webpage: http://reactor-core.org
Address: 2459 E 41st Ave, Vancouver, BC  V5R2W2
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subject: [Wikipedia-l] Tokerboy weighs in

body:
Tokerboy wrote:

>First of all, I like the Cunctster being a prick--he's
>a vaccine against groupthink because no decision will
>ever be unanimous as long as he is here--makes me
>wonder if that's his goal.  Many CEOs and team leaders
>and the like secretly designate one board/team member
>to disagree on every decision, because otherwise
>groups tend to accept the first even remotely viable
>option presented.

I knew that there was a reason that I'm glad that he's here.

>Bad vandals destroy cars, property and occasionally
>people, but a corrupt police force doesn't stop any of
>this and tears apart the community.  The best solution
>is to have the community oversee the police force.

The best solution is to have the community *be* the police force.

>In some
>cities, some gangs have done more to help the local
>community than governmental programs.  The Mafia is
>the same way.

And Hezbollah, for another example.
They all do this in an effort to buy community support,
so that it will be easier to commit their crimes against others.
Mind you, the government does the same things for the same reasons.

>I think regardless of the merit of what I propose
>above, I do believe we should have a Bill of Rights of
>sorts for users without any special status (i.e. not
>even signed in) to more effectively guarantee that
>abuse will not occur.

This is an interesting idea.
A lot of people will balk at the idea that
anonymous users have *rights* to our Wikipedia,
or that any users have *rights* to Jimbo's server.
But to be effective as a wiki,
there are certain states of affairs that need to be preserved,
even if we call them "principles" instead.

>The power
>for general maintenance should be spread out, because
>if the basic rule that only clearcut vandalism and
>nonsense can be deleted is followed, this can only
>help the wikipedia grow.  I think that in 99% of
>cases, a sysop ruling to delete a page/ban an IP
>(currently) is simply because of vandalism.  It's the
>minority of cases where judgement, and potential abuse
>of power, comes into play.  If 99% of the problems is
>one discrete type, then 99% of the enforcement power
>should be directed towards those problems, and the
>other 1% where judgement comes into play should be
>considered separately, because it is a separate
>problem.

I agree with that;
but I also think that that responsibility should be spread out.
Recognising it as a distinct problem is still important.

-- Toby


from_name: Throbbing Monster Cock

body:
> That's a bunch of relativistic morality crap.

Relativistic?  Certainly.  Crap?  It isn't for me to
judge.

> If somebody goes to the effort of building something
> or working their ass-off to pay for something it is
> absolutely wrong for somebody else to destroy that.

I can appreciate that as your position, but that
doesn't invalidate anyone else's position.

> If this is your true position then their is no
> reason to try and reason with you because your
> frame of reference is totally unreasonable.

My "true position" is that there are no absolute
morals, and that all frames of reference are equal.

__________________________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
U2 on LAUNCH - Exclusive greatest hits videos
http://launch.yahoo.com/u2


from_name: tarquin

subject: [Wikipedia-l] server

body:
talking about server performance, it's been unavailable here for the
last hour ("operation timed out"), except for about 5 minutes and during
that time I got a "database locked" when I tried to edit.


body:
Larry Sanger wrote:

>I solicit your opinion--yes, you, humble (or exalted) list member.

I'm grateful for the opportunity to speak to your august majesty.

>I ask you, dear reader and fellow Wikipedian, to offer your mere opinion.

Thanks, that's better.

>ISSUE 1.  The problem or lack thereof.

I agree with Matthew Woodcraft's non-strawman CONTRA.
That doesn't mean that there can't be improvements, as below.

>ISSUE 2.  What to do about the problem, if anything.

>The Status Quo, Plus Clearer Principles Option: We need to debate and
>settle upon some clear principles about when sanctions are to be meted out
>by our sysops.

That's basically my choice.

There are some smaller matters of refining the banning process:
* Technical fixes to avoid banning innocent users;
* Granting all administrators the ability to ban logged in users
  (whether by user name or just letting us find out their IP numbers;
   this may depend on how the previous point plays out);
* Unbanning vandals after (say) a week and automatically adding them
  to a page like mav's [[Wikipedia:IP watch list]] (or whatever it's called);
* Anything else that I mentioned earlier but forgot right now
  (I don't think that there is anything, but one never knows).
But I think that banning vandals works pretty well right now.

Banning users like Helga and Lir, however, needs clarified rules,
which will allow people to apply them consistently,
and I'm glad that you have said that you want these rules to be lenient,
because then you'll be on my side in the proposed debate ^_^.
We're not in a crisis situation with regards to this issue,
but we can still get ready for the next time.

-- Toby


body:
Hello Larry!

>>> It would be nice to get some specific examples. <<

> How many specific examples would it take to convince you, I wonder?  I
> doubt I could produce enough, because our difference is philosophical.

I don't think so. I respect the current system of sysops. I think it can
be improved, but I'm not against authority. Unlike what you may have
assumed at this point (I get the feeling you read the mail while you
replied), I'm not an anarchist. I believe in direct democracy and
therefore in the necessity of enforcement.

The main problem I have is that right now, we are not a democracy. You may
call it mob rule, an elite, whatever -- decisions are generally made by
individuals, though, and not by a collective. I want to create more
informed decisions by involving more people in a well-defined voting
process with a discussion phase and a decision phase (where these phases
could be very short in emergencies -- user definable).

While I believe such a process could be quite streamlined, I think it
should generally be used only when other, "softer" means don't work. This
is certainly the case with all vandals: here we have no choice but to
intervene. I am more lenient (and that is indeed a difference of
philosophy) towards "cranks" and the like.

By asking you whether the problem you perceive is growing or not I did not
mean to imply that there is no problem. The question whether it is
growing, however, is important to determine the urgency of the solution.
How much time do we have to implement something meaningful?

Working on Wikipedia today, I agree more with you than I did yesterday.
About half of all the anonymous edits were vandalism. It is my
*perception* that this is significantly more than when I started. I'd
still like to quantify this, though. It's quite possible that we are now
primarily getting new users via Google, and the percentage of those who
are valuable contributors is possibly smaller than with our earlier
contributors, with a higher number of vandals.

>>> Perhaps Ed's "Annoying users" page (if renamed) isn't such a bad idea. <<

> Hysteria?  I have to support Zoe here; Lir is a disruptive child, and she
> should probably be banned.

I disagree here, but I'm not familiar with all evidence (which is why a
"Problematic users" page, as a record of evidence, might be helpful). I
followed much of Lir's actions today and saw nothing too problematic.
She's antagonistic, sometimes silly and certainly not as smart as she
thinks, but I believe we can deal with here as long as she doesn't
vandalize pages.

The "hysteria" remark referred to a specific incident and was probably an
overstatement, I apologized to Zoe on her user page.

> No.  Our collective experience is more than enough proof that we need
> *consistent* enforcement, Erik, not *stronger* enforcement.  Right now we
> have very strong enforcement.

I don't think so, IP banning is quite ineffective, we clearly need to work
on this. Unlike Jimbo, I'm not so sure we're dealing with the same vandal.

But I also agree that enforcement needs to be applied consistently. I'm
worried that we may have missed vandalism when sysops weren't available.
But (more below) I don't think that the problem really comes from our
logged in userbase.

>  Your interest is obviously not in reducing
> power but in keeping power distributed among a lot of different people who
> use it in totally different, inconsistent ways, and none of which has any
> particular respect among other users.

Actually, no, I believe we need to quantify the generally agreed upon
standards using open voting. I have described such a system already on
wikitech, and have explained why I believe voting is important here on
wikipedia-l.

I am for enforcement in what you rightly call "relatively extreme" cases.

> If we had power concentrated in the power of a rotating group of trusted
> individuals

There are many problems of this idea vs. open voting, such as definition
of "trust", randomness of assignment (Slashdot-style voting) etc., I
pointed these out already.

>>> That's not the kind of list I'm talking about, because it only tells us
> about the reactions, not the actual actions. You may say that these people
> were driven away by silly eedjots, but I cannot tell whether this is true
> without looking at the actual conflicts. <<

> Be serious--look at what you just wrote.  Does anyone other than you
> really need it to be proven?

Perhaps, perhaps not. You're talking to me now, though, so either present
to me the knowledge I do not have, or you cannot presume that I have it.

>>> Often I've seen so-called experts on Wikipedia try to stop reasonable
> debate by simple assertion of their authority. This doesn't work, and this
> shouldn't work on Wikipedia, and if they can't handle that fact, it's my
> turn to say they should better leave. <<

> Wait a second.  Take a step back and put this exchange into context.  I
> said that Wikipedia is descending into a sort of mob rule, and that this
> has driven away, and will continue to drive away, some of our best
> contributors.  You reply, here, by defending the mob against the experts.

No, that's a grossly incorrect characterization of my statement. You see,
I asked my question above for examples of the conflicts because I myself
have had conflicts with so-called experts, and I did not accept their
assertion of authority as an argument, which offended them.

Now I would hardly call myself part of a "mob", and I would find it
demeaning and insulting to be called so. I can draw primarily from my own
experience when it comes to conflicts, so what I can say is this: If this
is the kind of conflicts you are talking about, where you think the so-
called experts should be able to enforce their POV just because of their
status as experts, then we are clearly of extremely opposite opinions. I
do not support an expertocracy, and I don't think you do either. In the
above paragaph, it sounds like it, though.

>> I'm talking about a body of trusted members, not an "elite."  Tarring
>> the proposal with that word isn't an argument.

>>> Sorry, but I do not really see much of a difference. A group with
> superior powers is an elite, trusted or not. The word "elite" requires a
> certain stability of that position, though, so it might not apply to an
> approach of random moderation privileges. <<

> That shows that you're essentially viewing this ideologically, and that
> you're expecting the rest of us to buy an essentially anarchistic
> ideology: *any* group of trusted members who has powers others don't have
> is *by definition* an "elite."  But in the mouths of any libertarian or
> anarchist, "elites" (and "cabals") are necessarily evil.

I'm not a libertarian or anarchist, and I do not consider elites
necessarily evil (I do not believe in a concept of evil). I just don't
think they are necessary either.

> The result of this ideology is..

Please, don't assume so much.

> They, like every committed Wikipedian, can't help but derive pleasure from
> the fact that we have built up a huge structure of knowledge.  But they
> have a woefully incomplete idea what makes it possible.  What makes it
> possible is precisely the *combination* of freedom, which makes it easy to
> contribute, *and* enforced standards, which define and guide our mission.

As I said repeatedly, I believe in enforcement, but only as a last resort,
and only democratically justified. I also find enforcement more important
in cases of vandalism than in cases of "cranks".

> to a project defined by rules, with a particular purpose.

>> Well, the times I'm concerned about aren't necessarily times when people
>> are shouting against the majority, but when they write nonsense, brazen
>> political propoganda, crankish unsupported stuff, and so forth--in other
>> words, violating community standards.

>>> Do you mean nonsense in the sense of "something that just isn't true"
> or in the sense of simple noise, like crapflooders? How do you plan to
> define / recognize "crankish unspported stuff"? <<

> Do you really think it would resolve anything in our discussion if I were
> to supply you with an answer to these questions?  No, you seem to want to
> ask rhetorical questions, and the point of the questions is: there are no
> clear standards whereby we can determine when community standards are
> violated.

That's not true. Ed has proposed some good standards, although I agree
with Cunctator that it is not always easy to identify partisanship (but
there are egregious cases). Our policy should be to argue with people, to
revert changes a few times to help them understand the wiki principle, and
if they don't agree with our minimum community standards, we enforce them
by community vote.

I also think, however, that your phrases above are much more vague, and
much less apt for inclusion in a set of minimum standards.

> OK, so you're worried that "crankish unsupported stuff" and other words
> we'd use to describe undesirable material and behavior would be such that
> we'd disagree about cases.  Of course we would.  But if we're reasonable
> people and understand what an encyclopedia *generally* requires, and we
> have much experience actually working on an encyclopedia, then we can
> certainly agree on a lot of cases.

Hopefully so, but because of the potential for disagreement, I think the
decision making process should remain open.

> The lack of absolute unanimity in every case does not--just to give an
> example--provide people an excuse to write unsupportable or provably false
> stuff in articles, just for one example.

True. However, it's perfectly OK to attribute provably false stuff. Ed
Poor does this all the time when he writes about homosexuality :-)

> It doesn't mean we can't
> forthrightly eject (or completely rewrite) material that is, on any
> reasonable person's view, a violation of our neutrality policy.

I agree.

>>> The idea of soft security has evolved in wikis, and it is only fair to
> point you to the respective page at MeatballWiki for the social and
> technical components of soft security:
> http://www.usemod.com/cgi-bin/mb.pl?SoftSecurity <<

> I'm not particularly interested in going to the website to find out what
> you mean.  If you want to introduce an unfamiliar term into a debate, it
> is polite to define it.

It is also polite to visit the links provided in someone else's mail in a
discussion. Are you afraid of MeatballWiki because you associate it with
TheCunctator? Rest assured, he's not much more popular around there than
he is here. MeatballWiki is a pretty good resource for many questions we
are debating, much more rich in content than the meta-wikipedia, and there
are many smart people over there. SoftSecurity as defined by the Meatball
people involves a large amount of different components, usually social
concepts relying on existing wiki technology as opposed to extending it.
We have talked about some aspects already. I suggest you familiarize
yourself with the concept.

> >> We already *have* a
> situation where we occasionally ban legitimate users and delete legitimate
> material. We need to get away from this. I am absolutely disgusted by the
> thought that we are already banning completely innocent users. <<

> Erik, two things.  First, we already have banning and deletion.  We aren't
> debating about those, but what you write above makes it sound as if we
> were.

No, no, no. I'm not against banning or deleting. I'm for making the
process less error-prone by involving more people in it. We are banning
innocent people behind multi-user proxies, and sometimes overzealous
sysops delete allegedly infringing material which is completely harmless.
This is, in my opinion, a very serious issue that needs to be addresed.
You believe that your trusted moderators could make better decisions, and
it's quite possible that in clear-cut cases, they would be better than
what we have now (though in less clear-cut cases, they might be worse). I
think open voting would be the best solution.

> Second, the mere *existence* of sanctions hardly implies that those
> sanctions will be abused to any degree at all.  If your point is simply
> "Power can be abused," I'm totally unconvinced and I don't think anyone
> else will be either.  Surely you must have more reason to support it than
> that.

It's quite possible that abuse will be minimal in a scheme like yours. I'm
afraid, however, if broad policies like "crankish unsupported stuff" are
adopted, a high degree of arbitrariness is introduced. We need to be very
precise here to avoid the Everything2/Slashdot dilemma.

> After all, as for example under my rough proposal, we can have strong and
> multiple safeguards against abuse.

I like that about your proposal. It makes it closer to mine :-)

>>> My underlying philosophy here is that it's worse to punish an innocent
> man than to let a guilty man go free. <<

> But that's hardly a reason never to punish anyone for anything, is it?

No, it is not. Repeat violators must be "punished" as a matter of self-
defense.

>>> I think this kind of last resort authority should not be concentrated
> but distributed. If a poll shows that many members think that member X has
> "crossed the line", this sends a much stronger message than any non-
> totalitarian scheme of concentrated authority. Especially if last resort
> measures like banning *can* be approved by the majority. <<

> You favor a democracy, susceptible to mob rule as at present

Please explain "suceptible to mob rule as at present". Currently we have a
situation where decisions are made by individual sysops, they are not
verified by anyone else. In my proposal, they would be verified by anyone
interested in doing so (logged in users, possibly only users with >n
contributions to avoid vote flooding).

> I favor a republic,

It was my understanding that you are libertarian. How is that compatible
with that view? (Yes, I know you're only using a metaphor -- but is real
life group decision making that much different from Wikipedia?)

>>> Yes, I agree that those cases exist. But I also believe that we need to
> have a lot of patience when dealing with newbies. Not an infinite amount,
> but a lot. And I think everyone should be given the opportunity to
> rehabilitate themselves. <<

> Well, I do agree with that, and it's not at all inconsistent with my
> proposal.

I think most of the supposed inconsistencies are simply misunderstandings,
but the main difference in opinion is that you regard cranks as the most
serious problems and I (and probably most sysops) see vandals as much more
annoying and serious.

> I think our experience clearly indicates that we can't make people nice if
> they don't want to be.

Well, no offense, but I don't think you're particularly good at making
people nice, so that may have something to do with the experience :-)

> Anyway, it's the nearly-worthless contributors who
> on balance damage the project by the dross they shovel in (and the
> resulting controversies and wasted time) that are the real problem.

I disagree here. I don't see a high number of "nearly-worthless
contributors" (that you characterize human beings as worthless is another
story). You named Lir (even there I don't agree entirely), who else?

>>> Well, I can predict that I'm going to "attack" experts myself if they
> add non-NPOV content, fail to cite sources properly, insist on their
> authority to make their point etc. <<

> Good luck.  Remember, experts know more about their areas than you do.
> That's why we call them experts.

That's incorrect, they're *supposed* to know more about their areas than
non-experts. Often they don't. Sometimes they're even paid to lie,
especially when commercial interests are involved.

> I'm a Ph.D. epistemologist.  My dissertation adviser was (still is) an
> expert on the concept of expertise, and I've read several papers on this
> area of social epistemology as part of a graduate course.  In addition, I
> gave careful thought to this subject while working on Nupedia.  Now, what
> is that you think my view of what experts are and what makes an expert?

I haven't read your adviser's papers, I base my opinions solely on your
mails. It appears that you value credentials such as a degree or
publications very highly, as opposed to reputation building through
verifiable expertise, regardless of background. An expert, in my view, can
be pseudonymous, he can be a 13 year old kid, it can be a motivated
housewife. A degree and other credentials are only one way of measuring
reputation, and not a particularly good one, because many institutions are
highly biased. We had two certified mediavalists on Wikipedia, who both
added highly biased POV material from a Christian-apologetic perspective,
for example. You yourself added quite a bit of NPOV material (often, but
not always, marked as such).

> I just have no idea why you say the system I proposed would "lead to less
> informed decisions."  Perhaps you should reread the proposal (even though
> it was, as I said, just a rough outline); I even went so far as to suggest
> that perhaps there would be a body of Wikipedia "case law" developed, that
> moderators could consult.  This would lead to *less* informed decisions
> than in the present case, when virtually anyone can have the power to ban
> and delete?

Yes, in some cases, because no longer the people who make the decisions
are the ones who care about the matter, but instead the ones who were
assigned moderation duty by your random number generator. A voting system
I propose would be similar to the Recent_Changes page, you would look at
the polls you find interesting, read the arguments, then vote. In your
system, however, the people who vote/make the decision are simply
assigned, and they may not care at all about the debate at hand and just
throw in a quick "yes or no". Because of your safeguards, this is better
than an individual sysop in the clear-cut cases, but possibly worse in
less clear-cut cases. And I consider this especially problematic because
you seem to see the less clear-cut cases as the more serious problem.

Regards,

Erik


body:
Matthew Woodcraft wrote in part:

>[1] Deleting pages is a separate issue. If history-preserving delete
>isn't working yet, I think we should do without the ability to delete
>pages until such a time as it is -- it's just too divisive. We can live
>with just blanking them.

It's not working as well as it could, in my opinion.
In particular, you can't view a deleted page without restoring it
(after which you have to delete it again, if you only wanted a look).
We also need a way to restore a deleted page that's been recreated,
by melding the histories together (has anybody needed this yet?).
But it works.

>If/when we have history-preserving delete, then I see no good reason not
>to make it available to all users.

Deleting a page can be much more disruptive than blanking it.
I'd restrict it to logged in users, just like moving pages is,
to discourage casual use by newbies (including new vandals).
But we'll *definitely* want a non-reviving viewing option if this happens,
since there will be more deletions that will need review,
and we don't need to clutter the deletion log
with a bunch of redeletions of resurrected pages.

This still makes it available to all users,
of course, but it makes it harder to get to.
(They call this "Security by obscurity" over on MeatBall ^_^.)

-- Toby


from_name: Matthew Woodcraft

in_reply_to: <E079C39257D0D845AC39E2CA261C43E00703DB@sm-nyny-xm04.nena.wdpr.disney.com>; from Edmund.W.Poor@abc.com on Mon, Nov 11, 2002 at 12:21:59PM -0500

body:
On Mon, Nov 11, 2002 at 12:21:59PM -0500, Poor, Edmund W wrote:
> What it comes down to is a tough choice between two choices:

> (1) We are building a free encyclopedia. Therefore, we use Wiki
> software.

> (2) We are maintaining a Wiki community. If we make some good
> encyclopedia articles, that's nice too.

Well, (2) is certainly not right. But I don't think (1) is quite right
either. Using the Wiki process isn't the only way to make a free
encyclopedia, as you know well, but it is the way we've chosen. As the
encyclopedia is Free, anyone who wants to try another way is able to get
a head start in doing so by taking our content, and good luck to them.
Those of us who want to carry on using a Wiki can do so here.

So, what does it mean that we are a Wiki? Certainly it doesn't mean that
we have to let any old abuser do anything they want. I think it means
two main things:

1 -- _You_ can edit this page _right now_. I think we should be willing
to work very hard to preserve the ability of any first-time reader of
Wikipedia to make corrections and improvements as they see fit.

2 -- Our main method for dealing with bad edits is simply to fix them.
Ease of editing works for us as much as against us. For every kook and
every troll, there are many constructive users willing to help out.

Now, I am leery of suggestions that we should rely on banning people,
and freezing pages, any more than the absolute minimum we can get away
with. This isn't because I think people who aren't interested in
building a serious encylopedia have a 'right' to edit, or would be
'harmed' by banning. It's because I think these techniques won't work as
well as 'soft security'.

Think about what banning people means. It means having to keep track as
they change IP addresses. It means collateral damage as it turns out
they were working from communal hosts or proxies. In the end, it means
dealing with 'abuse@' their ISP. This kind of work can't be shared very
well. Really, only Bomis is in a position to make official complaints.
There are many, many more of us who can address problems by editing
pages.

I think that dealing with people in positions of authority can be
attractive to trolls. It gives them someone to take aim at, a process to
complain about. If a troll simply finds their changes reverted, by a
different reader each time, _without_ getting into arguments, they're
more likely to take their stupid games elsewhere.

-M-


from_name: Michael R. Irwin

subject: [Wikitech-l] Getting Neophyte Developers Started

body:
erik_moeller at gmx.de wrote:

>
> But in general I am against such workarounds. We should try to improve the
> software ASAP. Do you think I could convert you into a developer? We need
> all the help we can get, and I'd be willing to teach as far as I
> understand.

I would be interested in joining a mailing list aimed at
assisting neophyte developers with getting started
or in establishing private dialogues with friendly mentors
and other neophytes.

I have some obsolete pentium systems that I could dedicate
and set up for local testing and/or development activities.

I have substantial experience and exposure to a variety
of software and system development projects and some
applicable formal training but very limited actual coding
experience.

If you can assist me (and others) with converting to a handson
developer I would appreciate it.  Gaining traction with free
software based development has proven more difficult than I
expected. Much more so (for me) than my previous experience
with limited Windows based programming.

I will be traveling on business next week and the following
and will have access to high bandwith internet access.  If
we could develop a list of software and versions to work with
initially in the next few days; I could download all the required
components to setup a local system very similar or identical to
the initial recommended neophyte's platform.

Regards,
Mike Irwin


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Wikipedians/Queer etc.

body:
On Monday 11 November 2002 09:39 pm, wikipedia-l-request at wikipedia.org wrote:
> -------
> Just because you are a Linux user, or happen to be gay, or a vegetarian
> doesn't mean that you have the requisite knowledge to write NPOV articles
> on these subjects. These pages are therefore only of peripheral interest
> and should be moved to a POV-friendly forum.
> ------
>
> Well, if you want to look at it that way, just because you are a Canadian
> or a Russian or a Scot doesn't mean you have the requisite knowledge to
> write NPOV articles on that subject. So I suppose we should move the
> geography ones too.
>
> Matt

Yep - all these categories are at best only of peripheral interest and at
worst highly POV and hurtful.

Moving all these pages will take some time though....

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)


body:
| ISSUE 1.  The problem or lack thereof.
|
| PRO: There is indeed a serious problem now on Wikipedia.  Many newbies
| (and some people who have been here for a while) brazenly violate the
| basic defining rules of our community, and presently, neither peer
| pressure, nor following violators around constantly, nor the occasional
| actual sanction seems to be solving this problem.  Well-respected, clearly
| productive members of the community are driven away by having to deal with
| these people or such behaviors, and this is a really serious problem.
|
| CONTRA: While there are of course people who abuse Wikipedia, their
| numbers and effects are perfectly manageable and are not particularly
| egregious.  Either "well-respected, clearly productive members of the
| community"--whose value is probably overrated--are not being driven away,
| in fact, or if they are, so much the worse for them, if they can't thrive
| in an open, free atmosphere.

CONTRA: While there are of course people who abuse Wikipedia, their
numbers and effects are manageable. Well-respected, clearly productive
members of the community have become tired of spending their time on
janitorial work, and in some cases have declared that they are leaving
altogether. Some of these users have since returned, now concentrating
on producing articles rather than fighting trolls and vandals. There is
as yet no indication that there are insufficient people willing to
perform the clean-up work.

| ISSUE 2.  What to do about the problem, if anything.

1.
| The Anarchist/Radical Freedom Option: We should strip everyone of
| powers to ban and to delete pages permanently[1]. "SoftSecurity" alone
| is adequate as a safeguard against Wikipedia's abusers.

2.
| The Status Quo Option: We should continue on as we have been in recent
| months, viz., everyone has, for the asking, the power to delete pages and
| to ban IP numbers.  There doesn't need to be set policy on when this is
| appropriate and when not.

3.
| The Status Quo, Plus Clearer Principles Option: We need to debate and
| settle upon some clear principles about when sanctions are to be meted out
| by our sysops.

Option 3 is best if the rule is that we should rely on soft security as
much as possible. Otherwise, option 1 is better.

-M-

[1] Deleting pages is a separate issue. If history-preserving delete
isn't working yet, I think we should do without the ability to delete
pages until such a time as it is -- it's just too divisive. We can live
with just blanking them.

If/when we have history-preserving delete, then I see no good reason not
to make it available to all users.


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Enough for now

body:
On Monday 11 November 2002 09:39 pm, wikipedia-l-request at wikipedia.org wrote:
> Well, folks, I've had enough for now.  I can't continue these
> conversations, because they are taking far too much of my time; I couldn't
> do them justice if I wanted to.  You also won't see me much anytime soon
> on Wikipedia itself.  I really do apologize to those (few, no doubt) who
> thought I was a positive influence recently.  I wish I had the time,
> energy, and patience to continue, and I hope you'll keep fighting the good
> fight.
>
> I will continue to work on Sifter-l, though.
>
> Larry

There were a hell of a lot of posts on Monday but that was probably due to
en.wiki being down and everybody flooding the mailing list because they
didn't have anything else to do. I'm sorry to hear that you are leaving
wikipedia proper but the fact that you are concentrating your efforts now on
the Wikipedia subset project more than makes up for your leaving.

One thing that Wikipedia lacks right now is credibility and reliability. One
thing that projects like Nupedia has is a lack of material and contributors.
The new project you are working on will add credibility to many Wikipedia
articles and thus dramatically improve their usefullness.

I look forward to working with you on this project (I'm not leaving Wikipedia
though - I really like to dabble in areas I don't have much formal training
in).

Regards,

Daniel Mayer (aka mav)


from_name: Matt M.

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wikipedians/Queer etc.

body:
-------
Just because you are a Linux user, or happen to be gay, or a vegetarian
doesn't mean that you have the requisite knowledge to write NPOV articles on
these subjects. These pages are therefore only of peripheral interest and
should be moved to a POV-friendly forum.
------

Well, if you want to look at it that way, just because you are a Canadian or
a Russian or a Scot doesn't mean you have the requisite knowledge to write
NPOV articles on that subject. So I suppose we should move the geography
ones too.

Matt


from_name: Erik Moeller

subject: [Wikipedia-l] about agendas

body:
Hi Elian,

I agree with much of what you said. I think people with an "agenda" *do*
have a place on Wikipedia, though, and if they believe that presenting
verifiable facts about that agenda in a balanced form will further it,
that's perfectly acceptable. I'm fairly anti-religious, for example, and
Ed is quite fundamentalist. Both of us would like more people to share our
entirely subjective POV. Both of us believe that we can make this happen
by showing the facts.

That's one reason why I think it's possible to convince at least some of
the regular "annoying users": Eventually they will have to realize that if
they want people to take their position seriously, they have to back it up
instead of censoring and vandalizing what their opponents say and
replacing it with their own opinions. Many of them will not be able to do
that, so they will eventually go away. Others might actually add useful
information.

There are key mechanisms for working together: attributing disputed claims
properly, not deleting other points of view, and presenting only
verifiable statements of fact and not irrelevant personal opinions. These
are basic rules that I believe can be enforced if necessary.

I think the [[anti-Americanism]] page (NOT the recent discussion, the
Wikipedia article) is a good example for people with different agendas
working together.

As for the decision making process, I agree entirely, we need to find
something better than the approach we have now, and again I think open
voting is the only viable option, both for the wiki itself and the lists
and policy decisions. What else is there but voting? Do we want Jimbo to
approve everything? Or do we want an elected "government", just because
that's what's used in the real world? Or do we want to use Cunctator's
"consensus for everything" approach, for which he himself guarantees that
it cannot succeed? Or do we want to use Larry's randomized trusted users
who get "decision duty" on rotation?

I have not seen a single plausible argument against open voting other than
that it doesn't produce perfect results (like all decision making
processes).

Regards,

Erik


from_name: koyaanisqatsi at nupedia.com

body:
TMC wrote:
>My "true position" is that there are no absolute
morals, and that all frames of reference are equal.

You wouldn't believe that if you had ever been a victim of violent
crime.  You sound like a "rebelling against my rich parents"
anarchist: vapid philosophy and a daytrip, cushioned by moneyed luxury.

kq


subject: [Wikipedia-l] server

body:
Zoe wrote:

> Who locked the database, why, and when will it be unlocked?  If
> solving the lag problem is to make it impossible to update, what' s
> the point of having a wikipedia?
>
Brion did, as a temporary fix to keep at least the reading part running.
He's to class now, and I'll be in bed soon. I can unlock the database,
but you'll run the risk of getting stuck again, unless Lee's around to
fix it again.

So, you want to read for now for sure, or read and write, but maybe only
for a few minutes? Your choice.

Magnus