from_name: Mark Bell

subject: [Wikitech-l] Researcher needs help

body:
Folks,

First, I have to apologize if this has been dealt with on the list before.
Just point me in the right direction. =)

I am doing academic research into Wikipedia and am a stand still.

I need:

   - ?         The complete history of three articles as some sort of
   text or flat file.
   - ?         A way to access more history for later research

I try to download the datadumps
(pages-meta-history.xml.7z<http://download.wikimedia.org/enwiki/20060518/enwiki-20060518-pages-meta-history.xml.7z>)
in the following browsers with the following results:

Firefox                  Dump stops at 4 gig

IE                         Dump is seen only as a corrupt 1.6 gig file

Opera                   Dump is seen only as a corrupt 1.6 gig file

Is there a way to ftp the file?

I can't get either single article histories or the whole thing and I am at a
loss. This should be much easier than this, so I think I am missing
something.

Any help would be appreciated. Thanks!!!

Mark

Mark Bell
http://www.storygeek.com
"The future is here...it's just not widely distributed." - Tim O'Reilly


list: wikitech-l

source: pipermail-mbox

subject: [Wikitech-l] Researcher needs help

body:
Sorry to clarify.

"More history" means the complete history of more articles.

I am using a tool called "historyflow" that can read html so let me try the
HTML solution.

Thanksso much.

M

On 6/8/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 6/8/06, Mark Bell <typewritermark at gmail.com> wrote:
> > I need:
> >
> >    - ?         The complete history of three articles as some sort of
> >    text or flat file.
> >    - ?         A way to access more history for later research
>
> What do you mean "more history"? Once you have the complete history of
> the three articles, what more is there? :)
>
> > Is there a way to ftp the file?
>
> Depending on what the articles are and how many histories there are,
> you could try something like viewing the first 500 entries in the
> history in a browser, then telling a program like Getright to download
> all the links. Depends what format you want the diffs (well, complete
> articles) in exactly. With a bit of fiddling you could probably
> generate all the URLs you need...
>
> I was thinking about making a GreaseMonkey script to make this easier,
> but never did it. Sorry!
>
> > I can't get either single article histories or the whole thing and I am
> at a
> > loss. This should be much easier than this, so I think I am missing
> > something.
>
> Don't think so.
>
> Steve
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>

--
Mark Bell
http://www.storygeek.com
"The future is here...it's just not widely distributed." - Tim O'Reilly


list: wikien-l

from_name: Anthony DiPierro

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Cultural distinctions are accidental? Consensus
	among cultures is bad?

body:
On 6/8/06, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 6/8/06, Anthony DiPierro <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
> > these distinctions, and what distinctions were intended.  I always
> > thought the English Wikipedia at least was supposed to be neutral with
> > regard to culture.  Maybe English is the exception?
>
> What does "neutral with regard to culture" mean?

It means that everyone from every culture has an equal voice in
determining the content of every Wikipedia article.  We don't tell
someone their opinion is to be disregarded because they come from a
different culture.  [[Wikipedia:Consensus]] means the consensus of
everyone, not just the consensus of a certain culture.

> Let's look at a scale
> of cultural-dependency that Wikipedia as a whole could situate itself
> on:
>
> 1. Every WP is a certified translation of every other
> 2. Every WP is not a translation of every other, but such a situation
> is recognised as being good, and efforts to improve synchronisation
> are encouraged
> 3. Small deviations in content are allowed in the form of examples or
> expressions. Eg, giving examples in English for "Personal pronoun" as
> I alluded to.

I still think that example is contrived.  Some of what you're saying
I'd say falls under "translation".  But as for actual differences in
what constitutes a personal pronoun, as opposed to merely
translational differences, I'd say the English Wikipedia should
*already* cover the topic in all languages, if necessary
disambiguating the article.

In fact, we already do this to some extent.  See [[French personal
pronouns]].  I don't think [[Personal pronoun]] would be any worse if
it talked only about concepts that exist across languages, and linked
to [[English personal pronouns]] for the rest.  In fact, I think it'd
be better.

> 4. Significant deviations in emphasis and coverage are allowed, to
> match the interests of the readership. For example, a history of the
> 20th century for en WP would focus much more on the two world wars
> than it would for languages of countries that weren't involved in
> them. All information is still welcome, but may be moved into
> subarticles as appropriate.
> 5. WPs can remove or trim information that is judged "irrelevant" to
> its readership, such as removing 36,000 articles on French communes
> and leaving only the top 20 French cities.
> 6. WPs can deliberately suppress information for cultural reasons,
> such as not mentioning the Tianenmen Square massacre on zh WP or
> referring to an independent country as merely being a "territory" of
> another if the relevant government is claiming that it is (in the face
> of international agreement to the contrary).
>
> I think we probably sit around 4. Further refinements to this scale welcome.
>
> Steve

I think the exercise is rather futile.  The ability to effectively
communicate among even just the 112 languages of which Wikipedia is
considered "somewhat active" is a long way off.  That said, I'd say 2,
3, and 4 are all true.  And, sadly, the first half of 5 is true too,
at least on the English Wikipedia.

My point, however, is that anyone who thinks that such an achievement
(the ability to effectively communicate among the 112 languages of
which Wikipedia is considered "somewhat active") would not be useful
to Wikipedia - they certainly have a completely different idea of the
project than I do.  I see it as significant that Wikipedia is
generally referred to as *an* encyclopedia in multiple languages, not
a collection of encyclopedias in multiple languages.  I thought it was
significant that Jimbo called Wikipedia "an effort to create and
distribute a multilingual free encyclopedia of the highest possible
quality to every single person on the planet in their own language."
But now he seems to be implying that it wasn't (I still think maybe he
misinterpreted me, though).

Anthony


subject: [WikiEN-l] Types of categories

body:
On 6/8/06, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 6/8/06, Anthony DiPierro <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
> > > One can work towards this, but any enforcement is a bit like passing a
> > > law that requires everybody to think logically.
> > >
> > Not at all.  All that's required is that people who do think logically
> > are allowed to fix things up and have somewhere to point to if they
> > are challenged.
>
> Any system that requires logic and thought to operate well, but can be
> operated by anyone, is likely to live in a state of semi-functioning.
> The people who are good at categorising will be overworked, and thus
> there will be parts of the system that will live for days, weeks, or
> months, badly categorised.
>
> There's nothing particularly wrong with that.
>
No, there isn't.  In fact I'd say it's pretty much how wikis work.

Anthony


list: foundation-l

from_name: Traroth

subject: [Foundation-l] Re :  Instant Commons : INCORRECT

body:
De : Anthere <Anthere9 at yahoo.com>

>I may also hint at the fact that
>we are volunteers and that volunteers can *choose* to take care of a
>proposal... or not. We are under no obligation to spend hours studying
>your proposals, and may prefer to focus on other issues of more interest
>to us or where people will appreciate a bit more the efforts of the
>team. The comments you made are not motivating in the least.

>Anthere

I completly disagree with this point. You are part of the Board. That's an engagement. Things are made so the agreement of the Board is needed for some decisions. It's unfair to say that the Board has the choice to *not decide* because the members don't care. Such a sentence could be demotivating for the whole project members : why try to organize something, if the Board take no decision about, not because the project is not good, but only because they don't care ?

Traroth


list: wikimedia-l


from_name: Guy Chapman aka JzG

subject: [WikiEN-l] To: Jimmy Wales - Admin-driven death of Wikipedia

body:
On Wed, 7 Jun 2006 15:42:46 -0700, you wrote:

>I was there, and a lot of people are falsely nostalgic about The Old Days.

Nostalgia isn't what it used to be...

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


from_name: Angela

subject: [Foundation-l] Fundraising ideas - using what we've already got

body:
On 6/8/06, Anthere <Anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:

> Good news : the board just approved the creation of the Fundraising
> Committee. Get in touch with Mav to help on it.

Please see http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fundraising_committee for details.

Also, fundraising ideas are always welcome on
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fundraising_ideas regardless of
participation in the fundraising committee.

Angela.


from_name: Jimmy Wales

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Cultural distinctions are accidental?
 Consensus	among cultures is bad?

body:
Anthony DiPierro wrote:
> My point, however, is that anyone who thinks that such an achievement
> (the ability to effectively communicate among the 112 languages of
> which Wikipedia is considered "somewhat active") would not be useful
> to Wikipedia - they certainly have a completely different idea of the
> project than I do.  I see it as significant that Wikipedia is
> generally referred to as *an* encyclopedia in multiple languages, not
> a collection of encyclopedias in multiple languages.  I thought it was
> significant that Jimbo called Wikipedia "an effort to create and
> distribute a multilingual free encyclopedia of the highest possible
> quality to every single person on the planet in their own language."
> But now he seems to be implying that it wasn't (I still think maybe he
> misinterpreted me, though).

Because obviously, it is impossible that Anthony could have
misinterpreted me.  :)

For what is it worth, I think that questions of language and culture are
subtle and deep.  Perfect machine translation would of course be useful
-- only Anthony could manage to find the straw man argument that anyone
who thinks that language distinctions are important and relevant might
also think that machine translation would not be _useful_.

I think we sit somewhere around 4 on Steve Bennett's scale, but moreso,
I think that is about where we ought to sit, perfect machine translation
or not.

--Jimbo

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


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [WikiEN-l] Lovely.

body:
Erik Moeller wrote:

>On 5/31/06, Stan Shebs <shebs at apple.com> wrote:
>
>
>>One thing that I think editors should do is to make employers and
>>such aware of their WP activities as much as possible.
>>
>>
>
>It's probably also true that there is a fair number of people who are
>editing Wikipedia under circumstances their boss or supervisor would
>disapprove of, including *gasp* some members of the nefarious ruling
>class known as "administrators". For those who intend to continue
>doing so, using a separate account may be advisable. (Accountability
>activism strikes again! Let's stalk people so they tell us more about
>themselves!)
>
>Do we have a guideline for dealing with off-wiki harassment? We
>probably should, and link it from RfA.
>
The relationship between any Wikipedian and his real life employer are
not our concern.  Unless editing Wikipedia is a part of his job
description he should not be doing so during his work time.  If he gets
fired because of his addictive behaviour it's not our concern.

Ec


subject: [Foundation-l] Instant Commons : INCORRECT

body:
Birgitte SB wrote:
> I cannot agree with you on this point.  Contracts must
> be with the Foundation if they want the WMF's name
> attached to it.  If Kenniset was willing to give the
> money to anyone willing to make it happen (Wikimedia
> or otherwise), I imagine you would have already worked
> it out.

Kennisnet contacted me at the time, and I recommended that they not fund
it until a proper proposal was in place.  I would repeat that
recommendation today, under the same circumstances, and for the same
reasons.

> With regards to the rest of you email.  The Board is
> going to hire an interim executive director.
> Hopefully it will be soon.  This shows me that the
> Board is addressing your corncerns about their
> efficiency.

In this particular case, the lack of efficiency was not from the WMF
board.  We were presented with no proper proposal but instead a set of
very insistent demands that we tell Kennisnet "yes" within a day or two,
to a project which had not been explained, with a budget which was not
explained, etc.

I make no apologies for saying no to that kind of nonsense, whether from
Erik or Gerard or anyone else, no matter how much I may like and trust them.

--Jimbo


body:
Erik Moeller wrote:
> They don't care about whose name is attached to the contract. They
> care that WMF wants this to go ahead. Many organizations will be the
> same way: "Oh, Wikimedia wants 5000 EUR for this project? Sure, we'll
> help! Oh, you want us to deal with these guys over there to keep the
> overhead low? Sure, can do!" We can and should define a size of
> contract where things cannot be handled this way anymore, of course.

I will never allow you to use the Wikimedia Foundation name to raise
money for a project with no written proposal, no budget, no
professionalism, just "trust us, it's a cool idea".

At the present time, this project has moved quite properly beyond that
stage, with good people having reviewed it, details having been worked
out, etc.  Super.  But short-cutting that process would not lead us to
have dozens or hundreds of great projects, it would lead us to complete
and total scandal and ruin, as people like Kennisnet would discover that
the Wikimedia Foundation saying 'yes' to a project means no more than
backscratching someone we like.

--Jimbo


from_name: Steve Bennett

body:
On 6/8/06, Anthony DiPierro <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
> these distinctions, and what distinctions were intended.  I always
> thought the English Wikipedia at least was supposed to be neutral with
> regard to culture.  Maybe English is the exception?

What does "neutral with regard to culture" mean? Let's look at a scale
of cultural-dependency that Wikipedia as a whole could situate itself
on:

1. Every WP is a certified translation of every other
2. Every WP is not a translation of every other, but such a situation
is recognised as being good, and efforts to improve synchronisation
are encouraged
3. Small deviations in content are allowed in the form of examples or
expressions. Eg, giving examples in English for "Personal pronoun" as
I alluded to.
4. Significant deviations in emphasis and coverage are allowed, to
match the interests of the readership. For example, a history of the
20th century for en WP would focus much more on the two world wars
than it would for languages of countries that weren't involved in
them. All information is still welcome, but may be moved into
subarticles as appropriate.
5. WPs can remove or trim information that is judged "irrelevant" to
its readership, such as removing 36,000 articles on French communes
and leaving only the top 20 French cities.
6. WPs can deliberately suppress information for cultural reasons,
such as not mentioning the Tianenmen Square massacre on zh WP or
referring to an independent country as merely being a "territory" of
another if the relevant government is claiming that it is (in the face
of international agreement to the contrary).

I think we probably sit around 4. Further refinements to this scale welcome.

Steve


body:
On 6/8/06, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> For what is it worth, I think that questions of language and culture are
> subtle and deep.  Perfect machine translation would of course be useful
> -- only Anthony could manage to find the straw man argument that anyone
> who thinks that language distinctions are important and relevant might
> also think that machine translation would not be _useful_.
>
You stated that "For the record, and as I have said many times in the
past, I do NOT
think that cultural distinctions between difference language Wikipedias
are accidental or to be regarded as accidental, and even if it were
possible to translate every article using machine translation, I cannot
imagine that we would want to do so."

If you weren't talking about machine translation, then what did you
mean?  Imagine that we would want to do what?

> I think we sit somewhere around 4 on Steve Bennett's scale, but moreso,
> I think that is about where we ought to sit, perfect machine translation
> or not.
>
> --Jimbo

And I'd say that "We try to reach people in their mother language or
at least a language they handle very well, we should not provide
different content based on any other specificity such as nationality,
religion, political view point and such."

Anthony


subject: [WikiEN-l] Category translation

body:
On 6/8/06, Andrew Gray <shimgray at gmail.com> wrote:
> I honestly don't know if this is the case. But I'm betting that, to
> some degree, it is... or it is enough to screw up any kind of
> cross-project categorisation program.

Probably the basic obscacle is that one article supposedly equals one
topic. In reality it's far from the case for almost every article -
articles on obscure authors cover their works, articles on cities
cover their sights etc.

Also, as mentioned, when articles carve information up at right-angles
to each other, you're basically just stuffed. A set of historical
articles on a region mapping onto a set of geographical articles, each
with its own history, for the same region, is just doomed.

Steve


subject: [WikiEN-l] Types of categories

body:
On 6/8/06, Anthony DiPierro <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
> > One can work towards this, but any enforcement is a bit like passing a
> > law that requires everybody to think logically.
> >
> Not at all.  All that's required is that people who do think logically
> are allowed to fix things up and have somewhere to point to if they
> are challenged.

Any system that requires logic and thought to operate well, but can be
operated by anyone, is likely to live in a state of semi-functioning.
The people who are good at categorising will be overworked, and thus
there will be parts of the system that will live for days, weeks, or
months, badly categorised.

There's nothing particularly wrong with that.

Steve


subject: [WikiEN-l] Lovely.

body:
Stan Shebs wrote:

>One thing that I think editors should do is to make employers and
>such aware of their WP activities as much as possible. WP's
>visibility and reputation is now such that it's generally a positive
>thing to be seen as an important person in WP, and should a nasty
>person call, it helps the callee to recognize it as stalking
>rather than anything legitimate. Be proud of your work for
>Wikipedia, and let everybody know about it.
>
I don't think we should let our role as an "important person" go to our
heads.  When I mention my role to people that I meet the results are
either benignly positive, or I still have to explain what Wikipedia is.
In the latter case people are not impressed by an important role in
something that they have never heard of.

Perhaps my biggest drawback in these circumstances is my own lack of
MediaWiki expertise.  I can easily see where MediaWiki software would be
useful benefit in areas related to the practice of education, but feel
restricted in my inability to describe how they could download and apply
the software.  There is a tendency among school systems to get bogged
down in expensive software licences, and a lack of will to explore less
expensive alternatives.

Ec


from_name: Timwi

subject: [Wikitech-l] Case inconsistency

body:
Nick Jenkins wrote:
>>>Surely the most useful solution would be to make the Go button redirect
>>>non-silently, i.e. in the same way as a real redirect. A wikilink [[Lyon
>>>metro]] would still be a redlink, but typing "Lyon metro" in the Go box
>>>or the actual URL should bring up [[Lyon Metro]] with the note,
>>>"(redirected from _Lyon metro_)", where "Lyon metro" is, of course, a
>>>redlink. You can then use that to create the page if you wanted to.
>>
>>Yes...why didn't I think of that?
>
> Good idea, but maybe it can be improved slightly by assuming that most
> people are somewhat lazy.
>
> Instead of:
>   (Redirected from _Lyon metro_)
>
> You could have:
>   (Redirected from _Lyon metro_ - _create redirect_)

I don't understand. If it already redirects automatically, why would you
still want to create the redirect?


body:
Traroth wrote:
> I completly disagree with this point. You are part of the Board.
> That's an engagement. Things are made so the agreement of the Board
> is needed for some decisions. It's unfair to say that the Board has
> the choice to *not decide* because the members don't care. Such a
> sentence could be demotivating for the whole project members : why
> try to organize something, if the Board take no decision about, not
> because the project is not good, but only because they don't care ?

I believe you have misunderstood her point.  In order for the board, or
anyone, to be able to look at something and make a decision, it has to
be presented coherently and professionally, not as a rambling series of
emails coupled with demands that we support it.  Our time is limited,
and not every proposal that comes to us is equally coherent.


from_name: Gregory Maxwell

body:
On 6/8/06, Erik Moeller <eloquence at gmail.com> wrote:
> I wrote specifications, a budget and a full proposal for Kennisnet in
> February. This proposal named the developers, the roles and
> responsibilities, and the duration of development. The proposal, as
> written in February, is at
> http://scireview.de/temp/instantcommons_2.odt

I have some questions from a technical perspective.

1. What is the purpose of the XML-RPC subsystem?   Since the images
are fetched via HTTP in any case, why not simply perform the existence
test via simple HTTP as well.   If that were done no modifications
would be needed on the commons side.  Without more explanation the
addition of the XML-RPC subsystem seems like an unnecessary exercises
in complexity.

2. It would appear from the specification that their is no facility
for caching failures. So if an page contains a non-existent image,
commons will be polled every time the page is rendered.  A number of
mechanisms would be possible to reduce this, from the use of negative
caching, to the use of periodically updated filename bloom filters.

3. The proposed method of interwiki transclusion doesn't appear fully
formed enough to determine if it will be sufficiently strong to
prevent instant commons from accidentally becoming an automated system
for license violations.  In particular there doesn't appear to be any
strong assurance that attribution and license data will *always* be
available when the image is available.

4. Although copyright concerns are mentioned, they don't seem to be
explored in depth. Commons has a huge amount of copyright violations
on it today.  I think the expectation that small wiki operators will
run a deletion script is unreasonable and that this area should be
explored in depth. Potentially making only certain images on commons
available for automated replication.

5. If the remote wiki will download the full image in all cases, what
is the purpose of burdening commons with the additional transfer and
storage costs of their thumbnail generation?  Yes, if that size has
been used before commons will have it... but it's quite likely that
other wikis will use a large number of sizes which are not used on
Wikimedia sites, and even if the best case they still cost us
additional bandwidth.  The far side will still need to perform
thumbnailing for the image page for large images in any case.

6. How will this address SVGs which are widely used on commons, but
not supported by mediawiki out of the box? Our support for SVGs
requires a modifyed version of librsvg in order to operate securely.

There are also some more complex issues, like where the $5,000 EUR fee
comes from for what is, overall, such a simple feature set. But I
don't want to create a flood of comments initially.


subject: [Wikitech-l] HTML normalization, transclusions, nesting

body:
Tels wrote:
>
>>Users can't edit [[MediaWiki:Monobook.css]], but that doesn't mean all
>>the CSS has to go there. You could use templates (or at least one
>>template) to include user-editable CSS from elsewhere.
>
> Except that you can't insert CSS into a template unless the style tag gets
> explicitely enabled. (and last I checked thats f.i. not possible on meta)

This is simply not true. Go to [[Template:CSS specificpurpose]] and type

     .specificpurpose { border: 1px solid black; background: red; }

Then go to [[MediaWiki:Monobook.css]] and insert

     @import
"/w/index.php?title=Template:CSS_specificpurpose&action=raw&ctype=text/css"

and voil?, the template is user-editable CSS.

However, I do not actually advocate this practice. I don't think CSS is
suitable for editing by the average user; it should be reserved for
admins who (1) know to leave it alone if they don't know what they're
doing, and (2) can ensure project-wide layout consistency.

> In any event, whats the difference between using:
>
> 	class="foo"
>
> and a template to set foo, and using a template directly anyway?

If you use something like this:

{| style="border: 1px solid black;"

then
(1) the CSS applies no matter what skin anyone is using, but people who
use MySkin probably don't want any CSS applied because they want to
define it all themselves; and
(2) if I don't want that border, I can't even remove it. However, in the
my example above I could just add to my User CSS:

      .specificpurpose { border: none; }

>>No, that is a strawman. I am neither arguing against wiki-syntax nor
>>against templates.
>
> Then please don't inject arguments that aren't n the current discussion
> without adding OT :)

Huh? I was responding to this argument from you:

> It is very convient to be able to create templates that start tables with
> a lot of predefiened markup, so users can just say:
>
> {{start-table-for-specific-purpose-foo}}
>
> instead of creatig manually bordersizes etc. It also makes mass-changing
> tables easier.

Under my proposal, users can just say:

{| class="specific-purpose"

which is surely shorter, cleaner, easier on the server (no template
look-up), and more future-proof (does not make crazy assumptions about
the working principles of the parser) and you _still_ don't need to
manually create any style definitions, and mass-changing the style of
those tables is no more or less easy.

> I was arguing for templates and for wiki-syntax. CSS doesn't have
> anything to do with it if I understood you correctly above :)

Then according to your logic, surely we should use {{strike|text}}
instead of <s>text</s>. (This is to demonstrate your strawman.)

No, you were actually arguing for templates _in a specific situation_
(starting a table with a certain style). When I refuted that argument,
you suddenly claimed that my logic would apply to completely different
situations. That is simply a strawman.

Timwi


from_name: Matt Brown

subject: [WikiEN-l] Lovely.

body:
On 6/8/06, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> The relationship between any Wikipedian and his real life employer are
> not our concern.  Unless editing Wikipedia is a part of his job
> description he should not be doing so during his work time.  If he gets
> fired because of his addictive behaviour it's not our concern.

We are not necessarily even talking about people who edit Wikipedia
from work.  The attempt to get Snowspinner in trouble was using his
fictional writings.  The attack on Katefan0 was not based on her
editing Wikipedia from work either.

-Matt


from_name: Steve Summit

subject: [Wikitech-l] Case inconsistency

body:
Steve Bennett wrote:
> On 6/8/06, Timwi <timwi at gmx.net> wrote:
>> Nick Jenkins wrote:
>>> You could have:
>>>   (Redirected from _Lyon metro_ - _create redirect_)
>>
>> I don't understand. If it already redirects automatically, why would you
>> still want to create the redirect?
>
> The "automatic redirection" only occurs if you happen to type the name
> in the box at the left of screen and press the Go button. In any other
> situation (linking to it, typing the name in the URL, searching) it
> doesn't "redirect automatically".
>
> Given that, your question comes down to "why create redirects at all?".

And of course, if the various Search options all got their "Do
you mean?" functionality just right, we truly would *not* need all
those redirects.  Many of them exist not because a commandment on
a tablet said we had to create them, but rather, as a workaround
for the fact that readers do occasionally type in article names
spelled wrong, and we want to make it easier to find what they
want, and the software hasn't always been smart enough.

So yes, if the software can tell that a user who typed A probably
meant B, and if it can implicitly redirect from A to B, we don't
need an explicit redirect from A to B, after all.  And having the
software do that automatically is obviously preferable to the
nuisance of creating and maintaining all those thousands of
explicit redirects manually.

The remaining case is that if the software is implicitly
redirecting from A to B, but there is some distinction between
A and B after all, such that a later editor wants to create a
distinct article on A, there must obviously be a way to do so
without being trapped by the same implicit redirect.

(Apologies if I'm belaboring the obvious here.)


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Tuvic

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Update van de MediaWiki boodschappen

body:
Kan hier iets meer uitleg bij, want ik snap niet echt op wat dit slaat of
wat er eventueel verwacht wordt...

Mvg, Tuvic

2006/6/7, Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com>:
>
> Hoi,
> Nadat de MediaWiki boodschappen die door Galwaygirl zijn aangeboden aan
> Gangleri op de Betawiki, zijn er veel boodschappen geupdate en zijn veel
> (niet alle) boodschappen die nog niet vertaald waren vertaald.
> Boodschappen die niet aangepast waren op een nl.project worden NIET
> overschreven. Het is daarom ook beter om aanpassingen in MediaWiki niet
> meer locaal te doen maar centraal en wel op de Betawiki.
>
> Wanneer deze boodschappen in MediaWiki worden opgenomen, dan komen ze in
> een aantal dagen beschikbaar in de projecten. De boodschappen die
> aangepast moeten worden zijn te herkennen "Special:allmessages for
> changed messages which needs to be updated".. Ik kan dat niet op de
> Nederlandse Wikipedia herkennen .. maar ik neem aan dat er genoeg
> moderatoren zijn die dit voor hun rekening kunnen nemen.
>
> Groetjes,
>     GerardM
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


from_name: Chad Perrin

subject: [Wikitech-l] Researcher needs help

body:
On Thu, Jun 08, 2006 at 07:17:43AM -0400, Mark Bell wrote:
>
> Mark Bell
> http://www.storygeek.com
> "The future is here...it's just not widely distributed." - Tim O'Reilly

Kind of off-topic, but . . . I think William Gibson said that first.

  William Gibson: "The future is already here.
  It's just not very evenly distributed."

Like that.

--
CCD CopyWrite Chad Perrin [ http://ccd.apotheon.org ]
Ben Franklin: "As we enjoy great Advantages from the Inventions of
others we should be glad of an Opportunity to serve others by any
Invention of ours, and this we should do freely and generously."


from_name: Robert Scott Horning

subject: [Foundation-l] Moving the "test Wikipedias"

body:
Nicholas Moreau wrote:

>On 6/6/06, Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com> wrote:
>
>
>>Cormac Lawler wrote:
>>
>>
>>>Great! But is it too late to discuss the scope of this wiki? We've had
>>>discussions about having a separate wiki as an incubator for potential
>>>new Wikimedia projects (see:
>>><http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikikernel> or the older
>>><http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Seed_wiki>). Could/will this be that
>>>wiki?
>>>
>>>
>>Sure, why not?
>>
>>
>So can/should we move all of Wikiversity there? What about Wikijunior?
> Isn't Wikibooks just holding these until they are moved onto their
>own domain, therefore acting like the incubator wiki?  Wouldn't it be
>more apposite for them to be there instead?
>
>
>
>
>I'm not sure Wikijunior was originally intended to be a seperate
>project, actually.  I'd love for it to be seperate of Wikibooks, as we
>do have a domain registered for it, but the WJ community opposed such
>a move previously.
>
>Nick
>
>
I have been a very long time critic of the process that started
Wikijunior on Wikibooks, but at the same time the opposition to moving
Wikijunior was simply that a formal project proposal needed to be
started, with a good number of organization questions answered before it
could be moved.  While these questions were answered by the individual
who wanted to do the move, it really needed a larger Wikimedia user
concensus before it could happen.

As far as having Wikibooks be an incubator project for new project idea,
I think the defacto status of doing so has some promise, where project
like Wikiversity, Wikijunior, and the Wikimania proceedings were on
Wikibooks.  This is a demonstration of what Wikibooks could be under one
vision, but again repeated requests to formalize this philosophy and
make it actual policy on Wikibooks has met considerable resistance,
including from several board members (including Jimbo) who have noted
that Wikibooks should not be the incubator project for Wikimedia users.
 As a matter of fact, Wikibooks has a explicit policy that prohibits
anybody from using Wikibooks as a free webhosting service, and
explicitly stated in [[b:WB:WIW]] that Wikibooks is not a site to
develop new Wikimedia projects.  This clause was added due to comments
on this list, and concensus on Wikibooks that this was a reasonable policy.

Wikijunior and Wikiversity were on Wikibooks before this policy was
created and enforced, so in effect these projects were "grandfathered"
and left alone until other means were available to deal with them.  With
the Wikiversity sub-committee wrapping things up (a formal report will
very shortly be given to the board), there is no need to move the
content to an incubator wiki and then to another site again afterwards,
nor move de.wikiversity to the incubator either.  I would imagine that
Wikijunior would go through a somewhat similar process in the next year
or two eventually.  With seven Wikijunior books now at a substantial
level of completion, there is some real substance to work with on
Wikijunior that would be the basis for a new sister project at some time
in the future, not to mention that Wikijunior is also available in
several different languages as well, including Chinese, French, German,
and Italian.

--
Robert Scott Horning


from_name: Selina .

body:
On 06/06/06, Kelly Martin <kelly.lynn.martin at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 6/6/06, Conrad Dunkerson <conrad.dunkerson at worldnet.att.net> wrote:
> > * Kelly Martin wrote:
> > > On 6/5/06, Mark Gallagher <m.g.gallagher at student.canberra.edu.au>
> wrote:
> > >> In any case, the general thrust of Selina's comment was spot-on, so
> > >> let's try not to jump on her for one clause.
> > >
> > > No, indeed, let us give the hypocrite a fair trial.  Then we can hang
> her.
> >
> > What was that I was saying about the need for admins to maintain
> civility
> > even with 'bad' users? Oh well... probably wasn't important anyway,
> right?
>
> Well, considering that Ms. "Racism-is-illegal" has been spouting some
> pretty ugly and bigoted crap over on her little pet playground (and
> some of it directed at me personally), I think she's just about run
> out of rope.
>
> Kelly
>

>>Perhaps what you meant to say was
>>"racism is not illegal in my jurisdiction".  There's a world outside
>>America: it's a world I've heard described by Americans as terrifying
>>and dystopian (presumably, these particular Americans were funnier in
>>the head than the average), but it's still there.

Well said. ;)

I replied defending myself from the personal attacks Kelly was making in the
above posts in WR (General Discussion) as I'm not allowed to here apparently
- Judge for yourself, I don't think it's anywhere near as bad as the
nastiness from her towards me in this topic...

I'm not sure why it seems acceptable for some people to be above the
rules...

--
Selina -
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Mistress_Selina_Kyle?oldid=55639088 /
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Mistress_Selina_Kyle?oldid=41845454
http://wikipediareview.com/?showuser=1
"I *do* think criticism is good for Wikipedia [...] Good quality criticism
is valuable, and Wikipedians should listen to it, and actually make changes
based on it. Are there corrupt administrators, then we should get rid of
them." --Jimmy Wales ( http://wikipediareview.com/?showtopic=1693 )


subject: [Wikitech-l] Case inconsistency

body:
On 6/8/06, Timwi <timwi at gmx.net> wrote:
> Nick Jenkins wrote:
> >>>Surely the most useful solution would be to make the Go button redirect
> >>>non-silently, i.e. in the same way as a real redirect. A wikilink [[Lyon
> >>>metro]] would still be a redlink, but typing "Lyon metro" in the Go box
> >>>or the actual URL should bring up [[Lyon Metro]] with the note,
> >>>"(redirected from _Lyon metro_)", where "Lyon metro" is, of course, a
> >>>redlink. You can then use that to create the page if you wanted to.
> >>
> >>Yes...why didn't I think of that?
> >
> > Good idea, but maybe it can be improved slightly by assuming that most
> > people are somewhat lazy.
> >
> > Instead of:
> >   (Redirected from _Lyon metro_)
> >
> > You could have:
> >   (Redirected from _Lyon metro_ - _create redirect_)
>
> I don't understand. If it already redirects automatically, why would you
> still want to create the redirect?

The "automatic redirection" only occurs if you happen to type the name
in the box at the left of screen and press the Go button. In any other
situation (linking to it, typing the name in the URL, searching) it
doesn't "redirect automatically".

Given that, your question comes down to "why create redirects at all?".

Steve


from_name: Delirium

subject: [WikiEN-l] Category translation

body:
Ray Saintonge wrote:
> Viewed
> separately the Wikipedias in different languages are bound to arrive at
> different NPOVs that are each strongly rooted in distinct cultural
> values.  A language with a small concentrated geographical territory is
> more likely to achieve a satisfactory NPOV, without the complicated
> arguments  that may be encountered with a widely dispersed language like
> English.  This broad range of neutralities helps keep things dynami

I'd say the opposite, unless we redefine "neutral" in some relativistic
way.  IMO, it is far more likely that the English article, due to having
participants from multiple viewpoints, will be neutral on any given
topic than that in a language without a very diverse speaker
population.  For example, which do you think is more likely to cover the
Bosnian war neutrally: the English-language Wikipedia, or the
Serbian-language Wikipedia?  The English Wikipedia has Serbs, Bosniaks,
Croats, and many neutral people; the Serb Wikipedia does not benefit
from nearly the same diverse population.

-Mark


body:
Steve Bennett wrote:
> Is it ok if a link at the top of [[President]] at en directs people to
> [[George W Bush]], while a link at the top of [[Pr?sident]] at fr
> directs people to [[Jaques Chirac]]?
>

Well this one seems like an easy "definitely not" to me!

-Mark


list: textbook-l

subject: [Textbook-l] Game Guides

body:
Lord Voldemort wrote:

>Okay, Jimbo.  In an effort to discuss the game guides issue, I would
>appreciate a couple of questions being answered.  I will try to
>address various points people have brought up on the subject of game
>guides as well as Wikibooks (WB) as a whole.  I will try to ask them
>in a broad sense, including questions that may seem obvious to some.
>Bear with me.
>
>1. What was the original purpose of Wikibooks?
>
>2. Is the current purpose the same?
>
>3. Who has control over the overall content of Wikibooks? The
>Wikimedia Foundation, the WMF Board, the community of Wikibookians?
>
>4a. Some time ago now, you declared that game guides did not fit with
>the intent of WB.  Were you speaking on behalf of the Wikimedia
>Foundation?  Were you speaking just as Jimbo?
>
>4b. Who decided all of a sudden to rid Wikibooks of game guides?  Was
>there recent discussion on Meta?  Between the Board?  If so, is there
>a record of this discussion?
>
>5. Why specifically do game guides not fit in Wikibooks?  Are there
>possible tax-exemption implications with having these here?  If so,
>where is the information regarding this?
>
>6. If the community of Wikibookians disagrees with the decision, and
>consensus is formed against it, can the community disregard the
>pronouncement?
>
>7. If the community rejects the pronouncement and decides they want
>game guides included, what steps would need to be taken to ensure
>there place at WB?  Would the WMF bylaws need to be changed? If so,
>how would they go about doing that?
>
>8. Can video games be an acceptable textbook subject?  If so, what are
>the requirements?  Is a simple walkthrough constitute a textbook?
>
>9. If video game guides are to be gotten rid of, what about board game guides?
>
>10. There is talk of a "Accredited Institution" metric.  If one small
>institution somewhere develops a class on a topic, does that warrant
>that topic's textbook on WB?  What about  if three institutions have
>the class?  Should links to some number of courses be provided to show
>the suitability for WB? If so, how many?
>
>11. Do classes that you do not earn credit for (either
>extra-curricular or within school, but not for credit) count as
>classes under the Accredited Institution metric?  For example, clubs
>used to educate someone on a topic not otherwise found in class.
>
>12. If the removal of video game guides also results in the leaving of
>many prolific and trusted WB editors, does the WMF consider this okay?
>
>13. Any other comments on these issues?
>
>I guess this is a start.  Forgive me if my biases show through. I
>tried to ask questions brought up on both sides of the issue.  If I
>have forgotten any glaring questions, please forgive me.  I understand
>some of these are not easy to answer, but I, and others, would
>appreciate whatever answers you can provide. Thanks.
>--LV
>
>
I would like to add that Wikibooks was started because of the Organic
Chemistry article on Wikipedia was growing incredibly huge, and was
becoming more of a book than an encyclopedia article.  With some
internal discussion going on with Wikipedia about what to do and Karl
Wick trying to spearhead the move to create a seperate website for this
sort of effort, http://textbooks.wikipedia.org was started.  It was from
this initial effort that subsequent content was added to Wikibooks.

Unlike the perception that seems to be presented at the moment,
Wikibooks was never intended to be strictly for publishable textbooks.
 Indeed to prevent this, the clause "Wikibooks is not paper" was added
into "What Wikibooks is not" (now What is Wikibooks?) to note that some
creativity could be done to try and explore some new and experimental
ways of writing content.  That spark of creativity seems to be missing
in a huge degree right now from Wikibooks.

Indeed, even the idea of making Wikibooks strictly non-fiction content
is something relatively new, although I think this is a reasonable
focus.  The problem that Wikibooks is facing now is the incredibly
limiting restriction of making Wikibooks only for textbooks, with no
real clear definition as to what a textbook really is.  Saying that you
must cite a course of study in an accredited educational institution and
that the textbook fits in with a proscribed syllabus is going way too
far in my opinion.  How could anything possibly be written at all with
that sort of very strict interpretation?  Yet that is precisely the
standard that is being used.

If we (and especially Jimbo) is suggesting that this is the standard
that needs to be applied, perhaps we simply need to nuke the whole
website, such as was done with French Wikiquote.  Kill everything and
perhaps bring back the one agreed upon textbook that started it all:
 Organic Chemistry.  And then make very strict policies that state the
much more strict interpretation that Wikibooks is only for textbooks
alone that meet my above definition, or something similar.

One thing I find especially disturbing in all of this is the complete
lack of discussion of the other language Wikibooks projects.  Mind you,
in almost all of the discussions that have taken place on en.wikibooks
we have never said that such policies were manditory for the other
language projects.  And the other languages have been largely
independent, with the German Wikibooks being perhaps the most developed
besides en.wikibooks.  Or as I've pointed out in several places, over
half of all Wikibooks content is written in languages other than
English.  If you are setting up a general policy that excludes a whole
class of content, this should be a general policy for more than just
this one project, en.wikibooks.  This is especially if the policy is to
be coming from the Wikimedia Foundation Board as an official policy.

As far as the tax exempt status issue is concerned, I fail to see that
as an argument at all.  See my response on:
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Wikibooks_talk%3AWhat_is_Wikibooks#Referencing_tax-exempt_status

As long as we keep content available under the GFDL and maintain NPOV
enforcement of Wikibooks content, I fail to see how anything else can
possibly threaten the tax-exempt status of Wikibooks or any Wikimedia
project for that matter.  The content alone is not going to cause any
problems of any kind regardless of what is written.  Calling in the U.S.
Federal Government on this issue is an attempt to distract from the
issue, which is a policy dispute between one rather prominent individual
(namely Jimbo) and admins on Wikibooks.  The real issue is to determine
what the scope of Wikibooks should be, and more importantly, its
relationship to the other Wikimedia sister projects.

And that gets to the heart of the matter and what is causing the
contention here, together with some of the comments from Jimbo.  What is
the relationship between Wikia and Wikimedia?  Almost all of the
arguments that have been used lately to remove content, including the
Jokebook but also the video game guides and the how-to books, as well as
the biographies, is because there are existing Wikia projects that cover
the scope of this kind of content.  However, one of the reasons why
Wikipedia is moving content to Wikibooks in large quantities (including
the Cookbook) is because there is no other Wikimedia project that can
really handle this sort of content.  Indeed, this was the very argument
that was also given as to why Wikibooks was chosen to host the Wikimania
proceedings.

So are the various Wikia projects considered sister projects to
Wikimedia projects?  Local links (not external references) exist going
both ways, including to the Uncyclopedia.  My understanding was that
they were very distinct groups (Wikia and Wikimedia) and the policies
and even existance of a Wikia project has no bearing on Wikimedia
projects.  Apparently this line is being blurred considerably now with
the new textbook only philosophy for Wikibooks, and it does have an
impact on future content being developed on Wikibooks.  Moving the
How-to books to the How-to Wikia seems like an attempt (to me) of
capturing Wikibooks content without having to do any work, especially
given that the how-to books on Wikibooks predate the How-to Wikia.  Six
months ago the idea would have been considered ludicrious to even
suggest removing the how-to books.

--
Robert Scott Horning


from_name: Zack Clark

subject: [Foundation-l] Donations - Direction - Destiny

body:
I've been watching YOU - warriors of the Wiki wonder!
Such a precious phenomenon - because, when I want the
clean clear skinny on say "digital signature", I don't
go to pgp.mit.edu|www.pgpi.org, an U.S. Commerce site,
nor Google, and certainly NOT Britannica; as Wikipedia
has consistently proven to be where the real wealth is.

Needless preaching to the choir you say?? - maybe not.
Wiki, GNU and Linus? Law are all spawned from the same
spirit - availing strategies which have achieved record
breaking results with heretofore inconceivable despatch.
Yet those gifted pioneers moving this new future forward
appear to be unaware of the full realm of freedom forces
being unleash and their world revolutionizing relevance.
Ya think I'm laying it on a bit thick? Well -if so- then
my goal over the next few short months is to demonstrate
that indeed this perspective is really an understatement.

To continue, the most personally inspiring aspect of this
whole marvel is the fact that it's unstoppablely unfolded
without massive mega-dollars of funding!  In fact, it can
even be argued that the monetary status quo -which wholly
engulfs us- constitutes a hostile proprietary environment
that?s largely counterproductive to the needs of today?s
avant-garde talent (requiring a new realm of recognition).
Hmmm - lets just leave that thought hang for the moment...

OK - the big question of the hour seems to be if this dear
movement must be wisely restrained to merely your precious
products or if it should foolishly be given an opportunity
to address an expanded range of challenges.  I'm concerned
the former 'wisdom' will reign. Before continuing however,
this phenomena I'm fawning over merits its own term. How's
"7F" (freedom fest fanatics forging fine faultless fruit)?

So if 7F can give us Wikipedia, GNU & Linux then why would
one ever shy from its application in the arena of practical
policy making unless it was fear of effectiveness?  To be a
bit fair, writing a quality encyclopedia IS hardly the same
as doing a business plan, but neither is coding an OS!  In
other words if 7F can successfully accommodate the extremes
we've already witnessed, then why can't we further tune it
for yet more terrific transformations? However, I see very
little about new 7F approaches.  Instead, there appears to
be this dangerous morbid attraction for delving into dirty
dollar dilemmas - a sadly unfortunate degrading indulgence.

The biggest bumbling bugaboo bobbing about is a bastardized
belief in the very nature of wealth. This ancient avaricious
animal (a scarcity paradigm) adverts attention from our true
assets and fixes the mind on conforming to hapless criteria.
Is that what we want to be about??  Or can someone sense the
power of a moral groundswell right under our proverbial feet?

All I'm trying to convey here is that in just 5 years you're
a blooming top 16 website propelled to prominence without any
big bucks.  Now that folks, is truly & profoundly beautiful!
Nevertheless there is this incredible spectacle of depending
on donations. Yea, I know, when under the status quo's spell
it all seem so natural.  But please consider that you're NOT
in some mere redistribution business like the UNITED WAY and
multitudes of want-to-be clones. Because (like the GNU/Linux
hackers) you are actually CREATING freed high quality wealth
in the most real ways. Moreover, each & every party involved
is enriched by the process (even the volunteers although not
nearly to the extent they should be). And yes, I know tragic
shortages of funds always occur when monetary elite channel
funds in preferential ways. But this hardly means that some
scarcity mentality is necessary nor that subjugation to any
authoritarian proprietary money need be forever suffered.

I am not saying it's best to totally abandon donations & the
whole 501c3 scene (just yet).  But I certainly do believe we
can build upon the wealth that's being constantly created by
valiant volunteers and seize the power to transform the most
basic precepts concerning wealth.  And perhaps the best part
is that this can be realized in full accord with 7F ideas.

Listen up, CREATING WEALTH & BEAUTY IS YOUR STRONGEST FORTE.
OK? So why weaken yourself by pandering to false & pathetic
scarcity principles wholly alien to the wiki spirit?  Your
proper placement for key endeavors should always be right
at the very top. But let me just say that you will never
be sterling players in the supplicant's area. There are
just far too many of them who have already honed their
curious craft to razor sharpness.  Even if you should
become honored & famed fund raisers that inevitably
lures one into the sullen slippery slope realm of
the lecherous lobbyist.  And before you know it
your previously free & wide open world starts
shrinking to accommodate the mean & narrow
minded precepts of the status quo.

The very existence of vastly varied cultures resulting solely
from the segregation of populations is itself, an indisputable
indictment of individuals' innate predisposition to assimilate
cultural norms. So it is no surprise that so many minds -after
years of turning to dollars for their very survival- form this
impression that fiat currency is necessary and scarcity is the
natural way of the world. They then run both their daily lives
and organizations in accordance with the status quo's dictates.
So even while we may be setting on top of a mountain of wealth,
there is always the blind propensity to ignore our true assets
and instead seek after rather dangerously deceptive currencies.
But just as 7F (as expressed through WP) stands to obliterate
the sordid sanctity of copyright;  a well working alternative
to FRNs (Federal Reserve Notes) could crack our dependence on
that harmful mind warping illusion also.

So here's the idea.  Embrace abundance.  Focus on strengths.
Place prime importance on continued high quality work/gifts.
Expand upon the enrichment already created by awarding your
own form of (monetary) *recognition* (remember? we left this
hanging in 3rd paragraph above).  Certainly any new monetary
concept appropriate for 7F needs calls for a whole new level
of integrity. So I'm suggesting a new order of raw individual
OWNERSHIP that is thief-proof, indestructible, unforgeable &
undeniable - plus basically cost free to a) create, b) store,
and c) transfer. The object of ownership is called a "YeNom"
since many of its features are the exact opposite of current
proprietary money.

The above -to good to be true- characteristics are actually
easy to actualize since -as you may have guessed- YeNoms are
simply files that are GPG/PGP clear text signed first by the
originator and finally by the recipient (should they wish to
assume ownership).  All active YeNom files are maintained in
a highly accessible open source database available to anyone
on the Internet (3rd party service providers most welcomed).
A YeNom (text file) could be title to tangible goods, stock
in an enterprise, pledged delivery of work/product or most
anything else an originator might imagine.  One especially
attractive idea for wiki would be votes of moral support in
the form of well considered comments on work & performance
for worthy persons, particularly your volunteers/supporters.

This is rather reminiscent of the barnstar idea, but with
higher expectations. YeNoms are highly objectified & most
explicitly owned.  They are also filed in a huge database
open to the world with the ready ability to be transfered
to new owners (the complete ownership history is embedded
in all YeNoms). Esteemed personages endowed with more well
earned regard than dollars can use YeNoms to critique and
extol cohorts. This amplifies the value of their gestures
for the whole community. This forum is also a great stage
for high profile philanthropy through selectively purchas-
ing individuals' YeNoms. In any case, being a YeNom owner
avails significant appreciation potential with zero risks.

While this idea was originated with you all & the GNU/Linux
hackers in mind, it's fully open for anyone's use. I'd also
be happy to manage the database at my own expense up until
it exceeds my abilities.  Finally, while this is really a
pretty simple idea, numerous points & details still remain
uncovered.  This email however, is already much too long,
so I respectfully offer the following URL for more info:
http://world1tours.com/wPress/home.html

Z.Clark


from_name: Fastfission

subject: [WikiEN-l] "refactoring" signatures

body:
On 6/5/06, Tony Sidaway <f.crdfa at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 6/5/06, Fastfission <fastfission at gmail.com> wrote:
> > People should be allowed and encourage to develop their personal
> > identity on Wikipedia
>
> Why?  Wikipedia isn't a web host, a blog or a social networking site.
> Those who are looking for such sites will find that there are plenty
> of those around.  There is only one Wikipedia.

Wikipedia is a project that thrives only because people want to spend
a ridiculous amount of their time on it. Developing a sense of
personal identity makes people feel comfortable, feel welcome, and
feel invested. As long as said sense of personal identity does not get
in the way of the goal of making an encyclopedia, I see absolutely no
reason to try and quash it. So far most of the attempts to cut out
"social" aspects seem to have done more harm than good, in my mind.

I've never seen any plausible evidence that things like userboxes
actually get in the way of the goal of making an encyclopedia, except
in the sense that trying to eliminate them takes months and creates
all sorts of awful falling-outs.

FF


subject: [WikiEN-l] Category translation

body:
Steve Bennett wrote:
> On 6/8/06, Delirium <delirium at hackish.org> wrote:
>
>> population.  For example, which do you think is more likely to cover the
>> Bosnian war neutrally: the English-language Wikipedia, or the
>> Serbian-language Wikipedia?  The English Wikipedia has Serbs, Bosniaks,
>> Croats, and many neutral people; the Serb Wikipedia does not benefit
>> from nearly the same diverse population.
>>
>
> There are probably comparable blind spots in the en Wikipedia, where
> English speakers are insufficiently critical of themselves, or
> insufficiently informed on topics that don't interest them.
>

There are blind spots to be sure, but I certainly don't think they're
"comparable", simply by virtue of the fact that English speakers don't
comprise only members of one ethnicity or nationality.  If it were an
encyclopedia edited solely by Americans you might have a point, but it
isn't.  We have, in addition to people from all the English-speaking
countries in the world, substantial numbers of speakers of English as a
second language who contribute regularly.

Which isn't to say it's perfect, but as far as the potential to be a
global, neutral, thorough encyclopedia, I think en.wikipedia is the
structurally best placed by far, simply because so many people from such
diverse cultures speak English.

I think that's basically a historical accident, but I'll take it.  For
my part as an American, I'm quite glad that the U.S. doesn't speak its
own separate language and have its own separate Wikipedia, because it
would almost certainly be worse.

-Mark


subject:
[WikiEN-l] cancelation of the deletion review of the satanism
	userbox

body:
On 6/5/06, Tony Sidaway <f.crdfa at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 6/5/06, Fastfission <fastfission at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Here's a tip: When two dozen people complain about your unilateral
> > decisions to delete things or what have you, you should consider
> > re-opening it up to discussion, rather than insisting on your
> > correctness.
>
> Hmmm, you've got it wrong.  One or two people made some ludicrous
> complaints.  They made a RfC ("re-opening it up to discussion" ) and
> the result is that there is no significant challenge here to the
> normal process of refactoring.
>
> Please read the history of this affair.  You may find that it is
> considerably different from your preconceived ideas.

Here's the page I was referring to. People can judge for themselves
who is being ludicrous. I think it's clear that there were a number of
sober-minded people who thought the policy should be allowed to play
out without Tony Sidaway's personal judgments coming in and
overrunning it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Administrators%27_noticeboard/IncidentArchive105#Tony_Sidaway_unilaterally_cancels_satanism_userbox_restoral_discussion

FF


body:
On 6/5/06, Tony Sidaway <f.crdfa at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 6/5/06, Fastfission <fastfission at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > I think we should err on the side of non-unilateral action
>
> What does that mean?  How does this fit in with "Be bold"?

Pretty simply. [[WP:BOLD]] says that "The Wikipedia community
encourages users to be bold in updating articles." I'm not talking
about updating articles, first, and second, I think your definition of
"boldness" would just result in wheel-warring, which I think we all
agree is a bad idea.

And even then, there are plenty of exceptions to unilateral action,
since article content cannot just be decided by stubborn "bold" users.

FF


from_name: Arie van Buuren

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Cultural distinctions are accidental? Consensusamong
	cultures is bad?

body:
FWIW, the Dutch and German language Wikipedia editors have developed their
own processes and policies which at some points differ substantially from
those of the English language Wikipedia. Even the best of translations of
quite a few articles on these wikis would never survive (intact or at all)
on the English Wikipedia.

(Presumably other language wikis have done the same but I've edited only
these three.)

Arie [[User:Avb]]


from_name: Anthony DiPierro

body:
On 6/8/06, Raphael Wegmann <raphael at psi.co.at> wrote:
> Anthony DiPierro wrote:
> >
> > Jimbo claims he's said this many times in the past.  I couldn't find
> > any, but if anyone else can maybe I can better understand what he's
> > saying.  If Jimbo does "NOT think that cultural distinctions between
> > difference language Wikipedias are accidental", then he must think
> > they're intentional.  That raises the question as to who intended
> > these distinctions, and what distinctions were intended.  I always
> > thought the English Wikipedia at least was supposed to be neutral with
> > regard to culture.  Maybe English is the exception?
> >
>
> Regardless whether the cultural distinctions are intended or not,
> they are a fact. I would consider i.e. a translation of terms like
> Islam and Terrorism from english to arabic and vice versa very
> exciting.

Me too.  In fact, if it were possible to translate every article using
machine translation, I can imagine lots of reasons why we'd want to do
so.

Anthony


subject: [WikiEN-l] "refactoring" signatures

body:
On 6/8/06, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 6/8/06, Fastfission <fastfission at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Wikipedia is a project that thrives only because people want to spend
> > a ridiculous amount of their time on it. Developing a sense of
> > personal identity makes people feel comfortable, feel welcome, and
> > feel invested. As long as said sense of personal identity does not get
> > in the way of the goal of making an encyclopedia, I see absolutely no
> > reason to try and quash it. So far most of the attempts to cut out
> > "social" aspects seem to have done more harm than good, in my mind.
> >
> > I've never seen any plausible evidence that things like userboxes
> > actually get in the way of the goal of making an encyclopedia, except
> > in the sense that trying to eliminate them takes months and creates
> > all sorts of awful falling-outs.
>
> It probably comes down to this:
> 1. Users work mostly on the encyclopaedia, and spend some time socialising
> 2. The social aspect attracts more users, who spend time in equal
> measure, creating pretty userboxes and expressing their political
> beliefs
> 3. This attracts more social users, who spend most of their time on
> purely social functions and creating noise
> ...
>
> Eventually you have to draw a line. For serious contributors to have a
> bit of social fluff about them is fine. Having people whose primary
> presence at Wikipedia is social, rather than encyclopaedical does
> eventually get in the way of building an encyclopaedia, through pure
> noise.

Social activity on Wikipedia is more than just "socializing", in my
experience. I spent most of my day-to-day time on Wikipedia either
reverting vandalism or explaining to people why certain edits are
better than others. A quick look at my own contributions shows that
out of the last 50 edits, around 80% were to talk namespaces.

Part of this involved fostering creative collaborations with others,
getting others on-board with ideas, answering questions, etc. In the
end all of this does have an effect on article content, but not
necessarily a direct one.

Wikipedia content is decided by a lot of back-and-forth between users.
Any time you have lots of communication, disagreement, contestation,
etc. between human beings you need a lot of social lubricant. You need
ways to identify others, you need things to put around your head that
says, "I know about this, I define myself as this, I am a real person
and not just some name on a screen, and you should treat me that way."

I've nothing against that at all. I don't see any great reason to try
and root it out. If there are a few freeloaders who are just in it for
"social" reasons, so be it. As long as they aren't using their
userspace for anything directly nefarious, then who cares? My time --
and I assume the time of others -- is better served continuing my own
business than it is getting into the business of others.

There are always limits to this, of course. There are definite
mis-uses of Wikipedia resources and I think most people would be able
to spot them pretty quickly. Copyright infringement on user pages, for
example, is a pretty straightforward case.

I'm admittedly non-interventionist here. I think it is easier and more
pragmatic tolerate mild misuse and annoyance than to waste time trying
to make everyone into ideal Wikipedians. As they say, if it ain't
(really) broke, don't fix it.

FF


subject: [Foundation-l] Eloquence #00 - was: Instant Commons : INCORRECT

body:
on  Thu, 8 June Erik Moeller noted:

 > Wikipedia is an insanely bad idea from a legal
 > point of view and would never have been started
 > through _any_ process which we are actually using
 > in our organization to start things.

Dear Erik, could you kindly elaborate?
I'm personally favor the concept of positioning your-
self out of harms way in the first place rather than
plunging into some slime pit of leaches just because
it's the norm. So I sense you have valuable insights
here that could spare us a world of big hurt & havoc!

Z.Clark
.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Category translation

body:
Steve Bennett wrote:
> I never notice much of an Indian presence
> surprisingly enough...
>

I've wondered about that on and off.  Perhaps less access to technology
locally amongst most of the population?

Interestingly, we have a ton of editors from some countries where
English isn't typically spoken.  For example there are a *lot* of Polish
editors on en:, ranging from fluent English speakers to people who write
barely-understandable English (but even the latter contribute usefully,
since grammar and wording can always be cleaned up).

-Mark


from_name: Brion Vibber

body:
Gregory Maxwell wrote:
> On 6/8/06, GerardM <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
>> I do however want to address Amgine's point. There is one important
>> difference between Commons and Napster. On Commons people are actively
>> engaged in ensuring that content is properly labeled and licensed.
>> This is in marked contrast with Napster where the defence was that
>> they were only providing a service and that it was not THEIR content.
>
> Considering that we've had violations persist for months after they
> were tagged and even brought up in a Wikimedia board meeting, I'd say
> that our position is even weaker than napsters.

Give me URLs and I'll happily bust some heads.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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body:
Gregory Maxwell wrote:
> On 6/8/06, GerardM <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
>> I do however want to address Amgine's point. There is one important
>> difference between Commons and Napster. On Commons people are actively
>> engaged in ensuring that content is properly labeled and licensed.
>> This is in marked contrast with Napster where the defence was that
>> they were only providing a service and that it was not THEIR content.
>
> Considering that we've had violations persist for months after they
> were tagged and even brought up in a Wikimedia board meeting, I'd say
> that our position is even weaker than napsters.

Give me URLs and I'll happily bust some heads.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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body:
Gregory Maxwell wrote:
> On 6/8/06, GerardM <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
>> I do however want to address Amgine's point. There is one important
>> difference between Commons and Napster. On Commons people are actively
>> engaged in ensuring that content is properly labeled and licensed.
>> This is in marked contrast with Napster where the defence was that
>> they were only providing a service and that it was not THEIR content.
>
> Considering that we've had violations persist for months after they
> were tagged and even brought up in a Wikimedia board meeting, I'd say
> that our position is even weaker than napsters.

Give me URLs and I'll happily bust some heads.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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body:
Gregory Maxwell wrote:
> On 6/8/06, GerardM <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
>> I do however want to address Amgine's point. There is one important
>> difference between Commons and Napster. On Commons people are actively
>> engaged in ensuring that content is properly labeled and licensed.
>> This is in marked contrast with Napster where the defence was that
>> they were only providing a service and that it was not THEIR content.
>
> Considering that we've had violations persist for months after they
> were tagged and even brought up in a Wikimedia board meeting, I'd say
> that our position is even weaker than napsters.

Give me URLs and I'll happily bust some heads.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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from_name: Lord Voldemort

subject: [WikiEN-l] Category translation

body:
On 6/8/06, Delirium <delirium at hackish.org> wrote:
> Steve Bennett wrote:
> > I never notice much of an Indian presence
> > surprisingly enough...
> >
>
> I've wondered about that on and off.  Perhaps less access to technology
> locally amongst most of the population?

I dunno.  I seem to run into a good Indian contingent fairly often.
Perhaps not quite the level we would like, but it's there.
--LV


from_name: George Herbert

subject: [WikiEN-l] "refactoring" signatures

body:
On 6/8/06, Tony Sidaway <f.crdfa at gmail.com> wrote:
> I suspect that the problem lies with us.  We are failing to say "go
> away, we're not interested" to those who want to abuse Wikipedia to
> conduct their social experiments.
>

Watching this interchange, I was wondering exactly how valid the claim
was that (for example) the signature refactoring complaintants were
"social Wikipedians" who might fall under the "go away" clause.  On
the basis that data is better than assertion, I went out and used
Interiot's tool to get stats on the seven accounts listed in the
original RfC complaint.

Distribution, by percent mainspace edits:
(total/%(main+main talk)
--------
4512/52%
7474/51%
3335/50%
1603/50%
303/23%
6790/22%
7447/6%

So we have four solid, high count productive contributors, a newbie, a
borderline case with high volume posts (the complaintant), and one
user who is, fairly, using it socially (6%?  7000+ edits?  Wow, that
suprised me).

I'm not going to dump all the source details to the list, but if
you're curious,
User:Georgewilliamherbert/temp_rfccounts

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


from_name: Sean Barrett

subject: [WikiEN-l] Saladin1970 (new thread)

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

Ilmari Karonen stated for the record:

> For what it's worth, I certainly didn't.  Actually, I still don't know
> much about him, since I haven't felt any particular urge to check out
> his article, but from what I gather of the references made here, the guy
> seems to be only marginally notable outside the UK.

I can assure you that he's more than "marginally notable" here, well
outside the UK.

- --
 Sean Barrett     | Hunde, wollt ihr ewig leben?
 sean at epoptic.com | --Frederick the Great, Kolin, 18 June 1757
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from_name: Rob Church

subject: [Wikitech-l] Researcher needs help

body:
On 08/06/06, Jeremy Dunck <jdunck at gmail.com> wrote:
> The article data will be out of date, since that's pulling from the
> toolserver which isn't in sync with production.  Sorry, I don't know
> when the last import was.

The database for the English Wikipedia is being reimported as we
speak, after which it'll be replicated again. So, while it'll take
time to get it up to date, it will happen soon. :)

Rob Church


subject: [Wikitech-l] New diff feature for MediaWiki

body:
On 08/06/06, Tim Starling <t.starling at physics.unimelb.edu.au> wrote:
> Gerard Meijssen wrote:
> > Hoi,
> > This small Unicode issue is a show stopper. When software is suggested
> > that only works on Latin script, you do not appreciate the amount of
> > work that is done in other scripts using the MediaWiki software.

"You do not appreciate" - rather a confrontational tone, there. Who
are we to assume that someone else doesn't appreciate the amount of
effort put in elsewhere? It might be correct, but then again, there
might be no specific bias against it.

> > Apart from that why would it be boring.. this is a technical list.
> > Personally I am interested in two things as well, what other projects
> > are you referring to and how you want to see this attribution done.

Apart from why what would be boring? The post was to get feedback,
don't withhold it. I would imagine standard attribution for the code
under GNU GPL blah blah blah. We won't be adding flashing banners,
"Wikipedia now uses a feature from XYZ". Or are we to start crediting
developers with individual features? "Thanks for clearing your
watchlist, c/o Rob Church."

> I discussed unicode support with the original poster on IRC. I couldn't get
> through to him that adding UTF-8 support to a PHP application is trivial,

My impression of the poster was that he didn't completely understand
the whole UTF-8/Unicode/blah thing nor its implications, and looked
somewhat confused.

> and requires no special UTF-8 support within PHP itself. MediaWiki's UTF-8
> support is mostly implemented from scratch using PHP's binary-safe string
> handling. My wikidiff2 module in C++ also contains a simple UTF-8 decoder
> within the word splitting routine. It's not difficult.

If the *idea* is found to be viable, adding the UTF-8 goodies will be
trivial, and we'll put the damn effort in.

Rob Church


subject: [WikiEN-l] "refactoring" signatures

body:
On 6/8/06, Tony Sidaway <f.crdfa at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 6/8/06, George Herbert <george.herbert at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > Watching this interchange, I was wondering exactly how valid the claim
> > was that (for example) the signature refactoring complaintants were
> > "social Wikipedians" who might fall under the "go away" clause.
>
> That's a straw man.  The problem is not one of people but of a class
> of behavior.

And, of what are appropriate responses to that class of behavior.

The straw man argument you were floating seems to have been, that
everyone doing this type of behavior should be told to go away.

My response is, now that we have some data, are you sure that you want
to drive away a bunch of multi-thousand edit, apparently positive
contributors for every actual problem child case you actually get in
the signature cleanup effort?

 Jimbo asks earlier whether we're really driving away good editors, as
a data point he'd like to see.  My point here is that your attitude,
that everyone displaying some of these problem symptoms should go
away, would result in driving away over 50% good editors.

The class of behavior is made up of individual people.  If you're
really sure that you want to drive away all those individual people,
even if  most of them are apparently strong contributors, then I
object and see a problem.

The solution has to be behavior modification, not exile, for the vast
majority of these "problems".

Whether some people who are predominantly just doing social stuff
should be encouraged out the door or not if behavior modification
fails is a different issue.  But that's 1/7 of the first set of people
you were refactoring sigs on.

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


from_name: Steve Bennett

subject: [Wikitech-l] Researcher needs help

body:
On 6/8/06, Mark Bell <typewritermark at gmail.com> wrote:
> I need:
>
>    - ?         The complete history of three articles as some sort of
>    text or flat file.
>    - ?         A way to access more history for later research

What do you mean "more history"? Once you have the complete history of
the three articles, what more is there? :)

> Is there a way to ftp the file?

Depending on what the articles are and how many histories there are,
you could try something like viewing the first 500 entries in the
history in a browser, then telling a program like Getright to download
all the links. Depends what format you want the diffs (well, complete
articles) in exactly. With a bit of fiddling you could probably
generate all the URLs you need...

I was thinking about making a GreaseMonkey script to make this easier,
but never did it. Sorry!

> I can't get either single article histories or the whole thing and I am at a
> loss. This should be much easier than this, so I think I am missing
> something.

Don't think so.

Steve


from_name: Death Phoenix

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Aww, so cute,
	a banned user is trying to take us down with a DMCA notice
	(Forwarded email)

body:
On 6/6/06, Philip Welch <wikipedia at philwelch.net> wrote:
>
> On Jun 6, 2006, at 7:24 AM, Death Phoenix wrote:
>
> >> It's still against the rules to give legal advice for free, because
> >> the rules are made by lawyers, and lawyers' business is giving legal
> >> advice.
> >
> > Really? I get free legal advice from my lawyer all the time, though
> > I guess
> > the "free" part could be in dispute. For instance, my mortgage
> > agreement is
> > up for renewal, and I go to my lawyer to update the paperwork. He
> > does not
> > charge by the hour for this service, and instead has a fixed price.
> > While I
> > am there, I also let him know of some changes in my life and whether I
> > should update my will. He says not necessarily, but tells me what
> > changes in
> > my life DO require an update on my will. Did he just give me free
> > legal
> > advice, and if so, is this against the rules?
> >
> > Now, let's say I don't go to the lawyer on an unrelated matter,
> > let's say I
> > call him up out of the blue to tell him of changes in my life and
> > ask him
> > whether I should update my will. Did he just give me free legal
> > advice, and
> > if so, is this against the rules?
>
> Maybe. I was joking anyway.
>

Rats. My joke detector completely missed this one.


body:
On 6/8/06, Anthony DiPierro <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
> It means that everyone from every culture has an equal voice in
> determining the content of every Wikipedia article.  We don't tell
> someone their opinion is to be disregarded because they come from a
> different culture.  [[Wikipedia:Consensus]] means the consensus of
> everyone, not just the consensus of a certain culture.

That must be a prescriptive statement, rather than a descriptive one.

> In fact, we already do this to some extent.  See [[French personal
> pronouns]].  I don't think [[Personal pronoun]] would be any worse if
> it talked only about concepts that exist across languages, and linked
> to [[English personal pronouns]] for the rest.  In fact, I think it'd
> be better.

Me too, I think I made that comment on that talk page a few months
ago. But I think also that [[Personal pronoun]] would be remiss if it
didn't say "such as 'she' in English" or whatever. You could have
examples from several languages on an equal footing, but no examples
from English would be wrong.

> I think the exercise is rather futile.  The ability to effectively
> communicate among even just the 112 languages of which Wikipedia is
> considered "somewhat active" is a long way off.  That said, I'd say 2,
> 3, and 4 are all true.  And, sadly, the first half of 5 is true too,
> at least on the English Wikipedia.

Right, and a non-notable journalist or minor personality is much more
likely to survive AfD if they're from New York rather than Bangalore
or Tashkent. It's just the way it is.

> My point, however, is that anyone who thinks that such an achievement
> (the ability to effectively communicate among the 112 languages of
> which Wikipedia is considered "somewhat active") would not be useful
> to Wikipedia - they certainly have a completely different idea of the
> project than I do.  I see it as significant that Wikipedia is
> generally referred to as *an* encyclopedia in multiple languages, not
> a collection of encyclopedias in multiple languages.  I thought it was

Hmm. I notice that people in one Wikipedia actually cite other
Wikipedias. "Source: French Wikipedia article". If it's "one
encyclopaedia" that would be like citing page 530.

I like the fact that there are parallel versions, but I wish that
Wikiproject:Echo was a lot stronger in getting good articles
translated into the other WPs.  Speaking for myself, it's a hell of a
lot easier to translate an article from French WP than to write it
from scratch...

Steve


from_name: amgine at saewyc.net

body:
On Thu, 2006-08-06 at 16:42 +0200, Erik Moeller wrote:
On 6/8/06, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > 4. Although copyright concerns are mentioned, they don't seem to be
> > explored in depth. Commons has a huge amount of copyright violations
> > on it today.
>
> Then they should be deleted. InstantCommons is a manual,
> user-initiated process. Commons has no legal responsibility to stop
> users of other wikis from copying images from Commons, whether it is
> by means of manually downloading or uploading, or by setting their
> wiki up for IC and initiating an IC transfer process. The copyright
> cleanup script is a convenient thing we can provide, and by no means a
> legal necessity.
>
Isn't this the Napster defense? And didn't that fail to convince the US
Supreme Court? Wouldn't the failure to address copyright concerns result
in Commons potentially being used as a file sharing service?

Amgine


from_name: Erik Moeller

body:
Birgitte,

I don't think you see my point, which isn't about InstantCommons at
all, but about guaranteeing the level of efficiency needed to deal
with the huge number of potential partnerships that Wikimedia could
and should establish. And an executive is not going to be the answer
to do that. InstantCommons is only an example of a deep structural
failure which continues to this day.

> I cannot agree with you on this point.  Contracts must
> be with the Foundation if they want the WMF's name
> attached to it.

They don't care about whose name is attached to the contract. They
care that WMF wants this to go ahead. Many organizations will be the
same way: "Oh, Wikimedia wants 5000 EUR for this project? Sure, we'll
help! Oh, you want us to deal with these guys over there to keep the
overhead low? Sure, can do!" We can and should define a size of
contract where things cannot be handled this way anymore, of course.

Erik


subject: [WikiEN-l] "refactoring" signatures

body:
On 6/8/06, John Lee <johnleemk at gawab.com> wrote:
> That is the reason why I am apathetic about userboxes (I couldn't care
> less whether they stay or go). Complex signatures complicate
> discussions, however, and as a result have a very direct effect on the
> encyclopaedia. If our editors can't communicate, or can only communicate
> inconveniently, then the encyclopaedia will inevitably suffer.

I'm happy to agree with that in principle, but I'm not sure we need a
complicated policy to sort that one out. If a signature is
legitimately fouling up editing (and it is not just a case of
annoyance or aesthetics), we should contact the user in question,
explain what is wrong with it, and ask them to scale it down a bit. I
find it hard to see where this is different than any other user habits
(i.e. if a user had a 6,000 pixel wide long image on their userpage),
and am suspicious that most of the arguments about it I've seen here
are based on relatively petty grievances, if not a total disdain for
anything which looks "personal".

FF


from_name: Brianna Laugher

body:
Looking around meta, I see now that there have been a few related
concepts to what I have suggested, such as [[m:WikiReader]] (although
it focused on printing) and [[m:Webshop]] (now long gone? I don't
recall ever seeing it). I will probably write up a meta page with some
of my ideas within the next week.

There are a few (very few) topics where we could put together really
cool high quality content from nearly ALL the projects on the one
theme. Wikibooks has European History as its BOTM which made me think
of it. There is definitely Wikisource material available relevant to
this. Definitely Wikipedia, maybe spoken Wikipedia too. Wikiquotes,
yes. Commons, probably. OK not Wiktionary and probably not Wikinews.
But I like the idea of bundling up all these high quality items from
different projects on the one theme in a ZIP and offering them as a
"Wikimedia Reader" or "Wikimedia Pack".

Brianna


subject: [WikiEN-l] "refactoring" signatures

body:
On 6/8/06, Tony Sidaway <f.crdfa at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Wikipedia is a project that thrives only because people want to spend
> > a ridiculous amount of their time on it.
> If they want *us* to spend a ridiculous amount of time discerning the
> comments on a discussion page from the clutter of their signatures, I
> think they'll be very disappointed with Wikipedia.  But you know what?
>  That's okay.  They can go somewhere else to play silly buggers.

Gosh, Tony, I didn't realize you had such a hard trouble reading
discussion pages, what with all of those colors and fonts! Maybe there
is some sort of css hack you could implement which would strip all
fancy tricks from the talk pages.

Personally, I've never found it too difficult to read the text itself.
Sometimes the names can take me about a millisecond to figure out
(thank goodness that mouseover tells me the URL in the status bar!),
but since that's usually not a major element of reading a discussion
page I wouldn't consider it a "ridiculous amount" of my time. But I
understand some people probably have more difficulty than others. I
didn't realize it was causing you such a daily inconvenience.

Sarcasm aside, I'm happy with saying that people who are legitimately
trying to be disruptive (which is what I assume you mean by "play
silly buggers") are told to knock it off, the same we would in any
other disruptive situation. But I suspect such people are in the slim
minority of those who customize their signatures. And I think that
trying to maintain too close a control on the "community", and trying
to enforce arbitrary style standards on discussion and user
namespaces, is far more disruptive than the phenomena it is trying to
control.

I apologize for being so irritable on this (and many other) issues,
but I find much of these discussions about various things users should
or shouldn't do in an ideal world not very helpful for the production
of an encyclopedia. I'm not saying that we'd necessarily be terribly
different if people spent as much time thinking about how to maintain
article stability in a system of open editing as they did userboxes
and signatures, but we'd have relatively fewer acrimonious arguments
and pointless battles.

FF


subject: [WikiEN-l] "refactoring" signatures

body:
On 6/8/06, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
> > 7447/6%
> More info needed. Depends what the other 7000 edits were, and whether
> the 400 were all Pok?mon related.

Well, it's User:Nathanrdotcom, and on further investigation I think
he's a special case.  I hadn't dived his contributions during
assembling the list.

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


from_name: Anthere

body:
Traroth wrote:
> De : Anthere <Anthere9 at yahoo.com>
>
>>I may also hint at the fact that
>>we are volunteers and that volunteers can *choose* to take care of a
>>proposal... or not. We are under no obligation to spend hours studying
>>your proposals, and may prefer to focus on other issues of more interest
>>to us or where people will appreciate a bit more the efforts of the
>>team. The comments you made are not motivating in the least.
>
>
>>Anthere
>
>
> I completly disagree with this point. You are part of the Board. That's an engagement.
Things are made so the agreement of the Board is needed for some decisions.
It's unfair to say that the Board has the choice to *not decide* because
the members don't care.
Such a sentence could be demotivating for the whole project members :
why try to organize something,
if the Board take no decision about, not because the project is not
good, but only because they don't care ?
>
> Traroth

I absolutely agree with you.
The Board must take decisions, just as the SPC must take decisions

However, the Board is not here to make/create the projects for you. Nor
is the SPC here to make/create projects or proposals for you.

-------

Oscar best said it in an internal email

-------

dear gerard,

we value you contributions greatly too.
however, only rather incomplete answers were given to all our further
questions, such as:

    1. the spc needs a clear plan and time schedule. with more details
that we can understand somehow, both technically and financially.
    2. how many hours of whom are involved?
    3. where in the time plan are these hours?
    4. whom to fall back upon in case of problems?
    5. possible problems?
    6. possible extra costs?
    7. how much is the reserve for "unforseen costs" etc?

your application has nevertheless been approved. but it has been up to
the spc to sort out and estimate things which imo should have been the
task of the applyer to do.

all the best,
oscar

--------

We should be here to estimate the interest of a new project, to consider
  its possible implications etc... It is not our job to gather details,
to set up the budget, to hunt for the grant... this is *your* job. If
the applyer does his homework well, there is no reason a decision should
take forever. In this case, we had to do a lot of the homework and as
Oscar indicated, some answers were never answered.

My engagement to the board does involve taking decisions. It does not
involve doing all the grunt work. I can do a bit of it as everyone, but
I am streched to my limits.

I think there is a huge misunderstanding with regards to the role of the
SPC. Its role is not to propose and implement projects on its own. Its
role is to help decision-making. It can either decide in the name of the
board whether to start a project or not (if it received delegation from
the board) or it is meant to insure the board is receiving a pre-digest
proposal. The very idea of letting it entirely open appears very weird
to me. It would mean a group of random people can make legally and
financially binding decisions in the name of the board. There would be
no need for a board in this case.

Ant


from_name: Robert Scott Horning

body:
Zack Clark wrote:

>Listen up, CREATING WEALTH & BEAUTY IS YOUR STRONGEST FORTE.
>OK? So why weaken yourself by pandering to false & pathetic
>scarcity principles wholly alien to the wiki spirit?  Your
>proper placement for key endeavors should always be right
>at the very top. But let me just say that you will never
>be sterling players in the supplicant's area. There are
>just far too many of them who have already honed their
>curious craft to razor sharpness.  Even if you should
>become honored & famed fund raisers that inevitably
>lures one into the sullen slippery slope realm of
>the lecherous lobbyist.  And before you know it
>your previously free & wide open world starts
>shrinking to accommodate the mean & narrow
>minded precepts of the status quo.
>
>The very existence of vastly varied cultures resulting solely
>from the segregation of populations is itself, an indisputable
>indictment of individuals' innate predisposition to assimilate
>cultural norms. So it is no surprise that so many minds -after
>years of turning to dollars for their very survival- form this
>impression that fiat currency is necessary and scarcity is the
>natural way of the world. They then run both their daily lives
>and organizations in accordance with the status quo's dictates.
>So even while we may be setting on top of a mountain of wealth,
>there is always the blind propensity to ignore our true assets
>and instead seek after rather dangerously deceptive currencies.
>But just as 7F (as expressed through WP) stands to obliterate
>the sordid sanctity of copyright;  a well working alternative
>to FRNs (Federal Reserve Notes) could crack our dependence on
>that harmful mind warping illusion also.
>
>
>
>Z.Clark
>
>
While I might have dismissed this posting, there is some things that I
do agree with you here.

There is the point of fundraising, however.  This is unfortunately
necessary as there are physical, tangible assetts that need to be
aquired (in the case of the WMF, there is the server farms) and some
professionals that are required to maintain these servers.  This means
that Wikipedia and the sister projects need to exist in an environment
that requires hard, cold cash.  Paying for internet bandwidth isn't free
either, and for the quantities that Wikipedia uses, normally won't even
be donated by most organizations, for profit or not.  Indeed Wikipedia
gets discounts in terms of value per megabyte simply because of the
volume of data being streamed from Wikimedia servers.  Fundraising is a
necessary evil, and that requires the whole thing of trying to deal with
accountants, lawyers, trademarks, CEOs, and professional staff.
 Considering the size of the volunteer force that is available and
working on Wikimedia projects, this professional component is
surprisingly small, even for similarly minded charitble activities.  And
the value produced per dollar donated to the WMF is quite high, which is
why thousands of dollars have come in simply by sticking out a tin cup
and asking for some donations, with the only real ads for this coming
from the website itself.

That said, I hope that we stick to proven fundraising techniques, and
don't waste too much effort or time into grants that may end up being
more of a hassle than any real value.  A couple of ideas and projects
have floated by that have made me scratch my head a little bit to wonder
just why it was thought up, but at least people are trying to be creative.

I want to thank Jimbo on trying to avoid getting the WMF into any
political mess, including the network bandwidth issue and other seeming
partisian neutral issues.  For crying out loud, there are enough
internal politics going on with Wikimedia projects to last for a
lifetime.  We don't need to turn Wikimedia projects into political
battle grounds any more than [[w:George W. Bush]] already is.

--
Robert Scott Horning


body:
On 6/8/06, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> I will never allow you to use the Wikimedia Foundation name to raise
> money for a project with no written proposal, no budget, no
> professionalism, just "trust us, it's a cool idea".

I wrote specifications, a budget and a full proposal for Kennisnet in
February. This proposal named the developers, the roles and
responsibilities, and the duration of development. The proposal, as
written in February, is at
http://scireview.de/temp/instantcommons_2.odt

Kennisnet was ready to approve the project as such if Wikimedia was
happy with it.I believe SP has received the same document. Let me know
if that is not the case.

Since then, the only major thing that has happened from my point of
view is that I answered to some questions that came from SP (via
Legal). For the most part, there was nothing in there that could not
have been worked out as the project moves along -- see my response
from April:
http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/spcommittee-l/2006-April/000078.html

Erik