from_name: SonOfYoungwood at aol.com

body:
In a message dated 3/31/2007 7:07:46 PM Central Daylight Time,
darthvader1219 at gmail.com writes:

On  3/31/07, Phil Sandifer <Snowspinner at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>  Why don't we lock new article creation in the main namespace entirely
>  for three months? Or six months? Demand that people fix existing
>  articles.

I feel this is a poor idea; some articles might need significant trimming  or
need to be broken up into several subarticles. Also, some articles need to be
 renamed, and so on. And what if an admin decides to delete a bunch of
articles  to be an asshole?

************************************** See what's free at http://www.aol.com.


list: wikien-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Matthew Brown

subject: [WikiEN-l] let's be honest then

body:
On 3/31/07, doc <doc.wikipedia at ntlworld.com> wrote:
> However, being realistic, our community is too large and impersonal for
> us to be in the business of reforming people - all we can do is change
> policies. But I get yelled at every time I suggest that.

Because changing policies does no damn good.  Most undesirable things
are already prohibited.

-Matt


from_name: James Farrar

subject: [WikiEN-l] let's be honest then

body:
On 31/03/07, Andrew Gray <shimgray at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 31/03/07, James Farrar <james.farrar at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 31/03/07, Andrew Gray <shimgray at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > On 31/03/07, James Farrar <james.farrar at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > > {{sofixit}}, quite frankly.
> > > >
> > > > Where {{sofixit} != speedy deletion when the article has already been
> > > > kept after an AfD.
> > >
> > > {{sofixit}} quite often involves a clueful editor or two camping on
> > > the article for months, reverting attempts to turn it into a
> > > hatchetjob. Which is fine; it's what we do with [[George W. Bush]]
> > > every day. But we only have so many clueful editors with time to
> > > spare, and this process simply runs out after a time.
> >
> > Indeed, but carping on the sidelines doesn't help either.
>
> Doc is not on the sidelines; this is a complaint from the coalface!
> He's one of the people who doesn't scale - I know where he's coming
> from, as I was doing much the same before I partly burned out.

I see this mailing list as being "the sidelines" in a way, though I'm
not sure I can explain precisely why, which suggests I used a wrong
metaphor in the first place.

But seriously, the kind of rant that kicked off this thread wouldn't
be out of place at Review. If Doc is that unhappy with what he's
doing, I can most heartily recommend he steps back from it.


from_name: Anthony

subject: [WikiEN-l] let's be honest then

body:
On 3/31/07, Kelly Martin <kelly.lynn.martin at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 3/31/07, Phil Sandifer <Snowspinner at gmail.com> wrote:
> > 1) The idea of an error-free encyclopedia is a pipe dream. No
> > sourcing requirements, no matter how onerous, will render us error-
> > free. Pursuit of an impossible goal at the expense of achievable ones
> > is foolish.
>
> This is a false dialectic.  It's not a binary choice; please stop
> presenting it as one.  Nobody expects an error-free encyclopedia, but
> a lot of us would like one with fewer errors than the one we have now.
>
Almost all of us would.  Now, how can that be done?  Preferably a way
which doesn't involve randomly or automatically (via bot) deleting
articles.

Find some errors, and get rid of them, would be the most direct
approach.  Find potential errors (i.e. unsourced statements), and get
rid of them, would be a bit more drastic one.  But both of these are
already policy.  So what's the next step?

Maybe an open mailing list for non-confidential complaints, to
complement the closed OTRS for confidential complaints?  Mailing lists
are probably kind of inefficient for this, though.

Code would be great, of course, but as I'm not currently able to
contribute any myself I'll leave that part out.  Abolishing AfD would
probably free up a lot of people's time.

Does anyone have a list of figures of the magnitude of the problem?
Number of biographies, number of unsourced biographies, results of a
study of how many errors there are on average, blah blah blah?

Anthony


subject: [WikiEN-l] let's be honest then

body:
On 31/03/07, MacGyverMagic/Mgm <macgyvermagic at gmail.com> wrote:

> OTRS is stressful to say the least. I speak from my own experience and it
> probably got worse since I was last there. If everyone who gets unhappy and
> stressed about OTRS steps down it will get even more clogged than it already
> is. We should find a way to retain people rather than encouraging them to
> stop.

In general, but there's a point beyond which staying in the job not
only does the volunteer no good, it does the project no good either.


list: foundation-l

from_name: Sebastian Moleski

subject: [Foundation-l] check user...

body:
On 3/31/07, Robert Horning <robert_horning at netzero.net> wrote:
>
> I disagree that the damage that somebody using checkuser privileges is
> necessarily irreversible and necessarily causes too many legal problems
> "for themselves and the foundation."  There is obviously an extreme case
> or two where this may be the case, but on the whole I can't really seen
> where revealing the IP address of a user is necessarily going to be a
> major problem.  At best, the worst damage that can happen is to document
> what computer an edit actually took place on.  Only with 3rd party
> records would it even be remotely possible to tie this with a specific
> individual.

The laws regarding such things vary wildly between regions. In comparison to
American privacy laws, for instance, the laws in manz European countries are
much more strict. Disclosing personal information without the consent of the
person the information belongs to can be prosecuted in criminal and civil
court in some instances. Note that many of these laws aren't primarily meant
to restrict the government from accessing the information but other private
entities. The legal implications of checkuser shouldn't be underestimated.

In addition, any user, including anonymous users, can trace the IP
> addresses of many of the contributors to Wikimedia projects.... that is
> the default log-in type.  And accidental disclosure of IP addresses are
> almost inevitable for most users, especially if you accidentally make an
> anonymous IP edit because the cookie in your browser has expired (it has
> for me on a couple of occasions).  For example (and I mention this
> because he also did one of these accidental disclosures and later noted
> this IP address explicitly)  Richard Stallman of the Free Software
> Foundation fame is also [[w:User:Rmstallman]], and by only accessing
> Wikipedia by anonymous status (I wasn't even logged into my Wikipedia
> account), I can find out that at least one of the IP addresess he has
> used to edit Wikipedia was with 128.30.16.48
> ...
> If a 10-year-old has been given bureaucrat privileges on a Wikimedia
> project, I would be very surprised.

There is at least one fifteen old user who is a bureaucrat on a Wikimedia
project.

It may also present some
> interesting legal problems for the WMF in terms of liability for that
> user's actions, but I also believe that any such user who has achieved
> that level of trust in a particular project is going to have a level of
> maturity to keep from abusing the checkuser tool as well.

Actual abuse isn't necessary to be subject to a lawsuit. People who
volunteer to perform checkuser functions must be fully aware of the
responsibilities their actions incur and the possible consequences of those
actions. It may be customary to assume good faith in Wikimedia projects.
Unfortunately, the real world doesn't always work that way.

Regards,

Sebastian


list: wikimedia-l

subject: [Foundation-l] check user...


from_name: Andrew Gray

subject: [WikiEN-l] let's be honest then

body:
On 31/03/07, James Farrar <james.farrar at gmail.com> wrote:

> But seriously, the kind of rant that kicked off this thread wouldn't
> be out of place at Review. If Doc is that unhappy with what he's
> doing, I can most heartily recommend he steps back from it.

I did. It didn't help. The project is still stupid about the same
things, though I feel a little less stressed now.

Basically, the problem is not that we have people burning out by
dealing with complaints; that's to be expected. The problem is that
they're burning out because the community as a whole is being actively
counterproductive; it's a symptom of the problem we need to solve,
rather than the problem itsel.f

We can keep throwing clueful editors at the problems, but if we don't
fix the root problems all we do is keep setting ourselves up to burn
more people out. Which is even less helpful.

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


from_name: Marc Riddell

subject: [WikiEN-l] Getting hammered in a tv interview is not fun

body:
> On 3/31/07, Marc Riddell <michaeldavid86 at comcast.net> wrote:
>> This is in response to several recent posts. For the record, the concept of
>> "do no harm" I was presenting to in WP was related to what information we,
>> as editors, choose to include in biographies of persons. My point was that
>> to consciously include gratuitous, tabloid-like junk in a biographical
>> article is unnecessarily harmful to the person.
>>
>> And, as far as "choosing a system of ethics" for WP: I don't believe it is
>> something you shop around for. But, rather, it develops, and is agreed upon,
>> by the Community of persons in WP itself.
>>
on 3/31/07 7:05 PM, Slim Virgin at slimvirgin at gmail.com wrote:

> Editors from English--speaking and European countries do operate under
> more or less the same ethical system, which promotes freedom and
> fairness, and all the arguments we have are only about where the
> balance should lie in any given case. The ethical system was famously
> described by John Rawls in his "original position" in A Theory of
> Justice. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Original_position I doubt there
> are many editors from Western countries who don't subscribe to it,
> whether they know it or not, and Rawls himself argued that it was in
> fact universal.
>
> For anyone not familiar with it, imagine a bunch of people sitting
> round a campfire. They're there to make decisions about the type of
> society they want to live in (but it can be adapted for practically
> any kind of moral decision). They have only a small amount of
> information about themselves. I forget what this is, but basically
> they know they are human beings, and they have basic information about
> the kinds of things that hurt human beings. But they don't know
> whether they're male or female, black or white, rich or poor, healthy
> or ill, talented or not, beautiful or not. They're behind what Rawls
> called the "veil of ignorance."
>
> Using this veil of ignorance, they have to decide what would be fair
> in any given situation, knowing that they may actually turn out to be
> the poor person in a wealthy society, or the woman in a misogynist
> one, or the budding entrepeneur in a socialist one, the black person
> in a racist one, and so on. This forces them to place themselves
> radically in the shoes of each set of characteristics they consider,
> and by carefully considering all positions -- as if considering their
> own -- they're able to arrive at a just decision.
>
> Geni, John Rawls would have said that this is your system of ethics,
> and that it's buried deep within you as a set of instincts, even if
> you feel you've rejected it. :-)
>
Thank you very much for contributing this.

And, Geni, Slim's right - trust your gut.

Marc Riddell

--
"Come to the edge. We might fall! Come to the edge. It's too high!

COME! TO! THE! EDGE!!

So they came and he pushed -- and they flew."

                                       Guillaume Apollinaire


from_name: Dycedarg

subject: [WikiEN-l] Lock new article creation for three months

body:
On 3/31/07, Anthony <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:

> Or AfD could be shut off too, starting one week after article creation
> is shut off.

I think this would be a mistake. With the greater focus on already existing
articles, it will actually increase the chance that people will find
articles that should be deleted but have never really had enough attention
payed to them to discover that.

--

Dycedarg


from_name: Ray Saintonge

body:
Bryan Derksen wrote:

>Slim Virgin wrote:
>
>
>>We're going to have more than a major hole in our coverage if we lose a lawsuit.
>>
>>
>Why? Aside from requiring us to take down whatever libelous
>misinformation we lost the case over (which we would want to do
>_anyway_), what limitation would it put on Wikipedia's coverage?
>
It's too easy to imagine a lawsuit, imsgine losing it, and use those
baseless imaginary results as the foundation for newly restrictive
policies.  Such defeatism ignores all the intermediate mitigating events
that would need to take place on the road to a successful lawsuit.

Ec


from_name: David Gerard

subject: [WikiEN-l] Now why didn't we see this before?

body:
http://www.metro.co.uk/news/article.html?in_article_id=30066&in_page_id=34

- d.


subject: [WikiEN-l] deleting unsourced articles ..... gradually

body:
On 31/03/07, Phil Sandifer <Snowspinner at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Mar 31, 2007, at 3:58 PM, MacGyverMagic/Mgm wrote:

> > This proposal didn't suggest deleting something because it was
> > foreign. If
> > it's a legitimate Andorran political party, there will be secondary
> > sources
> > although they are in French. English sources are preferred but
> > French or
> > Peruvian ones are acceptable if those are the only ones the editor
> > working
> > on it can find or understand.

> You miss the point - it's not that these articles can't get sources.
> It's that they don't have sources now and have a very small pool of
> editors working on them who would be overwhelmed, if not driven off
> entirely, by the demand to source all of the articles or see them
> deleted.

Indeed. Should this blithering idiocy go ahead, please at least make
sure there's a known-good dump of en:wp available first.

- d.


from_name: MacGyverMagic/Mgm

subject: [WikiEN-l] let's be honest then

references:
<C23407BE.29DD%michaeldavid86@comcast.net>
	<460E9E83.4070609@scissor.com> <460EABB6.8060704@ntlworld.com>

body:
Outrageous claims that are in fact libellous should indeed go. Unless the
article consists entirely of such claims this can be fixed without article
deletion. Unfortunately, people who wish to retain such text know where to
find it while editors like me don't.We should find some way for OTRS people
to get vandal hunters and other editors to keep an eye on such articles to
avoid such material from being reinserted.

Mgm

On 3/31/07, doc <doc.wikipedia at ntlworld.com> wrote:
>
> "I was heartbroken and nauseated almost to the point of vomiting about
> the last two lines"
>
> These are the words of an e-mail I dealt with today - and they are not
> untypical. Without breaching confidentiality I can say little more. But
> it related to a biography which, without any citation, commented on an
> individual - making outrageous (and quite probably libelous) claims
> about certain activities.
>
> On behalf of wikipedia and the community, I apologised and assured the
> complainant we took such things seriously and were working to ensure
> they didn't happen. I may have lied.
>
> Perhaps a more honest reply would have been:
>
> "We're sorry you had to complain about this. Regrettably that's the
> price you pay for our determination to retain as many articles as we
> can, even though we can't currently maintain most of them. You see, if
> we change things we might upset some of our editors who might have some
> of their unreferenced articles deleted by mistake. Basically, we're more
> concerned with that type of collateral damage than with wrecking your
> life.
>
> Over time we hope to correct articles like this, although, at current
> rates of growth we'll have ten times as many by then and still won't be
> able to cope.
>
> We have fixed the article, but please be aware that this incident may
> well reoccur. We'll do our best to try to avoid that (providing it
> doesn't interfere with our determination not to change our basic way of
> operating).
>
> Disclaimer: the Wikimedia Foundation is protected by Section 230 and so
> takes no responsible, and the Wikipedia Community has not signed up to
> any ethics code.
>
> PS. You might like to know that the objectionable content has probably
> been picked up by our mirrors by now. You can either live with that, or
> contact them yourself.
>
> Yours sincerely etc."
>
> Doc
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] let's be honest then

body:
On 3/31/07, James Farrar <james.farrar at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> But seriously, the kind of rant that kicked off this thread wouldn't
> be out of place at Review. If Doc is that unhappy with what he's
> doing, I can most heartily recommend he steps back from it.
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

OTRS is stressful to say the least. I speak from my own experience and it
probably got worse since I was last there. If everyone who gets unhappy and
stressed about OTRS steps down it will get even more clogged than it already
is. We should find a way to retain people rather than encouraging them to
stop.

Mgm


body:
On 31/03/07, MacGyverMagic/Mgm <macgyvermagic at gmail.com> wrote:

> I wonder if Mr. Cosley is addicted to something like for example his work...
> Still he's got a good point. It's addictive, but I think it's a small price
> to pay.
> I still have a real non-internet-life.

Indeed. It's not a personality cult ... it's the sheer addictive
nature of wikicrack.

- d.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Yet another legal threat

body:
Apparently even kooks aren't safe from scammers. No one owns the moon, so
it's impossible for anyone tell sell part of the moon's surface. It looks
like he's been scammed big time. (This is similar to the star scam. Some
people were thought that for a certain amount a star would be named after
them which was fake too).

Mgm

On 3/31/07, James Farrar <james.farrar at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 31/03/07, Daniel R. Tobias <dan at tobias.name> wrote:
> > In this thread:
> > http://wikipediareview.com/index.php?showtopic=7820
> >
> > somebody allegedly associated with The American Mutoscope and
> > Biograph Company is threatening to sue Wikipedia over his company
> > being "done wrong".
>
> [...]
>
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Mutoscope_and_Biograph_Company
>
> "In 2003, Biograph announced that it had acquired title to 1,777 acres
> on the Moon for use as a filming location, and Thomas R. Bond II
> stated that he planned to start filming there by 2008.[24]"
>
> The guy's a kook, evidently.
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


body:
On 3/31/07, Oldak Quill <oldakquill at gmail.com> wrote:
> To be honest, I don't think article creation is stealing much effort
> into other areas. Most users almost always edit existing articles. So
> if we can't expect efforts to be redirected, this won't help us much
> at all.
>
A new article doesn't just take up the time of the person who created
it.  It also takes up the time of everyone who reads the new article
looking for problems, who edits the new article, who categorizes the
new article, who nominates the new article for deletion, who discusses
the deletion, etc.

At about 2500 new articles in a day (and that's the ones that
survive), that's a lot of redirected effort.  Wikipedia has 1.7
million articles.  2500*3 months*30 days/1.7 million=13%, for an idea
of how useful that redirected effort could be, *if* there were some
way to use it effectively.

One possibility for increasing the effectiveness of the redirection
could be to redirect Special:newpages to a list of 2500 random
articles selected each day (perhaps even more effectively, 100
articles selected each hour).  [[Wikipedia:New pages patrol]] could
likewise be temporarily redirected.

I dunno, it might help.  I don't really like the idea, but 3 months
isn't that long.

Anthony


from_name: Ron Ritzman

subject: [WikiEN-l] let's be honest then

body:
On 3/31/07, doc <doc.wikipedia at ntlworld.com> wrote:

> However, being realistic, our community is too large and impersonal for
> us to be in the business of reforming people - all we can do is change
> policies. But I get yelled at every time I suggest that.

Outside of the current issue of BLBs, the three best "policies" I see
are summed up in this userbox... User:Lawilkin/UBX/Trifecta

It's really pretty simple
-mind NPOV-
-don't be a dick-
-ignore all rules-

<semi flip flop on my part>
Unfortunately, on the issue of BLPs it's just too easy to insert
plausible sounding bullshit into articles about real living people and
such bullshit can potentially hurt them in meatspace. Therefore it
looks like you are right that we have to get Nazi about anything
unsourced in BLPs even if we ourselves are 99% certain such "facts"
are correct.

One example of this is a few months ago, I added "Mr. T" to the list
of people who are afraid to fly because I "knew" he himself, and not
just his character on "A Team", was afraid to fly. The problem was
that even though this was common knowledge back in the 80s, there are
really no good citable sources for it so it was removed as it should
have been. Other editors might not be so understanding about this and
they get really miffed when you take out stuff that they just "know"
is the truth.


from_name: Jimmy Wales

body:
doc wrote:
> The fact is, with regard to biographies at very least, we are now tfar
> too high profile for the eventualism that says we must keep awful, pov,
> unsourced stuff, because in theory we could fix most of it. That's now
> simply unacceptable.

And there is a different form of eventualism which works quite well.
It's ok to delete a horribly crappy unsourced article, OR ANY PART of
such an article, because EVENTUALLY we will be able to add more
information, with sources, in the right way.

For a small wikipedia it can be ok to say: we are desperate for
volunteers, we are desperate for growth, and so it is best to put up
with a fair amount of unsourced stuff that is mostly right, just to
build up a base of work for the future.

In en.wikipedia, we have a base of work for the future.  And therefore
it is natural and proper that we should over time get more and more and
more serious about quality.

--Jimbo


subject: [WikiEN-l] let's be honest then

body:
If and when stable versions is implemented, I would recommend that every
single BLP article that has not been approved be "invisible", or in other
words impossible to find via Google or by using the standard search box in
Wikipedia and ignored by the mirrors. You'd have to go to an advanced Wiki
search and intentionally click an "unapproved articles" check box to search
for them. Nothing would be deleted, but we'd vastly reduce the probability
of an unsourced, libelous piece of garbage receiving any kind of attention
from the general public. If we could approve them at a fairly rapid rate,
our coverage could recover to its prior levels within a relatively short
period of time, at least when compared to any mass deletion scheme. Or,
alternatively, just have a gigantic red banner at the top that says "This
article is unapproved. Any unsourced piece of information is as likely to be
true as random gossip received from a group of twelve year-olds. Read at
your own risk. If this article is about you and it contains ridiculous crap,
please remove it yourself and request that an approved version be put in
place using <insert whatever method of communication is decided upon here>."
I don't think it would be necessary to do this about any other kind of
article (unless possibly those about corporations) because of the reduced
risk of real-world damage, BLP articles are the only ones I see causing
enough trouble to make this worth it.

--

Dycedarg


subject: [WikiEN-l] let's be honest then

body:
On 31/03/07, Anthony <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:

> In that sense, sourcing requirements *will* help, and they *will*
> increase the number of eyeballs on articles, because a sourced
> statement is faster and easier to check than an unsourced one.  A rule
> alone might not suddenly increase the number of eyeballs, but a rule
> that's enforced would certainly make the eyeballs more effective.

We already have sourcing requirements.

The stupidest thing about this thread is people proclaiming the need
for rules we already have, that aren't being followed. Just what makes
you think a new rule will?

- d.


body:
Bryan Derksen wrote:

>I think the reason is that our one truly fundamental goal is to write a
>good, free encyclopedia, and that while attempting to source everything
>is a good means to that goal if we were to take it to the extreme it
>would actually start to move us farther away from it. If we were to
>actually follow through with the absolute full extent of the
>only-sourced-statements ideal it would devastate Wikipedia's current
>contents and IMO raise such a barrier to editing that new work would
>slow to a crawl. We have to consider these costs and find a compromise
>position that tries to minimize them.
>
In certain measure this ties back to our old argument about whether we
are "free as in beer" of "free as in speech".  The former is relatively
simple, even if we haven't yet reached perfection in that; copyright
policy falls into it.  Free as in speech is more elusive.  The right of
free speech is not the absolut right to sy anything you damn well please
without regard to consequences, but if there are to be exceptions to
that right those exceptions must be explicit.  We cannot knowingly allow
defamation or lies.  As a private organization we are not confined to
only those exceptions that are sanctioned by law; we can also disallow
other kinds of speech.  We are within our legal rights to impose some
kind of notability criterion, but legislating cluefullness remains an
impossibility and not an illegality.

We need to constantly remind ourselves about what made this project grow
into the giant that we now have.  Important as it may be to strive for
total reliability, that was not the most important factor in our
phenomenal growth.  Nor has that growth been based on having only
biographies od "notable" people.  If these individuals are really so
-unnotable, very few people are likely to read those articles anyway.

Ec


body:
On 3/31/07, John Vandenberg <jayvdb at gmail.com> wrote:
> Locking down new article creation while we do a cleanup is sensible;
> Afd would be less like a sewerage drain and we could then judge the
> status of the cleanup by the, hopefully diminishing, number of Afds
> being raised.

Or AfD could be shut off too, starting one week after article creation
is shut off.

> During this time, creation of new articles could be restricted to
> admins, and non-admins could use WP:AFC.

They could use it as a temporary storage place, but if you're going to
let people submit new articles through WP:AFC and then have admins
create new articles based on those submissions, it seems you're just
redirecting efforts from one type of creation to another, and adding
more work in the process.

> It would be more tedious,
> but it would further encourage a culture of writing articles that fit
> within our policies and guidelines.  Regular contributors can write
> userspace articles and submit them to WP:AFC in order to request that
> they are moved into the main namespace by an admin.
>

I don't see the point of that.  If you're going to stop article
creation, stop it.  Admins can still create or move articles if they
feel there are special extenuating circumstances, but giving them the
task of reviewing and approving ordinary article creations defeats the
whole purpose, which is supposed to be to free people up to fix what's
already there.

Anthony


body:
On 3/31/07, Phil Sandifer <Snowspinner at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>
> On Mar 31, 2007, at 6:58 AM, doc wrote:
>
> >
> > 2) Any biography *totally* lacking sources (other than the
> > subject's own
> > pages) may be tagged as such and deleted after 7 days.
> >
> > 2b) Any page on an organisation or corporation lacking sources (other
> > than the subject's own pages) may be tagged as such and deleted
> > after 7
> > days.
> > 3) Any article *totally* lacking sources (other than the subjects own
> > pages) may be tagged as such and deleted after 7 days
> >
>
> Gah. #1 was sensible. #2-3 are terrible. People's own sites are
> reliable sources for information about them. It's perfectly
> reasonable to use a person or company's own site as the primary or
> even sole source for a stub or relatively short article. Yes, when
> they get to good and featured length they'll need more, but it's
> perfectly possible to have an embryonic article that relies entirely
> on the subject's own pages. The sole useful effect of #2 and #3 is to
> make it possible to do incontestable deletions of articles that some
> people have notability problems with. Absolutely not.

Which is exactly why only sources from the subject are not enough. People
and companies are notoriously bad at determining their own notability, so to
do that (and avoid uncontestable deletions of good information) you need at
least one outside source to determine notability.

Mgm


from_name: Phil Sandifer

subject: [WikiEN-l] let's be honest then

body:
On Mar 31, 2007, at 7:24 PM, Kelly Martin wrote:

> On 3/31/07, Phil Sandifer <Snowspinner at gmail.com> wrote:
>> 1) The idea of an error-free encyclopedia is a pipe dream. No
>> sourcing requirements, no matter how onerous, will render us error-
>> free. Pursuit of an impossible goal at the expense of achievable ones
>> is foolish.
>
> This is a false dialectic.  It's not a binary choice; please stop
> presenting it as one.  Nobody expects an error-free encyclopedia, but
> a lot of us would like one with fewer errors than the one we have now.

Did you actually read the rest of my e-mail? Yes. Obviously we want
to reduce errors. But trying to create iron-clad procedures is just
going to cause more problems. "Let's remove all the unsourced
information/delete all the unsourced articles" isn't an attempt to
reduce error. It's an attempt to eliminate it,  and it will backfire
grotesquely.

-Phil


from_name: doc

subject: [WikiEN-l] let's be honest then

references:
<C23407BE.29DD%michaeldavid86@comcast.net>	<460E9E83.4070609@scissor.com>
	<460EABB6.8060704@ntlworld.com>
	<dfd0b40703311348l74ce065alb20d88dff2cc7451@mail.gmail.com>

body:
> Someone whose life is wrecked by a Wikipedia article THEY THEMSELVES
> CAN CORRECT has bigger problems than the entry itself.
>
WTFF? That is unbelievable!!!!! What planet are you on my friend?


body:
On 31/03/07, MacGyverMagic/Mgm <macgyvermagic at gmail.com> wrote:

>  Personally, I wouldn't have a problem with this. It's a lot easier to fix
> the 1,5 million articles we have if there's not constantly new stuff pouring
> in. But people will turn to Wikipedia if there's a new hurricane or massive
> flood or to read about a country's new prime minister or president.
>
> These are the type of articles that need to be created and kept up-to-date
> as they happen for maximal effect. If we were to do this for a significant
> amount of time, we'd be severely lacking in articles about current events.
> How do you think we should handle that?

Oh, we can invent a process. Give the "article creation right" flag to
admins or bureaucrats or [some arbitrary respected group of people],
have a process where new articles can be created in a short period if
it's utterly essential, leave them to it with the understanding it
really shouldn't be used much.

It's certainly nothing we can't solve just by fiddling the rules a
little bit, and as we ourselves *make* the rules...

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


from_name: Sean Whitton (Xyrael)

subject: [Foundation-l] check user...

body:
> With respect: ANYTHING AT ALL can subject a project or person to a
> lawsuit.
Concur; I think that while checkuser has perhaps more chance of this,
I do not believe that we can place an age restriction when there are
so many other things that we do with no requirement in this way that
could potentially cause damage. For example, simply being on an
arbcom, as an authoritative body, could potentially have legal
implications (I don't know if we do have any under 18s on these
committees, but I don't know of any policy against it).

> user's actions, but I also believe that any such user who has achieved
> that level of trust in a particular project is going to have a level of
> maturity to keep from abusing the checkuser tool as well.
Definately - the level of trust required for checkuser is very similar
to that of a bureaucrat.

Also, I would point at the ability to view deleted pages by sysops, as
these contain copyvios and other nasty stuff, which could potentially
have legal issues.

--Sean/Xyrael

On 3/31/07, Samuel Klein <meta.sj at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> On Sat, 31 Mar 2007, Sebastian Moleski wrote:
>
> > Actual abuse isn't necessary to be subject to a lawsuit. People who
> > volunteer to perform checkuser functions must be fully aware of the
> > responsibilities their actions incur and the possible consequences of those
> > actions. It may be customary to assume good faith in Wikimedia projects.
> > Unfortunately, the real world doesn't always work that way.
>
> With respect: ANYTHING AT ALL can subject a project or person to a
> lawsuit.  Every editor of the site can do something that would subject
> someone to a related lawsuit -- the someone could be an individual editor
> who the suer tracks down, the foundation, or anyone else in the world.
> Many such suits would be woefully misguided, but they could be brought all
> the same.
>
> Please describe actual risk of exposure if you are proposing policy
> changed founded in legal FUD.  FUD is not always 'wrong' -- there are
> cases in which there really is justifiable uncertainty and doubt, and in
> which it is proper to be fearful as a result.  But please do not spread
> this sense without attention to detail, or without addressing the question
> of how likely a particular disaster scenario is.  Then we can consider why
> such scenarios have not yet happened, and what the tradeoffs are to being
> paranoid about security [at what point do we shut down the site to all
> edits, remove all biographies, and only modify it further in response to
> takedown requests?].
>
> SJ
>
>
> [I said earlier that I agree weakly with the statement that IF we have
> explicit legal concerns, it makes sense to describe the necessary response
> in terms of age of majority in the local jurisdiction... I am not at all
> convinced that these concerns merit the policy changes being discussed.]
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>

--
?Sean Whitton (Xyrael/xyr)
sean at silentflame.com
http://xyrael.net/


subject: [Foundation-l] check user...


body:
On 3/31/07, Phil Sandifer <Snowspinner at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>
> On Mar 31, 2007, at 12:41 PM, doc wrote:
>
> > And it would take you under a min to find a second citation for
> > that..... so it is a poor example.
>
> But what would a second citation add to that article? Or, more to the
> point, how is the lack of a second citation something so bad that the
> article should be deleted unless it gets one?
>
> > Yes, with any policy change, someone is going to be able to dig out
> > the
> > odd example where it would not really help. If we don't act because of
> > marginal damage, then we will never change anything. When we have 1.5
> > million articles we need to think bigger than that - and consider net
> > impact on the project, not one or two cases.
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andorran_Democratic_Centre
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SEC_Rule_10b-5 (Only source is the
> primary source)
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Virginia_University_Press
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Focus_on_the_Family_Institute
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Ferguson_%28organist%29
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
> Institute_for_the_Certification_of_Computing_Professionals
>
> Would you like me to find more? Now, mind you, I don't know for 100%
> certain that, for instance, the Focus on the Family Institute is
> notable. But all of these articles are short, descriptive articles
> that rely entirely on a primary source.
>
> I also am pretty certain that instead of gutting bad articles what
> would happen here is that articles on politicians in non-English
> speaking countries would get gutted. We would lose our coverage on
> the non-English speaking world rapidly. For instance, that first link
> - the Andorran Democratic Centre? None of our articles on Andorran
> political parties would survive this proposal. Neither would our
> Peruvian politicians.

This proposal didn't suggest deleting something because it was foreign. If
it's a legitimate Andorran political party, there will be secondary sources
although they are in French. English sources are preferred but French or
Peruvian ones are acceptable if those are the only ones the editor working
on it can find or understand.

Mgm


from_name: Guy Chapman aka JzG

body:
On Sat, 31 Mar 2007 13:02:07 -0600, Bryan Derksen
<bryan.derksen at shaw.ca> wrote:

>> What, you mean Angela freely states that she was born on X date in X
>> hospital, and we have the record, and they still won't let it in?

>Not quite in that level of detail (I don't think she's identified what
>hospital she was born in and I haven't registered for an account with
>ancestry.co.uk to view the details it gives), but along those lines.

Ah, right.  So it *is* a matter of editors joining the dots from
disjoint facts, rather than a citation to support a fact available
from another source.  Not surprising it's been removed, then.  Seems a
bit [[WP:STALK]]ish anyway.  Who cares?

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


body:
On Sat, 31 Mar 2007 18:31:02 +0900, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com>
wrote:

>I would like to know exactly what kind of lunatic would look up Angela's
>birth date in a hometown hospital register

Slightly more blunt than my version, but what I was really thinking
all along...

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


subject:
[Foundation-l] Possible changes regarding *all* Wikimedia IRC
	bots

body:
Hey again, all. Please excuse the fact that this is again on multiple
mailing lists :-)

I've had a good few responses to my request here and I intend to start
compiling a list of bots on meta, and recloaking a good few (with the
owner's permission) to make things a bit more streamlined. Thank you
to all those who have e-mailed me.

However, another issue has become apparent. At present, no bot
operators that use flood exemption have contacted me regarding
renewing this. Unfortunately, this leaves me with little choice but to
pull the plug on their access in order that I can try and re-organise
things - freenode are not keen on the amount of bots we have with
this, so I really do need to make an effort to bring things in order.

If you know one of these bot operators, *please* send them this message :-)

--Sean/Xyrael
Wikimedia IRC Group Contact

On 3/4/07, Sean Whitton (Xyrael) <sean at silentflame.com> wrote:
> Hey all. Please excuse the fact that this is posted to multiple
> mailing lists, but I need to ensure that it reaches all concerned.
>
> I'm writing as an IRC Group Contact to call all operators of Wikimedia
> IRC bots to state their activity and use of their bot to me, using a
> private e-mail, as I'm doing a bit of reorganisation. I have a few
> issues to address and would like to try and smooth out the rather
> convoluted situation we have right now.
>
> As many will know, I'm a freenode staffer and as such am in a position
> to notice the lack of continuity present. In particular many of our
> bots use flood-protection exemption due to the nature of their
> much-data roles. Unfortunately, with the death of freenode's founder
> Rob Levin, there is no longer a very organised record of which bots
> are doing what and where, and I would really like to establish a
> better one. By doing this I aim to make things a lot easier for bot
> operators to get the information/permissions they need. Please note
> that this has nothing to do with MediaWiki bot flags or community
> permission, which is still very important for bots that edit as well
> as speak on IRC.
>
> I would like to make two major changes to what we do at the moment.
> Firstly, I would like to cloak all active bots with wikimedia/bot/nick
> (wikimedia can be replaced by wikipedia, wikisource etc.) and add them
> to a list I'll keep on meta (not set up yet, will see how this goes
> first!). At the moment, there are a good few usercloak/bot/botnick
> (e.g. I have wikimedia/xyrael/bot/winesteward) and a few
> wikimedia/bot/botnicks around. I would like to make the distinction
> that usercloak/bot/botnick is a non-Wikimedia bot and that the
> project/bot/botnick is for those that are run specifically for one of
> our projects.
>
> Secondly, I would like to use one bot o:line for flood protection.
> Currently, there are a good few floating about, and I'm not sure who
> is actually using them actively - a cull of bots no longer in use
> would be good from freenode's perspective. There are obvious trust
> issues with this in that one password leak would be a lot of trouble
> compared with bot operators guarding their own personal passwords, but
> I think it's worth it because of the two stage process of changing the
> o:lines: me as group contact and then as staff, then actually getting
> hold of someone to make the change.
>
> I realise that I've rambled a bit here, and so I'll summarise my requests:
> * That all operators of IRC bots contact me via e-mail telling me
> their bot nickname, what is does and what it is cloaked with, as well
> as a note if it uses an o:line. I can then recloak them with your
> assistance. This also has the purpose of weeding out inactive bots (no
> action being taken yet, though).
> * That anyone who knows an operator who doesn't read any of the lists
> forwards this to them and asks them to complete my request, perhaps
> translating if necessary.
> * That any ideas/complaints/ways-that-are-significantly-better-than-this
> are expressed in this mailing list conversation!
>
> Thank you,
> [[m:User:Xyrael]]
> Friendly IRC group contact
>
> --
> ?Sean Whitton (Xyrael/xyr)
> sean at silentflame.com
> http://xyrael.net/
>

--
?Sean Whitton (Xyrael/xyr)
sean at silentflame.com
http://xyrael.net/


list: wikitech-l

subject: [Wikitech-l] Possible changes regarding *all* Wikimedia IRC bots


body:
On 3/31/07, Phil Sandifer <Snowspinner at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>
> On Mar 31, 2007, at 3:46 PM, MacGyverMagic/Mgm wrote:
>
> > Which is exactly why only sources from the subject are not enough.
> > People
> > and companies are notoriously bad at determining their own
> > notability, so to
> > do that (and avoid uncontestable deletions of good information) you
> > need at
> > least one outside source to determine notability.
>
> And that's fine(ish). But this amounts to an incontestable speedy
> deletion for articles of questionable notability. That's not OK.

I'm not saying such deletions are okay, I'm just countering the claim that
only primary sources shouldn't be enough -- in the long run.

Mgm


body:
On 3/31/07, Phil Sandifer <Snowspinner at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>
> On Mar 31, 2007, at 3:58 PM, MacGyverMagic/Mgm wrote:
>
> > This proposal didn't suggest deleting something because it was
> > foreign. If
> > it's a legitimate Andorran political party, there will be secondary
> > sources
> > although they are in French. English sources are preferred but
> > French or
> > Peruvian ones are acceptable if those are the only ones the editor
> > working
> > on it can find or understand.
>
> You miss the point - it's not that these articles can't get sources.
> It's that they don't have sources now and have a very small pool of
> editors working on them who would be overwhelmed, if not driven off
> entirely, by the demand to source all of the articles or see them
> deleted.
>
> -Phil
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

That's why I propose to make the referencing WikiProject more extensive and
attractive as per the thread I just posted myself.

Mgm


body:
I wonder if Mr. Cosley is addicted to something like for example his work...
Still he's got a good point. It's addictive, but I think it's a small price
to pay.
I still have a real non-internet-life.

Mgm

On 3/31/07, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> http://www.metro.co.uk/news/article.html?in_article_id=30066&in_page_id=34
>
>
> - d.
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Aphaia

subject: [Foundation-l] check user...

body:
On 3/31/07, Delphine M?nard <notafishz at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 3/31/07, Mohamed Magdy <mohamed.m.k at gmail.com> wrote:

> Because people who have checkuser are trusted with information that
> could mean they end up in court one day, whether to testify for or
> defend the Foundation. As such, they should have the capacity to act
> without the consent of their parents.
>
> I believe 18 is a(n almost?) world-wide age at which people attain
> majority, and are considered able to act responsibly before the law.

Generally agreed. I would only point out 18 is not world-wide age
considered as adult who make their legal decision without the consent
of their parents. In Japan, the age is 20. If you think it important,
we are better to amend this part "at least 18 and explicitly or over
the age at which they are capable to act without the consent of their
parent in the country they reside".

--
KIZU Naoko
  Wikiquote: http://wikiquote.org
  * habent enim emolumentum in labore suo *


body:
On Sat, 31 Mar 2007 13:50:08 -0600, Bryan Derksen
<bryan.derksen at shaw.ca> wrote:

>_Obviously_ a link to a list of students that doesn't actually contain
>the name in question is a bad reference to support the statement that a
>person is a student there.

Even if the name *was* on the list, it's *still* not a good source. It
could be a different person by the same name, it could be a distance
learning student, it could be a hoax, it could be a typo, it could be
a mistake.  Above all, it does not say that any of these people are
actually students studying at the campus.

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


from_name: Magnus Manske

subject: [WikiEN-l] Yet another legal threat

body:
On 3/31/07, Puppy <puppy at killerchihuahua.com> wrote:
> This guy is planning a trip to the moon?

Maybe we should make a fundraiser to buy him a one-way ticket...

Magnus


from_name: Jeffrey V. Merkey

subject:
[Foundation-l] Extensive Link Errors related to Proper Names -
	Needs Fixing

body:
I have been compiling a machine compiled lexicon created from link and
disambiguation pages from the XML dumps.  Oddly, the associations
contained in [[ARTICLE_NAME | NAME]] form a comprehesive "real time"
thesauraus of common associations used by current English Speakers in
Wikipedia, and perhaps comprise the worlds largest and most comprehesive
Thesaurus on the planet emedded within the mesh of these links within
the dumps.

While going through the dumps and constructing associative link maps of
all these expressions, I have noticed a serious issue with embdded
linking with proper names.  It appears there may be a robot running
somewhere that is associating Proper Names listed in articles about
relationships between people
by linking blindly to any entry in Wikipedia that matches a name in an
article.

Some of the content may create controversy to post examples here, so I
will complete the thesaurus compilation, and folks should go through the
encyclopedia.  Articles about movies stars and other "gossipy" type
articles seem to have the highest errors linking proper names to
unrelated people without proper disambiguation pages.  It could be
interpreted as violations of WP:BLP and some of the error linkages could
be troublesome for the foundation.

Whomever is running bots that link between articles should look at
proper name links based on categories and check into this.  I found a
large number of these types of errors.  They are subtle, but will most
probably show up when browsing through articles unless you can analyze
the link targets and relationships in the dumps.

Jeff


subject:
[Wikitech-l] Extensive Link Errors related to Proper Names - Needs
	Fixing


subject: [WikiEN-l] Light entertainment

body:
On Sat, 31 Mar 2007 11:39:42 +0100, "Earle Martin"
<wikipedia at downlode.org> wrote:

>Bureaucrat User:Nichalp has decided to
>close my RfA at halfway through, because it "does not enjoy the
>support of the community",

A reasonable conclusion, since there was a lot of opposition to the
premise of conflating a wish to change RfA with a request for
adminship.  I know why you did it, but it was a bad idea.

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


from_name: Rich Holton

body:
Matthew Brown wrote:
> On 3/31/07, Gwern Branwen <gwern0 at gmail.com> wrote:
>> This is not a good idea. Haven't we learned anything from locking
>> down *anonymous* page creation, and from the constant, and
>> people-pissing-off, mess that is Articles for Creation?
>
> I agree.  Volunteer effort is not transformable in that way.  There is
> absolutely no proof WHATSOEVER that shutting down article creation
> will help our project at all.  It's yet another manifestation of the
> belief that if you stop people doing what they want, they'll instead
> go off and do what YOU want.
>
> This doesn't happen.  If people can't do what they want, in a project
> MOSTLY CREATED BY OCCASIONAL CONTRIBUTORS, they'll simply leave.
>
> The only people steerable in such a way are regular contributors.  We
> do need to find ways to encourage those deeply committed to the
> project to waste less time dealing with crap that doesn't matter.
> Encourage, not force.
>
> -Matt
>

It's possible I missed something...but I thought the proposal was to
shut off article creation *for a while* while launching a major clean-up
effort. Of course, some people who like to create articles will not turn
instead to cleanup. But some of those who are currently doing cleanup,
including newly created articles, would be able to focus on other things.

I'm not sure it's a good idea. But it's not a suggestion for an
indefinite change, but for a temporary pause in new articles. Something
quite different.

-Rich


subject: [WikiEN-l] Yet another legal threat

body:
On Sat, 31 Mar 2007 13:05:55 -0400, "Daniel R. Tobias"
<dan at tobias.name> wrote:

>somebody allegedly associated with The American Mutoscope and
>Biograph Company is threatening to sue Wikipedia over his company
>being "done wrong".

We deleted this guy's spam links, as I recall.

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


subject: [WikiEN-l] Yet another legal threat

body:
On Sat, 31 Mar 2007 13:36:28 -0400, Puppy <puppy at KillerChihuahua.com>
wrote:

>This guy is planning a trip to the moon?

Sounds like a shorter trip for him than for the rest of us...

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


subject: [WikiEN-l] Yet another legal threat

body:
On Sat, 31 Mar 2007 22:46:32 +0200, "MacGyverMagic/Mgm"
<macgyvermagic at gmail.com> wrote:

>How he even thinks to make a profit from a movie shot on the moon is beyond
>me.

Yeah, even NASA had to fake it on a Hollywood backlot.

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


from_name: daniwo59 at aol.com

subject: [Foundation-l] test

body:
test

************************************** See what's free at http://www.aol.com.


subject: [Foundation-l] test


from_name: Robin Shannon

subject: [Foundation-l] Possible abuse of Wikipedia trademark

body:
I don't pretend to understand trademark law, but in this month's issue
of cleo <http://cleo.ninemsn.com.au/cleo/> there is a section called
"cleo's guy wikipedia" or something to that effect. Basically it is a
bunch of articles along the line of "if a guy says this he really
means this". Anyways, it has nothing at all to do with wikipedia
except for the use of our name.

I'm not sure if this is the right list to bring this up but since
wikilegal was closed down i guess it must be.

Paz,
-rjs.

--
Hit me: <http://robin.shannon.id.au>
Jab me: <FIRSTNAME at LASTNAME.id.au>
"I don't know that atheists should be considered as citizens, nor
should they be considered patriots. This is one nation under God."
     --- George Bush


subject: [WikiEN-l] let's be honest then

body:
On Sat, 31 Mar 2007 19:43:02 +0100, doc <doc.wikipedia at ntlworld.com>
wrote:

>These are the words of an e-mail I dealt with today - and they are not
>untypical. Without breaching confidentiality I can say little more. But
>it related to a biography which, without any citation, commented on an
>individual - making outrageous (and quite probably libelous) claims
>about certain activities.

Morbid curiosity: do you have a ticket number for that?  I entirely
agree, though.

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


body:
On Sat, 31 Mar 2007 21:06:19 +0100, "David Gerard" <dgerard at gmail.com>
wrote:

>http://www.metro.co.uk/news/article.html?in_article_id=30066&in_page_id=34

I'm not addicted, I can give up Wikipedia any time.  Just like that.

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


from_name: Angela

subject: [WikiEN-l] let's be honest then

references:
<C23407BE.29DD%michaeldavid86@comcast.net>
	<460E9E83.4070609@scissor.com> <460EABB6.8060704@ntlworld.com>
	<dfd0b40703311348l74ce065alb20d88dff2cc7451@mail.gmail.com>

body:
On 3/31/07, The Cunctator <cunctator at gmail.com> wrote:
> Someone whose life is wrecked by a Wikipedia article THEY THEMSELVES
> CAN CORRECT has bigger problems than the entry itself.

One big problem is that this is no longer true. WP:COI prevents
correction of articles by those most motivated to correct them.

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

Angela


subject: [WikiEN-l] let's be honest then

body:
On 3/31/07, Ken Arromdee <arromdee at rahul.net> wrote:
>
> On Sat, 31 Mar 2007, doc wrote:
> > Perhaps a more honest reply would have been:
> >
> > "We're sorry you had to complain about this. Regrettably that's the
> > price you pay for our determination to retain as many articles as we
> > can, even though we can't currently maintain most of them. You see, if
> > we change things we might upset some of our editors who might have some
> > of their unreferenced articles deleted by mistake. Basically, we're more
> > concerned with that type of collateral damage than with wrecking your
> life.
>
> If that's really a problem, then make a policy specifically related to
> biographical information in articles.
>
> A proposal was made to actively delete *all* unsourced articles.  As an
> attempt to solve your user's probplem, it's massive, massive, overkill.
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

Accuracy is nice, but if we have it at expense of a coverage (a lot of which
is accurate but unsourced) I prefer a wide coverage. It's easier to fixing
what we have than creating new articles from scratch which will just
reintroduce creation paranoia (and probably the second time we hit the
1000000th article). So that's what I will do. Try to promote fixing the
articles we have.


subject: [WikiEN-l] let's be honest then

body:
On 3/31/07, Anthony <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
>
> On 3/31/07, Phil Sandifer <Snowspinner at gmail.com> wrote:
> > The biggest problem is not unsourced information - it's false
> > information. It's appallingly libelous shit that anyone who looked at
> > the article would see if only people looked at the article.
>
> Acutally, the biggest problem is the appallingly libelous shit that
> someone who looked at the article would think was true.
>
> Obviously false statements look bad, but really aren't harmful except
> from a PR standpoint.  As I understand it false statements aren't even
> considered libelous if no one in their right mind would believe them.
>
> In that sense, sourcing requirements *will* help, and they *will*
> increase the number of eyeballs on articles, because a sourced
> statement is faster and easier to check than an unsourced one.  A rule
> alone might not suddenly increase the number of eyeballs, but a rule
> that's enforced would certainly make the eyeballs more effective.
>
> Stable versions could probably help too, if implemented properly.
>
> Anthony
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

Yes, I'm desperately waiting for stable versions and we should also find
some way to ensure each newly created article gets an extra set of eyeballs
in case the creator leaves. Bot work?

Mgm


subject: [Foundation-l] Report on board meeting in Florida

body:
Florence,
Thank you for  response. I will go through it section by section, explaining
why I disagree. So  as not to bore people, I will focus only on some points,
though that does not  mean I agree with your other points.
You wrote concerning  the most pressing issues, that " The general answer is
"unfixed". Practically,  we will depend on the good will of volunteer board
members, and on the good will  of staff who prefer helping than quitting. Eh !"
I have no idea what  you meant by, "Eh!" unless it was a personal jibe at me.
That?s fine. As for the  tasks, you made it clear to the staff that you are
the board member who handles  legal, job descriptions are board responsibility,
and personnel needs are board  responsibility. You made it clear that you did
not trust staff to do these  things (more on that later). So all I can assume
was that this was a personal  attack. As for your statement, "Those tasks are
not necessarily DONE by the ED,  but under the responsability [sic]of the
ED," as there is no ED, I can only  assume that there is no one responsible. Of
course, you also told us you would  be acting as ED unless the board said
otherwise, so, I assume that unless the  board says otherwise, that are your
responsibility.
>> Note that  they are all  ED. Am I too assume that, except for the
coordination
>> of legal activities, these  will all be left unfixed until  there is an
ED, or
>> will they be dealt with by  some undefined  else. It seems the former is
the
>> answer, with the exception   of a legal coordinator. In other words, are
you
>> leaving the most  pressing issues  unfixed? If it is the latter "undefined
else,"
>> how will the "else" be  selected?

You wrote: Note that  all. Which makes a difference.
I have no idea what  you mean.

> Next came, " Do it  soon (but not necessarily very  important)" ?

You wrote: "I have  spent the whole week trying to work on wikimania
finances, sponsorship and  fundraising. As a volunteer. And largely because the staff
member who was in  charge of these topics choose to quit without a warning nor
an  explanation."
Good answer. Of  course, I fail to see why you would complain about
volunteering for a volunteer  organization, especially one you chair. As for an
explanation, I will remind you  that you never asked for one. In fact, you have not
spoken to me since I  resigned.

I  asked
> Finally, you had  "  Important (but not necessarily to do immediately)"
> * Brand  Strategy  (board)
> * Business Development Strategy (board)
> *  Technical Management  (ED)
> What professional  expertise does  the Board bring to the first two? When
> talking about a brand   worth billions of dollars--and that means billions
of
> dollars for free  culture  and knowledge--I would assume that the Board
would
>  consider some professional  advice and assistance.

You answered"  "Yes, a company proposed its assistance. It is called Landor.
(www.landor.com).  Plenty of impressing customers. The fact you did not hear
about something does  not mean it does not exist."
I am sure it exists.  However, I beg to remind you that I was the person in
charge of business  development. It is unfortunate that you have decided to
keep business  development information from the person in charge of business
development. I can  only assume that you really think business development is a
board  responsibility. More on this later.

> As for some of the  other  topics discussed, you wrote "What can be
mentioned
> probably is  this:"
> *  work on a travel policy (nothing very fancy to report)
> I ask: what is the  current travel policy which is being  amended?

A policy was set up in 2004. It allowed 1000 dollars per  trimester per
board member, 3000 dollars for the chair. This is the last  "validated one".
In other words, most  board members have exceeded their "validated" trimester
allocation. I agree it  should be expanded, but as it was not--it has been
exceeded. Am I to assume that  board resolutions regarding spending can be
ignored at the discretion of the  Board?

> * work on a policy for  reimbursement (nothing very  fancy to report)
> I ask: what is the  current reimbursement policy,  which is being amended.
If
> there is no  reimbursement policy, how  are reimbursements made? What is
> eligible for  reimbursement and  what is not?

You wrote: No written policy being amended. We agreed on  reimbursement of
travel
costs (2nd class), food and hotel, as indicated on  the reimbursement
sheet done by Mav many months ago. Additionally, last  summer, there was
an agreement to reimburse me nanny costs when I was  travelling on the
board behalf.
Receipts must be  provided.
So all that is  reimbursed is travel costs and a per diem? That is a simple
yes or no  question. A reimbursement policy should cover what else is
reimbursed. For  instance, your nanny. Then there are other, more controversial
expenses. I  will be happy to elaborate if you like.

> * study of  some  collaboration propositions (details confidential)
> I hope you  don?t mean  the collaboration proposals with three major
>  organizations in DC that I brought  to the table. If you do, why was I not
 asked about
> them?

No, I am talking about other propositions  which are confidential and
which you were not involved  in.
Again, why is the  board keeping collaboration proposals from business
development or the office in  general. Do you think that only the board is qualified
to deal with these  matters? Do you not trust the office to do its job?

You wrote: No one,  which is why we created an advisory board, and ask help
from
companies,  especially those who accept to work on a pro bono basis.
But you are welcome  to tell future voters that they should elect a
community member being a  specialist of brand licensing.
Note that you are not a specialist of brands  either.
I will happily admit  that I am not a branding specialist and that a branding
specialist should be  brought on board, either as staff, or as a board
member. Once again, what  expertise does the board bring to this in the meanwhile.

> You  also  wrote:
> "During that week, the  office was really  populated, as it also hosted two
> other meetings, one  dedicated to  Quality (might be worthwhile to ask
> Greg to make a report on  this  one...), "
> While Greg is  extremely qualified to report on that,  you might also ask
the
> person who  organized it. Oh, and how much  time did the Board take
discussing
> its  recommendations.

You wrote: Oh good point. Since you were the organiser of that meeting,  can
you
provide me the budget where we approved the expenses related to that
meeting ?
Are you opposed to the  meeting? Or are you simply opposed to the fact that
something was done without  your involvement. Did you ever ask me about it?
Would you have approved it?

As for the time spent discussing the recommandations, I would say that
given that the recommandations were presented 2 hours before the end of
the board meeting and that the issue was not on the agenda... of course,
it was not further discussed. Not everyone is a workalcoholic  :-)
No, but senior  executives of huge international corporations generally are.
Especially when  they are understaffed.

> You wrote:  "Delphine  was also in Florida for several  days."
> It  is always very nice  to see Delphine. What was her role in these
meetings?

You wrote: I was not the organiser of the tech meeting. I am  still wondering
who
organised it really.
I was not the organiser of the  quality meeting. You were.
I was the organiser of the board meeting, and I  did not invite her.

You also wrote: However, contrariwise to you,  Delphine has an approved
travel budget,
and by default, I consider staff is  not "dumb" and if she thought she
needed travel, then she did need  travel.
The board is not the police.
She knows pretty well that if she  does not do her job and abuse things,
she can be fired. It is not your place  to judge her work and the way she
organises herself. That goes for every  employee.
Okay, so there is no  oversight when it comes to Delphine (though this is not
the case with the  office?you were very clear about that.) She currently has
a higher travel budget  than the entire board combined, and no one can
question it. By the way, is it  true that you have copied IRC board meeting
discussions to Delphine in real  time? A simple yes or no will do.

> Or does that  go under the  discussed Travel Policy (to quote you, "nothing
> very  fancy to report.")

The travel policy is the one related to the board. Not  the travel policy
of the employees.
The travel policy of the employees is  set up by the ED, not the board.
There is no ED, so who  sets up the travel policy?

> It would also be nice  to hear some  more elaboration from you about the
> "difference of opinion"  between  the Board and the Search Firm regarding
the role
> of an  ED. How does the Board  see the role? How does the Search Firm see
the
> role? What efforts are being made  to bridge this difference?

I would prefer that you be blunt and say your word rather than turning
around the pot Danny.
It's a simple  question. I am not turning it around. I am simply asking you
to explain your  statement.

> All in all, it  sounds like a fascinating meeting. I  look forward to
reading
> the minutes.

Ah,  confidential :-) Too bad. But they were written Danny, be  reassured.
I am reassured. I only  wonder why no board minutes whatsoever have been
posted to  wikimediafoundation.org since 2006. I had hoped that the new board
would usher  in a time of greater transparency. Apparently I was  wrong.

Danny

************************************** See what's free at http://www.aol.com.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Yet another legal threat

body:
How he even thinks to make a profit from a movie shot on the moon is beyond
me.
Getting there alone would take about as much as the budget of at least two
blockbuster films if not more depending on all the new technology he'd need
to sustain a film crew out there...

Mgm

On 3/31/07, Magnus Manske <magnusmanske at googlemail.com> wrote:
>
> On 3/31/07, Puppy <puppy at killerchihuahua.com> wrote:
> > This guy is planning a trip to the moon?
>
> Maybe we should make a fundraiser to buy him a one-way ticket...
>
> Magnus
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] let's be honest then

body:
What I said: Encourage people to follow the existing rules and find some way
to make proper sourcing of articles easier with new Wikipedia programs and
bots where they can help.

Mgm

On 3/31/07, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 31/03/07, Anthony <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
>
> > In that sense, sourcing requirements *will* help, and they *will*
> > increase the number of eyeballs on articles, because a sourced
> > statement is faster and easier to check than an unsourced one.  A rule
> > alone might not suddenly increase the number of eyeballs, but a rule
> > that's enforced would certainly make the eyeballs more effective.
>
>
> We already have sourcing requirements.
>
> The stupidest thing about this thread is people proclaiming the need
> for rules we already have, that aren't being followed. Just what makes
> you think a new rule will?
>
>
> - d.
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Gwern Branwen

body:
Phil Sandifer <Snowspinner at gmail.com> writes:

> Many of the proposals to "fix" Wikipedia of late have seemed to
  take
> as a premise that what we've done is wrong. I, personally,
  disagree.
> I think we've got a pretty good encyclopedia. It needs work, but
  it's
> good enough to go public with, which, thank God, since we went
  public
> with it. Sensible users can use it well.
>
> But if we really do want to speed up its improvement (which I
  can
> take or leave, but everyone else seems desperate to take it)...
>
> Why don't we lock new article creation in the main namespace
  entirely
> for three months? Or six months? Demand that people fix existing
> articles.
>
> Anything that's absolutely vital that comes into being in those
> months will still be possible to write about in a few months, so
> there's no real rush. And a lot of the crap that we create by
  reflex
> will not get created and be pleasantly forgotten about. (Brian
> Peppers, anyone?) And we could easily make the red page text
  read
> something like "On XX/XX/XXXX suspended new article creation
  until XX/
> XX/XXXX in order to better work on existing articles. If this is
  an
> important topic that has developed since we made this decision,
  you
> can probably find information on it by looking at existing
  articles
> on related topics."
>
> We've suggested doing it for a day here and there. The heck with
> that. Let's do it for a long period of time so that the culture
  of
> fixing what we have becomes entrenched.
>
> Or, I mean, we could decide that everything we've worked on this
  far
> is actually crap and create drastic proposals for how we could
  start
> over.
>
> -Phil

This is not a good idea. Haven't we learned anything from locking
down *anonymous* page creation, and from the constant, and
people-pissing-off, mess that is Articles for Creation? It's not a
success by any standards - it's led to burnt out editors, deeply
frustrated and well-meaning outsiders, and an arcane submission
process that is slow, glitchy, and doesn't scale! There is no
evidence whatsoever that AfC has helped Wikipedia: no evidence
that it has encouraged people to focus on articles.

And now you want to disable page creation for everyone except
admins?  Besides the obvious aspect of adding yet another thing
only admins and other higher ups can do, with ramifications for
the culture and legally (if this goes through, and admins have to
manually approve each article, will Wikipedia pass from being a
host capable of claiming DMCA safe harbor to a publisher
exercising editorial control and discretion over posting of new
articles?), this simply won't scale. There are only  what, 1100
admins, and how many of them are active? 900? Admins are already
kind of busy with deletions and page moves and other sort of
processes which are already too often backlogged (and related
stuff like OTRS). We should be very very reluctant to propose any
new process which could dump literally thousands of entries a day
onto their collective laps.

--
Gwern
Inquiring minds want to know.


subject: [WikiEN-l] let's be honest then

body:
On Sat, 31 Mar 2007 22:36:02 +0100, Angela <beesley at gmail.com> wrote:

>One big problem is that this is no longer true. WP:COI prevents
>correction of articles by those most motivated to correct them.
>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Conflict_of_interest

It should not do.  Where is the absolute prohibition on correcting
errors of fact on an article about yourself?

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


from_name: Anthony

subject: [WikiEN-l] let's be honest then

body:
On 3/31/07, Dycedarg <darthvader1219 at gmail.com> wrote:
> If and when stable versions is implemented, I would recommend that every
> single BLP article that has not been approved be "invisible", or in other
> words impossible to find via Google or by using the standard search box in
> Wikipedia and ignored by the mirrors. You'd have to go to an advanced Wiki
> search and intentionally click an "unapproved articles" check box to search
> for them.

If this is done I think I'll create a mirror consisting solely of such
unapproved articles, which is, of course, indexable by Google.  Should
get me a lot of traffic, at least until others figure out what I'm
doing and do the same.

> Or,
> alternatively, just have a gigantic red banner at the top that says "This
> article is unapproved. Any unsourced piece of information is as likely to be
> true as random gossip received from a group of twelve year-olds. Read at
> your own risk. If this article is about you and it contains ridiculous crap,
> please remove it yourself and request that an approved version be put in
> place using <insert whatever method of communication is decided upon here>."

Seems more reasonable.

Anthony


from_name: Fastfission

subject: [WikiEN-l] Yet another legal threat

references:
<460E5CB3.13966.3279F86@dan.tobias.name>
	<460E9C1C.80700@KillerChihuahua.com>
	<fab0ecb70703311322i247b8428q2410faa04bb54a18@mail.gmail.com>
	<fb7fdd9c0703311346v3399afbbx55ae9c6c68313b06@mail.gmail.com>
	<6mkt035mtpk70kp0igr9vmb6g27l44vp2e@4ax.com>
	<fb7fdd9c0703311442u64e58524xa634b8b7d8ed0dea@mail.gmail.com>
	<9amt03hk5oomlociuh39176gutfui2nuod@4ax.com>

body:
On 3/31/07, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:
> On Sat, 31 Mar 2007 23:42:54 +0200, "MacGyverMagic/Mgm"
> <macgyvermagic at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> >Basically, it said that it's impossible for such a conspiracy to be going on
> >without even one person involved in it telling about it before they died.
>
> This is the Achilles' heel of most of the big conspiracy theories,
> from Roswell to 9/11.
>
> Anybody who considers that a conspiracy involving more than a handful
> of people will remain leak free when it goes public is delusional.

Though there have been a few instances of big things being kept secret
for long periods of time on account of various organizational
practices. The South African nuclear weapons program, for example,
involved hundreds of people, but only a small few really knew what was
truly going on with it. One of the reasons the CIA didn't find out
about the 1974 Indian nuclear test was because they purposefully used
a small number of people to prepare it -- i.e. they cut out almost all
of the low-grade technicians and only used people who were deeply
invested in the project, forcing top-grade physicists to do the work
normally regulated to lesser specialists. During the US project to
build the atomic bomb, most of the thousands of factory workers
required to create the fissile material had no idea what the ultimate
goal of their efforts were -- they just knew to do their job and to
not ask questions -- and if they had been told in the end that their
work was just to develop some sort of new tank armor they'd probably
have believed it.

I'm not defending conspiracy theorists in the slightest; I'm just
saying that there are organizational arrangements (chiefly
compartmentalization, but others too) which allow for things requiring
great numbers of people to be more-or-less in the dark on what they
are doing, and there are also ways to reduce the number of people
working on a secret project to very low numbers even if they would be
traditionally seen as wasteful or impractical. The idea of having big
secrets has not been historically implausible, though of course such
things always fail Occam's Razor (which is just a heuristic, anyway).

Just musing along... (and not a conspiracy theorist)
FF


from_name: MacGyverMagic/Mgm

body:
On 3/31/07, Phil Sandifer <Snowspinner at gmail.com> wrote:

> Many of the proposals to "fix" Wikipedia of late have seemed to take
> as a premise that what we've done is wrong. I, personally, disagree.
> I think we've got a pretty good encyclopedia. It needs work, but it's
> good enough to go public with, which, thank God, since we went public
> with it. Sensible users can use it well.
>
> But if we really do want to speed up its improvement (which I can
> take or leave, but everyone else seems desperate to take it)...
>
> Why don't we lock new article creation in the main namespace entirely
> for three months? Or six months? Demand that people fix existing
> articles.
>
> Anything that's absolutely vital that comes into being in those
> months will still be possible to write about in a few months, so
> there's no real rush. And a lot of the crap that we create by reflex
> will not get created and be pleasantly forgotten about. (Brian
> Peppers, anyone?) And we could easily make the red page text read
> something like "On XX/XX/XXXX suspended new article creation until XX/
> XX/XXXX in order to better work on existing articles. If this is an
> important topic that has developed since we made this decision, you
> can probably find information on it by looking at existing articles
> on related topics."
>
> We've suggested doing it for a day here and there. The heck with
> that. Let's do it for a long period of time so that the culture of
> fixing what we have becomes entrenched.
>
> Or, I mean, we could decide that everything we've worked on this far
> is actually crap and create drastic proposals for how we could start
> over.
>
> -Phil
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

 Personally, I wouldn't have a problem with this. It's a lot easier to fix
the 1,5 million articles we have if there's not constantly new stuff pouring
in. But people will turn to Wikipedia if there's a new hurricane or massive
flood or to read about a country's new prime minister or president.

These are the type of articles that need to be created and kept up-to-date
as they happen for maximal effect. If we were to do this for a significant
amount of time, we'd be severely lacking in articles about current events.
How do you think we should handle that?


from_name: Will

body:
On 31/03/07, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> http://www.metro.co.uk/news/article.html?in_article_id=30066&in_page_id=34
>
>
> - d.
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l

It was probably on page 2 - some people out of habit won't read a page when
there's going to be a pair of breasts on the opposite page.


subject: [WikiEN-l] let's be honest then

body:
On 3/31/07, The Cunctator <cunctator at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 3/31/07, doc <doc.wikipedia at ntlworld.com> wrote:
> > "I was heartbroken and nauseated almost to the point of vomiting about
> > the last two lines"
> >
> > These are the words of an e-mail I dealt with today - and they are not
> > untypical. Without breaching confidentiality I can say little more. But
> > it related to a biography which, without any citation, commented on an
> > individual - making outrageous (and quite probably libelous) claims
> > about certain activities.
>
> Did you check?
>
> > On behalf of wikipedia and the community, I apologised and assured the
> > complainant we took such things seriously and were working to ensure
> > they didn't happen. I may have lied.
> >
> > Perhaps a more honest reply would have been:
> >
> > "We're sorry you had to complain about this. Regrettably that's the
> > price you pay for our determination to retain as many articles as we
> > can, even though we can't currently maintain most of them. You see, if
> > we change things we might upset some of our editors who might have some
> > of their unreferenced articles deleted by mistake. Basically, we're more
> > concerned with that type of collateral damage than with wrecking your
> life.
>
> Someone whose life is wrecked by a Wikipedia article THEY THEMSELVES
> CAN CORRECT has bigger problems than the entry itself.
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

Not if we lack the eyes to ensure the material they fix (or ask to have
fixed) doesn't return.

Mgm


subject: [WikiEN-l] Improving and expanding the referencing WikiProject

body:
With all this talk about referencing, I decided to take a look at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Fact_and_Reference_Check
 and I was surprised to see that unlike stubs and deletion debates articles
lacking references weren't sorted or even listed by topic. If articles that
need references are sorted or listed by topic, it means you will attract the
people most likely to know where to find references and willing to add them.
This project needs some extension that somehow sends of notices to the
relevant WikiProject when a certain article is tagged.

Secondly, I only found this project through the list of WikiProjects. I
couldn't remember its exact name and visiting some help pages on referencing
left me empty handed. This project should be linked all over the reference
help pages and possibly get some redirects from likely titles.

Thirdly, people are more likely to do something if they feel they get
rewarded for it. Look at the people who go through the heavy FA procedure.
Most of them do it simply to see an article they like or worked on on the
Main Page. And each time I get a barnstar, I still get a warm fuzzy feeling
of appreciation inside. *Rewards can get a lot of work done.*
I couldn't find a referencing barnstar. One should be created to encourage
people to go ahead and do it and if such a barnstar exists, it should be
made more prominent.

And finally, I'm thinking ahead. If somehow we can get every article sourced
we need to look at our next problem. It won't be lack of sources but
accuracy of sources that will be our next problem. Vandals will alter
sources or people will make apparently sourced claims where the link or book
reference doesn't actually back up the claim. We should start thinking on
how to handle that so we don't run into problems if we ever manage to get
there.

Mgm


from_name: Bryan Derksen

body:
Rich Holton wrote:
> I'm not sure it's a good idea. But it's not a suggestion for an
> indefinite change, but for a temporary pause in new articles. Something
> quite different.

Disabling article creation for anonymous users was supposed to be "just
an experiment" too and it's still in place over a year later despite no
analysis ever being done. I can understand people being concerned about
this experiment winding up the same way.


from_name: Dycedarg

body:
On 3/31/07, Gwern Branwen <gwern0 at gmail.com> wrote:

> This is not a good idea. Haven't we learned anything from locking
> down *anonymous* page creation, and from the constant, and
> people-pissing-off, mess that is Articles for Creation? It's not a
> success by any standards - it's led to burnt out editors, deeply
> frustrated and well-meaning outsiders, and an arcane submission
> process that is slow, glitchy, and doesn't scale! There is no
> evidence whatsoever that AfC has helped Wikipedia: no evidence
> that it has encouraged people to focus on articles.
>
> And now you want to disable page creation for everyone except
> admins?  Besides the obvious aspect of adding yet another thing
> only admins and other higher ups can do, with ramifications for
> the culture and legally (if this goes through, and admins have to
> manually approve each article, will Wikipedia pass from being a
> host capable of claiming DMCA safe harbor to a publisher
> exercising editorial control and discretion over posting of new
> articles?), this simply won't scale. There are only  what, 1100
> admins, and how many of them are active? 900? Admins are already
> kind of busy with deletions and page moves and other sort of
> processes which are already too often backlogged (and related
> stuff like OTRS). We should be very very reluctant to propose any
> new process which could dump literally thousands of entries a day
> onto their collective laps.
>

This is pretty much a complete misinterpretation of the proposal.
Let me outline it for you:
A. This would be a very temporary change. This would last for a few months
in an attempt to rejuvenate clean-up efforts, and then go away forever.
B. This would not be an attempt to filter all new pages through the admins
using some uber-beefed up AfC. There would be no new articles whatsoever.
Zero. Zip. Nada. The only very few and far between exceptions would be those
necessary to maintain our coverage of recent events, such as hurricanes,
floods, wars, and other natural/not so natural disasters. Admins would only
make new pages if it was patently obvious that we need such an article
immediately. Any request for an article that is not necessary for such
coverage would be ignored and deleted on sight.

I would agree that the overall number of edits would drop as people who
typically only create new pages took a wikibreak. But I believe that enough
would remain that the concentration of their efforts on the remaining
articles could be of a large amount of benefit. In fact: Even if the amount
of edits improving current articles remained constant, and no work was
redirected at all, the fact that all the work that usually goes into
stubbifying, prodding, CSDing, AfDing, wikifying, and all the rest of what
is necessary to make the brand new articles serviceable could now instead be
devoted to making the rest of the encyclopedia better, means that in my
opinion the over-all result would be positive. If anyone simply can't wait
another second before starting work on a new article, than they can make it
in their userspace and work on it until they can put it in mainspace again.
The draft will no doubt be all the better for it anyway.

--

Dycedarg


subject: [WikiEN-l] Yet another legal threat

body:
On Sat, 31 Mar 2007 23:42:54 +0200, "MacGyverMagic/Mgm"
<macgyvermagic at gmail.com> wrote:

>Basically, it said that it's impossible for such a conspiracy to be going on
>without even one person involved in it telling about it before they died.

This is the Achilles' heel of most of the big conspiracy theories,
from Roswell to 9/11.

Anybody who considers that a conspiracy involving more than a handful
of people will remain leak free when it goes public is delusional.

Of course, they also violate Occam's Razor.

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


subject: [WikiEN-l] let's be honest then

body:
On 3/31/07, Anthony <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
>
> If this is done I think I'll create a mirror consisting solely of such
> unapproved articles, which is, of course, indexable by Google.  Should
> get me a lot of traffic, at least until others figure out what I'm
> doing and do the same.
>

You really think a dumping ground of everything Wikipedia won't publish
because there's a good chance it's crap will be that popular? But really,
even if it was, it wouldn't be Wikipedia publishing crappy unsourced libel.
It would be some random internet person publishing information deemed by
Wikipedia to be too unreliable to have on the main part of its site. That
would probably play better in the media.

--

Dycedarg


from_name: Mark Williamson

subject: [Foundation-l] check user...

body:
Just modifying a page has legal implications, AFAIK (ianal).

Mark

On 31/03/07, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 31/03/07, Sean Whitton (Xyrael) <sean at silentflame.com> wrote:
>
> > could potentially cause damage. For example, simply being on an
> > arbcom, as an authoritative body, could potentially have legal
> > implications (I don't know if we do have any under 18s on these
> > committees, but I don't know of any policy against it).
>
>
> Sam Korn was on the en:wp arbcom at age 16, though he quit so as not
> to interfere with his A-levels.
>
>
> - d.
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>

--
Refije dirije lanm? yo paske nou posede pw?p bato.


subject: [Foundation-l] check user...


subject:
[Wikitech-l] Extensive Link Errors related to Proper Names -
	Needs Fixing

body:
I think the issue here is that someone linking to [[Thomas Figby]]
might not realize that the article at [[Thomas Figby]] is not about
the man who is currently on trial for the murder of his wife, but
rather Thomas Figby, the movie star, and instead he is looking for
[[Thomas Lawrence Figby]].

I don't think this has anything to do with bots.

Mark

On 31/03/07, Mohamed Magdy <mohamed.m.k at gmail.com> wrote:
> Mets501 wrote:
> >> Whomever is running bots that link between articles should look at
> >> proper name links based on categories and check into this.  I found a
> >> large number of these types of errors.  They are subtle, but will most
> >> probably show up when browsing through articles unless you can analyze
> >> the link targets and relationships in the dumps.
> >>
> >> Jeff
> >
> > Try http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Bot_owners%27_noticeboard.
> > --Mets501
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Wikitech-l mailing list
> > Wikitech-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> > http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
> >
>
> AFAIK links to another articles are done using human editors NOT bots..
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>

--
Refije dirije lanm? yo paske nou posede pw?p bato.


from_name: Matthew Brown

body:
On 3/31/07, Bryan Derksen <bryan.derksen at shaw.ca> wrote:
> Disabling article creation for anonymous users was supposed to be "just
> an experiment" too and it's still in place over a year later despite no
> analysis ever being done. I can understand people being concerned about
> this experiment winding up the same way.

I'm concerned it will be done simply because people want to try
SOMETHING, without really thinking through the actual effects and
without doing any real testing to make sure it helps.  Meanwhile,
every time I think that some content would work better in a new
article I can't do it.  Every time someone finds a crucial hole in our
coverage they won't be able to add it.  Many of those people won't
come back.

I have a great deal of caution about the urge to 'do something'.
Things done just to 'do something' tend to be poorly thought out and
lacking in results and lacking in research to see if they actually did
any good.

-Matt


from_name: Virgil Ierubino

subject: [Foundation-l] Red category link is unhelpful

body:
Seen as category pages work even if they DO contain no text, treating them
in the same way as a nonexistent article is unhelpful (especially to newer
users who only think they see a broken link). I was thinking that perhaps
category links could be red if they contain only the page they are linked
from, blue otherwise. Text on a category page is largely unneeded.

Just an idea. Thanks :).


subject: [WikiEN-l] let's be honest then

body:
On 3/31/07, doc <doc.wikipedia at ntlworld.com> wrote:
> So wikipedia is doomed to keep having its sordid downside? We're doomed
> to always be fighting a losing battle against libels and lies? We're
> doomed to go on consoling victims with empty words? And there's nothing
> we can do about it? No way we can make the system even a little better?
> It isn't even worth the attempt?
>
> I refuse to be that pessimistic or that cynical. The day I am, I will
> really quit.

Wikipedia cannot be perfect.  Wikipedia can get better.  IMO,
Wikipedia is a lot less bad, percentage-wise, than it seems to someone
who spends a lot of time trying to clean up biographical articles or
reading OTRS complaints.

I am fearful of the rush to 'do something' without the examination of
likely consequences.  I am pessimistic about more rules being the cure
for current rules being ignored.  I am cynical about the prospects for
success of any solution that starts with drastic over-reaction and
ignoring the reasons why Wikipedia is as successful as it is.

-Matt


from_name: Thomas Dalton

body:
> http://www.metro.co.uk/news/article.html?in_article_id=30066&in_page_id=34
>
>
> - d.

We did see it before, we have an entire article about it,
[[Wikipedia:Wikipediholic]]. Yet again, Wikipedia got the scoop.


subject: [WikiEN-l] let's be honest then

body:
On 3/31/07, Sage Ross <ragesoss+wikipedia at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> The questions are, what should that bar be?, and how big a portion of
> the editor pool should have the ability to so certify articles?.  The
> easy way would be to pick some edit count and time requirement (500
> edits, 3 months?); otherwise, we would have to create some kind of
> "clueful editor" status aside from admin.
>
> -Sage

Whatever clueful is supposed to mean in this context, we should remember to
doublecheck any entries someone tagged as stable if after some time someone
turns out at arbitration or otherwise lose this status.

We also need to make sure that whatever we do, this status is given to
trustworthy people and and that such a process is scaleable. This is where
the biggest problem lies. These two can bother each other. To ensure
scalability you need to give the permission to more people, but at some
point you run out of trusted editors who are experienced enough to handle
this feature.

We need to put careful consideration into this, because if someone turns out
to muck up these priviliges it takes a lot of work to undo the damage.


from_name: James Farrar

subject: [WikiEN-l] let's be honest then

body:
On 31/03/07, Slim Virgin <slimvirgin at gmail.com> wrote:

> it's trying to persuade the community that something needs to change.

Is this community particularly susceptible to persuasion by rant?


subject: [WikiEN-l] Yet another legal threat

body:
On 3/31/07, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:
>
> On Sat, 31 Mar 2007 22:46:32 +0200, "MacGyverMagic/Mgm"
> <macgyvermagic at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> >How he even thinks to make a profit from a movie shot on the moon is
> beyond
> >me.
>
> Yeah, even NASA had to fake it on a Hollywood backlot.
>
> Guy (JzG)
> --
> http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG

I saw a really good website that discredited that, but of course I forgot
the URL.
Basically, it said that it's impossible for such a conspiracy to be going on
without even one person involved in it telling about it before they died.
But I don't want to turn this into a "going to the moon debate". Point is
that assuming NASA did go to the moon, it isn't going to be cost-effective
for this guy.

Mgm


subject: [WikiEN-l] let's be honest then

body:
It doesn't prevent them editing such articles. It even gives them
tips on how to handle it properly:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Conflict_of_interest#Editors_who_may_have_a_conflict_of_interest

On 3/31/07, Angela <beesley at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 3/31/07, The Cunctator <cunctator at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Someone whose life is wrecked by a Wikipedia article THEY THEMSELVES
> > CAN CORRECT has bigger problems than the entry itself.
>
> One big problem is that this is no longer true. WP:COI prevents
> correction of articles by those most motivated to correct them.
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Conflict_of_interest
>
> Angela
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Newyorkbrad (Wikipedia)

subject: [WikiEN-l] let's be honest then

body:
On 3/31/07, doc <doc.wikipedia at ntlworld.com> wrote:
>
> Matthew Brown wrote:
> > On 3/31/07, doc <doc.wikipedia at ntlworld.com> wrote:
> >> However, being realistic, our community is too large and impersonal for
> >> us to be in the business of reforming people - all we can do is change
> >> policies. But I get yelled at every time I suggest that.
> >
> > Because changing policies does no damn good.  Most undesirable things
> > are already prohibited.
> >
> > -Matt
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > WikiEN-l mailing list
> > WikiEN-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> > To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> > http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
> >
> So wikipedia is doomed to keep having its sordid downside? We're doomed
> to always be fighting a losing battle against libels and lies? We're
> doomed to go on consoling victims with empty words? And there's nothing
> we can do about it? No way we can make the system even a little better?
> It isn't even worth the attempt?
>
> I refuse to be that pessimistic or that cynical. The day I am, I will
> really quit.
>
> Doc
>
I don't think about quitting, but I'm with Doc that we have to improve our
performance in this area.  Unfortunately, I'm bereft of brilliant ideas for
doing it.

Newyorkbrad