from_name: Luna

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Wrongfully blocked by admin who lies and on behalf
	of users trying to "own" articles

body:
Mr Petrovich,

I've had a quick look at these, and associated talk pages and block logs:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/72.178.235.28
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/129.7.35.194

Given what appear to be continued and gross violations of [[WP:3RR]] under
both IP addresses, abusive edit summaries and personal attacks, failure to
make reasonable use of talk pages and the dispute resolution process, and
what seems to be block evasion through what equates to sockpuppetry, I'm
afraid I will have to decline your request at this time.

If you have a credible defense or other explanation, feel free.

Thank you for contacting unblock-en-l,
-Luna

On 1/9/07, Bob Petrovich <wrestfan01 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Greetings,
>
> I believe I have been wrongly blocked, but because the blocking
> administrator also REMOVED my complaint from the wikipedia administrators'
> list board, I feel the need to write here as well.
>
> I came on tonight looking up wrestling moves and found one - the Double
> Underhook Facebuster - in the wrong page, as despite its sometime name
> (and
> it goes by several others) it is not a Facebuster, but rather a DDT
> variant.
>
> So I made the appropriate changes on the [[Facebuster]] page and the [[DDT
> (professional wrestling)]] page.
>
> I noted with some problematic nature the behavior of admins earlier to
> someone else who had tried to make the same factual correction; this
> behavior also concerns me and I mentioned it on the administrators
> notification page as the incidents page was locked down for some reason.
>
> Samuel Blanning not only took it on himself to block me, but to remove my
> corrections from the pages, after I reported the harassment by Paulley and
> Naohiro19, who were threatening me as they continually tried to vandalize
> wikipedia and accused me of vandalism for making factual corrections.
>
> Samuel Blanning's edits:
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia%3AAdministrators%27_noticeboard&diff=99683027&oldid=99681687
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Facebuster&diff=99683109&oldid=99682002
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=DDT_%28professional_wrestling%29&diff=99683020&oldid=99682074
>
> Paulley's behavior was all abusive in nature: he continually asserted that
> he has some "right" to control these articles in edit summaries such as
> here:
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=DDT_%28professional_wrestling%29&diff=99681937&oldid=99681376
>
> Naohiro19 - who continually blindly removed my improvements - has since
> REMOVED MY UNBLOCK REQUEST.
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk%3A72.178.235.28&diff=99684526&oldid=99684256
>
> This is beyond abusive behavior by these admins and I request the
> appropriate disciplinary action be taken against them at once.
>
> The IP address that comes up my error is 72.178.235.28, it said I should
> mention this.
>
> Bob Petrovich.
> _______________________________________________
> 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
>


list: wikipedia-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Entries for deletion.... issues from
	the	ThirdWorld

body:
Frederick Noronha wrote:

>If anyone convinces Wikipedia that it needs to be "more like the real
>thing" (whatever that is, including mainstream, printed encyclopedias
>or Encarta), it would be a great loss for the attempt to build
>alternatives. Likewise, it would be hardly helpful if anyone convinces
>Wikipedia that it should focus on the "standard and quality
>information" argument (whatever that is supposed to mean!) over all
>other strengths of the Wikipedia experiment.
>
The value of Wikipedia is as much in the processes that it stands for as
its contents.  This does not mean that we should embrace clearly
inappropriate content, but obscure or remote does not equate to
inappropriate.  This process does recognize that good content builds up
over a length of time with the help of a separate community of editors
for each article.  A smaller article community implies that the buildup
of that article will take longer.  There is no need to be impatient
about any article.

>For someone like me, the strength of the Wikipedia lies mainly in the
>fact that it has space also for my village of 8000 to be written about
>for a global audience (in a factual manner, of course). If things that
>are important to me are going to be seen as "peripheral" (just because
>they lack size or not being visible enough in cyberspace), then in
>what way is it different from the mainstream... that has kept me out
>in the cold for so long, anyway?
>
When it comes to the size of notable communities, I believe that Rambot
has set the standard with his wide selection of United States place
names.  The standard applied to the Unied States should be taken as a
precedent for other countries of the world.  I have several volumes
published by the Government of India and listing all the post offices in
India.  From my perspective, if the village is in that publication it is
notable.  100 people in a small village in India are just as valuable as
100 people in a small United States village.

>Just the other day, a speaker here in Goa, India was describing
>"remote" communities, and pointing out that the term is misleading in
>itself. As he put it, the logic of "remoteness" is always connected to
>our definition of what is the centre (of the world, of the nation
>state, or whatever). "For people out there, their own location, of
>course, is the centre of the world, as far as they go," he said.
>
I have often wondered why Goans that I have met locally here in Canada
should become so disporportionately prominent when compared to
immigrants from other parts of India.

Ec


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Matthew Flaschen

subject:
[Wikitech-l] Category Intersections: "Proof of Concept Page"
 feedback please?

body:
Aerik Sylvan wrote:
> I think the consensus is that once we have this, it will be very popular
> (from previous discussions on the mailing list).  I asked Brion about this
> performance expectations once, and he said something like that he'd like to
> see it run in less than a second. I'm thinking that if it runs in 1 second
> +/- .5 secs, it might be okay, and having a ajax interface would make it
> palatable to the user experience (somehow waiting for a div to load seems
> less maddening than waiting for the whole page... plus, it might reduce some
> overhead associated with rendering the mediawiki page.  OTOH... not friendly
> for mobile users etc... Hmm...)

Any AJAX interface would have to be optional.

>
> Can we save the
>> results of a popular intersections (like American people intersected with
>> Actors) so that the intersection is updated less frequently?
>
>
> Yes, but then we have to add caching logic.  You wouldn't want to save it
> too long, because then it becomes outdated.

Categories are obviously cached, so you just update the intersections
when the categories get updated (or slightly less often).

> (If I can find the time, I'll enhance the UI too.)

Don't worry about that yet. :)

> Thanks again for the feedback,

Thank you for all your work.

Matthew Flaschen

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from_name: J.L.W.S. The Special One

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Entries for deletion.... issues from the Third
	World

body:
Requiring verifiability creates systemic bias. To be more accurate, it
enforces the systemic bias of existing references.

On 1/9/07, Michael Billington <michael.billington at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 1/9/07, Lars Aronsson <lars at aronsson.se> wrote:
> >
> > Andre Engels wrote:
> > > I guess I should not go into the examples, but in this case my opinion
> > is
> > > that 50,000 would be too high a limit,  I myself would be thinking of
> > 2,000
> > > or 5,000.
> >
> > Absolutely.  Perhaps for the U.S. and parts of Germany we are
> > approaching full coverage of all places with 5,000 people.  But
> > for India I doubt if we have covered all cities with 50,000.
> > Nothing stops the limit from being set at 500 too.  But a lower
> > limit could be questioned a lot more easily than a higher one.
> > Then again, some places with 50,000 people are less notable than
> > some very small places.  But if you can point to the fact that a
> > place has 50,000 inhabitants (or was the birth places for a
> > president), then it is a lot easier to defend its notability.
> >
>
> On one side we have western places. For instance, Wikipedia has an article
> about my town, political division and local member of parliament. My town
> and surrounding ones (all of which have wiki articles) have a population of
> 1,500 or so. Rambot has written articles about towns 1/10th of the size of
> mine.
>
> However, whilst lists of Australian, German or US (and more) topics are
> mostly blue links, there are lists populated almost entirely by red links,
> such as [[List of Sudanese singers]]. Unfortunately, very few or no reliable
> sources will probably be found to warrant articles about these singers (at
> least not on the internet), and the only way to get coverage of a large
> portion of them would be through original research (which we can't do
> obviously), or to find print sources. So does anyone on this mailing list
> happen to have access to archives for a Sudanese newspaper? It would be nice
> if we could get more things like [[WP:AWNB]] for smaller countries, so we
> can find people more local* who may very well be able to walk to a library
> to find sources and add articles. That could work wonders for coverage :-)
>
> *And I may be a bit too ambitious in assuming we have editors from just
> about every country
>
> Michael Billington
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

--
Written with passion,
J.L.W.S. The Special One


subject: [Wikitech-l] MediaWiki as a Wikimedia project

body:
David Gerard wrote:
> On 09/01/07, Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> By the way, there is a growing demand for admins for MediaWiki projects.
>> In the Netherlands there are at least two people I know off doing admin
>> work professionally. It is a GOOD thing because it makes MediaWiki and
>> Wikis acceptable and known by a substantially large and influential
>> group of people.

Are you talking admin as in sysop, or as in system administrator?

Matthew Flaschen

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from_name: Steve Sanbeg

subject: [Wikitech-l] slowness today

body:
On Tue, 09 Jan 2007 22:03:30 +0100, Erik Zachte wrote:

> Repost with better formatting:

>
> Also what happens when a switch stateent has hundreds of clauses, each with
> new sub-templates: are these all resolved before resolving the switch? Just
> wondering.

I believe they are resolved going in, then discarded.  I experimented with
using a magic word to defer evaluation (i.e. {{defer:template}}) but
haven't had a chance to finish it or get any opinions on it. But there is
a note on bug #8314


subject:
[Wikitech-l] Category Intersections: "Proof of Concept Page"
 feedback, please?

body:
Steve Bennett wrote:
> On 1/6/07, Matthew Flaschen <matthew.flaschen at gatech.edu> wrote:
>>> Of course, some difficult to anticipate factors are that if category
>>> intersections are adopted and become popular, we will likely see a movement
>>> towards more implied categories ("Americans" and "Actors" instead of
>>> "American Actors")
>> This is why people want the intersections, so the system should be able
>> to scale efficiently enough for it.
>
> Indeed, what we probably want is a way to formalise these "implied
> categories". Like creating a category "American actors" which simply
> contains the text "Category:Americans Category:Actors", and having the
> whole thing work just as you'd expect.

That shouldn't even be necessary.  That just creates the semantic
problems we have.  It could be as simple as

[[:Intersect:American|Actors|Link text]]

That reminds me.  What about category unions?

Matthew Flaschen

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from_name: Ashar Voultoiz

subject: [Wikitech-l] Use binary to represent varchar rather than UTF8

body:
howard chen wrote:
> in all table creation statments, such as
>
> CREATE TABLE `categorylinks` (
>   `cl_from` int(8) unsigned NOT NULL default '0',
>   `cl_to` varchar(255) binary NOT NULL default '',
>   `cl_sortkey` varchar(255) binary NOT NULL default '',
>   `cl_timestamp` timestamp(14) NOT NULL,
>   UNIQUE KEY `cl_from` (`cl_from`,`cl_to`),
>   KEY `cl_sortkey` (`cl_to`,`cl_sortkey`(128)),
>   KEY `cl_timestamp` (`cl_to`,`cl_timestamp`)
> ) TYPE=InnoDB;
>
>
> why use binary to represent varchar, not UTF8?

Brion answered that earlier:

http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/mediawiki-l/2006-February/010267.html

To quote him, utf8 in database will mostly:

* Make indexes larger (3 bytes per character)
* Cause failures if you use characters outside the BOM in page titles,
usernames, etc.

cheers,

--
Ashar Voultoiz - WP++++
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Hashar
http://www.livejournal.com/community/wikitech/
IM: hashar at jabber.org  ICQ: 15325080


subject: [Wikitech-l] Adequate place for new wikistats

body:
Felipe Ortega wrote:
> Hi all.
>
> The Libresoft Group, at Universidad Rey Juan Carlos (Madrid), has
> started to generate a bunch of interesting metric graphics about
> Wikipedia.
>
> These graphics currently include histograms about article size. They
> will soon also include, for instance, caracterization of several
> important groups of authors and their evolution in time (much in the
> way Jimbo Wales exposed a few months ago).
>
> We plan to extend these results to all language versions of
> Wikipedia.
>
> As these graphics complement current wikimetrics info about the
> project, generated by Erik Zatche's scripts, we wonder about the
> better place to release them, in case Wikimedia is interested (under
> a GPL license).
>
> Could we include them in an "official repository page" with metrics
> about Wikipedia? Should we place only a link to a server of our own?
> Which could be the better place to create those links?

Hello Felipe,

You can probably create a new bunch of articles on
http://meta.wikipedia.org and uploads the pictures on
http://commons.wikimedia.org (since they are GPL).

We can probably host them at stats.wikimedia.org too :)

--
Ashar Voultoiz - WP++++
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Hashar
http://www.livejournal.com/community/wikitech/
IM: hashar at jabber.org  ICQ: 15325080


list: wikien-l

from_name: Ron Ritzman

subject: [WikiEN-l] Deletions and double jeopardy

body:
On 1/9/07, MacGyverMagic/Mgm <macgyvermagic at gmail.com> wrote:

> No, no, no! This is the 4th time I'm tearing my hair out over a deletion
> debate.

I know that this doesn't apply in the case of a "notice board" but has
a "double jeopardy" system for AFD ever been considered? Since normal
deletions are based on consensus and consensus changes it shouldn't be
absolute but it could be useful for certain kinds of deletions.

Notability is a good example. It would work like this. Someone doesn't
think that "Joe Bloggshmoe" is notable and nominates his article for
deletion and the consensus is " strong keep". The AFD discussion is
then closed "with prejudice" which means that the article can never
again be AFDed for "lack of notability". (but could be deleted for
other reasons) This would make sense since "notable" people and
subjects don't just one day magically stop being notable.

Such a system would keep editors from continually having to defend
their articles in AFD and give them more time to improve them.


body:
On 1/9/07, Parker Peters <onmywayoutster at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> You might as well have just phrased this "sorry, you didn't genuflect deep
> enough for my taste, so you don't get any serious consideration."

Are you sure you're looking at the same contribs, Parker? Let's see some of
these edit summaries:

"rv scientologist trying to whitewash his cult's crimes"
"Replaced page with '{{unblock|lying scientologist ChrisO still tries to own
the [Oxford Capacity Analysis] page and whitewash the crimes of his cult
there.}}'"
"rv dumbfuck; it's not a legitimate facebuster."
"rv dumbfuck: a move which incorporates a headlock is a DDT, not a
faceplant."
"rv stop being a dumbfuck fanboi."
"rv dumbfuck who abuses bots"
"rv dumbfuck kneejerk asssucking moron who cant read the fucking change
being made"
"rv dumbfuck who doesn't know anything yet AGAIN."

I find it difficult to imagine any circumstance in which such behavior would
ever be acceptable. You're free to disagree, but please do be aware that
your doing so does not translate into me changing my mind unless you
actually *convince* me to. I don't consider actions I take to be final; if
other users disagree, they should be perfectly able to say so or even
reverse my actions, provided they have a good explanation.

Feel free to look into this, if you like, but please do so on your own dime.

-Luna


from_name: Rob Church

body:
On 09/01/07, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> Mmm. There's talk of my company selling my services to a customer as a
> MediaWiki sysadmin, as they have several installs with *no sysadmin
> responsible* ... and I'm going to have to learn to code soon whether I
> like it or not ...

A clever bloke like yourself will pick up the nuances of MediaWiki
development fairly rapidly, both for extensions and hacking core code.

Rob Church


from_name: Marek Najmajer

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Entries for deletion.... issues from the
	ThirdWorld

body:
I've been reading some of your meassages or votes for entry deletion, and
I'm getting more and more sad.

You are trying to have a 'clean' worthfull encyclopaedia with assurance
there is no meaningless article in it.
It could be understood in case of written, printed book which looks great in
the bookshelf (I like books anyway).

But deletion of entire entries only because they are not so wide known?
Wait a moment!
It's against spirit and rationale od Wikipedia!

I can present you my own list of drivers which, I hope, stimulated people to
support Wikipedia:
Here you have it:
    1. to have free (no cost) source of information,
    2. to work out bias and antagonisms in different national, religious,
cultural, philosophical perspectives (in the wake of NPOV),
    3. to have much wider scope of entries (with no limits of printing,
publishing and paper and timber production - greens beware!),
    4. to have more fresh infos before it was even printed in newspapers,

Recapitulating, the corner stone of quality and the competitive edge of
Wikipedia as a whole is:
    * early delivery,
    * different perspectives,
    * market verification,
    * wider scope.

Now some of you are trying to make Wikipedia a digital representation of
printed encyclopaedias. Balanced and highly representative.
Great apetite and the results...? The results are at no surprise rather
mediocre. Wikipedia is not of the same level of quality as printed
Encyclopaedia Britannica.

Cleaning-oriented Wikipedians are focusing only on the first driver I've
mentioned hereinbefore. They want to have it for free and still of the
highest quality.
Why it falls short expectations.
Because it is only a try to transfer _old paper paradigm_ to completely
different _opensource digital world_, where there are no more constraints
of:
* paper and printing costs,
* costs of scalability od delivery,
* difficulties in searching,
* cost barriers of royalties.

Instead, we need - in my opinion - to exploit in whole new possibilities of
this new 'brave' model of knowledge sharing and diffusion.

If I remember, this discussion started with issues from the Third World.
Someone has counted entries from different countries and someone another
analized it and shouted:
"Wait a moment! It's a discrimination of the Third World! There is so great
overrepresentation of the developed countries."
Yes, indeed, this analyst was right.
But... What solutions were proposed?

Here you have a proposal: "In order to balance representations of different
nations and cultures, we will delete some articles."
I hope I misunderstood it!
If unfortunately not, it could be awful act of vadalism of voluntary work of
millions Wikipedians. Once again a kind of affirmative action or 'positive
discrimination' at cost of the whole community.

I think problem solution should be carefully adjusted to solve the root
cause. So:
* If you want to support entries from the Third World, do support creating
and editing new articles from these area.
* If you want to have a highly balanced set of high quality entries to
compete with printed Encyclopaedias, find some way to promote quality
(featured arcticle is an excellent step in this direction). Maybe the next
step would be creating more elaborate quality hierarchy and some new
features for quality demanding internauts like searching entries within some
quality criteria.

Maybe I'm trying here to invent gunpowder but in my opinion:
*The power of Wikipedia is to expand*
To expand: in member count, in scope, in presentation form (maps, semantic
taxonomies, graphical searching)

There are so many entries to create and so many issues to solve (ideological
battles).
Deletion of articles which looks like of little meaning is of least
importance.

Best regards,
Marqoz


from_name: Jeff Raymond

body:
Ron Ritzman wrote:
> On 1/9/07, MacGyverMagic/Mgm <macgyvermagic at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> No, no, no! This is the 4th time I'm tearing my hair out over a deletion
>> debate.
>
> I know that this doesn't apply in the case of a "notice board" but has
> a "double jeopardy" system for AFD ever been considered? Since normal
> deletions are based on consensus and consensus changes it shouldn't be
> absolute but it could be useful for certain kinds of deletions.

Sort of.  It actually got good vibes until I actually tried to use it in a
discussion (after spending 6 weeks gaining the necessary consensus at
[[Wikipedia:Speedy Keep]]), where it was then unceremoniously dumped.

This would be a smart move, which is why it will never get adopted.

-Jeff


from_name: Domas Mituzas

subject: [Wikitech-l] slowness today

body:
We had some slowness today, where after some temporary issue cluster ended
up spending >50% of it's time working on Spanish wikipedia template. We
nuked the template (es.wikipedia site was also turned off at some moment),
so now it is all up and running.

The template was used for adding a single line of text, though it took 20
seconds to render. ;-)

We'll probably have to do something about that.

Cheers for now,
Domas


body:
A very interesting and comprehensive post.

You forgot to mention about the language barrier.

I agree that verifiability is important, but making it compulsory
introduces problems such as systemic bias.

Where should we raise this issue for further discussion?

I've been working on an article on a Singaporean movie - I Not Stupid.
It's close to GA status, but there is very little referenced
information on the production of the film. My friend suggested I
interview Jack Neo - my idol, who wrote the movie. Since his child
studies in my school, getting an interview is not out of the question.
The problem is: how do I publish it?

On 1/9/07, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com> wrote:
> This is true. However, is there a workable solution to that?
>
> I remember when people didn't worry too much about references on
> Wikipedia. Sure, you were supposed to have them, but as long as you
> had a nice article, nobody cared.
>
> Well, what if I know the truth, but it is not written anywhere? What
> if I interview 100 people to make sure they agree, and they do? What
> if it is common knowledge in my village, which nobody will challenge?
>
> The answer: it will be labeled "unverifiable" or "non-notable" and deleted.
>
> Wikipedia's current message to the world: If it's never been written
> about, or been mentioned in a sound recording or a film, it's not
> important.
>
> Well:
>
> 1) Not all cultures have writing.
> 2) Among those cultures which DO have writing, they each place
> different importance values on it. In my daily life, I am using it
> constantly. My desk is littered with books with their titles written
> on them, products with their labels. If I go driving, some of the
> signs will have writing on them, there are billboards, signs for
> businesses, all of them using writing. But in some cultures, writing
> may not be used so extensively. Maybe it is usually just used for
> poetry, or just for writing letters to people who are far away. The
> concept of mass communication is foreign to most cultures still, and
> if you don't need mass communication, writing is hardly necessary,
> except to write a letter to someone who is not present.
> 3) Among the population of the Earth, a very, very large portion live
> in societies that are not highly literate or which don't place a high
> importance on writing. Most societies don't record every aspect of
> life the way we do. Yes, there are newspapers in India (although to
> the best of my knowledge there are no newspapers in Igbo or Aymara or
> Afar), there are books in Nepal, but if you look it up, the sheer
> volume of materials published in the First World per-capita far, far,
> far, far exceeds that of anywhere else.
>
> Here, if someone sees an insect doing something strange, they write a
> paper or a book about it, and if they don't, somebody else will! But
> in most countries, this is not the case. Books cost money to make.
> People in developing countries often don't have this money. There are
> no or (comparatively) few publishers there, and those that do exist
> cannot afford to put out the sheer volume of books put out by
> publishers here because the demand tends to be much lower (especially
> for non-fiction books). They do not have Amazon.com or massive
> real-life bookstores, so "specialty" books would not sell because they
> would have no way to reach their intended audience!
>
> And they say, that the internet will change all this. Well, in these
> societies, although internet access is on the rise, it is still very,
> very, low. Even if you do have internet access, it takes a somewhat
> higher degree of computer literacy to be able to _publish_ on the
> internet. What? You want to put your knowledge on Wikipedia? Go ahead!
>
> ...
>
> Sorry, your knowledge is not referenced. It has been deleted. You know
> nothing that is worth anything.
>
> We are telling the developing world that they do not matter and that
> they are stupid.
>
> Mark
>
> On 09/01/07, J.L.W.S. The Special One <hildanknight at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Requiring verifiability creates systemic bias. To be more accurate, it
> > enforces the systemic bias of existing references.
> >
> > On 1/9/07, Michael Billington <michael.billington at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > On 1/9/07, Lars Aronsson <lars at aronsson.se> wrote:
> > > >
> > > > Andre Engels wrote:
> > > > > I guess I should not go into the examples, but in this case my opinion
> > > > is
> > > > > that 50,000 would be too high a limit,  I myself would be thinking of
> > > > 2,000
> > > > > or 5,000.
> > > >
> > > > Absolutely.  Perhaps for the U.S. and parts of Germany we are
> > > > approaching full coverage of all places with 5,000 people.  But
> > > > for India I doubt if we have covered all cities with 50,000.
> > > > Nothing stops the limit from being set at 500 too.  But a lower
> > > > limit could be questioned a lot more easily than a higher one.
> > > > Then again, some places with 50,000 people are less notable than
> > > > some very small places.  But if you can point to the fact that a
> > > > place has 50,000 inhabitants (or was the birth places for a
> > > > president), then it is a lot easier to defend its notability.
> > > >
> > >
> > > On one side we have western places. For instance, Wikipedia has an article
> > > about my town, political division and local member of parliament. My town
> > > and surrounding ones (all of which have wiki articles) have a population of
> > > 1,500 or so. Rambot has written articles about towns 1/10th of the size of
> > > mine.
> > >
> > > However, whilst lists of Australian, German or US (and more) topics are
> > > mostly blue links, there are lists populated almost entirely by red links,
> > > such as [[List of Sudanese singers]]. Unfortunately, very few or no reliable
> > > sources will probably be found to warrant articles about these singers (at
> > > least not on the internet), and the only way to get coverage of a large
> > > portion of them would be through original research (which we can't do
> > > obviously), or to find print sources. So does anyone on this mailing list
> > > happen to have access to archives for a Sudanese newspaper? It would be nice
> > > if we could get more things like [[WP:AWNB]] for smaller countries, so we
> > > can find people more local* who may very well be able to walk to a library
> > > to find sources and add articles. That could work wonders for coverage :-)
> > >
> > > *And I may be a bit too ambitious in assuming we have editors from just
> > > about every country
> > >
> > > Michael Billington
> > > _______________________________________________
> > > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > > Wikipedia-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> > > http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> > >
> >
> >
> > --
> > Written with passion,
> > J.L.W.S. The Special One
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > Wikipedia-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> > http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> >
>
>
> --
> Refije dirije lanm? yo paske nou posede pw?p bato.
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

--
Written with passion,
J.L.W.S. The Special One


body:
On 1/9/07, Parker Peters <onmywayoutster at gmail.com> wrote:

>
> I've yet to see where these are connected to the user who protested to us.
> Perhaps that is the problem, your willingness to jump at shadows and
> underlying hostility to anyone who doesn't genuflect "just so" towards
> you.

While I do value your opinions, I will be frank on this count: I don't trust
you to be neutral.

I openly challenge you to take a dig through my postings to this mailing
list, and back up your claims of my behavior and attitudes. Go for it. If
you can find evidence that I've been serially abusing the few powers and
positions of trust the community has seen fit to grant me, by all means,
bring it to my attention. I have no qualms with specific and reasonable
complaints grounded in fact.

In this case, I'm not the only user who suspects block evasion. One IP
address is blocked for trolling and general disruption, a second IP address
comes onto the scene and begins making the exact same reverts -- hardly a
stretch of the imagination, here.

Again, as you seem to be concerned by what's happened. I have no objection
if you desire to pursue this on your own.

-Luna


list: foundation-l

from_name: effe iets anders

subject: [Foundation-l] Wikimeet Rotterdam with board

body:
Hi all!

apperently everybody forgot to mention it in here, so i'll do it anyway,
sorry that it is this late :) Coming friday, that is january 12th, the
Wikimedia Foundation Board is in the Netherlands for a Board Meeting, and
from 20.00h CET on, they will attend to an open WikiMeet. The location will
be the Golden Tulip Hotel (near the Erasmus Bridge), and the meetup will
have no formal character. Of course I hope to see a lot of you guys who are
able to attend :)

Greetings from Holland,

Lodewijk


list: wikimedia-l


body:
Perhaps I could join Wikinews and add a copy of the interview there?

On 1/9/07, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com> wrote:
> Yes. If you interview Jack Neo, you should keep a copy of it somewhere
> online or on your personal computer. You may reference it from the
> article, but it is of the utmost importance that you can produce a
> copy of the interview if anyone wants it.
>
> Mark
>
> On 09/01/07, J.L.W.S. The Special One <hildanknight at gmail.com> wrote:
> > A very interesting and comprehensive post.
> >
> > You forgot to mention about the language barrier.
> >
> > I agree that verifiability is important, but making it compulsory
> > introduces problems such as systemic bias.
> >
> > Where should we raise this issue for further discussion?
> >
> > I've been working on an article on a Singaporean movie - I Not Stupid.
> > It's close to GA status, but there is very little referenced
> > information on the production of the film. My friend suggested I
> > interview Jack Neo - my idol, who wrote the movie. Since his child
> > studies in my school, getting an interview is not out of the question.
> > The problem is: how do I publish it?
> >
> > On 1/9/07, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > This is true. However, is there a workable solution to that?
> > >
> > > I remember when people didn't worry too much about references on
> > > Wikipedia. Sure, you were supposed to have them, but as long as you
> > > had a nice article, nobody cared.
> > >
> > > Well, what if I know the truth, but it is not written anywhere? What
> > > if I interview 100 people to make sure they agree, and they do? What
> > > if it is common knowledge in my village, which nobody will challenge?
> > >
> > > The answer: it will be labeled "unverifiable" or "non-notable" and deleted.
> > >
> > > Wikipedia's current message to the world: If it's never been written
> > > about, or been mentioned in a sound recording or a film, it's not
> > > important.
> > >
> > > Well:
> > >
> > > 1) Not all cultures have writing.
> > > 2) Among those cultures which DO have writing, they each place
> > > different importance values on it. In my daily life, I am using it
> > > constantly. My desk is littered with books with their titles written
> > > on them, products with their labels. If I go driving, some of the
> > > signs will have writing on them, there are billboards, signs for
> > > businesses, all of them using writing. But in some cultures, writing
> > > may not be used so extensively. Maybe it is usually just used for
> > > poetry, or just for writing letters to people who are far away. The
> > > concept of mass communication is foreign to most cultures still, and
> > > if you don't need mass communication, writing is hardly necessary,
> > > except to write a letter to someone who is not present.
> > > 3) Among the population of the Earth, a very, very large portion live
> > > in societies that are not highly literate or which don't place a high
> > > importance on writing. Most societies don't record every aspect of
> > > life the way we do. Yes, there are newspapers in India (although to
> > > the best of my knowledge there are no newspapers in Igbo or Aymara or
> > > Afar), there are books in Nepal, but if you look it up, the sheer
> > > volume of materials published in the First World per-capita far, far,
> > > far, far exceeds that of anywhere else.
> > >
> > > Here, if someone sees an insect doing something strange, they write a
> > > paper or a book about it, and if they don't, somebody else will! But
> > > in most countries, this is not the case. Books cost money to make.
> > > People in developing countries often don't have this money. There are
> > > no or (comparatively) few publishers there, and those that do exist
> > > cannot afford to put out the sheer volume of books put out by
> > > publishers here because the demand tends to be much lower (especially
> > > for non-fiction books). They do not have Amazon.com or massive
> > > real-life bookstores, so "specialty" books would not sell because they
> > > would have no way to reach their intended audience!
> > >
> > > And they say, that the internet will change all this. Well, in these
> > > societies, although internet access is on the rise, it is still very,
> > > very, low. Even if you do have internet access, it takes a somewhat
> > > higher degree of computer literacy to be able to _publish_ on the
> > > internet. What? You want to put your knowledge on Wikipedia? Go ahead!
> > >
> > > ...
> > >
> > > Sorry, your knowledge is not referenced. It has been deleted. You know
> > > nothing that is worth anything.
> > >
> > > We are telling the developing world that they do not matter and that
> > > they are stupid.
> > >
> > > Mark
> > >
> > > On 09/01/07, J.L.W.S. The Special One <hildanknight at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > > Requiring verifiability creates systemic bias. To be more accurate, it
> > > > enforces the systemic bias of existing references.
> > > >
> > > > On 1/9/07, Michael Billington <michael.billington at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > > > On 1/9/07, Lars Aronsson <lars at aronsson.se> wrote:
> > > > > >
> > > > > > Andre Engels wrote:
> > > > > > > I guess I should not go into the examples, but in this case my opinion
> > > > > > is
> > > > > > > that 50,000 would be too high a limit,  I myself would be thinking of
> > > > > > 2,000
> > > > > > > or 5,000.
> > > > > >
> > > > > > Absolutely.  Perhaps for the U.S. and parts of Germany we are
> > > > > > approaching full coverage of all places with 5,000 people.  But
> > > > > > for India I doubt if we have covered all cities with 50,000.
> > > > > > Nothing stops the limit from being set at 500 too.  But a lower
> > > > > > limit could be questioned a lot more easily than a higher one.
> > > > > > Then again, some places with 50,000 people are less notable than
> > > > > > some very small places.  But if you can point to the fact that a
> > > > > > place has 50,000 inhabitants (or was the birth places for a
> > > > > > president), then it is a lot easier to defend its notability.
> > > > > >
> > > > >
> > > > > On one side we have western places. For instance, Wikipedia has an article
> > > > > about my town, political division and local member of parliament. My town
> > > > > and surrounding ones (all of which have wiki articles) have a population of
> > > > > 1,500 or so. Rambot has written articles about towns 1/10th of the size of
> > > > > mine.
> > > > >
> > > > > However, whilst lists of Australian, German or US (and more) topics are
> > > > > mostly blue links, there are lists populated almost entirely by red links,
> > > > > such as [[List of Sudanese singers]]. Unfortunately, very few or no reliable
> > > > > sources will probably be found to warrant articles about these singers (at
> > > > > least not on the internet), and the only way to get coverage of a large
> > > > > portion of them would be through original research (which we can't do
> > > > > obviously), or to find print sources. So does anyone on this mailing list
> > > > > happen to have access to archives for a Sudanese newspaper? It would be nice
> > > > > if we could get more things like [[WP:AWNB]] for smaller countries, so we
> > > > > can find people more local* who may very well be able to walk to a library
> > > > > to find sources and add articles. That could work wonders for coverage :-)
> > > > >
> > > > > *And I may be a bit too ambitious in assuming we have editors from just
> > > > > about every country
> > > > >
> > > > > Michael Billington
> > > > > _______________________________________________
> > > > > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > > > > Wikipedia-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> > > > > http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> > > > >
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > --
> > > > Written with passion,
> > > > J.L.W.S. The Special One
> > > >
> > > > _______________________________________________
> > > > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > > > Wikipedia-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> > > > http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> > > >
> > >
> > >
> > > --
> > > Refije dirije lanm? yo paske nou posede pw?p bato.
> > >
> > > _______________________________________________
> > > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > > Wikipedia-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> > > http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> > >
> >
> >
> > --
> > Written with passion,
> > J.L.W.S. The Special One
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > Wikipedia-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> > http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> >
>
>
> --
> Refije dirije lanm? yo paske nou posede pw?p bato.
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

--
Written with passion,
J.L.W.S. The Special One


from_name: Bob Petrovich

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Wrongfully blocked by admin who lies and on behalf of
	users trying to "own" articles

body:
Greetings,

I believe I have been wrongly blocked, but because the blocking
administrator also REMOVED my complaint from the wikipedia administrators'
list board, I feel the need to write here as well.

I came on tonight looking up wrestling moves and found one - the Double
Underhook Facebuster - in the wrong page, as despite its sometime name (and
it goes by several others) it is not a Facebuster, but rather a DDT variant.

So I made the appropriate changes on the [[Facebuster]] page and the [[DDT
(professional wrestling)]] page.

I noted with some problematic nature the behavior of admins earlier to
someone else who had tried to make the same factual correction; this
behavior also concerns me and I mentioned it on the administrators
notification page as the incidents page was locked down for some reason.

Samuel Blanning not only took it on himself to block me, but to remove my
corrections from the pages, after I reported the harassment by Paulley and
Naohiro19, who were threatening me as they continually tried to vandalize
wikipedia and accused me of vandalism for making factual corrections.

Samuel Blanning's edits:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia%3AAdministrators%27_noticeboard&diff=99683027&oldid=99681687
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Facebuster&diff=99683109&oldid=99682002
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=DDT_%28professional_wrestling%29&diff=99683020&oldid=99682074

Paulley's behavior was all abusive in nature: he continually asserted that
he has some "right" to control these articles in edit summaries such as
here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=DDT_%28professional_wrestling%29&diff=99681937&oldid=99681376

Naohiro19 - who continually blindly removed my improvements - has since
REMOVED MY UNBLOCK REQUEST.
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk%3A72.178.235.28&diff=99684526&oldid=99684256

This is beyond abusive behavior by these admins and I request the
appropriate disciplinary action be taken against them at once.

The IP address that comes up my error is 72.178.235.28, it said I should
mention this.

Bob Petrovich.


body:
I have no idea who the other person is. I have barely used wikipedia before,
but I know that it's supposed to be accurate and people are supposed to fix
things when they see something wrong.

If that's not what wikipedia is, I guess mr wales is a liar and your
"encyclopedia" is a fraud.

Bob Petrovich

On 1/9/07, Luna <lunasantin at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Mr Petrovich,
>
> I've had a quick look at these, and associated talk pages and block logs:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/72.178.235.28
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/129.7.35.194
>
> Given what appear to be continued and gross violations of [[WP:3RR]] under
> both IP addresses, abusive edit summaries and personal attacks, failure to
> make reasonable use of talk pages and the dispute resolution process, and
> what seems to be block evasion through what equates to sockpuppetry, I'm
> afraid I will have to decline your request at this time.
>
> If you have a credible defense or other explanation, feel free.
>
> Thank you for contacting unblock-en-l,
> -Luna
>
> On 1/9/07, Bob Petrovich <wrestfan01 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Greetings,
> >
> > I believe I have been wrongly blocked, but because the blocking
> > administrator also REMOVED my complaint from the wikipedia
> > administrators'
> > list board, I feel the need to write here as well.
> >
> > I came on tonight looking up wrestling moves and found one - the Double
> > Underhook Facebuster - in the wrong page, as despite its sometime name
> > (and
> > it goes by several others) it is not a Facebuster, but rather a DDT
> > variant.
> >
> > So I made the appropriate changes on the [[Facebuster]] page and the
> > [[DDT
> > (professional wrestling)]] page.
> >
> > I noted with some problematic nature the behavior of admins earlier to
> > someone else who had tried to make the same factual correction; this
> > behavior also concerns me and I mentioned it on the administrators
> > notification page as the incidents page was locked down for some reason.
> >
> > Samuel Blanning not only took it on himself to block me, but to remove
> > my
> > corrections from the pages, after I reported the harassment by Paulley
> > and
> > Naohiro19, who were threatening me as they continually tried to
> > vandalize
> > wikipedia and accused me of vandalism for making factual corrections.
> >
> > Samuel Blanning's edits:
> >
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia%3AAdministrators%27_noticeboard&diff=99683027&oldid=99681687
> >
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Facebuster&diff=99683109&oldid=99682002
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=DDT_%28professional_wrestling%29&diff=99683020&oldid=99682074
> >
> >
> > Paulley's behavior was all abusive in nature: he continually asserted
> > that
> > he has some "right" to control these articles in edit summaries such as
> > here:
> >
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=DDT_%28professional_wrestling%29&diff=99681937&oldid=99681376
> >
> > Naohiro19 - who continually blindly removed my improvements - has since
> > REMOVED MY UNBLOCK REQUEST.
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk%3A72.178.235.28&diff=99684526&oldid=99684256
> >
> >
> > This is beyond abusive behavior by these admins and I request the
> > appropriate disciplinary action be taken against them at once.
> >
> > The IP address that comes up my error is 72.178.235.28, it said I should
> > mention this.
> >
> > Bob Petrovich.
> > _______________________________________________
> > 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: Parker Peters

body:
On 1/9/07, Bob Petrovich <wrestfan01 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Greetings,
>
> I believe I have been wrongly blocked, but because the blocking
> administrator also REMOVED my complaint from the wikipedia administrators'
> list board, I feel the need to write here as well.
>
> I came on tonight looking up wrestling moves and found one - the Double
> Underhook Facebuster - in the wrong page, as despite its sometime name
> (and
> it goes by several others) it is not a Facebuster, but rather a DDT
> variant.
>
> So I made the appropriate changes on the [[Facebuster]] page and the [[DDT
> (professional wrestling)]] page.
>
> I noted with some problematic nature the behavior of admins earlier to
> someone else who had tried to make the same factual correction; this
> behavior also concerns me and I mentioned it on the administrators
> notification page as the incidents page was locked down for some reason.
>
> Samuel Blanning not only took it on himself to block me, but to remove my
> corrections from the pages, after I reported the harassment by Paulley and
> Naohiro19, who were threatening me as they continually tried to vandalize
> wikipedia and accused me of vandalism for making factual corrections.
>
> Samuel Blanning's edits:
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia%3AAdministrators%27_noticeboard&diff=99683027&oldid=99681687
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Facebuster&diff=99683109&oldid=99682002
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=DDT_%28professional_wrestling%29&diff=99683020&oldid=99682074
>
> Paulley's behavior was all abusive in nature: he continually asserted that
> he has some "right" to control these articles in edit summaries such as
> here:
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=DDT_%28professional_wrestling%29&diff=99681937&oldid=99681376
>
> Naohiro19 - who continually blindly removed my improvements - has since
> REMOVED MY UNBLOCK REQUEST.
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk%3A72.178.235.28&diff=99684526&oldid=99684256
>
> This is beyond abusive behavior by these admins and I request the
> appropriate disciplinary action be taken against them at once.
>
> The IP address that comes up my error is 72.178.235.28, it said I should
> mention this.
>
> Bob Petrovich.
> _______________________________________________

This looks a lot like the sort of institutional problems I was talking about
earlier.

Parker


from_name: C. Currie

subject: [WikiEN-l] Introduction to "Allegations of Israeli Apartheid"

body:
I would like to draw the attention of readers to the current introduction
of an article entitled "Allegations of Israeli Apartheid":

*"Allegations of Israeli apartheid* draw a controversial
analogy<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analogy>from South
Africa <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Africa>'s treatment of non-whites
during the apartheid
era<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_South_Africa_in_the_apartheid_era>to
Israel <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israel>'s treatment of Arabs living in
the West Bank <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Bank> and Israel. Those who
reject the analogy argue that it has no basis in fact and is intended as
political slander to malign Israel. They say that legitimate Israeli
security needs justify the practices that prompt the analogy, and argue that
the practices of many other countries, to which the term is not applied,
more closely resemble South African apartheid."

Some editors are of the opinion that this introduction is
one-sided, arguing it lists the arguments of critics but not proponents, is
weighted toward one position, and goes beyond the succinct definitions
usually favoured for Wikipedia introductions.  Other editors have opposed
efforts to modify the section, arguing that the current version follows the
Manual of Style.

This is obviously a contentious article, and accusations of partisanship
have been made on both sides.  I would request that mailing list
contributors review this dispute, and suggest fair and neutral wording.

Thank you,

CJCurrie


body:
On 1/9/07, Luna <lunasantin at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Mr Petrovich,
>
> I've had a quick look at these, and associated talk pages and block logs:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/72.178.235.28
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/129.7.35.194
>
> Given what appear to be continued and gross violations of [[WP:3RR]] under
> both IP addresses, abusive edit summaries and personal attacks, failure to
> make reasonable use of talk pages and the dispute resolution process, and
> what seems to be block evasion through what equates to sockpuppetry, I'm
> afraid I will have to decline your request at this time.
>
> If you have a credible defense or other explanation, feel free.
>
> Thank you for contacting unblock-en-l,
> -Luna
> <snip>

Great, Luna, now you've gone and shown the problem with Wikipedians feeling
high and mighty.

You might as well have just phrased this "sorry, you didn't genuflect deep
enough for my taste, so you don't get any serious consideration."

I've looked over the same situations. In both cases, we have editors who
feel they somehow have ownership of the content of pro wrestling-based
articles. In one case, we have an editor who went off the deep end after
being serially reverted. In the other (Mr Petrovich) we have an editor who
kept a level head even as his opponent started screaming about how he
started the article and therefore somehow had some right to decide what
content was on it.

And as for an admin removing a valid unblock request, or an admin removing a
formal protest from administrators' noticeboard? This is precisely the kind
of behavior that makes good editors see wikipedia as a cabalist institution
and destroys any hope they have that the administrators are behaving in good
faith.

Parker


from_name: Erik Zachte

subject: [Wikitech-l] slowness today

body:
I am in the process of upgrading my Mediawiki parser for TomeRaider files,
adding template processing, and I also noticed how complicated templates can
becomeHere is an example: For article fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris the
following templates were executed:#expr: 294 #if: 100 #ifexpr: 350After
disabling geohack code, which yields two numbers only (longitude and
latitude):#expr:   2 #if:  88 #ifexpr:   2Also what happens when a switch
stateent has hundreds of clauses, each with new sub-templates: are these all
resolved before resolving the switch? Just wondering.Erik
Zachte-----------------Domas:We had some slowness today, where after some
temporary issue cluster ended
up spending >50% of it's time working on Spanish wikipedia template. We
nuked the template (es.wikipedia site was also turned off at some moment),
so now it is all up and running.

The template was used for adding a single line of text, though it took 20
seconds to render. ;-)

We'll probably have to do something about that.


body:
No, sir.

They keep trying this. Paulley (a non-administrator) himself came by and
removed my legally filed unblock request now.

They are obviously trying to hide the abuse of power as they try to own this
article and it is amazing that you allow such behavior to continue.

I've been told wikipedia is about "assuming good faith" but all I'm seeing
here is a group of jerks trying to hold ownership of an article and
vandalizing wikipedia by making an article LESS accurate than it should be.

Bob Petrovich

On 1/9/07, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:
>
> On Tue, 9 Jan 2007 21:49:40 -0600, "Bob Petrovich"
> <wrestfan01 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> >I have no idea who the other person is. I have barely used wikipedia
> before,
> >but I know that it's supposed to be accurate and people are supposed to
> fix
> >things when they see something wrong.
> >If that's not what wikipedia is, I guess mr wales is a liar and your
> >"encyclopedia" is a fraud.
>
> Over-reacting, much?
>
> Guy (JzG)
> --
> http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> 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:
I also have no idea who the previous person it was using that IP address,
because it wasn't me. I gather you get a lot of vandals but believe me, I am
not the vandal here, a group of persons trying to abuse administrator power
to hold ownership of an article and make wikipedia less accurate than it can
be are the vandals.

Bob

On 1/9/07, Bob Petrovich <wrestfan01 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> No, sir.
>
> They keep trying this. Paulley (a non-administrator) himself came by and
> removed my legally filed unblock request now.
>
> They are obviously trying to hide the abuse of power as they try to own
> this article and it is amazing that you allow such behavior to continue.
>
> I've been told wikipedia is about "assuming good faith" but all I'm seeing
> here is a group of jerks trying to hold ownership of an article and
> vandalizing wikipedia by making an article LESS accurate than it should be.
>
> Bob Petrovich
>
> On 1/9/07, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:
> >
> > On Tue, 9 Jan 2007 21:49:40 -0600, "Bob Petrovich"
> > <wrestfan01 at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > >I have no idea who the other person is. I have barely used wikipedia
> > before,
> > >but I know that it's supposed to be accurate and people are supposed to
> > fix
> > >things when they see something wrong.
> > >If that's not what wikipedia is, I guess mr wales is a liar and your
> > >"encyclopedia" is a fraud.
> >
> > Over-reacting, much?
> >
> > Guy (JzG)
> > --
> > http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > 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: [Wikitech-l] slowness today

body:
Repost with better formatting:

I am in the process of upgrading my Mediawiki parser for TomeRaider files,
adding conditional template processing, and I also noticed how complicated
templates can become

Here is an example:

For article fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris the following templates were
executed:

#expr: 294
#if: 100
#ifexpr: 350

After disabling geohack code, which yields two numbers only (longitude and
latitude):
#expr: 2
#if: 88
#ifexpr: 2

Also what happens when a switch stateent has hundreds of clauses, each with
new sub-templates: are these all resolved before resolving the switch? Just
wondering.

Erik Zachte

-----------------

Domas:
We had some slowness today, where after some temporary issue cluster ended
up spending >50% of it's time working on Spanish wikipedia template. We
nuked the template (es.wikipedia site was also turned off at some moment),
so now it is all up and running.

The template was used for adding a single line of text, though it took 20
seconds to render. ;-)

We'll probably have to do something about that.


body:
Samuel Blanning also removed my report of vandalism against Paulley:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia%3AAdministrator_intervention_against_vandalism&diff=99682988&oldid=99682359

On 1/9/07, Bob Petrovich <wrestfan01 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> I also have no idea who the previous person it was using that IP address,
> because it wasn't me. I gather you get a lot of vandals but believe me, I am
> not the vandal here, a group of persons trying to abuse administrator power
> to hold ownership of an article and make wikipedia less accurate than it can
> be are the vandals.
>
> Bob
>
> On 1/9/07, Bob Petrovich <wrestfan01 at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > No, sir.
> >
> > They keep trying this. Paulley (a non-administrator) himself came by and
> > removed my legally filed unblock request now.
> >
> > They are obviously trying to hide the abuse of power as they try to own
> > this article and it is amazing that you allow such behavior to continue.
> >
> > I've been told wikipedia is about "assuming good faith" but all I'm
> > seeing here is a group of jerks trying to hold ownership of an article and
> > vandalizing wikipedia by making an article LESS accurate than it should be.
> >
> > Bob Petrovich
> >
> > On 1/9/07, Guy Chapman aka JzG < guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:
> > >
> > > On Tue, 9 Jan 2007 21:49:40 -0600, "Bob Petrovich"
> > > <wrestfan01 at gmail.com> wrote:
> > >
> > > >I have no idea who the other person is. I have barely used wikipedia
> > > before,
> > > >but I know that it's supposed to be accurate and people are supposed
> > > to fix
> > > >things when they see something wrong.
> > > >If that's not what wikipedia is, I guess mr wales is a liar and your
> > > >"encyclopedia" is a fraud.
> > >
> > > Over-reacting, much?
> > >
> > > Guy (JzG)
> > > --
> > > http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk
> > > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG
> > >
> > >
> > > _______________________________________________
> > > 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:
Paulley is lying, I am NOT that person.

Bob

On 1/9/07, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:
>
> On Tue, 9 Jan 2007 20:58:32 -0600, "Bob Petrovich"
> <wrestfan01 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> (some stuff)
>
> This is discussed here:
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Administrators%27_noticeboard/Incidents#User:129.7.35.194
>
> Guy (JzG)
> --
> http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> 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: Stan Shebs

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Entries for deletion.... issues from the Third
 World

body:
Steve wrote:
> There's no reason to pit pedia and library against one another, and simply
> because the possibility exists that you can find said newspaper subscription
> in a library doesn't create a reason against duplicating that information in
> pedia. There are interested parties outside Londoners and Bostonians.
>
I think you mistake my meaning - I was saying that books and newspapers
are an excellent, if unfashionable :-) , source of information worth
adding to WP. Doesn't everybody else type into WP with book propped open
in lap, or newspaper spread on floor?

Stan


from_name: Luna

subject: [WikiEN-l] psychosis and wikipedia.

body:
On 1/9/07, Christopher Thieme <cdthieme at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> Something like that would probably explain a lot about the bitterness,
> control issues, the incessant desire to be "right", etc. that some people
> have when approaching the subject of editing.

There's a goodly amount of ego involved, I think. Being able to say "I wrote
that, it's on Wikipedia" is pretty cool, to me, and I imagine other people
feel much the same way. Add into that a desire to feel "smart," and the need
to feel right and accepted among these other "smart" people is at least a
bit explained.

Something along these lines, perhaps:
http://www.usemod.com/cgi-bin/mb.pl?AttentionSeeker

Or, there's always Penny Arcade's take:
http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2004/03/19

But yeah, a more serious study of some sort would probably have some nifty
results. I'd be interested, at least.

-Luna


body:
User Ryulong has now removed my legally filed unblock request AGAIN and his
patsy Khoikoi has locked the page down.

You know what? This proves you are full of it, you aren't being in good
faith at all.

Bob

On 1/9/07, Bob Petrovich <wrestfan01 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Paulley is lying, I am NOT that person.
>
> Bob
>
> On 1/9/07, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net > wrote:
> >
> > On Tue, 9 Jan 2007 20:58:32 -0600, "Bob Petrovich"
> > < wrestfan01 at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > (some stuff)
> >
> > This is discussed here:
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Administrators%27_noticeboard/Incidents#User:129.7.35.194
> >
> >
> > Guy (JzG)
> > --
> > http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > 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: Nina Stratton

subject: [WikiEN-l] psychosis and wikipedia.

body:
Oh honies, don't get me started...

Nina

On 1/9/07, Luna <lunasantin at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 1/9/07, Christopher Thieme <cdthieme at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >
> > Something like that would probably explain a lot about the bitterness,
> > control issues, the incessant desire to be "right", etc. that some
> people
> > have when approaching the subject of editing.
>
>
> There's a goodly amount of ego involved, I think. Being able to say "I
> wrote
> that, it's on Wikipedia" is pretty cool, to me, and I imagine other people
> feel much the same way. Add into that a desire to feel "smart," and the
> need
> to feel right and accepted among these other "smart" people is at least a
> bit explained.
>
> Something along these lines, perhaps:
> http://www.usemod.com/cgi-bin/mb.pl?AttentionSeeker
>
> Or, there's always Penny Arcade's take:
> http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2004/03/19
>
> But yeah, a more serious study of some sort would probably have some nifty
> results. I'd be interested, at least.
>
> -Luna
> _______________________________________________
> 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: Michael Billington

body:
On 1/9/07, Lars Aronsson <lars at aronsson.se> wrote:
>
> Andre Engels wrote:
> > I guess I should not go into the examples, but in this case my opinion
> is
> > that 50,000 would be too high a limit,  I myself would be thinking of
> 2,000
> > or 5,000.
>
> Absolutely.  Perhaps for the U.S. and parts of Germany we are
> approaching full coverage of all places with 5,000 people.  But
> for India I doubt if we have covered all cities with 50,000.
> Nothing stops the limit from being set at 500 too.  But a lower
> limit could be questioned a lot more easily than a higher one.
> Then again, some places with 50,000 people are less notable than
> some very small places.  But if you can point to the fact that a
> place has 50,000 inhabitants (or was the birth places for a
> president), then it is a lot easier to defend its notability.
>

On one side we have western places. For instance, Wikipedia has an article
about my town, political division and local member of parliament. My town
and surrounding ones (all of which have wiki articles) have a population of
1,500 or so. Rambot has written articles about towns 1/10th of the size of
mine.

However, whilst lists of Australian, German or US (and more) topics are
mostly blue links, there are lists populated almost entirely by red links,
such as [[List of Sudanese singers]]. Unfortunately, very few or no reliable
sources will probably be found to warrant articles about these singers (at
least not on the internet), and the only way to get coverage of a large
portion of them would be through original research (which we can't do
obviously), or to find print sources. So does anyone on this mailing list
happen to have access to archives for a Sudanese newspaper? It would be nice
if we could get more things like [[WP:AWNB]] for smaller countries, so we
can find people more local* who may very well be able to walk to a library
to find sources and add articles. That could work wonders for coverage :-)

*And I may be a bit too ambitious in assuming we have editors from just
about every country

Michael Billington


from_name: Samuel Wantman

body:
>
>Subject: Re: [Wikitech-l] Category Intersections: "Proof of Concept Page"
>  feedback, please?
>Message: 6
>
>Steve Bennett wrote:
>
>That shouldn't even be necessary.  That just creates the semantic
>problems we have.  It could be as simple as
>
>[[:Intersect:American|Actors|Link text]]
>
>That reminds me.  What about category unions?

Rick Block and I spent some time discussing the syntax for intersections
(see [[Wikipedia:Category intersection]]  or the shortcut
[[WP:CI]]).  Since there can be more than two categories involved, and
you'd still want to pipe how it was displayed, we came up with:

[[:Intersection:Actors::Americans::Living people|Living American actors]]

I'm not certain that category unions are nearly as critical.  Since all
these "index" categories (Americans, Actors, Poets, Writers, etc...) would
be fully populated, they would already contain the union of all their
sub-categories.  The only thing missing would be unions of only some of the
subcategories, for instance, the union of Comedy films and Drama films, or
Poets and Novelists.  For most topics these do not seem very significant.

There are several ways intersections could be implemented.  We've sketched
out 3 alternative approaches at [[WP:CI]].

-- Samuel Wantman


body:
Luna,

I've yet to see where these are connected to the user who protested to us.
Perhaps that is the problem, your willingness to jump at shadows and
underlying hostility to anyone who doesn't genuflect "just so" towards you.

I've reviewed the edits of *the IP address in question* and it looks like a
user operating in good faith who's getting a pile-on from egomaniacs,
power-mad administrators who feel they have some right to remove a filed
complaint, and a particular bad seed who seems to think he has personal
ownership of pro-wrestling content on Wikipedia.

Parker

On 1/9/07, Luna <lunasantin at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 1/9/07, Parker Peters <onmywayoutster at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >
> > You might as well have just phrased this "sorry, you didn't genuflect
> deep
> > enough for my taste, so you don't get any serious consideration."
>
>
> Are you sure you're looking at the same contribs, Parker? Let's see some
> of
> these edit summaries:
>
> "rv scientologist trying to whitewash his cult's crimes"
> "Replaced page with '{{unblock|lying scientologist ChrisO still tries to
> own
> the [Oxford Capacity Analysis] page and whitewash the crimes of his cult
> there.}}'"
> "rv dumbfuck; it's not a legitimate facebuster."
> "rv dumbfuck: a move which incorporates a headlock is a DDT, not a
> faceplant."
> "rv stop being a dumbfuck fanboi."
> "rv dumbfuck who abuses bots"
> "rv dumbfuck kneejerk asssucking moron who cant read the fucking change
> being made"
> "rv dumbfuck who doesn't know anything yet AGAIN."
>
> I find it difficult to imagine any circumstance in which such behavior
> would
> ever be acceptable. You're free to disagree, but please do be aware that
> your doing so does not translate into me changing my mind unless you
> actually *convince* me to. I don't consider actions I take to be final; if
> other users disagree, they should be perfectly able to say so or even
> reverse my actions, provided they have a good explanation.
>
> Feel free to look into this, if you like, but please do so on your own
> dime.
>
> -Luna
> _______________________________________________
> 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: Anthere

subject: [Foundation-l] Fundraising and site notice

body:
Anthony wrote:

>>The problem is that the underfunding of the foundation is consistently
>>belittled.
>
>
> As of the last audited financial report, the foundation was quite
> overfunded, not underfunded.  If it is now underfunded, that is a new
> thing.

Beg your pardon ?

Financial statements go from june to june. So, "new" is at least 7
months ago.

7 months ago, we had a "cash at the end of the year" of 500 000 dollars.

Our auditors recommanded to increase cash reserve to at least 3
($875,000), preferrably 6 months ($1,650,000) of operating expenses for
fiscal security.

In june 2006, we were NOT overfunded, we were precisely within security
limits, with something like 3 to 6 months of operations in reserve.

Right now, we are VERY underfunded.

Anthere


body:
Sigh....

This is just pathetic. I mean, seriously. Do we have nothing better to do
than pile onto and abuse good-faith editors, people?

I'm serious here. I've forwarded this to Jimbo directly, this is precisely
the sort of admin behavior that made me leave wikipedia. This is a textbook
case for a desysopping of Samuel Blanning and perhaps others, or at least it
would be if the cult of adminship and some very cabalish behavior weren't
alive and well.

Parker

On 1/9/07, Bob Petrovich <wrestfan01 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> User Ryulong has now removed my legally filed unblock request AGAIN and
> his
> patsy Khoikoi has locked the page down.
>
> You know what? This proves you are full of it, you aren't being in good
> faith at all.
>
> Bob
>
> On 1/9/07, Bob Petrovich <wrestfan01 at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > Paulley is lying, I am NOT that person.
> >
> > Bob
> >
> > On 1/9/07, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net > wrote:
> > >
> > > On Tue, 9 Jan 2007 20:58:32 -0600, "Bob Petrovich"
> > > < wrestfan01 at gmail.com> wrote:
> > >
> > > (some stuff)
> > >
> > > This is discussed here:
> > >
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Administrators%27_noticeboard/Incidents#User:129.7.35.194
> > >
> > >
> > > Guy (JzG)
> > > --
> > > http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk
> > > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG
> > >
> > >
> > > _______________________________________________
> > > 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
> > >
> >
> >
> _______________________________________________
> 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:
Naohiro has now left another threat on my discussion page.

You really are a bunch of crazy egomaniacs aren't you?

Bob

On 1/9/07, Parker Peters <onmywayoutster at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Sigh....
>
> This is just pathetic. I mean, seriously. Do we have nothing better to do
> than pile onto and abuse good-faith editors, people?
>
> I'm serious here. I've forwarded this to Jimbo directly, this is precisely
> the sort of admin behavior that made me leave wikipedia. This is a textbook
> case for a desysopping of Samuel Blanning and perhaps others, or at least it
> would be if the cult of adminship and some very cabalish behavior weren't
> alive and well.
>
> Parker
>
> On 1/9/07, Bob Petrovich <wrestfan01 at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > User Ryulong has now removed my legally filed unblock request AGAIN and
> > his
> > patsy Khoikoi has locked the page down.
> >
> > You know what? This proves you are full of it, you aren't being in good
> > faith at all.
> >
> > Bob
> >
> > On 1/9/07, Bob Petrovich <wrestfan01 at gmail.com> wrote:
> > >
> > > Paulley is lying, I am NOT that person.
> > >
> > > Bob
> > >
> > > On 1/9/07, Guy Chapman aka JzG < guy.chapman at spamcop.net > wrote:
> > > >
> > > > On Tue, 9 Jan 2007 20:58:32 -0600, "Bob Petrovich"
> > > > < wrestfan01 at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > >
> > > > (some stuff)
> > > >
> > > > This is discussed here:
> > > >
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Administrators%27_noticeboard/Incidents#User:129.7.35.194
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > Guy (JzG)
> > > > --
> > > > http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk
> > > > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > _______________________________________________
> > > > 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
> > > >
> > >
> > >
> > _______________________________________________
> > 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:
Bob, I'm going to be as direct as possible with you.

CALM DOWN.

You're not helping your situation. Calling names doesn't help.

Your block will probably be up in a few days, and at that time, I advise you
to file a formal arbitration committee complaint. I'll even assist you with
links at that time.

I'm signing off. This isn't worth any more aggravation for any of us right
now, and everyone is too hotheaded as it is.

Parker

On 1/9/07, Bob Petrovich<wrestfan01 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Naohiro has now left another threat on my discussion page.
>
> You really are a bunch of crazy egomaniacs aren't you?
>
> Bob
>
> On 1/9/07, Parker Peters <onmywayoutster at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > Sigh....
> >
> > This is just pathetic. I mean, seriously. Do we have nothing better to
> > do than pile onto and abuse good-faith editors, people?
> >
> > I'm serious here. I've forwarded this to Jimbo directly, this is
> > precisely the sort of admin behavior that made me leave wikipedia. This is a
> > textbook case for a desysopping of Samuel Blanning and perhaps others, or at
> > least it would be if the cult of adminship and some very cabalish behavior
> > weren't alive and well.
> >
> > Parker
> >
> > On 1/9/07, Bob Petrovich < wrestfan01 at gmail.com> wrote:
> > >
> > > User Ryulong has now removed my legally filed unblock request AGAIN
> > > and his
> > > patsy Khoikoi has locked the page down.
> > >
> > > You know what? This proves you are full of it, you aren't being in
> > > good
> > > faith at all.
> > >
> > > Bob
> > >
> > > On 1/9/07, Bob Petrovich <wrestfan01 at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > >
> > > > Paulley is lying, I am NOT that person.
> > > >
> > > > Bob
> > > >
> > > > On 1/9/07, Guy Chapman aka JzG < guy.chapman at spamcop.net > wrote:
> > > > >
> > > > > On Tue, 9 Jan 2007 20:58:32 -0600, "Bob Petrovich"
> > > > > < wrestfan01 at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > > >
> > > > > (some stuff)
> > > > >
> > > > > This is discussed here:
> > > > >
> > > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Administrators%27_noticeboard/Incidents#User:129.7.35.194
> > > > >
> > > > >
> > > > > Guy (JzG)
> > > > > --
> > > > > http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk
> > > > > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG
> > > > >
> > > > >
> > > > > _______________________________________________
> > > > > 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
> > > > >
> > > >
> > > >
> > > _______________________________________________
> > > 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 1/9/07, Luna <lunasantin at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 1/9/07, Parker Peters <onmywayoutster at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> >
> > I've yet to see where these are connected to the user who protested to
> us.
> > Perhaps that is the problem, your willingness to jump at shadows and
> > underlying hostility to anyone who doesn't genuflect "just so" towards
> > you.
>
>
> While I do value your opinions, I will be frank on this count: I don't
> trust
> you to be neutral.
>
> I openly challenge you to take a dig through my postings to this mailing
> list, and back up your claims of my behavior and attitudes. Go for it. If
> you can find evidence that I've been serially abusing the few powers and
> positions of trust the community has seen fit to grant me, by all means,
> bring it to my attention. I have no qualms with specific and reasonable
> complaints grounded in fact.
>
> In this case, I'm not the only user who suspects block evasion. One IP
> address is blocked for trolling and general disruption, a second IP
> address
> comes onto the scene and begins making the exact same reverts -- hardly a
> stretch of the imagination, here.
>
> Again, as you seem to be concerned by what's happened. I have no objection
> if you desire to pursue this on your own.
>
> -Luna

Luna,

I'll be frank with you as well: I approach things a bit different from the
way you do.

It seems obvious to me that you approach things assuming the administrator
is right. I approach things with an open mind and analyze the data first,
then see what I can see from there. The majority of the time, I'lll admit
that the administrator is right.

This, however, is plainly not one of those times. Instead, this seems to be
an attempt to control the content of a page by one small group of users who
happen to have an administrator or two to help them out, and it is the use
of administrator powers to gain a leg up in a content dispute that I
primarily have a problem with.

I have a second problem with the abuse by these administrators in removing
the complainant's complaints from other pages, which is in effect trying to
hide what they are doing from the community at large.

Parker


from_name: Daniel R. Tobias

subject: [WikiEN-l] One way inter-languages links?

body:
On 10 Jan 2007 at 10:49, "howard chen" <howachen at gmail.com> wrote:

> http://download.wikipedia.com/enwiki/20061130/

I think the preferred address for this these days is
http://download.wikimedia.org/enwiki/20061130/
using the "download.wikimedia.org" address instead of the old,
deprecated one within wikipedia.com.  For one thing, the download
site is for all Wikimedia projects, not just Wikipedia, and for
another, Wiki[p|m]edia is a noncommercial project and long ago
switched to .org domains instead of .com.

(The Wikipedia Weekly podcast illogically uses a .com domain for its
site, but it's not an official Wikimedia project.)

--
== Dan ==
Dan's Mail Format Site: http://mailformat.dan.info/
Dan's Web Tips: http://webtips.dan.info/
Dan's Domain Site: http://domains.dan.info/


from_name: brion at pobox.com

subject: [Wikitech-l] MediaWiki automated test run failure 2007-01-10

body:
An automated run of parserTests.php showed the following failures:

This is MediaWiki version 1.10alpha (r19054).
Reading tests from "/home/brion/src/wiki/phase3/maintenance/parserTests.txt"...
Running test TODO: Table security: embedded pipes (http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2006-April/034637.html)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: Link containing double-single-quotes '' (bug 4598)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: message transform: <noinclude> in transcluded template (bug 4926)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: message transform: <onlyinclude> in transcluded template (bug 4926)... FAILED!
Running test BUG 1887, part 2: A <math> with a thumbnail- math enabled... FAILED!
Running test TODO: HTML bullet list, unclosed tags (bug 5497)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: HTML ordered list, unclosed tags (bug 5497)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: HTML nested bullet list, open tags (bug 5497)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: HTML nested ordered list, open tags (bug 5497)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: Parsing optional HTML elements (Bug 6171)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: Inline HTML vs wiki block nesting... FAILED!
Running test TODO: Mixing markup for italics and bold... FAILED!
Running test TODO: 5 quotes, code coverage +1 line... FAILED!
Running test TODO: dt/dd/dl test... FAILED!
Running test TODO: Images with the "|" character in the comment... FAILED!
Running test TODO: Parents of subpages, two levels up, without trailing slash or name.... FAILED!
Running test TODO: Parents of subpages, two levels up, with lots of extra trailing slashes.... FAILED!
Running test TODO: Don't fall for the self-closing div... FAILED!
Running test TODO: Always escape literal '>' in output, not just after '<'... FAILED!

Reading tests from "/home/brion/src/wiki/phase3/extensions/Cite/citeParserTests.txt"...

Reading tests from "/home/brion/src/wiki/phase3/extensions/Poem/poemParserTests.txt"...

Passed 484 of 503 tests (96.22%)... FAILED!


from_name: David Gerard

body:
On 09/01/07, Rob Church <robchur at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 09/01/07, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:

> > Mmm. There's talk of my company selling my services to a customer as a
> > MediaWiki sysadmin, as they have several installs with *no sysadmin
> > responsible* ... and I'm going to have to learn to code soon whether I
> > like it or not ...

> A clever bloke like yourself will pick up the nuances of MediaWiki
> development fairly rapidly, both for extensions and hacking core code.

NOOOO YOU BASTARD AIEEEEEEEEE

/me runs away

- d.


body:
On 10/01/07, Erik Moeller <erik at wikimedia.org> wrote:

> Well, Brion has been the release manager for MediaWiki for years.
> Since he's on the payroll of WMF, I don't think we're assuming any
> _new_ responsibilities, but merely clarifying existing
> responsibilities. And I definitely do agree that the WMF should do a
> better job at soliciting and coordinating external contributions to
> MW, but this, like many other things the WMF _should_ be doing, is
> greatly limited by our ability to spend money on doing so.

OK - what does officially putting MediaWiki under the umbrella of the
WMF do for MediaWiki that is an improvement on the present situation?
List with + and -.

- d.


from_name: Brion Vibber

references:
<b66ddc900701090914k309b6844r9dc0fe7ce0bcef61@mail.gmail.com>
	<eo0nsu$c90$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<b66ddc900701091847p1cd536a4pdffd6fe51ca34c5c@mail.gmail.com>

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

howard chen wrote:
> i would like to know if `wikipedia` is going to use this method in the future?

If MySQL supported UTF-8, we'd be happy to make use of it. Using proper
character sets gives us warm, fuzzy feelings and makes it easier to work
in terminals and other direct-database tools, as well as potentially
making it easier to use built-in database support for case-insensitive
lookups and proper sorting.

BUT... at the moment MySQL only supports a subset of UTF-8 which
corresponds to UCS-2 (limited to the lower 16 bits of Unicode's encoding
space).

Thus characters from a number of scripts encoded outside of that range
cannot be represented without resorting to storing raw UTF-8 in binary
fields. Since we already have data outside that range, we don't plan to
reduce our functionality to shoehorn it into a broken UTF-8 implementation.

(There is an experimental MediaWiki mode for using UTF-8 collation, but
since the functionality in MySQL is incomplete it doesn't fully work.
It's also not properly integrated with the updaters, so an experimental
database in this mode may not properly update on version upgrades.)

We have expressed our interest in full UTF-8 support (or UTF-16 with
proper conversion should do fine!) to MySQL, but as far as I know it's
still not on the roadmap as of 5.2. Maybe some more lobbying is in order. ;)

Since the forseeable future does not include full UTF-8 support in
MySQL, when we upgrade to 5.0 or 5.1 we expect to continue using binary
encoding.

We do though plan to 'formalize' that a bit more, with proper binary
charset/collation labeling on the fields, rather than the ad-hoc method
we've used since 4.0. The experimental 'binary' schema on MediaWiki 1.9
or later can be tested to play with this, but be warned it's even more
experimental than the UTF-8 one at the moment.

- -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org

iD8DBQFFpKQUwRnhpk1wk44RAr84AKCLte+paYICxJqwkZIVYVzEOx9AJwCgk1ao
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from_name: Tariq Ab- Jo- Tu-

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Wrongfully blocked by admin who lies and on behalf
 of users trying to "own" articles

body:
(Mostly to) Parker Peters --

The suggestion that a de-sysopping or request for arbitration ought to
occur is excessive. I fail to see anything wrong with what Luna and
Samuel did. Luna has, at the very least, presented evidence to support
her position in a polite manner. From you, however, most of what I see
amounts to /see... there's an admin cabal; I know there is/. It's one
thing to disagree with someone, but it's another thing to be so dogmatic
in your opinion that you believe the opposition is part of some
conspiracy. Unfortunate is the fact that you've resorted to that stance.

-- Tariq Ab- Jo- Tu-

Parker Peters wrote:
> On 1/9/07, Luna <lunasantin at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> On 1/9/07, Parker Peters <onmywayoutster at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>
>>> I've yet to see where these are connected to the user who protested to
>>>
>> us.
>>
>>> Perhaps that is the problem, your willingness to jump at shadows and
>>> underlying hostility to anyone who doesn't genuflect "just so" towards
>>> you.
>>>
>> While I do value your opinions, I will be frank on this count: I don't
>> trust
>> you to be neutral.
>>
>> I openly challenge you to take a dig through my postings to this mailing
>> list, and back up your claims of my behavior and attitudes. Go for it. If
>> you can find evidence that I've been serially abusing the few powers and
>> positions of trust the community has seen fit to grant me, by all means,
>> bring it to my attention. I have no qualms with specific and reasonable
>> complaints grounded in fact.
>>
>> In this case, I'm not the only user who suspects block evasion. One IP
>> address is blocked for trolling and general disruption, a second IP
>> address
>> comes onto the scene and begins making the exact same reverts -- hardly a
>> stretch of the imagination, here.
>>
>> Again, as you seem to be concerned by what's happened. I have no objection
>> if you desire to pursue this on your own.
>>
>> -Luna
>>
>
>
> Luna,
>
> I'll be frank with you as well: I approach things a bit different from the
> way you do.
>
> It seems obvious to me that you approach things assuming the administrator
> is right. I approach things with an open mind and analyze the data first,
> then see what I can see from there. The majority of the time, I'lll admit
> that the administrator is right.
>
> This, however, is plainly not one of those times. Instead, this seems to be
> an attempt to control the content of a page by one small group of users who
> happen to have an administrator or two to help them out, and it is the use
> of administrator powers to gain a leg up in a content dispute that I
> primarily have a problem with.
>
> I have a second problem with the abuse by these administrators in removing
> the complainant's complaints from other pages, which is in effect trying to
> hide what they are doing from the community at large.
>
> Parker
> _______________________________________________
> 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 10/01/07, Matthew Flaschen <matthew.flaschen at gatech.edu> wrote:
> David Gerard wrote:
> > On 09/01/07, Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:

> >> By the way, there is a growing demand for admins for MediaWiki projects.
> >> In the Netherlands there are at least two people I know off doing admin
> >> work professionally. It is a GOOD thing because it makes MediaWiki and
> >> Wikis acceptable and known by a substantially large and influential
> >> group of people.

> Are you talking admin as in sysop, or as in system administrator?

I was talking as in Unix sysadmin; I suspect Gerard meant programming as well.

- d.


from_name: Steve

body:
There's no reason to pit pedia and library against one another, and simply
because the possibility exists that you can find said newspaper subscription
in a library doesn't create a reason against duplicating that information in
pedia. There are interested parties outside Londoners and Bostonians.

-S

On 1/9/07, Stan Shebs <stanshebs at earthlink.net> wrote:
>
> Michael Billington wrote:
> > However, whilst lists of Australian, German or US (and more) topics are
> > mostly blue links, there are lists populated almost entirely by red
> links,
> > such as [[List of Sudanese singers]]. Unfortunately, very few or no
> reliable
> > sources will probably be found to warrant articles about these singers
> (at
> > least not on the internet), and the only way to get coverage of a large
> > portion of them would be through original research (which we can't do
> > obviously), or to find print sources. So does anyone on this mailing
> list
> > happen to have access to archives for a Sudanese newspaper?
> >
> Larger libraries pride themselves on extensive newspaper subscriptions,
> anybody in Boston or London should have no problem finding Sudanese
> papers. I note this particular list is itself unsourced, so there's no
> way to tell whether the people are articleworthy, even in Sudan.
>
> It's still the case that I can go to my smallish university library,
> pick a random volume about an obscure country, and find it covering
> hundreds of topics not mentioned anywhere in WP. If the information is
> literally sitting on a shelf downtown being ignored, I don't think we're
> anywhere close to worrying about oral histories and storing interviews -
> it's more a matter of getting people to use the books that already
> exist. And on that note, I have three new books to start working from...
>
> Stan
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


from_name: Ray Saintonge

body:
Frederick Noronha wrote:

>My wager is that en.wikipedia.org would be far, far more
>representative of India than, say hi.wikipedia.org Sad but true. And
>there are reasons for that.
>
>Have you seen the way Indians interact with themselves? If meeting
>outside the North Indian belt, there's a good chance they  (we?) would
>be taking to each other in English. There are just so much diversity
>here, that like it or not, English often serves as a link language.
>
>Added to this, many of the Wikipedia contributors would be
>college/university-educated types, often more comfortable to express
>ideas in English than, say, in an Indian language. I've made hundreds
>of edits in English
>[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/Fredericknoronha]
>but am litterally struggling to get a Konkani Wikipedia going (Konkani
>is India's smallest "national" languages, with between 1.5 to 5
>million speakers, depending whose estimates one accepts).
>
Getting a Wikipedia developed in some languages can be difficult until
you can build a critical mass of contributors.  Sometimes the results
are surprising.  One would expect that the central role of Hindi would
result in it having the biggest Wikipedia in an Indian language, but at
this point Telugu with its 26,132 articles has more than twice as many
as second place Bengali.  Manipuri, Marathi and Tamil also have more
articles than Hindi.  The growth can be unpredictable.

Your observations are perfectly sensible, and I would understand if many
Indians were more resistant to learning Hindi than English.  Although
there are parallels I think that the issues of systemic biases are
qualitatively different than those about the growth of smaller
languages.  It would be extremely difficult for us foreigners to learn
enough of any Indian language to the point where we could write articles
in that language, but it is within our grasp to research the notability
of many topics about India.

Ec


from_name: Christopher Thieme

subject: [WikiEN-l] psychosis and wikipedia.

body:
I'd love to see some psychology-oriented individual do a case study on what
kind of people are attracted to editing on Wikipedia.  What psychological
defects lurk behind the computer screens and the keyboards.  Why do I ask?
Because in the last month (including right now), I've gotten in spats, edit
wars, content disputes, with people who would be poster children for
narcissitic personality disorder and one of several temporal lobe disorders,
respectively.

Something like that would probably explain a lot about the bitterness,
control issues, the incessant desire to be "right", etc. that some people
have when approaching the subject of editing.

Just a crazy idea. (no pun intended).

Regards,
Christopher D. Thieme


from_name: Matthew Brown

subject: [WikiEN-l] One way inter-languages links

body:
Rob Church wrote:
> Actually, we *do* track interlanguage link relationships in the
> database, as we do for page links, image links, external links,
> category links, etc.

It's just that each Wikipedia is in a separate database and thus only
has one part of the puzzle, yes?

-Matt


from_name: Ilmari Karonen

subject: [WikiEN-l] Using paragraphs from wikipedia on other websites

body:
Rory Stolzenberg wrote:
> On 1/8/07, mwookie <peter at iriselements.com> wrote:
>>
>> 1) If I include several paragraphs from the text in my website, does my
>> entire site need to be licensed under the GFDL or just that page, or just
>> the "text" versus the layout, links, etc.?
>
> 1) None of the text you write yourself has to be under the GFDL, only the
> text that you quote.

I don't think that's quite true.  The GFDL says, in section 1:

   A "Modified Version" of the Document means any work containing the
   Document or a portion of it, either copied verbatim, or with
   modifications and/or translated into another language.

And in section 4 ("Modifications"):

   You may copy and distribute a Modified Version of the Document under
   the conditions of sections 2 and 3 above, provided that you release
   the Modified Version under precisely this License . . .

Thus, a work, such as a web page, containing portions of a GFDL work
must generally in itself be licensed under the GFDL.

Section 7 ("Aggregation with independent works") does, however, say:

   A compilation of the Document or its derivatives with other separate
   and independent documents or works, in or on a volume of a storage or
   distribution medium, is called an "aggregate" if the copyright
   resulting from the compilation is not used to limit the legal rights
   of the compilation's users beyond what the individual works permit.
   When the Document is included in an aggregate, this License does not
   apply to the other works in the aggregate which are not themselves
   derivative works of the Document.

However, it's not entirely obvious at what point a document ceases to be
"independent".  Certainly the pages of a web site can, in most cases, be
considered independent documents, but it's not at all clear to me
whether a distinct section of a single web page, like what you have on
your site, can in fact be considered an independent document.

If you do wish to stand by the claim that it can, I believe your case
would be strengthened by making sure that the section in question in
fact makes sense even if taken off the page; in particular, it should
probably carry a title of its own, so that someone reading the section
out of context will still be able to tell what it is about.

--
Ilmari Karonen


subject: [Wikitech-l] New ipblock-exempt permission

body:
Simetrical wrote:
> On 1/9/07, JePe <jepe at xs4all.nl> wrote:
>> How can we on a wikimedia project enable this for a user? There aren't added or
>> changed any Mediawiki messages in r18904.
>
> Make them a sysop.  ;)  If you want all autoconfirmed users or
> something to be exempt, that strikes me as possibly a bad idea, but
> you can file a bug at bugs.wikimedia.org asking for it if you like.
> Since we don't yet have a flexible userrights system, no, you can't
> make a specific group for this and add only specific users to it.

...or rather, I expect you can, if you manage to persuade a server admin
to do it for you.  Good luck with that.  :-)

--
Ilmari Karonen