subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: recent goings-on

body:
On 5/31/05, Tony Sidaway <minorityreport at bluebottle.com> wrote:
> We don't, or shouldn't, give aggressive trolls due process.  Or the right
> to troll this mailing list.
> I'm not at all happy that, rather than indefinitely ban this troll, Arbcom
> has decided to take on his case.  This can only give him more opportunity
> to troll.

But without due process we can not determine if someone is a Troll or
if they were actually wronged. You can't escape providing due process.

You can avoid providing an undue degree of fairness... due process and no more.

It seems like that's what we are doing now, telling him to buzzoff the
list as we've given him his due 15 minutes... So I guess the system is
working in this case.


list: foundation-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Anthere

subject: [Foundation-l] Official positions... a little bit of meat

body:
A couple of points to Brion, Dammit, JeLuf, Eloquence, Danny, Elian,
Soufron and all others interested.

* Could someone update http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Official_position
so as to reflect last decisions ? I'll help :-)

* It would be nice that all current officers list themselves on
http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=WMF_organigram&action=edit.
A little bit of sauce around their names, such as a minimum of
information about each of you would be great. Pictures... personal
statement, whatever... When the page is properly set up, it will be
transfered to the Foundation website. As far as I remember, we already
have this information for Dammit, Brion and JeLuf (in the developer
page), but they might wish to give different information.

* it would be great as well that roles of each position is properly
written somewhere. If short, on the organigram page, if long, on a
separate page linked to the organigram page.

* If you want some business cards and do not have yet any, you may
contact James Forrester or Elian or notafish to get some done, or get
the file to make yours.

* If you do not have yet an account on WMF site, please ask Angie or
myself to set up one for you.

* I also suggest that each of you send a mail to the board reminding a
couple of little things such as addresses and phone number... We'll save
them privately somewhere.

I wish that you feel free to act in your position as you feel is best.
If you feel you need help, do not hesitate to gather a team around you.
Animate your mailing list, whatever.
It would be great if you could go "ahead" of board wishes and feel
entitled to keep us informed before we ask :-) I do not want to be a
pain on this... but keep in mind we also set up such roles to try to be
more organised and to delegate more. Hum, if some of you could
sponteaneously update the foundation main page news if you feel an
important point occured in your department, please do so as well.

/me goes to the Bahamas now...

ant


list: wikimedia-l


from_name: Angela

subject: [Foundation-l] Fundraising drive (was 2M articles)

body:
On 5/31/05, Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:

> I would also remind that we should (could) very possibly have a new
> fundraising drive soon... and it might be a good idea
> to reflect in which order to do the three events

I'd like the fundraising to be before the end of June so it's part of
this quarter's budget. The elections begin on the 27th, so to avoid
needing two messages in the sitenotice, it would be best to have the
fundraising drive finish before then. Assuming it will last 2 weeks,
we'd need to start it by the 12th. Does this seem too short notice, or
is that going to be a possible?

Angela.


list: wikien-l

from_name: QuotationsBook.com Webmaster/Support

subject: [WikiEN-l] custom RSS syndication

body:
Hello

I'm constructing a large literary resource, and would like to query
articles about authors automatically, and receive Wikipedia articles
back as RSS/XML documents to present in my website, with all the
relevant backlinks to wikipedia.

Does Wikipedia have customised syndication of its content?

Regards
Amit
quotationsbook.com


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Official positions... a little bit of meat

body:
Erik makes a good point here :
http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Official_position&curid=7915&diff=0&oldid=137455

I heard Dammit comment on this and apparently not disagreeing.

Ant


from_name: Michael Snow

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Recent goings-on

body:
Phil Sandifer wrote:

> May I ask what communities these are? Particularly the one with
> hundreds of thousands of members.

It seems that Skyring has ignored the opportunity to back up his vague
claims with specific evidence. However, judging from his user page, it
appears that the two communities he's alluding to are LiveJournal and
BookCrossing.

Anyway, I'd like to take an opportunity to see how the "competition"
compares, and whether other large, open online communities really are
more "polite and productive" as he claims. First of all, I don't see any
reason to say that the atmosphere at LiveJournal is any better than on
Wikipedia. As with Slashdot and Kuro5hin, two of the other leading
candidates, LiveJournal has its own well-documented social issues, of
which you can get the first inkling by reading our articles about them.
I don't mean to bash any of these sites - as with Wikipedia, if you're
not looking to get involved in contentious areas, you probably won't be
- but they have their own problems, along with their own ways of
combating them. They may not be worse than Wikipedia in this regard, but
I wouldn't agree that they're any better, either.

BookCrossing may have a comparable number of members to Wikipedia, but
its character is too different for a sensible comparison. I mean, who's
going to force you to pick up a book you're not interested in? I don't
see how the community brings out the kind of passion that produces the
disruptions we experience.

I might consider Skyring's argument more plausible if made about some
other communities, including possibly craigslist and Flickr (notably,
unlike the previous examples, their Wikipedia articles fail to mention
whatever critics they may have). With Flickr, you don't have to reveal
anything you don't want to reveal, go anywhere you don't want to go, or
deal with people you choose not to deal with. While collaboration and
community dynamics do exist, the site is not organized in a way that
fundamentally requires it. And still, as their FAQ reveals, where they
do have community groups and channels (similar to IRC), they have the
same problems with disruptive behavior and deal with them in the same way.

That leaves craigslist, in my opinion, as the one realistic candidate
for a more "polite and productive" community on a scale similar to
Wikipedia. If someone knows more about the seamy side of craigslist than
I do, feel free to enlighten me to the contrary. Presumably their forums
can occasionally breed bad behavior, as with all such creatures, but I
know of little else. It's also interesting to note that craigslist
happens to be the only one of these sites we have not yet overtaken in
terms of traffic. Perhaps we should take more interest in figuring out
what lessons we can pick up from their experience.

--Michael Snow


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Mark Williamson

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Ossetic again (bugs, bugs, bugs...)

body:
You and all of #wikipedia... ;p

I never have once mentioned it in there that somebody didn't say
something about furries...

Similar to the Uyghur Wikipedia (ug.wikipedia) and caveman...

Mark

On 31/05/05, Bryan Derksen <bryan.derksen at shaw.ca> wrote:
> Mark Williamson wrote:
>
> >Same with fur.wikipedia - links to certain other Wikipedias don't work.
> >
> >
> Ack. For one brief, glorious and horrifying moment I thought perhaps we
> had a Wikipedia specifically for furries. :)
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

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


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Brion Vibber

subject:
[Wikitech-l] Re: [Wikipedia-l] server maintenance on June 1,
	3 a.m. UTC

body:
Brion Vibber wrote:
> Jens Frank wrote:
>> We'll create some new indexes that should improve site
>> performance. To do this, we need to set the wikis to
>> read only at 3 a.m. UTC (5a.m. Berlin/Paris, about
>> 10 p.m. Chicago). The downtime will take about 2 hours.
>
> While we're on this, that would be a good time to run the password hash
> salting.

Done.

The other indexes are still building, we'll be back online soon enough... :)

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Jimbo interview on NPR Friday?

body:
Hi Ant

The "quickly integrated" kids you speak of aren't actually integrated so well.

Although most have at least a "satisfactory" command of English, they
prefer Spanish in all contexts, and at schools the Spanish-speaking
kids tend to have a separate social life than the English-speaking
kids, even though most of the Spanish-speaking kids are fluent in
English as well.

As far as the internet, if you go to "teen central" at the Burton Barr
branch of the Phoenix Public Library (4th floor I think?), you will
see that a good percentage of the kids are browsing the internet in
Spanish, mostly checking e-mail at yahoo.com.mx (Mexican Yahoo!)
though sometimes doing other things.

I'm guessing that if they wanted to use Wikipedia, they would use the
Spanish version if they knew it existed, although in a school context
they might use English instead (sociolinguistic reasons: Spanish is,
in many ways, seen by kids as not OK for any usage inside the
classroom, so they will often use English even if there are two
versions available).

Mark
(In Tucson right now)

On 26/05/05, Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Nod. Most of your arguments are valid to me.
>
> But, reading them, I thought of asking a question.
>
>
>  > 4.  Most Americans live in a very, very large contiguous span of
>  > English-speaking regions.  There is little or no need for most US
>  > citizens to ever speak another language in day to day life.  While this
>  > may or may not be a bad thing, it is a true thing nonetheless, and that
>  > being the case I'm not surprised if US citizens tend to pay little
>  > attention to matters that involve other languages most of the time.  The
>  > same cannot be said so easily of other languages (with a couple of
>  > notable exceptions, perhaps): Europe, for instance, consists of a large
>  > number of countries, many of whom have their own associated languages
>  > largely distinct from the languages of their neighbors, and yet much of
>  > Europe would fit within the borders of one of the larger states in the
>  > US.  This forces a certain amount of multilingual awareness on
>  > Europeans, whereas the opposite tends to be true of Americans, pretty
>  > much through no fault of their own.
>
> Since you are focusing more on an american perspective, though english
> is the only official language in the usa, many more or less recent
> immigrants only poorly manage english.
>
> When I lived in Arizona, I was in the part of the city most inhabited by
>   teachers and students, as it was the city where the university was
> located (Tempe).
>
> However, I had the opportunity to spend a lot of time in two other
> cities located in the south and east, essentially because the medical
> center and the children care center was located in east (Mesa) and the
> hospital in the south (Chandler, where my son finally born).
>
> Admittedly, most cheap clothes and most cheap cars were also in Mesa,
> which is also why it was a key area for me :-)
>
> However, what was striking is that most of this area was inhabited by
> mexican immigrants, some legal and some illegal; and many of them did
> not manage english well, or even not at all, as they only recently came in.
>
> I particularly remember supermarkets entirely in spanish (which was easy
> to manage for me), but also a supermarket entirely in chinese near my
> appartment (which was much harder to manage :-)).
>
> I went to a church in that area as well, it was a bit different approach
> from the way we usually practice religion in France, but it was better
> than nothing (I am catholic). Many catholics there were from Mexico or
> San Salvador. And some of the meetings were in spanish to address their
> needs. The church also organised some courses for them, to try to help
> them manage better in english (sort of adult courses of english).
>
> Most of those families listened to radio station in spanish or watched
> tv in english. The kids got integrated amazingly quickly thanks to
> school (french people would do well to understand how americans can
> integrate immigrants so quickly), but it was much tougher for adults and
> most of time these were poorly educated immigrants.
>
> So, my question is this one, and it is addressed to spanish editors as
> much as english ones. Do you know how much impact the spanish wikipedia
> has amongst spanish speakers in the usa ? Are they participants amongst
> rather recently immigrated people ? Do you know if there were some
> articles on wikipedia in spanish speaking american press (I suppose
> there is press in spanish) ? Or radio interviews ?
>
> I know there are sometimes some little disagreements between the spanish
> editors from Spain and the spanish editors from latine american. Are
> they some fully spanish editors from USA ? And what is their
> representation in the USA media ?
>
> Ant
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

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


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Fundraising drive

body:
Angela wrote:

>I'd like the fundraising to be before the end of June so it's part of
>this quarter's budget. The elections begin on the 27th, so to avoid
>needing two messages in the sitenotice, it would be best to have the
>fundraising drive finish before then. Assuming it will last 2 weeks,
>we'd need to start it by the 12th. Does this seem too short notice, or
>is that going to be a possible?
>
>
Is there much that would need to be accomplished beyond touching up our
messages and checking the translations? Presumably the Board can decide
on an appropriate target at its next meeting. Perhaps US$75k like last
time, or maybe 50k because it's only two weeks this time, unless we can
articulate a strong justification for needing more? Yes, the fundraiser
and the election should not overlap.

I still haven't seen an answer to the question I asked earlier, about
whether our direct credit-card payment processing is set up yet, or will
be soon. So far, no sign of it on the donations page at least. This
should be settled quickly if possible, especially if it's more
cost-effective than directing everyone thru PayPal.

--Michael Snow


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Fundraising drive


from_name: David Friedland

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Feature addition to the gallery

body:
Ed W wrote:
> Do you mean this bug:
> http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=684
>
> What's wrong with the code as is?  Looks great to me?
>
> Please advise what's wrong and I will fix it up - seems great for my
> purpose
>
> Thanks
>
> Ed W

I wrote this patch. I stopped working on it after a cold reception--my
contributions weren't met with much enthusiasm so I stopped pursuing
trying to make them.

Brion wants it changed to not allow \' and \" as escapes for ' and "
inside quoted strings and to not allow whitespace between the opening <
and the name of the tag.

Also, ?var notes that the patch doesn't work on the current HEAD, as the
code the patch applies to has probably changed since the patch was
written, so it needs some cleaning up.

Hope that helps. Good luck.

- David Friedland


from_name: Tim Starling

subject: [Foundation-l] Re: 2M articles

body:
Przykuta wrote:
> What do you think about promotion Wiki in global media by send info
> about two millions Wikipedia articles? It (2M) will be perhaps first
> half of July or end of June. IMHO this promotion will be good before
> Wikimania 2005.

Our last milestone-related press release (en 500K) received virtually no
attention. Most major newspapers and magazines have already run stories
on us, it's not like we need to tell them we exist. Why not save the
press releases for when we actually have news?

-- Tim Starling


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: 2M articles


from_name: Charles Matthews

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: recent goings-on

body:
"Richard Rabinowitz" wrote

>Enviroknot is apparently up to no
> good. All the same, that doesn't mean he shouldn't be given the rights to
> due process of law before banning him.

Except of course under policy.  Could you manage not to feed the troll?  We
get plenty of applications to this list to have blocks lifted - a fair few
of which are successful.  They tend not to be those who lash out, but those
genuinely puzzled (sometimes rightly) at 'goings-on'.

Charles


subject: [WikiEN-l] Recent goings-on

body:
 "Skyring"  wrote.

>I don't really care if most of the inhabitants of a
large city live their lives free from crime - it's the assaults and
murders that get on the front pages, and Wikipedia seems to have
rather a lot of this compared to some other online communities.

Suddenly you have my full attention.  Who has been murdered?

Charles


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Copyright violations at download.wikimedia.org

body:
Gregory Maxwell wrote:

>With text it's even worse because our public editing process make it
>much easier for someone to prove that our text was a derived work,
>where in a more traditional medium a sufficient amount of refactoring
>would usually manage to hide the violation.
>
>With images I plan on just replacing all the ones with suspect
>copyright (i.e. everything that isn't CC* or GFDL and uploaded by the
>author, or with an actual letter attached that explicitly says PD or
>an acceptable license) over time... but I have no idea how to solve
>text.
>
>
Indeed, I'm rather surprised at the glib and easy way with which some
people suggest "refactoring" copyright violations rather than deleting
them when possible. Under normal circumstances, every revision of an
article is a derivative work of previous revisions going back to the
beginning. Simply rephrasing to avoid identical strings of words is not
sufficient to avoid this.

To be confident that you don't have a derivative work, you would need to
remove all content traceable to the copyright infringement, in much the
same way that some editors rewrite an article entirely from scratch if
they find it unsatisfactory. Using the infringing content as a base to
work from is risky at best. When we need to preserve history that
predates the violation, I can understand the dilemma that forces us to
bury these problems instead of excising them, but otherwise it's a
shoddy practice. Images are rather different, because the revisions can
be entirely different, merely taking advantage of the same filename, and
all traces of a copyright violation are easier to remove.

Exactly what qualifies as a derivative work is not always clear, and as
best I'm aware there is effectively an open conflict on the issue
between the rulings of two circuits of the U.S. Court of Appeals. So
better guidance would only be available with a Supreme Court decision. I
rather suspect that under the right circumstances, a Wikipedia article
might provide them with an excellent set of facts on which to issue such
a ruling. However, the expense and distraction of litigation being what
it is, I'm not saying that setting legal precedent this way is something
we should aspire to. Also, once faced directly with the prospect of an
unfavorable outcome, people often discover that they're actually _more_
comfortable with uncertainty.

--Michael Snow


from_name: Erik Moeller

subject: [Foundation-l] 2M articles

body:
David:
> Eeek! Please let article rating run experimentally for a while! We can wait
> on telling the world when we're actually getting useful results from it ...

I wasn't thinking of an announcement like "Wikipedia is now the greatest
thing ever, thanks to article validation!" but something more along the
tune of "Wikipedia launches article quality survey", as an invitation
for outside individuals to participate. Such a press release could
clearly point out the nature of the experiment.

Best,

Erik


subject: [Foundation-l] 2M articles


from_name: Jens Frank

subject: [Wikipedia-l] server maintenance on June 1, 3 a.m. UTC

body:
Hello,

We'll create some new indexes that should improve site
performance. To do this, we need to set the wikis to
read only at 3 a.m. UTC (5a.m. Berlin/Paris, about
10 p.m. Chicago). The downtime will take about 2 hours.

Thanks for your understanding.

	JeLuF


subject: [Wikitech-l] server maintenance on June 1, 3 a.m. UTC


from_name: Jack Lynch

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: User:Sam Spade/Report rogue admin

body:
I asked to have it deleted, which you can learn more about thru an
insane amount of research... or we could all move on ;)

Jack (Sam Spade)

On 5/31/05, Richard Rabinowitz <rickyrab at eden.rutgers.edu> wrote:
>
> I looked it up. Page didn't exist.
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Sean Barrett

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: recent goings-on

body:
Cranston Snord stated for the record:
> "Maliciously wounded"???
>
> I'd like to see some evidence of that. I've done nothing of the sort.
>
> -Enviroknot

Indeed, don't give him too much credit.  The malice is there; the
capability is lacking.

--
 Sean Barrett     | To speak algebraically: Mr. Mathews is execrable
 sean at epoptic.com | but Mr. Channing is (x+1)ecrable. --Edgar Allen Poe


from_name: Tomer Chachamu

subject: [Wikitech-l] Wiki changesets

body:
On 31/05/05, Joel Konkle-Parker <jjk3 at msstate.edu> wrote:
> Yeah, I realize it's not a standard wiki way of doing things, but this type of
> thing would be perfect for what I have in mind. Thanks for the thoughtful
> reply.
>
> Anyone happen to know of something that can do this?

No, sorry. Are you making a program with the source code on wiki?


from_name: Tony Sidaway

subject: [WikiEN-l] Rogue Admin Syndrome

body:
Richard Rabinowitz said:
>
>>
>> There are a number of administrators who are failing in that
> responsibility,
>> and they are present on this list. One of them, rather than addressing
>> Enviroknot's concerns in a calm tone and actually going over policy,
> chose
>> to kickban Enviroknot entirely.
>>
> Oops. That's something called "laziness", or "impatience", or
> sometimes, just plain being forgetful. In such cases, we should stop,
> take a breath, rethink what we are doing for a moment, and review the
> cases of folks such as Enviroknot. Dealing with admins fairly will go a
> LONG way towards improving Wikipedia.
>

I wasn't present, but I can imagine what would happen if
ElKabong/KaintheScion/Enviroknot or whatever he wants to call himself this
week showed up and tried his aggressive trolling on an IRC channel.  Any
IRC channel.

If trolls like him got what they would consider fair treatment, we'd be
hemorrhaging users from his shenanigans.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: recent goings-on

body:
Richard Rabinowitz said:
>>-Matt (User:Morven)
>
> Morven makes some pretty good points. Enviroknot is apparently up to no
> good. All the same, that doesn't mean he shouldn't be given the rights
> to due process of law before banning him.

We don't, or shouldn't, give aggressive trolls due process.  Or the right
to troll this mailing list.
I'm not at all happy that, rather than indefinitely ban this troll, Arbcom
has decided to take on his case.  This can only give him more opportunity
to troll.


from_name: Roger Luethi

body:
On Tue, 31 May 2005 11:03:44 -0700, Ray Saintonge wrote:
> Refactoring may completely remove the problem, not just mitigate it.

So I guess there is no need to ever flag a copyvio, then. Should some
copyright holder ever complain, we will just change change some words
in his text and the problem will go away. Well, that sure makes life
a lot easier.

> Copyright applies to the way something is expressed, and not to what is
> expressed.  So what's the difference between a copyvio text that has
> been refactored, and the same refactored text being added from the
> bbeginning?

Why do we delete pages that start as copyvios, rather than refactoring
them?

Roger


from_name: Matt Brown

body:
On 5/31/05, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
> With images I plan on just replacing all the ones with suspect
> copyright (i.e. everything that isn't CC* or GFDL and uploaded by the
> author, or with an actual letter attached that explicitly says PD or
> an acceptable license) over time...

I note that this standard is quite different from Wikipedia's current
image policy.

If you, say, came across my photo album on Flickr, on which every
photo has a CC-BY-SA-2.0 license attached - would you consider those
images unsuitable for use on Wikipedia unless you obtained a letter
from me in precise legal language?  (And I note you say a LETTER, not
an email.  I am certain as hell not going to be writing via snail mail
just to let someone use my damn photos).

Sounds like you'd also reject the use of out-of-copyright images since
we couldn't get a letter stating permission.

It all seems rather extreme to me, unless this isn't what you meant.

Besides, would you trust anyone to tell the truth about even images
they own, if you're getting that paranoid?

-Matt (User:Morven)


body:
On 5/31/05, Michael Snow <wikipedia at earthlink.net> wrote:
> Indeed, I'm rather surprised at the glib and easy way with which some
> people suggest "refactoring" copyright violations rather than deleting
> them when possible. Under normal circumstances, every revision of an
> article is a derivative work of previous revisions going back to the
> beginning. Simply rephrasing to avoid identical strings of words is not
> sufficient to avoid this.

This bothers me as well.

It might be acceptable to 'save' sections added later that are clearly
not based on the copyright violation at all.  However, all additions
and to the areas which began as copyright violations are suspect.

Wikipedia needs an easy method to delete copyvio revisions, for that
matter.  Right now, copyvio additions to an existing article are often
not even brought to WP:CP; they're just reverted.

-Matt


from_name: Cranston Snord

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: recent goings-on

body:
"Maliciously wounded"???

I'd like to see some evidence of that. I've done nothing of the sort.

-Enviroknot

>From: "Tony Sidaway" <minorityreport at bluebottle.com>
>Reply-To: minorityreport at bluebottle.com,English Wikipedia
><wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
>To: <wikien-l at wikipedia.org>
>Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Re: recent goings-on
>Date: Wed, 1 Jun 2005 02:02:09 +0100 (BST)
>
>Gregory Maxwell said:
> > But without due process we can not determine if someone is a Troll or
> > if they were actually wronged. You can't escape providing due process.
>
>
>Well the minute he started in on the trolling I think it's fair to say he
>was not just some innocent user who had been wronged.  He's the most
>blatant troll I've ever seen and the fact that he's still permitted to
>edit wikipedia with impunity some three weeks after being clearly
>identified, and is also being allowed to troll this mailing list, is in my
>opinion a grave failure of the system.  He has maliciously wounded
>Wikipedia with nearly every one of his edits and he has apparently been
>given explicit permission to carry on doing it.
>
>_______________________________________________
>WikiEN-l mailing list
>WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l

_________________________________________________________________
Don?t just search. Find. Check out the new MSN Search!
http://search.msn.click-url.com/go/onm00200636ave/direct/01/


from_name: Lee Daniel Crocker

subject: [Foundation-l] 2M articles

body:
On Wed, 2005-06-01 at 08:51 +1000, David Gerard wrote:

> I'd rather wait until we're at least past the experimental phase. But
> perhaps I'm being overly cautious ... others' opinions?
>
> (It'd certainly give the feature one hell of a beta test ;-)

As currently implemented, article validation is not meaningful
in light of non-dated transclusions.  I would't advertise it
until that hole is plugged.

--
Lee Daniel Crocker <lee at piclab.com>  <http://www.piclab.com/lee/>
<http://creativecommons.org/licenses/publicdomain/>


subject: [Foundation-l] 2M articles


from_name: A Nony Mouse

subject: [WikiEN-l] Rogue Admin Syndrome

body:
Apparently it was a very good idea.

I've been banned from the list for speaking out.

I shudder to think what would have happened if I revealed my Wikipedia
username or my name on this list.

A.Nony.Mouse.

>I have decided to make this anonymous. I do not know how some of you
would
>react and I do not wish to take any chance that I would be harassed for
>this.

Good idea, I think.

_________________________________________________________________
On the road to retirement? Check out MSN Life Events for advice on how to
get there! http://lifeevents.msn.com/category.aspx?cid=Retirement


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: recent goings-on

body:
Gregory Maxwell said:
> But without due process we can not determine if someone is a Troll or
> if they were actually wronged. You can't escape providing due process.

Well the minute he started in on the trolling I think it's fair to say he
was not just some innocent user who had been wronged.  He's the most
blatant troll I've ever seen and the fact that he's still permitted to
edit wikipedia with impunity some three weeks after being clearly
identified, and is also being allowed to troll this mailing list, is in my
opinion a grave failure of the system.  He has maliciously wounded
Wikipedia with nearly every one of his edits and he has apparently been
given explicit permission to carry on doing it.


from_name: Anthere

subject: [Foundation-l] Re: 2M articles

body:
Foundation-l] Re: 2M articlesNicolas Weeger nicolas.weeger at laposte.net
Wed Jun 1 07:32:17 UTC 2005

   Previous message: [Foundation-l] 2M articles
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---------------------------------

> But *this* announcement would not be a global one. Launching article > quality survey is of great interest for the english wikipedia due to its > size. It is of much reduced interest for smaller language (as the lack > of interest in validation topics by minor languages show in meta).I'd also give some time for concerned language Wikipedia(s) to think and decide to activate or not that feature.
IMO validation activation shouldn't be decided by Foundation, but directly by contributors.Nicolas

Which is really good, because I do not think the Foundation has *ever* suggested it would do so.
What makes you think it would ?

Ant

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subject: [Foundation-l] Re: 2M articles


subject: [Foundation-l] 2 M

body:
Anthere (anthere9 at yahoo.com) [050601 14:24]:

> But *this* announcement would not be a global one. Launching article
> quality survey is of great interest for the english wikipedia due to its
> size. It is of much reduced interest for smaller language (as the lack
> of interest in validation topics by minor languages show in meta).
> Wikipedias are at different stages of development. 2M global article can
> help smaller languages get a press announcement. I am not sure they
> would dare send a "quality survey" if their project is 11 254 articles.
> Journalists are more likely to have a great laugh :-)

Mmm. It's of great interest on en: and (I think) de: (particularly in
regards to their quality campaign). Has anyone on fr: noticed?

- d.

I certainly agree it is of great interest.

I think there are enough french readers of this list and enough french participants on meta, to know about this future feature (hard to say this aloud... :-)) ... and to make the information dip at the right places... though I do not remember having it seen discussed in french anywhere... well.
This morning, I put the [[en validation feature]] page a bit in the light on the "hot news" on meta to help a bit it raise interest. But what I am confused about why are there not two different pages for german and english speaking wikipedias ? Will the same "frame" work for both languages ?

In any cases, the topic of the thread is about making a press release for the 2M, not a press release for the article validation system.

The 2M would be of interest to many languages, if not all languages.
The article validation system, if it deserves a press release, would not be interesting all languages by far, because some languages are currently still in the process of trying to have *content*.

These are obviously two different topics and possibly not to mix in the same press release.

And as Ryo points it out extremely well, a press release about the article validation system should be discussed in wikipedia-l. I think it is premature though :-) Perhaps for september ???? (hummm, when school and business start again ?) Since you take care of it a lot, you'll be able to tell us in time :-)

Hmmm, right, I am not in the communication business. I only have the feeling these are two important issues and it would be best to avoid that one press release deals with two different issues at the same time. If only because we could not draft a good powerful title :-)

ant

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subject: [Foundation-l] 2 M


list: wiktionary-l

from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [Wiktionary-l] GNU-FDL and Ultimate Wiktionary

body:
Jimmy Wales wrote:

>Ray Saintonge wrote:
>
>
>>Not really, since the existing wiktionaries would continue as they have
>>all along.
>>
>>
>I am not agreeing or disagreeing or taking any position on this at all.
> Please consider my questions about this to be merely data gathering. :-)
>
>Why should we have such a formal break?  Why shouldn't we instead
>transition from one to the other in a seamless way?  I worry a lot about
>duplication of effort, etc.
>
>Are there objections from old-school wiktionarians to the ultimate
>wiktionary plans?  Is it possible that we could address these objections
>through code?
>
>I'm very sorry that I don't already know all of this, but I'm sure you
>can all get me up to speed quite quickly.
>
The following are my further comments that I have added in the
Wiktionary Beer Parlour, for those who don't haunt that place. Perhaps,
before we get into copyright licensing issues, we should make sure that
we are not pursuing a chimera.

In all fairness Gerard's proposal for his Ultimate Wiktionary has been
around for some time.  According to the timetable Prototype III is now
available, but I have been unable to find a link to it.  A version that
is fully integrated with Mediawiki 1.6 is due by the middle of June.
There is all manner of talk about how all the Wiktionaries can be
integrated into one big Ultimate Wiktionary but there is precious little
practical progress.

At some point Gerard expressed that when the Ultimate Wiktionary was
operational we would not be forced to migrate, but predicted that we
would all see this new project as the best thing in on-line dictionaries
ever created.  He further predicted that we would all find it so
marvellous that we would be inspired to move everything there without
any difficulty whatsoever.  I accepted that at face value, and was
prepared to wait until there was something in place before wasting any
more time debating it.  That explains my opinionated silence on the
matter.  A recent comment by Jimbo on the mailing list suggested to me
that he has been led to believe that there is more to this project than
can be supported by facts.  That made it necessary to comment.

It's wonderful that Gerard has been able to talk ?5,000 from a Dutch
company to fund his proposal, but let's get real.  Gerard's Ultimate
Wiktionary is currently at the level of a techies pipedream, and we can
only wonder what's in the pipe.  Adapting to software that does not
exist showes that UW really stands for "Ultimate Wheelspinning".  We
don't know how Mediawiki 1.6 will handle this by mid-June; Mediawiki 1.5
is only now in development and has not yet been released.  Let's not
become dependent on software that has yet to be written.

While I'm at it I should remark how effective these proposals have been
at propelling the Ido Wiktionary to become the 7th largest Wiktionary
with some 9,000 entries.  Ido is a minor dialect of Esperanto.  Of
course most of the entries don't have a definition, and only show a
translation of the word into one other language.  I sometimes wonder if
some of these people understand what a dictionary is all about.
<small><small> I hope nobody is reading this on the Klingon homeworld.
</small></small>

Ec


references:
<42999E86.6090106@wikia.com>
	<429A1CEB.9020604@telus.net>	<429A24FE.2040307@wikia.com>
	<429AB67C.3080205@telus.net>
	<op.srlbcnxm2okkek@arcadia.hsd1.co.comcast.net>

body:
Muke Tever wrote:

> Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
>
>> For my part translation is a secondary function of a dictionary.
>> Documenting the history of a word, citing quotations that support uses
>> of the word, and commentary on the usages of a word are more interesting
>> and important.  I recently did a little of this to raise awareness of
>> the divergence of  [[gourmand]]  in English and French.  I find our
>> present software essentially adequate for the task.
>>
>> Gerard has been talking about his Ultimate Wiktionary for a long time,
>> but so far I have not seen examples of what Gerard's Wiktionary will
>> look like, how it will work or how it will be editable.  Perhaps if he
>> presented more concrete examples attitudes could change.
>
>
> I agree.  As I have said ... probably many times now, 99% of Wiktionary
> articles are stubs.[1]  Taking these as a model for a stricter dictionary
> format may relegate the "Ultimate" Wiktionary to the status of a mere
> glossary.  But without even having had a mock-up of what the product will
> look like or how it will work, noone can tell.  A lot of the work for
> this is apparently being done by a small few behind closed doors,
> which is
> not very encouraging at all.
>
>     *Muke!
> [1] And having five thousand one-word translations attached to each won't
> make them any less stubby.

If you want stubs look at the Ido Wiktionary. 8-)
Ec


from_name: David Gerard

subject: [Foundation-l] 2M articles

body:
Erik Moeller (erik_moeller at gmx.de) [050601 00:20]:

> Wikimania should get a dedicated press release when we have finalized
> the programme. We can mention the "2 million articles" number in that,
> but it shouldn't be the focus. It seems unlikely that anyone who would
> not care about Wikimania itself would care about yet another Wikipedia
> milestone. The next Wikipedia-specific press release, in my opinion,
> should be about peer review, perhaps when we put the validation tool in
> operation.

Eeek! Please let article rating run experimentally for a while! We can wait
on telling the world when we're actually getting useful results from it ...

- d.


subject: [Foundation-l] 2M articles


from_name: jack-lutz at comcast.net

subject: [Foundation-l] signoff foundation-l


subject: [Foundation-l] signoff foundation-l


subject: [WikiEN-l] signoff wikien-l


subject: [Wikipedia-l] signoff wikipedia-l


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: 2M articles

body:
Nod

But *this* announcement would not be a global one. Launching article
quality survey is of great interest for the english wikipedia due to its
size. It is of much reduced interest for smaller language (as the lack
of interest in validation topics by minor languages show in meta).

Wikipedias are at different stages of development. 2M global article can
help smaller languages get a press announcement. I am not sure they
would dare send a "quality survey" if their project is 11 254 articles.
Journalists are more likely to have a great laugh :-)

Ant

Erik Moeller a ?crit:
> David:
>
>> Eeek! Please let article rating run experimentally for a while! We can
>> wait
>> on telling the world when we're actually getting useful results from
>> it ...
>
>
> I wasn't thinking of an announcement like "Wikipedia is now the greatest
> thing ever, thanks to article validation!" but something more along the
> tune of "Wikipedia launches article quality survey", as an invitation
> for outside individuals to participate. Such a press release could
> clearly point out the nature of the experiment.
>
> Best,
>
> Erik


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: 2M articles


from_name: Skyring

subject: [WikiEN-l] Recent goings-on

body:
On 5/31/05, Charles Matthews <charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com> wrote:
> Skyring wrote
>
> >Somewhere along the way, Wikipedia seems to have lost something
> valuable. I look at this list and just about everything I see is one
> group of editors bickering with another group.
>
> We gained ... an encyclopedia: 500000 articles in March, 10% added smoothly
> since then.
>
> Nobody should kid themselves that there was ever a golden time when there
> was no 'bickering'.  If you look at the traffic numbers you see huge growth.
> Every month or so an asocial user kicking up a fuss about the way things are
> handled... it's the price we pay for being a radically open community.
> Remember, this is a big volunteer project; all that happens is that some
> people simply make it too hard for them to be accepted as volunteers.

The large polite communities I mention are likewise "radically open".
Yet they are polite and productive. They are not free from
"bickering", but such disputes are minor and short-lived. Sure, the
bulk of Wikipedia might proceed smoothly, but it's the "rough" aspects
that bother me. I don't really care if most of the inhabitants of a
large city live their lives free from crime - it's the assaults and
murders that get on the front pages, and Wikipedia seems to have
rather a lot of this compared to some other online communities.

--
Peter in Canberra


subject: [Foundation-l] The new steward team

body:
Your new stewards are now

*[[user:Andre Engels|Andre Engels]] (en, nl, de, fr, nds, ...)
*[[user:Angela|Angela]] (en)
*[[user:Anthere|Anthere]] (fr, en)
*[[User:AstroNomer|AstroNomer]] (es, en)
*[[user:Daniel Mayer|Daniel Mayer]] (mav) (en, es)
*[[User:Danny|Danny]] (en, he, yi)
*[[User:Datrio|Datrio]] (pl, en)
*[[user:Fantasy|Fantasy]] (en, de, it, <small>fr</small>
*[[User:Oscar|Oscar]] (nl, en)
*[[User:Shizhao|Shizhao]] (zh, en, ru)
*[[User:Sj|Sj]] (en, es)
*[[User:Snowdog|Snowdog]] (it, en, fr, es, ca, pt)
*[[User:Waerth|Waerth]] (nl, en)
*[[User:Yann|Yann]] (fr, en, gu, hi)

Amongst candidates for year 2005, all but one were elected with high
level of support. To be fair, I did not check out the last participants
for non-perfect suitability for voting, because by looking at the
results, it is crystal clear 9 candidates satisfy the "at least 30
votes" and "at least 80%" of support and crystal clear the last one does
not. Since the total number was expected to be 10 editors max... I see
no sense in calculating complicated statistics.

Astronomer, Danny, Datri, Oscar, Shizhao, Sj, Snowdog, Waerth and Yann
are simply elected by very large consensus, and that is it.

As for Traroth, I will just tell him that he not being recognised as
suitable in this role, absolutely does not diminish the quality of his
edits, which are appreciated by the french community as far as I know.

Reminder for Stewards : it is usually best to avoid removing sysop
rights (except when asked by the user himself out of tiredness) on your
own favorite projects. Both because you could be biaised, and because
others could consider you biaised. Generally, let other stewards take
the responsability of unsysoping people in your community. Also,
remember that the role of a steward is not to change his own status to
help himself, NOR to act unilaterally, but only to do what is useful and
according to community rules.

----------

As proposed a few months ago, and not rejected by anyone, inactive
stewards will be destewarded. This follow the same habit that what we do
for sysops on meta.

Last activity at Special:Log/rights show that
* Looxix was very active initially, but he is no more. He has left the
project (he asked me personally to remove his rights)
* Karl has never done any steward activity according to the log
* Arno Lagrange has only done steward activity to give himself sysop
rights (last february).

Karl will be removed his rights due to inactivity.

Note that Arno protested yesterday at the idea of his steward rights
being removed, pleading that he had been elected, had never abused the
position, supported linguistic diversity, had the intent to use it again
to give himself rights on some projects to help.

Angela answered him that being a steward was first of all a collective
role ("I expect stewards to carry out the requests at requests for
permissions"). Which he never did.

I support Angela here. Stewards should not just be super sysops, but
people helping the editors getting the access rights they need,
according to community wishes. A steward not carying those tasks is not
useful and is  spreading a false image of many people being able to help.

I totally respect Arno request for more diversity but Snowdog and
Astronomer will now be able to help with the it and es communities.

There is a habit on meta that goes this way.

"if you need a status, ask for it. If you do not need it any more, give
it back". This is the reason why sysops are unsysoped after a year of
basic inactivity on meta. If they do not come to meta, there is no sense
in them staying sysop. This is not a criticism of their person, nor a
measurement of their trustefullness in the community.

So, I will wait people comments on this. However, if Arno activity keeps
limited to giving himself rights when he needs it and never helping the
community, I think he should be removed.

--------

All this will naturally be applied when the db is no more in the
read-only mode. But the vote is closed.

--------

In all cases, thanks for your unanimity and for the quiet surrounding
this vote :-)

Anthere


subject: [Foundation-l] The new steward team


body:
Roger Luethi (collector at hellgate.ch) [050601 07:39]:

> So I guess there is no need to ever flag a copyvio, then. Should some
> copyright holder ever complain, we will just change change some words
> in his text and the problem will go away. Well, that sure makes life
> a lot easier.

Well, not quite ... but that's what a rewrite is.

> Why do we delete pages that start as copyvios, rather than refactoring
> them?

To get the revisions out of the database while it's still easy to do so.
The rewriting happens on [[pagename/temp]].

- d.


from_name: Jimmy Wales

subject: [Wiktionary-l] (no subject)

body:
rb_wiktionary at boult.mailshell.com wrote:
> So I would suggest whoever is managing the idea of change needs to lift
> their game in keeping the active Wiktionary community informed.

Yes, indeed.

Don't worry -- nothing radical is going to happen too quickly -- but
Gerard has managed to secure funding from Kennisnet (Dutch educational
consortium) for programming for WikiData.  I'm not fully informed on the
details of this, but I think that it should be fairly easy to get strong
community input on features needed most badly.

The goal here should be to make everything better for everyone.  There
should be no thought of doing away with free form wiki text for detailed
explanations of etymology, meaning, etc.  That's a wonderful thing.  At
the same time, there should be _easy_ support for structured querying
and automatic international linking per Gerard's usual explanations of
this stuff.

--Jimbo


subject: [Wiktionary-l] (no subject)

body:
rb_wiktionary at boult.mailshell.com wrote:
> Like Ec I find even the present level of codification annoyingly
> complicated. Requiring any significant level of codification from general
> users would just knock out 99%of the population form being contributors,
> asituation we cannot go towards.

The concept here is to _decrease_ rather than _increase_ the level of
complexity for users.  One reason the present system is annoyingly
complicated is that we are forcing the software to do more than it was
designed to do, and failing to automate things for the user that could
be automated.

> From what little I have learned so far of this idea, including the complete
> lack of communication with the user community, the idea of introducing a new
> more technical Ultimate Wiktionary sounds like a disaster waiting to happen.

Well, I think we can avert disaster now that everyone is talking.  I did
not personally realize that people weren't fully informed about this --
that's my own fault.

--Jimbo


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Banned users

body:
Richard Rabinowitz (rickyrab at eden.rutgers.edu) [050601 06:42]:

> If the banned user deserved to be banned, then, yeah, I agree. Did the
> banned user deserve to be banned? I dunno.

Although I blocked KaintheScion as a deceptive sockpuppet, both the
ElKabong and Enviroknot names both appear to still be in use - except when
the user violates the 3RR, in which case he gets a 24-hour block. That's
what's actually been happening here.

- d.


subject: [Foundation-l] 2M articles

body:
Erik Moeller (erik_moeller at gmx.de) [050601 06:27]:
> David:

> >Eeek! Please let article rating run experimentally for a while! We can wait
> >on telling the world when we're actually getting useful results from it ...

> I wasn't thinking of an announcement like "Wikipedia is now the greatest
> thing ever, thanks to article validation!" but something more along the
> tune of "Wikipedia launches article quality survey", as an invitation
> for outside individuals to participate. Such a press release could
> clearly point out the nature of the experiment.

I'd rather wait until we're at least past the experimental phase. But
perhaps I'm being overly cautious ... others' opinions?

(It'd certainly give the feature one hell of a beta test ;-)

- d.


subject: [Foundation-l] 2M articles


from_name: Rick

subject: [WikiEN-l] Rogue Admin Syndrome

body:
--- A Nony Mouse <tempforcomments2 at hotmail.com> wrote:
> Apparently it was a very good idea.
>
> I've been banned from the list for speaking out.
>
> I shudder to think what would have happened if I
> revealed my Wikipedia
> username or my name on this list.
>
> A.Nony.Mouse.

Really?  You've been banned from the list?  Then how
did this posting make it through?

RickK

__________________________________
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Get on-the-go sports scores, stock quotes, news and more. Check it out!
http://discover.yahoo.com/mobile.html


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Re: Intended changes to namespace management

body:
On Wed, 2005-06-01 at 12:15 +0100, Phil Boswell wrote:
> "Erik Moeller" <erik_moeller at gmx.de> wrote in message
> news:429C002F.3020207 at gmx.de...
> [snip]
> > Whether we should create synonyms beyond the simple Image=>File redirect
> > when we don't have special ways of dealing with these file types yet is
> > arguable. The current behavior would be that [[Sound:soundfile.ogg]] would
> > link to the file description page for that file, but not embed it (so
> > would [[Image:soundfile.ogg]]). But it might be enough to have
> > [[File:Soundfile.ogg]] for this purpose for now.
>
> I suppose it would be too much to hope that we could extend the {{}} syntax
> to images, wherein {{Image:Some-nice_picture.jpg}} embedded the image and
> [[Image:Some-nice_picture.jpg]] simply linked to the description page?

Actually, that's almost precisely what the syntax I'm working on does;
embedded images are, after all, more like inclusions than links, so I
use the same syntax for embedded images, inclusions, extensions like
math, nowiki, comments, and variables (which are like min-inclusions).

--
Lee Daniel Crocker <lee at piclab.com>  <http://www.piclab.com/lee/>
<http://creativecommons.org/licenses/publicdomain/>


from_name: Nicolas Weeger

subject: [Foundation-l] Re: 2M articles

body:
> But *this* announcement would not be a global one. Launching article
> quality survey is of great interest for the english wikipedia due to its
> size. It is of much reduced interest for smaller language (as the lack
> of interest in validation topics by minor languages show in meta).

I'd also give some time for concerned language Wikipedia(s) to think and decide to activate or not that feature. IMO validation activation shouldn't be decided by Foundation, but directly by contributors.

Nicolas

Acc?dez au courrier ?lectronique de La Poste : www.laposte.net ;
3615 LAPOSTENET (0,34?/mn) ; t?l : 08 92 68 13 50 (0,34?/mn)


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: 2M articles


from_name: Poor, Edmund W

subject: [WikiEN-l] What Wikipedia Admins are, anyway

body:
Richard suggested:

> > Personally I favor being a Barbarian Admin, although Archaeologist
> > Admin is good for a change of pace, and Valkyrie Admin has its
> > equipment advantages at lower levels.
> >
> > Stan
>
> How about Viking Admin? :-)

I really like the idea of having a Hiking Admin, and I thank you for
suggesting it. You could tell someone to "take a hike" when they got
"off the path", without giving "a fence". <hee hee>

Or you could sponsor outings where local Wikipedians got together for
hiking parties. I'm just not sure this should include hitchhiking. That
might drive some users away.

We should also consider having a Kipling Admin.

Here hoping I'm not being any sillier than the rest of you lot :-)

Ed Poor    <-- somewhat dyshexic today


from_name: Erik Moeller

subject: [Foundation-l] CafePress shop now managed by Daniel Mayer

body:
Hi,

I've handed over management of the Wikimedia/Wikipedia CafePress shop at

	http://www.cafepress.com/wikipedia

to Daniel Mayer (mav) to focus on my Research role. All questions about
the shop should be directed at him. Thanks to mav for accepting this
responsibility.

Best,

Erik


subject: [Wikipedia-l] CafePress shop now managed by Daniel Mayer


from_name: Joseph Reagle

subject: [Wikipedia-l] An idea

body:
On Tuesday 31 May 2005 20:02, Mark Williamson wrote:
> In some situations however it would be a good thing for the person
> with the degree in astrophysics to tell the person without to stfu.

Ah, OK. So you are touching on the issue of what exact role does the
credential system serve. Is it an intelligence highlighter, a moron
mitigator, I way of incenting contributions, etc.

As a crackpot moron mitigator, I don't expect credential would do that much
with respect to the crackpot -- your just part of the conspiracy. If it
served in some way to help others regulate the crackpot, then perhaps...


body:
On Wed, 01 Jun 2005 08:11:23 +1000, David Gerard wrote:
> > Why do we delete pages that start as copyvios, rather than refactoring
> > them?
>
> To get the revisions out of the database while it's still easy to do so.
> The rewriting happens on [[pagename/temp]].

Yeah, that's what I thought. And I am also aware of the problems that
keep us from completely purging copyvios from the revision history if
they happen only at a later stage. It was my understanding that in those
cases, we roll back and add the information back in a rewritten form.

_However_, some editors seem to think that even a rollback to the state
before the copyvio is entirely unreasonable unless the copyvio was the
most recent edit.

Check out [[en:Terrorism in Kashmir]] for a recent example, where many
paragraphs (some 90% of the article at the time of the copyvio) were
lifted literally from BBC News and yet my rollback was reverted.

I used to think we had a clear rollback policy for such cases, but the
discussion here seems to indicate that I argue a minority position.

Roger


body:
On Tue, 31 May 2005 16:59:37 -0700, Ray Saintonge wrote:
> >So I guess there is no need to ever flag a copyvio, then. Should some
> >copyright holder ever complain, we will just change change some words
> >in his text and the problem will go away. Well, that sure makes life
> >a lot easier.
> >
> Do you have statitics on how many have complained?

No, I don't. What I do have is some anecdotal evidence.

Last week, I requested that an editor ask permission from a copyright
holder, and the copyright holder gave permission because she was so
pleasantly surprised that for the first time ever, someone actually asked
her, although the copyvio was just the most recent one of many. Not
surprisingly, she didn't have kind words for the way copyvios are
handled at WP.

FWIW, I did ask her about the other incidents, but didn't hear back.

Roger


from_name: Geoff Burling

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Recent goings-on

body:
On Tue, 31 May 2005, Michael Snow wrote:

> Phil Sandifer wrote:
>
> > May I ask what communities these are? Particularly the one with
> > hundreds of thousands of members.
>
[snip]
>
> That leaves craigslist, in my opinion, as the one realistic candidate
> for a more "polite and productive" community on a scale similar to
> Wikipedia. If someone knows more about the seamy side of craigslist than
> I do, feel free to enlighten me to the contrary. Presumably their forums
> can occasionally breed bad behavior, as with all such creatures, but I
> know of little else. It's also interesting to note that craigslist
> happens to be the only one of these sites we have not yet overtaken in
> terms of traffic. Perhaps we should take more interest in figuring out
> what lessons we can pick up from their experience.
>
Check out the "Rants & Raves" section. I can't speak for any other local
version of Craigslist, but at portland.craigslist.com there have been
a number of flame wars that make any exchange on EN-wikipedia look not
only polite but extremely intellectual. (Currently, amongst the usual
posts bashing gays, fat women, national corporations, & city government,
there is a dispute over pornography that makes no sense & I have no
desire to get to the bottom of -- but is noteable because one side is
attaching workplace unsafe pictures to their contributions, thus
disrupting the forum to prove their point.)

I honestly doubt any community is entirely "polite & productive". To
paraphrase the late Douglas Adams, the problem with people is people.

On the other hand, I do find the classifieds on Craigslist quite
useful -- which I consider is Craiglist's most important feature.
Does this mean that we should consider Wikiclassifieds? (The ability
to edit other people's personal ads offers the potential for continuous
and immeasurable entertainment, although it might not be worth the
resulting trouble.)

Geoff


from_name: Phil Boswell

body:
"Erik Moeller" <erik_moeller at gmx.de> wrote in message
news:429C002F.3020207 at gmx.de...
[snip]
> Whether we should create synonyms beyond the simple Image=>File redirect
> when we don't have special ways of dealing with these file types yet is
> arguable. The current behavior would be that [[Sound:soundfile.ogg]] would
> link to the file description page for that file, but not embed it (so
> would [[Image:soundfile.ogg]]). But it might be enough to have
> [[File:Soundfile.ogg]] for this purpose for now.

I suppose it would be too much to hope that we could extend the {{}} syntax
to images, wherein {{Image:Some-nice_picture.jpg}} embedded the image and
[[Image:Some-nice_picture.jpg]] simply linked to the description page?
--
Phil
[[en:User:Phil Boswell]]


from_name: iMeowbot

subject: [WikiEN-l] Rogue Admin Syndrome

body:
"Rick" <giantsrick13 at yahoo.com> wrote:

> --- A Nony Mouse <tempforcomments2 at hotmail.com> wrote:
[...]

> Really?  You've been banned from the list?  Then how
> did this posting make it through?

Earlier messages were from tempforcomments@ rather than tempforcomments2@ .


from_name: Ed W

references:
<429BA6C3.50609@wildgooses.com>
	<429BB0E1.9010100@pobox.com>	<429C54EE.4080108@wildgooses.com>
	<d7je6b$d7q$1@sea.gmane.org>

body:
> Brion wants it changed to not allow \' and \" as escapes for ' and "
> inside quoted strings and to not allow whitespace between the opening
> < and the name of the tag.

Brion,

I read this comment on the bugzilla.  Whilst I agree that """
should be supported I am a little unsure what is wrong with supporting
the \" syntax?

Personally I dont do a lot of web development and my first instinct
would have been to reach for \" to put quotes within quotes.  Surely the
goal is to have a syntax which is understandable to the general public?

Lets be clear though.  Are we talking about stuff like the following:

<gallery caption="Ed said: \"Here is my gallery\"">

Which you think should *only* be allowed as:

<gallery caption="Ed said: "Here is my gallery"">

The former doesn't feel "inconsistent" to me? (But I am not a hardcore
web worker)

Can we not compromise and offer both syntax?  Either way it seems like a
small detail which is holding back an otherwise very useful patch that
seems quite low risk.  Eyeballing the patch it looks fairly
selfcontained, although my first thought is that we only need the one
tag parsing function, params would simply be null if there weren't any
params?

Brion: I don't want to run cvs based code on my website, and neither do
I want to maintain two versions of a patch.  What do we realistically
need to do to get this finished off?  Making it patch against head is
probably trivial, and whilst I would prefer the escaped quotes above it
doesn't seem to be a show stopper either way around?

Hoping that we might get such an easy patch moving and into 1.5 for release?

Thanks and good luck

Ed W


from_name: james

subject: [Wikitech-l] image dump

body:
just finished downloading the en image dump, tried extracting it with winrar -
only to get an error - 'the archive is corupt' - though doing it with a
different extractor, not only doesnt preserve the folders, there only seems to
be 9200 images in the dump.... could well be more, as i havent extract it all,
because of this folder thing

anyone of an extracter that does a folder intact job

once that is extracted - how will my wiki know where the images are for each
artical, and thus include them within each artical?

thanks


from_name: Aphaia

subject: [Foundation-l] The elections have begun!

body:
Hello,

On 5/30/05, daniwo59 at aol.com <daniwo59 at aol.com> wrote:
> The elections for the Board of Trustees of the Wikimedia Foundation are now
> open. In order to accommodate all projects, every effort will be made to
> translate the election notice into all of the languages used by the Foundation.
> As such, we are asking that everyone pitch in to ensure that the Election
> regulations are translated before candidates issue their statements. Please see
> _http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Elections_for_the_Board_of_Trustees_of_the_Wikim
> edia_Foundation%2C_2005/En_
> (http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Elections_for_the_Board_of_Trustees_of_the_Wikimedia_Foundation,_2005/En)

and thank you for your interest, we have already Election notice
translated into 11 languages (+ original English one). Some are on
meta and linked from local projects,
most are on local projects (and linked from other local projects). On
behalf of the election organizers, I appreciate you all of
translators.

Already I posted English version to several local projects and some
were already translated.
Let's keep it up soon candidate presentation is coming up ;-)

Some posted notice including to De,
Wikipedia:Wahlen ins Board of Trustees der Wikimedia-Foundation
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wahlen_ins_Board_of_Trustees_der_Wikimedia-Foundation
or Hr
Wikipedia:Izbori
http://hr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Izbori
are still waiting for translators. If you can speak those languages,
please care for them ;)

There are still projects which have last year notice. Please check
your favorite project
and if the notice should be updated, and can't wait for its arrival
from our organizer's slow hand, don't hesitate and snatch the latest
version from
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Elections_for_the_Board_of_Trustees_of_the_Wikimedia_Foundation,_2005/En
or other language one. Also, if you would like to post Election notice
to local projects or put a message on it on Village pump, it will be
very appreciated.

So see you again after DB unlocked,
Best,

--
Aphaea@*.wikipedia.org
email: Aphaia @ gmail (dot) com


from_name: Sean Barrett

subject: [WikiEN-l] Good reasons for blocking Enviro

body:
MacGyverMagic/Mgm stated for the record:

> I totally agree with this. If environknot had been less hostile, his
> chances of being unblocked would've been much larger.

And if trolls were contributors, we wouldn't need the ArbComm.

--
  Sean Barrett     | If you take cranberries and stew
  sean at epoptic.com | them like applesauce they taste much
                   | more like prunes than rhubarb does.


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: GFDL Clarification

body:
"Timwi" <timwi at gmx.net> wrote in message
news:d7ajq0$887$1 at sea.gmane.org...
[snip]
> Quite to the contrary, you only asked if the image could be used on
> Wikipedia, not whether they would license it under the GFDL or anything
> else. Therefore, they only agreed to using it on Wikipedia, and therefore
> it should not be used on Wikipedia because it isn't free.

Am I the only person stunned by the complete lack of logical progression
here?

A) The owners of the image agreed for it to be used on Wikipedia
B) Therefore it can't be.

Surely we can sort out our licensing system better than this
self-contradictory nonsense?
--
Phil
[[en:User:Phil Boswell]]


from_name: Brion Vibber

body:
Ed W wrote:
>> Brion wants it changed to not allow \' and \" as escapes for ' and "
>> inside quoted strings and to not allow whitespace between the opening
>> < and the name of the tag.
>
> I read this comment on the bugzilla.  Whilst I agree that """
> should be supported I am a little unsure what is wrong with supporting
> the \" syntax?

If we're using HTML/XML syntax for extension hooks (and we are), then it
must behave consistently with the HTML/XML elements we allow. Why would
\" be magic in some places and not others?

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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from_name: Fred Bauder

subject: [Wikipedia-l] An idea

body:
Knowledge and the ability to communicate it are what matter.
Credentials are evidence of the possibility that the person is
familiar with knowledge regarding a topic and can communicate that
knowledge, but not proof in the absence of performance.

Fred

On Jun 1, 2005, at 1:44 PM, Andrew Venier wrote:

> It still leaves the question:
> Why would the project expend such an effort to validate
> credentials, when one of its operating principles is that
> credentials don't count for anything?


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Fundraising drive

body:
On 6/1/05, Michael Snow <wikipedia at earthlink.net> wrote:

> Is there much that would need to be accomplished beyond touching up our
> messages and checking the translations? Presumably the Board can decide
> on an appropriate target at its next meeting. Perhaps US$75k like last
> time, or maybe 50k because it's only two weeks this time, unless we can
> articulate a strong justification for needing more?

Perhaps relevant question: where we could find 2005 Q2 a/o yearly
budget? And Q1 (real) balance sheet?  I presume it is hard for most of
people to donate without any information how and for which their
donation was  a/o will be used.

Cheers,

--
Aphaea@*.wikipedia.org
email: Aphaia @ gmail (dot) com


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Fundraising drive


subject: [WikiEN-l] On Newspeak

body:
The Cunctator stated for the record:

> On 6/1/05 4:26 PM, "Sean Barrett" <sean at epoptic.org> wrote:
>
>>And if trolls were contributors, we wouldn't need the ArbComm.
>
>
> I'd just like to say that I despise the Newspeak technique of abbreviating
> the name of the arbitration committee. As Orwell wrote in 1984: "It was
> perceived that in thus abbreviating a name one narrowed and subtly altered
> its meaning, by cutting out most of the associations that would otherwise
> cling to it."

Oldthinkers unbellyfeel Wikipedia.

--
  Sean Barrett     | Legatus est vir bonus peregre missus
  sean at epoptic.com | ad mentiendum Rei Publicae causa.


from_name: Andrew Venier

subject: [Wikipedia-l] An idea

body:
Jimmy Wales wrote:

>Andrew Venier wrote:
>
>
>>To me it appears to be quite a display of cognitive dissonance.
>>
>>"We (wikipedia in the aggregate) don't think that credentials carry any
>>weight. At least, not enough to influence our content or policies in any
>>meaningful way.   However, because other people value credentials, we
>>have trouble building credibility without them, so we would like to
>>advertise them in order to enhance our reputation.  We're happy to
>>trumpet our contributor's qualifications, as long as it's clear that
>>they mean nothing to us and in no way affect our process."
>>
>>
>
>I think that's a fairly accurate summary, but I don't know why you call
>it cognitive dissonance.
>
>--Jimbo
>
>_______________________________________________
>Wikipedia-l mailing list
>Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>
>
>
I say "cognitive dissonance" because it seems it is an attempt (and not
a particularly successful one, in my opinion) to reconcile conflicting
ideas.  Wikipedia has an entrenched attitude of dismissing credentials.
However, the belief that credentials are worthless is challenged.  So,
I'm observing the gymnastics of trying to accommodate both ideas.  In
this case, it seems the primary device is to impute one of the ideas
(that credentials have value) to "others".  This path leads to the
notion that these efforts are being made only for appearance's sake.
Ultimately, it seems to me that taking a position along the lines of:
"We care, but then again, we don't." is too conflicted to have any sort
of persuasive effect on perceptions of Wikipedia.

It still leaves the question:
Why would the project expend such an effort to validate credentials,
when one of its operating principles is that credentials don't count for
anything?

In the end I think Wikipedia has to either continue with its current
M.O. and accept the doubts that come with it, or admit that credentials
can play some sort of role (however minor) in establishing the
trustworthiness of information.


subject: [Wikitech-l] Trophees du libre prizes

body:
Nicolas Weeger wrote:
>> Well, it would make sense to make use of this for Wikimania: we're
>> planning a developers hackathon before the main convention and if
>> somebody's missing a laptop it could come in rather handy. If nobody
>> needs direct use of it, we could reserve it for infrastructure / use by
>> the NIC.
>>
>> After Wikimania it'll need to go somewhere.... ?
>
> Ok, I'll keep it stored under my bed, and bring it to Wikimania.
> I may test it to make sure it works, but that's all.

Ok, consensus among core devs is that the laptop will go to Tim
Starling, who's put in so much excellent work on the system over the
last year or two (especially in our database load balancing support,
text block compression, and other vital areas) and so far is laptopless.

Tim will be using it for the hackathon and taking it home after Wikimania.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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from_name: Sabine Cretella

body:
Hmmm ... I know for sure that Gerard is not the only one believing in
this project - there are language professionals, like me, who want this
- there are more possibilities you can even imagine - and I am not going
to outline them here or anywhere else as it is far too difficult to
understand if people don't even understand what the UW basically is
about - the inital idea was saving time and effort, creating one place
where to work instead of repeating the same work on 70+ different
wiktionaries around (I hope the number is correct). Then step by step
other contacts with organisations and of course people came up and this
lead to further thinking, to additional features etc. And it is not
finished here.

Ultimate Wiktionary is real - it is a fact and it will have success.

The planning of this project on wiktionary started last year in August -
for some of us even sooner, since we had this view in mind for
months/years - Gerard had an idea and implemented it with the use of
templates - and I had a very similar idea, but did not know how to
create what I wanted to create - so I just sat down and learned how to
do. There's a Farsi speaking colleague in Canada who tried similar stuff
- there are dictionary projects around that have in part what UW will
have in the end. The combination of Mediawiki + Wikidata will allow for
a real astonishing project.

Of course there will be some inexpected problems, like with every
project ... wasn't wiktionary born out of a problem to wikipedians who
did not want lexicological data?

Problems are there to be solved - and if you want to, if you really want
to, you can always find the solution. And if this should depend from me:
I definitely want to find the solution. It is part of my everyday work

Oh ... and as for the stub thingie ... if I now would like to complete a
word adding for example a definition I don't know which are these words
- I have to search in hundreds (or thousands) of words ... this is a
waist of time. Using wikidata with a relational database in combination
with mediawiki I will be able to see which are the German/Italian words
that need a definition, I will have the possibility to search for
example for all German words where the gender is missing (you just need
a database query) - contributing will become much easier, take less
time, become more qualified +++++.

Ido: I had a look at this project - they started to upload things -
unfortunately the capitalisation is not off and this could create
problems, but I suppose they have the data as tables and upload with a
bot. So it could be data to be included easily in UW and it will be easy
to start editing the missing parts and so the stub-time will be over
very, very soon.

Isn't the real reason for so many negative comments that people are
worrying about all the work they have done more than twice? Isn't it
true that some of us repeatedly tried to explain that Wiktionary like it
is/was at this/that stage is 80% metadata and wastes lots of time of
contributing members?

You see: most innovations are seen as an intrusion - this is normal - it
will take time for people to accept that there is more than just a
normal wiki for lexicological content.

UW is going ahead - it will work - we will make it work.

Sorry, if I am maybe a bit too harsh - but starting to doubt about a
project now ... it is a bit late to my opinion. Instead of doubting and
trying to see negative I would like to kindly in vite you to give
constructive contributions - ideas on what to implement, ask if this or
that is already implemented. Help to create structures and help to make
sure that the work you did is not going to be wasted..

Thank you and have a great day!

Sabine

___________________________________
Yahoo! Mail: gratis 1GB per i messaggi e allegati da 10MB
http://mail.yahoo.it


subject: [WikiEN-l] Rogue Admin Syndrome

body:
--- JAY JG <jayjg at hotmail.com> wrote:
> Regardless of what happened to his A Nony Mouse
> account, I'm sure his
> Everyking e-mail can still post.
>
> Jay.

And will, at the drop of an arbitration or admin
action.

RickK

__________________________________
Discover Yahoo!
Get on-the-go sports scores, stock quotes, news and more. Check it out!
http://discover.yahoo.com/mobile.html


from_name: Magnus Manske

subject: [Foundation-l] GNU-FDL and Ultimate Wiktionary

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

Jimmy Wales schrieb:
> I think that GNU FDL is perfectly fine for Ultimate Wiktionary and there
> is no need to change the license.  The license is perfectly compatible
> with the .DICT format, so there should be no problems at all.
>
> Thinking about how to import data from wiktionary in the ultimate
> wiktionary may pose a few puzzles with respect to FDL compliance, but I
> don't see any significant problems.  The import script should keep track
> of who contributed to a chunk of data and take note of that fact.  The
> history may be a little more problematic, and I think we will want to
> get advice on exactly how to do it.
>
> But changing the license to something else would require throwing away
> all existing work in wiktionary, which seems quite unwise to me.

I don't hang around wiktionary a lot (OK, not at all:-) but if there's
only a small group of people doing most of the work, maybe they could
agree on dual-licensing their work under CC-BY-SA-2.0 or the like. Then,
all articles exclusively edited by these people could be used for a
dual-licensed UW.

Magnus
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subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: GFDL Clarification

references:
<Pine.LNX.4.61.0505271324140.4830@mimosa.opentrend.net>	<d7ajq0$887$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<d7kab6$s7r$1@sea.gmane.org>

body:
Phil Boswell schrieb:
> "Timwi" <timwi at gmx.net> wrote in message
> news:d7ajq0$887$1 at sea.gmane.org...
> [snip]
>
>>Quite to the contrary, you only asked if the image could be used on
>>Wikipedia, not whether they would license it under the GFDL or anything
>>else. Therefore, they only agreed to using it on Wikipedia, and therefore
>>it should not be used on Wikipedia because it isn't free.
>
>
> Am I the only person stunned by the complete lack of logical progression
> here?
>
> A) The owners of the image agreed for it to be used on Wikipedia
> B) Therefore it can't be.

The point is that we want others to be able to use Wikipedia material
under a free license (GFDL). If the permission is only for Wikipedia, it
excludes that use and, thus, shouldn't be used.

> Surely we can sort out our licensing system better than this
> self-contradictory nonsense?

Sure we could, but the rest of the copyright-DRM-IP-crazy world wouldn't
go for it :-(

Magnus


from_name: Stephen Bain

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: recent goings-on

body:
On 6/1/05, Cranston Snord <wikipediaisstupid at hotmail.com> wrote:
> "Maliciously wounded"???
>
> I'd like to see some evidence of that. I've done nothing of the sort.

How about your email address for starters?

--
Stephen Bain
stephen.bain at gmail.com


from_name: Matt Brown

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Recent goings-on

body:
On 6/1/05, Tony Sidaway <minorityreport at bluebottle.com> wrote:
> What does workplace unsafe actually mean in this context?  Whose
> workplace?  Why unsafe?  How can a person placing a photograph on a
> website cause a completely unrelated workplace to become unsafe?

With respect, Tony: what could be said about this THIS time that
wasn't said last time?  It'd be flogging a dead horse on all sides.

-Matt (User:Morven)


subject: [Wikipedia-l] An idea

body:
Fred Bauder wrote:

> Knowledge and the ability to communicate it are what matter.
> Credentials are evidence of the possibility that the person is
> familiar with knowledge regarding a topic and can communicate that
> knowledge, but not proof in the absence of performance.

Saying that credentials are insufficient to establish one's suitability
as an editor is a very different argument from saying that credentials
must not be permitted to play any role in the editing process--which was
the original point I was addressing.

I don't think there is any disagreement that knowledge and the ability
to communicate it are key factors.  The issue seems to be how to
establish expertise in a way that is widely accepted and trusted.

As someone making a living outside of the fields in which I have
degrees, I am well aware that credentials are not a direct
representation of a person's knowledge and abilities.

I just question the wisdom of investing the time, money, effort,
attention, mindshare, etc. in a system for verifying credentials while
at the same time holding that credentials are not at all meaningful to
the project.


from_name: Stan Shebs

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Recent goings-on

body:
Tony Sidaway wrote:

>Geoff Burling said:
>
>>but is noteable because one
>>side is attaching workplace unsafe pictures to their contributions,
>>thus
>>disrupting the forum to prove their point.)
>>
>
>What does workplace unsafe actually mean in this context?  Whose
>workplace?  Why unsafe?  How can a person placing a photograph on a
>website cause a completely unrelated workplace to become unsafe?
>
You know full well, it's been exhaustively explained multiple times.

Stan


from_name: Rowan Collins

body:
On 01/06/05, Phil Boswell <phil.boswell at gmail.com> wrote:
> I suppose it would be too much to hope that we could extend the {{}} syntax
> to images, wherein {{Image:Some-nice_picture.jpg}} embedded the image and
> [[Image:Some-nice_picture.jpg]] simply linked to the description page?

Well, it might well be too much to hope that all articles on
Wikipedia, and all old versions of those articles, could be either
converted to obey that rule or somehow activate a
"backwards-compatibility" mode.

Besides, while it makes sense that displaying an image is an
inclusion, this doesn't actually extend very well to, for instance,
sounds - unless we go the route of embedding plugins, sounds will
always be more like a fancy link than an "inclusion". (For an example
of what I think such a "fancy link" might look like, see my mockup at
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Multimedia#Software_features )

--
Rowan Collins BSc
[IMSoP]


from_name: James D. Forrester

body:
On Wednesday, June 01, 2005 4:01 PM, Rowan Collins <rowan.collins at gmail.com>
wrote:

> On 01/06/05, Phil Boswell <phil.boswell at gmail.com> wrote:
> > I suppose it would be too much to hope that we could extend the {{}}
> > syntax to images, wherein {{Image:Some-nice_picture.jpg}} embedded the
> > image and [[Image:Some-nice_picture.jpg]] simply linked to the
> > description page?
>
> Well, it might well be too much to hope that all articles on
> Wikipedia, and all old versions of those articles, could be either
> converted to obey that rule or somehow activate a
> "backwards-compatibility" mode.
>
> Besides, while it makes sense that displaying an image is an
> inclusion, this doesn't actually extend very well to, for instance,
> sounds - unless we go the route of embedding plugins, sounds will
> always be more like a fancy link than an "inclusion". (For an example
> of what I think such a "fancy link" might look like, see my mockup at
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Multimedia#Software_features )

Hmm. If you link to a sound-file with {{Image:}} (or {{Sound:}} you'd want
to transclude it, even if the software won't let you. [[Sound:]] would then
be a link to the sound, and the overall manner of links would make more
sense.

Yours,
--
James D. Forrester -- Wikimedia: [[W:en:User:Jdforrester|James F.]]

Mail: james at jdforrester.org | jon at eh.org | csvla at dcs.warwick.ac.uk
IM  : (MSN) jamesdforrester at hotmail.com


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Recent goings-on

body:
Tony Sidaway stated for the record:

> Geoff Burling said:
>
>>but is noteable because one
>>side is attaching workplace unsafe pictures to their contributions,
>>thus
>>disrupting the forum to prove their point.)
>
>
> What does workplace unsafe actually mean in this context?  Whose
> workplace?  Why unsafe?  How can a person placing a photograph on a
> website cause a completely unrelated workplace to become unsafe?

Attention all: please do not feed the troll.

--
  Sean Barrett     | Legatus est vir bonus peregre missus
  sean at epoptic.com | ad mentiendum Rei Publicae causa.


body:
On 01/06/05, James D. Forrester <james at jdforrester.org> wrote:
> Hmm. If you link to a sound-file with {{Image:}} (or {{Sound:}} you'd want
> to transclude it, even if the software won't let you. [[Sound:]] would then
> be a link to the sound, and the overall manner of links would make more
> sense.

Sorry, I don't follow what you're saying here - are you saying that
"transcluding a sound" *is* the same as displaying a specially
formatted set of links/player, or that it isn't? Like I say, I can see
how "transcluding an image" could mean displaying it inline, but I'm
not sure that "transcluding a sound" is really a meaningful concept.
At the moment, you can transclude the *description page*, but I don't
think anyone would really miss that ability.

Don't get me wrong, I can see the argument for having a different
syntax for "display inline" than for "link to", I'm just not 100%
convinced that this is logically the same as "transclude from".

--
Rowan Collins BSc
[IMSoP]


from_name: JAY JG

subject: [WikiEN-l] Rogue Admin Syndrome

body:
>From: iMeowbot <iMeowbot at mac.com>
>"Rick" <giantsrick13 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> > --- A Nony Mouse <tempforcomments2 at hotmail.com> wrote:
>[...]
>
> > Really?  You've been banned from the list?  Then how
> > did this posting make it through?
>
>Earlier messages were from tempforcomments@ rather than tempforcomments2@ .

Regardless of what happened to his A Nony Mouse account, I'm sure his
Everyking e-mail can still post.

Jay.


subject: [Wikitech-l] image dump

body:
On 01/06/05, james <jamessampford at supanet.com> wrote:
> just finished downloading the en image dump, tried extracting it with winrar -

> anyone of an extracter that does a folder intact job

http://download.wikimedia.org/images/README_ABOUT_FILE_FORMAT.txt
mentions how to extract them correctly under *NIX system - so one way
would be to get cygwin up and running. A quick search also turned up
this Windows port of a "libarchive" which seems like it may include a
compatible "tar" utility -
http://gnuwin32.sourceforge.net/packages/libarchive.htm

> once that is extracted - how will my wiki know where the images are for each
> artical, and thus include them within each artical?

For that, you need to download the "image" and "imagelinks" database
tables from http://download.wikimedia.org/#en.wikipedia to go with
your "cur" dump (the "imagelinks" one could probably be rebuilt
programmatically, but that's likely to be slower than just downloading
it).

--
Rowan Collins BSc
[IMSoP]


from_name: The Cunctator

subject: [WikiEN-l] On Newspeak

body:
On 6/1/05 4:26 PM, "Sean Barrett" <sean at epoptic.org> wrote:

> MacGyverMagic/Mgm stated for the record:
>
>> I totally agree with this. If environknot had been less hostile, his
>> chances of being unblocked would've been much larger.
>
> And if trolls were contributors, we wouldn't need the ArbComm.

I'd just like to say that I despise the Newspeak technique of abbreviating
the name of the arbitration committee. As Orwell wrote in 1984: "It was
perceived that in thus abbreviating a name one narrowed and subtly altered
its meaning, by cutting out most of the associations that would otherwise
cling to it."

See [[Newspeak]].


subject: [WikiEN-l] Recent goings-on

body:
>From: BJ?rn Lindqvist <bjourne at gmail.com>
> > >There are a number of administrators who are failing in that
> > >responsibility, and they are present on this list.
> >
> > Name them.  Take them to ArbCom.
>
>Total Bullshit. That has been done many times by new users who was
>harassed my some overly aggressive admins. Ofcourse they never suceed
>because the rules are complex and setup to protect the administrators.

No, the rules are set up so that admins can only be sanctioned for doing
things against policy; new users often seem to think "disagreeing with me"
or "not putting up with my POV edits" is against policy.

>First you have to "file a complaint" which means you have to gather
>evidence and then submit that for public review to get the ArbCom to
>accept it. Then you need to get someone else to sign your complaint
>within 24 hours or else your complaint is automatically rejected and
>20 seconds later some admin will come around and delete it so that all
>traces of whatever it was is gone. The person seconding your complaint
>obviously cannot be a user someone can suspect being a sockpuppet or a
>troll or "a known troublemaker". And most important, the other user
>must also be involved in the dispute between you and the admin in
>question.

Actually, that's for an RfC, not an arbitration.  As for the other
conditions you claim, they don't exist, except for known sockpuppets, and I
can't fathom why you think a RfC initiated by one person and seconded by his
sockpuppet would be valid.

>And then, if you succeed with all that, your complaint is accepted for
>further review in the ArbCom! Woho! Then all that is left is for you
>to fight in the Wikipedia version of a trial against someone who knows
>all the rules, while you are a newbie and has lots of powerful friends
>while you only have enemies.

What a bizarre view of the process.

>But what if you, like a hero in Hollywood, manages to beat the
>unbeatable, win the unwinnable and actually get the ArbCom to issue
>some kind of verdict AGAINST the admin in question? Well, then you'll
>forever be known as a troublemaker/troll and the admin will be quickly
>forgiven by his or her peers because "he/she is a good guy" and only
>made a mistake/got played by the trolls.

Can you give an example of this happening? Arbcom sanctioning an admin, and
the person who brought the case therefore being viewed as a
troublemaker/troll?

Jay.


from_name: Mark Williamson

subject: [Wikipedia-l] An idea

body:
Exactly - it helps others realise that the crackpot is a crackpot.

What if the crackpot opens a RfC to get other people's opinions about
who is correct, and they all agree with the crackpot because his
version of the truth "sounds better"? Thus the crackpot version gets
written into the article semipermanently, and any further attempts by
the smart person to remove it from the article will be seen as
anything from a troublesome annoyance to vicious vandalism.

Mark

On 01/06/05, Joseph Reagle <reagle at mit.edu> wrote:
> On Tuesday 31 May 2005 20:02, Mark Williamson wrote:
> > In some situations however it would be a good thing for the person
> > with the degree in astrophysics to tell the person without to stfu.
>
> Ah, OK. So you are touching on the issue of what exact role does the
> credential system serve. Is it an intelligence highlighter, a moron
> mitigator, I way of incenting contributions, etc.
>
> As a crackpot moron mitigator, I don't expect credential would do that much
> with respect to the crackpot -- your just part of the conspiracy. If it
> served in some way to help others regulate the crackpot, then perhaps...
>

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


body:
On Wednesday, June 01, 2005, at 16:30, Rowan Collins
<rowan.collins at gmail.com> wrote:

> On 01/06/05, James D. Forrester <james at jdforrester.org> wrote:
> > Hmm. If you link to a sound-file with {{Image:}} (or {{Sound:}} you'd
> > want to transclude it, even if the software won't let you. [[Sound:]]
> > would then be a link to the sound, and the overall manner of links
> > would make more sense.
>
> Sorry, I don't follow what you're saying here - are you saying that
> "transcluding a sound" *is* the same as displaying a specially
> formatted set of links/player, or that it isn't? Like I say, I can see
> how "transcluding an image" could mean displaying it inline, but I'm
> not sure that "transcluding a sound" is really a meaningful concept.
> At the moment, you can transclude the *description page*, but I don't
> think anyone would really miss that ability.

In short: I'm agreeing with you. :-)

We could do without {{Image:Foo}} importing the description content of media
file Foo, and instead use it as a transclusion mechanism for the image. Then
[[Image:Foo]] would be a link to the image, the syntax would suddenly make a
lot more sense, and there would be happy children frollicking in the fields
and all that.

I also agreed with you that having {{Sound:Foo}} would only make sense if
you could in some way transclude the audio file Foo; for that to be useful
one would need, as you say, some form of special format or inline player.
Which would be fun (but obviously isn't a major feature request yet :-)).

> Don't get me wrong, I can see the argument for having a different
> syntax for "display inline" than for "link to", I'm just not 100%
> convinced that this is logically the same as "transclude from".

Transclusion is the taking of the content of another page and displaying it,
umm, inline. No? :-)

Yes, there is a bit of a mess between linking to the item and its
description, and   [[:Image:Foo]] handles this, but a plain link is much
simpler.

Yours,
--
James D. Forrester -- Wikimedia: [[W:en:User:Jdforrester|James F.]]

Mail: james at jdforrester.org | jon at eh.org | csvla at dcs.warwick.ac.uk
IM  : (MSN) jamesdforrester at hotmail.com


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Recent goings-on

body:
Stan Shebs stated for the record:

> Tony Sidaway wrote:
>
>> Geoff Burling said:
>>
>>> but is noteable because one
>>> side is attaching workplace unsafe pictures to their contributions,
>>> thus
>>> disrupting the forum to prove their point.)
>>>
>>
>> What does workplace unsafe actually mean in this context?  Whose
>> workplace?  Why unsafe?  How can a person placing a photograph on a
>> website cause a completely unrelated workplace to become unsafe?
>>
> You know full well, it's been exhaustively explained multiple times.

It even has its own Wikipedia article.

--
  Sean Barrett     | Legatus est vir bonus peregre missus
  sean at epoptic.com | ad mentiendum Rei Publicae causa.


from_name: Erik Moeller

body:
Jimmy Wales:
> I think that GNU FDL is perfectly fine for Ultimate Wiktionary and there
> is no need to change the license.  The license is perfectly compatible
> with the .DICT format, so there should be no problems at all.

Jimbo,

could you give us an update on where we are with regard to CC-BY-SA/FDL
compatibility? Might it make sense to organize an electronic meeting
with Wikimedia's legal team and the CC/GNU folks to speed matters up?
Sorry if I'm out of the loop on this.

Erik


from_name: ultrablue at gmail.com

body:
I should clarify that I am not the user who blocked Enviroknot. I was
merely responding to Anonymouse's allegations of the mailing list
failing to address the main issue, namely the blocking of Enviroknot.

~Mark Ryan

On 6/1/05, Richard Rabinowitz <rickyrab at eden.rutgers.edu> wrote:
>
> >Message: 4
> >Date: Tue, 31 May 2005 15:43:14 +0800
> >From: <ultrablue at gmail.com>
> >Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Recent goings-on
> >To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at wikipedia.org>
> >Message-ID: <a4a707705053100431977d076 at mail.gmail.com>
> >Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
>
> >On 5/31/05, A Nony Mouse <tempforcomments at hotmail.com> wrote:
> >> By the time I got to the discussion, it was a good series of emails
> long,
> >> and despite the number of list members who had posted, none save
> SlimVirgin
> >> had bothered to address Enviroknot's concerns on the block in any way.
> >> SlimVirgin herself made a bad judgement call. An edit made in good
> faith
> >> should never be considered a reversion, even if it contains some
> content
> >> that is included in a later reversion.
>
> >The 3RR provides an electric-fence against continuing revert wars.
> >Most of the administrators who enforce the 3RR (and even the
> >[[WP:AN/3RR]] page) request that as little circumstantial information
> >be provided. Good faith or bad faith does not come into whether a user
> >has violated the rule. Your interpretation of the meaning of
> >"reversion" is not the one accepted in the Wikipedia community. There
> >are simple reverts and complex reverts (where something is
> >surreptitiously sneaked back into an article). Every reversion is a
> >"good faith" reversion to someone in an article content dispute.
>
> Okay, thanks for clarifying what a "reversion" is.
>
> >Do not assume from the silence of users on the concerns of Enviroknot.
> >Before I first replied to the list about this situation, I examined
> >all the relevant diffs, and concluded in my own mind that there is a
> >clear-cut violation of the 3RR here.
>
> Okay, but you should've explained your reasons beforehand; those reasons
> could've saved us much agita!
>
> >The 3RR does allow administrators some discretion, such as the ability
> >to unblock people where they have shown remorse for breaking the rule.
> >Enviroknot has not expressed any such remorse, and has not addressed
> >the allegations of sockpuppetry. Instead, he or she has spammed the
> >mailing list and attacked Wikipedia Administrators as a whole. Had
> >Enviroknot come up with a good explanation for sharing IPs with other
> >users, expressed some sort of remorse for breaking a very basic rule
> >and agreed to work collaboratively on the relevant article's talk page
> >to reach consensus, I have little doubt the ban would have been
> >happily lifted by a number of administrators.
>
> >~Mark Ryan
>
> Agreed. Here is someone who has clear, thought-out, and well-displayed
> (now, anyway) reasons for blocking Enviroknot. Anyone who wants to counter
> those reasons should go ahead and do so this is what debate is all about,
> folks.
>
>
> _______________________________________________
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>