subject: [Wikitech-l] Server down?

body:
Right, well, Jason is either there or almost there, and I do expect
more downtime throughout the day today as he works on the latest
upgrades.

Poor, Edmund W wrote:

> Jimbo,
>
> Hate to bother you when you were up so late last night, but...
>
> I think www.wikipedia.org is down. I haven't gotten a single web page
> (since 9:00 A.M. when I first checked it). Nor any e-mail (time-stamped
> after 5:00 A.M.).
>
> Ed Poor
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>


list: wikitech-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] Server down?

body:
On Monday, Oct 13, 2003, at 10:29 US/Pacific, Jimmy Wales wrote:

> Right, well, Jason is either there or almost there, and I do expect
> more downtime throughout the day today as he works on the latest
> upgrades.

Well, it's up now (that's how the message got through ;), but there
probably will be more downtime during upgrades.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


from_name: Nikola Smolenski

subject: [Wikitech-l] LanguageSr.php

body:
I have just finished translating LanguageSr.php. Could it be added to the
Wikipedia?


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Andrew Lih

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Money, money...

body:
Mark:
> How is the notion of paying academics for their knowledge more
> anti-wiki than the notion of paying coders for their skills?

Several differences -- code isn't created as collaboratively as Wiki
content.  Also, coders are toolmakers, meaning successful work is purely
judged by the defined inputs/outputs/APIs.  For example, Alan Cox wrote
most of the Linux Ethernet drivers. In the end, folks only care whether
their Ethernet card works, not whether he coded a linked list or used a
"goto" statement.

However, I do agree with 'mav' that sometimes getting the momentum going
in certain Wikipedia areas is necessary, and some type of inducement
might help.  However, we have to be careful not to drastically change
the Wikipedia community dynamic.

-Fuzheado


from_name: Daniel Mayer

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Money, money... (let's bribe them)

body:
Erik Zachte wrote:
>A fool like me might come to his senses and think
>twice before contributing for free what can be bought
>on the market.

This is highly flawed thinking given the large number of free software coders
that are paid by their employers to create free software. US government
employees do this a lot as well.

Does that make pure volunteers fools? Hardly.

-- mav


from_name: Poor, Edmund W

subject: [Wikitech-l] Server down?

body:
Jimbo,

Hate to bother you when you were up so late last night, but...

I think www.wikipedia.org is down. I haven't gotten a single web page
(since 9:00 A.M. when I first checked it). Nor any e-mail (time-stamped
after 5:00 A.M.).

Ed Poor


list: wikien-l

from_name: Jimmy Wales

subject: [WikiEN-l] User:Non-liberals are stupid

body:
Ah, I missed this one -- I'm *way* behind, as usual.

LittleDan, you're a respected and highly valued member of the
community, please don't do anything provocative like that again!  (I
see that you already apologized later in the thread.  Thanks!)

Daniel Ehrenberg wrote:
> Why is it necessary to restrict usernames? This seems like a
> pointless measure that could only loose us contributors.

The username that you chose for your demonstration very nicely
illustrates the point.  A 'username' like "Non-liberals are stupid" is
a direct attack on other people, and an attack on an ideological
basis.  I don't consider myself a liberal, nor a conservative, and yet
I also - for some reason - have a hard time thinking of myself as
stupid.

Now, I'm well-known for being calm and pleasant and slow to ire, but
even so, when I see someone writing and saying, in essence, that I'm
_stupid_, it's difficult to view their work as co-operative and
helpful.  Such a name tends to poison our dialogue, as every single
thing that the username posts is accompanied with an insult.

> So, if I did it again, you'd ban me? Even if all of my
> edits were OK?

Yeah, I would.  I mean, if you pulled stunts like this over and over,
after repeatedly being asked to stop, you'd eventually burn through
the incredible good will that you've generated with everyone.

But perhaps you're asking whether it's o.k. to ban someone for having
a name like that, without all the usual rigamarole.

I'd say yes, no doubt about it.  That name was not even borderline, it
directly expressed a hostile sentiment towards many other
contributors.

The "JesusIsLord" example was different.  I think people realized that
the name was very likely not intended to be offensive or insulting,
and that while problematic, it wasn't just a simple insult.

One thing we must always remember -- we're building an encyclopedia
first, and an experiment in openness second.

--Jimbo


subject: [WikiEN-l] User:Non-liberals are stupid

body:
Andrew wrote:
> So if one person (without any discussion) declares a username to be trolling
> then they can ban that user immediately? I don't see that on WP:NOU...

It falls into the same kind of category as "simple vandalism".  Sysops
are advised to be cautious, to bring it to the mailing list if there's
doubt, and to stand ready to back down.  In borderline cases, even if
it's SORT OF borderline, probably it's best to just relax a bit and
ask the person to change.

But any username that is just an insult of others, well, there's not
much reason to wait for a discussion, because I can tell you know that
it just isn't going to fly with me.

We're trying to maintain an atmosphere of *love* for what we're doing,
and *love* for each other.  That's a melodramatic and mushy thing to
say, I know, and with all of our arguing it isn't always easy to
remember.  But it is true.

And so we aren't going to put up with usernames that are all about
insulting others.  That's just not going to help us create an
atmosphere that's serious, pleasant, and non-partisan.

--Jimbo


subject: [WikiEN-l] User:Non-liberals are stupid

body:
Daniel Ehrenberg wrote:
> BTW, what's our multiple username policy?

There's no specific policy against it, but it's generally considered
uncool unless you have a good reason.

I would say that multiple usernames are really only a problem if they
are used as a method of troublemaking of some sort.  For example, to
generate an appearance of consensus, or to vote more than once, or to
hide from public scrutiny.

--Jimbo


subject: [WikiEN-l] User:Non-liberals are stupid

body:
Daniel Mayer wrote:
> Andrew
> >That vote was to ban user:Liberal, not the other name.
>
> It was the same damn person! What's more is that they deliberately upped the
> ante by choosing an offensive user name. That needed to be stopped then and
> there.

I agree.

--Jimbo


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: User:Non-liberals are stupid

body:
I agree with all of this.  It's a shame that he chose to burn some of
the goodwill that he's built up around here, but life goes on.

Louis Kyu Won Ryu wrote:

> LDan has made a faux paux.  So what.  It is neither irreversible nor
> serious.  It did not involve an abuse of his sysop powers.
>
> I suggest that we all forget about it and move on.  There are far more
> pressing matters to attend to.
>
> Louis
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [WikiEN-l] Username changed

body:
Toby Bartels wrote:

>Maveric149 wrote:
>
>>Eclecticology wrote:
>>
>>>What's become an even more peculiar turn in this saga
>>>is that in some medieval views using God's name
>>>backwards was a certain sign of being in league with
>>>the devil.  Are we to believe that his true colours are
>>>those of a Satanist? :-D
>>>
>>ROTFL! :-) You should mention that to them and see if it provokes another name
>>change request.
>>
>
>Considering the way that Drolsi took some of this as a personal insult,
>I think that it would be wise not to imply, even as a joke,
>that you honestly think that he would want to do this for that reason.
>(You don't /really/ think of Drolsi as medieval, do you?)
>
As much as I may feel that there is an element of medieval throwback to
fundamentalist beliefs, I would find it unusual indeed for any of that
ilk to be aware of any event that preceeded their Christian rebirth.
 Though I did make an observation, it was with the full understanding
that Drolsi was in all likelyhood blissfully unaware of this tradition.

I support the position that he can pretty well choose any name he wants.

Ec


from_name: Louis Kyu Won Ryu

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: New mailing lists: mediawiki-l, wikilegal-l

body:
Will these be available via news.gmane.org?

--
Louis

Brion Vibber wrote:
>   http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-l

>   http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikilegal-l


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Paid adminstrator (Money.. Mark)

body:
Tim Starling wrote:
> I think we should pay photographers and illustrators. It's very
> necessary, and uncontroversial.

Rather than simply looking towards money as an inducement, we should
also be more savvy about evangelism and internal awareness for
Wikipedia.  Related to my former suggestion about a "Tell a friend"
link, here are some other brainstorming ideas, and they get more crazy
as you go further down... :)

- Universities and schools.  Encourage other schools and classes to
adopt a curricula similar to what I've done - get a bunch of students or
groups to throw their expertise into Wikipedia.  It helps the project,
and it gives folks experience in writing NPOV, editing, interacting with
others around the world, etc.  "100 ways to use Wikipedia in Teaching
and Learning" might be one way to help bring others in.

- Topics of the week.  Each week come up with 5-10 articles that
embarrasingly need work and concentrate resources on them.  (Pick some
important ones from "Most Requested Articles")  Strangers or bored
'pedians looking for something to do could always focus working on
these.  Put these on the front page, in the spotlight.

- Competition.  The Distributed.net project has many folks donating
computing time to help break certain encryption challenges, and people
could form teams to compete against each other.  We could do the same by
forming teams of folks to attack certain chunks of unfinished articles
in Wikipedia.  (This "sort of" happens now with WikiProject groups.)

- Wikipedia-thon.  Have friends pledge a certain amount of money for
each edit or article you do.  At the end of such period, more people
know what Wikipedia is, and money raised is donated to Wikimedia (but
again the Florida solicitation problem comes up).

-Fuzheado


from_name: Tim Starling

body:
I think we should pay photographers and illustrators. It's very
necessary, and uncontroversial.

-- Tim Starling.


from_name: Andre Engels

body:
On Mon, 13 Oct 2003, Tim Starling wrote:

> Perhaps our money would be better spent on increasing
> the size of the development team, rather than paying hard-core
> wikipediholics like myself for work that we would have done anyway.

There's something to be said for that - a bit of money will not be likely
to cause some already heavy contributor to do more. I think to get me to
do even more, Wikipedia would have to pay me full time wages against Dutch
minumum wage to have me do more, I think...

Andre Engels


subject: [WikiEN-l] User names

body:
Toby Bartels wrote:

>Stevertigo wrote:
>
>>What do his responses have to do with your opinion on
>>the merits of the name?
>>
>
>Well, considering that it's /his/ name,
>the things that he has to say about it
>are going to have an impact on my opinion.
>But what in the world makes you think
>that the only issue here is whether I like the name?
>If /that/ were the only basis for the vote,
>then I'd have voted to keep it a long time ago,
>and I wouldn't pay any attention to the arguments
>that the name is offensive, or "inflammatory",
>or "make[s] a statement".  'Cause I like the name.
>
A person's name is necessarily representative of a POV, as is one's own
user page.  These are the places where POV must be acceptable, because
we are saying things about ourselves.  If we choose POV's that appear
extreme they are bound to affect how others read our contributions..  If
a chosen name is objectionable to some they will make that view known.
 The person with the objectionable name will quietly go away, often
reappearing as an entirely new unconnected person without having lost
face in the process.

>>Part of maintaining a consistent
>>policy is abstaining from the sideissues -- Just vote
>>on the merits of the name, dagummit thats it.
>>
>No, dagummit!!!  JiL's individual name isn't very important.
>OTOH, whether it becomes acceptable Wikipedia practice
>to greet new users (and the next JiL may be a new user)
>with "You're going to have to change your name." is a big deal.
>That is the sort of "sideissues" that I'm concerned with --
>that is really the /only/ issue.
>
It's an exercise in self deception to believe that a problem can be made
to go away with a simple vote.  Is today's 51% any more menaingful than
tomorrow's 49%?  Participatory democracy cannot work without safeguards
to protect minorities.  That's it most frustrating aspect.

>No, sysops are not to enforce a name change,
>because we /can't/ -- that's a practical matter.
>Maybe a good thing (since sysops like you often
>see consensus when it isn't there), or a bad thing
>(since Tim was feeling more pressure than he should),
>but that's a fact of life, for now.
>
The technical ability to enforce a name change is a secondary matter; if
it were a good thing the technical means would follow easily.  I feel
more concerned about the tyranny of majorities who carry on like on-line
lynch mobs.

Ec


from_name: Alex R.

subject: [WikiEN-l] Here here, or... (Hear, hear!) or hear, hear

body:
From: "Jake Nelson" <jnelson at soncom.com>
> Stevertigo said:
> >"Alex R." <alex756 at nyc.rr.com> wrote:
> >>Here. here.
> >
> >I thought it was "hear, hear"
>
> You are correct. And I concur, as well.
>
> -- Jake

"Here" is an interjection meaning "to concur",
Thus, Here. Here. Means, "I concur. I concur."
(repeated for emphasis).

See The American Heritage Dictionary of the
English Language,  Fourth Edition

http://dictionary.reference.com/search?r=2&q=Here

Oral utterances are always open to ambigious
interpretation and I am not suggesting that one who
listens to UK or other Commonwealth countries
Commons  debates incorrectly believes that "Here!"
(meaning "I agree")  cannot also be interpreted
to mean means"hear him". or "listen to the speaker";
http://phrases.shu.ac.uk/meanings/178100.html
which is the origin of Hear, hear! or Hear! Hear!
though I have never seen that exclamation used
without exclamatory punctuation.

The exclamatory form  is acceptable when drawing
attention to the speaker's words as a type of
cheer. I was using "Here." as an expression of
concurrance with Louis Kyu Won Ryu's
utterance, not primarily to draw attention to his speech.

It can be considered an idiomatic expression:
http://dictionary.reference.com/search?r=2&q=hear
that some interpret as being a sign of agreement.

Either word is acceptable as far as I am concerned,
but then lawyers are always looking for alternative
meanings and the gray zones. Academics,
grammarians (and others too!) may be looking for
black and white answers, nothing wrong with that,
it these POVs that keeps us "gray zone workers"
searching for the NPOV!

Alex756


subject: [WikiEN-l] People who bicker over name-changes are stupid

body:
Poor, Edmund W wrote:

>See how I sneaked in a POV in the "subject heading", heh, heh?
>
>And you guys thought that employing a username, so that it appears on
>Recent Changes, was a clever way to advance one's POV... ^_^
>
>Why don't we all chill out and read a good, funny joke!
>
Of course!  As the Lord Brian said when he was hanging from The Cross,
"Always look on the bright side of life." :-)

Ec


subject: [WikiEN-l] User names

body:
Toby wrote:
>I'm ashamed to see "if the community doesn't like it
>then it must change" coming from such a respected
>member of the community -- it is the death knell of a
>community of individuals.

Huh? So community standards should not apply to anything and individuals
should be allowed to do whatever they want? Policy is formed by consensus.
That means that the /community/ (the collection of individuals) has made the
decision.

You reasoning doesn't make /any/ sense at all.

--mav


from_name: epzachte at chello.nl

body:
Pay experts for their knowledge? What a bad idea!

> Paying experts in this way would inevitably result in a two-class society.

Yes, and in another way than stated already: We would have a class of fools, still doing things for free, out of love for an ideal, and a class of savy experts, who know what makes the world go around, have no inner motivation to share their knowledge with lay people and need to be bribed into this silly affair.

A fool like me might come to his senses and think twice before contributing for free what can be bought on the market.

> I think it is beyond silly that the Hindi and Arabic Wikipedias are still so small.

How many of our top ten Wikipedias were faring really well a year before now? Marvel at what has been achieved in such a short time, and have the patience to see other Wikipedias, and underdeveloped areas in the existing ones, grow up the wiki way. Wikipedia is not a household name yet, but it will be in a year time, thanks to Google. Surely some arabists, art historians and chromosome watchers will catch the opportunity to show off. Surely more photographers will relish the prospect of a world stage to make their marks upon.

Maverick is worried that Arabic and Hindi Wikipedias are nowhere near where they should be. The same could be said for the Chinese Wikipedia only a few monthes ago, yet they got going for real recently, and will almost certainly be within our top ten in less than half a year from now.

As for nearly dead languages: very nice to preserve them for posterity, a wiki might help. Only I would like to see the surviving speakers do their part because they care, not because the XBox II is not theirs' yet.

We receive a couple of thousands very much needed dollars and suddenly everybody goes crazy. Once all dying languages are resuscitated we might save the wales (no pun intended) and help the Ethiopians to put a man on the Moon. I say: lets keep our feet on the ground and talk about goals that are of benefit for a lot of people and that can not be reached in any other way. Hardware is a clear case and more of that will be needed soon. Administrative labour is a borderline case to me, but what will happen if Brion is struck by fatherhood or any other disability (God forbids), is too sad to even envision. Certainly a print or CD edition will require some cash. Once we educated the billion or so people that regard education a luxury item (not to speak of food), and would not be harmed by some readily available knowledge, they will all jump happily to the task of preserving dying languages, I'm sure.

Erik Zachte


from_name: Till Westermayer

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] heise online: Wikipedia-Enzyklopaedie fuer PDA und
	Smartphone

body:
Diese Meldung aus dem heise online-Newsticker wurde Ihnen
von "Till Westermayer <till at tillwe.de>" gesandt.
Wir weisen darauf hin, dass die Absenderangabe nicht verifiziert
ist. Sollten Sie Zweifel an der Authentizit?t des Absenders haben,
ignorieren Sie diese E-Mail bitte.
--------------------------------------------------------------------
((A german article from heise.de informing us that Beam advertizes a version of the Wikipedia as eBook for Palms, Pocket PCs and mobile phones. Tillwe))
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Wikipedia-Enzyklop?die f?r PDA und Smartphone

 Der E-Book-Shop Beam-Bibliothek[1] bietet die Enzyklop?die Wikipedia
kostenlos[2] f?r den Mobipocket-Reader an. Da es diesen Reader neben
Windows unter anderem auch f?r Palm OS, Pocket PC und Symbian OS gibt, wird
die Enzyklop?die nun per PDA und Smartphone mobil -- vorausgesetzt, der
Speicherplatz ist vorhanden, denn gegenw?rtig umfasst die
Mobipocket-Version etwa 34 MByte und Beam-Bibliothek empfiehlt etwa 43
MByte um Wikipedia zu nutzen. Wikipedia[3] ist ein Projekt unter der
GNU-Lizenz, deren Inhalt die Nutzer selbst erstellen. Gegenw?rtig umfasst
die Enzyklop?die mehr als 32 000 Artikel.

 Der Mobipocket-Reader steht als Standardversion kostenlos zum Download[4]
bereit. Au?er f?r Palm OS und Pocket PC gibt es Versionen der Lesesoftware
f?r den Casio BE-300, den Franklin eBookman, Nokia 9210 Communicator sowie
f?r SonyEricsson P800 und Series-60-Ger?te wie Nokia 7650.

 Die Beam-Bibliothek enth?lt au?er der Wikipedia-Enzyklop?die noch
kommerzielle und kostenlose E-Books f?r den Palm Reader und den Mobipocket
Reader. Mehr zu deutschsprachigen E-Books, Lese-Software und
Konvertierungstools steht in der Ausgabe 22 der c't, die ab 20. Oktober im
Handel ist. (jr[5]/c't)

URL dieses Artikels:
 http://www.heise.de/newsticker/data/jr-13.10.03-000/

Links in diesem Artikel:
 [1] http://www.beam-bibliothek.de/
 [2] http://www.beam-bibliothek.de/ebook.php?id=144

 [3] http://de.wikipedia.org/
 [4] http://www.mobipocket.com/en/DownloadSoft/DownLoadReaderStep1.asp
 [5] mailto:jr at ct.heise.de

--------------------------------------------------------------------
Copyright 2003 by Heise Zeitschriften Verlag


subject: [WikiEN-l] User:Non-liberals are stupid

body:
LDan wrote:
>I wish there were a more eloquent way to put this,
>I'm sorry about User:Non-liberals are stupid. At the
>time, I didn't realise it was trolling. I didn't mean to
>waste your time.

Well, "trolling" requires an intent to cause trouble for the sake of causing
trouble. So even though your actions looked like trolling when we didn't know
who "User:Liberal" and "User:Non-liberals are stupid", I know that that was
not your intent.

Apology accepted. :)

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)


subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Money, money ... (let's bribe them) -- repost for
	readability in browser

body:
>> Reformatted for readibility. I love webmail.<<

Pay experts for their knowledge? What a bad idea!

> Paying experts in this way would inevitably result in a two-class society.

Yes, and in another way than stated already:
We would have a class of fools, still doing things for free,
out of love for an ideal, and a class of savy experts,
who know what makes the world go around,
have no inner motivation to share their knowledge
with lay people and need to be bribed into this silly affair.

A fool like me might come to his senses and think twice
before contributing for free what can be bought on the market.

> I think it is beyond silly that the Hindi and Arabic Wikipedias are still so small.

How many of our top ten Wikipedias were faring really well
a year before now? Marvel at what has been achieved in such
a short time, and have the patience to see other Wikipedias,
and underdeveloped areas in the existing ones,
grow up the wiki way. Wikipedia is not a household name yet,
but it will be in a year time, thanks to Google.
Surely some arabists, art historians and chromosome watchers
will catch the opportunity to show off.
Surely more photographers will relish the prospect of a world
stage to make their marks upon.

Maverick is worried that Arabic and Hindi Wikipedias are nowhere
near where they should be. The same could be said for the Chinese
Wikipedia only a few monthes ago, yet they got going for real recently,
and will almost certainly be within our top ten in less than half a year from now.

As for nearly dead languages: very nice to preserve them for posterity,
a wiki might help. Only I would like to see the surviving speakers
do their part because they care, not because the XBox II is not theirs' yet.

We receive a couple of thousands very much needed dollars and
suddenly everybody goes crazy. Once all dying languages are resuscitated
we might save the wales (no pun intended) and help
the Ethiopians to put a man on the Moon.
I say: lets keep our feet on the ground and talk about goals
that are of benefit for a lot of people and that can not be reached in any other way. Hardware is a clear case and more of that will be needed soon.
Administrative labour is a borderline case to me,
but what will happen if Brion is struck by fatherhood or any other disability
(God forbids), is too sad to even envision.
Certainly a print or CD edition will require some cash.
Once we educated the billion or so people that regard
education a luxury item (not to speak of food),
and would not be harmed by some readily available knowledge,
they will all jump happily to the task
of preserving dying languages, I'm sure.

Erik Zachte


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: [Intlwiki-l] LanguageSr.php

body:
On Monday, Oct 13, 2003, at 01:57 US/Pacific, Nikola Smolenski wrote:

> I have just finished translating LanguageSr.php. Could it be added to
> the
> Wikipedia?

Cool! I'll test it out and install it once the server madness is a
little stabilized later today (hopefully!)

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject: [WikiEN-l] Trolls, dwarves & Hobbits

body:
Just to interrupt this fascinating discussion of names and their
changes, do you all recall the part in 'The Hobbit' when Bilbo said,
"Hear, hear!" (meaning what they had just said sounded sensible to him)
and the dwarves all turned to "hear" what he had to say?

Well, I have nothing to say. And you can quote me as saying I was
misquoted.

Furthermore, I'm blathering and so are all of you.

Now let's go back to plotting how to get the dragon's treasure -- I mean
how to organize and develop informative, relevant and *neutral* articles
for the world's greatest Free Encyclopedia.

(signed)
Frodo Lives!


body:
Stevertigo wrote:
>
>
> Tim Starling wrote:
>
>  >I think we should pay photographers and illustrators. It's very
>  >necessary, and uncontroversial.
>
> Being an illustrator, I would not disagree with any funds coming my
> way... but I would still like Brion, Erik, Magnus, *You and whoever else
> has donated free custom code to get some first.  Then maybe Mav's idea
> for some "startup funds".. and with the last fifteen bucks...
>
> ~S~

I won't be accepting any money. As much as I'd like to do my bit for
Australia's CAD, I already spend far too much time on Wikipedia as it
is. My supervisor thinks my 6 hours per week of permissible paid work
should probably be spent teaching physics rather than programming, and I
have to say I can see his point.

It's true however that programmers are in oddly short supply. That's why
I switched from editing to programming. We have lots of people who are
willing to write articles on programming topics (albeit mostly on an
undergrad level), but very few who want to apply that knowledge in any
significant way. Perhaps our money would be better spent on increasing
the size of the development team, rather than paying hard-core
wikipediholics like myself for work that we would have done anyway.

-- Tim Starling.


from_name: Stevertigo

subject: [WikiEN-l] User names (G-sh this is getting olde)

body:
--- Toby Bartels <toby+wikipedia at math.ucr.edu> wrote:

> Yeah, /I/ know what it means?  Do you???

If you dont think "Jesus is Lord!" (dont forget the
exclamation !) isnt inflamatory-- I dont know what to
tell you.  Youre usually pretty straightforward and
practical Toby--in this case you seem to be making a
strange quasi-principled argument against a policy --
let me repeat it-- 1. Wikipedians can vote to change a
username.  2. There are no standards, save the will of
the community.  The second one require some wikitrust
or better yet:
http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikifaith

So, maybe LD's experiment was useful after all-- but
only to prove my original point (which isnt really
"my" point alone, is it-- 19 to 5 vote ) that "WP
reserves the right to rename you. "  ie:
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Toby_Bartels/namechange

~S~

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subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Add new lists to gmane.org

body:
Walter Vermeir wrote:
> Now most Wikimedia mailing lists you can read by use of gmane.org, A
> mailing list to usenet service.

Walter, I for one would appreciate being able to read the newly created
lists through gmane.  I think that Gmane is great, since it is so much
less time consuming to read the lists that way.

Louis


subject: [WikiEN-l] EofT/142.177.etc/24 back as User:Mediator

body:
Well, let's make it a priority to figure out if it is him, and I think
it's time for me to start pursuing some legal means here.

> And if anyone can confirm that User:Mediator is not 142.177.etc., I'll
> submit my apology and buy the next two rounds of drinks.

By all means, let's be reasonably sure first, but I think we have to
be very firm in this case.

--Jimbo


subject: [Wikitech-l] Wikipedia parser specs

body:
Does anyone have a requirements document for the Wikipedia parser?

If not, will those programmers who have already begun work on such a
parser, like Magnus and Frithjof, please send me any scraps of
documentation you have?

I would like to assemble these into a wiki grammar or something like
that. So we can help each other with parser development.

I guess the list of "stupid parser tricks" would start with bracket
notation for links:

[http://www.edpoor.com] is a link to my outdated, static website

[http://www.edpoor.com/images/Ae-inAndDog.jpg girl with dog] is an
annotated link

[[Iraq]] links to the Wikipedia article on Iraq
[[Iraq|Rummyland]] links to Iraq but is shown as "Rummyland" (a
Doonesbury reference, okay? ;-)

Etc.

Along with parsing rules for the rendering of text, is the problem of
fetching and posting files. That is, coordinating each user's off-line
stash (cache?) with the database. Note that some users might not want
the entire encyclopedia, but perhaps only those articles they're working
on. Or articles one click away?

Ed Poor


from_name: Anthere

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Money, money... (let's bribe

body:
 From: <epzachte at chello.nl>

> Pay experts for their knowledge? What a bad idea!
>
> > Paying experts in this way would inevitably result
> in a two-class society.
>
> Yes, and in another way than stated already: We
> would have a class of fools, still doing things for
> free, out of love for an ideal, and a class of savy
> experts, who know what makes the world go around,
> have no inner motivation to share their knowledge
> with lay people and need to be bribed into this
> silly affair.
>
> A fool like me might come to his senses and think
> twice before contributing for free what can be
> bought on the market.
>
> > I think it is beyond silly that the Hindi and
> Arabic Wikipedias are still so small.
>
> How many of our top ten Wikipedias were faring
> really well a year before now? Marvel at what has
> been achieved in such a short time, and have the
> patience to see other Wikipedias, and underdeveloped
> areas in the existing ones, grow up the wiki way.
> Wikipedia is not a household name yet, but it will
> be in a year time, thanks to Google. Surely some
> arabists, art historians and chromosome watchers
> will catch the opportunity to show off. Surely more
> photographers will relish the prospect of a world
> stage to make their marks upon.
>
> Maverick is worried that Arabic and Hindi Wikipedias
> are nowhere near where they should be. The same
> could be said for the Chinese Wikipedia only a few
> monthes ago, yet they got going for real recently,
> and will almost certainly be within our top ten in
> less than half a year from now.
>
> As for nearly dead languages: very nice to preserve
> them for posterity, a wiki might help. Only I would
> like to see the surviving speakers do their part
> because they care, not because the XBox II is not
> theirs' yet.
>
> We receive a couple of thousands very much needed
> dollars and suddenly everybody goes crazy. Once all
> dying languages are resuscitated we might save the
> wales (no pun intended) and help the Ethiopians to
> put a man on the Moon. I say: lets keep our feet on
> the ground and talk about goals that are of benefit
> for a lot of people and that can not be reached in
> any other way. Hardware is a clear case and more of
> that will be needed soon. Administrative labour is a
> borderline case to me, but what will happen if Brion
> is struck by fatherhood or any other disability (God
> forbids), is too sad to even envision. Certainly a
> print or CD edition will require some cash. Once we
> educated the billion or so people that regard
> education a luxury item (not to speak of food), and
> would not be harmed by some readily available
> knowledge, they will all jump happily to the task of
> preserving dying languages, I'm sure.
>
> Erik Zachte

I entirely agree with you Erik
Btw, we have an India specialist on the fr wiki. I
hope all his articles will someday help the indian
wiki to take off. We also make a lot of effort to
attract arab/french speaking people. I am optimistic.

And I am sure Brion will be a great father (attention
? ne pas poser la b?cane trop lontemps sur les genoux Brion).

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subject: [Wikitech-l] C++ wiki parser

body:
On Monday, Oct 13, 2003, at 13:05 US/Pacific, Neil Harris wrote:

> Has anyone made an attempt at defining a formal grammar for Wikipedia?

There's been various stuff on meta, such as:
http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_lexer

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


body:
Ray Saintonge wrote:
> Louis Kyu Won Ryu wrote:
>
> >Our favorite troll is raising Cain as User:Mediator.
>
> An unproven allegation.

Well, it's been proven now, with clear evidence from the access_logs.

> You have the burden of proof backward.  It's up to the person making
> the accusation to prove that he is. Innocent until proven guilty.

Sure, but I consider this proven now.

--Jimbo


body:
Louis Kyu Won Ryu wrote:

> Our favorite troll is raising Cain as User:Mediator.

An unproven allegation.  It would be just as fair if I speculated that
you were a reincarnation of User:Clutch, or worse that you were yourself
EofT trying to stir discord by stirring up dissension.

> He has created a couple dozen pages on Mediation, including his
> "invitations" to participate in this new "role account."  Some of his
> ideas are valuable, some lack consensus, some are not neutral and
> cheapen the concept of mediation.  For example, he was critical of one
> user's language skills and suggested that they refrain from editing
> the English Wikipedia.

I don't recall seeing where he made that last criticism, but then those
pages are already becoming lengthy.  Being valuable and lacking
consensus are not mutually exclusive concepts.  So far, what's on those
pages is still at the proposal stage.  Also whoever it is has expressed
willingness to pass on the role account to someone else.  There have
been no takers so far.  If one appears I hope that it won't be someone
who jumps to accusations so quickly

> However, the content he has posted and its value are beside the point.

No! It is the point

> The point is, we've banned him three times.

But only if it's the same person.

> I suggest that the usual technological measures for dealing with edits
> from banned users be employed.  Pursuant to existing policy, the pages
> he created should be deleted and his other contributions rolled back.

Hmmm!  So what hidden agenda is there in this attempt to suppress all
these mediation proposals?

> And if anyone can confirm that User:Mediator is not 142.177.etc., I'll
> submit my apology and buy the next two rounds of drinks.

You have the burden of proof backward.  It's up to the person making the
accusation to prove that he is. Innocent until proven guilty.

Ec


body:
--- Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> Louis Kyu Won Ryu wrote:
>
> > Our favorite troll is raising Cain as
> User:Mediator.
>
> An unproven allegation.  It would be just as fair if
> I speculated that
> you were a reincarnation of User:Clutch, or worse
> that you were yourself
> EofT trying to stir discord by stirring up
> dissension.

I had thought the same thing!

<twilightzone>
But I considered another possibility: Maybe LKWR is in
fact 24/EofT disguised as a moderate voice--setting up
User:Moderator (after reading en:Wiki of course) as a
patsy/decoy personality.  After demolishing
"Moderator" this would allow 24/EofT to re-join the
collective with a clean slate altogether! ~No one
would suspect~
</twilightzone>

> > LKWR:However, the content he has posted and its
value
> are beside the point.
> EC:No! It is the point

Hahaha!  Judge the messenger, or the message?

> >LKWR: The point is, we've banned him three times.
>EC: But only if it's the same person.

It may be hard to tell.

> > I suggest that the usual technological measures
> for dealing with edits
> > from banned users be employed.  Pursuant to
> existing policy, the pages
> > he created should be deleted and his other
> contributions rolled back.
>
> Hmmm!  So what hidden agenda is there in this
> attempt to suppress all
> these mediation proposals?

It is strange that LKWR (supposedly new) seems so
familiar with existing policy, and his echoing of that
old (wrong) stigma--that any work under suspicion of
being by a banned user must be eradicated with extreme
prejudice-- is just too... whats the word....?

> You have the burden of proof backward.  It's up to
> the person making the
> accusation to prove that he is. Innocent until
> proven guilty.

This is exactly right Ray.  Among the sharper tacks in
the sack you are!

~S~

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body:
On Monday, Oct 13, 2003, at 13:26 US/Pacific, Brion Vibber wrote:

> On Monday, Oct 13, 2003, at 01:57 US/Pacific, Nikola Smolenski wrote:
>
>> I have just finished translating LanguageSr.php. Could it be added to
>> the
>> Wikipedia?
>
> Cool! I'll test it out and install it once the server madness is a
> little stabilized later today (hopefully!)

I've gone ahead and installed it on sr.wikipedia.org.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject: [WikiEN-l] Drolsi Susej

body:
Tim: Next time, (since you seem to be the dev'r taking
point with namechanges) you might wait a minute and
see if a target name for a change is problematic.  I
dont have any problem with it, per se-- but
considering the objections raised onlist, and that its
in fact just a hack of Jesus is Lord (sans ! ) -- I
suggest that the final decision of making a change and
what the change is-- might also better be in the hands
of the collective, as well.

Respectfully,
~S~

PS: Yes, ATC, it would be silly to start a
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Drolsi_Susej/namechange
page now.  (Maybe)

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from_name: Stan Shebs

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] images from one wikipedia to another (Re: Money,
	money)

body:
Arnaud G wrote:

> Sascha Noyes wrote:
>
>> On Monday 13 October 2003 02:12 pm, Karl Eichwalder wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>>> This is a problem to be attacked ASAP.  We need one image server for
>>> all wikipedias--simply because images are language independend.
>>>
>>
>
> I don't agree with the statement image are "language independent". All
> the schema, map, etc are language dependant. As soon as you have text
> (whatever letter or number) in an image, it becomes a language
> dependant image.

We do officially discourage the inclusion of text in images because of
this very problem. Alas, not every uploader has gotten the memo... At some
point we'll want to make overlays work, so that diagram legends can be
multilingual - then wikipedia will be so studly that all other encyclopedias
must bow down before it! :-)

> Moreover can you tell us why the description of the image should
> contain the copyright notice in english? If we have the same image for
> multiple wiki, this image should contain the copyright statement in
> all the language as you cannot expect everyone to understand english,
> and then the description will be not very readable. People should take
> care when they import an image from another wikipedia to translate the
> copyright statement and not only say: this image is ok it comes from
> kw: !

That is a problem.  One answer is to require copyright snoopers to be
multilingual. The most important info, such as names, urls, and "GFDL"
are the same in different languages, and we could be tough like the UPU
and require the use of Latin letters in addition to local scripts.

If there were a tabular form of image page, with checkboxes for the standard
kinds of info, that page could be localized, which would also help the
non-English understand the images in English wikipedia.  (Alas, I can't help
develop this kind of thing until I get Apple to make an exception to their
ownership of everything code-related that I write, on or off the job - not
impossible, done it before, but bureaucratic.)

Stan


body:
Jimmy Wales wrote:

>Ray Saintonge wrote:
>
>>Louis Kyu Won Ryu wrote:
>>
>>>Our favorite troll is raising Cain as User:Mediator.
>>>
>>An unproven allegation.
>>
>
>Well, it's been proven now, with clear evidence from the access_logs.
>
>>You have the burden of proof backward.  It's up to the person making
>>the accusation to prove that he is. Innocent until proven guilty.
>>
>
>Sure, but I consider this proven now.
>
Very well, but this sort of checking should have been done in the first
place.  These kind of accusations are all too often completely speculative.

At the same time, I think that he had some very useful ideas in that
complex of articles.  What can we do to get the greatest benefit from
those ideas?

Ec


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Re: C++ wiki parser

body:
>> I don't think it's wise to have four parsers doing actually the same. <<

On the server side it seems that speed is a desired feature, so C or C++ seems to make sense as a preferred language. They also have the advantage of being very widely understood. Broad understanding probably favors C or simple C++ (simple C++ meaning without really fancy use of classes and inheritance). Hopefully either of those would allow a lot of people to get involved in optimizing and reusing the code.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Louis Kyu Won Ryu

body:
>From: Louis Kyu Won Ryu <lazolla at hotmail.com>

>Our favorite troll is raising Cain as User:Mediator.

What does that mean Cain ?

>For example, he was critical of one
>user's language skills and suggested that they
refrain >from editing the
>English Wikipedia.

Just like RK then ?

No, not just like RK. RK was telling me I had no room
on the en wiki, because I was unable to understand
what I was told. So, I should go away and limit myself
to edit the french wiki.

This mediator suggested to someone to edit the
simple.english.

Another wiki that needs help to develop.

But, again, two weight, two measures, right ?

Louis, you are heavy and you have an interpretation of
other people words I do not agree with. Believe in
good faith

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from_name: Nick Reinking

subject: [Wikitech-l] C++ wiki parser

body:
On Mon, Oct 13, 2003 at 09:05:14PM +0100, Neil Harris wrote:
> I would imagine that a formal grammar for Wikipedia markup (for example
> using EBNF) might be a good thing.
>
> This could then be used for three purposes:
> * to define the grammar clearly for technical reference purposes
> * to allow the generation of parsers using parser-generator compilers
> which are available for a large number of languages, including C/C++,
> Python,  Java etc.
> * to help define a Document Object Model for the output of the parser
> * to allow parsers to be validated as correct, by allowing the
> compilation of a set of unit tests
>
> However, what makes this difficult is that there should no invalid
> documents in Wiki-markup: everything should produce some output, even if
> it's partly broken: for example, opening a link body, but not closing
> it, should end up with literal "[[" in the text, not a parser error.
> Another way of putting it is that _all_ strings should be valid
> productions of the grammar: however, done naively, this can end up with
> an ambiguous grammar where the same input can be parsed two ways.
>
> Has anyone made an attempt at defining a formal grammar for Wikipedia?

Plus, make sure it doesn't make these mistakes:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Marumari/Wikitext_Rendering_Quirks

--
Nick Reinking -- eschewing obfuscation since 1981 -- Minneapolis, MN


from_name: Walter Vermeir

subject: [Wikitech-l] Add new lists to gmane.org

body:
Now most Wikimedia mailing lists you can read by use of gmane.org, A
mailing list to usenet service.

http://news.gmane.org/?match=wikipedia (old hierarchy, to be moved to the
new Wikimedia hierarchy)
http://news.gmane.org/?match=wikimedia

I have noticed that there are now several new lists who are not (yet) listed.

Lists and proposed names and discriptions;

1. MediaWiki-l
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-l
gmane.org.wikimedia.mediawiki
"Announcements about the MediaWiki software and site admin list"

! post adress is @wikimedia.org

2. Wikibugs-l
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikibugs-l
gmane.org.wikimedia.mediawikibugs
or
gmane.org.wikimedia.wikibugs
"Monitor updates to the MediaWiki bug tracker on SourceForge"

-> "Wikibugs-l" is the name of the list but it is about bugs to the
MediaWiki Software so "Mediawikibugs" sounds more clear.

3. Wikilegal-l
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikilegal-l
gmane.org.wikimedia.wikilegal
"Discussion list about the legal matters of the Wikimedia projects"

! post adress is @wikimedia.org

Is it ok if those lists are also listed at gmane.org? Comments?

There is not yet a;
* WikiquoteEN-l
* WiktionaryEN-l

Do not know of that would be usefull.

--
Contact: walter AT wikipedia.be
Ook een artikeltje schrijven? WikipediaNL, de vrije GNU/FDL encyclopedie
http://www.wikipedia.be


subject: [WikiEN-l] Literals are stupid

body:
Calling other users "stupid" is counter-productive. I wish I could say
it was "stupid", but then someone would pounce on that and yell
"Gotcha!".

We're so concerned with who's right and wrong and fair or unfair (and I
point three fingers back at myself for each one I point at others), that
we are quickly derailed from the track of trying to figure out a useful
policy and create a passionate train wreck.

This seems to happen right after each time someone gets banned; maybe
it's an outlet for extra hostile energy? I guess all the carbon dioxide
we exhale leads to lobal warming of the brain (bad joke, Ed, don't give
up your day job for stand-up comedy! ;-)

So let's not take everything literally, which is the subject of this
peppy little editorial. Let's go back to basics: Assume Good Faith, and
all that.

Ed Poor


body:
Our favorite troll is raising Cain as User:Mediator.

He has created a couple dozen pages on Mediation, including his
"invitations" to participate in this new "role account."  Some of his
ideas are valuable, some lack consensus, some are not neutral and
cheapen the concept of mediation.  For example, he was critical of one
user's language skills and suggested that they refrain from editing the
English Wikipedia.

However, the content he has posted and its value are beside the point.

The point is, we've banned him three times.

I suggest that the usual technological measures for dealing with edits
from banned users be employed.  Pursuant to existing policy, the pages
he created should be deleted and his other contributions rolled back.

And if anyone can confirm that User:Mediator is not 142.177.etc., I'll
submit my apology and buy the next two rounds of drinks.

Louis


subject: [Wikitech-l] Wikipedia parser specs

body:
Tarquin, putting some specs on-line at Meta sounds like a good idea. And
per Alfio's suggestion, maybe we could start by copying "Editing help".
Then massage it from "tips to users" format into "specs for programmers"
format.

Ed Poor


subject: [WikiEN-l] user:mediator blocked

body:
Angela wrote:
>Welcome back to the cabal [MyRedDice]. :)

One of us! One of us!!

--mav


subject: [WikiEN-l] user names

body:
Martin wrote:
>It's good that people volunteer to work on Wikipedia.
>We're grateful for their hard work. But with that work
>comes responsibility. We ask that contributors check
>their facts and take some pride in their work. We ask
>that they collaborate with others. We ask that they
>behave civilly and with respect. Asking that they use
>an appropriate username is an extension of that, and
>not wildly unreasonable.

Wow, Martin - you just nailed it.

--mav


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: EofT/142.177.etc/24 back as User:Mediator

body:
Louis Kyu Won Ryu wrote:

> >Very well, but this sort of checking should have been done in the
> first >place.  These kind of accusations are all too often completely
> >speculative.
>
> I was quite sure of my conclusions, and raised the issue first at
> User_talk:Mediator, where he had an opprotunity to refute it, which he
> did not.
>
> Beyond that, there was little I could do to check my facts, since I
> don't have access to the server logs.  What more do you believe I
> should have done before raising the allegation here?

My apologies for having misjudged what appeared to be
overenthusistically authoritarian.

I still stand by what I suggested at my contributions to the various
"Mediator" articles.  I would still make a distinction between "The
Mediator" and a mediator perhaps even to the extent of renaming the
former as "Registrar" to distance ourselves from the unsavory aspects of
just who User:Mediator really was.

I believe that there is an answer to your question that can be found in
the very articles that we are discussing.  The biggest heat from these
situations arises when there is a public accusation that a contributor
is a banned user.  The Registrar should have access to the server logs.
 Thus, when you suspect that this has been happening he can be contacted
in confidence to check the facts.  At this stage of proceedings his only
power would be to respond with a simple "yes" or "no".  That would put
the ball back in your court to decide what, if any, further steps should
be taken in accordance with established policies.

I happen to feel that a lot of time is wasted debating public
accusations.  Putting these things before the public demands public
response, and that almost always will result in a polarized community.

Ec


subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Tapping into public service (was: $6,
	000 goal reached!)

body:
Mark wrote:
> For example, we have very good information on math and computer
science
> topics, because that's what internet-people tend to like.  We do not
> have comparable information on art, history, literature, etc., and I
> think paying a professor to go through and jump-start our art history
> section would be a good use of funds.

Unfortunately, I think a prof. would have more important
writing/publishing priorities, even with monetary inducement.  However,
I do support the idea of grants of some sort to encourage folks to
attack certain areas.

I've served on a board of a nonprofit where we give academic
scholarships to students ($2,000 USD or so) and they also need to do
some public service related to the field (in my case, journalism).  In
the case of Wikipedia, it could be that they have to contribute to at
least 100 articles in their area of expertise.  So just thinking
outloud, one idea would be to give Wikimedia scholarships to students
about to embark on graduate work in, say, biology, and tell them to beef
up related Wikipedia entries, or get a student who knows Arabic to
translate some to Arabic, etc.  This is, of course, after we get our $50
million from Mr. and Mrs. Gates.

Or, we could perhaps find some nonprofits who do give away scholarship
money and see if they would point folks our way, to make Wikipedia the
public service aspect of their stipulated grant/scholarship.  It's
always good to use OPM (other peoples' money).

-Fuzheado

Disclaimer: since IANAL, not sure how legal/illegal it is giving a
scholarship/grant with strings attached is if you're a nonprofit.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Louis Kyu Won Ryu

body:
From: Louis Kyu Won Ryu <lazolla at hotmail.com>

>24 can't make more than a dozen contributions without
>resisting his
>various demons, even when he's trying to play the
>"moderate voice."

Given that Louis started contributing just 11 days
ago, it is quite astonishing he knows 24 so well.

>I was quite sure of my conclusions, and raised the
>issue first at User_talk:Mediator, where he had an
>opprotunity to refute it, which he did not.

Louis is a troll. Since he appeared on wikipedia, he
had done little else than making noise on RK, Jesus is
Lord ! and now 24. He shows obvious knowledge of the
system which is not normal for a new user.

>Beyond that, there was little I could do to check my
>facts, since I  don't have access to the server logs.
 >What more do you believe I should have done before
>raising the allegation here?

Thank god you don't ! We would not give log access to
trolls ! Now that you did your deed, could you go away
please ?

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subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Louis Kyu Won Ryu

body:
Anthere wrote:
> > What does that mean Cain ?
Louis Kyu Won Ryu wrote:

> In the fourth chapter of the Book of Genesis, Cain
> was the first son of
> Adam and Eve.  He was banned from the Garden of Eden
> by God because he
> killed his brother, Abel.

What does that "Louis Kyu Won Ryu" mean, and what
other username/s are you currently using/have used?

~S~

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from_name: Brion Vibber

body:
On Monday, Oct 13, 2003, at 16:16 US/Pacific, Jens Frank wrote:

> On Mon, Oct 13, 2003 at 02:10:59PM -0700, Anthere wrote:
>>
>> And I am sure Brion will be a great father
>
> Hi Anthere, Brion, is there anything we should know?

Well sometimes, when two PowerBooks love each other very much... ;)

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


from_name: Sascha Noyes

body:
On Monday 13 October 2003 02:12 pm, Karl Eichwalder wrote:

> This is a problem to be attacked ASAP.  We need one image server for
> all wikipedias--simply because images are language independend.

This is necessary for another reason: copyright validation. Often images are
uploaded with the description that they are from a foreign language
wikipedia. That means that someone hunting for possible copyvio has to go to
that other language wikipedia to verify the source. Needless to say I didn't
succeed in reading the details on an image in the korean wikipedia, and the
user copying it over has yet to respond to my request.

Best,
Sascha Noyes
(in wikiland: snoyes)


from_name: Rick

body:
See [[User:Mediator/ban]].  He's now making legal threats of libel against Jimbo Wales.  I have banned his IP address, 142.177.78.145

RickK

Louis Kyu Won Ryu <lazolla at hotmail.com> wrote:
Our favorite troll is raising Cain as User:Mediator.

He has created a couple dozen pages on Mediation, including his
"invitations" to participate in this new "role account." Some of his
ideas are valuable, some lack consensus, some are not neutral and
cheapen the concept of mediation. For example, he was critical of one
user's language skills and suggested that they refrain from editing the
English Wikipedia.

However, the content he has posted and its value are beside the point.

The point is, we've banned him three times.

I suggest that the usual technological measures for dealing with edits
from banned users be employed. Pursuant to existing policy, the pages
he created should be deleted and his other contributions rolled back.

And if anyone can confirm that User:Mediator is not 142.177.etc., I'll
submit my apology and buy the next two rounds of drinks.

Louis

_______________________________________________
WikiEN-l mailing list
WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l

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from_name: Poor, Edmund W

subject: [WikiEN-l] You look nice in that costume

body:
Martin,

In your guise as user:My Red Dice, I imagine you as a kid dressed up for
a Halloween party: with arms and legs sticking out of a huge, cubical
box: painted red, with black dots on it (like one die from a pair of
dice).

You look good, mate.

Ed Poor


subject: [WikiEN-l] User:Non-liberals are stupid

body:
Someone named User:Tester seems to have created multiple user names today.  He's created User:Groessler User:Opus33  User:Wartortle User:Josh Cherry User:Donnie Ng and User:Tester.  He then immediately went to the VfD page as Donnie Ng and placed several opinions on whether to keep articles or not.  This behavior has me curious.

RickK

Jimmy Wales <jwales at bomis.com> wrote:
Daniel Ehrenberg wrote:
> BTW, what's our multiple username policy?

There's no specific policy against it, but it's generally considered
uncool unless you have a good reason.

I would say that multiple usernames are really only a problem if they
are used as a method of troublemaking of some sort. For example, to
generate an appearance of consensus, or to vote more than once, or to
hide from public scrutiny.

--Jimbo
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subject: [Wikitech-l] EofT/142.177.etc/24 back as User:Mediator

body:
Would someone please look through the server logs and see whether the
suspicion about User:Mediator is correct? If it's banned user
"EntmoonOfTrolls", then it looks like Jimbo wants some quick action.

Ed Poor

-----Original Message-----
From: Jimmy Wales [mailto:jwales at bomis.com]
Sent: Monday, October 13, 2003 4:49 PM
To: lazolla at hotmail.com; English Wikipedia
Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] EofT/142.177.etc/24 back as User:Mediator

Well, let's make it a priority to figure out if it is him, and I think
it's time for me to start pursuing some legal means here.

> And if anyone can confirm that User:Mediator is not 142.177.etc., I'll
> submit my apology and buy the next two rounds of drinks.

By all means, let's be reasonably sure first, but I think we have to be
very firm in this case.

--Jimbo
_______________________________________________
WikiEN-l mailing list
WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l


from_name: Daniel Mayer

body:
RickK wrote:
>See [[User:Mediator/ban]].  He's now making legal threats
>of libel against Jimbo Wales.  I have banned his IP address,
>142.177.78.145

Only 999,999 IPs to go! He'll keep coming back in the 142.177 range since he
is on a dynamic IP (Sympatico.ca; Toronto POP). Range bans become temping in
this case....

--mav


body:
> But I considered another possibility: Maybe LKWR is in
> fact 24/EofT disguised as a moderate voice--setting up
> User:Moderator (after reading en:Wiki of course) as a
> patsy/decoy personality.  After demolishing
> "Moderator" this would allow 24/EofT to re-join the
> collective with a clean slate altogether! ~No one
> would suspect~

24 can't make more than a dozen contributions without resisting his
various demons, even when he's trying to play the "moderate voice."

> Hahaha!  Judge the messenger, or the message?

It is unfortunate that the project loses the benefit of his unique
perspective and his insightful commentary as a result of the need to
protect itself from his stubborn, iconoclastic side.  At this point he's
probably too far gone to save, and a good deal of community effort has
already been expended to try to work with him.

>>Hmmm!  So what hidden agenda is there in this
>>attempt to suppress all
>>these mediation proposals?

Those who believe there is value there could perhaps rework the articles
into a more acceptable form.  My agenda is simple: we need a
community-based means of dealing with article disputes.  24 was trying
to install something by fiat instead.  Big hat--no cattle, as they say
in Texas.

> It is strange that LKWR (supposedly new) seems so
> familiar with existing policy, and his echoing of that
> old (wrong) stigma--that any work under suspicion of
> being by a banned user must be eradicated with extreme
> prejudice-- is just too... whats the word....?

Well, I don't believe the material should stand based on its own merits
either, regardless of authorship, but we could spend the next two weeks
trying to get everyone to agree on that.

 >>> <Ray> You have the burden of proof backward.  It's up to the person
making the accusation to prove that he is. Innocent until proven guilty.

 >> <Jimbo> Sure, but I consider this proven now.

 >Very well, but this sort of checking should have been done in the
first >place.  These kind of accusations are all too often completely
 >speculative.

I was quite sure of my conclusions, and raised the issue first at
User_talk:Mediator, where he had an opprotunity to refute it, which he
did not.

Beyond that, there was little I could do to check my facts, since I
don't have access to the server logs.  What more do you believe I should
have done before raising the allegation here?

---
Louis Kyu Won Ryu


from_name: David Friedland

subject:
[Wikitech-l] Wikitext to HTML translator and Wikitext language
	specification

body:
There seems to be a lot of disjoint discussion on Meta about this. Viz:

* There is work that has been done by Taw on an OCAML lexer at
   <http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_lexer>
* There are some links at
   <http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikitext_syntax>
* A proposal for a radically different Wiki text language at
   <http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikitax>
* A brief take at
   <http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiki_markup_syntax>
* A nearly content-free page at
   <http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiki_syntax>
* A draft XML syntax of Wikitext at
   <http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_DTD>

Clearly there needs to be some kind of centralized place for work on
formalizing the language. I would suggest the recently-created
<http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikitext_standard>

Right now what we should work on, is like Ed says, to describe and
formalize a 1.0 version of the Wikitext language, based on what is used
currently. In other words this work should not (for right now) involve
incorporating improvements or changes to the Wikitext language.

Moving on...

First, a couple issues of nomenclature that we should probably get out
the way:

(1) We need to decide on a name for the wiki markup language or Wiki
text. I would advocate calling the language "Wikitext" (and calling it
"The Wikitext language" when usage might be ambiguous, like "C or "The C
Language"). This seems to be common usage.

(2) A program that converts Wikitext to HTML really consists of three
(at this point, entirely theoretical) parts: the lexical analyzer, the
parser, and the (HTML) code generator. Of course, our language is so
simple and the output language so similar to the input that these steps
are basically all rolled into one. Nevertheless, calling the whole
system a 'parser' is not strictly correct. I think 'translator' is more
accurate, at least from a CS persceptive. I will use the name "Wikitext
to HTML translator" unless someone comes up with something better.

In addition to a formalization of the language, we also need a
*reference* implementation of a Wikitext to HTML translator. Right now
what we have is a de facto reference translator: the functions in
OutputPage.php. I think most would agree that they're not an ideal
implementation, but right now, it's the only (proven) complete and
working implementation of a translator.

The current translator has the following flaws practical and theoretical
flaws:

(1) It is a little buggy, and, as Neil R. pointed out, there are some
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Marumari/Wikitext_Rendering_Quirks>.
(2) It is written in PHP, which is a relatively show scripting language.
(3) It works mainly by using regular expression search-and-replace,
which can be wildly ineffecient.
(4) And from a theoretical standpoint, it isn't based on any formally
declared reference grammar for Wikitext, leading to (1).

The ideal translator will:
(1) be written so that is is very efficient, either in PHP or a compiled
language like C or C++.
(2) Be portable and embeddable in a variety of language environments.
(3) Be an example of well-written code generally.

Other thoughts I couldn't find a good place for above:

* A translator written using Lex and Yacc would be a C translator, as
that is the output language of those tools. I think using Lex and Yacc
or similar tools would be a good approach because it would mean making
alterations to the language relatively easy to implement.

* The SWIG interface compiler <http://www.swig.org> can be used to
compile C or C++ directly into PHP and can be called with normal PHP
function calls. If a C or C++ translator is used and efficiency of the
translator becomes a major performance concern, then using SWIG to
compile the translator directly into PHP would be probably the most
efficient way to use it. Swig can also compile C and C++ into modules
for Perl, Python, Tcl, Ruby, Java, and some other languages.

* Obviously, for usability purposes, we have decided not to use a
XML-compatible language. That is fine. However, given the ubiquity of
XML and tools to manipulate it, I think it is desirable to have a
canonical translation between Wikitext and XML. Having a XML translation
of Wikitext would allow better interoperation between Wikitext documents
and other systems. Also, the conversion from XML->HTML could be handled
by standardized software and technologies, like XSLT. I recognize
current implementations of these standards are lacking in some areas,
but in the long term they may be the best solution. For now, I think,
there is no reason not to just focus on making a good Wikitext to HTML
translator.

* We can have a competition of sorts to pick the best implementation of
a Wikitext->HTML translator and declare that the 1.0 reference translator.

* As Neil H. said, there should be a way for translators "to be
validated as correct, by allowing the compilation of a set of unit tests"

I will put most of this content on meta, but I thought I should post it
to the mailing list to stir up interest in a way that can be put to good
use.

- David [[User: Nohat]]


subject: [WikiEN-l] Louis Kyu Won Ryu

body:
Wow, this is pretty harsh, isn't it?  What has this person done to deserve such invective?

RickK

Anthere <anthere6 at yahoo.com> wrote:
From: Louis Kyu Won Ryu

>24 can't make more than a dozen contributions without
>resisting his
>various demons, even when he's trying to play the
>"moderate voice."

Given that Louis started contributing just 11 days
ago, it is quite astonishing he knows 24 so well.

>I was quite sure of my conclusions, and raised the
>issue first at User_talk:Mediator, where he had an
>opprotunity to refute it, which he did not.

Louis is a troll. Since he appeared on wikipedia, he
had done little else than making noise on RK, Jesus is
Lord ! and now 24. He shows obvious knowledge of the
system which is not normal for a new user.

>Beyond that, there was little I could do to check my
>facts, since I don't have access to the server logs.
>What more do you believe I should have done before
>raising the allegation here?

Thank god you don't ! We would not give log access to
trolls ! Now that you did your deed, could you go away
please ?

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from_name: Louis Kyu Won Ryu

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Louis Kyu Won Ryu

body:
Anthere wrote:

>>Our favorite troll is raising Cain as User:Mediator.
>
> What does that mean Cain ?

In the fourth chapter of the Book of Genesis, Cain was the first son of
Adam and Eve.  He was banned from the Garden of Eden by God because he
killed his brother, Abel.

The expression "Raising Cain," meaning literally to bring Cain back from
the dead, is a metaphor for making trouble and dissent.

>>For example, he was critical of one
>>user's language skills and suggested that they
> refrain >from editing the
>>English Wikipedia.
 >
> This mediator suggested to someone to edit the
> simple.english.
>
> Another wiki that needs help to develop.
>
> But, again, two weight, two measures, right ?
>
> Louis, you are heavy and you have an interpretation of
> other people words I do not agree with. Believe in
> good faith

Sorry to be anything other than a source of light for you, Anthere.  I
know there was some value in what User:Mediator was doing, but I found
hir words to lack sincerity in a number of places, the "simple English"
recommendation being only one of them.  After all, it takes greater
skill with langauge to limit vocabulary than it does to write in flowery
metaphorical prose.  And I truly believe that the only goal of
User:Mediator was to disrupt.

I did read through the entirety of your contribution at
User_talk:Mediator.  There is much value in what you say about conflict
resolution generally, and I hope your ideas will work their way into
whatever mechanism does indeed come about.

Best regards

Louis


body:
> Ray Saintonge wrote:
> > Louis Kyu Won Ryu wrote:
> >
> > >Our favorite troll is raising Cain as User:Mediator.
> >
> > An unproven allegation.
>
> Well, it's been proven now, with clear evidence from the access_logs.
>
> > You have the burden of proof backward.  It's up to the person making
> > the accusation to prove that he is. Innocent until proven guilty.
>
> Sure, but I consider this proven now.
>
> --Jimbo

Wow, that's quick work. I only cross-posted your
request-for-confirmation to wikitech-l 45 minutes ago.

Ed Poor


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Louis Kyu Won Ryu

body:
 From: Louis Kyu Won Ryu <lazolla at hotmail.com>
> The expression "Raising Cain," meaning literally to
> bring Cain back from
> the dead, is a metaphor for making trouble and
> dissent.

There was not really trouble and dissent upon the
discussion over the Mediator idea. There were things
to discuss and fix.
I think that in the whole subject, those who have
brought the more dissent are not the ones so labelled.
I also think that provoking dissent over a person is
just a nice way to shut down a discussion over an
idea.

> > Louis, you are heavy and you have an
> interpretation of
> > other people words I do not agree with. Believe in
> > good faith
>
> Sorry to be anything other than a source of light
> for you, Anthere.

Believe me, I would prefer that everybody around here
is a source of light for me.

I
> know there was some value in what User:Mediator was
> doing, but I found
> hir words to lack sincerity in a number of places,
> the "simple English"
> recommendation being only one of them.  After all,
> it takes greater
> skill with langauge to limit vocabulary than it does
> to write in flowery
> metaphorical prose.

I would like to add that I am perhaps better placed to
have understood the suggestion made than english
speakers. I did not read it as criticism.

It was my understanding non-english speakers were
welcome to the simple wikipedia. If not, I would like
Angela to confirm it, so we can change the rules of
the simple accordingly.

And I truly believe that the
> only goal of
> User:Mediator was to disrupt.

You are entitled your opinion

> I did read through the entirety of your contribution
> at
> User_talk:Mediator.  There is much value in what you
> say about conflict
> resolution generally, and I hope your ideas will
> work their way into
> whatever mechanism does indeed come about.

Yup. Let's hope someone has the courage to do so in
spite of the weight that these ideas carry now.

In the current case, I don't think mediation was a
great success :-)

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body:
On Monday 13 October 2003 04:53 pm, Arnaud G wrote:
> I don't agree with the statement image are "language independent". All
> the schema, map, etc are language dependant. As soon as you have text
> (whatever letter or number) in an image, it becomes a language dependant
> image.

Your assessment that there are both language dependent and independent
pictures is correct. This does however not address the issue that in the
language independent pictures there will be massive duplication between
different languages. At the moment this is not that much of a problem, with
the wikipedia still being pretty small, and harddrive space being cheap. In
the long run however this will have to be solved. I can only think of two
possible solutions:

1) Keep language dependent and independent pictures strictly appart. The
independent ones are in a central repository, while the each language has a
repository for the dependent ones.

2) Keep them together but make a strict rule that all language dependent
pictures must end in a language code. eg:
wikilogo.en.jpg
wikilogo.fr.jpg
wikilogo.simple.jpg
using the already established codes for the different languages.

I personally prefer #2 more, but am obviously open to better solutions.

> Moreover can you tell us why the description of the image should
> contain the copyright notice in english?

I never said that. All I said is that images on the english wikipedia need to
have an english copyright info description. It does not suffice to say that
the image was copied from another language wikipedia in order to constitute a
copyright info description. Which is the case with the example from the
korean wikipedia that I named. Of course each different language should have
its native copyright info description.

Best,
Sascha Noyes
(in wikiland: snoyes)


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Louis Kyu Won Ryu

body:
~S~ wrote:
> What does that "Louis Kyu Won Ryu" mean, and what
> other username/s are you currently using/have used?

I would be happy to address this and other related questions about my
identity and background on my talk page.  I suggest we take the
discussion there for the time being.

Then we can return the discussion here if you conclude there is some
sort of problem.

Louis


from_name: Luc Van Oostenryck

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Money, money...

body:
Stevertigo wrote:
> Just catching up--- I agree with Andrew that these notions of paying
> academics for their knowlege is anti-wiki -- its silly, and I need to
> say so before I read another one of these. With every typical boon come
> the various ideas for how to spend it. Were talking about a few thousand
> dollars here.  Even if Bill and Melinda Gates came down and gave a
> million bucks to wikipedia, it still would not warrant the hiring of
> expensive academics--- many of whom actuall do 'get it" and already
> contribute to WP. Its beyond silly-- and I would like to propose an
> equally silly idea that WP hire on Gary Coleman, Stephen Hawking and
> Traci Lords as spokespeople for Wikipedia -- and pay for commercial
> airtime to advertise.
>
> Well maybe a few public transit ads...
> ~S~

I agree totally with you.

-- Looxix


from_name: Toby Bartels

subject: [WikiEN-l] User names

body:
Maveric149 wrote:

>Toby Bartels wrote:

>>I'm ashamed to see "if the community doesn't like it then it must change"
>>coming from such a respected member of the community --
>>it is the death knell of a community of individuals.

>Huh? So community standards should not apply to anything and individuals
>should be allowed to do whatever they want?

Within reason, yes.

>Policy is formed by consensus.
>That means that the /community/ (the collection of individuals) has made the
>decision.

But it doesn't mean that it's good for the community to force something
simply because they have a consensus (much less merely a majority vote).
We are writing an encylcopaedia -- that is fundamental and basic.
Our encyclopaedia is NPOV -- one of its foundational principles.
These are matters on which the community should hold firm.
But to say that the community should, just because most people want to,
change a person's username -- or other directly personal matters --
certainly does not follow.  There must be a good reason.

I'm not saying that you haven't given any reasons.
Drolsi's name was called offensive, inflammatory, etc;
and people gave arguments as to why it hurt the project.
But that's not the comment that I was responding to.
Rather, the comment that I was responding to said simply
"if the community doesn't like it then it must change",
and that is terribly, terribly wrong.
(OK, you also said "other people have to see it" --
but that's a pretty darned generic situation.)

Nor does it mean that I should have the authority to step in
and say "Community, you are in error.  You should not do this."
and overrule a clear consensus (should one develop on some issue).
That would also be wrong, albeit for different reasons.
However, if the community decided to force some consensus preference,
and if this were something egregious enough, that it ought not to force,
then I might be in a position where I would decide that I must leave,
or would try to convince Jimbo to withdraw support, or something.

For an extreme example, suppose that the community --
say by a broad consensus -- believed that Wikipedia should be POV,
adopting, for example, a secular humanist viewpoint on all matters.
Even though I am a secular humanist, I would still be appalled;
and if Jimbo didn't realise what was happening, I'd be sure to tell him;
and if I couldn't stop the consensus from being implemented, then I'd leave.
Now this isn't very likely; but the fact (or my opinion if you prefer)
would remain that such a community decision would be WRONG.

So in this case "if the community doesn't like it then it must change"
is in error.  And when the community believes this -- when it enforces
all of its opinions, whether they're reasonable to enforce or not --
then it has stopped being a community of individuals
and instead become a collective enforcing its will upon others.
And not that I should be given the power to stop this,
because I should not have such power over the community,
but it would still be a bad thing if the community reached this point.

>You reasoning doesn't make /any/ sense at all.

It's not a particularly great specimen of reasoning,
given that I wasn't so much drawing a conclusion
(not arguing that we should /not/ force a name change)
as claiming that /your/ principle was not valid reasoning.
I deny "if the community doesn't like it then it must change";
but I'm not affirming the opposite, or anything like that.

Having responded to your specific comments regarding my post,
I'm going to ramble a bit more about community decision making.

People should not try to make decisions very much.
Ideally, decisions should be decentralised,
made by a few people with the interest to get very involved.
Most decisions on Wikipedia are made in this way;
they are decisions about how to edit articles,
and they're usually made by a small number of people.
On rarely watched articles, this is only one person (in the short term).
On other articles with more people involved, it's a larger group.
But only on rare occasions does the en.Wikipedia "community"
(which to judge from Drolsi's case is about 30 mailing list subscribers)
get involved to make a group decision.  This is a good thing!

Then there is policy.  If a policy is broad and affects many people,
then it's only right that many people should be involved in it.
And this is one reason why broad policies ought to be few.
We started out with NPOV and "Wikipedia is an encyclopaedia.".
Then we added naming conventions, deletion policy, and the MoS.
To a certain extent, these are things that needed to be decided;
and while I personally believe that we have too many policies
(to some degree or another) about all of these items,
still that's not my point here; my point is simply that
broad policies should be few so that everybody can be involved in them.
Policies that affect fewer people can be more numerous,
because fewer people need to get involved in them.
That way, we retain the principle that each Wikipedian
can be involved in those policies that affect them individually.
(I believe that we fall short of this right now,
although we probably do better than most online communities our size.)

All this is about the /content/ of the encyclopaedia.
This content is by far the most important part of Wikipedia.
After all, that's we came here to work on in the first place;
the community was created for the encyclopaedia,
not the encyclopaedia for the community.
But the meta material -- talk pages, user pages, etc --
is less important, so there's less need for community consensus.
Furthermore, this material is more personal,
so a /community/ decision is, usually, simply not appropriate!
If the community decided that your userpage or mine
ought to contain a different description of ourselves,
then in most situations this would not be right.
Even if there were a consensus (among the others) to impose this,
still it would not be a good idea for the community to do this.
And it would imply a community that had lost sight of our purpose here --
to write an encyclopaedia -- and become more interested in enforcing
(and forming in the first place) community norms for userpages.
The same goes for comments on talk pages, edit summaries,
and, yes, even usernames.

So there must be a reason, and a stronger reason than would be needed
in the forming of a consensus for an article or even a policy page.
Those pages are written by the community and need community support,
while other items are written by individual users and need less support.
In the case of Drolsi's name, some reasons have been given --
offensiveness, professionalism, trust by downstream users --
and while I found many of the reasons spurious, others were good points.
So we can weigh those reasons and see if they justify
the community (by consensus, or -- if the reasons are stronger yet --
even by only a majority vote) to interfere in an individual user's
personal identity on Wikipedia; we can even make general policies.
But just because something is the will of the community,
much less the will of a majority of the community with serious dissent,
does not make it right.

Whatever one may think about the particulars of this case,
it is, to me, a fundamentally important principle in /all/ of life
not to impose personal decisions on other people in ordinary cases.
This is a matter of basic freedom, and human dignity,
not just in matters of state (where we all probably agree),
but in all walks of life whatsoever.

-- Toby


from_name: Lee Pilich

subject: [WikiEN-l] User names

body:
Jake wrote:
 >And LDan: Chronological age is no big factor (at least not to me, and I feel
 >not to many), which is much of why I dislike when people call actions
 >'childlike', 'juvenile', or 'immature'... hell, I'm still a teenager (until
 >Saturday).

I don't want to bang on about this, but when I called "Non-liberals are
stupid"'s actions "childish" I meant that, in my opinion, trying to whip up
an argument in that way to make a point is not a good thing to do. It
wasn't meant as a dig at LDan's age, which, as you say, is completely
irrelevant (in any case, I didn't know that Non-liberals was LDan when I
said it).

Anyway, perhaps it's not a good idea to call anybody childish, no matter
what they're doing. I won't be doing it again any time soon...

Enough of this - slip-ups all round, perhaps, but let's move on. There's an
encyclopaedia to write.

Lee (Camembert)


from_name: Jimmy Wales

body:
Rick wrote:
> See [[User:Mediator/ban]].  He's now making legal threats of libel
>against Jimbo Wales.  I have banned his IP address, 142.177.78.145

Well, if he wants to do that, then he'll have to reveal his true
identity to me, and I don't think he wants to do that.

--Jimbo


body:
Daniel Mayer wrote:
> Only 999,999 IPs to go! He'll keep coming back in the 142.177 range since he
> is on a dynamic IP (Sympatico.ca; Toronto POP). Range bans become temping in
> this case....

I have no objection to a temporary range ban in this case, if it
becomes necessary.  It's actually not 999,999, because there are only
256 alternatives per number.  So it's 256*256 = 65,536.

What would be neat would be able to 'soft ban' certain ip number
ranges in extreme cases.  We've never had to do that (yet), but a
'soft ban' would mean that people can't edit from those ips unless
logged in, and that new accounts on those ips would be flagged for
monitoring, just in case.

--Jimbo


subject: [WikiEN-l] 24

body:
Im not entirely keen on the beef with 24, save that
his arguments and comments were sharp enough to
warrant a detailed response from Jimbo on meta-- much
of which read like "mine website-mine rules."  I
understand he made some legal threats, though I'm not
sure what the real deal is. Is it that he was just a
troll-adding little content?

Would there be any problem (situation permitting) for
user 24 to re-join the collective, as Adam and even RK
have had the opportunity to do?  Would it not be more
practical?

~S~

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
The New Yahoo! Shopping - with improved product search
http://shopping.yahoo.com


subject: [WikiEN-l] 24

body:
Stevertigo wrote:
> Would there be any problem (situation permitting) for
> user 24 to re-join the collective, as Adam and even RK
> have had the opportunity to do?  Would it not be more
> practical?

Stevertigo, I don't think you understand what's going on here.

I tried.  I let him come back as EofT for as long as we could take it.

Part of the problem is that he will not email me, he will not join the
mailing list, he will not take part in dialog.  He calls people
racists and control freaks.  He postures about being interested in
policy, but then he always makes it perfectly clear that he intends to
ignore any policy that he doesn't agree with.

More than once, he has frightened people, including me, by making
remarks implying a personal level of intimidation.  He likes to speak
of death for people who disagree with him, and says things like "There
is no co-operation with such people." "They were warned."

More than once, he has been accused of writing things that were
tantamount to death threats.

Because of him, I have issued strict instructions to my wife not to
open mysterious packages, should any arrive.

Say what you will about Adam or H.J. or anyone else who has been
banned, they were not frightening in any way.  Adam and I have an
ongoing semi-friendly dialogue in private email, arguing about
politics and what not.  H.J. wrote to me for months on end asking me
to help finish erasing her name from the website, etc.

But this guy, well, he's in a category all his own, I'm sorry to
conclude, and I think there is very little chance of him learning how
to behave in a civilized fashion.

--Jimbo


subject: [Wikitech-l] Server purchase plan - advice needed quickly

body:
Jake Nelson wrote:

> > I've requested an electronic transfer of the U.S. dollar balance from
> > PayPal to our real bank account, because for now I don't have a
> > bankcard for the PayPal account directly, so I will need the money in
> > the bank so that I can do online ordering.
>
> Just as an aside, the Paypal card is handy to have (I have one, use it a
> lot)...
> Also, on their site, under 'Withdraw', 'Shop online with a PayPal virtual
> card'- useful thing.

Yes, I will get one, but our account hasn't been open long enough to
be eligible yet.


from_name: Steven G. Johnson

subject: [WikiEN-l] logo madness

body:
What was the point of having the whole logo contest and vote and
ratification of the colored logo if you don't stick with the vote results?

Are you going to change the logo every few days?  (I suppose that would
be in the wiki spirit, but it seems a bit silly.)  In that case, just
make the logo world-editable and we'll all have a traditional edit war
over it.

And who decides when the logo gets changed, since apparently the vote
didn't matter?  You've even removed the logo-feedback link from the main
page, so one has to hunt around on google to find it now.

Cordially,
Steven G. Johnson [User:Stevenj]


subject: [WikiEN-l] User names

body:
Stevertigo wrote:

>Toby Bartels wrote:

>>Yeah, /I/ know what it means?  Do you???

>If you dont think "Jesus is Lord!" (dont forget the
>exclamation !) isnt inflamatory-- I dont know what to
>tell you.

Eh, that post was a bit over the top, and not very sensible.
I think that I meant that it seemed rather circular
to claim that a name must be changed because it's "inflammatory"
("of a nature to rouse passion, anger, or animosity" -- OED)
when the only passion, anger, and animosity that it raised
was in the business of changing names in the first place.
There was no mention (there was eventually, but late in the process)
of any emotions being aroused by the name /other/ than
the desire to ban it on the grounds that it was "inflammatory".

But that is hardly what I said; which, as I mentioned,
was not very coherent.  And was overly combative.  And rude.
Sorry about that.

>Youre usually pretty straightforward and
>practical Toby--in this case you seem to be making a
>strange quasi-principled argument against a policy --
>let me repeat it-- 1. Wikipedians can vote to change a
>username.  2. There are no standards, save the will of
>the community.

Yes, I am absolutely arguing against that policy.
A more detailed case, from principle, is in my most recent post,
which is a lengthy reply to a post from mav.

>The second one require some wikitrust
>or better yet: http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikifaith

According to that article, Wikifaith is faith in the wiki process.
That's neither here nor there when it comes to personal usernames.
I have a great deal of faith in the wiki process these days --
more than I did when I first heard of it! ^_^

I also have faith that Wikipedia will generally do the right thing;
perhaps that is what you meant.  To the extent that money measures faith,
note that I made the largest charitable contribution of my life to date
(by a factor of more than 3) on the basis of this faith, last week.
Still, this faith is not blind.

>So, maybe LD's experiment was useful after all-- but
>only to prove my original point (which isnt really
>"my" point alone, is it-- 19 to 5 vote ) that "WP
>reserves the right to rename you. "  ie:
>http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Toby_Bartels/namechange

See, if that ever /really/ went through, I would leave.
Hell, if it were ever a serious issue, I'd lose a lot of faith
(in Wikipedia, but not much in the wiki process in general).
OK, that might not be entirely without doubt;
I know the danger of making absolute statements.
But I'm having a hard time thinking of a plausible situation
where such a name change would be remotely a good idea --
I mean for the community to attempt to impose on me by force.

I suspect that the world would be a better place
if we didn't have the technical means to enforce some rules.
If people couldn't do anything to change Drolsi's old name
/other/ than to talk to him on a personal basis
and try to convince him that it would be a good idea,
then that might have been what people tried in the first place!
This suspicion, like the rambling at the end of my reply to mav,
is also much broader than just Wikipedia -- and as in that case,
Wikipedia is much closer to my ideal than most insitutions are.
This is even -- dare I say it? -- a big part of Wikifaith to me.
In wikis, people /can't/ stop others from editing their text;
and this forces collaboration instead of single authorship.
Instituting banning and page protection -- even if necessary,
in the end, because of vandalism -- can be a bad thing too,
like anythin that interferes with the wiki process
(in which I have so much faith).

-- Toby


subject: [WikiEN-l] user names

body:
[Reply to both Martin and to wikiEN-L.]

Martin Harper wrote in part:

>There is a middle way between unrestricted freedom of speech and "the tyranny
>of majorities who carry on like on-line lynch mobs" (nice turn of phrase). I
>think it lies in balancing an appropriate dress code with an appropriate means
>of asking people to follow that dress code.

There's also a middle way between asking people to behave and forcing them to,
a middle way between hard rules and a lack of individual responsibility.
Drolsi was originally hit with the demand that his name would be changed,
whether he liked it or not.  When people (not just me, you too,
and I'm sorry that I previous post of mine implied otherwise)
began to talk /with/ him, rather then /tell/ him what would be done,
then he was a reasonable person and did the right thing.

-- Toby


from_name: Karl Eichwalder

body:
Anthere <anthere6 at yahoo.com> writes:

> and those copying images from one wikipedia to another
> ?

This is a problem to be attacked ASAP.  We need one image server for
all wikipedias--simply because images are language independend.

It would also be good, to store the "facts" (numbers, numbers,...)
somewhere independently from where it could be possible to feed the
data sections of certain articles.

> Drawing logos ?

No new logo within the next five years, please ;)

--
                                                         |      ,__o
                                                         |    _-\_<,
http://www.gnu.franken.de/ke/                            |   (*)/'(*)


from_name: tarquin

subject: [Wikitech-l] Wikipedia parser specs

body:
Poor, Edmund W wrote:

>Does anyone have a requirements document for the Wikipedia parser?
>
>If not, will those programmers who have already begun work on such a
>parser, like Magnus and Frithjof, please send me any scraps of
>documentation you have?
>
>
Are you writing this document on Meta? I'll help :)

>I guess the list of "stupid parser tricks" would start with bracket
>notation for links:
>
>[http://www.edpoor.com] is a link to my outdated, static website
>
>[http://www.edpoor.com/images/Ae-inAndDog.jpg girl with dog] is an
>annotated link
>
>[[Iraq]] links to the Wikipedia article on Iraq
>[[Iraq|Rummyland]] links to Iraq but is shown as "Rummyland" (a
>Doonesbury reference, okay? ;-)
>
>
Actually, it's been suggested to use double brackets for both types of link.

http://www.planetunreal.com/titanium


subject: [WikiEN-l] Drolsi Susej

body:
Stevertigo wrote:

>Tim: Next time, (since you seem to be the dev'r taking
>point with namechanges) you might wait a minute and
>see if a target name for a change is problematic.  I
>dont have any problem with it, per se-- but
>considering the objections raised onlist, and that its
>in fact just a hack of Jesus is Lord (sans ! ) -- I
>suggest that the final decision of making a change and
>what the change is-- might also better be in the hands
>of the collective, as well.

And I just want to say that you did a fine job Tim, all round.

>PS: Yes, ATC, it would be silly to start a
>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Drolsi_Susej/namechange
>page now.  (Maybe)

Kudos also to the Wikipedia Borg for deciding that,
while "Drolsi Susej" is problematic (and I believe it is!),
it is nevertheless acceptable (for now maybe).

-- Toby


subject: [WikiEN-l] Louis Kyu Won Ryu

body:
Anth?re wrote in part:

>Louis Kyu Won Ryu wrote:

>>Our favorite troll is raising Cain as User:Mediator.

>What does that mean Cain ?

"to raise Cain" = "to make a disagreeable disturbance;
to create trouble, uproar, or confusion" -- OED

"Cain" (or "the devil" or "hell" in the similar phrases, mutatis mutandis)
is the trouble or uproar that's being raised by the person in question.
If somebody raises Cain, that implies (to me) that there's a lot of shouting
going on as a result of what they said.

>But, again, two weight, two measures, right ?

Yes; RK was a respected contributor (by many people),
so he was given a lot of leniency for a long time.
People are saying that the contents of the posts are not the point;
but they are relevant de facto, even if not de jure.

Still, the bottom line is that Jimbo has been convinced by IP logs
that Mediator is the mutliply banned user EofT aka 142 (maybe aka 24);
and I'm sure that /this/ not-very-well-respected-at-all user
would have been banned, once discovered, whatever he'd written.
In the end, the content of Mediator's edits under /that/ name
served only to rouse suspicion in the first place.

-- Toby


from_name: Alfio Puglisi

subject: [Wikitech-l] Wikipedia parser specs

body:
On Mon, 13 Oct 2003, Poor, Edmund W wrote:

>I guess the list of "stupid parser tricks" would start with bracket
>notation for links:
>
>[http://www.edpoor.com] is a link to my outdated, static website
>
>[http://www.edpoor.com/images/Ae-inAndDog.jpg girl with dog] is an
>annotated link
>
>[[Iraq]] links to the Wikipedia article on Iraq
>[[Iraq|Rummyland]] links to Iraq but is shown as "Rummyland" (a
>Doonesbury reference, okay? ;-)

Isn't the "Editing help" page already a parser guide? At least, that's
what I used writing mine :-)

Ciao,
Alfio