from_name: Michael Bimmler

subject: [WikiEN-l] Oversight -- Really new or not?

body:
On 6/23/06, Michael Noda <michael.noda at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 6/23/06, Michael Bimmler <mbimmler at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 6/23/06, Lord Voldemort <lordbishopvoldemort at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > On 6/23/06, Matt Brown <morven at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > > Because we don't know which admin has done this, just that it happened.
> > >
> > > Yet. To quote Saw2 "Oh yes, there will be blood."  (But not really,
> > > desysopping won't physically harm anybody...
> > Sure. But desysopping somebody needs less time/skills than preparing a
> > legal action against him ;-) (and it's something against which he
> > cannot file an appeal)
>
> You're wrong there; our villain will be able to file an appeal with ArbCom;
> they'll laugh at him, but he will be able to appeal.
>
Of course he can. But: If he appeals to ArbCom, it will be dealt with
much faster (and favourable for Wikipedia) than if he is able to
appeal to the whole bunch of appeal courts (up to Supreme Court if he
has the time for it), and this will take *a lot of time*. So I don't
think we can compare this.

> Actually, that's an interesting question; presuming we ever identify the
> Wikitruth admin(s), will it stop at summary desysopping, or do we expect
> that they will also be community banned?
I think, if a sysop is found to be the person who has published
deleted content, he should also be community banned. However I must
say that I was unable to find a applicable paragraph in
[[Wikipedia:Banning policy]], probably as it is a rather unusual case.
But, as Mark Wagner said, as long as he didn't undelete the page but
only looked at it, it might be quite difficult to find the person who
has done so...
Michael


list: wikipedia-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Francis Tyers

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Moldovan wikipedia, again

body:
Agree with this statement. Absurd vote stacking on both sides has left
us with this impossible situation. It shouldn't have been closed the
first time (even though it was voted as such) and it should be closed
now (even though it hasn't been voted as such). Oh the wonderful
confusion.

If only it were possible to get a non-involved party to look at this for
5 minutes and decide one way or the other. It would save everyone a hell
of a lot of time. What we need is a knee jerk binding judgement! (of
course this is said partly in jest, but we really aren't going to get
anywhere by 'discussing' this).

Fran

On Sat, 2006-06-24 at 06:15 -0700, Mark Williamson wrote:
> Having said that, I should add that the majority of people in both
> votes who voted to delete this Wiki came from the Romanian Wikipedia.
>
> So don't accuse me of playing unfairly. This is a vote for
> Wikimedians. Russian Wikipedians are just as good of voters are you
> Romanian and your buddies.
>
> Mark
>
> On 24/06/06, Jacky PB <dpotop1 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> >
> > Hello everybody,
> >
> > Remember, you decided to leave the Moldovan wikipedia freezed, but not completely deleted. Now, its unique contributor [[:en:User:Node_ue]], is back (probably on school holiday), with his anti-Romanian edits. I cite from [[:mo:Wikipedia_talk:Administrator]]:
> >
> > <i> Please don't write in Romanian here, write Moldovan. Every time you write Romanian on the Moldovan wikipedia, god kills a kitten. </i>
> >
> > No to mention that he initiated a vote to become again sysop, then tried to falsify the results (because they were not favourable). The current version of the page [[:mo:Wikipedia:Administrator]] is that rigged by Node_ue, but take a look at the history on the vote page [http://mo.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Administrator&oldid=11594], which shows the true result of the vote according to the original rules set by Node_ue.
> >
> > After this, he managed to invite the entire Russian wikipedia to take position on a language they know nothing about here: [[:meta:Proposals for closing projects]]. Take a look at his post here [[:ru:?????????:?????/???????#Moldovan]], and notice the blatant lie concerning the cyrillic script (whereas the problem is in fact the absence of Moldovan editors).
> >
> > In the meantime, Node_ue is copying articles from ro.wiki to mo.wiki and pretends they are in a different language.
> >
> > It must be noted that he is the only one on the entire wikipedia (all wikipedias took together) to pretend speaking a "Moldovan language" different from the Romanian one. Just take a look at [[:en:Category:User mo]], [[:mo:Category:User mo]], [[:ro:Category:User mo]], [[:ru:Category:User mo]].
> >
> > Moreover he himself places himself at level mo-2. I can assure you this guy isn't able to write correct text in Moldovan. Any native Moldovan can tell you the same  (in fact, this is why he keeps copying articles from ro.wiki).
> >
> > While no native Moldovan editor exists, the Moldovan wikipedia will continue to be a political statement that exacerbates nationalisms from Romania, Russia, and Moldova itself, and a playground for clever and stupid trolls.
> >
> > It should be closed until a native Moldovan editor requires its re-opening and assumes admin rights.
> >
> > This argument has already been put forward here [[:meta:Proposals for closing projects#What decision makers need to know]].
> >
> > Yours sincerely,
> > [[:en:User:Dpotop]], [[:ro:User:Dpotop]]
> >
> >
> >
> > ---------------------------------
> > Do you Yahoo!?
> >  Next-gen email? Have it all with the  all-new Yahoo! Mail Beta.
> > _______________________________________________
> > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> >
>
>


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] New SVN committer

body:
Added: Cyril DANGERVILLE (cdangerville), DynamicPageList2 extension

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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subject: [Wikipedia-l] Moldovan wikipedia, again

body:
Well, I'm not in a position to "hand down the law" so to speak ;) It
bothers me that certain people are so eager to close it, and it also
bothers me that once it is closed, should sufficient interest be shown,
the same people who voted 'close' here would 'oppose' re-opening it.

I think that would be highly unfair. _If_ it is closed, there has to be
the possibility of it being re-opened provided there is interest.

Mark, I think that any Wikipedia without native contributors should be
closed after a certain period. By closed I mean as I proposed here:

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Proposals_for_closing_projects#Collective_failure_to_get_the_point

The current content archived and a placeholder put in place. I don't
think the "offensive" thing is important at all, I voted for keeping the
Serbo-Croatian Wikipedia, even though (allegedly) it offended a lot of
Balkanians. The point there was there were native speakers really eager
to contribute. I'm just not seeing that here.

As I have expounded on the same page here:

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Proposals_for_closing_projects#General_discussion_about_small.2C_inactive_wikis

I think having very low quality small Wikipedias harms more than helps.
I think that a Moldovan Wikipedia could certainly in its current form
have a place in something like Sabines suggestion. With regard to the
Tajik, Nauruan, Kanuri, Venda, Xhosa, and Twi Wikipedias, the same
applies.

In short, I stand by my previous proposal, and would add that it should
definately _not_ be voted on to be re-opened, it should only take ~9
native speakers to request it. _Definately no vote_ -- We'll just get
adorable Romanians pushing their brand of "democracy", and the ensuing
clown parade.

Fran

On Sat, 2006-06-24 at 08:07 -0700, Jacky PB wrote:
>
> > ... it should be closed now
>
> Amen !
> (I cut the oppinion of Francis Tyers out of a context that hides it).
>
> > If only it were possible to get a non-involved party to look at this for
> > 5 minutes and decide one way or the other. It would save everyone a hell
> > of a lot of time. What we need is a knee jerk binding judgement! (of
> > course this is said partly in jest, but we really aren't going to get
> > anywhere by 'discussing' this).
>
> Well, **you** of all are non-involved. And after following this discussion for
> a **long** time you ended with the same conclusion: Regardless of what the Moldovan
> language is or is not, there are no native contributors, and there is one single
> contributor overall (who actually cannot contribute because he is at level mo-2). Isn't this enough?
>
> Dpotop
>
>
>
> ---------------------------------
> Want to be your own boss? Learn how on  Yahoo! Small Business.
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Moldovan wikipedia, again

body:
Which is why I strongly oppose any Romanian or Russian involvement in
the re-opening process. The re-opening process should ideally be a
"Support only" affair, where people who are native speakers can go and
voice their support for re-opening the project. And it would be
re-opened given sufficient interest.

I would probably not be willing to close if this was not the case.

Fran

On Sat, 2006-06-24 at 08:36 -0700, Mark Williamson wrote:
> Do you really honestly think that the Moldovan Wikipedia would ever be
> re-opened, even if the entire population of Tighina showed up to
> demand it? The Romanians would find some cute little way to keep it
> closed.
>
> Mark
>
> On 24/06/06, Francis Tyers <spectre at ivixor.net> wrote:
> > Well, I'm not in a position to "hand down the law" so to speak ;) It
> > bothers me that certain people are so eager to close it, and it also
> > bothers me that once it is closed, should sufficient interest be shown,
> > the same people who voted 'close' here would 'oppose' re-opening it.
> >
> > I think that would be highly unfair. _If_ it is closed, there has to be
> > the possibility of it being re-opened provided there is interest.
> >
> > Mark, I think that any Wikipedia without native contributors should be
> > closed after a certain period. By closed I mean as I proposed here:
> >
> > http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Proposals_for_closing_projects#Collective_failure_to_get_the_point
> >
> > The current content archived and a placeholder put in place. I don't
> > think the "offensive" thing is important at all, I voted for keeping the
> > Serbo-Croatian Wikipedia, even though (allegedly) it offended a lot of
> > Balkanians. The point there was there were native speakers really eager
> > to contribute. I'm just not seeing that here.
> >
> > As I have expounded on the same page here:
> >
> > http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Proposals_for_closing_projects#General_discussion_about_small.2C_inactive_wikis
> >
> > I think having very low quality small Wikipedias harms more than helps.
> > I think that a Moldovan Wikipedia could certainly in its current form
> > have a place in something like Sabines suggestion. With regard to the
> > Tajik, Nauruan, Kanuri, Venda, Xhosa, and Twi Wikipedias, the same
> > applies.
> >
> > In short, I stand by my previous proposal, and would add that it should
> > definately _not_ be voted on to be re-opened, it should only take ~9
> > native speakers to request it. _Definately no vote_ -- We'll just get
> > adorable Romanians pushing their brand of "democracy", and the ensuing
> > clown parade.
> >
> > Fran
> >
> > On Sat, 2006-06-24 at 08:07 -0700, Jacky PB wrote:
> > >
> > > > ... it should be closed now
> > >
> > > Amen !
> > > (I cut the oppinion of Francis Tyers out of a context that hides it).
> > >
> > > > If only it were possible to get a non-involved party to look at this for
> > > > 5 minutes and decide one way or the other. It would save everyone a hell
> > > > of a lot of time. What we need is a knee jerk binding judgement! (of
> > > > course this is said partly in jest, but we really aren't going to get
> > > > anywhere by 'discussing' this).
> > >
> > > Well, **you** of all are non-involved. And after following this discussion for
> > > a **long** time you ended with the same conclusion: Regardless of what the Moldovan
> > > language is or is not, there are no native contributors, and there is one single
> > > contributor overall (who actually cannot contribute because he is at level mo-2). Isn't this enough?
> > >
> > > Dpotop
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > ---------------------------------
> > > Want to be your own boss? Learn how on  Yahoo! Small Business.
> > > _______________________________________________
> > > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > > Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> > > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> >
>
>


from_name: Chad Perrin

subject: [Wikitech-l] Poem extension on Wikisource

body:
On Sat, Jun 24, 2006 at 02:53:09PM -0400, Jay R. Ashworth wrote:
> On Sat, Jun 24, 2006 at 05:33:41AM -0600, Chad Perrin wrote:
> > > Please don't use it for something else, even if it seems somewhat useful
> > > for another purpose. It is _designed_ for poems, and it is supposed to
> > > mark up only poems. If you find another use, a new tag can be introduced
> > > that behaves in a very similar way.
> >
> > Why?  That seems needlessly complex.  If one has need for the same
> > functionality for multiple purposes, it doesn't strike me as a net win
> > to have eight different syntaxes to do the same thing.  Is there some
> > specific reason that it should be divided by intent rather than purpose,
> > thusly?
>
> [ looks a second time ]
>
> That's *you* asking that, Chaper?
>
> Semantic markeup, of course.
>
> What's needlessly complex is deciding that such a new tthing which isn't
> a poem but might look the same now should then look different...
>
> after 10,000 non-poem things have been tagged <poem>.

There's a difference between semantics (justified, preformatted, list)
and content (poem, TV script, needed groceries).  So, yeah, it's me
asking that.

--
CCD CopyWrite Chad Perrin [ http://ccd.apotheon.org ]
Brian K. Reid: "In computer science, we stand on each other's feet."


list: wikien-l

from_name: Andrew Gray

subject: [WikiEN-l]And you thought Pokémon was trivial...

body:
On 24/06/06, Justin Cormack <justin at specialbusservice.com> wrote:
>
> On 24 Jun 2006, at 04:01, maru dubshinki wrote:
> >
> > Yeah, but our growth in articles is also slowing down from the
> > exponential growth rates we'd previously enjoyed (or so my tea-leaf
> > reading of the statistics would indicate).
>
> Figures for this?
>
> It might just be a side effect of the restrictions on new article
> creation of course.
>
> But it would be interesting if we were approaching the point where in
> some areas we have at least a stub for "everything".

We have a stub or more for:

a) every contemporary head of state or head of government
b) every sitting UK, US, Australian or Canadian parliamentarian and
their constituencies
c) every past US senator
d) every member of the European Parliament (which surprises me)

We're slowly reaching at least basic completeness in some fields; a
lot of the missing-articles lists are beginning to top out. There's
still a long way to go, though.

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


subject: [WikiEN-l] Spoiler Boilerplates

body:
On 6/24/06, Zero <megamanzero521 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> Yes, that sounds sensible. They are widely accepted now, as
> its  (presumely) the "in" and "hip" thing to do about the internet. I, as
> an  long-time and experienced editor am troubled by this attack upon
> our  status as an encyclopedia and conveyance as a knowlegeable
> resource.  And so I come with the spirit of advocacy to query and discuss
> the  usefulness and relevance of a silly template with my fellow
> editors,  hopefully in light of good outcome for the encyclopedia and its
> value  as a informative resource. -Zero

FWIW, I also really would like the spoiler templates to be killed.
Especially when I saw the [[Romeo and Juliet]] article. But consensus
definitely seems be to that they should stay. It is possible to do without
though. Like mentioned earlier, the german wikipedia doesn't has them and I
believe the opera's project doesn't use them. But sometimes you also just
have to accept that you can't convince people (can't imagine why anyone
would not agree with me though :). Hey, if it were up to me I also would
kill 90 % of the use of the current template. And some of the infoboxes. I
guess I just don't like many templates. I don't know if this page was
mentioned before but see also [[User:Shanes/Why tags are evil]]. But like I
said, sometimes you just have to accept the fact that they are going to
stay. But please do try to change consensus. :)

Garion


from_name: Steve Bennett

body:
On 6/24/06, Tels <nospam-abuse at bloodgate.com> wrote:
> I didn't see that question. And even if it would be renamed, then we would
> now miss a way to tag poems as poems, and not as "something usefull
> including poems, cook recipes and whatever". :)
>
> So, Use <poem> for poems, and invent something else for, well, something
> else :-D

Some more background on this <poem> tag would help. Are there any
other instances where we have purely semantic tags?

Steve


subject: [WikiEN-l] Spoiler Boilerplates

body:
On 6/24/06, Alphax (Wikipedia email) <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Garion1000 wrote:
>
> > FWIW, I also really would like the spoiler templates to be killed.
> > Especially when I saw the [[Romeo and Juliet]] article.
>
> See also: http://uncyclopedia.org/wiki/Template:Spoiler
>
> --

That was great.

Garion


body:
On 6/24/06, Justin Cormack <justin at specialbusservice.com> wrote:
>
> On 24 Jun 2006, at 04:01, maru dubshinki wrote:
> >
> > Yeah, but our growth in articles is also slowing down from the
> > exponential growth rates we'd previously enjoyed (or so my tea-leaf
> > reading of the statistics would indicate).
>
> Figures for this?
>
> It might just be a side effect of the restrictions on new article
> creation of course.
>
> But it would be interesting if we were approaching the point where in
> some areas we have at least a stub for "everything".

We're there it at least two areas: Episodes of the Simpsons, and Price
is Right pricing games.

Steve


body:
On 6/24/06, maru dubshinki <marudubshinki at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> >
> > Also, I'm just generally not comfortable with the situation that the
> > Foundation Office wants things one way, but everyone else seems to
> > want them another way (and everyone else is winning)...
> >
> > Steve
>
> Yeah, but our growth in articles is also slowing down from the
> exponential growth rates we'd previously enjoyed (or so my tea-leaf
> reading of the statistics would indicate).
>
> As for your second point, so what? The Foundation Office exists for
> the sake of the "everyone else", not the other way around.

Hmm, within limits though. "Everyone else" are definitely not always
correct.

Garion

~maru
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Timwi

body:
Steve Bennett wrote:
> On 6/24/06, Tels <nospam-abuse at bloodgate.com> wrote:
>
>>I didn't see that question. And even if it would be renamed, then we would
>>now miss a way to tag poems as poems, and not as "something usefull
>>including poems, cook recipes and whatever". :)
>>
>>So, Use <poem> for poems, and invent something else for, well, something
>>else :-D
>
> Some more background on this <poem> tag would help. Are there any
> other instances where we have purely semantic tags?

You seem to be implying that you think we should only introduce purely
semantic tags if we already have other semantic tags. You therefore seem
to be of the opinion that unsemantic tags are favourable in a context
where most mark-up is already unsemantic. But if this was the case, then
surely HTML would not have introduced things like <em> and <strong> and
deprecated things like <font>, and instead have introduced things like
<marquee> or <blink>.

So, the reason <poem> was made a semantic tag is because semantic tags
are good, independently of whether we already have semantic tags or not.

Imagine we use the same tag for poems and for cooking recipes. Some time
in the future we decide we actually want the mark-up to behave slightly
(or even completely) differently for recipes. This is why we need
separate mark-up for separate purposes.

And yes, I know that ideally this reasoning also calls for separate
mark-ups that are currently all handled with '' (emphasis, maths
variables, song/film titles, etc.). Obviously in this situation it is
futile to hope for the ideal. Doesn't mean we have to create the same
suboptimal situation in something as rarely-used as poems, though.

Timwi


from_name: Ivan Krstic

subject: [Wikitech-l] New SVN committer

body:
Brion Vibber wrote:
> Jitse Nielsen (jitsenielsen)

That 'l' doesn't belong there.

--
Ivan Krstic <krstic at fas.harvard.edu> | GPG: 0x147C722D


from_name: Platonides

body:
"Steve Bennett" wrote:
> On 6/24/06, Tels wrote:
>> I didn't see that question. And even if it would be renamed, then we
>> would
>> now miss a way to tag poems as poems, and not as "something usefull
>> including poems, cook recipes and whatever". :)
>>
>> So, Use <poem> for poems, and invent something else for, well, something
>> else :-D
>
> Some more background on this <poem> tag would help. Are there any
> other instances where we have purely semantic tags?
>
> Steve

We have <nowiki> which not only blocks wiki-text but also HTML....


from_name: jkelly at fas.harvard.edu

subject: [WikiEN-l]  popular POV not NPOV? (was:New York Times article)

body:
  Hi,

  With the caveat that I haven't looked carefully at either the AN discussion,
the RFC, nor the article in question...

Quoting Conrad Dunkerson <conrad.dunkerson at worldnet.att.net>:

> To me that looks like the >admin< was violating NPOV by trying to write
> the article from the 'most popular point of view' rather than the NEUTRAL
> point of view...

...it would be easy to (mis?)read the above as a statement that we are
attempting to find some sort of absolute neutrality between points of view.  It
isn't a violation of [[WP:NPOV]] to write a synthesis of mainstream thinking and
identify fringe views as fringe views.  Our actual policy goes into some detail
about this, and takes a much less naive view of neutrality than is often
attributed to it.

   Jkelly


from_name: Philip Welch

subject: [WikiEN-l] popular POV not NPOV? (was:New York Times article)

body:
On Jun 24, 2006, at 7:40 PM, Fastfission wrote:

> "Captured"(???) and "Correct"(!!!)? Those aren't good alternatives
> to "Neutral".
>
> The closest synonyms I can find to "neutral" which really get the same
> meaning are "evenhanded", "impartial", and "disinterested". Even these
> are a bit too close to "objective" which is not the same thing as
> "neutral" at all (you can be objective without being neutral).
>
> Neutral is a great word. Instead of worrying about people
> misunderstanding the acronym, which should take more time to explain
> it to them, and try to avoid using acronyms alltogether if possible
> (they are in-community practices which are opaque and potentially
> misleading to those who are not used to them -- WP:FU is a great
> example!).

I think we should replace "neutral point of view" (which is
abbreviated to the misunderstood acronym NPOV) to
"neutrality" (which, like "verifiability", is easier to understand).

--
Philip L. Welch
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Philwelch


from_name: Ray Saintonge

body:
Stan Shebs wrote:

>Rob Church wrote:
>
>
>>On 23/06/06, Stan Shebs <shebs at apple.com> wrote:
>>
>>
>>>All it's lacking is a title! I propose "Brion's Poem".
>>>It should get a reading at the next Wikimania too.
>>>
>>>
>>That one shouldn't.
>>http://de.wikisource.org/wiki/Benutzer:Brion_VIBBER should, though. :)
>>
>>
>That one's just doggerel though - doesn't have nearly the
>sophisticated but spare rhythms of his later work.
>
One could only dream how far Mehitabel's friend Archy could have
competed if only he had had a modern keyboard available instead of a
mechanical typewriter. :-)

Ec


from_name: Bogdan Giusca

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Moldovan wikipedia, again

body:
Hello Mark,

I'm not sure about this new user, but IMO, from the errors he/she
makes, I'd say he/she does not speak Romanian/Moldovan natively.

I just read one of his one-liners (Kamenka) and here are the errors:

* "locuieshte" instead of "locuiesc" (grammar mistake)
* "mai mult decat" instead of "peste" (different meaning)
* "funccioneaza" instead of "functzioneaza" (spelling mistake)
* "ocupatz'" instead of "ocupatzi" (spelling mistake)
* "care sunt ocupatzi in general in domeniul agriculturii" (not an
error, but awkward usage of the language)

Anyway, I don't see how would one user affect this. :-)

Saturday, June 24, 2006, 6:43:59 PM, you wrote:

MW> Their username is written in Moldovan Cyrillic. I don't know whether
MW> or not they're a native speaker, but they are the first person in a
MW> while besides me to create new pages in correctly-spelt Moldovan.

MW> I know I will get accusations from the Romanian camp of sockpuppetry;
MW> I assure you this is not my sockpuppet, you may check if you would
MW> like.

MW> Whoever this is, though, they've certainly made this whole thing more
MW> interesting for me, at least.


subject: [Wikitech-l] SVG blankness problem hopefully resolved

body:
I believe I've got the SVG blanking problem resolved.

Some files may still have blank renderings left over; use ?action=purge on the
image description page (on Commons if it's a Commons image) to rerender them.

The new batch of machines set up a few weeks ago ended up with a broken version
of libxml2 that ships by default with Fedora Core 4, which is unable to handle
an odd but legal XML construct in SVG files exported from Adobe Illustrator.

We'd worked around this problem on the other servers by upgrading libxml2 to the
then-latest version which handles it, but apparently this didn't make it into
the setup scripts (or else didn't get installed properly by them) on the newest
machines.

I've upgraded the laggards to libxml2 2.6.23, the same as is on the older
machines, and recompiled librsvg. At least in a test environment, every server
in the farm now properly renders the affected files.

There are other rendering issues which could be improved by upgrading to librsvg
2.15.0, but it has dependencies and I've had limited success getting RPMs built
for everything such that it actually works so far.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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list: foundation-l

subject:
[Foundation-l] Opinions/suggestions for "outside" members of
 the board?

body:
Anthere wrote:

>Fred Bauder wrote:
>
>
>>I have always viewed Jimbo's suggestion that we "distribute a paper
>>encyclopedia to African children" as quixotic but I have in
>>connection with a possible board member wondered if we could create a
>>series of documents which focus on public health which would prove
>>useful in Africa, possibly also in China and other regions, and be
>>worth distributing as part of a public health education campaign.
>>There was lately a cholera epidemic in Angola which affected most of
>>the country. There is a lot of ignorance involved in this sort of
>>situation. I don't see this project so much directed to children as
>>to local decision makers. It would contain information about disease
>>and disease prevention, etc. The question, bottom line, is would a
>>project of this nature actually prove effective? Or should we first
>>see if we could even mobilize around it? One of the good aspects
>>regarding this possible board member is that he is a hands on,
>>computer literate guy with experience in give and take.
>>
>>
>Regarding "would a project of this nature actually prove effective", I
>am giving a presentation end of august in an international health forum
>(http://www.hcuge.ch/genevahealthforum/) and this is exactly the type of
>question I hope can receive a beginning of an answer.
>
>I do not really believe we can mobilize around it before setting up a
>framework around. We need partners for such project and these partners
>input will be essential to define which content should be included or
>not included, and what the audience would be.
>
>However, admittedly, what I would worry about is, if a framework is set,
>with partners and of course, a deadline, I am not sure we would succeed
>to mobilize enough and in a sufficiently effective way to respect the
>limits. I think we can do huge things, but generally, we are bad with
>deadlines because a volunteer may come and go.
>
>Also, one of the reasons why Wikipedia typically is successful is that
>it can be build by tiny bits. Doing just a bit is easy. A little step
>that most of us can climb without too much efforts. It is much more of a
>problem to participate to a long term project, in which significant
>amounts of efforts must be brought be each contributor.
>
The idea is commendable but strikes me as well beyond the scope of the
things we do.  We are more in a kind of educational publishing business
rather than a vehicle for mibilising health care.  Our information could
include medical information, but publishing that information is not
enough.  We could include "The Barefoot Doctor's Manual" in Wikisource.
(The English translation was published by the National Institute of
Health in 1974, and that would likely make it copyright free as a US
government publication despite the claims of subsequent reprinters.)

But the advances in Chinese medical practice at that time involved more
than just publishing a book.  It was a textbook for teaching.  Putting
it on-line won't do much for people who don't have computers.  What the
barefoot doctor mobilization did in China was was bring medical care to
rural areas where no care at all was previously available; one should
not, therefore, judge the skill of these practitioners by reference to
the medical personel in developed countries where there is access to
sophisticated equipment and drugs.

What's needed is to mobilize local people, give them a basic level of
medical training, and send them out through the country  where, as much
as possible, they can use indiginous supplies in the practice of
medicine.  This may seem like quackery by Western standards, but it's
better than the nothing that that public currently has.  Our role in
this can only be very limited.

Ec


list: wikimedia-l


body:
On Sat, Jun 24, 2006 at 11:57:09PM -0400, Jay R. Ashworth wrote:
> On Sat, Jun 24, 2006 at 05:34:51PM -0600, Chad Perrin wrote:
> > There's a difference between semantics (justified, preformatted, list)
> > and content (poem, TV script, needed groceries).  So, yeah, it's me
> > asking that.
>
> You're correct, there's a difference.
>
> But, as far as I can see, those first ones are rather specifically not
> semantics; they're *syntax*.  Looks, not meaning.
>
> Which was sort of my point, as well, I believe, as that of Timwi.

In retrospect, the argument about what constitutes "semantic" tags could
go either way.  I was thinking presentational semantics and you were
thinking of semantic presentation, basically.  Yes, that's a meaningful
sentence.

I'm not sure I agree that semantic presentation is really a great idea
to implement in markup tags.  Rather, it seems to be something that
should be managed via properties that are attached to tags.  It provides
sort of a natural hierarchical inheritance model, rather than (by way of
analogy) sticking every single file on your hard drive in the root
directory, like the FAT12 filesystem did.

Maybe that's not a concern here, though.  I admit I haven't been much
involved in thinking about wiki markup needs overall.

--
CCD CopyWrite Chad Perrin [ http://ccd.apotheon.org ]
unix virus: If you're using a unixlike OS, please forward
this to 20 others and erase your system partition.


from_name: Fastfission

body:
"Captured"(???) and "Correct"(!!!)? Those aren't good alternatives to "Neutral".

The closest synonyms I can find to "neutral" which really get the same
meaning are "evenhanded", "impartial", and "disinterested". Even these
are a bit too close to "objective" which is not the same thing as
"neutral" at all (you can be objective without being neutral).

Neutral is a great word. Instead of worrying about people
misunderstanding the acronym, which should take more time to explain
it to them, and try to avoid using acronyms alltogether if possible
(they are in-community practices which are opaque and potentially
misleading to those who are not used to them -- WP:FU is a great
example!).

FF

On 6/24/06, Ian Woollard <ian.woollard at gmail.com> wrote:
> Yeah, POV is nearly always good NPOV unless it's OR.
>
> We should really change the name NPOV. It's too confusing. The policy
> is spot on but nobody knows what the acronym NPOV means.
>
> I would prefer, say, CPOV. Captured POV or Correct POV. NPOV suggests
> *Not* POV; whereas POV is absolutely fine.
>
> *Seriously*.
>
> Page move anyone?
>
> On 25/06/06, jkelly at fas.harvard.edu <jkelly at fas.harvard.edu> wrote:
> >   Hi,
> >
> >   With the caveat that I haven't looked carefully at either the AN discussion,
> > the RFC, nor the article in question...
> >
> > Quoting Conrad Dunkerson <conrad.dunkerson at worldnet.att.net>:
> >
> > > To me that looks like the >admin< was violating NPOV by trying to write
> > > the article from the 'most popular point of view' rather than the NEUTRAL
> > > point of view...
> >
> > ...it would be easy to (mis?)read the above as a statement that we are
> > attempting to find some sort of absolute neutrality between points of view.  It
> > isn't a violation of [[WP:NPOV]] to write a synthesis of mainstream thinking and
> > identify fringe views as fringe views.  Our actual policy goes into some detail
> > about this, and takes a much less naive view of neutrality than is often
> > attributed to it.
> >
> >    Jkelly
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > WikiEN-l mailing list
> > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> > To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
> >
>
>
> --
> -Ian Woollard
>
> "Victory can be perceived but not created."
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Phoebe Ayers

subject: [WikiEN-l] How to edit Wikipedia if you're a campaign manager

body:
Apologies if this has come up before; this is an article from April
2006, published in "Campaigns and Elections" magazine, which describes
itself as a magazine for campaign consultants.
(http://www.campaignline.com/). I've excerpted the article below,
leaving in the important part where he tells campaign managers how to
influence Wikipedia, for better or worse. Hmm.

If you have access to the Expanded Academic database, the full text is
in there.
-- phoebe

------
The Wikipedia dilemma. Michael Cornfield.
Campaigns & Elections 27.3 (April 2006): p50(1).

Full Text :COPYRIGHT 2006 Campaigns & Elections, Inc.

"Congressional staffers have tried to airbrush and deface it. The
Chinese government has tried to block access to it. Old-line
journalists resent it, while new-line journalists rely on it."

"'It'" is Wikipedia, the real-time online encyclopedia with close to
one million English-language entries that any Internet user, more or
less, can contribute to and edit. Wikipedia is the latest addition to
the online campaigning toolbox. While it has been around for five
years, its readership has now reached critical mass. According to
Alexa.com, it has been the 22nd most visited site on the Web in the
last three months."
[more introductory materia]
....
"It's the composition along with the size of the mass that makes
Wikipedia increasingly important for campaigners. People who go to
Wikipedia often do so to put themselves in a position to say something
knowledgeable to others. In other words, Wikipedia users are opinion
leaders."
....
[goes on to describe the Wikipedia entry for Mark Kennedy, noting one
biased paragraph, where Kennedy is noted as a supporter of the war on
Iraq]

"No such biased paragraph (pro or con) appeared on the entry of
Kennedy's leading opponent at the moment, DFLer Amy Klobuchar. And no
warning box appeared at the top of Kennedy's entry, as may be found at
the entry "Minnesota U.S. Senate Election 2006," which advises users
that what follows is "likely to contain information of a speculative
nature."
....
"The paragraph attacking Kennedy is accurate and mild compared with
some things that have surfaced on political entries. Some may
interpret it as a sign of Wikipedia's liberal media bias. To me, it's
a sign that the Kennedy campaign hasn't been as active on Wikipedia as
it should be. The Kennedy entry ranked eighth on the Google search
return page for his name, by the way.

"The rule of thumb on using Wikipedia as a campaign research tool
ought to be that you: get a second source to ascertain the accuracy of
what you read. Wikipedia links you to a few sites where you can find
that second source, but there are facts which need offline
investigation too. Wikipedia does not post original research, and
professional campaigners need to conduct that sometimes, especially
regarding a client's bio and signature issues.

"The rule of thumb on using Wikipedia to influence the influencers is
to: get in early and stay active. Make sure you consult the "talk" and
"history" tabs to learn who is in the editorial room for an entry and
what they are saying. Insert indexing categories to cross-link crucial
entries; every category is a potential portal to additional
supporters. (The "What Links Here" link in the "Toolbox" is a good
guide to these geographic, demographic, issue-related and other
intellectual bridges; there were 40 in-links for Kennedy's entry.) If
you detect a flaw in the entry of a client, opponent or key topic,
change it. If the change doesn't stick, enter a dispute notice at the
top of the entry, follow the prescribed rules for content, and perhaps
alert mainstream media gatekeepers in your campaign arena to the fact
that you're involved in a Wikipedia dispute.

"The community of self-titled "Wikipedians" really strives for a
neutral point of view. They have established a Counter Vandalism Unit.
They freeze entries, excise content, expose malefactors and most
importantly maintain a public record of what gets said and done on the
site. Wikipedia is, over time and with your cooperative input, less
susceptible to personal, institutional and monetary biases than just
about any other forum in campaignland. It is dull and picayune in
places, but a force for moderation, truth and reason in politics."

ADVICE BY MICHAEL CORNFIELD


subject: [Wikipedia-l] How to edit Wikipedia if you're a campaign manager


subject: [Foundation-l] Re : Where we are headed

body:
Kelly Martin wrote:

>On 6/4/06, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
>
>
>>Could communications be improved?  Yes, of course, but this is something
>>we have all known for a long time.  I believe that the core problem is
>>not a lack of information flow, but excessive flow of raw information
>>which makes it hard for anyone to keep up with it all.
>>
>>
>Yes, this is exactly the problem.  For someone like me, for whom
>Wikimedia is an avocation and not a vocation, there simply isn't
>enough time to read all of the huge morass of information that is out
>there -- spread out over a dozen mailing lists and a dozen wikis, not
>to mention other sources -- required to form a fully informed opinion.
> This definitely hampers my overall participation.
>
It's easy to agree on that problem, and at the same time it's only a
very small segment of the community that is generating it all.  Getting
literally everybody's opinion would be totally unmanageable.

We each do best within a limited set of parameters, editing articles
about the topics which most interest us.  A person who sticks to that is
probably happy and has little use for long policy debates or reviewing
technical "improvements".  If he does not participate in such
discussions he is presumed to have consented.  If he complains when the
policy or template is imposed he is told that he had an opportunity to
discuss the matter at an earlier time.

Whatever happened to writing in plain English?  (or French, or German,
or whatever language?)  The number of policies and templates could
easily be cut in half, and very few of us would be missing anything.
It's easy to concede that fewer of these would diminish the
"professional" appearance of the site, but how many of us are paid
professionals?  What's more important, the content or the window dressing?

Maybe the policies mean something.  I don't know.  I haven't got time to
read them all, let alone absorb their meaning.  If someone comes to the
mailing list complaining about being blocked, I've gotten to the point
where I delete the whole thread.  His claim of admin abuse may be valid,
but I don't give a damn.

At one time Mav imposed upon himself the rule that each of his mailing
list contributions needed to be offset by a real contribution to a real
article.  That wasn't such a bad idea.

Ec


subject: [Foundation-l] Re : Where we are headed


from_name: shi zhao

subject: [Foundation-l] open ID

body:
see http://www.openidenabled.com/

we can use on user page ?

[[zh:user:shizhao]]


subject: [Foundation-l] open ID


body:
On 6/24/06, Andrew Gray <shimgray at gmail.com> wrote:
> We're slowly reaching at least basic completeness in some fields; a
> lot of the missing-articles lists are beginning to top out. There's
> still a long way to go, though.

It would be fascinating to see a global view of this. I know we have a
lot of WikiProjects that track completeness in indivdiual fields, but
a way of combining these into an overall view, like "Politicians: UK
20% missing, 60% stub, 20% advanced" or something, would be amazing.
It would also be then interesting to compare that "top down" view with
a "bottom up" view, whereby articles are sampled at random for quality
and to see what domains they belong to.

Steve


subject: [WikiEN-l] Spoiler Boilerplates

body:
On 6/24/06, Zero <megamanzero521 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>   Wikipedians are generally a good lot. I don't expect to change heads  anytime soon but I think it is obvious the usefulness of this template  is clearly not in view of building the encyclopedia. I'm hopeful, that,  in the future this can come out to sensible agreement. Currently, I  will continue discussion on the matter. - Zero

I've provided several reasons why they contribute to our chief goal.
You haven't provided any evidence that they interfere with our chief
goal.

Steve


from_name: Jay R. Ashworth

body:
On Sat, Jun 24, 2006 at 05:34:51PM -0600, Chad Perrin wrote:
> There's a difference between semantics (justified, preformatted, list)
> and content (poem, TV script, needed groceries).  So, yeah, it's me
> asking that.

You're correct, there's a difference.

But, as far as I can see, those first ones are rather specifically not
semantics; they're *syntax*.  Looks, not meaning.

Which was sort of my point, as well, I believe, as that of Timwi.

Cheers,
-- jra
--
Jay R. Ashworth                                                jra at baylink.com
Designer                          Baylink                             RFC 2100
Ashworth & Associates        The Things I Think                        '87 e24
St Petersburg FL USA      http://baylink.pitas.com             +1 727 647 1274

     A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text.
     Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?

     A: Top-posting.
     Q: What is the most annoying thing on Usenet and in e-mail?


from_name: brion at pobox.com

subject: [Wikitech-l] MediaWiki automated test run failure 2006-06-25

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

Running test Table security: embedded pipes (http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2006-April/034637.html)... FAILED!
Running test Link containing double-single-quotes '' (bug 4598)... FAILED!
Running test message transform: <noinclude> in transcluded template (bug 4926)... FAILED!
Running test message transform: <onlyinclude> in transcluded template (bug 4926)... FAILED!
Running test BUG 1887, part 2: A <math> with a thumbnail- math enabled... FAILED!
Running test Language converter: output gets cut off unexpectedly (bug 5757)... FAILED!
Running test HTML bullet list, unclosed tags (bug 5497)... FAILED!
Running test HTML ordered list, unclosed tags (bug 5497)... FAILED!
Running test HTML nested bullet list, open tags (bug 5497)... FAILED!
Running test HTML nested ordered list, open tags (bug 5497)... FAILED!
Running test Parsing optional HTML elements (Bug 6171)... FAILED!
Running test Inline HTML vs wiki block nesting... FAILED!
Running test Mixing markup for italics and bold... FAILED!

Passed 394 of 407 tests (96.81%) FAILED!


from_name: Kat Walsh

subject: [WikiEN-l] Spoiler Boilerplates

body:
On 6/23/06, Kirill Lokshin <kirill.lokshin at gmail.com> wrote:

> But it doesn't affect our primary mission -- which has always been to
> *give away* the encyclopedia we're writing -- in the least.

Nitpick: our primary mission is to produce a free-content
encyclopedia, that we also give away at no cost (but may also sell
printed or DVD copies of at some point in the future, like de: is
already doing).

OK, carry on. :-)

-Kat
who as a reader likes the spoiler tags, when used appropriately

--
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Mindspillage  |  G/AIM:LucidWaking
mindspillage or mind|wandering on irc.freenode.net | email for phone
The good traveller has no fixed plans, and is not intent on arriving
-- Lao-Tzu        Wikia: creating communities - http://www.wikia.com


from_name: Ian Woollard

body:
Yeah, POV is nearly always good NPOV unless it's OR.

We should really change the name NPOV. It's too confusing. The policy
is spot on but nobody knows what the acronym NPOV means.

I would prefer, say, CPOV. Captured POV or Correct POV. NPOV suggests
*Not* POV; whereas POV is absolutely fine.

*Seriously*.

Page move anyone?

On 25/06/06, jkelly at fas.harvard.edu <jkelly at fas.harvard.edu> wrote:
>   Hi,
>
>   With the caveat that I haven't looked carefully at either the AN discussion,
> the RFC, nor the article in question...
>
> Quoting Conrad Dunkerson <conrad.dunkerson at worldnet.att.net>:
>
> > To me that looks like the >admin< was violating NPOV by trying to write
> > the article from the 'most popular point of view' rather than the NEUTRAL
> > point of view...
>
> ...it would be easy to (mis?)read the above as a statement that we are
> attempting to find some sort of absolute neutrality between points of view.  It
> isn't a violation of [[WP:NPOV]] to write a synthesis of mainstream thinking and
> identify fringe views as fringe views.  Our actual policy goes into some detail
> about this, and takes a much less naive view of neutrality than is often
> attributed to it.
>
>    Jkelly
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

--
-Ian Woollard

"Victory can be perceived but not created."


from_name: Alphax (Wikipedia email)

subject: [WikiEN-l] Spoiler Boilerplates

body:
Garion1000 wrote:
> On 6/24/06, Zero <megamanzero521 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>> Yes, that sounds sensible. They are widely accepted now, as
>> its  (presumely) the "in" and "hip" thing to do about the internet. I, as
>> an  long-time and experienced editor am troubled by this attack upon
>> our  status as an encyclopedia and conveyance as a knowlegeable
>> resource.  And so I come with the spirit of advocacy to query and discuss
>> the  usefulness and relevance of a silly template with my fellow
>> editors,  hopefully in light of good outcome for the encyclopedia and its
>> value  as a informative resource. -Zero
>
>
> FWIW, I also really would like the spoiler templates to be killed.
> Especially when I saw the [[Romeo and Juliet]] article.

See also: http://uncyclopedia.org/wiki/Template:Spoiler

--
Alphax - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax
Contributor to Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia
"We make the internet not suck" - Jimbo Wales
Public key: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax/OpenPGP

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from_name: Zero

subject: [WikiEN-l] Spoiler Boilerplates

body:
Zero <megamanzero at 521com> wrote:  On 6/25/06, Zero  wrote:
>  Please. The value and spirit of the encyclopedia comes before the  community every time. The spirit of the encyclopedia is the sharing of  knowledge and the freedom of this information unhindered by the source  material in any capacity. Sticking silly labels on articles created by  hard sweat doesn't fullfill that spirit. Making assumptions on the  basis of a networking site must not be mistaken for the the production  and flourishing of the encyclopedia. - Zero

>>Ok, just to carry on your thinking, how do you feel about the
following "silly labels":

>>* This article is a stub - you can help out by editing it.
>>* Please expand and improve this section as described on this
article's talk page or at Requests for expansion, then remove this
message
>>* The neutrality of this article is disputed.Please see the discussion
on the talk page.
>>* This article needs more context around or a better explanation of
technical details to make it more accessible to general readers and
technical readers outside the specialty, without removing technical
details. See below for more information.
>>* The title of this article should be eBay. The initial letter is
capitalized due to technical restrictions.
>>* Due to technical limitations, some web browsers may not display some
special characters in this article.

>>I have to admit to a sense of irony that we warn users of excessively
>>technical language, and we warn them if the title of the page isn't
>>quite right. We even warn them that the article uses unicode
>>characters. But we refuse to warn them that they may witness >>seriously
>>obscene material or have their enjoyment of a work of fiction totally
>>spoilt.

>Ho hum.

>Steve

  I must admit the mentioned tags are really quite feasible in wikipedia.  As an editor with over 14,000 edits, many of them new articles, I must  conceed the appropriate tags are quite valuable to the intregity,  spirit, improvement and operation of the encyclopedia.

  Lets review:

  * Stub tag- Lest we forget, this is wikipedia. As an editor, I value  completion and professional appearence, so personally I strongly oppose  the creation of a brief article; rather I prepare a rather detailed  document over a time period in [[User:MegamanZero/Sandbox]] and move it  to mainspace upon completion. This, or I merely create the article in  one go from the outset.

  However, its reasonable to forsee editors do not follow this personal  standard, and create a brief article immediately, perhaps without  research or proper overview. In this case, we insert the stub template  to being attention to it. And as an editor that does much writing, I  know from experience they garner attention to make improvement. And  improved articles means an improved encyclopedia. Are you aware of how  many articles have benefited from expansion from me becuase I took note  of the stub or clean-up tag...? Take a gander at my contribution tree.  I assure you it is very productive indeed.

  * I look upon the second template with slight dissapointment, although  I admit it is useful to an outside party with a tendency to expand  articles at a whim. Being Bold in wikipedia gets work done.

  * I strongly endorse this tag. It provides a service to the  encyclopedia in that it requires the attention of a neutral editor. In  these cases, all that is required is a rewrite after some research on  the matter. I've used it to the advantage in many occassion and it  highlights a need when an editor blatently commits to the violation of  the neutrality we demand at wikipedia.

  * I'm not going to explain the rest in detail; they are all tools for  editors to discuss upon for the improvement of the article itself. When  readers come to wikipedia, they must expect this is a volunteer project  and there is work in progress to make it to the highest quality.

  "Our goal is to get wikipedia to Britianica quality or better" - Jimbo Wales

  And we will get there, I'm positive. But we have quite a way to go. The  most glaring dissapointment I have with the spoiler tag is it wasn't  developed with an encyclopedia in mind. Many users claim the offense of  "Oh but its nice and it will help not to spoil them". This isn't that  kind of website.Wikipedia is an uncensored, pure callaboration of  knowledge unhindered by what other social websites may do.

  You say" "well it doesn't help the wikipedia, but the reader in a way  similar to usenet". This is wrong. Anything promoting such external  social ideals lacking in edvidence to improve the encyclopedia itself  should of course be deleted on sight. - Zero

_______________________________________________
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To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l

---------------------------------
Ring'em or ping'em. Make  PC-to-phone calls as low as 1?/min with Yahoo! Messenger with Voice.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Spoiler Boilerplates

body:
Zero <megamanzero521 at yahoo.com> wrote:  On 6/25/06, Steve Bennett  wrote:
>
> I have to admit to a sense of irony that we warn users of excessively
> technical language, and we warn them if the title of the page isn't
> quite right. We even warn them that the article uses unicode
> characters. But we refuse to warn them that they may witness seriously
> obscene material or have their enjoyment of a work of fiction totally
> spoilt.

>>It makes sense to me. When an article is bad (or not complete enough, too
technical, whatever), a reader should be warned. But when a reader looks up
something 'obscene', he shouldn't be surprised to see something 'obscene',
or when a reader looks up a movie, he shouldn't  be surprised to find a plot
summary there. To me a warning in those cases seems unnecessary.

>>Garion

  It is entirely unecessary. "Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia", its  written everywhere. I absolutely refute the claim one would  "accidently" "stumble" upon wikipedia and be unaware of this.

  Take a gander at wikipedia or a external link from google. It is  written multiple times across the screen, so much as to be excessive.  "Their enjoyment of fiction"...? The enviroment in which we edit and  prepare the project determines the quality and status of wikipedia.  Treating wikipedia similar to social networking or movie site hurts  wikipedia's status as an encyclopedia. Comparing the view of an  imaginary reader's "potential harm from learning something new" hurts  wikipedia. We share knowledge freely. To say otherwise at the fictional  argument of "consideration" is not in view of an encyclopedia. - Zero
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from_name: Birgitte SB

subject: [Foundation-l] Re : Where we are headed

body:
--- James Hare <messedrocker at gmail.com> wrote:

> To respond to Jimmy's e-mail,
>
> Another problem with communication is all the pages
> it spans. I maintained
> several user and user talk pages, but I only need
> two of them. Although the
> normal MediaWiki software can maintain the status
> quo, Wikimedia's should be
> designed a bit differently: the projects can have
> the mainspace, the portal
> space, and the project space, but a central wiki
> (Meta, anyone?) would have
> the help pages and the user/user talk pages. Surely
> this has been discussed
> before?

Centralizing the help pages is  a bad idea.  There are
technical differences between projects.  For example
en.WS has subpages enabled and therefore uses relative
linking which does not work on other projects.  There
once was a bot that went through and imported on the
Meta Help pages into en.WS (even overwrting some of
local copies!)  It was not useful and they were all
run through deletion.  They too detailed, too much
information. Local help pages need be very simple and
deal with just the common issues, and then link to
Meta for advanced help.

Birgitte SB

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subject: [Foundation-l] Re : Where we are headed


from_name: Fred Bauder

subject:
[Foundation-l] Opinions/suggestions for "outside" members of
	the board?

body:
On Jun 25, 2006, at 12:45 AM, Gerard Meijssen wrote:

> We could have some servers in Africa... There is some reluctance of
> the
> developers to overcome.. We could hope that the project of the Vrije
> Universiteit bears fruit.. and help it where we can. With this project
> successful, it would mean a peer to peer MediaWiki whereby content is
> near the people that want it.

Ok, Vrije Universiteit is in the Netherlands. What project do they
have which relates to Africa?

Fred


from_name: Gerard Meijssen

body:
Ray Saintonge wrote:
> Anthere wrote:
>
>
>> Fred Bauder wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>>> I have always viewed Jimbo's suggestion that we "distribute a paper
>>> encyclopedia to African children" as quixotic but I have in
>>> connection with a possible board member wondered if we could create a
>>> series of documents which focus on public health which would prove
>>> useful in Africa, possibly also in China and other regions, and be
>>> worth distributing as part of a public health education campaign.
>>> There was lately a cholera epidemic in Angola which affected most of
>>> the country. There is a lot of ignorance involved in this sort of
>>> situation. I don't see this project so much directed to children as
>>> to local decision makers. It would contain information about disease
>>> and disease prevention, etc. The question, bottom line, is would a
>>> project of this nature actually prove effective? Or should we first
>>> see if we could even mobilize around it? One of the good aspects
>>> regarding this possible board member is that he is a hands on,
>>> computer literate guy with experience in give and take.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>> Regarding "would a project of this nature actually prove effective", I
>> am giving a presentation end of august in an international health forum
>> (http://www.hcuge.ch/genevahealthforum/) and this is exactly the type of
>> question I hope can receive a beginning of an answer.
>>
>> I do not really believe we can mobilize around it before setting up a
>> framework around. We need partners for such project and these partners
>> input will be essential to define which content should be included or
>> not included, and what the audience would be.
>>
>> However, admittedly, what I would worry about is, if a framework is set,
>> with partners and of course, a deadline, I am not sure we would succeed
>> to mobilize enough and in a sufficiently effective way to respect the
>> limits. I think we can do huge things, but generally, we are bad with
>> deadlines because a volunteer may come and go.
>>
>> Also, one of the reasons why Wikipedia typically is successful is that
>> it can be build by tiny bits. Doing just a bit is easy. A little step
>> that most of us can climb without too much efforts. It is much more of a
>> problem to participate to a long term project, in which significant
>> amounts of efforts must be brought be each contributor.
>>
>>
> The idea is commendable but strikes me as well beyond the scope of the
> things we do.  We are more in a kind of educational publishing business
> rather than a vehicle for mibilising health care.  Our information could
> include medical information, but publishing that information is not
> enough.  We could include "The Barefoot Doctor's Manual" in Wikisource.
> (The English translation was published by the National Institute of
> Health in 1974, and that would likely make it copyright free as a US
> government publication despite the claims of subsequent reprinters.)
>
> But the advances in Chinese medical practice at that time involved more
> than just publishing a book.  It was a textbook for teaching.  Putting
> it on-line won't do much for people who don't have computers.  What the
> barefoot doctor mobilization did in China was was bring medical care to
> rural areas where no care at all was previously available; one should
> not, therefore, judge the skill of these practitioners by reference to
> the medical personel in developed countries where there is access to
> sophisticated equipment and drugs.
>
> What's needed is to mobilize local people, give them a basic level of
> medical training, and send them out through the country  where, as much
> as possible, they can use indiginous supplies in the practice of
> medicine.  This may seem like quackery by Western standards, but it's
> better than the nothing that that public currently has.  Our role in
> this can only be very limited.
>
> Ec
Hoi,
If we want to make a difference in Africa, we should make Africa more
relevant. This is something that is not impossible, we should however
consider the issues that we face to support Africa.

* Our user interface is not localised for the many African languages
* Many people are reluctant to edit and have a bias against their own
language
* Due to "peering agreements" traffic from Europe or America is REALLY
expensive and slow to reach Africa
* We should spend more effort on African subjects in the Arab, English
and French wikipedia

Localising the MediaWiki user interface is a job that takes in between
two days and a week. It takes a week when the vocabulary does not exist
in language. This means some research. Particularly the languages where
Microsoft or Open Office have done there thing should be in relative
good shape for the many other languages it is just a lot of work. This
work can be done by people we pay or by people an NGO pays. In my
opinion it is best when we do not pay and that it is done within
existing organisations. When an NGO organises this, it is software that
they are likely to use as well.. This helps a lot.

Many people who are literate in one language are semi-literate in their
mother tongue. When they edit, they expect the same level of
completeness, the same consistency of spelling. Many languages however
do not have one formalised orthography and for many people this hinders
rather than helps. When an NGO uses MediaWiki to spread its own message,
people will see how it can be done. Getting a message in their own
language is really powerful from a marketing point of view. It will also
help make it easier for people to start contributing.. (Wikipedia is
very much monkey see, monkey do)

We could have some servers in Africa... There is some reluctance of the
developers to overcome.. We could hope that the project of the Vrije
Universiteit bears fruit.. and help it where we can. With this project
successful, it would mean a peer to peer MediaWiki whereby content is
near the people that want it.

When we want to make Wikipedia itself more relevant, there is nothing
stopping us, we can enrich the content about Africa. It is still very
poor compared to what we know about the first world.

Oh yes, and when you want medical information, it is good to know that
medical subjects have a mondial relevance. Would it work? Sure, but do
not forget that people are looking for sex, sport and politics first in
Wikipedia and it is important to get all the eyeballs that we can get.

Thanks,
    GerardM


from_name: James Hare

subject: [Foundation-l] Re : Where we are headed

body:
To respond to Jimmy's e-mail,

Another problem with communication is all the pages it spans. I maintained
several user and user talk pages, but I only need two of them. Although the
normal MediaWiki software can maintain the status quo, Wikimedia's should be
designed a bit differently: the projects can have the mainspace, the portal
space, and the project space, but a central wiki (Meta, anyone?) would have
the help pages and the user/user talk pages. Surely this has been discussed
before?

On 6/25/06, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
>
> Kelly Martin wrote:
>
> >On 6/4/06, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> >
> >
> >>Could communications be improved?  Yes, of course, but this is something
> >>we have all known for a long time.  I believe that the core problem is
> >>not a lack of information flow, but excessive flow of raw information
> >>which makes it hard for anyone to keep up with it all.
> >>
> >>
> >Yes, this is exactly the problem.  For someone like me, for whom
> >Wikimedia is an avocation and not a vocation, there simply isn't
> >enough time to read all of the huge morass of information that is out
> >there -- spread out over a dozen mailing lists and a dozen wikis, not
> >to mention other sources -- required to form a fully informed opinion.
> > This definitely hampers my overall participation.
> >
> It's easy to agree on that problem, and at the same time it's only a
> very small segment of the community that is generating it all.  Getting
> literally everybody's opinion would be totally unmanageable.
>
> We each do best within a limited set of parameters, editing articles
> about the topics which most interest us.  A person who sticks to that is
> probably happy and has little use for long policy debates or reviewing
> technical "improvements".  If he does not participate in such
> discussions he is presumed to have consented.  If he complains when the
> policy or template is imposed he is told that he had an opportunity to
> discuss the matter at an earlier time.
>
> Whatever happened to writing in plain English?  (or French, or German,
> or whatever language?)  The number of policies and templates could
> easily be cut in half, and very few of us would be missing anything.
> It's easy to concede that fewer of these would diminish the
> "professional" appearance of the site, but how many of us are paid
> professionals?  What's more important, the content or the window dressing?
>
> Maybe the policies mean something.  I don't know.  I haven't got time to
> read them all, let alone absorb their meaning.  If someone comes to the
> mailing list complaining about being blocked, I've gotten to the point
> where I delete the whole thread.  His claim of admin abuse may be valid,
> but I don't give a damn.
>
> At one time Mav imposed upon himself the rule that each of his mailing
> list contributions needed to be offset by a real contribution to a real
> article.  That wasn't such a bad idea.
>
> Ec
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


subject: [Foundation-l] Re : Where we are headed


from_name: Robert Scott Horning

subject: [Foundation-l] Re : Where we are headed

body:
Birgitte SB wrote:

>--- James Hare <messedrocker at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>
>>To respond to Jimmy's e-mail,
>>
>>Another problem with communication is all the pages
>>it spans. I maintained
>>several user and user talk pages, but I only need
>>two of them. Although the
>>normal MediaWiki software can maintain the status
>>quo, Wikimedia's should be
>>designed a bit differently: the projects can have
>>the mainspace, the portal
>>space, and the project space, but a central wiki
>>(Meta, anyone?) would have
>>the help pages and the user/user talk pages. Surely
>>this has been discussed
>>before?
>>
>>
>
>
>Centralizing the help pages is  a bad idea.  There are
>technical differences between projects.  For example
>en.WS has subpages enabled and therefore uses relative
>linking which does not work on other projects.  There
>once was a bot that went through and imported on the
>Meta Help pages into en.WS (even overwrting some of
>local copies!)  It was not useful and they were all
>run through deletion.  They too detailed, too much
>information. Local help pages need be very simple and
>deal with just the common issues, and then link to
>Meta for advanced help.
>
>Birgitte SB
>
>
>
Ditto for Wikibooks.  We just had a VfD for the help pages, and the
whole help system was revamped to eliminate the duplcated pages from
Meta, and asked that the bot not be used any more to import the pages
(which was even overwriting comments on the talk pages to kill the bot
as well).  We still link to the Meta help pages for in-depth
information, however.

--
Robert Scott Horning


subject: [Foundation-l] Re : Where we are headed


subject: [Foundation-l] Open source CRM needed for Wikimedia

body:
This seems to me to be just the latest example of
infighting within the WMF becoming a war of attrition
on this list.  By example I mean that no-one should
consider the rest of this message as directed at
Angela particularly.  Everyone is being equally
damaged by these e-mails and it is pointless.
Truthfully it is the WMF that is coming out the loser.
 Is anyone willing to bring up whatever the actual
underlying problems are?  Is there something that can
be done to work these things out and end this sort of
foolishness?

I don't know how everyone can be talking of bringing
in new outside board members into the sort of
environment which must be producing these sorts of
emails.  If there is as much infighting going on as I
imagine, bringing in an outsider with experience would
likely be the same as handing over control of the
organization to them.  They would just need to play
you guys off one another to do as they like.

Birgitte SB
who is tired of the signal-to-noise ratio

--- Angela <beesley at gmail.com> wrote:

> I'm not buying into the arguments Brad and his
> friends are putting
> forward for Wikimedia to turn away from it's
> reliance on open source
> software. Especially when that decision is being
> taken by some unknown
> group of people with no community or Board
> consultation about possible
> alternatives.
>
> So, I'm asking if people can suggest to Brad some
> open source (fully
> open source, not "can be open source if you don't
> need the security
> package") CRM software
>
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Customer_relationship_management).
> I've
> no doubt that people on this list have contacts in
> the free/OS
> software world, so I'm hoping you can now use those
> contacts to help
> with this.
>
> Angela.
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
>
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>

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from_name: Wikipedia Romania (Ronline)

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Moldovan wikipedia, again

body:
>
> Your Wikipedia may be larger than ours, but ours is higher quality.
> Maybe we should delete the Romanian Wikipedia instead? As you can see,
> it is clearly substandard -- the only Wikipedia of its size with less
> bytes per article is the Swedish Wikipedia. No other Wikipedia is as
> low, until you get down under 7000 articles.
>
> Mark

I'm not particularly getting involved in this whole Moldovan argument again,
but I think your point above is highly misleading. The Moldovan Wikipedia is
not in any way of higher quality than the Romanian Wikipedia, because byte
size doesn't reflect this, for two reasons:

1) Nearly all articles on the Moldovan wiki have a corresponding Romanian
article of the same or greater length. This is because a significant number
of them were transliterated from the Romanian Wikipedia.
2) The grammatical quality of the mo: articles is arguably lower. This is
the more subtle aspect of quality, and also includes things like depth of
coverage and systemic bias.

So, the Romanian Wikipedia is of a higher functionality than the mo.wiki,
and its quality is also higher, because it basically contains all of the
info that mo. contains, plus more.

In any case, the argument for closing the mo:wiki was that it is has poor
quality articles and is a playground for trolling, not that it particularly
has a low article or byte-size count.

On 24/06/06, Jacky PB <dpotop1 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> >
> >
> > > ... it should be closed now
> >
> > Amen !
> > (I cut the oppinion of Francis Tyers out of a context that hides it).
> >
> > > If only it were possible to get a non-involved party to look at this
> for
> > > 5 minutes and decide one way or the other. It would save everyone a
> hell
> > > of a lot of time. What we need is a knee jerk binding judgement! (of
> > > course this is said partly in jest, but we really aren't going to get
> > > anywhere by 'discussing' this).
> >
> > Well, **you** of all are non-involved. And after following this
> discussion for a **long** time you ended with the same conclusion:
> Regardless of what the Moldovan language is or is not, there are no native
> contributors, and there is one single contributor overall (who actually
> cannot contribute because he is at level mo-2). Isn't this enough?
> >
> > Dpotop
> >
> >
> >
> > ---------------------------------
> > Want to be your own boss? Learn how on  Yahoo! Small Business.
> > _______________________________________________
> > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> >
>
>
> --
> Refije dirije lanm? yo paske nou posede pw?p bato.
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


from_name: Jeffrey V. Merkey

body:
Angela wrote:

>I'm not buying into the arguments Brad and his friends are putting
>forward for Wikimedia to turn away from it's reliance on open source
>software. Especially when that decision is being taken by some unknown
>group of people with no community or Board consultation about possible
>alternatives.
>
>So, I'm asking if people can suggest to Brad some open source (fully
>open source, not "can be open source if you don't need the security
>package") CRM software
>(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Customer_relationship_management). I've
>no doubt that people on this list have contacts in the free/OS
>software world, so I'm hoping you can now use those contacts to help
>with this.
>
>Angela.
>_______________________________________________
>foundation-l mailing list
>foundation-l at wikimedia.org
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>
>
>
There's several Web based CRM solutions that are open sourced - we use
one at solera -- however, MS has some good windows stuff as well. I'll
dig into the versions and post where we got it from. It's ok for folks
to use whatever they like, and not all open source apps are up standards
or are secure.

Jeff


from_name: Steve Bennett

subject: [WikiEN-l] Spoiler Boilerplates

body:
On 6/25/06, Zero <megamanzero521 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>   Please. The value and spirit of the encyclopedia comes before the  community every time. The spirit of the encyclopedia is the sharing of  knowledge and the freedom of this information unhindered by the source  material in any capacity. Sticking silly labels on articles created by  hard sweat doesn't fullfill that spirit. Making assumptions on the  basis of a networking site must not be mistaken for the the production  and flourishing of the encyclopedia. - Zero

Ok, just to carry on your thinking, how do you feel about the
following "silly labels":

* This article is a stub - you can help out by editing it.
* Please expand and improve this section as described on this
article's talk page or at Requests for expansion, then remove this
message
* The neutrality of this article is disputed.Please see the discussion
on the talk page.
* This article needs more context around or a better explanation of
technical details to make it more accessible to general readers and
technical readers outside the specialty, without removing technical
details. See below for more information.
* The title of this article should be eBay. The initial letter is
capitalized due to technical restrictions.
* Due to technical limitations, some web browsers may not display some
special characters in this article.

I have to admit to a sense of irony that we warn users of excessively
technical language, and we warn them if the title of the page isn't
quite right. We even warn them that the article uses unicode
characters. But we refuse to warn them that they may witness seriously
obscene material or have their enjoyment of a work of fiction totally
spoilt.

Ho hum.

Steve


from_name: Neil Harris

body:
Steve Bennett wrote:
> On 6/24/06, Tels <nospam-abuse at bloodgate.com> wrote:
>
>> I didn't see that question. And even if it would be renamed, then we would
>> now miss a way to tag poems as poems, and not as "something usefull
>> including poems, cook recipes and whatever". :)
>>
>> So, Use <poem> for poems, and invent something else for, well, something
>> else :-D
>>
>
> Some more background on this <poem> tag would help. Are there any
> other instances where we have purely semantic tags?
>
> Steve
>
>
<math>, assuming you already know how to read LaTeX.

-- Neil


from_name: Krishna Pagadala

subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia mirror (Unblock request)

body:
All,
  I am planning on building a computer which is a copy of en.wikipedia (including portals), en.wikitonary, en.wikibooks, species.wikimedia along with the pictures. The computer will be sent to India to be used in educational settings, and will probably be copied and shared.
  I have already built a text only mirror of en.wikipedia at http://freeknowledge.dyndns.org/wikipedia/index.php/Main_Page
  Any suggestions/advice on how to go about and pitfalls that I will likely encounter is greatly appreciated.
-Krishna

=====================================
Misinterpreting Copyright by Richard Stallman
"Die Gedanken Sind Frei": Free Software and the Struggle for Free Thought by Eben Moglen mp3 ogg
Free Knowledge blog

.

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from_name: Conrad Dunkerson

subject: [WikiEN-l] New York Times article

body:
* Mark Gallagher wrote:
 > G'day Conrad,

Hello Mark.

 > Of course, we don't know the full story.  It could be the editor was an
 > obnoxious so-and-so who'd been cutting a swathe through Wikipedia,
 > vandalising and POV-pushing, and when he seemed to be about to re-write
 > our article on New World Order to make all those loony right-wing
 > Americans seem less loony, the camel gave one hell of a scream as it
 > felt its long-suffering back finally break.  Or perhaps not.

As I said, the user had never been blocked or 'in trouble' before. Nearly
all of those defending the admin action actually cited bad behaviour by
OTHER people as 'justification' for blocking. 'They are all disruptive POV
pushers so we should block them indefinitely' sort of thing - with NO
evidence of this being true of the person actually blocked being
presented... or apparently needed in the eyes of far too many.

 > Now, it's obvious to anyone that refusing to accept criticism, refusing
 > to change in the face of clear evidence that we're wrong, etc., is a
 > terrible way to conduct our affairs.  It's not quite so obvious that
 > pointing to unspecified inappropriate behaviour and the unnamed admins
 > who encourage it and saying "tut, tut" without making any effort to do
 > anything about the problem is also pretty terrible.

Perhaps it could be noted that there are OTHER (less 'terrible') reasons
for describing issues without 'naming names'... such as focusing on a
general problem rather than specific individuals, attempting not to bias
ongoing discussion by leaving the individual name out of it, and/or
presenting a scenario without names to get an evaluation based on the
scenario itself without any preconceptions based on the names attached.

And... weren't you the one who, when I DID specifically object to the
actions of someone by name, told me that such public confrontations are
counterproductive and it would be better to keep the matter private? It
seems almost as if objections are ALWAYS wrong, no matter how presented.

 > I see.  Do you have a link?

As you insist;

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_comment/MONGO

 > And what did you do about it?  Did you say "no, this is not appropriate.
 >   This was plain-jane edit warring, and should be treated as such.
 > Admins should never use their admin powers in an edit war, nor should
 > they call non-vandalism edits 'vandalism' to justify a block."

Um... yes?

Did you seriously think there was any question of that? If so, I think you
need to consider the possibility that you do not understand me at all;

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Administrators%27_noticeboard/Incidents&diff=prev&oldid=60000962

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Administrators%27_noticeboard/Incidents&diff=prev&oldid=60015419

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Administrators%27_noticeboard/Incidents&diff=prev&oldid=60023005

 > Did you
 > say anything at all?  If you piped up at all, was it to make a comment
 > like my suggested one, or did you make one more of the sort you've
 > become famous for --- like the one in your email to the list?

"Famous". How lovely for me.

Well maybe someone might eventually listen and consider the validity of
these 'famous' comments rather than making invalid negative assumptions
from which they might be dismissed.

 > We have damn near a thousand admins now.  Some of them are becoming
 > admins without even knowing what adminship is all about.  Others have
 > become too caught up in the tougher admin jobs, and become jaded.  A
 > couple (and this one irritates me) feel they have the support of ArbCom
 > regardless of what they do (whether ArbCom agrees or not is a different
 > story), and feel they have no reason not to do as they please.

I agree... but do not consider any of those people 'the problem'. There
will ALWAYS be people who 'cross the line' from time to time (or who do
not know where it is)... no procedure for appointing and/or removing
admins will ever prevent that. The 'problem', in my view, resides in the
admin community in general, including ArbCom members, who tacitly condone
these things by failing to do anything about them or making outright
statements in support of double standards;

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia%3AAdministrators%27_noticeboard%2FIncidents&diff=57904155&oldid=57903627

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia%3AAdministrators%27_noticeboard%2FIncidents&diff=58231439&oldid=58229967

Would you find it inconceivable for me to say that I >like< Tony, and
Kelly, and Jimbo (I do not know MONGO or Johnleemk well but assume they
are equally worthy of respect) despite having directly criticized all of
them strongly in the past?

These are all good 'admins' doing good things... but they DO 'mess up'
occasionally and the fact that this is ACCEPTED and that people are often
outright attacked for saying so is, in my opinion, THE biggest problem
Wikipedia has right now. It discourages examination of problems and
encourages increasingly disruptive behaviour.

 > Overall,
 > considering the sheer number of admins involved, I think we can be
 > pleased that very, very few of them are bad admins.

Again, I agree... except that it isn't primarily an issue of 'good admins'
and 'bad admins'. The greater issue is 'good' and 'bad' admin ACTIONS...
and the response to such by the admin community.

 > But when we come
 > across an example of an admin misbehaving, we should be either trying to
 > improve their behaviour, or stripping them of adminship until we can
 > trust them with the extra tools and the inevitable (but unfortunate)
 > increase in status.

Again, I focus on the actions and community acceptance of them rather than
the individuals. In my view what needs to change is the community's
willingness to say, 'Um no... that's not kosher' to 'good' admins - and
the willingness of the admin community, ArbCom, and all the way up to
Jimbo to HEAR it >without< stomping the person saying so as someone who
"would never *dream* of actually doing anything likely to make things
better for Wikipedia" and other such pleasantries.

That kind of response causes most people to clam up, avoid drawing
negative attention to themselves, and just let the status quo go on
rotting from within.

You won't find alot of us who are so arrogantly self-assured as to be
willing to be labeled "obnoxious". :]

 > Clucking that everything's broken isn't going to
 > improve the lot of Wikipedia's admins, nor that of the Wikipedians who
 > are forced to put up with them.

Everything is not broken. Just one thing... how Wikipedia's PTB respond to
criticism of anyone 'on the inside'.

In response to your analysis I would propose at least two more 'groups' -
those who challenge the admin community as a whole to confront the
perceived double-standards, and those who respond with some rather nasty
comments and assumptions instead of considering that they might have a point.

Or perhaps those aren't "groups" so much as individuals. :]


subject: [WikiEN-l] Spoiler Boilerplates

body:
Zero <megamanzero521 at gmail.yahoocom> wrote:  On 6/25/06, Steve  wrote:
.
>The spoiler tag, as well as any "warning, this page contains
pornographic images" tags, are totally unrelated to censorship.
Really. And I don't see what either of these tags has to do with
"other social websites" - we don't imitate, we make our own decisions
based on what seems reasonable.

  To whom's decision...? It is censorship. It thrives upon the ideal of a  person perhaps not engaging in the action by merit of another group  selectively in the belief they think it might be "cover-worthy", which  is never the case in any encyclopedia.

  >I didn't mention usenet. And I'm afraid I don't understand your point
here. It seems to me that we are both using the ideal that "Wikipedia
is an encyclopaedia" to support opposing viewpoints. Maybe Wikipedia
should stop claiming to "be an encyclopaedia", and instead define
precisely what it wants to be, and where it wants to draw its limits.
Not all encyclopaedias are the same, so just claiming to be in that
general class of works isn't enough anymore.

>Steve

  I was not making reference to "you" in paticular making the argument of  usenet. This is the common view: "Other websites do it as "courtesy"  and thus should be accepted about the Encyclopedia because people like  it".

  In view of "not all encyclopedias are the same", you lost me there.  That's an interesting comparison. I suppose you'll say then that the  implementation of a template derived from the ideal of a networking  site is appropriate in any encyclopedia. There's no need to  differientiate; encyclopedias may focus on different subjects, some  more than others, in different qualities and quanities. That doesn't  change the spirit. An encyclopedia's definition is universal- to give  information and leave the responsibility of "handeling dangerous  information" to the reader. When one embarks upon the knowledge   pot known as an encyclopedia (wherever or however it may be) those lads  take it upon themselves to make the decision to  enlighten  themselves in  any capacity. As neutral editors, I don't see how  that decision become  our concern. We build an encyclopedia, not  selctively dictate who might or might not view it on a personal whim. -  Zero
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from_name: Jay R. Ashworth

body:
On Sat, Jun 24, 2006 at 10:15:47PM -0600, Chad Perrin wrote:
> On Sat, Jun 24, 2006 at 11:57:09PM -0400, Jay R. Ashworth wrote:
> > On Sat, Jun 24, 2006 at 05:34:51PM -0600, Chad Perrin wrote:
> > > There's a difference between semantics (justified, preformatted, list)
> > > and content (poem, TV script, needed groceries).  So, yeah, it's me
> > > asking that.
> >
> > You're correct, there's a difference.
> >
> > But, as far as I can see, those first ones are rather specifically not
> > semantics; they're *syntax*.  Looks, not meaning.
> >
> > Which was sort of my point, as well, I believe, as that of Timwi.
>
> In retrospect, the argument about what constitutes "semantic" tags could
> go either way.  I was thinking presentational semantics and you were
> thinking of semantic presentation, basically.  Yes, that's a meaningful
> sentence.

It is?

:-)

The distinction I'm accustomed to seeing made is between "semantics",
the meaning of things, and "presentation", the way that meaning is
wrapped in a look, to convey it to the user.

While many meanings may carry the same look, the reason people suggest
that the tagging should reflect the *specific* meaning in each case is
so that back-end processes which might want to can distinguish.

> I'm not sure I agree that semantic presentation is really a great idea
> to implement in markup tags.  Rather, it seems to be something that
> should be managed via properties that are attached to tags.  It provides
> sort of a natural hierarchical inheritance model, rather than (by way of
> analogy) sticking every single file on your hard drive in the root
> directory, like the FAT12 filesystem did.

Well, as long as the tags are distinguishable, yeah, but it seems
easier to do <poem> than <special type=poem>, particular in the
Wikipedia milieu.

> unix virus: If you're using a unixlike OS, please forward
> this to 20 others and erase your system partition.

Hee.  :-)

Cheers,
-- jra
--
Jay R. Ashworth                                                jra at baylink.com
Designer                          Baylink                             RFC 2100
Ashworth & Associates        The Things I Think                        '87 e24
St Petersburg FL USA      http://baylink.pitas.com             +1 727 647 1274

     A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text.
     Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?

     A: Top-posting.
     Q: What is the most annoying thing on Usenet and in e-mail?


from_name: Chad Perrin

body:
On Sun, Jun 25, 2006 at 11:53:30AM -0400, Jay R. Ashworth wrote:
> On Sat, Jun 24, 2006 at 10:15:47PM -0600, Chad Perrin wrote:
> >
> > In retrospect, the argument about what constitutes "semantic" tags could
> > go either way.  I was thinking presentational semantics and you were
> > thinking of semantic presentation, basically.  Yes, that's a meaningful
> > sentence.
>
> It is?
>
> :-)
>
> The distinction I'm accustomed to seeing made is between "semantics",
> the meaning of things, and "presentation", the way that meaning is
> wrapped in a look, to convey it to the user.

Yes, and there's a difference between basing presentation on semantics
and creating a semantic class of presentation.  In one case, you have
presentation classes based on their presentational characteristics, and
associate your semantic classes of content with those classes of
presentation, and change the associations when you want to modify how a
semantic class of content is presented.  In the other, you define a
semantic class of content as having specific presentational
characteristics, which lends itself to the likelihood that you will end
up defining three or four semantically-identified classes of
presentation that all have roughly the same presentational
characteristics, providing greater probability of violation of the DRY
principle of design -- which can get messy rather quickly.

>
> While many meanings may carry the same look, the reason people suggest
> that the tagging should reflect the *specific* meaning in each case is
> so that back-end processes which might want to can distinguish.

I'm not saying we shouldn't distinguish between content semantics.  I'm
just questioning the decision to tie presentation characteristics
directly to semantic classes of content.  I'm also curious as to why a
database query (for example) would care that it's fetching a poem, as
opposed to a fondue recipe: I was pretty sure we hadn't developed DBMSes
that have aesthetic taste just yet.

>
> > I'm not sure I agree that semantic presentation is really a great idea
> > to implement in markup tags.  Rather, it seems to be something that
> > should be managed via properties that are attached to tags.  It provides
> > sort of a natural hierarchical inheritance model, rather than (by way of
> > analogy) sticking every single file on your hard drive in the root
> > directory, like the FAT12 filesystem did.
>
> Well, as long as the tags are distinguishable, yeah, but it seems
> easier to do <poem> than <special type=poem>, particular in the
> Wikipedia milieu.

That's a good point.  Tag properties may not be the best way to handle
it.  In fact, there's no reason that a simple tag syntax can't be used
for semantic markers, and that these cannot be used as cues for applying
presentation styles.  What concerns me about this is that it seems the
way we're implementing a tag syntax for semantic markers is by actually
making the semantic markers and presentational style cues synonymous,
rather than merely associated (and decoupled).

To further muddy the waters of the use of the term "semantic":
I'm not worried about the syntax of assigning semantic markers and
presentational styles.  Rather, I'm considering the semantic structure
of our markup, and how best it can be planned out for future
maintainability.  It looks to me like extensions to the semantic
structure of the wiki markup are being implemented as features, when
such should instead be approached as core functionality.  After all, the
parser is an implementation detail: the language definition is what
makes the parser worth using.

--
CCD CopyWrite Chad Perrin [ http://ccd.apotheon.org ]
This sig for rent:  a Signify v1.14 production from http://www.debian.org/


subject: [Wikitech-l] Wikimarkup request: -- to em-dash

body:
On Sun, Jun 25, 2006 at 01:32:53PM -0400, Jay R. Ashworth wrote:
> On Sun, Jun 25, 2006 at 07:22:53PM +0200, Steve Bennett wrote:
> > > We do, however, quite often want source code in our articles.
> >
> > And it would probably be appropriate to have a good way of doing that.
> > Source code doesn't necessarily demand lack of line wrapping.
>
> It doesn't?
>
> Certainly there are languages in which wrapping a line breaks the
> syntax; the Bourne Shell is only the first one that comes to mind...

If by "wrapping a line" you mean inserting a linebreak, yes, you're
absolutely correct.  Others include Logo, BASIC, and Python (though Logo
at least provides for the ability to break a line on the page without
breaking a semantic line of code via a work-around syntax).

On the other hand, the words "doesn't necessarily" seem technically
accurate, since there are many languages that don't care what linebreaks
you have in a file, with the possible exception of linebreaks in the
midst of comments and partway through keywords, function names, et
cetera.  I suppose the question that needs to be asked at this point is
whether the necessities of some languages suggest that we should impose
the same limits on presentation of other languages that do not share
those necessities.

While we're at it, we might consider whether to allow line wrapping, but
provide a line-wrap indicator syntax to show that what appears on a
separate line of the page is in fact meant to be part of the same
semantic line of code.  I'm thinking of examples such as the plus-syntax
used on websites such as perlmonks.org.  An example of this usage might
look something like this:

 |while (<>) {
 |  if ( $scalar_foo <= $scalar_bar ) && ( $scalar_bar <= $array_qux[2]
+|) {
 |    print;
 |  }
 |}

. . . where the plus character is typically some differentiating color,
such as red.  That may or may not be appropriate for something like
MediaWiki -- I only bring it up as something to consider.

--
CCD CopyWrite Chad Perrin [ http://ccd.apotheon.org ]
"A script is what you give the actors.  A program
is what you give the audience." - Larry Wall