from_name: stevertigo

body:
> I've resisted taking this to the arbcom because he
> will turn it into a circus, and also because I
couldn't face going through all the diffs
> and having the whole thing repeated yet again.

The Arbcom - "a circus?" You must be joking. Maybe if
they... well... who listens to Me anymore? (Me Me Me).

> I've been on the verge a couple of times of writing
to Jimbo for help, but didn't because that puts him on
the spot. I've
> also been on the verge of leaving, but
> I don't want to let someone like that drive me away.

Yes, the great founder can't go around making
everybody feel better. "It hurts right here..."

> Now, because Ed Poor recently blocked FuelWagon for
> three hours over a personal attack on me, FuelWagon
has seized his chance and has taken Ed to the arbcom,
where he will hold >court for several weeks, perhaps
several months, and all the >allegations will have to
be responded to.

Its funny how, in contrast with my Arbcom ("you broke
the rules!") Ed's violations require "defending" and
so forth. Ed's famous ((soothing vibe)) is indeed
something to behold, but wouldn't things work out
better if the Arbcom could be trusted to actually
review its cases and debate each point openly? Theres
a little AGF missing I suppose...

> There has to be a better way to deal with users like
> this. For example, we could set up a small committee
of
> experienced editors, a
> subcommittee of the arbcom and subject to the
> arbcom's jurisdiction, whose job it is to identify
when a user >is trolling, stalking, or harassing, and
we give that committee >the power to deal with it
there and then, using blocks of >increasing length for
each instance of it. I
> know this has drawbacks (accusations of cabalism),
> but I feel the benefits would greatly outweigh them.

No, this is wrong. Sorry you feel stressed out SV, but
thats the way it goes. Take it with a grain of salt,
as they say. Go on a wikibreak -- take a wikicruise.
WPh will still be here when we're all dead and gone.
Etc.

With the mandatory consoling out of the way, I have to
say its funny how the real "drawback" of cabalism
(according cabalists presumably) is the "accusations
of cabalism," and not the cabalism itself... and the
distance such represents from the Open Model (i.e. the
"lets see if this works" philosophy which built
wikipedia up to begin with. Sure, theres the GFDL and
a strongly egalitarian ethos too...).

But I liked Fred's idea of having official prosecutors
and defenders represent each case in some clear terms.
Prosecutors will take complaints and sort evidence,
etc. And defenders will challenge the Arbcom to hold
some perspective in the application of 'da rulz.' Of
course, those positions would not be paid positions
either... ("but Ive spellchecked every article for the
correct use of 'i before e'..." ). In anycase, Slim,
you seem to be another one on the boat for
[[WP:DRR|overhauling the dispute resolution process in
some general way shape or form]].

True, Wikipedia 'is a project to create a free
encyclopedia and not a free internet democracy,' but
IMHO authoritarian measures have usually proven
themselves to be mistakes. Of course, theres some
tinkering going on as we speak (you can hear it if you
listen closely). Question as always is: will the
tinkering break the machine?

Stevertigo

:''The user name above is incorrect for [[who
cares?|technical reasons]]. The correct title is
stevertigo.''

--- slimvirgin at gmail.com wrote:

> On 12/2/05, Carbonite <carbonite.wp at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> > On 12/2/05, Poor, Edmund W <Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com>
> wrote:
> > > By defending SlimVirgin against what FuelWagon
> HIMSELF conceded
> > > was an "accusation" (his words), I find myself
> hauled before the
> > > arbitration committee.
> >
> > For what its worth, FuelWagon has now turned
> Jayjg's ArbCom candidate
> > question page into his own personal battleground.
> FuelWagon's
> > "questions" span five sub-sections, have dozens of
> diffs and are filled with
> > endless rhetorical statements. However, this
> doesn't even begin to compare
> > with the 16 section response to his RfC a while
> back: (
> >
>
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_comment/FuelWagon_2).
> >
> > Ed's right, the system's not working here.
> >
> I want to describe some of what FuelWagon has been
> doing so that
> people can see how hard it is to deal with this
> within the existing
> dispute-resolution structure.
>
> FuelWagon has been harassing Ed and myself, and a
> couple of others to
> a lesser extent, since July. It started because I
> blocked him for 3RR
> and then because I made a copy edit he didn't like
> of an article he
> had edited a lot. He responded with a stream of
> invective and
> talk-page disruptive, which Ed blocked him for, and
> that made Ed his
> victim too.
>
> I hate to think how many personal comments he has
> posted about Ed and
> me since then, but it amounts to thousands of words.
> He filed an RfC
> against me, which was deleted because he failed to
> show prior efforts
> at dispute resolution. He promptly copied and pasted
> it into his user
> subspace, so that he can still link to his various
> claims. He also
> created an "attack page" on me, where he makes a
> note of anything I do
> that he feels he can use against me. Carbonite
> opened an RfC against
> him, but he hijacked it and turned it into another
> attack page. He
> tried to intervene in the arbcom case against Ed,
> writing to Jimbo to
> have it re-opened when it had closed, then tried to
> have some kind of
> black mark put on Ed's mediation record.
>
> It has been very upsetting to be on the receiving
> end of it. I tried
> ignoring him, responding with reason, responding
> firmly. I stayed away
> from pages he edits, but he stalked me to pages I
> edit and began to
> revert me, so that I had to either let him have his
> own way, or get
> into a revert war with him and look as bad as he is.
>
> It changed the whole way I interact with people on
> Wikipedia. I found
> myself becoming sharper with people than I had
> previously been,
> because I was on edge all the time. I felt
> embarassed at having
> someone pursue me with accusations, because most
> people looking at it
> will think there's no smoke without fire. And yet
> when I tried to
> correct some of what he was saying, I ended up
> looking as silly as
> him, so mostly I had to let him get away with it.
>
> Several editors and admins have intervened and tried
> to persuade him
> to stop, including Ed Poor, Ann Heneghan, El C,
> Carbonite, Jayjg,
> Bishonen, Willmcw, Marskell, Aaron Brenneman, Mel
> Etitis, and
> Viriditas.
>
> FuelWagon's response was that he would leave me
> alone if I did 12
> things that he listed on his talk page
>
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:FuelWagon&oldid=25272763#ideal
> including that I make, in the "first-person narative
> [sic] form" an
> unqualified and unconditional apology in relation to
> the copy edit he
> didn't like, and he listed the various talk pages
> that the apology had
> to be posted on. He had a similar list of apologies
> that Ed had to
> make before he'd be satisfied.
>
> He also teamed up with other known trolls like
> Zephram Stark, Marsden,
> and Vizcarra, so that a gang of people began to
> pursue his various
> victims.
>
> I've resisted taking this to the arbcom because he
> will turn it into a
> circus, and also because I couldn't face going
> through all the diffs
> and having the whole thing repeated yet again. I've
> been on the verge
> a couple of times of writing to Jimbo for help, but
> didn't because
> that puts him on the spot. I've also been on the
> verge of leaving, but
> I don't want to let someone like that drive me away.
>
> Now, because Ed Poor recently blocked FuelWagon for
> three hours over a
> personal attack on me, FuelWagon has seized his
> chance and has taken
> Ed to the arbcom, where he will hold court for
> several weeks, perhaps
> several months, and all the allegations will have to
> be responded to.
> The only way I can defend Ed now is to present the
> case that I've not
> been able to face putting together. It's probably
> going to take me a
> week or more to put all the diffs together in a way
> that gets the full
> force of his behavior across without being
> unreadable for the
> arbitrators.
>
> There has to be a better way to deal with users like
> this. For
> example, we could set up a small committee of
> experienced editors, a
> subcommittee of the arbcom and subject to the
> arbcom's jurisdiction,
> whose job it is to identify when a user is trolling,
> stalking, or
> harassing, and we give that committee the power to
> deal with it there
> and then, using blocks of increasing length for each
> instance of it. I
> know this has drawbacks (accusations of cabalism),
> but I feel the
> benefits would greatly outweigh them.
>
> Sarah
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

__________________________________________
Yahoo! DSL ? Something to write home about.
Just $16.99/mo. or less.
dsl.yahoo.com


list: wikipedia-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Mark Williamson

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Why MO.wikipedia. - Moldovan,
	is written in cyrillic ?

body:
On 03/12/05, Field Nothing <fieldtheory2 at hotmail.com> wrote:
> >But what about Transdnistria?
> >As I know, they use Moldovan language (also Russian and Ukrainian) but
> >use Cyrillic script.
>
> Transdnistria is not an independent state, it is a part of Moldova and it is

Transnistrian authorities would beg to differ. If Transnistria isn't
independent, then how come Moldovan laws don't work there? Sure,
they're not recognised by other countries as independent, but Moldova
doesn't control it either. And can a nation really reasonably claim
territory it doesn't have control over?

Take the example of Taiwan. The communist People's Republic of China
claims it as theirs, and even has a provincial administration for it.
And yet, the laws made by the provincial administration are little
more than a joke -- who would follow them? Taiwan is ruled in totality
by a different government, calling itself the Republic of China, more
democratic than PRC. Yes, PRC intimidates ROC with military might, but
if you break Taiwanese provincial law (as in, province of PRC) in
Taiwan, nobody cares. If you told someone in Taiwan "Oh my that's
against the law made by the People's Assembly of the Province of
Taiwan! I will call the police and they shall arrest you!", they would
just laugh.

Transnistria is in a somewhat similar situation; the main difference
is that Taiwan is recognised by a few dozen countries (but not all!)
and Transnistria is recognised by none... well, that's not entirely
true, they're fully recognised by South Ossetia, Abkhazia, and
Nagorno-Karabakh, with all of whom they maintain friendly relations.
Yet... the names of these nations may not be familiar to you for good
reason. They all recognise each other, but how many UN members
recognise any of them? Nagorno-Karabakh is recognised by only Armenia
among UN members, but they have that at least. One could argue thus
that Armenia, by recognising Nagorno-Karabakh's independence,
legitimises by proxy the claims to independence of all countries
recognised only by Nagorno-Karabakh... but that's not really relevant.

> not recognized in the world.If my neighbor suddenly decides to have the
> official language written using chinese symbols that doesn't mean it has to
> be on the official page of a country's official language. Whatever language

What? The "official page of [Moldova]'s official language"? Wouldn't
that be http://www.asm.md/institute/lingvist/index.htm rather than
http://mo.wikipedia.org/ ? Moldovan WP is _completely_ unofficial.

Would your country still be able to enforce policies and laws in your
neighbour's house if they declared independence? How many people live
there? Surely not 550 000 people live at his house... that would be a
very large house.

> is used there it is not officially recognized and the ISO code mo stands for

...

> the language based on latin alphabet and not cyrillic. And let's get serious

No, the ISO code stands for "Moldovan". It doesn't specify a script.
Similarly, "ku" is for Kurdish, it doesn't say Arabic or Latin
alphabet, or "az" for Azeri, or any other language written with
different alphabets.

> most of the people from the Transdn. region either know Romanian and write
> it properly or don't know it at all.

Write it _properly_? That's a bit of an oversight on your part. After
all, 200 years ago, Romanian was ALWAYS written in Cyrillic, and then
not due to Soviet pressure because the USSR didn't exist then.

I don't think it's "improper" to write English in Chinese characters.
Unconventional, perhaps, but certainly not improper. If English using
Chinese characters is made the official language in Texas, it makes
perfect sense to me for en.wiki to use both scripts.

> And what you say sounds to me like that: There is a country A that has the
> official language as english. Then there's a country/region B that adopts
> english also as their language but written in morse code, so they modify the
> en.wikipedia.org's main page to have a pleasant interface combined of both
> and a warm welcome "If you want it in latin script click here"  and ".. ..-.
> /  -.-- --- ..- /  .-- .- -. - /  .. - /  .. -. /  -- --- .-. ... . /  -.-.
> --- -.. . /  -.-. .-.. .. -.-. -.- /  .... . .-. . .-.-.-". Wonderful idea,
> no ? This is exactly the current situation with mo.wiki

And what exactly is wrong with that?

> If you still want to have some weird language, no problem, invent your own
> name for it (not derived from mo) and put it on wiki, just don't use our
> official "mo".

"mo" doesn't belong to you. It doesn't _belong_ to anybody. Just ask
the ISO commission. ISO codes don't belong to anybody. They specify
something. This specifies "Moldovan language". When you say Moldovan
language, that doesn't automatically specify how to write it.
Similarly, I could specify a webpage as "en" according to ISO code,
but use Arabic letters, as long as it was used to record the English
language.

Mark

--
"Take away their language, destroy their souls." -- Joseph Stalin


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Brian

subject: [Wikitech-l] Upcoming edit page layout changes

body:
Brion Vibber wrote:

>????????? ??????? wrote:
>
>
>>>2) A new message, MediaWiki:Edittools, is created which can hold those extended
>>>character insertion boxes that some wikis use (currently hacked into the
>>>copyright message).
>>>
>>>
>>Can you add another message for character insertion boxes and
>>javascript tools JUST BELOW textarea.
>>
>>
>
>If you _really_ want it just below the textarea, you can slip it into the
>copyright warning message. However that really ought to be short and sweet;
>nonessential tools & gadgets should remain out of the way.
>
>-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
>
Maybe a scroll-down menu thing could be implemented, and its contents
based on a MediaWiki: page? So a box says "Insert", and you click the
down arrow next to it, and it lists various characters or other codes to
insert. This would allow endless possibilities for expansion (especially
if the menu allowed submenus, sort of like browser bookmark folders;
then there could be a submenu for math/latex codes, templates, etc).

brian0918


list: foundation-l

from_name: shi zhao

subject: [Foundation-l] about China block

body:
China users have can used IP in Florida.  only Seoul IP block. But still
cannot just aceess wikimedia site.

[[zh:user:shizhao]]


list: wikimedia-l

subject: [Foundation-l] about China block


subject: [Wikitech-l] about China block


from_name: Lars Aronsson

subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Sources and sourceability

body:
Brian wrote:

> On the contrary, any published books, such as.... Encyclopaedia
> Britannica, has every single one of the its facts checked
> against each individual source. This is a requirement of the
> publisher, and of the company.

This is an interesting statement.  What sources do you have for
your description of how the editors of EB work?  Has this been
documented in public?

--
  Lars Aronsson (lars at aronsson.se)
  Aronsson Datateknik - http://aronsson.se


from_name: Michael Snow

body:
SJ wrote:

> On Sat, 3 Dec 2005, Michael Snow wrote:
>
>> SJ wrote:
>>
>>>> When you talk about "cite sources" never ever put it into
>>>> connection to people editing and adding contents - it must be seen
>>>> as something separate - many people are not able to "separate"
>>>> things themselves they will combine and make something different
>>>> out of all this.
>>>
>>> What does this mean?  How can citations be separate from adding
>>> content?
>>> Only the person adding a fact actually knows where it came from;
>>> other people can do nothing but guess.
>>
>> Why does it matter where it came from? Except in cases where you're
>> dealing with a primary source and it's essential to check the
>> original, the choice of sources is just as subject to editing as the
>> content. If I add content and
>
> Don't misunderstand me; I mean that the original author can fairly
> effortlessly add a line about his/her source; whereas the next reader
> to come along will have to do significantly more work to find a
> relevant source and cite it.
>
> Of course sources need to change, early sources should be replaced by
> better ones, etc.

Right, I understand that wasn't precisely what you meant, but I was
arguing against possible implications of the way you approached it. The
reason I did that (and "misunderstood" you in the process) is because
many people, unlike you, misunderstand the use of sources. I've seen too
many occasions where somebody objected to getting rid of a poor-quality
source because some past author had used it, even if the article could
be supported just as well from other and better sources.

So my comments were directed at those people generally, perhaps to
little effect since most people on this list know better. Your message
just gave me an opportunity to vent.

--Michael Snow


from_name: Delphine Ménard

subject: [Foundation-l] Enforcing WP:CITE the Soi case

body:
On 12/3/05, Walter van Kalken <walter at vankalken.net> wrote:
>>Brian wrote:
> > Britannica has to defend every letter of it before they can get
> > published. The same is true for all other major encyclopedias. Why
> > wouldn't it be true for us? Aren't we trying to make an encyclopedia
> > here?

I'm jumping in the train. There is a limit to what can be sourced, and
what cannot. Not *every* word can be. But every fact *should* be
sourced, in an ideal world, yes. I agree.

>
> Wikipedia is based on mutual trust. I trust that you put valid info on
> there. I ask you for the same trust. Now asking me to go and dig up were
> the hell I learned some things in my 32 years on this planet is a bit to
> much. If I actually research something especially for wikipedia I put
> sources on there(which is most of my contributions) If I just happen to
> know something I do not. You just have to trust my statement. Wikipedia
> is based on trust! Now if you say you cannot trust me I have to put
> about a 1000 articles on nl: and about 20 or so on en: on votes for
> deletion.

Quoting you : "Wikipedia is based on trust"

Yes, and no.
Yes, there are certain editors I trust, as we do all, and others I
distrust. I will trust you on the Soi article, because *I* know you
live there. In that, in my eyes, *you* are a known source. But where I
trust you, there could (and should) be 20 editors who distrust you.
Not because of you, because in fact, they don't know you, but because
then they would go and look for opposing sources, or verifying sources
to support the facts you put in your articles. And I think that is
good.

No, Wikipedia *should* not be solely based on trust. I think we,
editors, are too often forgetting that *we* know to trust some people,
but that readers, who never ever get to hit the "history" button,
should not take us for granted,a nd that we should give them every
possible means to verify that what is stated in an article is indeed
verifiable.

 I remember when I did my first presentation of Wikipedia. The same
question that comes up all the time came up that time also. "If anyone
can edit, how can you trust". I was new to the whole thing, so I gave
what I thought was the best answer at the time "Well, if *you* find a
mistake, correct it, and there are xxx contributors who look at
articles and do rc patrolling, etc."

At that point a woman in the assistance got up and said "Well, I have
an answer to this. I believe that the fact that Wikipedia *can* be
distrusted is a good thing. In this world where so much information is
given to us with no background, no distanciation, the fact that
Wikipedia keeps people wondering is good, because it obliges them to
go and find other sources, to diversify their views on one subject".

That opened a whole different view on the projects to me.

Mind you, I am not saying that we *should* have mistakes in the
articles, on the contrary. But sourcing, which in my view is crucial,
as Danny,Sj and Michael pointed out, should not be seen as having for
sole role that of making Wikipedia look "better", (ie. we are right,
that guy said it) but as our due to the readers. See for yourself.

We are striving to write an encyclopedia, but by definition, we don't
have it all. You, reader,  can trust us, because we can direct you to
other sources where we got our information, but at the same time, you
should see for yourself, and here is how you can do it, follow the
link. And also, please, if you disagree, if we've got something wrong,
by all means, add your source, and their point of view.

Without sources, we pretend *we* are the source, and I believe that is
wrong. We should be *one source* not *the source*

Best,

Delphine
--
~notafish


from_name: David Gerard

subject:
[Foundation-l] Re: [WikiEN-l] Jimbo Wales = Sergey Brin = Bill
	Gates

body:
Nicholas Moreau wrote:

> Interesting that CBS' article name "Wicked-pedia" was a rejected name for
> Wikijunior. We could've got them on trademark infringement.

wickedpedia.com has been taken since 16 June 2004! wickedpedia.org since
 31 March 2004, wickedpedia.net since 30 June 2004. wicked-pedia.com,
.org and .net are ALL STILL AVAILABLE!!11!

- d.


list: wikien-l

subject: [WikiEN-l] More fair use deletion wreckage

body:
Steve Block wrote:
> MacGyverMagic/Mgm wrote:

>> We need a way to record which articles an image has been on (not the
>> other way around) and we also need to see how a category changes.

> The use of {{tl|fairusein}} will let a user know where the image is
> intended to be used.  It might also be worth noting the information on
> the image talk page.

Yep. When I put a fairuse image up that doesn't have a categorised
reason (book cover, etc.), I try very hard to name the articles it's
being used in and why.

On Uncyclopedia, appropriated and manipulated images are de rigeur. But
fair use for satirical purposes is even wider than for educational
purposes, so I tend to add something like "the uploader asserts that the
use of this copyrighted image in the article [[whatever]] is fair use as
satirical and political speech under US law" or similar. c.f.
http://uncyclopedia.org/wiki/Niggers , which is a fairly vicious satire
of the Cleveland Indians and their staggeringly racist logo, and adapts
said trademarked logo for its purposes. (I'm amazed they haven't come
after it; possibly they are having the good sense to ignore it and not
draw attention to it.)

- d.


subject: [Foundation-l] Jimbo Wales = Sergey Brin = Bill Gates

body:
Ray Saintonge wrote:
> Sabine Cretella wrote:

>> Please note that negative articles are not always really negative.
>> People react more to negative news than to positive ones - so having
>> negative news means that more people will look at "that page"
>> mentioned in an article - and if that page is good they will say to
>> themselves "I don't know what this guy has ... it is ok" ... so the
>> negative news has/had a positive effect in the end.

> It's a reminder of the old quote, (with apologies that I can't CITE the
> source. :-) ), "You can say anything you want about me as long as you
> spell my name correctly."

Indeed. "Please don't go to that appalling site wikipedia.org. That's
WIKIPEDIA DOT ORG. And especially don't enter a search for anything you
might be interested in or want to look up, and REALLY don't hit the
'Edit this page' link. They're MAD, BAD and PERVERTED! Especially don't
look up the scholarly and encyclopedically-toned articles on [[penis]],
[[clitoris]] or [[autofellatio]], kids!"

- d.


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Openness is a means to an end. Nothing more

body:
Delirium wrote:

> Well yes, in a broad sense if there were no possible uses, then it would
> not have much purposes.  But I don't see it as a means to any specific
> end, certainly anything so specific as distributing an encyclopedia to
> everyone in the world---a large body of Free high-quality information is
> the end.  By the nature of Free information, other ends can then follow
> by whoever wants them to follow, without them even having to get
> permission from us.
> I think where I seem to be differing at least from Jimbo, and possibly
> from you, is that I don't see us as going for any specific one of the
> possible uses that can be made, but instead as enabling all of them.  In
> fact, I think it would be ideal if the Wikimedia Foundation were *not*
> the one making all those uses---we will have succeeded if we produce a
> high-quality free encyclopedia that enables thousands of third parties
> to distribute, adapt, and use it however they wish, coordinating or not
> with us as they please.

Indeed. That's why I say "in ten years, if you want a good encyclopedia
it's going to have to be Wikipedia *or a fork*." It doesn't actually
matter in the longer run if it's Wikipedia itself providing the packaged
distribution; indeed, de:'s DVD has worked very nicely being produced by
a company rather than by Wikimedia itself, and thankfully it was a
company with the good sense to involve the de: community as much as
possible and send a percentage back to Wikimedia (was it to the
Foundation or to the .de organisation?).

- d.


subject:
[Wikitech-l] Wikidata on Rails [was: Re:
	Possible	Wikidata	component: JSONwidget]

body:
Erik Moeller wrote:
> Gregory Maxwell:

>> For every wikidata table there are actually two tables in the
>> database, a item table and a revision table.  In item, the key will be
>> constrained to be unique and non-null, in the revision table it will
>> be just non-null.
>> Generally just follow mediawiki for the fields, but rather than text
>> have your data fields.

> The scenario of having a basically flat table that is versioned is a
> simple one. It gets tricky when you have 20 tables which are in complex
> relations with each other, and you want to revert or view a particular
> revision. Note that even our current MediaWiki is broken in this respect
> - when you view an old version of a page, you see it with the latest
> versions of the templates it uses, which can lead to very funny results.

This is mentioned on [[m:Article validation possible problems]] - you
can't really rate a particular version going back too far sensibly as
it'll show the current version of any templates.

One solution is to have bringing up an old rev attempt to bring up
whatever version of each of the templates was current at the time it was
saved. This is more work, but old revs are viewed a *lot* less than
current versions.

Variation: if a stable link is given in a news story or popular blog or
whatever it'd be eminently cacheable. Are old revs cached the way the
current version is?

A more elaborate variation on the idea is to save each rev with a list
of which versions of the included templates it uses.

(Yeah, I know, go write the code ;-)

> The problem with relations of that complexity is that, if you don't want
> to balloon your tables, (I think) you need a lot of revision pointers
> between them. I'm going to try to model this with a simpler example. If
> you want to model something, feel free to help - it is sometimes good if
> multiple heads work on the same problem and come up with different
> solutions.

Would the second idea above be useful to this end as well?

- d.


from_name: J.F. de Wolff

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: The difficulty of retaining volunteer writers

body:
SlimVirgin & Ed: I did not know this monster has been around since
July. I would have quit the wiki 50x (after returning because of Wikiholicism).

You both need a wikihug.

One wishes the Fuel in Wagon caught fire.

JFW

--
No virus found in this outgoing message.
Checked by AVG Anti-Virus.
Version: 7.1.362 / Virus Database: 267.13.10/190 - Release Date: 01/12/2005


from_name: Field Nothing

body:
>But what about Transdnistria?
>As I know, they use Moldovan language (also Russian and Ukrainian) but
>use Cyrillic script.

Transdnistria is not an independent state, it is a part of Moldova and it is
not recognized in the world.If my neighbor suddenly decides to have the
official language written using chinese symbols that doesn't mean it has to
be on the official page of a country's official language. Whatever language
is used there it is not officially recognized and the ISO code mo stands for
the language based on latin alphabet and not cyrillic. And let's get serious
most of the people from the Transdn. region either know Romanian and write
it properly or don't know it at all.

And what you say sounds to me like that: There is a country A that has the
official language as english. Then there's a country/region B that adopts
english also as their language but written in morse code, so they modify the
en.wikipedia.org's main page to have a pleasant interface combined of both
and a warm welcome "If you want it in latin script click here"  and ".. ..-.
/  -.-- --- ..- /  .-- .- -. - /  .. - /  .. -. /  -- --- .-. ... . /  -.-.
--- -.. . /  -.-. .-.. .. -.-. -.- /  .... . .-. . .-.-.-". Wonderful idea,
no ? This is exactly the current situation with mo.wiki

If you still want to have some weird language, no problem, invent your own
name for it (not derived from mo) and put it on wiki, just don't use our
official "mo".

_________________________________________________________________
Express yourself instantly with MSN Messenger! Download today - it's FREE!
http://messenger.msn.click-url.com/go/onm00200471ave/direct/01/


from_name: Ashar Voultoiz

subject: [Wikipedia-l] language inheritance

body:
Hello,

Mark asked to change some language inheritances. So instead of
defaulting to english we have:

ab: av: ba: ce: & kv: inherit ru

ii: & za: inherit from Zn_cn

Note, avar already did:
 qu: gn: and ay inherit from es
 ty from fr

For details:
  http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=3844

cheers,

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


from_name: Arbeo M

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Why MO.wikipedia. - Moldovan,
	are written in cyrillic ?

body:
Adrenalin wrote:

> And who the hell on the main wikipedia page(http://www.wikipedia.org/)
> have written OUR name language using cyrillic ?

You are right. This is tactless towards the people of Moldova. It should
be changed as soon as possible.

Arbeo

---------------------------------
Gesendet von Yahoo! Mail - Jetzt mit 1GB kostenlosem Speicher


subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia on PDAs (was J2ME Client for Wikipedia)

body:
Carl Witty wrote:
> On Sun, 2005-11-27 at 02:39 -0500, S. Woodside wrote:

>>Wikipedia actually displays pretty well in mobile browsers.

> Well, some mobile browsers, perhaps...it's quite broken on my Treo 650
> (the entire article text is rendered one-character-per-line,
>   l
>   i
>   k
>   e

Palm browsers are notoriously shit and almost not worth bothering with.
The browser in User:Redcountess' Zire 72s (PalmOS 5.2.8 with Novarra Web
Pro 3.5) does okay on en: Wikipedia (I even posted to the sandbox with
it!), but the one on User:Arkady Rose's Tungsten C (PalmOS 5.2.1 with
PalmSource Web Browser 2.0) - which would otherwise be *ideal* for
Wikipedia, given it's got inbuilt wifi and is basically a handheld
wardriving appliance ;-) - looks like utterly misrendered dogshit.

The Treo 650 runs PalmOS 5.4.x - what browser and version does it include?

The only problem with Web Pro 3.5 is that it doesn't do UTF-8 characters
at all, so it's only really usable on a language that works in 7-bit
(such as en:). Otherwise it was great. I know you can buy 3.0 or 3.5 as
an upgrade for the Tungsten C, so you might be able to get something
less shit for the Treo.

I'm currently writing [[Wikipedia:Wikipedia on PDAs]], and will be
uploading photos demonstrating the above in a while. Others are heartily
encouraged to add their own experiences and photos.

[cc: to wikien-l - please add your own!]

- d.


subject: [Wikitech-l] Wikipedia on PDAs (was J2ME Client for Wikipedia)


from_name: Александр Сигачёв

body:
> 2) A new message, MediaWiki:Edittools, is created which can hold those extended
> character insertion boxes that some wikis use (currently hacked into the
> copyright message).

Can you add another message for character insertion boxes and
javascript tools JUST BELOW textarea.

Now it's MediaWiki:Summary hack in Russian wiki. See, for example,
http://ru.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Python&action=edit

--
m:user:ajvol


from_name: Walter van Kalken

body:
daniwo59 at aol.com wrote:

>
>Is it too much to ask that contributions to Wikipedia be correct? That is
>news to me.
>
>Danny
>
There is a difference between an entry being correct and someone having
to defend every letter of it.

Waerth/Walter


from_name: Justin Cormack

body:
On 4 Dec 2005, at 01:03, David Gerard wrote:

> Carl Witty wrote:
>> On Sun, 2005-11-27 at 02:39 -0500, S. Woodside wrote:
>
>>> Wikipedia actually displays pretty well in mobile browsers.
>
>> Well, some mobile browsers, perhaps...it's quite broken on my Treo
>> 650
>> (the entire article text is rendered one-character-per-line,
>>   l
>>   i
>>   k
>>   e
>
>
> Palm browsers are notoriously shit and almost not worth bothering
> with.
> The browser in User:Redcountess' Zire 72s (PalmOS 5.2.8 with
> Novarra Web
> Pro 3.5) does okay on en: Wikipedia (I even posted to the sandbox with
> it!), but the one on User:Arkady Rose's Tungsten C (PalmOS 5.2.1 with
> PalmSource Web Browser 2.0) - which would otherwise be *ideal* for
> Wikipedia, given it's got inbuilt wifi and is basically a handheld
> wardriving appliance ;-) - looks like utterly misrendered dogshit.
>
> The Treo 650 runs PalmOS 5.4.x - what browser and version does it
> include?
>
> The only problem with Web Pro 3.5 is that it doesn't do UTF-8
> characters
> at all, so it's only really usable on a language that works in 7-bit
> (such as en:). Otherwise it was great. I know you can buy 3.0 or
> 3.5 as
> an upgrade for the Tungsten C, so you might be able to get something
> less shit for the Treo.
>
> I'm currently writing [[Wikipedia:Wikipedia on PDAs]], and will be
> uploading photos demonstrating the above in a while. Others are
> heartily
> encouraged to add their own experiences and photos.

This is something I have been meaning to spend some time on.

I have mobile Opera on Sony Ericsson P900 and its ok but the clutter
around the information detracts rather. Not sure what the UTF-8 like,
will check.

Justinc


subject: [Foundation-l] Enforcing WP:CITE the Soi case to Danny

body:
daniwo59 at aol.com wrote:

>
>Ridicule? No. I am simply disappointed that you can even make such a
>statement. It shows me that we have very radically different ideas about what an
>encyclopedia is. Providing correct information is not something I am willing to
>compromise. I had hoped that this sentiment was shared by all of Wikipedia's
>editors and contributors.
>
>Danny
>
>
Yes this sentiment is shared Danny. But it is like Sabine said. In many
cases you just know things. You simply forgot where you heard them. Also
many things are sourced only in languages other than english. I have
already seen an article on en.wikipedia deletion list which was put on
there because it was not considered to have had a source. Its source was
a German text which was linked! And a Dutch wikipedia article. This
wasn't considered enough because it was not English. So if I put up a
Thai source in Thai would it be accepted as sourced?

Some things are just common knowledge. I would much rather see a
wikipedia editor, especially a trusted one as a source in some cases.

Walter/Waerth


body:
Brian wrote:

>
>
> Walter van Kalken wrote:
>
>> daniwo59 at aol.com wrote:
>>
>>>
>>> Is it too much to ask that contributions to Wikipedia be correct?
>>> That is  news to me.
>>>
>>> Danny
>>>
>> There is a difference between an entry being correct and someone
>> having to defend every letter of it.
>
>
> Britannica has to defend every letter of it before they can get
> published. The same is true for all other major encyclopedias. Why
> wouldn't it be true for us? Aren't we trying to make an encyclopedia
> here?

Wikipedia is based on mutual trust. I trust that you put valid info on
there. I ask you for the same trust. Now asking me to go and dig up were
the hell I learned some things in my 32 years on this planet is a bit to
much. If I actually research something especially for wikipedia I put
sources on there(which is most of my contributions) If I just happen to
know something I do not. You just have to trust my statement. Wikipedia
is based on trust! Now if you say you cannot trust me I have to put
about a 1000 articles on nl: and about 20 or so on en: on votes for
deletion.

Waerth/Walter


from_name: Matt Brown

subject:
[WikiEN-l] New proposal for summary eletion of non-copyright
	infringing material, on suspicion

body:
Where is this proposal listed?

The problem with this is we already frequently bite the newbies with
respect to people uploading stuff they own that's already published on
another website.  Being accused of copyright infringement and having
the article blanked is bad enough for them; having them deleted will
make people not come back.

-Matt


from_name: Александр Сигачёв

body:
> >>But it is undenyable that some people rather write in Cyrillic.
>
> I see romanian is not the only language you are having problems with, it's
> "undeniable" last time I checked my dictionary. That aside, what do you have
> to back up your affirmation, I live here, I see the situation, I haven't
> seen anyone writing anything in cyrillic romanian/moldovan. And an important
> note is that we don't have something like "Moldovan language" in schools,
> the course is called "Romanian language/Limba Romana", we don't even have a
> "History of Moldova" it's "History of Romania".

But what about Transdnistria?
As I know, they use Moldovan language (also Russian and Ukrainian) but
use Cyrillic script.

--
[[m:user:ajvol]]


from_name: Александр Сигачёв

subject: [Wikipedia-l] language inheritance

body:
I already did:
os: cv: udm:  inherit from ru:

--
m:user:ajvol


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] MediaWiki 1.5.3 released [SECURITY]

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

MediaWiki 1.5.3 is a security and bugfix maintenance release.

Validation of the user language option was broken by a code change in
May 2005, opening the possibility of remote code execution as this
parameter is used in forming a class name dynamically created with
eval().

The validation has been corrected in this version. All prior 1.5 release
and prerelease versions are affected; 1.4 and earlier and not affected.

Additionally several bugs have been fixed; see the changelog in the
release notes for a complete list.

Release notes:
http://sourceforge.net/project/shownotes.php?release_id=375755

Download:
http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/wikipedia/mediawiki-1.5.3.tar.gz?download

MD5 checksum:
fc697787f04208d1842a2c646deca626  mediawiki-1.5.3.tar.gz

SHA-1 checksum:
070189e29ace2ef9ab0589db42ecf849f2b88ee5 mediawiki-1.5.3.tar.gz

Before asking for help, try the FAQ:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki_FAQ

Low-traffic release announcements mailing list:
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-announce

Wiki admin help mailing list:
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-l

Bug report system:
http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/

Play "stump the developers" live on IRC:
#mediawiki on irc.freenode.net

- -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com / brion @ wikimedia.org)
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.2.4 (Darwin)
Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org

iD8DBQFDktOvwRnhpk1wk44RAi/tAJ9NlfTJTqW+9xTC6xaeOple14hFLQCgpyBn
/hIyYleol9gFbHfMgzJCyy8=
=fdzu
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----


from_name: Milos Rancic

subject: [Foundation-l] Wikimedia Serbia and Montenegro

body:
Before we make some official announcement in English, I would like to
say a few words about new local chapter:

We held two sessions of our assembly. The first one was formal when we
accepted our bylaws and chose presidium. (We decided that to avoid
explanation to our authorities that we would hold our sessions over
Internet.)

The second session was less formal and during this session some of our
decisions were:

- We accepted statute of our assembly (where we explained that we can
hold our sessions over Internet).

- We constituted other bodies of our organization: executive board and
supervision board.

- We constituted two regional boards: for Vojvodina and for Belgrade
(in this moment we have relevant number of members only from these two
regions).

- We constituted three expert boards: for informatics, linguistics and
natural sciences (in this moment we have relevant number of members
only in these fields).

- We elected Jimmy Wales, Angela Beesley, Florence Nibart-Devouar
(Anthere) and Delphine M?nard (Notafish) as honorary members of
Wikimedia SCG for a life.

- We elected Jimmy Wales as honorary president of Wikimedia SCG
regional board for USA :) for a life.

Also, it should be noted that our members are two important public
persons: The first one is Vladimir Ajdacic, nuclear physicist and a
member of Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts (who became the
president of our Expert board for natural sciences); the second one is
Dragan Ambrozic, the most important organizer of pop culture events in
Belgrade (who became our vice-president).


from_name: Tony Sidaway

body:
There is now a formal proposal for a criterion for speedy deletion,
worded as follows:

1. unwikified
2. cut-and-pasted verbatim from another website
3. less than 48 hours old (could be relaxed if the source is verified
not to be Wikipedia mirror?)
4. no assertion of permission
5. not from a known public domain or GFDL-compatible source

This appears to be an extension of the copyright infringement CSD,
which is as follows:

An article that is a blatant copyright infringement and meets these parameters:

* Material is unquestionably copied from the website of a commercial
content provider (e.g. encyclopedia, news service) and;
* The article and its entire history contains only copyright violation
material, excluding tags, templates, and minor edits and;
* Uploader makes no assertion of permission or fair use, and none
seems likely and;
* The material is identified within 48 hours of upload and is almost
or totally un-wikified (to diminish mirror problem).

This ignores the statement of permission that is made during posting
of the material, and would not require the deleting administrator to
make a proper investigation--unless he knows the article to be from a
GFDL source or to be in the public domain, the article can be
summarily deleted.

In my opinion this is going far too far.  Until recently, copyright
infringements had been dealt with perfectly well by listing the
material of [[Wikipedia:Copyright problems]].  Under this new
proposal, articles that are not even copyright infringements would
stand to be deleted on mere suspicion, and without any proper
investigation.


from_name: Angela

body:
> de:'s DVD has worked very nicely being produced by
> a company rather than by Wikimedia itself, and thankfully it was a
> company with the good sense to involve the de: community as much as
> possible and send a percentage back to Wikimedia (was it to the
> Foundation or to the .de organisation?).

As far as I'm aware they gave one euro per DVD to the German Wikimedia chapter.

Angela


from_name: Fred Bauder

subject: [WikiEN-l] NPOV trainwreck

body:
Yes, please look at this and give us some feedback. If we have not
explained well enough why we are coming to the decisions we have in
this case, dialogue here would help us explain it better. For a
start, there is no finding that there was any conspiracy. A number of
folks who could loosely be described as "right wing" have engaged in
a number of activities which violate Wikipedia policies and
guidelines. The most serious violations involve Nobs01 who basically
acts like an attack dog. This has little or nothing to do with
anyones political viewpoint, a great deal to do with the targeting of
a valuable Wikipedia editor.

Fred

On Dec 2, 2005, at 2:03 PM, Sam Spade wrote:

> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/
> Nobs01_and_others/Proposed_decision
>
> The appointed arbiters don't seem to be working out, place have a look
> at their handiwork. Note the lack of recusals, and near perpetual
> conflicts of interest. Note the political railroading of a handful of
> "rightwingers" on trumped up conspiracy charges. Look at the ability
> of an editor who barely warrants an article to cite himself, and
> enforce his blatantly biased POV w impunity, due to friends in the
> right places. It is a caricature of wikipedia at its worst.
>
> Sam Spade
> _______________________________________________
> 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: Sabine Cretella

body:
>
> As Gerard pointed out we also need to keep connected with the average
> contributor, to who we already owe much.  He still has a lot to say
> and a lot to offer.  We would be delighted if he could provide full
> bibliographical support for his own material, but a more realistic
> expectation would be a single link.  we don't want to fall into soome
> new form of academic elitism.

Ec, thanks for that one ... I suppose you understood also what I mean -
I am not against giving references (I add them when I have them here),
but I am not willing (or better I really do not have the time) to
re-research whatever I learnt ... and also: many things come out of
stuff I translated - sometimes when I translate things they are not for
the public in that moment (new machinery developments, sometimes press
releases that are prepared beforehand etc. - this is impossible to be
followed up and also to be cited as source - these, in the moment I work
on it, must be kept secret and I would never give that information out
before you can't read about it in other places) and that after years are
just "normal" things people talk about every day. This is valid for many
of us.

>
> I can now understand why some material may need to be kept unavailable
> to the public through us. If we are going to connect everything that
> must include copyright material which can only be caged in inaccesible
> archives until it can be set free.

Well, this is one of those things ... some poeple would give parts of
their copyrighted and non GFDL material to a portal if they may decide
any license for it. This means: somehwere on the web, we should have
such a place. There are for example authors that allow for publication
of their work, but they don't want it under GFDL - so what would be
wrong with such a place? It would make sure that things are collected in
"one library" and the when things become copyright free it can simply be
transferred to the right projects. And: it would be much easier to
connect things.

Ciao, Sabine

___________________________________
Yahoo! Messenger: chiamate gratuite in tutto il mondo
http://it.messenger.yahoo.com


from_name: Anthony DiPierro

subject: [Foundation-l] Deletion of Wikibooks content by Jimbo

body:
On 11/29/05, Daniel Mayer <maveric149 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>
> --- Anthony DiPierro <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
> > On 11/26/05, Angela <beesley at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > There is a comedy Wikicity at <http://comedy.wikicities.com> where
> > > jokes can be added if it is decided that they are not suitable for any
> > > Wikimedia project. It would be best to wait until Wikicities upgrades
> > > its version of MediaWiki before doing any sort of mass import though,
> > > since we'd need [[Special:Import]] to be working in order to retain
> > > the page histories.
> > >
> > It hasn't been decided that jokebooks aren't suitable for any
> > Wikimedia project.  Jimbo has declared by executive fiat that this is
> > the case.
>
> Jokebooks are completely out of place in Wikibooks because they do not serve a
> valid educational purpose. A textbook on comedy that had example jokes in it
> would be welcome, however. This type of distinction was decided on when I
> helped found Wikibooks, so Jimbo is not acting by executive fiat. He is simply
> trying to put that project back on track.
>
> > Your suggestion is quite plainly unethical, Angela.  Keep
> > your advertisements off this mailing list.
>
> That is totally uncalled for and I think you owe Angela an apology. Angela is
> just mentioning a valid alternative place for the content to be placed. Are you
> aware of another wiki joke book where the deleted Wikibooks jokebook could
> comfortably go? If not, then keep your unfair attacks off the mailing lists. If
> so, then please just add that information as an alternative, not as part of an
> attack.
>
> -- mav

After further reflection, you're right.  I was wrong for making those
statements, and I apologize to both Angela and Jimbo for the
statements I made.

Anthony


from_name: Jimmy Wales

body:
Delirium wrote:
> I strongly disagree with that---that may be your goal (and perhaps
> Jimbo's), but a goal of a lot of people here is to create a Free (as in
> Freedom) encyclopedia as the primary end.  The fact that this increases
> its availability is quite nice, but the Freedom aspect is not merely a
> means to the end of increasing availability, but the end itself.

I don't think these two are in tension.  What Mav was talking about is
how we care about the free _encyclopedia_ (emphasizing quality) more
than we care about our crazy open wiki way of making it.

>  For me
> at least, and I suspect at least some number of other people, this is
> the *only* end---to produce a completely Free encyclopedia, which
> everyone is then free to use as they wish, save that they may not
> restrict others' right to do the same with their derived works.

And what Delirium is talking about is how we care about the _free_
encyclopedia (emphasizing gnu-freedom) more than we care about our crazy
open wiki way of making it.

I think everyone in the core community is on board with those two
concepts in a major way.  And all of us love the wiki ways, but not at
the expense of those two goals.

(Although, I should add, I think that mainstream media hysteria
notwithstanding, there seems to be no compelling reason to do more than
slowly and carefully seek cautious tweaks to our current model in the
service of constant improvement.)

--Jimbo


body:
On 12/4/05, Tony Sidaway <f.crdfa at gmail.com> wrote:
> There is now a formal proposal for a criterion for speedy deletion,
> worded as follows:
>
> 1. unwikified
> 2. cut-and-pasted verbatim from another website
> 3. less than 48 hours old (could be relaxed if the source is verified
> not to be Wikipedia mirror?)
> 4. no assertion of permission
> 5. not from a known public domain or GFDL-compatible source
>
> This appears to be an extension of the copyright infringement CSD,
> which is as follows:
>
> An article that is a blatant copyright infringement and meets these parameters:
>
> * Material is unquestionably copied from the website of a commercial
> content provider (e.g. encyclopedia, news service) and;
> * The article and its entire history contains only copyright violation
> material, excluding tags, templates, and minor edits and;
> * Uploader makes no assertion of permission or fair use, and none
> seems likely and;
> * The material is identified within 48 hours of upload and is almost
> or totally un-wikified (to diminish mirror problem).
>
> This ignores the statement of permission that is made during posting
> of the material, and would not require the deleting administrator to
> make a proper investigation--unless he knows the article to be from a
> GFDL source or to be in the public domain, the article can be
> summarily deleted.
>
> In my opinion this is going far too far.  Until recently, copyright
> infringements had been dealt with perfectly well by listing the
> material of [[Wikipedia:Copyright problems]].  Under this new
> proposal, articles that are not even copyright infringements would
> stand to be deleted on mere suspicion, and without any proper
> investigation.

As long as 1) the submitter is notified of the deletion (a nicely
worded template talking about copyright infringement, apologizing if
the deletion was incorrect, etc. could be created for this), and 2)
the url is included in the deletion notice, I don't see it as big
problem, because it is easy to reverse.  If you really think there's a
lot of treasure being thrown away, you could go through the deletion
log and make a page listing all the articles deleted this way, and
then investigate them further.

I think point number five should be clarified and more tightly worded
though.  Just because the admin doesn't know that the source is public
domain isn't really enough.  There should probably be at least some
evidence that the source *is* copyrighted.

Anthony


from_name: Nathaniel Sheetz

subject: [WikiEN-l] A bold fix needed to the "omg backlog" problem

body:
Alex Schenck wrote:

> I will copy what I wrote to David here...
> I want to ask for your opinion here. I was feeling brave this morning and
> decided to see if I could make a dent in Category:Wikipedia
> backlog<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Wikipedia_backlog>.
> After looking at about 25 articles with the wikification tag attached to
> them, and being so disgusted with the lot as to be unable to make a
*single*
> change, something major hit me.
> We need to, as one might say, flush the crap down the toilet. Allow me to
> explain.

On his userpage, George argues this better than me, but basically the
argument is that sometimes, nothing is better than something.  I'm sure that
many of the articles in that backlog actually do more damage than good to
the project, because someone who finds them is going to judge the quality of
wikipedia as a whole based on those articles.  Not finding anything, on the
other hand, will probably not result in as great a negative reaction.

That said, I'm not sure what should be done about it.  Deletion is tempting,
but shouldn't be applied haphazardly.  I wouldn't be opposed to the creation
of an AfD criterion (not CSD) that allowed for the deletion of truly
unorganized and difficult to use text.  This is different from patent
nonsense, and CSD shouldn't be extended, which is made clear because Alex's
example, [[Help the Aged]], was just reverted to a previous version by
Angela and now it looks fine.  (see
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Help_the_Aged&diff=30111977&oldid=28413926).
Deleting it would have been a bad idea.

Just my two cents.

Nathaniel / Spangineer


body:
On 12/1/05, Alex Schenck <linuxbeak at gmail.com> wrote:
> I will copy what I wrote to David here...
>
> That's right!
>
> I want to ask for your opinion here. I was feeling brave this morning and
> decided to see if I could make a dent in Category:Wikipedia
> backlog<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Wikipedia_backlog>.
> After looking at about 25 articles with the wikification tag attached to
> them, and being so disgusted with the lot as to be unable to make a *single*
> change, something major hit me.
>
> We need to, as one might say, flush the crap down the toilet. Allow me to
> explain.
>
> A LOT of the articles in Category:Articles that need to be
> wikified<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Articles_that_need_to_be_wikified>are
> so poorly written and so obscure that they have
> *no possible use, worth or value to anyone!* Jimbo himself made it clear in
> that interview that although Wikipedia does have some gems of articles (ie
> our Featured Articles), there is a rather poor signal to noise ratio. We all
> know that backlogs need to be cleared out, but no one is going to be able to
> do it without a.) time that reaches beyond time itself, b.) unlimited
> patience and c.) endless knowledge. In other words, to clear out the
> backlogs would be akin to an act of God.
>
> I know you know what I'm thinking, David. I want to nuke a ton of articles
> in the backlog. Things like
> this<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help_the_Aged>may have a place on
> Wikipedia, but *not* in their current form. If these
> things are important enough, they can be tagged as such and someone can be
> given it to work with. But I want to delete a lot of articles.
>
> I know I'm going to get a lot of flak from other users concerning this. They
> will kneejerk to "OMG ABUSIVE ADMIN LALALALLA" and "DELETIONIST! OMG
> DELETIONIST!". But, we *need* to do something about the absolutely wretched
> backlogs.
>
> Get back to me on this. Thanks. Alex
> Schenck<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Linuxbeak>(that's
> Linuxbeak <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Linuxbeak> to you) 16:40,
> 1 December 2005 (UTC)
>
>
> Now, with that said, I need feedback. Please provide.
>
> --Linuxbeak

I think these articles are perfect for the pure wiki deletion process.
 They're somewhat useful as starting points for articles, but a lot of
work still needs to be done.  It'd be nice if there were a place to
keep them until they get more fleshed out, but not bless them as an
actual article worthy of Wikipedia.  PWD allows for that.

Of course, moving all the crap to the talk page and replacing the mess
with a really short stub would work too.  That solution probably
wouldn't stick, though.  For one thing, ripping out lots of
information is often reverted, and for another lots of people like to
turn short stubs into redirects (which tend to create circular links
and not be expanded due to this and other technical issues).


subject: [WikiEN-l] David Hager is listed as convicted rapist

body:
On 12/4/05, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 12/1/05, poore5 at adelphia.net <poore5 at adelphia.net> wrote:
> > Hello,
> >
> > Advice please.
> >
> > During a bout of Insomnia-Induced Insanity, I did a major expansion of the article about David Hager. Hager is the controversial fellow that Bush appointed to the FDA committee on Reproductive Health Drugs. (Self-disclosure: We both live in central Kentucky and our paths crossed through our professions from mid 80's - mid 90's.) Being a controversial figure, I was prepared to deal with POV crap. However, I never thought anyone would put him on a list of convicted rapists. Of course, I immediately took his name off the list. He was on the list for less than five hours, from Dec. 1 00:58 to 05:19. This brings up several issues.
> >
> > 1. Was this information spread to other web sites like Answers.com? Who do I ask to find out?
> >
>
> That is quite a difficult question to answer. For the most part no
> since I doubt it will have been included in a datebase dump however
> there are some sites that apear to pick up our content live
>
I know Wikipedia was developing a live feed for answers.com at some
point.  Not sure if this was ever implented.  But that's just
answers.com.  Most of the mirrors likely use database dumps.

Also, if answers.com updates that quickly, then it'll fix the problem
as quickly as it creates it.


from_name: Josh Gordon

subject: [WikiEN-l] (no subject)

body:
That would be
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/141.157.67.240, blocked
for 31 hours by drini; "vandalism; warned". I think 31 hours is a peculiar
number, but what the heck; people who insert "poopie in my panties" into
articles can go away for a day and change and contemplate their purpose in
editing Wikipedia.

On 12/4/05, MacGyverMagic/Mgm <macgyvermagic at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Can you please share the username or IP address that was blocked and
> the message drini put in the reason field?
>
> Mgm
>
> On 12/2/05, Diane Hutchinson <john.b.hutchinson at verizon.net> wrote:
> > i have meen blocked by drini and i dont deserve it. i  was just getting
> use to the capabilites that wikipedia offers. Please give me another chance
> and i am sorry for any promblems
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > WikiEN-l mailing list
> > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> > To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
> >
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


body:
I responded to this user previously on the helpdesk.  The issue is
that David Hager was accused of marital rape by his former wife, who
got an article published in The Nation about this, among other places.
 Thus the allegations, true or not, are documented and citable, and
thus cannot be removed as unsourced attacks.

However, he should NOT be listed in any categories that imply he has
been convicted of a crime, because he has not.

-Matt


from_name: Fl Celloguy

body:
>1. Was this information spread to other web sites like Answers.com? Who do
>I ask
>to find out?

Answers.com and other forks and mirrors don't update that often, if I am
correct. It is highly unlikely that information that stayed there for only a
few hours would be copied. To find out, you could check out Answers.com - I
highly doubt that the information has been copied given its relatively short
amount of time on Wikipedia.

>2. Do we all agree that this is a BIG problem. Can you imagine what would
>happen
>if another major media source published Hager???s name on a list of
>convicted
>rapists?

I agre with you that this is a problem that we need to address sooner or
later. The use of Wikipedia for slander, libel, or political reasons is
huge, as evidenced both by the John Seigenthaler Sr. case and the German
Wikipedia's polticial articles.

>2. How do I (hopefully, we) stop this unregistered user (or any other) from
>doing this again? Being very, very generous, I will assume this was an
>isolated
>incidence of poor judgment. This doesn't change the fact that this libelous
>misinformation appeared in OUR encyclopedia.

Shouldn't this be question number three, by the way? :-) There's really no
way to stop it except to keep a watch on the article and on the user's
contributions. If s/he has a pattern of adding misleading information, you
may wish to warn him about citing sources and verifiability. If he persists,
a block may be needed.

>3. I can???t unring this bell. The Wikipedia article is listed 6 in an
>Yahoo
>search of the words David Hager. Being a registered user, I will be
>associated
>with this article forever. While, an unregistered user can damage
>Wikipedia,
>Hager, and me.

True; this should only make us more vigilant and aware of the people who
strive to manipulate Wikipedia.

>Immediate solution? Ask everyone here to put his name on your watch list.
>Long term solution???????.

Sorry, can't read your proposed long-term solution. Short-term solution, as
you state - be more vigilant and aware.

Thanks!

Flcelloguy
>From Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia.

_________________________________________________________________
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from_name: Andrew Dunbar

subject: [Wikitech-l] Upcoming edit page layout changes

body:
This sounds like what I've implemented in Javascript on the
English Wiktionary some time ago if I read correctly.

Take a look at:

http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/MediaWiki:Monobook.js

and

http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/MediaWiki:Edittools

The drawbacks are:
* You have to edit both files and keep them synchronized when
  making additions.
* There is no way to add a user preference for which menu item
  is preferred and there is no way I've found to set and get a cookie
  from this code to remember which menu item was used
  previous.

Andrew Dunbar (hippietrail)

On 12/3/05, Brian <brian0918 at gmail.com> wrote:
> Brion Vibber wrote:
>
> >????????? ??????? wrote:
> >
> >
> >>>2) A new message, MediaWiki:Edittools, is created which can hold those extended
> >>>character insertion boxes that some wikis use (currently hacked into the
> >>>copyright message).
> >>>
> >>>
> >>Can you add another message for character insertion boxes and
> >>javascript tools JUST BELOW textarea.
> >>
> >>
> >
> >If you _really_ want it just below the textarea, you can slip it into the
> >copyright warning message. However that really ought to be short and sweet;
> >nonessential tools & gadgets should remain out of the way.
> >
> >-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
> >
> Maybe a scroll-down menu thing could be implemented, and its contents
> based on a MediaWiki: page? So a box says "Insert", and you click the
> down arrow next to it, and it lists various characters or other codes to
> insert. This would allow endless possibilities for expansion (especially
> if the menu allowed submenus, sort of like browser bookmark folders;
> then there could be a submenu for math/latex codes, templates, etc).
>
>
> brian0918
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>

--
http://linguaphile.sf.net


subject: [WikiEN-l] NPOV trainwreck

body:
For the most part, I have been impressed - and pleased - with the speed,
efficiency, and boldness of the ArbCom regarding this case. While I won't
comment on any specifics of the case, I was pleasantly surprised at how fast
the ArbCom developed this case, compared to some of the other cases that
have apparently stalled, and how quickly it responded to requests and
comments by all parties. Keep up your great work!

Flcelloguy
>From Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia.

>Yes, please look at this and give us some feedback. If we have not
>explained well enough why we are coming to the decisions we have in
>this case, dialogue here would help us explain it better. For a
>start, there is no finding that there was any conspiracy. A number of
>folks who could loosely be described as "right wing" have engaged in
>a number of activities which violate Wikipedia policies and
>guidelines. The most serious violations involve Nobs01 who basically
>acts like an attack dog. This has little or nothing to do with
>anyones political viewpoint, a great deal to do with the targeting of
>a valuable Wikipedia editor.
>
>Fred
>
>On Dec 2, 2005, at 2:03 PM, Sam Spade wrote:
>
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/
> > Nobs01_and_others/Proposed_decision
> >
> > The appointed arbiters don't seem to be working out, place have a look
> > at their handiwork. Note the lack of recusals, and near perpetual
> > conflicts of interest. Note the political railroading of a handful of
> > "rightwingers" on trumped up conspiracy charges. Look at the ability
> > of an editor who barely warrants an article to cite himself, and
> > enforce his blatantly biased POV w impunity, due to friends in the
> > right places. It is a caricature of wikipedia at its worst.
> >
> > Sam Spade

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from_name: stevertigo

body:
And that takes care of that.

Stevertigo

--- Matt Brown <morven at gmail.com> wrote:

> I responded to this user previously on the helpdesk.
>  The issue is
> that David Hager was accused of marital rape by his
> former wife, who
> got an article published in The Nation about this,
> among other places.
>  Thus the allegations, true or not, are documented
> and citable, and
> thus cannot be removed as unsourced attacks.
>
> However, he should NOT be listed in any categories
> that imply he has
> been convicted of a crime, because he has not.
>
> -Matt
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

__________________________________
Start your day with Yahoo! - Make it your home page!
http://www.yahoo.com/r/hs


subject: [WikiEN-l] NPOV trainwreck

body:
>From what I can see, the arbitrators are doing quite well with a difficult case.

-Matt


body:
On 12/4/05, stevertigo <vertigosteve at yahoo.com> wrote:
> And that takes care of that.

Not exactly, but it renders it a much more complicated case than ones
where negative statements about a public figure are unsourced.  Since
they are sourced in this case, the question becomes: does this article
meet NPOV?  I haven't researched the article or the subject enough to
know for sure.

It certainly is not an issue solved with a quick complaint to this
list or the helpdesk or anywhere else.

-Matt


from_name: MacGyverMagic/Mgm

body:
Were can I find the extension proposal you're talking about?
And while it may be harsh, we really need something like that.
We can't have copyvio material on Wikipedia if it's clear the material
in question was copied from a source that didn't give permission
regardless of whether that source is a commericial content provider.

There's now a note on all edit windows which clearly shows one cannot
break copyright. People who still fail to indicate ownership upon
posting shouldn't be accomodated. Waiting is how such material slips
under the radar and goes undetected.

Mgm

On 12/4/05, Tony Sidaway <f.crdfa at gmail.com> wrote:
> There is now a formal proposal for a criterion for speedy deletion,
> worded as follows:
>
> 1. unwikified
> 2. cut-and-pasted verbatim from another website
> 3. less than 48 hours old (could be relaxed if the source is verified
> not to be Wikipedia mirror?)
> 4. no assertion of permission
> 5. not from a known public domain or GFDL-compatible source
>
> This appears to be an extension of the copyright infringement CSD,
> which is as follows:
>
> An article that is a blatant copyright infringement and meets these parameters:
>
> * Material is unquestionably copied from the website of a commercial
> content provider (e.g. encyclopedia, news service) and;
> * The article and its entire history contains only copyright violation
> material, excluding tags, templates, and minor edits and;
> * Uploader makes no assertion of permission or fair use, and none
> seems likely and;
> * The material is identified within 48 hours of upload and is almost
> or totally un-wikified (to diminish mirror problem).
>
> This ignores the statement of permission that is made during posting
> of the material, and would not require the deleting administrator to
> make a proper investigation--unless he knows the article to be from a
> GFDL source or to be in the public domain, the article can be
> summarily deleted.
>
> In my opinion this is going far too far.  Until recently, copyright
> infringements had been dealt with perfectly well by listing the
> material of [[Wikipedia:Copyright problems]].  Under this new
> proposal, articles that are not even copyright infringements would
> stand to be deleted on mere suspicion, and without any proper
> investigation.
> _______________________________________________
> 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: geni

body:
On 12/4/05, Tony Sidaway <f.crdfa at gmail.com> wrote:
> In my opinion this is going far too far.  Until recently, copyright
> infringements had been dealt with perfectly well by listing the
> material of [[Wikipedia:Copyright problems]].

No they were not.

--
geni


from_name: Walter van Kalken

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Translators needed for fund drive

body:
Daniel Mayer wrote:

>The next Wikimedia fund drive will start on Friday 9 December and will end on Saturday 31
>December. There is no specific goal, but we would like to at least cover the budget for the rest
>of this year and the first quarter of next year. That means we need at least $500,000.
>
Half a million ....... coughs ......... I really cross my fingers that
we make that.

Waerth/Walter


from_name: Mark Williamson

body:
On 04/12/05, Wikipedia Romania (Ronline) <rowikipedia at gmail.com> wrote:
> One big problem, though, is that although I supported the current model
> operating at mo.wiki, it turned out to be a big failure. There is a lot of
> poor grammar
> being used, a lot of the things there don't make sense. That is why, now,

But if that's the case, it's not really our fault. We copied it from
the Romanian Wikipedia, so if anything doesn't make sense, it's not
our doing.

Mark

--
"Take away their language, destroy their souls." -- Joseph Stalin


from_name: Barry

subject: [WikiEN-l] Did 71.247.13.53 deserve being blocked?

body:
I tried starting a discussion over whether my edit should have been removed,
but I discovered I was blocked by Brian0918 for vandalism. In my edit I
fixed a couple of typos in my post, which I assume wasn't the problem. I
also moved Hamletta's comment from between two paragraphs of my comment to
right after my comment. I used unconventional code to make that work because
otherwise it was spaced too far from my comment. This is what it looked like
in the edit box (between the dashes):

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

Y'all it's a lie. Siegenthaler did not move to the Soviet Union, and he
didn't start a PR firm. He was the editor, then publisher, then publisher
emeritus of ''The Tennessean'' up till he started the Freedom Forum. Any
newspaper reader in Nashville could tell you that. And you damn well better
have some proof that he was "thought to be involved" in the Kennedy
assinations, because I call horse puckey. No, this bio was a malicious lie
conjured up in some hateful person's fevered imagination.

::::::[[User:Hamletta|Hamletta]] 07:17, 4 December 2005 (UTC)
--------------------

After Hamletta's comment, I added my own comment (between the dashes):

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

Are people allowed to insert their comment in the middle of someone
else's, like Hamletta did? That could get messy if everyone wants attention
like that. Oh, think I know why Hamletta did that. The spacing gets messed
up otherwise. I used a HTML list and CSS to fix it. Works in IE and Firefox.
Use of the asterisks to indicate a bullet should probably be avoided until
it's fixed and can be used when a comment contains multiple paragraphs
without spacing getting messed up. I'll continue to use it in this thread
for consistency.

:::::::More on topic...I believe so strongly that information in Wikipedia
should be confirmed that despite my comment titled The name and the sponsors
at [[Talk:Bipartisan_Campaign_Reform_Act]], I didn't edit the article at
all. There were a couple of things that I felt pretty strongly should be
changed, but despite my research and a quote from Library of Congress staff,
I thought it should go through some more checks and balances.

:::::::Barry ~~~~~
--------------------

You can find the above content in the too-difficult-to-figure-out history
page at
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:John_Seigenthaler_Sr.&diff=prev&oldid=30113532 .

I think I gave a useful formatting tip that also explained my edit and could
prevent spacing problems and having to comment within another comment, and I
gave my opinion on how careful people should be before editing an article.
Strict content standards are best left for the articles, not the discussion.

Barry
http://www.polisource.com

--
No virus found in this outgoing message.
Checked by AVG Free Edition.
Version: 7.1.362 / Virus Database: 267.13.11/191 - Release Date: 12/2/2005


from_name: Timwi

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Messages

body:
> Also, http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/How_to_become_a_MediaWiki_hacker
> recommends creating a patch and posting it at bugzilla, but I'm on
> Windows - how do I create a cvs diff in this environment?

I'm also on Windows, but for hacker tools like CVS I strongly recommend
using the command line. If you already have a Windows CVS program
installed, it will probably come with a Windows port of the 'cvs'
command-line tool. Find it (should be called cvs.exe) and use "cvs diff
-u <filename>" while you are in the appropriate subdirectory that
contains the file. You can also be in a parent directory and use
relative paths.

Timwi


from_name: Dirk Riehle

subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Sources and sourceability

body:
The NY Times picked up the Seigenthaler story:

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/04/weekinreview/04seelye.html

The following statement stroke me as interesting:

"On an electronic mailing list for them, J. Stephen Bolhafner, a news
researcher at The St. Louis Post-Dispatch, wrote, "The best defense
of the Wikipedia, frankly, is to point out how much bad information
is available from supposedly reliable sources."

I think this doesn't invalidate the use or importance of citing
sources and steadily improving quality, but just emphasizes how
Wikipedia needs to get users to think for themselves. That may be
obvious for everyone here but maybe not for the rest of the world.

Overall, the article is reasonably friendly, IMO.

Dirk


from_name: Sam Korn

body:
On 12/3/05, Daniel Mayer <maveric149 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> The next Wikimedia fund drive will start on Friday 9 December and will end on Saturday 31
> December. There is no specific goal, but we would like to at least cover the budget for the rest
> of this year and the first quarter of next year. That means we need at least $500,000.

Are we accepting credit card donations yet?

--
Sam


from_name: Stan Shebs

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: yet another image lost for posterity

body:
Steve Block wrote:

> Perhaps the way to square this is that for all images tagged with any
> fair use tag but fairusein, we follow the links to the articles to
> which it is linked and place a template on the linking articles talk
> page to the effect that the image should be tagged with fairusein and
> that an argument for such fairuse should be made on the image
> description page.  Would there also be agreement on requiring a
> timelimit within which this should happen, somewhere between a week
> and a month perhaps?
>
> With fair use and related tagged images which are orphan, including
> those not in the article space, perhaps we need to start tagging
> uploader talk pages notifying them that the image will be deleted if
> not tagged with fairusein and used within the body of an article.  I
> can understand both sides of this argument, and it seems that this
> might be the best way to solve the problems posted to this list recently.

I've been on a fair-use-crunching jag for a couple days now, and I'm
not actually seeing very many orphans in the generic fair use category;
in general they are one-picture-one-article, with the hardest problem
being to figure out if a picture is a legitimate promotional image or
something stolen from a magazine or news agency.

The bigger mess I see is large piles of artwork from within games or
anime - pictures of seemingly every object and character in a work,
displayed in lengthy list/gallery articles. Seems like it really pushes
the bounds of fair use, and yet it's hard to imagine the copyright
holders ever complaining much ("what's that you say? WP is using our
artwork to illustrate extended quasi-advertising articles for
''EverFinal Half-Life of Gundam Doom XXIII''? And for free? Excellent!")

Stan


from_name: Alfio Puglisi

subject: [Wikitech-l] remote loading

body:
This web site:

http://www.pakaf.com/read/

Seems to be a live mirror, loading articles from wikipedia in realtime
with no attribution. For example:

http://www.pakaf.com/read/Bullington,_Hampshire

an article that was created today.

Alfio


from_name: Ashar Voultoiz

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: remote loading

body:
Alfio Puglisi wrote:
> This web site:
>
> http://www.pakaf.com/read/
>
> Seems to be a live mirror, loading articles from wikipedia in realtime
> with no attribution. For example:
>
> http://www.pakaf.com/read/Bullington,_Hampshire
>
> an article that was created today.

Added it to squid.conf , need to be deployed though.

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


from_name: Angela

subject: [Wikitech-l] Messages

body:
On 12/4/05, Stephen Bain <stephen.bain at gmail.com> wrote:

> Also, http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/How_to_become_a_MediaWiki_hacker
> recommends creating a patch and posting it at bugzilla, but I'm on
> Windows - how do I create a cvs diff in this environment?

You can do it using <http://www.tortoisecvs.org/>, a GPL CVS tool for Windows.

Angela.


body:
On 12/4/05, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 12/4/05, Tony Sidaway <f.crdfa at gmail.com> wrote:
> > In my opinion this is going far too far.  Until recently, copyright
> > infringements had been dealt with perfectly well by listing the
> > material of [[Wikipedia:Copyright problems]].
>
> No they were not.
>
>
> --
> geni
I think a lot of people will want to see a more reasoned explanation
of that claim.

Personally, I think (as I said before) that having potential copyvios
stick around for too long hurts WP, but the idea Keith suggested about
shortening the period they're kept looks fine to me. It's not like a
lot of effort went into copy-pasting and such material is easily
retrievable if requested.

Mgm


subject: [Wikitech-l] Messages

body:
On 12/4/05, Angela <beesley at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 12/4/05, Stephen Bain <stephen.bain at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Also, http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/How_to_become_a_MediaWiki_hacker
> > recommends creating a patch and posting it at bugzilla, but I'm on
> > Windows - how do I create a cvs diff in this environment?
>
> You can do it using <http://www.tortoisecvs.org/>, a GPL CVS tool for Windows.

Tortoise CVS works very well, but for diffs and other cvs features on
windows you need to install the windows port of binutils (for example
from http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=2435 ).

Alfio


body:
On 12/4/05, MacGyverMagic/Mgm <macgyvermagic at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 12/4/05, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 12/4/05, Tony Sidaway <f.crdfa at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > In my opinion this is going far too far.  Until recently, copyright
> > > infringements had been dealt with perfectly well by listing the
> > > material of [[Wikipedia:Copyright problems]].
> >
> > No they were not.
> >
> >
> > --
> > geni
> I think a lot of people will want to see a more reasoned explanation
> of that claim.
>

Backlog at CP and a heck of a lot were missed. A few turned up at
cleanup wikify.

--
geni


from_name: David Gerard

body:
Alex Schenck wrote:

> I will copy what I wrote to David here...
> I want to ask for your opinion here. I was feeling brave this morning and
> decided to see if I could make a dent in Category:Wikipedia
> backlog<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Wikipedia_backlog>.
> After looking at about 25 articles with the wikification tag attached to
> them, and being so disgusted with the lot as to be unable to make a *single*
> change, something major hit me.
> We need to, as one might say, flush the crap down the toilet. Allow me to
> explain.

I replied on [[User talk:David Gerard]] as well. I suspect flooding AFD
with this stuff will just piss people off. OTOH, it's probably not
speedyable.

Most of these articles are on topics that *do clearly deserve an
article* and would probably survive AFD because of that. The actual
articles are horrible.

All the people on this list who have complained we need a higher drive
for quality. Go to [[Category:Wikipedia backlog]] and fix a pile of
articles. Get together a WikiProject to Fix Crappy Prose.

Any takers?

(note me not waving my own hand)

- d.


body:
On 12/1/05, Alex Schenck <linuxbeak at gmail.com> wrote:
> Now, with that said, I need feedback. Please provide.
>
> --Linuxbeak

Well as a deltionist admin even I feel you are going a little far.
While I seem to recall that uncyclopedia did have a few weeks in which
they cleared out at lot of rubish by allowing the admins to delete
anything they felt was not up to par I don't think this would work on
wikipedia.

My personal answer is that we should make it harder to create new
articles in the first place. Probably by restricting the creating of
orphans. Don't ask me how to do that though.

--
geni


body:
On 12/1/05, poore5 at adelphia.net <poore5 at adelphia.net> wrote:
> Hello,
>
> Advice please.
>
> During a bout of Insomnia-Induced Insanity, I did a major expansion of the article about David Hager. Hager is the controversial fellow that Bush appointed to the FDA committee on Reproductive Health Drugs. (Self-disclosure: We both live in central Kentucky and our paths crossed through our professions from mid 80's - mid 90's.) Being a controversial figure, I was prepared to deal with POV crap. However, I never thought anyone would put him on a list of convicted rapists. Of course, I immediately took his name off the list. He was on the list for less than five hours, from Dec. 1 00:58 to 05:19. This brings up several issues.
>
> 1. Was this information spread to other web sites like Answers.com? Who do I ask to find out?
>

That is quite a difficult question to answer. For the most part no
since I doubt it will have been included in a datebase dump however
there are some sites that apear to pick up our content live

> 2. Do we all agree that this is a BIG problem. Can you imagine what would happen if another major media source published Hager's name on a list of convicted rapists?
>

There are bigger problems but yes it is a big problem

> 2. How do I (hopefully, we) stop this unregistered user (or any other) from doing this again? Being very, very generous, I will assume this was an isolated incidence of poor judgment. This doesn't change the fact that this libelous misinformation appeared in OUR encyclopedia.
>

We can't.

>  3. I can't unring this bell. The Wikipedia article is listed 6 in an Yahoo search of the words David Hager. Being a registered user, I will be associated with this article forever. While, an unregistered user can damage Wikipedia, Hager, and me.
>
> Immediate solution? Ask everyone here to put his name on your watch list.
> Long term solution???.
>
> SP AKA FloNight

No long term solution currently exists.

--
geni


body:
>  - There are people who think that Moldovan is a distinct language. There are people who think that Moldovan is simply different name for the Romanian. Everybody knows however that both Romanian and Moldovan are generally written in Latin script.

This is an incorrect opinion. Yes, the majority do use Latin, but many
still use Cyrillic.

>  - Nevertheless,  on Wikipedia's homepage "Moldovenească" in not written in Latin script, like the Moldovan society has determined but in Cyrillic script like it was decreed in the unfree days of the Soviet union when the people of Moldova was not allowed to decide for themselves.

As noted previously, Cyrillic is still used by many in Moldova proper,
and by a majority in Trasnistria.

>  - This gives the Moldovan internet user a bad impression of Wikipedia and irritates him or her because they can think that Wikipedia ignores what the independent nation of Moldova decides and rather goes by the standard from the Soviet era.

...

>  - Now, if that user clicks on that cyrillic "Moldovenească", he is taken to a page that tells him to make a decision if he prefers the Latin or the Cyrillic script.

...

>  - What happens next is the following: If that user choses Latin (i. e. the standard script), he is told that his language is now considered Romanian by Wikipedia and taken to the Romanian Wikipedia. If, however the user should decide for some reason that he prefers Cyrillic (official script during the Soviet era),  Wikipedia  _now_  considers  his language Moldovan and he is taken to a Wikipedia named "Moldovenească".

No, it doesn't say that Wikipedia considers his language Romanian. It
just says, "If you want to look at the Moldovan Wikipedia in the Latin
alphabet, please visit the Romanian Wikipedia". It used to say "Please
click here", but this was changed, due to pressure from one Moldovan
and 3 Romanians.

>  - And finally he realizes that this wiki that uses the Soviet standard which became suspended one and a half decades ago is given the subdomain "mo" (code reserved for Moldovan which is by default written in Latin script) by Wikipedia!

Not sure where you're getting the idea that nobody uses Cyrillic.

>  Is there anybody who does _not_ understand why a large number of users from the region are upset by this weird arrangement?

"A large number of users"? So far, I've observed a plethora of
Romanians who are upset, and a handful of Moldovans. This totally
ignores the fact that there are Moldovans who collaborate to mo.wiki,
and there has been a small volume of positive feedback.

>  In a nutshell, Wikipedia currently delivers this message to users from Moldova:
>  "If you're using the Latin script (like your national constitution says and like the majority of your compatriots do) we'll call your language Romanian but in case you should use Cyrillic, then we'll consider your language Moldovan".

What the language is called when written in Latin script is entirely
up to ro.wiki.

>  Is there anybody who thinks that there is no need to correct this awkward situation?

The situation was already discussed extensively by myself, other
Moldovans both in Moldova and abroad, and Romanians. The current
solution was arrived at.

The OLD solution was that the mainpage of mo.wiki was all Cyrillic.
And didn't you notice the Sitenotice? It says, in bold, "If you wanna
read WP in Latin, the official script of the Moldovan Republic, please
go to ro.wiki"

Mark

--
"Take away their language, destroy their souls." -- Joseph Stalin


from_name: Ray Saintonge

body:
Matt Brown wrote:

>On 12/4/05, stevertigo <vertigosteve at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>
>>And that takes care of that.
>>
>>
>Not exactly, but it renders it a much more complicated case than ones
>where negative statements about a public figure are unsourced.  Since
>they are sourced in this case, the question becomes: does this article
>meet NPOV?  I haven't researched the article or the subject enough to
>know for sure.
>
>
In some respects the Seigenthaler case is easier to deal with, *because*
it was anonymous and unsourced.  We don't even have evidence that there
were rumours circulating at the time.

Sourced stories of an accusations are a bigger problem.  A newspaper may
report a perfectly verifiable fact that someone was arrested for rape.
When he is released after spending one night in jail no newspaper
reports it.  There is no subsequent trial so there is nothing to report
there.  There is more to this issue than sourcing.

Ec


from_name: Keith Old

subject: [WikiEN-l] Fwd: Google Alert - Wikipedia

body:
Today's news clips including the New York Times take on Seigenthaler
although you have to be registered to read it.

Regards

Keith Old

Keith Old
User:Capitalistroadster
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Google Alerts <googlealerts-noreply at google.com>
Date: Dec 4, 2005 3:05 PM
Subject: Google Alert - Wikipedia
To: keithold at gmail.com

Google Alert for: *Wikipedia*

Rewriting History Snared in the Web of a *Wikipedia*
Liar<http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/04/weekinreview/04seelye.html>
New York Times - United States
ACCORDING to *Wikipedia*, the online encyclopedia, John Seigenthaler Sr. is
78 years old and the former editor of The Tennessean in Nashville. *...*

*Wikipedia*: A Techno-Cult of
Ignorance<http://www.zpenergy.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=1635>
ZPEnergy - USA
*...* scientists and their efforts than on creating an encyclopedic article,
but also part of a general fanaticism displayed on all *Wikipedia* entries
relating to new *...*

USATODAY.com - A false *Wikipedia*
'biography'<http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/editorials/2005-11-29-wikipedia-edit_x.htm>
This is a highly personal story about Internet character assassination. It
could
be your story.

------------------------------
 This as-it-happens Google Alert is brought to you by Google.

Remove <http://www.google.com/alerts/remove?s=9a4f2425fa5d9963&hl=en> this
alert.
Create <http://www.google.com/alerts?hl=en> another alert.
Manage <http://www.google.com/alerts/manage?hl=en> your alerts.


body:
> After further reflection, you're right.  I was wrong for making those
> statements, and I apologize to both Angela and Jimbo for the
> statements I made.

Thank you for the apology, Anthony. I appreciate it. Thanks also to
those who defended me on this list. My intention was certainly not to
advertise.

Angela


from_name: Magnus Manske

subject:
[Wikitech-l] Wikidata on Rails [was:
	Re:	Possible	Wikidata	component: JSONwidget]

body:
David Gerard wrote:
> Erik Moeller wrote:
>
>> Gregory Maxwell:
>>
>
>
>>> For every wikidata table there are actually two tables in the
>>> database, a item table and a revision table.  In item, the key will be
>>> constrained to be unique and non-null, in the revision table it will
>>> be just non-null.
>>> Generally just follow mediawiki for the fields, but rather than text
>>> have your data fields.
>>>
>
>
>> The scenario of having a basically flat table that is versioned is a
>> simple one. It gets tricky when you have 20 tables which are in complex
>> relations with each other, and you want to revert or view a particular
>> revision. Note that even our current MediaWiki is broken in this respect
>> - when you view an old version of a page, you see it with the latest
>> versions of the templates it uses, which can lead to very funny results.
>>
>
>
> This is mentioned on [[m:Article validation possible problems]] - you
> can't really rate a particular version going back too far sensibly as
> it'll show the current version of any templates.
>
Another advantage an import-only site would have - change of templates
is controlled.

BTW, the "staticwiki.php" extension now fully works for text imports.
Image imports are not supported yet.

Magnus


from_name: Chris Jenkinson

subject: [WikiEN-l] Please unblock me

body:
Jeff McCready wrote:
> To Whom it May Concern:
>
>   I was unfairly blocked by nandesuka for allegedly violating the 3-revert rule.  I only reverted once.  In no way did I revert four times in a 24-hour period (or any other period for that matter).  I was unaware of the 3-revert rule prior to this incident.  I have since registered for an account with wikipedia and have become a subscriber to wikien.  I enjoy wikipedia and I like to correct errors which I have located with a high amount of frequency.
>
>   Yours truly,
>
>   neodanite

What's your username?

Chris


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject:
[Wikitech-l] Brion,
	could you please undo your halfbaked 'improvement' on EasyTimeline

body:
epzachte at chello.nl wrote:
> Brion, since you quoted it to someone else, you read my previous post about
> what is wrong with your quick and dirty patch.

I applied someone else's patch by their request. If you've got an improved
version, please send it over.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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body:
Sam Korn wrote:
> On 12/3/05, Daniel Mayer <maveric149 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>> The next Wikimedia fund drive will start on Friday 9 December and will end on Saturday 31
>> December. There is no specific goal, but we would like to at least cover the budget for the rest
>> of this year and the first quarter of next year. That means we need at least $500,000.
>
> Are we accepting credit card donations yet?

We have accepted credit card donations for years, via PayPal's interface.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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