from_name: Ray Saintonge

body:
Steve Block wrote:

> Jimmy Wales wrote:
>
>> JAY JG wrote:
>>
>>> I've been have a months-long debate with another editor on this
>>> topic. I've been stating that we include people in "Criminals"
>>> categories if
>>> they have been convicted of a crime by an independent judiciary.  The
>>> other editor insists that we have to decide (by some means) whether or
>>> not they have actually committed a crime, conviction is not enough a
>>> good enough yardstick.  I'd be interested in other thoughts here.
>>
>> I have a simple thought.  My simple thought is that of course you are
>> right. :-)
>
> I agree with you, but community consensus doesn't.  I recently tried
> to get the criminal categories renamed to include the words convicted
> but was told that was unworkable since Butch Cassiday was never
> convicted, or something.
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Categories_for_deletion/Log/2005_November_15#Criminals

I just added my vote in favour of the change.  Maybe more of us who
weren't aware of the vote when it was started should do that, and not be
deterred by an artificial deadline.

If Butch Cassidy wasn't convicted that decides it unless there are other
*clearly* defined criteria.. I think it's important to be scrupulous in
avoiding a lynch mob mentality.

BTW I see that Martha Stewart is not in the Criminal category even
though she was convicted.

Ec


list: wikien-l

source: pipermail-mbox

subject: [WikiEN-l] Experiment on new pages

body:
BJ?rn Lindqvist wrote:

>>If we diagnose what went wrong in the Seigenthaler case, this seems like
>>a very opportune place to try a small change of policy.
>>
>>1. First, the Seigenthaler article was created by an anon.
>>
>>
>
>What does that have to do with anything? Please assume good faith. The
>person who wrote the text might have gotten Seigenthaler mixed up with
>another person who might actually have been suspected of being a
>Soviet spy etc. A registered user could aswell have made the same
>mistake. I certainly had no idea who this Seigenthaler dude was and
>wouldn't have been able to spot the errors in the article. Now I know
>- he's a litigous asshole looking for revenge. What was written about
>him on Wikipedia is peanuts compared to how the printed press
>regularily treats famous persons. He should consider himself lucky if
>involvement in the Kennedy assassination is the worst be has been
>accused for.
>
It seems to me that these comments are far more libellous than what was
in the article.  At least the article stated that the charges were found
to be in error.  Do you have any proof at all for your statement that
"he's a litigous asshole looking for revenge."  A truly litigious person
would have fun with that comment, and the fact that it was made on the
mailing list would be no excuse.

Ec


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Travis Derouin

body:
Hey Brion,

Doh! It does look like the UTM code that Google Analytics uses does
cookie anonymous users, will this prevent us from configuring Squid
properly? The cookies won't affect the display of the pages loaded, is
there a way to ignore a set of cookies that start with __utm in the
context of the cache?

Travis

> Message: 10
> Date: Mon, 05 Dec 2005 11:32:34 -0800
> From: Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com>
> Subject: Re: [Wikitech-l] Squid configuration problem
> To: Wikimedia developers <wikitech-l at wikimedia.org>
> Message-ID: <439495D2.3050400 at pobox.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
>
> Travis Derouin wrote:
> > Hey,
> >
> > Does anyone have any suggestions about configuring Squid in reverse proxy
> > for MW? We're seeing that our articles aren't being cached and Squid is
> > still making several requests per second for the same article, despite
> > configuring Squid as instructed at meta.wikimedia.org. Here are our
> > settings:
> >
> >  $wgUseSquid = true;
> >  $wgUseESI = false;
> >  $wgInternalServer = $wgServer;
> > $wgSquidMaxage = 18000;
> > $wgSquidServers = array('10.234.169.202');
> > $wgSquidServersNoPurge = array();
> > $wgMaxSquidPurgeTitles = 400;
> > $wgSquidFastPurge = true;
> >
> > Squid and Apache are running on different machines, and we're seeing several
> > 200 response codes for unchanged articles from Apache, even in a small time
> > span of a few minutes. While the apache load has been reduced, we should be
> > seeing Squid handling more of the serving of normal article pages, instead
> > of forwarding the request to Apache almost 100% of the time.
>
> Can you confirm that anonymous users have no cookies? If you manually hit the
> server with manual HTTP can you confirm cache hits/misses?
>
> -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
>
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from_name: Justin Cormack

subject: [WikiEN-l] Jimbo/Seigenthaler CNN interview transcript

body:
On 6 Dec 2005, at 13:42, Fred Bauder wrote:

> I think this is a clear case of fair use. It serves a public
> purpose. There is a problem and we all need to hear about it.
>

fair use says nothing about public purpose. Now a few excerpts would
be ok, but not the whole
thing. You can hear about it from CNN.

Justinc


from_name: Mark Ryan

subject: [WikiEN-l] A note on how the list moderation works

body:
On 12/6/05, A. Nony Mouse <mousyme at gmail.com> wrote:
> In other words, it's a perfect way to keep ACTUAL debate from happening.

>From what I can see, the list is replete with actual debates going on
all the time. In the past year and a half, since I became list admin,
there has been 2392 discrete conversation threads, if Gmail is to be
trusted. Sounds pretty healthy to me.

~Mark Ryan


from_name: Chuck Smith

subject: [Wikitech-l] Java code to convert HTML to Wiki syntax?

body:
I am currently working on a Java applet for JSP wiki which I would
eventually like to migrate for MediaWiki.  It highlights wiki syntax to make
it easier for people to learn and use wikis (for details see
http://www.jspwiki.org/wiki/WikiWizard).  Right now I want it to copy text
from MS Word and format it into wiki syntax.  I have already figured out how
to get the Word content from the clipboard as HTML (for details see
http://forum.java.sun.com/thread.jspa?threadID=688889) and I was wondering
if anyone knows of any open source Java code that converts HTML to wiki
syntax.  Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
Chuck

PS: For those interested in the differences between MediaWiki syntax and JSP
Wiki syntax, I have created the following page:
http://www.jspwiki.org/wiki/MigratingFromMediaWiki


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Magnus Manske

subject: [Wikipedia-l] road to stability, formatted. last kick-off posting.

body:
Kai Kumpf wrote:

>
>
> The rationale behind my suggestion is of course that articles that
> have matured over time are - statistically speaking - less likely to
> improve when large modifications are made than relatively new ones.
> Some of the articles have reached a stage where well-meant editing
> effectively mucks up the inner structure and logic.

Looking at our recent JFK-assassin mess, it doesn't need a large edit to
mess up an article. The jerk who submitted the misinformation just
needed "he was under investigation for killing JFK".

>
> So why not confer a little bit more of responsibility to the authors!?
> He/she could be aided by predefined lists, checkboxes, comboboxes (for
> ref.type, etc.). Asking a little more information from authors could
> be a substantial part of the rising editing threshold necessary for
> "cooling down" WP a bit.

Because
* /demanding/ things (which is effectifely what asking for sources boils
down to) from volunteers might cool edits more off than we'd like
* this can be gamed (mark it as a minor edit, or write "google" under
sources, or give some non-existing or out-of print book, or a book in an
obscure language, or set up your own fake page and then give it as
source, or...)

>
> I find myself increasingly involved in hunting down vandals and their
> work ? partly due to the ease of use WP offers for non-serious edits,
> too, and I can?t help feeling that a larger and larger part of WP
> keeps a larger and larger part of the community busy with just keeping
> up the existing standard. We mustn't be sure of still finding
> enthusiatic acclaim in the years to come when WP becomes a battlefield
> in a fight against distracting, redundant or plain wrong infobits.

As Brion already stated correctly, the current Wikipedia is an eternal
beta version. Validation (how's that coming, BTW?;-) will eventually
give some hints to the "end user", but it probably would not have caught
the JFK blunder either.

The only way to give Wikipedia a "quality assurance" (limited to human
errors, of course:-) would IMHO be a method where someone takes
*professional* (not financial or legal:-) responsibility for the quality
of an article. Also, this can't just be any user - user accounts are
created far too easily for this. It needs to be someone who has the
trust of the communtiy, someone with the "power" to say "this article
version is good as it is", without having to defent this against trolls
or revert-warring against vandals.

That directly leads to a (relatively) small, elite (!=cabal) group of
peer reviewers. The cathedral filtering the bazaar, as I said before.
This could be done externally (software's in the making), or within
wikipedia. The latter would be nicer, however, it might lead to more
conflict between those who can peer review and those who can not.

(It goes without saying that none of the above would alter the wiki in
any way; it would be an additional feature with no technical impact on
the normal Wikipedia editing).

I hope to have a demo site up shortly.

Magnus


body:
Kelly Martin wrote:

>On 12/6/05, Justin Cormack <justin at specialbusservice.com> wrote:
>
>
>>On 6 Dec 2005, at 13:42, Fred Bauder wrote:
>>
>>
>>>I think this is a clear case of fair use. It serves a public
>>>purpose. There is a problem and we all need to hear about it.
>>>
>>>
>>fair use says nothing about public purpose. Now a few excerpts would
>>be ok, but not the whole
>>thing. You can hear about it from CNN.
>>
>>
>Actually, a number of copyright law commentators have suggested that
>"public purpose" may be a legitimate restriction on exclusive rights,
>as a form of "fair use".  The claim was raised inartfully in RTC v.
>Henson, but I don't believe the court ever ruled on the merits of that
>claim (mainly because Henson is a freaking idiot).
>
The other factor is that the material is personal to Wikipedia.  This
would give us arguments for using it that would not be available to
others.  CNN would only have a legitimate claim on Kyra Phillips part of
the conversation since she is their employee.  Jimbo can still release
his part of the conversation under GFDL.  For that matter, so can
Seigenthaler.  I don't think that CNN would want this kind of fight.

Ec


from_name: Daniel Mayer

body:
--- Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com> wrote:

> Daniel Mayer wrote:
> > People would need to log in and change their
> > preferences to see stable versions by default (the other way around would hide vandalism in
> > the development version; besides, the most recent/up-to-date version should be on top anyway).

>
> IMHO the opposite needs to be true; reviewed, stable versions need to be right
> on top, as what the public sees by default.

And when they read something that needs to be fixed or added, they will be reading an older
version. Clicking 'edit' at that point would produce a confusing result; an article that would
likely have the fix or fact they wanted to added. Principle of least astonishment should rule
here. Also, the most up to date version should be, well, on top. Everything else is part of the
revision history. That just makes more intuitive sense to me.

> Sure, there'll be a big fat message showing that 78573 more edits have been made
> to [[George W. Bush]] since this reviewed version, with a handy link to go right
> to it and see the changes, but they're gonna see the stable copy first.

That would only *start* to make sense when more than a small fraction of articles are part of the
stable version. Otherwise there would be a confusing mix of stable and development versions
displayed to readers depending on if the article has a stable version or not.

We also still want to encourage further growth and improvement of articles that have stable
versions, no? Hiding the most recent version takes away the immediacy and instant self
gratification one gets when editing. It is a major hook to attract new editors (and until we get
our high turnover rate in check, we need to still encourage lots of new users to join).

This would also harm an area we are pretty good at: updating articles whose subject is in the
news. If stable versions were displayed by default, then any updates that reflect current events
would not be displayed until a new stable version is selected. That would either mean that we
would need to have very low standards on the selection of stable versions in order to keep up with
updates, or it would kill much of the motivation to update those articles in the first place (a
more rigorous selection process - which is what we want, right? - would be too slow to keep up).

> We've spent so much time hyping Wikipedia that it's become quite popular at its
> present location; a separate or hidden click-through stable set will basically
> never be seen and can't reasonably answer the (totally valid) criticisms that a
> reference site needs to be a little bit conservative on its public face.

The public face of Wikipedia has always been a work in progress. True, right now I think the
pendulum is too far to the openness and development side. But presenting stable versions by
default would fundamentally change the whole character of the project and swing the pendulum too
far in the other direction, IMO. At the very least we should start this the way I have set out:
Prominent links to the stable versions when they exist. We could also put ?under construction: you
can help!? icons on all the development versions.

In short: We should make it more obvious that development versions are just that *and* we should
give people the option to use stable versions (even the option to see those by default where they
exist or even to *only* see those versions). Adding to what we do now is what we need. Making
fundamental changes to what we now have, which has been rather successful, would, IMO, be a
mistake.

The goose that laid the golden egg does not need a sex change operation; she just needs a new set
of clothes and some additional tools to help in egg care.

> Most of those visitors *aren't* participating editors, and on a relatively
> mature site like en.wikipedia we need to recognize this and act accordingly to
> meet their requirements as well as those of visitors who start participating.

A fraction of readers stream-in as editors. But offering them a static website by default will
severely restrict that stream.

-- mav

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


from_name: Steve Block

subject: [WikiEN-l] Anons banned from creating articles

body:
The Cunctator wrote:
> On 12/5/05, John Lee <johnleemk at gawab.com> wrote:
>
>>http://news.com.com/Growing+pains+for+Wikipedia/2100-1025_3-5981119.html?tag=cd.top
>>
>>
>>Why were Wikipedians the last to know about this? I only saw some
>>discussion on the mailing list about this, but nothing final. Why do we
>>have to learn of this from the media instead of straight from Jimbo?
>>This is really disturbing.
>>
>
> Not only disturbing, but disappointing.
>
> I guess the only silver lining is that it helps confirm yet another
> cynical prediction I and others have made in the past.
>
> Four years ago, Jimbo wrote "Wikipedia should remain permanently open
> to everyone who is attempting to make a legitimate contribution." [1]
>
> I guess by "permanently" he meant "for a few more years" and by "open"
> he meant "restricted".

Could you clarify how anyone is prevented from making a contribution by
this experiment.  An anon editor simply creates an account and creates
the page.

--
No virus found in this outgoing message.
Checked by AVG Free Edition.
Version: 7.1.362 / Virus Database: 267.13.12/192 - Release Date: 05/12/05


from_name: Taco Deposit

subject: [WikiEN-l] About our disclaimer and what I wish...

body:
On 12/6/05, stevertigo <vertigosteve at yahoo.com> wrote:

> Would it make sense to have '[[Siegenthaler
> incident]]?' article on en.wiki? As always, NPOV would
> requires that we avoid unnecessarily diplomatic
> language.

There is an article at [[John Seigenthaler Sr. Wikipedia biography
controversy]]. It is up for deletion.

TD


from_name: Gerrit Holl

subject: [Wikitech-l] FW: Whitelisting 'members'

body:
Brion Vibber wrote:
> Gerrit Holl wrote:
> > This question belongs here, I believe. Would such a patch be possible?
>
> Is there some context? I have no idea what's being requested.

I want to patch Wikipedia's mailman to help moderation of the helpdesk-l
mailinglist. I want to automatically approve messages from senders whose
e-mail address is registered with a user account in the enwiki user
database. This would not completely solve the problem of the moderation
workload for helpdesk-l, but I think it would greatly reduce the
moderation workload. And many people respond to the 'held'-message,
which says helpdesk-l is moderated for non-members: "I am a member!"

The technical question is:

Is the user table from the enwiki database accessible from the server
running the helpdesk-l mailing list?

Would such a patch be accepted (after local testing, of course)?

Sorry for being unclear originally.

kind regards,
Gerrit Holl.

--
Temperature in Lule?, Norrbotten, Sweden:
| Current temperature   05-12-06 14:29:49   -7.0 degrees Celsius ( 19.4F) |
--
Det finns inte d?ligt v?der, bara d?liga kl?der.
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from_name: Andrew Venier

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Experiment on new pages

body:
Kelly Martin wrote:
> On 12/5/05, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> On 12/6/05, Fastfission <fastfission at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> On a similar topic -- are there any tool for automatic monitoring new
>>> page creation?
>>>
>>>
>> With the current level of NP patrol I don't think it is needed.
>>
>
> I fully disagree; and even if it's sufficient at this level it won't
> be when it's twice what it is now.
>
I'm with Kelly on this.  Any tools that can assist new page patrolling
is beneficial.

People doing NP patrol do an excellent job, considering what they are up
against.  However, the sheer volume of inbound nonsense means that even
if NP patrollers eliminate most of it, significant amounts survive.

One approach I sometimes take is to go 24 to 48 hours into the new pages
log and do a sort of second round patrolling.  The second round can be
more careful because the first round (standard) NP patrol has taken care
of the bulk of the problems.


subject:
[WikiEN-l] [[Wikipedia:Articles for creation]] for anonymous
	creation of articles

body:
Stan Shebs wrote:
> >
> >Um, in what way is this easier than, well, creating an account?
> >
> It's not, but there are a remarkable number of longtime good editors
> who apparently do not want to create accounts (I've come to recognize
> some familiar IPs). Part of the experiment is to see what anons decide
> to do when a restriction is applied - for instance, if we get a surge
> in throwaway logins and no benefit in content quality, that might
> suggest the problem is with pseudonymy rather than anonymity.

Can't we change the rule "anon's can't create pages" to "anons with
editcount<x timespan <y" can't create pages?

Gerrit.

--
Temperature in Lule?, Norrbotten, Sweden:
| Current temperature   05-12-06 14:39:53   -7.0 degrees Celsius ( 19.3F) |
--
Det finns inte d?ligt v?der, bara d?liga kl?der.


subject: [Wikitech-l] Squid configuration problem

body:
Hey,

No, this is for our site wikiHow (http://wiki.ehow.com)

I'm trying to find out from Google whether filtering out the cookies will be
pointless, I know our PHP code doesn't use them and since it's javascript
code, I don't see how we would lose anything by not having GA cookies reach
our Apache server.

Thanks,
Travis

On 12/6/05, Tels <nospam-abuse at bloodgate.com> wrote:
>
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
>
> Moin,
>
> On Tuesday 06 December 2005 19:47, Travis Derouin wrote:
> > Hey Brion,
> >
> > Doh! It does look like the UTM code that Google Analytics uses does
> > cookie anonymous users, will this prevent us from configuring Squid
> > properly? The cookies won't affect the display of the pages loaded, is
> > there a way to ignore a set of cookies that start with __utm in the
> > context of the cache?
>
> * Are you talking about your own mediawiki installation or wikipedia?
> * If wikipedia, why is Google analytics even included?
> * Wouldn't filtering the cookies make the inclusion of GA pointless?
>
> I know why I personally filter GA out - including third-party JS code in a
> webpage is a receipe rife for desaster....
>
> Best wishes,
>
> Tels
>
> - --
> Signed on Tue Dec  6 20:14:11 2005 with key 0x93B84C15.
> Visit my photo gallery at http://bloodgate.com/photos/
> PGP key on http://bloodgate.com/tels.asc or per email.
>
> "In 1988, Jack Thompson ran against Janet Reno for DA of Dade County:
> Thompson's unique campaign message was that Reno was unfit for the job
> because, as a closeted lesbian with a drinking problem, she was great
> candidate for blackmail by the criminal element. Jack never explained
> why this remained a threat even after he exposed her 'secret'. Reno
> cruised at the polls."
>
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
> Version: GnuPG v1.2.4 (GNU/Linux)
>
> iQEVAwUBQ5XjnXcLPEOTuEwVAQGeEQf+K9WbLHbJ+EwbO1ou/cOl/lmEdVmYtKB1
> wO9FU1g9qL4htYd+xsKdMAzNdpzlUuYinUl4f+QKYotnBiws+WV8f2X5jGUl3QxB
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> =HcpI
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>


body:
Replying to myself for update: You can now try out an external
import-only site at:

http://magnusmanske.de/wikipeerdia

("wikipeerdia" was jokingly suggested by Brion a long time ago :-)

How-to:
* For testing, anyone can import
* Importing is done by clicking on a red link, or on "edit" on an
existing page
* The import page will show the current en.wikipedia version
* You can chose another version in the column on the right
* Click the "import" link for the version you want to import
* The import will show up as an edit, with the version ID in the comment

Currently, main namespace, categories, and templates are imported. Other
namespaces, as well as all talk pages, can be edited normally.

Image import - not yet.

Give it a try and tell me what you think!

Magnus


from_name: geni

subject: [WikiEN-l] One question

body:
On 12/6/05, The Cunctator <cunctator at gmail.com> wrote:
> Before John Siegenthaler had his conniption, how many people viewed
> his article in the five months that the evil, terrible rumor that he
> (like everyone else) may have killed Kennedy was up?
>
> Yes, I have limited sympathy for him, so I apologize in advance for the sarcasm.
>
> I really would like to know the page views on the article.

I doubt there is any way to find out though.

--
geni


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Experiment on new pages

body:
Fastfission wrote:
> On a similar topic -- are there any tool for automatic monitoring new
> page creation?

Yeah, I created something for this purpose once but I didn't maintain
it. It's part wf pywikipedia and is called followlive.py. It needs
maintenance because it currently does only {{stub}}, {{cleanup}} or
{{delete}}.

Gerrit.

--
Temperature in Lule?, Norrbotten, Sweden:
| Current temperature   05-12-06 15:00:00   -6.9 degrees Celsius ( 19.6F) |
--
Det finns inte d?ligt v?der, bara d?liga kl?der.


from_name: Timwi

subject:
[Wikitech-l] Re: RfC regarding technical problems of Wikipedia
	(Mediawiki ??)

body:
> Wikipedia articles are all works-in-progress. [...] Do keep this in
> mind; people seem to forget it.

Yes -- this is what I meant when I said that there has been a decline of
eventualist attitude on Wikipedia.


from_name: Brion Vibber

body:
Daniel Mayer wrote:
> --- Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com> wrote:
>> Daniel Mayer wrote:
>>> People would need to log in and change their
>>> preferences to see stable versions by default (the other way around would hide vandalism in
>>> the development version; besides, the most recent/up-to-date version should be on top anyway).
>
>> IMHO the opposite needs to be true; reviewed, stable versions need to be right
>> on top, as what the public sees by default.
>
> And when they read something that needs to be fixed or added, they will be reading an older
> version. Clicking 'edit' at that point would produce a confusing result;

If you were to dive into the editing world, you'd first be taken to the current
development version. Principal of least astonishment, after all!

> That would only *start* to make sense when more than a small fraction of articles are part of the
> stable version.

It starts to make sense *the second* we're seen as serving the general public.
That time is already past; the foundation and many volunteers have favored
publicity and we're very much in the public eye as a resource, not so much as an
in-progress effort. We've not stepped up to our responsibilities to be clear
about what we are and what we provide; either we need to put a big "Bug off!" on
every page and tell everyone to go away while we play around for another five
years, or we need to get serious about being a public resource.

> Otherwise there would be a confusing mix of stable and development versions
> displayed to readers depending on if the article has a stable version or not.
>
> We also still want to encourage further growth and improvement of articles that have stable
> versions, no? Hiding the most recent version takes away the immediacy and instant self
> gratification one gets when editing. It is a major hook to attract new editors (and until we get
> our high turnover rate in check, we need to still encourage lots of new users to join).

The time is past that we can pretend we're just a few geeks editing for fun. To
serve the public -- and that *is* the point of an encyclopedia -- we need
public-facing pages that have been reviewed.

> This would also harm an area we are pretty good at: updating articles whose subject is in the
> news.

Those same articles will be very actively worked on by reviewers, I have no
doubt. If they are in fact slower to update, THEN GOOD! We *need* to be slower
to update.

We *need* to be more careful and deliberate.

We *need* to be more selective.

We *need* to be less of a crap conduit.

Explosive growth is *not* our primary concern today. We already have way too
many articles; we need to concentrate on quality. Concentrating on "growth" will
just keep us in the death spiral we're in now.

> The public face of Wikipedia has always been a work in progress. True, right now I think the
> pendulum is too far to the openness and development side. But presenting stable versions by
> default would fundamentally change the whole character of the project

Something which is necessary!

> and swing the pendulum too
> far in the other direction, IMO.

I disagree.

> A fraction of readers stream-in as editors. But offering them a static website by default will
> severely restrict that stream.

That'll be a good thing.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Why do we not make it clear that Wikipedia is a
	work in progress?

body:
Brion Vibber wrote:
> Why is there not a big, fat, clear warning at the top of every article that this
> is a work in progess, has not been formally reviewed, may contain factual
> inaccuracies or vandalism, and *should not* be used for reference without a very
> large grain of salt?

For enwiki, we can discuss this at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki_talk:Tagline#Work_in_progress
perhaps?

Gerrit.

--
Temperature in Lule?, Norrbotten, Sweden:
| Current temperature   05-12-06 15:09:50   -6.9 degrees Celsius ( 19.6F) |
--
Det finns inte d?ligt v?der, bara d?liga kl?der.
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body:
Magnus Manske wrote:
> * this can be gamed (mark it as a minor edit, or write "google" under
> sources, or give some non-existing or out-of print book, or a book in an
> obscure language, or set up your own fake page and then give it as
> source, or...)

What's wrong with using an out-of-print book as a source?
It might be the only source for this 18-people remote saami village in
the Kiruna municipality of Lapland?

> As Brion already stated correctly, the current Wikipedia is an eternal
> beta version. Validation (how's that coming, BTW?;-) will eventually
> give some hints to the "end user", but it probably would not have caught
> the JFK blunder either.

Parts look more like alpha than like beta to me.

> That directly leads to a (relatively) small, elite (!=cabal) group of
> peer reviewers. The cathedral filtering the bazaar, as I said before.
> This could be done externally (software's in the making), or within
> wikipedia. The latter would be nicer, however, it might lead to more
> conflict between those who can peer review and those who can not.

A problem with a bazaar is that the products sold might not conform to
the norms that current society holds.

Gerrit.

--
Temperature in Lule?, Norrbotten, Sweden:
| Current temperature   05-12-06 15:09:50   -6.9 degrees Celsius ( 19.6F) |
--
Det finns inte d?ligt v?der, bara d?liga kl?der.


body:
Magnus Manske wrote:
> Currently, main namespace, categories, and templates are imported. Other
> namespaces, as well as all talk pages, can be edited normally.
>
> Image import - not yet.
>
> Give it a try and tell me what you think!

Why does importing Current Events not work?
It's fun, btw!

Gerrit.

--
Temperature in Lule?, Norrbotten, Sweden:
| Current temperature   05-12-06 15:19:53   -6.9 degrees Celsius ( 19.7F) |
--
Det finns inte d?ligt v?der, bara d?liga kl?der.


from_name: David Gerard

subject: [WikiEN-l] NPOV trainwreck

body:
Sam Spade wrote:

>Thank you for clarifying my thesis:
>That those who describe others as "troublemakers" (esp. persons such
>as myself without any serious charges against them, past or present)
>are incapable of judging them neutrally. You have already made up your
>mind, evidence be damned. You solidify the bigotry by comparing me to
>those you have censured before. This Ivory Tower injustice cannot long
>last. Your prejudices and flippant generalisations underscore your
>inability to fairly judge better than any argument I could make.

Your post is long on ranting and notably short on evidence.

Please provide diffs illustrating your claim of conflict of interest.

- d.


list: foundation-l

from_name: Walter van Kalken

subject: [Foundation-l] Anons cannot create pages on english wikipedia?

body:
Jimmy Wales wrote:

>Jan Kulveit wrote:
>
>
>>This is interesting - is there some real statistic on how watched
>>articles are? I'm affraid there may be tens of thousand virtually
>>unwatched articles no active wikipedians care about.
>>
>>
>
>I think it would be excellent for us to study this.  What I have long
>dreamed of is a regularly published list of "the most read / least
>watched articles".  Take the number of pageviews divided by the number
>of watchers (plus one to prevent division by zero I guess).  Or some
>more sophisticated variant of that to take into account minimum
>thresholds of concern perhaps.
>
>
Unfortunately the pageview statistics are turned off :(

Waerth/Walter


list: wikimedia-l


from_name: Mark Williamson

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

body:
On 06/12/05, Wikipedia Romania (Ronline) <rowikipedia at gmail.com> wrote:
> Moldovan ethnicity separate of Romanian) will tell you that "Moldovans wanted self-determination from Romania, they were never forced by the 'liberating' Soviet Union". Well, that's just propaganda.

One thing I've heard from Romanians is that all Moldovenists are
actually Russians. That's certainly not true. The Moldovenist movement
is a movement with some support in the intellectual community but
admittedly only a minority, currently the trend in the Moldovan
intellectual community is to favour closer cultural ties with Romania
in a romanticist sort of way (referring to Romanians as "our
brothers", and saying that union with Romania "is our destiny", and
other things like that), but certainly the Moldovenist movement has
its supporters in academia.

And most Moldovenists are not Russian or Ukrainian. While
Russo-Moldovans and, to a lesser extent, Ukraino-Moldovans do seem to
believe in the concept of a separate Moldovan identity from Romania at
a much higher rate than do Moldovans, it's undeniable that some of the
most fervent supporters of the Moldovenist ideas are infact ethnically
Moldovan (don't call them Romanian because that will make them mad).

The most hysterically extreme Moldovenist publication in the
linguistic arena in the last few years is undeniably Vasile Stati's
"Dictsionar Moldovenesc-Romynesc". And he speaks in the preface about
"our Moldovan language" because it is, in fact, his native language.

But the vast majority of supporters of the Moldovenist hypotheses are
actually rural peasants, from what I heard. Even though their speech
is much closer to Romanians than the speech of cities, the country
bumpkins are apparently convinced that they are Moldovans and their
language, Moldovan.

And sure, it was impossible to support the theory of Moldovan and
Romanian ethnic unity until glasnost and perestroica.

Moldovenists might feel in the historical perspective that they were
liberated from Romania, but Moldovans who disagree with the
Moldovenist perspsective will tell you the opposite usually. So who is
right? I think it depends. Not everybody was happy when Bessarabia
united with Romania despite what some people will tell you -- there
really were those people who at the time supported continued
independence -- and it's conceivable that they were happy when their
nation was annexed back to Russia. But the people who were happy at
uniting with Romania certainly felt the opposite.

Mark

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


body:
177.204 vs 2,578,322 (I would dispute that number based on literacy
rates, and the fact that some people are literate in Cyrillic but not
Latin in the countryside)... I don't see a reason why the
approximately 6,4 % of all "Moldovan" speakers should just be ignored.
Do you have one?

Yes, they're not the majority. That's why it's a biscriptal portal,
and cyrillic is placed _second_

Mark

On 06/12/05, Adrenalin <adrenalinup at gmail.com> wrote:
> Let's admit what Moldavian people from Transnistria use the cyrillic
> script, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transnistria#2004_census
>
> Transnistrian 2004 census:
>    * Total population (including Tighina): 555.500
>    * Moldovans: 31.9%
>
> That's 177.204 Moldovans ppl, what are forced to use the Cyrillic
> alphabet. (forced? see here
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transnistria#Political_status). But i'm
> still not sure what they all write in Cyrillic.
>
> Now let's see how many Moldovans use the latin script.
> (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moldova#Ethnic_composition)
> According to the 2004 census Moldovans: 76.1% from 3,388,071 ppl.
> That's 2,578,322 of Moldovans what use latin script in write. And
> since Moldovian language are the only official language in Moldova,
> the other 23,9% also must know to speak and write the official
> language using official script.
>
> So we see:
> In Transnistria, people what are forced to write the Moldovian
> language in Cyrillic: 177.204
> In Moldova, people what write his language in latin: 2,578,322 (or even more).
>
> So why must 2,578,322 of ppl to see his language in cyrillic on
> Wikipedia just because of the Transnistrian 177.204 Moldovans what are
> forced by a internationally unrecognised state maintained by Russian
> forces(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transnistria) to use cyrillic ?
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

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


from_name: Oskar Sigvardsson

body:
"Had this discussion been on aired on wikinews, such an error would
quickly have been corrected."

What, wait? Not applicable? Damn.... I love that argument..................

On 12/6/05, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> "Now, you do have a general disclaimer on the site, it says that
> Wikipedia cannot guarantee the validity of the information found here,
> none of the authors, contributors, or anyone else connected with
> Wikipedia in any way whatsoever can be responsible for the appearance of
> any inaccurate or libellous information." - Kyra Phillips, talking to me
> on CNN
>
> I wish my response could have been:
>
> "Yes, Kyra, and let me read you the disclaimer from _your_ website:
> NEITHER CNN, ITS AFFILIATES NOR ANY OF THEIR RESPECTIVE EMPLOYEES,
> AGENTS, THIRD PARTY CONTENT PROVIDERS OR LICENSORS WARRANT THAT CNN
> INTERACTIVE WILL BE UNINTERRUPTED OR ERROR FREE; NOR DO THEY MAKE ANY
> WARRANTY AS TO THE RESULTS THAT MAY BE OBTAINED FROM USE OF CNN
> INTERACTIVE, OR AS TO THE ACCURACY, RELIABILITY OR CONTENT OF ANY
> INFORMATION, SERVICE, OR MERCHANDISE PROVIDED THROUGH CNN INTERACTIVE."
>
> But I didn't have that handy.
>
> --Jimbo
> _______________________________________________
> 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: Sam Spade

subject: [WikiEN-l] NPOV trainwreck

body:
Thank you for clarifying my thesis:

That those who describe others as "troublemakers" (esp. persons such
as myself without any serious charges against them, past or present)
are incapable of judging them neutrally. You have already made up your
mind, evidence be damned. You solidify the bigotry by comparing me to
those you have censured before. This Ivory Tower injustice cannot long
last. Your prejudices and flippant generalisations underscore your
inability to fairly judge better than any argument I could make.

Sam Spade

On 12/6/05, Sean Barrett <sean at epoptic.org> wrote:
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
>
> Sam Spade stated for the record:
>
> > So you deny a history of conflict with me?
> >
> > Sam Spade
>
> I deeply admire the basic concept at work here.
>
> 1. Troublemaker makes a career of causing conflict.
>
> 2. Troublemaker's career of conflict leaves a wake: a history of
> conflict with those charged with stopping conflict.
>
> 3. Troublemaker then cites his career of conflict as a reason why those
> charged with stopping conflict cannot stop the conflict he is making a
> career of causing.
>
> 4. ???
>
> 5. Profit!
>
> It should be needless to say, but, alas, is not, that the ArbComm has
> not accepted this argument any of the dozen or so previous times it's
> been offered, and don't seem to be interested in it this time, either.
> Inciting conflicts with the ArbComm is not an effective way of
> preventing the ArbComm from ruling against you.
>
>
> - --
>  Sean Barrett     | We will chant in Old Nahuatl
>  sean at epoptic.org | As we pray to Quetzalcoatl
>                   | Who gave us chocolatl
>                   | And that's good enough for me!
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
> Version: GnuPG v1.4.2 (MingW32)
> Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org
>
> iD8DBQFDlNpgMAt1wyd9d+URAvrgAKCBrE83/OST5r+TaUwd43qxdMUDOwCeJ2HS
> T3loV0jOZvHqoMmGKn0mp5g=
> =5P/3
> -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: The Wiki meritocracy

body:
No, I havn't stopped being myself, insisting on NPOV and admin
accountability, sorry...

Sam Spade

On 12/5/05, JAY JG <jayjg at hotmail.com> wrote:
> >From: Sam Spade <samspade.thomasjefferson at googlemail.com>
> >
> >Are you saying that now that I have a F.A. I have a chance to become an
> >admin?
> >
> >Sam Spade
>
> That all depends on whether or not you've stopped doing the things that
> caused Wikipedia's editors to reject your previous applications.
>
> Jay.
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> 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:
Look, you say that it can't be seen as an experiment because there
arn't any start and end dates, and so forth, but does not mean it
isn't an experience. You are right, it very well MAY be a permanent
policy change if it works out fine... if it doesn't (many people
complain, it doesn't really reduce bad entries, wikipedia growth is
severely stuntet, etc) we will just change it back. We could sit
around and discuss if this is a good idea forever, but the only way we
will ever know for sure is to actually try it out.

Look, this in no way (except in the very most theoretical
wiki-fundamental way) limits the openness of wikipedia, and it very
well might increase the overall quality, so why not try it for awhile?

Remember, we are here to write an encyclopedia first and foremost. We
are a grand social experment ofcourse, but not primarily (or however
that qoute went).

On 12/6/05, The Cunctator <cunctator at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 12/6/05, Martin Osterman <stonewallgrant at gmail.com> wrote:
> > First of all, I don't think that Jimbo ever expected that Wikipedia would
> > become this popular and widespread.  The quote you use was made FOUR YEARS
> > ago.  A lot has changed in four years' time.
>
> I know. But human nature hasn't changed much in that time.
>
> And both Jimbo and I expected Wikipedia would become this popular and
> widespread.
>
> > Now, I don't profess to know why we were the last to find out... that could
> > be for any number of reasons.  However, I think that this experiment is
> > going to yield interesting results, and for that reason I endorse it.  (Not
> > as if anything needs my endorsing since I'm just one editor among hundreds)
>
> What annoys me particularly is pretending that this is an experiment.
> It's not. It's a permanent policy change.
>
> Who's willing to bet that I'm wrong?
> _______________________________________________
> 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: Anthony DiPierro

body:
On 12/6/05, Lars Aronsson <lars at aronsson.se> wrote:
> Jan Kulveit wrote:
> > Look from
> > http://www.usemod.com/cgi-bin/mb.pl?SoftSecurity
> > viewpoint.
>
> Do they provide a proven solution for wikis with a million
> articles?
>
If by proven you mean works 100% of the time, of course not.  If by
proven you mean works 99% of the time, well, Wikipedia is the proof.

Anthony


from_name: Kirill Lokshin

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

body:
On 12/6/05, David Gerard <fun at thingy.apana.org.au> wrote:
> Steve Block wrote:
>
> > I agree with you, but community consensus doesn't.  I recently tried to
> > get the criminal categories renamed to include the words convicted but
> > was told that was unworkable since Butch Cassiday was never convicted,
> > or something.
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Categories_for_deletion/Log/2005_November_15#Criminals
>
>
> Well, I guess community consensus trumps NPOV ... except of course it
> doesn't. That would get a "don't be dense" category deletion.

I'm not quite sure why this would be a NPOV issue, unless we're going
to start deleting any category for which the membership may be
contentious.

To continue with the example cited above, is describing Butch Cassidy
as a "prolific bank and train robber" in the article text permitted
while placing him in the bank robbers category is not?  That seems to
be a rather unintuitive approach to categorization. Or are the
statement and the category both NPOV violations since he was never
convicted of robbing banks (even though no sources dispute the
assertion)?

Kirill Lokshin


from_name: Jossi Fresco

subject: [WikiEN-l] Semi-protection policy

body:
  I have been fighting vandalism extensively for the last few
months.  The proposed policy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
Wikipedia:Semi-protection_policy will substantially improve things in
RC patrol and enable editors and admin doing this thankless job,
easier and more successful.

Please take a look and help make this a policy.

--Jossi


from_name: Liviu Andronic

body:
> Maybe it would be a good choice just to move the whole thing to
> __mo-cyr.wikipedia.org__, leaving at [[:mo:]] the two links -- to the
> Romanian and to the old-fashioned Cyrillic-written Moldovan.

It is not that bad an idea. I support it. Mo.wikipedia should probably
contain - apart from the two links - a small but clear disambiguation
note (excerpt from the Constitution - Moldovan language, latin script;
something explaining that Moldovan is just a political rename of
Romanian; the reasons for keeping a mo-cyr.wikipedia - that it may
still be used by some in Moldova and in Transnistria). Alternatively,
it may contain a similar disambiguation note and a redirect to the
Romanian Wikipedia only (as it is Romanian that is spoken in Moldova).


body:
FF wrote:

>Sure, we use "fair use text" but that means "quotations" and not
>wholesale copying. We're allowed to write an article about the
>interview, describing and even quoting from it when relevant but we're
>not allowed to just copy and re-print the entire interview.

*Probably* not. Fair use can include and has included up to the entire
work in question.

- d.


from_name: Daniel Mayer

body:
--- Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com> wrote:
> If you were to dive into the editing world, you'd first be taken to the current
> development version. Principal of least astonishment, after all!

The version they dive into edit would *not* be the version they first came upon and read. I fail
to see how that would not be at least a little confusing.

> We've not stepped up to our responsibilities to be clear
> about what we are and what we provide; either we need to put a big "Bug off!" on
> every page and tell everyone to go away while we play around for another five
> years, or we need to get serious about being a public resource.

Making the distinction between development and stable versions and linking to stable versions
serves both purposes.

> The time is past that we can pretend we're just a few geeks editing for fun. To
> serve the public -- and that *is* the point of an encyclopedia -- we need
> public-facing pages that have been reviewed.

And my idea of having stable versions linked from development versions does not serve that? There
are hundreds of other websites out there that provide static mirrors of our content. So Wikipedia
does not need to concentrate on that.

When we get a critical mass of stable articles, the mirrors almost certainly will choose to only
host those. If readers what to use Wikipedia to view stable articles by default, then they just
need to create an account and set their preferences.

But *WIKIPEDIA IS WHERE THE DEVELOPMENT HAPPENS* And we are far, far, from being a comprehensive
source of human knowledge. Let's not pretend that our current article count is at all adequate to
serve our goals. It is not.

> Those same articles will be very actively worked on by reviewers, I have no
> doubt. If they are in fact slower to update, THEN GOOD! We *need* to be slower
> to update.

Maybe the really popular and heavily-edited articles, but not the more obscure topics that need to
be updated. Heavily-edited articles should instead have delayed edits for anons and new users.
Articles that are not heavily-edited should not have that though.

> We *need* to be more careful and deliberate.
>
> We *need* to be more selective.
>
> We *need* to be less of a crap conduit.

And all of that is served by my idea; stable versions prominently linked from development versions
that are clearly identified as such. My plan adds to our current methods, which have brought us
far.

> Explosive growth is *not* our primary concern today. We already have way too
> many articles; we need to concentrate on quality. Concentrating on "growth" will
> just keep us in the death spiral we're in now.

And concentrating on stagnation is the key? I don't think so. We need to balance growth with
quality. Under my plan, editors will still be highly motivated to get articles to the point where
a reviewer can mark a version as stable. Hiding the development version by default effectively
means we don't much care about further improvement to the article. It also means less motivation
to editors (who have all their work hidden away until a reviewer finds time to review it).

> > The public face of Wikipedia has always been a work in progress. True, right now I think the
> > pendulum is too far to the openness and development side. But presenting stable versions by
> > default would fundamentally change the whole character of the project
>
> Something which is necessary!

Why? We have come very far with our current model. Let's *add* to it instead of replace it. We
should we consider fundamental *only* if adding to our current methods does not work. Otherwise we
risk throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

> > A fraction of readers stream-in as editors. But offering them a static website by default will
> > severely restrict that stream.
>
> That'll be a good thing.

Hiding development versions and greatly reducing new recruitment  will result in development
versions that, on average, deteriorate with time, instead of improve.

Sunshine is the best medicine. Development versions need more sunshine than stable versions do.
Just make it very clear to the reader what is what and that they can log-in to view stable
versions by default.

-- mav

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


from_name: Delirium

body:
Brion Vibber wrote:

>IMHO the opposite needs to be true; reviewed, stable versions need to be right
>on top, as what the public sees by default.
>
>Sure, there'll be a big fat message showing that 78573 more edits have been made
>to [[George W. Bush]] since this reviewed version, with a handy link to go right
>to it and see the changes, but they're gonna see the stable copy first.
>
>We've spent so much time hyping Wikipedia that it's become quite popular at its
>present location; a separate or hidden click-through stable set will basically
>never be seen and can't reasonably answer the (totally valid) criticisms that a
>reference site needs to be a little bit conservative on its public face.
>
>
That sounds about right to me.  Software developers of course have
already arrived at that solution---grab the old, stable, conservative
version if you're going to be whiny; if you use the CVS version, don't
blame us if it's not done, because it's not supposed to be. =]

(Although those of us who are eventualists haven't been "hyping
Wikipedia" in the first place.  Perhaps those who have been hyping it
before it's ready shouldn't have been.)

-Mark


subject: [WikiEN-l] Experiment on new pages

body:
Ray Saintonge wrote:

> It seems to me that these comments are far more libellous than what
> was in the article.  At least the article stated that the charges were
> found to be in error.  Do you have any proof at all for your statement
> that "he's a litigous asshole looking for revenge."  A truly litigious
> person would have fun with that comment, and the fact that it was made
> on the mailing list would be no excuse.

How about this statement, then:

"Based on the available evidence, particularly his tone and comments in
public discussions, Mr. Seigenthaler appears to be a litigious asshole
looking for revenge.  In particular, his singleminded focus on the
inability of Wikipedia to provide him with a name he can sue suggests
that he is more interested in lawsuits and revenge than in constructive
criticism or improving anything."

(There is, of course, nothing libelous about expressing an opinion.)

-Mark


from_name: Magnus Manske

body:
The Cunctator wrote:

> What annoys me particularly is pretending that this is an experiment.
>
>It's not. It's a permanent policy change.
>
>
My guess is that it's an experiment that will turn into a permanent
policy change if it turns out to be useful.

>Who's willing to bet that I'm wrong?
>
>
About this being not an experiment, or about it being permanent?

It will stay if it turns out to be a Good Thing (tm). As most people
expect it to be good, most peolpe will expect it to stay.

So, you're likely wrong about the "experiment" part, but probably not
about the "permanent"part :-)

Magnus


body:
Gerrit Holl wrote:

>Magnus Manske wrote:
>
>
>>* this can be gamed (mark it as a minor edit, or write "google" under
>>sources, or give some non-existing or out-of print book, or a book in an
>>obscure language, or set up your own fake page and then give it as
>>source, or...)
>>
>>
>
>What's wrong with using an out-of-print book as a source?
>It might be the only source for this 18-people remote saami village in
>the Kiruna municipality of Lapland?
>
>
Nothing's wrong with that.
But if I were a subtle vandal and had to cite my sources, I might cite
some out-of-print book, hoping noone will get a hold of a copy soon.
Thus, using "cite your sources" to prevent subtle vandalism doesn't work.

>
>
>>As Brion already stated correctly, the current Wikipedia is an eternal
>>beta version. Validation (how's that coming, BTW?;-) will eventually
>>give some hints to the "end user", but it probably would not have caught
>>the JFK blunder either.
>>
>>
>
>Parts look more like alpha than like beta to me.
>
>
Considering Microsoft sells beta-stage software as "stable", the borders
are kinda fluent there :-)

>
>
>>That directly leads to a (relatively) small, elite (!=cabal) group of
>>peer reviewers. The cathedral filtering the bazaar, as I said before.
>>This could be done externally (software's in the making), or within
>>wikipedia. The latter would be nicer, however, it might lead to more
>>conflict between those who can peer review and those who can not.
>>
>>
>
>A problem with a bazaar is that the products sold might not conform to
>the norms that current society holds.
>
>
It's not like the reviewers would come in from another reality. IMHO,
many Wikipedians would qualify. The point is that there would be a
higher standard of quality; people who import substandard articles would
soon be excluded. The main rule would be along the lines "Import *only*
if you *know* this article is good".

Magnus


body:
Gerrit Holl wrote:

>Magnus Manske wrote:
>
>
>>Currently, main namespace, categories, and templates are imported. Other
>>namespaces, as well as all talk pages, can be edited normally.
>>
>>Image import - not yet.
>>
>>Give it a try and tell me what you think!
>>
>>
>
>Why does importing Current Events not work?
>
>
I just imported Current Events, worked just fine. Maybe the wikipedia
was slow to deliver data, and I can't turn off the 30-second-limit for
PHP from my provider :-(

>It's fun, btw!
>
>
Don't overdo it, you'll have to do it all over again *if* there's a
"real" site someday :-)

Magnus


body:
Gerrit Holl wrote:

>Stan Shebs wrote:
>
>
>>>Um, in what way is this easier than, well, creating an account?
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>It's not, but there are a remarkable number of longtime good editors
>>who apparently do not want to create accounts (I've come to recognize
>>some familiar IPs). Part of the experiment is to see what anons decide
>>to do when a restriction is applied - for instance, if we get a surge
>>in throwaway logins and no benefit in content quality, that might
>>suggest the problem is with pseudonymy rather than anonymity.
>>
>>
>
>Can't we change the rule "anon's can't create pages" to "anons with
>editcount<x timespan <y" can't create pages?
>
>Gerrit.
>
>
>
That will automatically allow every single AOL or school proxy, since
there's ton of edits from there (many oif them quite old), and many of
those edits are of the class we want the least.

grm_wnr


body:
Just off the top of my head, I can think of three good things that
would make it fail.

1. Many people (anons and regular users alike) protests
2. It is ineffective, that is, New Page patrollers see just as much
crap article-creations as before (and what would be the point of
restricting anons then).
3. Article growth severly stunted

(also, minor point, but if there can be, as you say, no way to tell
that it has failed, wouldn't that mean it's a roaring success?)

Look, lets just try this out for awhile. A thing like this could be
enormously effecting at reducing bad new articles/good new articles
ratio, or it might make no difference what so ever. The only way to
find out is to actually do it.

Oskar Sigvardsson
On 12/6/05, Delirium <delirium at hackish.org> wrote:
> Magnus Manske wrote:
>
> >My guess is that it's an experiment that will turn into a permanent
> >policy change if it turns out to be useful.
> >
> >
> But there does not appear to be any actual criteria under which it can
> be judged to fail.  The only way it will be rescinded, basically, is if
> Jimbo changes his mind about it being a good idea, because there's no
> way he can be proven wrong about it being a good idea.  No one has even
> informally defined what it would mean for it to be "successful", much
> less suggested how to measure that.
>
> One possible criterion: The overall number of bad edits on Wikipedia
> (counting new page creation and edits to existing pages) decreases.
>
> Another one: The overall number of bad edits on Wikipedia not caught
> within [x] hours (again counting both) decreases.
>
> Is anyone prepared to measure either of these, or some other useful
> statistic?
>
> -Mark
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] Experiment on new pages

body:
geni wrote:

>2. The idea that putting false info on wikipedia can get you sued is
>one I would not object to being spread.
>
>
I certainly would!  To be more specific, his call for us to make it
easier to trace Wikipedia contributors, and therefore to enable people
to sue them, is *directly* contrary to a lot of our goals.  If we make
it so that nobody can be anonymous enough to avoid U.S. libel lawsuits,
it also means nobody is anonymous enough to avoid getting hauled before
courts authoritarian countries who might want to trace who wrote an
article they disapprove of.

-Mark


from_name: Kelly Martin

subject: [WikiEN-l] Experiment on new pages

body:
On 12/6/05, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> They are not database servers only squids so we are probably safe. We
> could also drop them if it became a problem.

Those servers constitute a "legal presence" in those jurisdictions.
The WMF's investment in those servers is at risk in the event of an
unfavorable legal finding in one of those jurisdictions or in any
jurisdiction from which one of those jurisdictions will grant
execution of an adverse judgment.  I don't know enough about EU law
and the enforceability of foreign judgments within the EU to know
whether a UK judgment could be enforced in France in such a situation.

Kelly


from_name: Heinz

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Experiment on new pages

body:
Jimmy Wales schrieb:
>
> Absolutely.  We agree completely on that.
>
Who is "We"?

Heinz


from_name: Wikipedia Romania (Ronline)

body:
>
>
> How about having two DB tables, splitting the domain, like Chinese
> Wikipedia does (Simplified and Traditional)?
> _______________________________________________

I think that's unnecessary. The Moldovan language case is a unique one
throughout the world in that Moldovan is a politically-renamed Romanian
spoken in Moldovan. It would be just like the Austrian government declares
today that the language spoken officially in Austria is called "Austrian".
Therefore, we don't need a separate Wikipedia for Moldovan in Latin script
- Romanian can already cater for that. In fact, we have users from Moldova
reading and contributing to our content at ro.wiki.

For that reason, I think mo.wiki could be abolished entirely. If people
really
want a Cyrillic version, then it should be moved to mo-cyr, and mo should
act
as a portal, with one link to ro.wiki, one link to mo-cyr. But currently,
the demand
for Cyrillic is almost inexistent, and the quality of the articles there is
very
questionable.

Ronline


body:
> In Moldova proper,  virtually everyone knows how to read/write Latin script,

Do you know this for certain?

> because the government isn't allowed to use Cyrillic script (it's
> unconstitutional, since Latin is specified as offical script).

Well, did you know that governments can't deal with 100% of their
citizens using writing? In Moldova, somewhere between 1% and 4% of the
citizens are illiterate altogether (can't read or write). How does the
government deal with these people? And why couldn't they deal the same
way with Cyrillic people??

> The case is quite interesting - in rural areas, less people actually write in Cyrillic, because rural areas are much less Russified.

Ronline, that's simply not true. You know that's not true, because you
and I had a lengthy discussion on it at Talk:Moldovan_language, where
I provided you with a source which documents the fact that in rural
areas Cyrillic is more used. Rural areas are less _Russified_, yes.
But simply using Cyrillic to write Moldovan has nothing to do with
being Russified -- in 1980, even monolinguals used Cyrillic to write
the language, no matter whether they were from the city or the
countryside.

But consider this case:
A farmer, Gheorghe Curechi, went to school in the Soviet period. He
left school when he turned 14 so he could work in the fields. At his
school, he learned some good stuff, but only a little bit of Russian.
Most of his schooling was in his hearth language, a language he calls
Moldovan because that's what his teacher at school told him it was
named.

He isn't an idiot, he isn't behind the times, he knows very well that
Moldova is now called "Republica Moldova" instead of RSSM. And he
knows that since 1989, his language is now written using the "French
alphabet", like the language of the neighbouring country, Romanian,
has been for as long as he knew.

His grandchildren learn this alphabet at school, but he doesn't really
know it. He can read some of the basic things. He doesn't get the
newspaper, but if he did, he wouldn't be able to read it.

He keeps a diary, which he writes in every day. He does it to keep his
wits sharp, since he lives alone. And of course, he uses Cyrillic.

The last time he went into town, a few months ago, he had no troubles
understanding anybody, but he didn't know what most of the signs meant
because they were mostly written in the "French alphabet" which he
doesn't know.

Gheorghe doesn't really care to learn the Latin alphabet because he
doesn't have much need for it. He has a few dusty old books in his
posession, their covers have fallen off. Three of them are in Russian
so he doesn't really understand them, but the other ones are all
written in Moldovan-Cyrillic. He has already read them though, and he
doesn't have much use for them anyhow.

This story is obviously fictional -- It'd be a bit funny if there were
really some farmer named "gheorghe curechi" (or as he spells it,
reopre kypekb).

> previously wrote in Cyrillic have been accustomed so far to ubiquitous text in Latin.

What about my example with Mr Curechi? What need would he ever have
for the Latin alphabet?

You could argue that he doesn't use Wikipedia either because he
doesn't have a computer. Well, we could use the same criteria to argue
to get rid of most Wikipedias in African languages. But there is the
hope that someday, a printed version might be made, and it could be
distributed.

Surely we shouldn't just ignore the minority of Moldovans who are like
Mr KYPEKb?

> So, as I said before, I don't think this Cyrillic script Wikipedia
> serves any really practical purpose.

The people who work on it now (not just me) disagree... otherwise,
they'd just be wastingtheir time.

> Their "emotional" links to Moldova and to an extent Romania are
> therefore quite strong.

Sources, please?

> I presume about half of those people would know and prefer the
> Latin alphabet, which leaves about 100,000 people that would
> actually write in Cyrillic and may have some trouble
> reading/writing Latin script.

Well, even if it is just 100,000 total, that's still not a negligible number.

Mark

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


from_name: Steve Block

subject: [WikiEN-l] Libel law

body:
How does Wikipedia and especially the foundation square up to the following:

In the Loutchansky v. The Times Newspapers Limited case, it was
established that a suit may be brought many years after the information
was added, since the viewing of the material within a browser counts in
law as a dissemination, and an action must be launched within a year of
such dissemination. This means that if the material is viewable within
the page history of an article or talk page it will allow a suit to be
brought at any point.

In the Polanski vs. Vanity Fair suit it has established that the
claimant need not appear in person.

In the Godfrey v. Demon Internet case has established that a host of the
libellous claim has a duty to remove libellous comments and is deemed to
be the publisher for the purposes of libel law.

In the Lennox Lewis & Ors. v. Don King case has established that the
courts of England and Wales are suitable forums to hear libel cases as
long as defamation has occurred within their jurisdiction, since
internet pages are published where they are downloaded.

My questions are, has the wikipedia foundation received advice on how it
is affected by libel law in England and Wales?

If so, is it possible to see a copy of that advice?

Should libellous statements be completely removed from the edit history
like copyright violations are?

Should Wikipedia have a policy on libel?

I'd also ask for opinions on whether each editor who edits and yet fails
to remove a libellous statement could be open to being named in a suit
under England and Wales law, since it can be argued that by editing and
saving the page one has in turn republished the libel.

Note also, that in England and Wales libel law, the burden of proof is
on the defendant, i.e. Wikipedia, to prove the statement is true.  The
claimant only has to show defamation, not falsehood.

--
No virus found in this outgoing message.
Checked by AVG Free Edition.
Version: 7.1.362 / Virus Database: 267.13.12/192 - Release Date: 05/12/05


body:
On 12/6/05, Fastfission <fastfission at gmail.com> wrote:

> In any event, *Wikipedia* does not include whole copies of *any*
> documents. That's what Wikisource is for, yes?
>

Well, with the obvious exception of the GFDL anyway.


from_name: Jonathan Leybovich

subject:
[Foundation-l] Jihad in Defense of Objectivity (Was: Enforcing
	WP:CITE)

body:
> Anthony DiPierro wrote:
>
>Maybe complicated isn't what I'm looking for.  But
> consider the
> following and whether or not you'd enjoy editing it
> by hand:
>
>'''Roy [[cite:ISBN:123456789:p. 7|"Roy Orbison's
> middle name is
>Kelton"|"Kelton"]] Orbison'''
> ([[cite:ISBN:123456789:p.9|"He was born
>in Foo, Bar on April 23 of 1936"|"[[April 23]],
> [[1936]]"]] –
>[[cite:ISBN:123456789:p.11|"He died that same year,
> on the 6th of
>December"|"[[December 6]], [[1988]]"]]),
>[[cite:ISBN:123456789:p.13|"They called him "The
> Big O""|"nicknamed
>"The Big O""]], was ...

Yes, that is extremely hairy.  I'll try and come up
with something more manageable and post it on the Meta
project site for review.

Ray Saintonge wrote:
>
> Perhaps.  When I asked my own question about what
> the rest of us can do
> I was not interested in a lot of theoretical
> material about what library
> scientists put into card catalogues.  I was
> considering the point of
> view of a normal Wikipedian (assuming such an animal
> exists) who is
> about to write an article and who already has
> adequate references that
> he is ready, willing and able to use.

Useability feedback is certainly helpful.  And as I
said before, people can help by thinking about the
kind of features they would want out of such a system-
what information should it be able to provide?  What
is the best way to present it?  My proposal is really
only based on my own experiences as an editor, so this
sort of feedback will be extremely helpful.

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


from_name: Brion Vibber

body:
Daniel Mayer wrote:
> --- Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com> wrote:
>> If you were to dive into the editing world, you'd first be taken to the current
>> development version. Principal of least astonishment, after all!
>
> The version they dive into edit would *not* be the version they first came upon and read. I fail
> to see how that would not be at least a little confusing.
>
>> We've not stepped up to our responsibilities to be clear
>> about what we are and what we provide; either we need to put a big "Bug off!" on
>> every page and tell everyone to go away while we play around for another five
>> years, or we need to get serious about being a public resource.
>
> Making the distinction between development and stable versions and linking to stable versions
> serves both purposes.

It might be a start, but it still leaves us with unreviewed crap by default.

>> The time is past that we can pretend we're just a few geeks editing for fun. To
>> serve the public -- and that *is* the point of an encyclopedia -- we need
>> public-facing pages that have been reviewed.
>
> And my idea of having stable versions linked from development versions does not serve that?

No, it doesn't. It keeps the crap out in front, leaving us with a permanent
reputation as unreliable and dangerous.

> There
> are hundreds of other websites out there that provide static mirrors of our content. So Wikipedia
> does not need to concentrate on that.

If we don't want to concentrate on it, then we need to make a serious effort to
keep people *off* of Wikipedia and divert them to those "static mirrors". This
means backpedaling on the last couple years of publicity and going out of our
way to:

* Prevent linking to articles at *.wikipedia.org
* Keep pages at *.wikipedia.org out of search engines, or very lowly ranked
* Get rid of any "citation" features that encourage people to reference pages at
our site.

> When we get a critical mass of stable articles, the mirrors almost certainly will choose to only
> host those. If readers what to use Wikipedia to view stable articles by default, then they just
> need to create an account and set their preferences.

If you keep putting something else out in front, that's what mirrors are going
to want. (It's also what the crappy leech-mirrors are going to get by default.)

> But *WIKIPEDIA IS WHERE THE DEVELOPMENT HAPPENS* And we are far, far, from being a comprehensive
> source of human knowledge. Let's not pretend that our current article count is at all adequate to
> serve our goals. It is not.

Our "article count" is, if anything, too high. Article count is meaningless at
this point; pretending a growth in article count is helpful is not going to get
us anything but big numbers to toss around press releases and look impressive.

>> Explosive growth is *not* our primary concern today. We already have way too
>> many articles; we need to concentrate on quality. Concentrating on "growth" will
>> just keep us in the death spiral we're in now.
>
> And concentrating on stagnation is the key? I don't think so. We need to balance growth with
> quality. Under my plan, editors will still be highly motivated to get articles to the point where
> a reviewer can mark a version as stable. Hiding the development version by default effectively
> means we don't much care about further improvement to the article. It also means less motivation
> to editors (who have all their work hidden away until a reviewer finds time to review it).

Concentrating on "growth" leaves us in a stagnating rut where we never have
anything that's safe to show in public. Why bother improving it if it's going to
have a penis picture on it whenever anyone goes to look at it?

>>> The public face of Wikipedia has always been a work in progress. True, right now I think the
>>> pendulum is too far to the openness and development side. But presenting stable versions by
>>> default would fundamentally change the whole character of the project
>> Something which is necessary!
>
> Why? We have come very far with our current model. Let's *add* to it instead of replace it. We
> should we consider fundamental *only* if adding to our current methods does not work. Otherwise we
> risk throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

I'm recommending we add to it, not replace it. Why do you think otherwise?

>>> A fraction of readers stream-in as editors. But offering them a static website by default will
>>> severely restrict that stream.
>> That'll be a good thing.
>
> Hiding development versions and greatly reducing new recruitment  will result in development
> versions that, on average, deteriorate with time, instead of improve.

I believe this to be false. Making it *visible* that development is happening by
having a clear distinction, a visible marker of progress from the last stable
revision, and a review process that is interactive, should *encourage*
improvement in quality.

> Sunshine is the best medicine. Development versions need more sunshine than stable versions do.
> Just make it very clear to the reader what is what and that they can log-in to view stable
> versions by default.

If you want sunshine, then let us have stable reviewed versions up front so
there's light at the end of the tunnel!

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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from_name: Michael Keppler

subject: [Wikitech-l] Messages

body:
Stephen Bain schrieb:
> I was wondering where is the place to put new messages? I figured in
> Language.php, but how then do I update the database with them and
> create the relevant MediaWiki: pages?

I guess that refers to your now extension based random links special
page. The messages should be in your extension too. When the extension
function of your extension is called, you then declare your special
page, parser hook or whatever inside of that function. And that is also
the right time to declare the new messages.
You can see an example for that in a short extension of mine at
http://cvs.sourceforge.net/viewcvs.py/bw-projects/MediaWiki/extensions/SpecialChangePassword.php?rev=1.1&view=markup
at the end of the file.

> 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 use Eclipse for nearly all development tasks. Eclipse has a built in
patch creation facility, so if you compare two versions of version
controlled resources inside Eclipse, you can easily create a patch from
the comparison result.

For me using external tools outside Eclipse only happens very seldom now. :)

Ciao, Michael.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Experiment on new pages

body:
geni wrote:

>If you post something libilus under US law (which is the only law that
>matters) and the person finds it fast enough they can get a court
>order and get the relivant server logs from wikipedia. If you don't
>log in then I'm afaraid we can't protect you from being stupid. You
>can't expect the foundation not to respect a US court order. As a
>result the fact is that under certian conditions posting something
>false on wikipedia could get you into legal trouble. It is important
>people understand this.
>
>
>The reference to authoritarian countries is a red herring. Assumeing
>you avoid local monitoring it is only US law you have to worry about
>because only US law affects the foundation.
>
>
It isn't a red herring, because I'm not talking about the possibility
that a court order could be made for our current logs.  I'm talking
specifically about Mr. Seigenthaler's calls for us to add additional
logging facility specifically for the purpose of making it easier to
trace anonymous contributors, which would be a very bad idea.  We can't
guarantee people's anonymity, but we shouldn't---contrary to his
suggestion---go out of our way to make contributors more easily
traceable back to their real identities.

-Mark


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

body:
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?

Yeah, Nupedia tried that already.

The Wikipedia process is explicitly not to require perfection up front.
Ideally, every fact would indeed be referenced.  And if you can add
references to an article, that's a great thing.  If we end up with some
system of vetting good articles, perhaps only well-referenced articles
should be allowed to get the higher markings.  Those are all fine, and
all much different than prohibiting edits that are not meticulously
referenced in the first place.

-Mark


subject:
[Foundation-l] Wikipedia ... but where are you going
	...	(was:Enforcing WP:CITE ...)

body:
Daniel Mayer wrote:

>>It is one case ... things have been corrected as soon as the error was
>>seen ... well, where's the problem?
>>
>>
>
>The libelous statements remained uncorrected for 4 months and were spread to hundreds of Wikipedia
>mirrors. We not only failed to correct the error, but our license allowed it to be spread all over
>the Internet.
>
>
That is not an interesting statement.  If you were to claim "...and [x]
people read that article", that would be more interesting.  The fact
that an obscure article had misinformation that was not corrected
because virtually nobody ever read the article isn't particularly
worrisome.  If we were talking of [[en:Margaret Thatcher]], containing
misinformation for 4 months that thousands of people read, I would be
more worried.

-Mark


body:
Daniel Mayer wrote:

>And such a requirement would not prevent anybody from adding unsourced material. It would just
>allow people who like to tag things - and boy does at least the English Wikipedia have plenty of
>those folks - to tag those articles as needing sources. The tag would serve two roles:
>1) Tell readers to treat the article very critically,
>
>
Why does this need a tag?  Cannot a read see for themselves whether or
not an article has references?  Or are we assuming our readers are
idiots who accept everything uncritically unless explicitly told not to?

-Mark


body:
Daniel Mayer wrote:

>Hiding development versions and greatly reducing new recruitment  will result in development
>versions that, on average, deteriorate with time, instead of improve.
>
>Sunshine is the best medicine. Development versions need more sunshine than stable versions do.
>Just make it very clear to the reader what is what and that they can log-in to view stable
>versions by default.
>
>
That seems reasonable, so long as it's very clearly/prominently labeled
as the development version, rather than "stable version" just being
another one of the tabs next to "history" and "edit this page" or
something.  Basically, it should be possible to respond to any "I found
[inaccuracy x] in Wikipedia" with "well, did you check the stable
version, or the one we very clearly marked as in development?"

-mark


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Script conversion for Vlax Romany Wikipedia

body:
Hi,

There is currently an approved request to set up a Wikipedia in
Vlax Romany, the main language of the Roma people, which is
mainly spoken by Romanian Roma but also throughout the world.

Now, this isn't yet a request to set up the Vlax Romany Wikipedia,
since the interface still needs to be translated and a few more
administrative things to be done. However, the main Romany contributor,
Desiphral, has already written more than 10 quite long articles on the
Vlax Romany test wiki, at:

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Test-wp/rmy/

Now, the main reason I have written here - I talked to him and he said
that he would like to contribute in both scripts - Latin and Devangari.
Romany is an Indo-Aryan language, and while it is mostly written in
Latin script, some people, especially outside of Europe, write it in
Devangari script, which they say represents the language better and
links it culturally to its related languages, Hindi, Sanskrit, etc.
Desiphral himself said that he communicated with Roma throughout
the world in Devangari, and has already written some articles to Test-wiki,
in both Latin script and Devangari.

So, what I'm wondering here is: would it be possible to set up an
automatic conversion system to serve up Devangari and Latin versions of the
same article? For example, if a user writes in Latin script, can that be
converted
automatically to Devangari to be read by someone who's specified Devangari
as their nominated script in Preferences, and vice versa?
The conversion is very consistent in that each Devangari
symbol represents the one and the same letter or diphthong in the Latin
Romany alphabet.

Thanks,

Ronline


from_name: Tels

body:
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----

Moin,

On Tuesday 06 December 2005 19:47, Travis Derouin wrote:
> Hey Brion,
>
> Doh! It does look like the UTM code that Google Analytics uses does
> cookie anonymous users, will this prevent us from configuring Squid
> properly? The cookies won't affect the display of the pages loaded, is
> there a way to ignore a set of cookies that start with __utm in the
> context of the cache?

* Are you talking about your own mediawiki installation or wikipedia?
* If wikipedia, why is Google analytics even included?
* Wouldn't filtering the cookies make the inclusion of GA pointless?

I know why I personally filter GA out - including third-party JS code in a
webpage is a receipe rife for desaster....

Best wishes,

Tels

- --
 Signed on Tue Dec  6 20:14:11 2005 with key 0x93B84C15.
 Visit my photo gallery at http://bloodgate.com/photos/
 PGP key on http://bloodgate.com/tels.asc or per email.

 "In 1988, Jack Thompson ran against Janet Reno for DA of Dade County:
 Thompson's unique campaign message was that Reno was unfit for the job
 because, as a closeted lesbian with a drinking problem, she was great
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 why this remained a threat even after he exposed her 'secret'. Reno
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from_name: James R. Johnson

body:
Dumb question, but is that 555 and a half, or 555,500 (five hundred
fifty-five thousand five hundred)?  And 177 and two-tenths people, or 177
thousand two-hundred-four?

JR

-----Original Message-----
From: wikipedia-l-bounces at Wikimedia.org
[mailto:wikipedia-l-bounces at Wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Adrenalin
Sent: Tuesday, December 06, 2005 5:08 PM
To: wikipedia-l at wikimedia.org
Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] Why MO.wikipedia. - Moldovan,are written in
cyrillic ?

Let's admit what Moldavian people from Transnistria use the cyrillic
script, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transnistria#2004_census

Transnistrian 2004 census:
    * Total population (including Tighina): 555.500
    * Moldovans: 31.9%

That's 177.204 Moldovans ppl, what are forced to use the Cyrillic
alphabet. (forced? see here
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transnistria#Political_status). But i'm
still not sure what they all write in Cyrillic.

Now let's see how many Moldovans use the latin script.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moldova#Ethnic_composition)
According to the 2004 census Moldovans: 76.1% from 3,388,071 ppl.
That's 2,578,322 of Moldovans what use latin script in write. And
since Moldovian language are the only official language in Moldova,
the other 23,9% also must know to speak and write the official
language using official script.

So we see:
In Transnistria, people what are forced to write the Moldovian
language in Cyrillic: 177.204
In Moldova, people what write his language in latin: 2,578,322 (or even
more).

So why must 2,578,322 of ppl to see his language in cyrillic on
Wikipedia just because of the Transnistrian 177.204 Moldovans what are
forced by a internationally unrecognised state maintained by Russian
forces(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transnistria) to use cyrillic ?
_______________________________________________
Wikipedia-l mailing list
Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l


body:
--- Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com> wrote:
> It might be a start, but it still leaves us with unreviewed crap by default.

unreviewed≠crap

Please, don't buy into what the Wikipedia naysayers spew. We have lots and lots of good content
that is constantly improving; just because it is not formally reviewed does not make it crap. We
in fact have lots and lots of good to great articles. I would not call them crap.

> No, it doesn't. It keeps the crap out in front, leaving us with a permanent
> reputation as unreliable and dangerous.

Not if it is clearly marked as a development version.

> If we don't want to concentrate on it, then we need to make a serious effort to
> keep people *off* of Wikipedia and divert them to those "static mirrors". This
> means backpedaling on the last couple years of publicity and going out of our
> way to:
>
> * Prevent linking to articles at *.wikipedia.org
> * Keep pages at *.wikipedia.org out of search engines, or very lowly ranked
> * Get rid of any "citation" features that encourage people to reference pages at
> our site.

No - that would be the wrong thing to do. I think a great many people will want to link to the
most up-to-date version (or the version they read via the cite feature). If they want to link to
the stable version, then they can also do that.

> If you keep putting something else out in front, that's what mirrors are going
> to want. (It's also what the crappy leech-mirrors are going to get by default.)

We give them the option to only download stable versions. I'm sure a great many will do that
instead of having to worry about hosting unvetted content. Fixing bad articles on Wikipedia is a
lot easier than on a static mirror. So that is the logical place to have those.

> Our "article count" is, if anything, too high. Article count is meaningless at
> this point; pretending a growth in article count is helpful is not going to get
> us anything but big numbers to toss around press releases and look impressive.

Who said anything about numbers? I want us to cover the sum of human knowledge. We won't be
anywhere near that goal for years (even at current growth). Yeah, that will require us to have
many, many more articles, but the point isn't to have a high number for bragging rights.

> Concentrating on "growth" leaves us in a stagnating rut where we never have
> anything that's safe to show in public. Why bother improving it if it's going to
> have a penis picture on it whenever anyone goes to look at it?

I'm advocating less concentration on growth than there already is. At the same time, I don't want
to ruin what we already have.

Having something safe to show in public? I want to have something that is good and improving. The
'good' part of that is well-served by having stable versions, but the 'improving' part is not
well-served by hiding the development version from potential editors.

> I'm recommending we add to it, not replace it. Why do you think otherwise?

You want to hide the most recent version of articles with a static version. That is very, very
different from what we do now. It is very different from what has made us work.

> I believe this to be false. Making it *visible* that development is happening by
> having a clear distinction, a visible marker of progress from the last stable
> revision, and a review process that is interactive, should *encourage*
> improvement in quality.

Why bother improving something when it is hidden away in a closet somewhere?

> > Sunshine is the best medicine. Development versions need more sunshine than stable versions
> do.
> > Just make it very clear to the reader what is what and that they can log-in to view stable
> > versions by default.
>
> If you want sunshine, then let us have stable reviewed versions up front so
> there's light at the end of the tunnel!

Cute :)

-- mav

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


from_name: Sam Korn

body:
On 12/6/05, stevertigo <vertigosteve at yahoo.com> wrote:
> The below is quite well stated, and sets a good
> example for how deal with this in a meta article.
>
> Would it make sense to have '[[Siegenthaler
> incident]]?' article on en.wiki? As always, NPOV would
> requires that we avoid unnecessarily diplomatic
> language. Someone could write a K5 article...

You mean one like [[John Seigenthaler Sr. Wikipedia biography controversy]]?

--
Sam


subject: [WikiEN-l] Libel law

body:
On 12/6/05, Kelly Martin <kelly.lynn.martin at gmail.com> wrote:
> The Wikimedia Foundation is not subject to the law of England or Wales
> (since it lacks a legal presence there), and a judgment found against
> the Foundation in that jurisdiction would be subject to a First
> Amendment analysis under United States law before enforcement might be
> had in the United States.  Such analysis would defeat most libel
> judgments based on English or Welsh law, rendering them unenforceable.
>  Furthermore, there are defenses in United States law that render the
> Foundation immune to defamations actions for the actions of its
> volunteer editors; those defenses would also be available in a hearing
> to determine whether to enforce a foreign judgment.
>
> It would be advisable for the Wikimedia Foundation to avoid
> establishing a legal presence within the jurisdiction of countries
> which lack adequate protections for free speech, however.

Hence the possibly forthcoming UK chapter would not be directly linked
to the WMF, even if its sole (?) purpose would be to finance WMF.

>From another point of view, the supposed lack of "freedom of speech"
laws (which isn't quite the case: it's just not as clearly stated as
in US law) would seem a Very Good Thing to us if we weren't at risk of
falling foul of the laws.

--
Sam


from_name: David Gerard

body:
Steve Block wrote:
> Jimmy Wales wrote:
>> JAY JG wrote:

>>> I've been have a months-long debate with another editor on this
>>> topic. I've been stating that we include people in "Criminals"
>>> categories if
>>> they have been convicted of a crime by an independent judiciary.  The
>>> other editor insists that we have to decide (by some means) whether or
>>> not they have actually committed a crime, conviction is not enough a
>>> good enough yardstick.  I'd be interested in other thoughts here.

>> I have a simple thought.  My simple thought is that of course you are
>> right. :-)

> I agree with you, but community consensus doesn't.  I recently tried to
> get the criminal categories renamed to include the words convicted but
> was told that was unworkable since Butch Cassiday was never convicted,
> or something.
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Categories_for_deletion/Log/2005_November_15#Criminals

Well, I guess community consensus trumps NPOV ... except of course it
doesn't. That would get a "don't be dense" category deletion.

- d.


from_name: Chip Berlet

subject: [WikiEN-l] NPOV trainwreck

body:
Hi,

If Sam Spade needs time to take his finals, I have no problem suspending
the arbitration process for a week in order to give him time to gather
any more evidence he thinks would be pursuasive. I am currently taking a
break from editing pending the arbitration outcome, but I suspect Wiki
will not collapse without my input. I can also take a break from
discussion pages and replying to the arbitration pages.  I have recently
been converted to the eventualist camp. My keyboard thanks you.  :-)

Chip "incompetent abrasive commie stooge" Berlet

> -----Original Message-----
> From: wikien-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org
> [mailto:wikien-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org] On Behalf Of Sam Spade
> Sent: Tuesday, December 06, 2005 8:50 PM
> To: English Wikipedia
> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] NPOV trainwreck
>
>
> I "threw" evidence regarding Cberlet, what did that result in?
>
> Sam Spade
>
> On 12/7/05, David Gerard <fun at thingy.apana.org.au> wrote:
> > Sam Spade wrote:
> >
> > > Please, don't bother w the false indignation. You have
> given me no
> > > reason to believe you would be swayed by any evidence, no
> matter how
> > > clear. I had begun to waste my time looking into the long
> history of
> > > conflict between Jayjg and I.
> >
> >
> > Rather than, say, presenting no evidence because you have
> no evidence
> > that wouldn't be laughed out of the room? So far you've
> thrown mud and
> > presented nothing to back it up.
> >
> >
> > - d.
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > 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
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] Libel law

body:
Sam Korn wrote:

> Hence the possibly forthcoming UK chapter would not be directly linked
> to the WMF, even if its sole (?) purpose would be to finance WMF.

That's not going to be its purpose, or even its secret intended purpose.
Current plan is not in fact to give money to the WMF unless and until
we're absolutely sure it's clearly allowable under UK charity law if the
people we wanted least to know about it were to kick up a fuss.

- d.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Libel law

body:
On 12/6/05, David Gerard <fun at thingy.apana.org.au> wrote:
> That's not going to be its purpose, or even its secret intended purpose.
> Current plan is not in fact to give money to the WMF unless and until
> we're absolutely sure it's clearly allowable under UK charity law if the
> people we wanted least to know about it were to kick up a fuss.

Oh? So what is the purpose?

--
Sam


subject: [WikiEN-l] Libel law

body:
Sam Korn wrote:
> On 12/6/05, David Gerard <fun at thingy.apana.org.au> wrote:

>>That's not going to be its purpose, or even its secret intended purpose.
>>Current plan is not in fact to give money to the WMF unless and until
>>we're absolutely sure it's clearly allowable under UK charity law if the
>>people we wanted least to know about it were to kick up a fuss.

> Oh? So what is the purpose?

See [[m:UK Wikimedia]] and its subpages. It boils down to "stuff that
would be really good to do that would further Wikimedia projects"
without money actually leaving the UK except in certain very tightly
constrained circumstances.

There's actually quite a lot we can do other than send money to Florida
for database servers, important though that is at present.

- d.


body:
Kelly Martin wrote:

>Almost all the print and electronic media
>articles I've seen misreport Wikipedia's URL as www.wikipedia.com
>(instead of .org).
>

It's an easy mistake to make, though, since all .com links transparently
redirect to .org ones. The name of the project is Wikipedia, not
wikipedia.org. And I guess most people just aren't watching their
location bar all that much, since it's the only place where it's really
apparent (okay, it's on [[Wikipedia]] too). If we really care that much
about not being called a .com, we should change that.

grm_wnr


subject: [WikiEN-l] Libel law

body:
On 12/6/05, David Gerard <fun at thingy.apana.org.au> wrote:
> See [[m:UK Wikimedia]] and its subpages. It boils down to "stuff that
> would be really good to do that would further Wikimedia projects"
> without money actually leaving the UK except in certain very tightly
> constrained circumstances.
>
> There's actually quite a lot we can do other than send money to Florida
> for database servers, important though that is at present.

Hmm, that was kind of what I meant.  Clearly my way of expressing
myself is not at its optimum after all that wine...

--
Sam