body:
On 12/9/05, MacGyverMagic/Mgm <macgyvermagic at gmail.com> wrote:
> I think educating editors should be tried before be try any sort of
> technical solution, so I'm all for a template. At least, that way
> people can't claim they didn't know how to include the references we
> require (which is now clearly said on edit pages by the way as well)
>
> Mgm
>
I guess if the template is kept to the article namespace only it's not
such a bad thing.  I wouldn't oppose at least trying it out.  But I do
think it's a different idea.

In the other thread I propose requiring comments for every edit, but
only for users that aren't logged in.  Let's test it out on them
first, and see how it goes :).  One tweak I just thought of now though
is we'd probably be better off limiting this to only the article
namespace.

(Now, how to handle a top post...do I delete the rest or keep it?  ohwell)

Anthony

> On 12/9/05, Anthony DiPierro <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
> > On 12/9/05, David Gerard <fun at thingy.apana.org.au> wrote:
> > > Anthony DiPierro wrote:
> > >
> > > > Right.  It's not perfect.  Just better.  At least if someone is lazy
> > > > and doesn't attribute something and then someone else catches them, it
> > > > can be fixed.
> > > > If we added a "references" field to the edit page, even if it was
> > > > optional, the number of attributions would probably increase even
> > > > more.  The field would be unformatted, so someone could of course type
> > > > "I just knew it" or "copied from some website" or even "poop" for
> > > > their reference, but it'd be one more thing to look into if someone
> > > > put their reference as "Wikipedia".
> > >
> > >
> > > I put forward an idea a while ago which people weren't too keen on, but
> > > I think it's time for it to be presented again: when a new article is
> > > created, prefill it with text. e.g.
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > A '''pagetitle''' is ... (say what the article is about, with a bit of
> > > introductory detail)
> > >
> > > ==More detail==
> > >
> > > (If there's more to say about it, put in sections with == == on the name
> > > of each section)
> > >
> > > ==See also==
> > >
> > > ==References==
> > > * (List the sources you used in writing this article)
> > > *
> > > *
> > >
> > > ==External links==
> > > * (List the few most relevant external web pages on the subject (home
> > > pages, etc) that you know of)
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > While this would just be wikitext, and any experienced Wikipedia regular
> > > could of course format an article how they liked, new editors would be
> > > presented clearly with what we expect from a new article.
> > >
> > > With this in place, I think we could even allow anons to create articles
> > > again on en:. They certainly wouldn't just put "so what do you want me
> > > to type?"
> > >
> > > I'm not sure if Mediawiki has new article prefill as yet, but it can't
> > > be that hard. The prefill wikitext could even be a Mediawiki: space message.
> > >
> > > (Example of a new article I created today: [[XCB]]. I have something
> > > like the above template in my head when I write an article.)
> > >
> > >
> > > > Now, adding a references section would preferably add a column to a
> > > > database table.  Whether or not that would require scheduled downtime,
> > > > I don't know.
> > >
> > >
> > > Sounds like much more work than the above. The above would set out that
> > > we do expect references and so on. Ultimately, I think guiding new
> > > editors in how to do the right thing would work better than trying to
> > > force a given article format in the database.
> > >
> > >
> > > - d.
> > >
> > > [cc: to wikitech-l]
> >
> > Hmm, you're really talking about something completely different from
> > me, though.  First of all, this would be for all edits, not just new
> > articles.  But secondly, whatever you put in that field wouldn't go
> > into the article at all, it'd go into the article history (next to the
> > comments field or something).  Unlike references in the article
> > itself: 1) we'd encourage people to put their reference for *every
> > edit*, not just major references, 2) the edit would be forever tied to
> > the reference, 3) you could include sources which wouldn't go in the
> > references section (from another article, from memory), 4) there'd be
> > no complaints about spamming (I've seen references to web pages
> > removed because they were considered ads), 5) In cases where the
> > source you use is already in the references section, you'd be able to
> > note that you used that source for *this edit* too.
> >
> > I guess there is an argument that this would be redundant work for
> > those who already put references in the ==References== section, but in
> > my experience that represents a very small portion of edits, whereas
> > the vast majority of edits should mention a source somewhere.  Of
> > course the best argument is that this should just go in the comments
> > section, which is why I'm somewhat hesitant about whether or not it's
> > a good idea.
> > _______________________________________________
> > 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
>


list: wikien-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Jtkiefer

subject: [WikiEN-l] Turn off AfD

body:
geni wrote:

>On 12/9/05, Anthony DiPierro <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
>
>
>>On 12/9/05, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>
>>>On 12/9/05, Anthony DiPierro <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>>Well, we certainly have different theories on what would happen.
>>>>Let's try it out and see.
>>>>
>>>>Anthony
>>>>
>>>>
>>>Tell you what lets go to the other extream and let admins deleted what
>>>ever they like for a week. Would make RC patrol much less of a
>>>problem.
>>>
>>>
>>>--
>>>geni
>>>
>>>
>>Wouldn't that give admins more responsibilities?
>>
>>
>
>Since you allow then to delete anything they feel like they don't have
>to be responcible. No messing around with does this fit criteria 7A or
>whatever.  We'd also probably find out if the 3RR applies to admin
>actions. Personaly I suspect the resulting problems would provide a
>fairly solid answer as to why the try it an see aproach isn't always a
>good idea.
>
>
>--
>geni
>
>
I wonder how long the GNAA article would last if we let admins delete
whatever they want :)

-Jtkiefer


from_name: Anthony DiPierro

subject: [WikiEN-l] Turn off AfD

body:
On 12/9/05, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 12/9/05, Anthony DiPierro <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
> > On 12/9/05, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > On 12/9/05, Anthony DiPierro <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
> > > > Well, we certainly have different theories on what would happen.
> > > > Let's try it out and see.
> > > >
> > > > Anthony
> > >
> > > Tell you what lets go to the other extream and let admins deleted what
> > > ever they like for a week. Would make RC patrol much less of a
> > > problem.
> > >
> > >
> > > --
> > > geni
> >
> > Wouldn't that give admins more responsibilities?
>
> Since you allow then to delete anything they feel like they don't have
> to be responcible. No messing around with does this fit criteria 7A or
> whatever.  We'd also probably find out if the 3RR applies to admin
> actions. Personaly I suspect the resulting problems would provide a
> fairly solid answer as to why the try it an see aproach isn't always a
> good idea.
>
>
> --
> geni

No, it's not always a good idea.  If we want to get ridiculous, I
could propose turning off editing for a week.  Anyway, I suspected you
were just proposing something you don't actually want.

For my part, I don't think removing the rules over deletion and
letting admins do whatever they want (subject to review and reversal,
of course, and if some admin goes around deleting articles like
[[George Bush]], reprimand and loss of admin powers) is such a bad
thing that trying it for a week would be a mistake.  In fact, if you
combined this with allowing users to see the content of those deleted
articles, I actually think it'd be the best solution.

Anthony


from_name: David Gerard

subject: [WikiEN-l] Please join the list if you're going to post to it

body:
I just pressed the wrong button and accidentally deleted mail from
someone who emails the list a fair bit recently, but isn't subscribed
from the posting address. My error entirely, but it would be a lot
easier if you could please subscribe all addresses you post from! Set
the address to "nomail" so you don't get a flood of messages in two
places. I do this myself.

- d.


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Alfio Puglisi

subject:
[Wikitech-l] Account creation spike on enwiki after anonymous
	page creation got disabled

body:
I have similar data:

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:December_2005_new_users_on_English_wikipedia.png

Notice how account creation varies during a day (the chart covers
about a week). The account creation slowed down a bit compared to
Monday, but it's still 2x the previous value.

Alfio

On 12/9/05, ?var Arnfj?r? Bjarmason <avarab at gmail.com> wrote:
> I made a plot[1] of account creations on the English Wikipedia based
> on Newuserlog data, there has been quite a spike since anonymous page
> creation got disabled, although the numbers are a bit inaccurate since
> it has also been in the press lately.
>
> [1]: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5c/Account_creations_on_the_English_Wikipedia.png
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] Turn off AfD

body:
On 12/9/05, MacGyverMagic/Mgm <macgyvermagic at gmail.com> wrote:
> > For my part, I don't think removing the rules over deletion and
> > letting admins do whatever they want (subject to review and reversal,
> > of course, and if some admin goes around deleting articles like
> > [[George Bush]], reprimand and loss of admin powers) is such a bad
> > thing that trying it for a week would be a mistake.  In fact, if you
> > combined this with allowing users to see the content of those deleted
> > articles, I actually think it'd be the best solution.
> >
> > Anthony
>
> AFD holds people accountable for their action and asks what the
> community actually wants. While I'd love more freedom in deleting
> obvious crap, I think it should be based on policy rather than some
> freedom.
>
> I'm sure we'd get at least some accusations of abuse of admin powers
> of people who feel their opinion wasn't heard when something not
> specifically falling in policy gets deleted. Admins should have a
> recourse if they're not sure.
>
> Mgm

I think one of the problems with AFD is that it removes
accountability.  Other than myself, I don't think anyone has been
reprimanded for simply voting.

But anyway, admins don't need a recourse if they're not sure, they
already have a really simple rule: "When in doubt, don't delete."


from_name: Claus Färber

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Libel law

body:
Kelly Martin <kelly.lynn.martin at gmail.com> schrieb/wrote:
> Nothing stops you from suing a US editor in UK courts.

Even worse, noting stops you from suing a US editor in US courts for
infringment of UK laws, especially UK IP laws. A US judgment based on UK
substantive law can easily be enforced in the US.

Claus
--
http://www.faerber.muc.de


subject: [WikiEN-l] Why Turn of AFD?

body:
On 12/9/05, MacGyverMagic/Mgm <macgyvermagic at gmail.com> wrote:
> Granted, the post I made in the other thread contained an opinion, but
> so did the Concutator's.
>
> I think the people who are suggesting to shut off AFD as an experiment
> are trying to solve a problem by addressing the wrong symptoms. So
> with this post, I'll try to dig up the motives behind the idea.
>
> 1. Deletion is a neccesary evil. Even Kappa, who is considered
> extremely inclusionist by a lot of wikipedians, occasionally uses AFD
> to list something, so there's clearly deletions by policy that need to
> happen yet are not covered by speedy criterions. AFD is the only
> recourse which allows all Wikipedians to have their say on the issue
> in an ordered manner right now and has additional benefits I list
> below. (Cuncatator, would you agree with this?)
>
> 2. Speedy criterions need to be objective which is why formulating
> them is so hard. It's simply impossible to make anything that should
> be deleted speediable, because deletion policy requires
> interpretation. There's almost always exceptions to the rule.
>
> 3. Deletion will create ill-feelings no matter how they are dealt
> with. People who created the article or care about the subject of one
> may feel 'bitten'. Regardless whether we use Pure Wiki Deletion,
> Uncontested Deletion, AFD, Speedy or any other matter.
>
> 4. AFD show contested articles to a larger public and often lead to
> evidence being produced which wouldn't otherwise been found and the
> saving of an article which would otherwise have been deleted. Any
> method like Pure Wiki Deletion would require you to dig through your
> watchlist and Recent changes on a daily basis to see if any articles
> you care about have a deletion discussion going.
>
> 5. Central listing avoids nominated articles from hiding in obscurity
> if disgrunted editors or vandals remove a template something which
> cannot be done with categories or any other method I've heard
> suggested so far.
>
> 6. It's not the fact that all the deletion discussion are listed at
> AFD that is causing the ill-feelings but the actions and reactions of
> certain editors. Discontinuing AFD for any length of time would not
> address these feelings.
>
> All these points (facts as far as I can tell) indicate, to me, we
> should be focussing on how people act on AFD and how authors of
> deleted content take it rather than get rid of the process itself.
>
> Could any of the people suggesting turning off AFD say which of the
> facts I list here, they don't agree with. I would also like to see
> some facts countering my points and tell me why AFD should stop (even
> temporarily) rather than adjusted or refined.
>
> Mgm

I disagree that it's not possible to come up with objective criteria
for deletion.  I disagree with the sentiment that "Deletion will
create ill-feelings no matter how they are dealt with", because some
methods of dealing with it causes much more ill-feelings than others.
I don't think showing contested articles to a larger public for less
than a week is beneficial.  If it's that important, the public will
find it anyway.  If it's not that important, then it's no big loss,
especially if the action can be reversed a month, two months, three
years later.  I don't think it's necessary to keep "nominations" from
hiding in obscurity.  Again, if it's important, someone will notice it
and reverse it.  If it isn't, then it doesn't matter anyway.  This is
especially true because we already point out that an article has been
deleted when someone actually tries to read that article.
Furthermore, how many people actually look at AfD every single week to
check if any articles they care about are being deleted?  I'd imagine
it's not many.  The time that articles are kept on AfD is already far
too short to expect that many objectors will notice in time.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Libel law

body:
On 12/9/05, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> True enough to a point, but now you're questioning the concept of
> judicial independance.  No court wants to be considered a paet of
> government.  Even accepting your premise there can be no judgement
> unless there is a complaint.  I read Andrew's comment as referring to
> the initial prosecution of a case as being done by private persons.
>
> Ec

As was mentioned in some other posts, this was just a language issue.
In American English, the word "government" means something different
from British English.


from_name: Aron Rubin

subject: [Wikitech-l] Hooking

body:
Why are there so few hooks in MediaWiki? Is this part of an effort to be
lean or have you not gotten around to it?

Aron

--

ssh aron at rubinium.org cat /dev/brain | grep ^work:

Aron Rubin                       Member, Engineering Staff
Lockheed Martin                  E-Mail: arubin at atl.lmco.com
Advanced Technology Laboratories Phone:  856.792.9865
3 Executive Campus               Fax:    856.792.9930
Cherry Hill, NJ USA 08002        Web:    http://www.atl.lmco.com


subject:
[WikiEN-l] Preformatted blank articles? (was Experiment on new
	pages and GFDL)

body:
On 12/9/05, MacGyverMagic/Mgm <macgyvermagic at gmail.com> wrote:
> > In the other thread I propose requiring comments for every edit, but
> > only for users that aren't logged in.  Let's test it out on them
> > first, and see how it goes :).  One tweak I just thought of now though
> > is we'd probably be better off limiting this to only the article
> > namespace.
> >
> > (Now, how to handle a top post...do I delete the rest or keep it?  ohwell)
> >
> > Anthony
> >
> I don't see why we should limit that to anons there's enough newbies
> and regulars who fail to cite sources on a regular basis. Anyone
> should be encouraged (if not forced) to do so. I don't see the
> advantage of just doing that to anons.
>
> Obvious spelling errors shouldn't really need a source, so there's a
> few crinks to iron out.
>
> Mgm

Well, spelling fixes and other mass changes would be severely slowed
down if you had to add a comment every time.  I think we'd be better
off testing it on "anons" (who aren't really anonymous) first.  Of
course, if we were going to turn it on for all users, we could exempt
minor edits - and "anons" can't mark edits as minor, which is kind of
what made me think to restrict it to anons first.

The comment wouldn't have to be used to cite sources.  You could use
it for anything, such as saying "fix spelling" or "move a paragraph".
But the idea is you couldn't just leave it blank.  Hopefully this
would make edit patrolling easier by putting a lot more information on
the recent changes page (and the watch lists).

I really can't think of much reason anyone would oppose it, especially
just limited to "anon" editing of the article namespace.


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [WikiEN-l] Well, we have at least one important supporter

body:
Geoffrey Burling wrote:

> I know he's Canadian, & for some reason I think he lives in Vancouver.
> If that's right, then I suspect he must be on speaking terms with Ray.
>
> http://ars.userfriendly.org/cartoons/?id=20051209

??????? Cute cartoon, but I never heard of the guy before.

Ec (Ray)


subject: [WikiEN-l] Turn off AfD

body:
On 12/9/05, MacGyverMagic/Mgm <macgyvermagic at gmail.com> wrote:
> It's simply impossible to not use deletion. Some subjects will always
> be contentious and need discussion instead of a speedy criterion to
> cover them.
>
> Mgm

Maybe you could give a few examples of such subjects, preferably from
AfD?  I can't think of anything that's verifiable and a noun and
shouldn't at least be kept as a redirect.

Anthony


list: foundation-l

from_name: Gerard Meijssen

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

body:
Daniel Mayer wrote:
> --- Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Daniel Mayer wrote:
>> The way I read your answer, you assume that all improvement is coming
>> from our existing editors. I do not know what you base this on.
>>
>
> That is not what I meant at all. I was simply pointing out that on a large wiki, such as
> en.wikipedia, the negatives start to outweigh the positives of allowing anon and newbie new page
> creation. In other words (for large wikis), the bad effects of additional maintenance and strain
> on existing users start to outweigh the benefit of recruitment and the relatively small part of
> anon new pages that survive. We also have to consider Jimmy's reasoning; that new pages are much
> more likely to have far fewer eyeballs on them and thus more likely to contain libel, slander, or
> blatantly false information. Thus limiting that function to people who are less likely to do that
> (at least on impulse), is something to try.
>
> We may in fact have just shifted much of the problem to new users and may need to extend this
> experiment to cover new user accounts as well. Undoing a page creation is only something that
> admins can take care of, so this would be not-unlike our prohibition on page moves by newbies
> since multiple page moves can only be fixed by admins.
>
>
Over time more people sign on to our project. Given our importance the
number of these people in a similar time frame increase. It is a similar
situation as with stubs, numerically the numbers grow and as a
percentage they stay the same. The point of this exercise is to decrease
the existence of flawed articles. The blunt mechanism that is chosen for
now will not help the existing flawed articles. It only leads on an ever
increasing path of repressive measures.
>> But thinking
>> that we can get absolute good quality is an achievable goal is like
>> believing in Santaclaus.
>>
>
> Nobody here is that naive. What we must do, however, is decrease the probability of creating bad
> content and increase the probability of creating good content. We need to scale our processes to
> meet new demands. Our software and methods need to adapt to an environment where people depend on
> the larger wikis to be as correct as possible and where our fame and license makes the libel,
> slander, and false information we host that much more harmful; both to those it directly puts into
> a bad light and ourselves.
>
>
When you say that we need to improve our methodology I agree. I agree
that it requires tooling. When you single the bigger wikis out to be
correct, I think the tooling you are thinking of is probably flawed. The
small wikis are probably more in need of improvement than the bigger
ones. The chance of lawsuits is not less but more complicated. The
consequences of not addressing issues may lead to a total ban of our
resources in a given country. I rate the current block of wikipedia from
China as more damaging for the relevance of our data. My motivation is
that we know that there are issues with content and we do address these
issues as well as we possibly can. By loosing our public we lose our
relevance and we lose their point of view that helps our point of view
to be neutral.
>> Having made the step to have a user account like described is a big step
>> towards becoming a community member. That is the point that you try to deny.
>>
>
> Have you seen the number of user accounts created on the Enlglish Wikipedia? It is an order of
> magnitude greater than the size of the community. That misses the whole point anyway; our goal is
> to create the world's largest and best free encyclopedia. The community is a means to that end.
> Granted, the community is vitally important, but concerns about it should not trump our goal.
> Let's not deny our goal.
>
> -- mav
Again, the number of users needs to be seen in relation to a time frame
and in relation to the size of our popularity. I would not be surprised
that the amount of new users has been fairly constant.

I would be the last to deny our goal. I am all for better tooling and
for being more discriminatory. I am all for stimulating annotations. I
am however also afraid that the current train of thought is well under
way, we are its passenger and we do not know where it will lead us and
how far it lead us away from the very ideals that so many hold dear.

Thanks,
    GerardM


list: wikimedia-l


from_name: Andrew Gray

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

body:
On 05/12/05, Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com> wrote:

> >> Does this apply to all pages, or just articles? It seems that IPs should
> >> still be able to create talk pages, both for articles and for users.
> >
> > We'll have to ask Brion, but what you say sounds perfectly reasonable to me.
>
> Talk pages are separately controlled, and anons can indeed still create them.
>
> I've gone ahead and turned on the restriction mode, per Jimmy's order.

This was brought up by [[User:JIP]] on [[WP:HD]] today:

----

Today I've seen a couple of talk pages created for nonexistent
templates, created by anon users, which have turned out as vandalism.
I seem to remember that although anons can't create articles any more,
they can create talk pages. I suggest that anons should be prohibited
from creating talk pages for articles, categories, templates or
project pages that don't exist yet, to prevent this sort of vandalism.

----

It's pretty sensible; anyone feel modifying the "can create talk
pages" system would cause problems? I assume it's simply a matter of
setting permissions for various namespaces, but if it's anything more
complex it might not be worth implementing...

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


subject: [WikiEN-l] Why Turn of AFD?

body:
On 12/9/05, MacGyverMagic/Mgm <macgyvermagic at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 12/9/05, Anthony DiPierro <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
> > I disagree that it's not possible to come up with objective criteria
> > for deletion.  I disagree with the sentiment that "Deletion will
> > create ill-feelings no matter how they are dealt with", because some
> > methods of dealing with it causes much more ill-feelings than others.
> > I don't think showing contested articles to a larger public for less
> > than a week is beneficial.  If it's that important, the public will
> > find it anyway.  If it's not that important, then it's no big loss,
> > especially if the action can be reversed a month, two months, three
> > years later.
> I didn't say it was impossible to come up with objective criteria,
> just hard to find some everyone agrees with for some types of
> articles.
>
AfD doesn't scale.  Speedy deletion does.  It's worth the trouble to
do the hard work to create a system that scales.

> Correction: We can't make everything that needs to be deleted
> speediable. Some things need interpretation and thus discussion. (I
> said anything)
>
Even if that's true, I suspect the types of things that need
discussion are a tiny subset of what gets deleted by AfD.  Like I said
somewhere else, maybe AfD would wind up getting resurrected in some
new form after we learn what kinds of articles speedy deletion
absolutely can't work for.

> People are not online all the time so Recentchanges and Watchlists
> aren't going to cover everything they care about that is nominated for
> deletion.

People aren't on AfD all the time either.  The solution for both of
these problems is undeletion.

> I for one, would hate to trawl through hours of edit logs
> when you can just have them all neatly logged in one place. For
> example, I wouldn't have noticed Emerson Spartz being nominated for
> deletion. That was important to me and it would've made it hard for me
> to find if AFD wasn't centralized. We shouldn't make people search for
> debates just because they hurt someone's feelings.
>
I do hate to trawl through AFD.  In fact, I just don't do it.  Try
avoiding AFD for a few months.  I think you'll be pleasantly surprised
about how the wiki continues to work.  You might just find yourself
never coming back, though.

> > I don't think it's necessary to keep "nominations" from
> > hiding in obscurity.  Again, if it's important, someone will notice it
> > and reverse it.  If it isn't, then it doesn't matter anyway.  This is
> > especially true because we already point out that an article has been
> > deleted when someone actually tries to read that article.
> Speedy deletion nominations aren't permanently logged in a central
> place, only in the edit history. They disappear from the directory as
> soon as the tag is removed. Have you got any idea how often speedy
> tags are removed? Just because I don't notice them being removed,
> doesn't mean it's not important.
>
Ah, I see what you mean now, you're talking about speedy deletion
nominations.  Can't these be put on [[Wikipedia:Speedy deletions]] for
a central location?  I don't really see what this has to do with AfD,
anyway.

> > Furthermore, how many people actually look at AfD every single week to
> > check if any articles they care about are being deleted?  I'd imagine
> > it's not many.  The time that articles are kept on AfD is already far
> > too short to expect that many objectors will notice in time.
> What point of mine was this aimed at?

Well, it was aimed at my misunderstanding of point 5 :).  But it
applies to point 4 as well.  It's already a pain in the ass to watch
for deletions.


from_name: The Cunctator

subject: [WikiEN-l] Turn off AfD

body:
On 12/9/05, Justin Cormack <justin at specialbusservice.com> wrote:
> On Fri, 2005-12-09 at 10:03 -0500, The Cunctator wrote:
> > My idea is to treat article deletion like the rest of page editing.
> > AfD came about originally because deletion was not reversible, so it
> > was necessarily A Big Deal. Once deletion was made reversible (Brion?)
> > deletion didn't need to be a Big Deal.
>
> Its not quite reversible yet:
>
> 1. Only admins can see deletion history (required for legal reasons I
> believe so copyvios can be hidden).
> 2. Deleted stuff goes away eventually in database purges. I think,
> although I may be wrong.
>
> If 2 is a non issue, admins could be given free deletion and restore
> without afd, but not normal users.
>
#1 is not required for legal reasons. Essentially all users should be
able to see the deletion history.

Back in the day when the "admin" class was created the claim by people
like Jimbo is that in the long run nearly everyone would have admin
powers; that it would be no special thing. I was skeptical for obvious
reasons. But I'm still willing to believe that's what we're heading
towards.

Undeleting (in my vision of this experiment) would be accessible to
all registered users who have been around for some non-zero, non-huge
amount of time.


from_name: geni

subject: [WikiEN-l] Turn off AfD

body:
On 12/9/05, Anthony DiPierro <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
> How do you deal with crap everyone agrees should be deleted, but is
> not actually speediable?  Here's a thought - make it speediable!
>
> Anthony

Giving admins more responcibilities is never a good idea.

--
geni


from_name: Kelly Martin

subject: [WikiEN-l] Does WP have legal advice?

body:
On 12/9/05, Matt Brown <morven at gmail.com> wrote:
> The problem as I see it is that the Wikimedia Foundation might not
> want to appear to be passing out legal advice to our contributors ...

Indeed, it should not do so, since doing so would create liability.

Remember, never take legal advice from someone who is not your lawyer.

Kelly


subject: [WikiEN-l] Turn off AfD

body:
On 12/9/05, Anthony DiPierro <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
> I'm not suggesting giving admins more responsibilities.
>
> Anthony

Expanding speedy is doing exactly that.

--
geni


from_name: Sherool

subject: [WikiEN-l] Do we have a "upload patrol"?

body:
Despite the huge warning on the upload page whenever I check the upload
log I always find several images with no info what so ever, and a lot that
do have a copyright tag (usualy promo or screenshot), but no source. I
know there is a image tagging project, but AFAIK they work off database
dumps with means most of the images will float around for months before
they pick them up (at least the ones that never make it into articles), so
by the time they get the latest dump there are usualy several thousands
new images to work though.

I would think it would be a better approach to catch these images shortly
after whey where uploaded, that way we might even "catch" the "upload and
run" users before they sign off for good, and get them to actualy fix
theyr images. Maybe some of the existing RC patroling tools could be
modified to detect images uploaded with no tags and source or something.
There are fortunately not THAT many uploads (compared to regular edits),
each page in the upload log span about an hour (using the default 50
uploads per page).

A more "permanent" solution might be something like Steve block suggested
here
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Fair_use#Required_fields_when_uploading>.
That is change the upload form to include a required "source" field, and
simply refuse the upload if the field is not filled in (same with
copyright tag). People could naturaly just write "asdf" or whatever to
bypass that, but at least then we know the lack of source is not a "good
faith" oversight and send it straight to IFD (maybe even CSD, though that
would require a new criterea). But that would still require people to
patrol for these images, no amount of dire warnings will help if it's not
enforced.

--
[[User:Sherool]]


subject: [WikiEN-l] Turn off AfD

body:
On 12/9/05, Snowspinner <Snowspinner at gmail.com> wrote:
> Is this another one of those things we're asserting by blanket
> default without evidence?
>
> -Phil

Never is going too far but it should very much be an option of last
resort. There are a number of reasons why it is a bad idea:

1.Shortage of admin manpower. Remeber those stats that came out last
month? We have maybe 200 admins reasonably active in an admin capacity

2. Adminship is meant to be no big deal. I would prefer it if people
stoped trying to make it so

3.The constantly riseing standards at WP:RFA are not going to be
helped by increaseing admin responcibilities/powers.

4.It appears that we may be getting more wheel wars. Increaseing the
number of subjective descissions will not help that.

--
geni


subject: [WikiEN-l] Turn off AfD

body:
On 12/9/05, Anthony DiPierro <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
> On 12/9/05, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 12/9/05, Anthony DiPierro <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
> > > I'm not suggesting giving admins more responsibilities.
> > >
> > > Anthony
> >
> > Expanding speedy is doing exactly that.
> > --
> > geni
>
> You're really going to have to explain this one.  It is the
> communities responsibility to expand the criteria for speedy deletion,
> not the admins.  What responsibility am I suggesting giving admins
> that they didn't have before?
>
> I suppose we're adding a new ability for admins, the ability to delete
> [whatever is defined in the new speedy deletion criterion].  But even
> that isn't a responsibility.
>
> So, can you try explaining what you're saying a little better?  I
> really don't understand.  (Phil's point is valid too, sometimes it is
> a good idea to give admins certain responsibilities, but in this case
> I don't even see what the new responsibility is.)
>
> Anthony

The areas which you expand into involve more subjective descission. Of
course this could largely be delt with by knocking out orphans. Go
through AFD sometime and look at the correlation between unanimiuos
deletes and orphans.

--
geni


subject: [WikiEN-l] Turn off AfD

body:
On 12/9/05, Sam Korn <smoddy at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 12/9/05, Anthony DiPierro <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
> > Maybe you could give a few examples of such subjects, preferably from
> > AfD?  I can't think of anything that's verifiable and a noun and
> > shouldn't at least be kept as a redirect.
>
> [[Historical persecution of Muslims]]
> [[Historical persecution by Muslims]]
>
> and suchlike.
>
> --
> Sam

What's wrong with redirecting this to [[Muslims]]?


subject: [WikiEN-l] Turn off AfD

body:
On 12/9/05, Anthony DiPierro <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
> On 12/9/05, Sam Korn <smoddy at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 12/9/05, Anthony DiPierro <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
> > > Maybe you could give a few examples of such subjects, preferably from
> > > AfD?  I can't think of anything that's verifiable and a noun and
> > > shouldn't at least be kept as a redirect.
> >
> > [[Historical persecution of Muslims]]
> > [[Historical persecution by Muslims]]
> >
> > and suchlike.
> >
> > --
> > Sam
>
> What's wrong with redirecting this to [[Muslims]]?
>
other than the fact that the article is [[Muslim]] :)


subject: [Foundation-l] Sources and sourceability

body:
On 12/9/05, Delirium <delirium at hackish.org> wrote:
> daniwo59 at aol.com wrote:
>
> >I want to outline my position here, so that there is no misunderstanding,  as
> >there seems to be.
> >
> >1. I am NOT saying that every fact in Wikipedia must be sourced or  removed.
> >2. I am saying that every fact in Wikipedia should be SOURCEABLE.
> >3. I am not saying that everyone must give their sources whenever they  edit.
> >4. I am saying that we can encourage people to work on a project to find
> >sources for each fact, just like we have encouraged people to fix commas or
> >categorize stubs.
> >5. I am not saying that people who cannot source should be discouraged from
> >editing.
> >6. I am saying that we should encourage people to find sources, for their
> >own work and for other's work as well.
> >7. I am saying that there are many different types of sources, and we  should
> >find ways of including them. (BTW, in a previous job I worked extensively
> >with oral histories, which are a wonderful source of information, even if they
> >must always be verified).
> >7. Finally, I am saying that high quality is NOT something we can  compromise.
> >
> >
> That's a very nice bulleted summary of exactly what our policy on
> sources should be, IMO. =]
>
> -Mark

Wouldn't it be fair to say that it's a nice bulleted summary of
exactly what our policy on sources actually is?


subject:
[WikiEN-l] Plots of article creations,
	deletions and undeletions on the English Wikipedia

body:
On 12/9/05, ?var Arnfj?r? Bjarmason <avarab at gmail.com> wrote:
> I was playing with some more plotting and made a plot of article
> creations, deletions and undeletions on the English Wikipedia, enjoy:
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_%28technical%29#Article_creations.2C_deletions_and_undeletions

This is awesome.  Now can someone point out the hour that this
experiment was started?  (I'd have just added this comment to the page
itself, but I'm not allowed to edit the Village Pump.)

Anthony


subject: [WikiEN-l] Turn off AfD

body:
On 12/9/05, Anthony DiPierro <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
> Yes, you've confused what I've said.  I think we should add more
> *objective* criteria to the speedy deletion candidates, not
> *subjective* ones.

If totaly objective criteria don't turn up much outside maths

>Turning off AfD for a while would cause that to
> happen.
>

No it would not. It would simply start an all out fight between the
inclionists and the deletionists.

--
geni


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Tim 'avatar' Bartel

subject: [Wikipedia-l] WikiPress: Wikipedia and German Wikipedia DVD

body:
Hi wikipedians,

perhaps the German speaking wikipedians are interested in the release of
the book "Wikipedia" by Directmedia and the latest Wikipedia DVD with
~300.000 articles (in German only!) and ~100.000 images from de and commons.

You can find information here:
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiPress

And you can download the stuff here:
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiPress/Download

Bye, Tim.

--
Die Mathematiker sind eine Art Franzosen: Redet man zu ihnen, so
uebersetzen sie es in ihre Sprache, und dann ist es alsobald ganz
etwas anderes. (Johann Wolfgang von Goethe)
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from_name: Michael Snow

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Turn off AfD

body:
The Cunctator wrote:

>My idea is to treat article deletion like the rest of page editing.
>AfD came about originally because deletion was not reversible, so it
>was necessarily A Big Deal. Once deletion was made reversible (Brion?)
>deletion didn't need to be a Big Deal.
>
>So the elements of my experiment would be:
>1. Turn off AfD.
>2. Make deletion/undeletion a common power.
>3. Follow the rules for edit/reversions to police whether deletions
>are done properly.
>
>
The problem is that a great deal of policing depends on people using
their watchlists and/or Recent Changes. Deletion and undeletion show up
on neither.

--Michael Snow


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Turn off AfD

body:
Anthony DiPierro wrote:

>On 12/9/05, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>>On 12/9/05, Anthony DiPierro <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
>>
>>
>>>Yes, you've confused what I've said.  I think we should add more
>>>*objective* criteria to the speedy deletion candidates, not
>>>*subjective* ones.
>>>
>>>
>>If totaly objective criteria don't turn up much outside maths
>>
>>
>I find it hard to believe that we can't come up with objective
>criteria for articles that everyone agrees should be deleted.
>Verifiability, for instance, is an objective criterion.
>
>
In the end, it really isn't. It depends on subjective judgments as to
what kind of source is acceptable to verify a particular fact.

--Michael Snow


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Turn off AfD

body:
David Gerard wrote:

>Travis Mason-Bushman wrote to Tony Sidaway:
>
>
>>Coming from someone who's consistently opposed good faith efforts to make it
>>easier for admins to get rid of crap wiki pages, and, in fact, is at this
>>very moment proposing to not allow crap-but-not-speedy-crap wiki pages to be
>>deleted at all for a month, I find that statement quite amusing.
>>
>>
>Keith Old wrote to The Cunctator:
>
>
>>People should give serious thought to the consequences of such actions
>>before they post. All that would happen is that we would end up with one
>>hell of a mess.
>>In any case, those people who are so concerned about AfD should come up with
>>a serious proposal that would work better. As yet, I have not seen such a
>>proposal.
>>
>>
>I don't doubt Keith or Travis's good faith at all, but I do think the
>above is a good example of the attitude of assumption of bad faith by
>outsiders the AFD process currently seems to foster - and particularly
>the hostile reaction to most suggestions of change.
>
Actually, they aren't assumptions of bad faith so much as they're
reflections of an opinion that "turn off AfD" isn't a proposal that can
be taken seriously. Other people obviously do take it seriously, and the
gap between these two positions is difficult to bridge.

--Michael Snow


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

body:
MacGyverMagic/Mgm wrote:

> It's less about authorship and more about accountablility.
> We need those names so we know who to hold responsible if the info is wrong.

Yep, knowing who to ask. The thing that *really* gets Wikipedia editors
upset about things like the Siegenthaler article is not the possibility
of a libel case - it's that the article was *wrong*. THAT gets people
into action.

- d.


body:
Anthony DiPierro wrote:

> Right.  It's not perfect.  Just better.  At least if someone is lazy
> and doesn't attribute something and then someone else catches them, it
> can be fixed.
> If we added a "references" field to the edit page, even if it was
> optional, the number of attributions would probably increase even
> more.  The field would be unformatted, so someone could of course type
> "I just knew it" or "copied from some website" or even "poop" for
> their reference, but it'd be one more thing to look into if someone
> put their reference as "Wikipedia".

I put forward an idea a while ago which people weren't too keen on, but
I think it's time for it to be presented again: when a new article is
created, prefill it with text. e.g.

A '''pagetitle''' is ... (say what the article is about, with a bit of
introductory detail)

==More detail==

(If there's more to say about it, put in sections with == == on the name
of each section)

==See also==

==References==
* (List the sources you used in writing this article)
*
*

==External links==
* (List the few most relevant external web pages on the subject (home
pages, etc) that you know of)

While this would just be wikitext, and any experienced Wikipedia regular
could of course format an article how they liked, new editors would be
presented clearly with what we expect from a new article.

With this in place, I think we could even allow anons to create articles
again on en:. They certainly wouldn't just put "so what do you want me
to type?"

I'm not sure if Mediawiki has new article prefill as yet, but it can't
be that hard. The prefill wikitext could even be a Mediawiki: space message.

(Example of a new article I created today: [[XCB]]. I have something
like the above template in my head when I write an article.)

> Now, adding a references section would preferably add a column to a
> database table.  Whether or not that would require scheduled downtime,
> I don't know.

Sounds like much more work than the above. The above would set out that
we do expect references and so on. Ultimately, I think guiding new
editors in how to do the right thing would work better than trying to
force a given article format in the database.

- d.

[cc: to wikitech-l]


subject:
[Wikitech-l] Preformatted blank articles? (was Experiment on new
	pages and GFDL)


subject: [WikiEN-l] Some more unscientific findings

body:
Geoffrey Burling wrote:

> Now while some people will use this as proof that Wikipedia badly needs
> improvement and eoter rant that we need to work on our quality, or
> dismiss this finding as belaboring the obvious, a little math will show
> that if the 5% figure is correct then there ought to be at least 42,000
> articles that are Good in quality -- or better. That's not a bad
> statistic, especialy when one considers some proprietary encyclopedias
> don't have that many articles *in total*.

Wikipedia is not a finished product encyclopedia. It's the raw material
for one. It's good enough to be usable, and our popularity (#30 today,
#29 yesterday - we've broken the top 30!) shows there's an aching need
for something like Wikipedia, even if we don't fill it as well as we'd
like to.

> Let's stop making assumptions, and do some more math: more articles are
> listed & debated on AfD than on Peer review. It's hard not to conclude
> from that simple calculation that Wikipedians are more motivated to
> remove an article than to improve it. Small wonder, then, that so many
> people complain about the quality of the articles on Wikipedia: that's
> what they look for -- the bad articles instead of the good.

Yes. I wish more AFD regulars would work on writing and improving stuff.
 (I know a lot do - Geogre, for instance, an ardent advocate of clearing
crap, very much has the runs on the board when it comes to producing new
stuff of high quality. I'm a fan.)

> I know this would be unenforceable, but wouldn't it be a good policy
> that before an editor nominates an article to AfD, they have to also
> nominate an article to Peer review? And that before an editor adds to
> the debate at AfD, they have to contribute to the debate at either Peer
> review or Featured articles candidates? Maybe that might make some
> people complain about those fora like some people complain about AfD
> now, but it just might help uncover more of those 42,000 unrecognized
> Good articles.

I heartily endorse this product and/or service!

(And if you have someone who's a good admin who is good at spotting crap
but a terrible writer, e.g. geni, who is dyslexic, they should be able
to find people to help them with editing their prose into shape. I'll
volunteer.)

- d.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Turn off AfD

body:
On 12/9/05, Anthony DiPierro <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
> Well, we certainly have different theories on what would happen.
> Let's try it out and see.
>
> Anthony

Tell you what lets go to the other extream and let admins deleted what
ever they like for a week. Would make RC patrol much less of a
problem.

--
geni


from_name: Ruy Lopez

subject: [WikiEN-l] NPOV trainwreck

body:
I surprisingly find myself in agreement with many things about this ArbCom decision with Sam Spade.

Here's how I see it:

1) Jimbo, who said he sees Wikipedia as a "von Mises model", appoints like-minded people to
ArbCom such as Fred Bauder and JayJG.  Jimbo appoints conservative cronies like that, making
a far worse choice than the ArbCom elections, which in my view elected some good, decent people
like Raul654, who I don't always agree with, but at least is neutral, fair and so forth.
2) So Fred Bauder, Jimbo-appointed conservative cronie from way back "does" the case, and most of
the other arbs just sign off on the work he did.  I've seen this movie before.
3) Getting onto ArbCom went from Jimbo appointments (who like JayJG and Bauder are horrible), to
an election, which brought in good arbs, and now he wants to go back to appointing people again.
Of course he can't just kill the election once it's in place, so he says he will have an election
to help him decide or some garbage like that.  I mean it's nonsense.  Despite the "be bold" mantra,
I am usually not so bold on such things, but I moved the "ArbCom 2005 elections" page to something
like "Arbcom 2005 support vote" and noted that there would be no elections.  Of course I was
immediately reverted, and my notes on how the election is a fraud were removed.
4) Reading myself, I'd think I'm just another Wikipedia crank, except I'm not because I "gave up"
on Wikipedia months ago.  It will be some time before the alternative wikis like Demopedia, Dkosopedia,
Anarchopedia, Red Wiki and so forth get momentum though (which I am helping generate), so I am kind of
stuck here for a bit unfortunately.  For those who have agreed with little I have said so far, here
is one thing I'll say that if you think about it, you might agree with me on.  Wouldn't it be a good
thing for all the "left wing cranks" to go off and edit some other wiki encyclopedia?  Wouldn't that
stop a lot of edit wars and nonsense, and people could concentrate on making the pages in the Science,
Mathematics, Technology and so forth pages better, instead of wasting time on all of this other nonsense?
For some reason, Wikipedia has grabbed onto and held onto the third rail of politics, and the only
reason why I can think this happened is because Ayn-Rand-reading porn magnate Jimbo wants it that way.
I should also note that when I heard Brian Lamb ask Jimbo about Ayn Rand and porn, I was of course
delighted, and if there is a God, I hoped I had something to do with that question being asked.
5) Nobs01 is not a von Mises, Ayn Rand reader.  He is not a rabid Zionist like JayJG.  He is not a
conservative hick lawyer like Fred Bauder who probably wears cowboy boots.  He is a complete nutcase,
he is not playing with all 52 cards in the deck.  Go to Nobs01's user page, and go through the history,
and ask yourself if this is the user page of someone who is well in the head.  And I live in a city where
I meet nutty people all the time.  Nobs01 is a nut even nuts are scared of.  And ArbCom is doing nothing except a month ban of him for personal attacks.  Is this going to solve the problem?  Is thing going to solve  Nobs spreading his crank red-under-every-bed theories around Wikipedia?

Ruy

--
___________________________________________________
Play 100s of games for FREE! http://games.mail.com/


from_name: Keith Old

subject: [WikiEN-l] Turn off AfD

body:
David,

I would have no problem with adding a requirement to notify the original
author as part of a requirement for nomination. We should also look at
systems where communities possibly affected by a decision are advised of the
decision. Posting  articles on relevant noticeboards  is one way of doing
it.

We have a situation where Wikipedian A disagrees with Wikipedian B over all
sorts of issues such as schools, webcomics, etc. We have to look at ways of
trying to reach some sort of common ground and involving the community as
much as possible in the decision. Ultimately, we have to delete some
articles that just aren't suitable for Wikipedia and we should have a
process where as many people

Ultimately, I have looked at RfAr. As far as I can see most of the cases
relate to pushing POV on particular pages. That would continue whether or
not we continued with AfD or some other system.

Regards

Keith Old

Keith Old

On 12/9/05, David Gerard <fun at thingy.apana.org.au> wrote:
>
> Keith Old wrote:
>
> > What I think is what would happen is that more articles would end up
> being
> > speedy deleted with the author often not even having a say. Nor would
> they
> > have the chance to improve their articles in response to criticism.
>
>
> The creator often doesn't have a chance now, because the AFD regulars
> think it's too much like work to notify them.
>
>
> > Personally, I don't go to Articles for Deletion to win arguments or to
> salt
> > the earth. Nor do the vast majority the hundreds of other people who
> > participate in the process. From my experience most people on AfD are
> > amenable to good argument. We should Assume Good Faith regarding
> > participants in Articles for Deletion.
>
>
> See current RFAr. It blatantly encourages an atmosphere of bad faith and
> that's damaging.
>
>
> - 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
>


body:
On 12/9/05, David Gerard <fun at thingy.apana.org.au> wrote:
> I heartily endorse this product and/or service!

The problem is that there isn't really any patrol that will throw up
good articles. I mean I know where there are good articles because
they cover my areas of interest but they don't turn up on RC patrol of
articles in need of wikification which is where my AFD nominations
come from.

--
geni


subject:
[WikiEN-l] Experimenting with "anon editors" - a new proposal -
	require comment

body:
On 12/9/05, Anthony DiPierro <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
> OK, here's another idea for an experiment to reduce vandalism and make
> edit patrolling easier - require users that aren't logged in to enter
> something into the comment field.  Encourage these editors in text
> next to the comment field to describe their change and explain where
> they got the information from.  Tell them that unverifiable
> information will be deleted.
>
> Sure, some will put "blah" in there or some other nonsense, but
> that'll show up in recent changes and it'll draw attention.  Some will
> outright lie about what they're doing (putting "fix spelling" when
> they're really deleting text or whatever), but this will be obvious to
> anyone viewing the diff.  It won't stop vandalism, but it'll make it
> easier to detect.
>
> Feel free to comment on this experiment proposal.

2 Isnt really a problem. People already lie.

What about section editing.

--
geni


from_name: Magnus Manske

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Request management

body:
Rowan Collins wrote:
> On 08/12/05, Magnus Manske <magnus.manske at web.de> wrote:
>
>> Currently, they can see "this article needs cleanup" (or the like). I
>> though along the lines of a sidebar note; maybe a little less prominent
>> than the current style.
>>
>
> Well, some things need a more prominent notice than others - e.g. a
> page listed for deletion needs to really draw attention to that fact.
> Obviously, this could still be done manually with templates, but it
> would be nice if the software would do it for you (it would also keep
> "meta" info out of the article source, though it could stay in the
> history as null revisions, like page moves do).
>
> Perhaps a notice displayed at the top of the page, configurable as a
> wikitext-rich MediaWiki page per request type. That way "needs
> cleanup" could just be a little italic note, and "may be deleted
> shortly" could be a large red box with lots of exclamation marks.
>
The 'how' is just a matter of taste; I'd suggest having all these notes
in one place at the sidebar, but for essential ones like "deletion", we
could change the page background slightly into yellowish or red (yes, so
that color-blind users can see something's different as well).

I'll announce it when the feature is advanced enough to work on these
things :-)

Magnus


body:
Tim 'avatar' Bartel wrote:
> Hi wikipedians,
>
> perhaps the German speaking wikipedians are interested in the release of
> the book "Wikipedia" by Directmedia and the latest Wikipedia DVD with
> ~300.000 articles (in German only!) and ~100.000 images from de and commons.
>
> You can find information here:
> http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiPress
>
> And you can download the stuff here:
> http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiPress/Download
>
> Bye, Tim.
>
Quick note: I ordered one for myself at DirectMedia, and two as
christmas presents at amazon.

The DirectMedia arrived about a week ago; I'm still waiting for the
amazon ones. Sold out?

Magnus


from_name: Tom Cadden

subject: [WikiEN-l] Does WP have legal advice?

body:
Has Wikipedia ever got professional legal advice? A lot of the legal analysis I hear on WP seems to be amateur interpretation of statutes, or comments by people who say they are lawyers but who, because of their anonymous status, may not be, or who may be undergraduate legal students.

 I know it would be costly, but I think recent cases, plus issues over images other issues, are IMHO crying out of absolutely professional legal advice. It may well already have received it, but much of the commentary on WP doesn't show evidence of it. We need to be 100% certain of the legality of our actions in all cases. We cannot risk finding that, quite innocently, that we are breaking one or more laws and face the threat of large fines or even an injunction closing us down.

 Far smaller publications than WP have lawyers check things all the time. If we don't already have full legal advice available it is VITAL that we get it. It would be irresponsible to run an entity like WP and not have it.

 Thom

---------------------------------
To help you stay safe and secure online, we've developed the all new Yahoo! Security Centre.


from_name: David Gerard

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Re: Preformatted blank articles? (was Experiment on new
 pages and GFDL)

body:
Tels wrote:

> - From my experience with people very new to wikis, I also set up a new link
> in the menu ala "Create new article". When clicked it asks about the
> title, and then bounces them back to the wiki, the edit box open and a
> text similar to yours already filled in.
> People view this as _much_ easier than mucking about with the URL, putting
> a link in somewhere else, and/or starting with an empty edit box.

Yep!

> The most FAQ was "How do I start a new article?" followed by "And why is
> this so complicated?", closely followed by "How do I add a headline
> again?"

That's specifically why I put how to make a section in that in the
example ;-)

I did a radio interview on Wikipedia yesterday. I actually tried to lure
casual editors to feel free to edit.

It'd be nice if anon contributors could start articles again. If
regulars don't like getting a template, perhaps it could be on just for
anon editors.

> Especially in-frequent contributors tend to forget these things very quick
> and since the computer should help the humans and not vice versa, I
> finally patched my local Mediawiki installation to fix this issue.
> Everyone's been happy since :)

Please submit the patch! (Is there a bug for this yet?)

- d.


subject:
[Wikitech-l] Re: Preformatted blank articles? (was Experiment on
 new pages and GFDL)


subject: [WikiEN-l] Turn off AfD

body:
On 12/9/05, Anthony DiPierro <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
> On 12/9/05, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 12/9/05, Anthony DiPierro <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
> > > Well, we certainly have different theories on what would happen.
> > > Let's try it out and see.
> > >
> > > Anthony
> >
> > Tell you what lets go to the other extream and let admins deleted what
> > ever they like for a week. Would make RC patrol much less of a
> > problem.
> >
> >
> > --
> > geni
>
> Wouldn't that give admins more responsibilities?

Since you allow then to delete anything they feel like they don't have
to be responcible. No messing around with does this fit criteria 7A or
whatever.  We'd also probably find out if the 3RR applies to admin
actions. Personaly I suspect the resulting problems would provide a
fairly solid answer as to why the try it an see aproach isn't always a
good idea.

--
geni


from_name: Heinz

subject: [Wikitech-l] how switching language for anonymos users

body:
How can i let anonymus users chose their language eg. by clicking
buttons for "english" or "german".

I know this works for registrated users within preferences.

Any ideas?

Thanks, Heinz


from_name: Tels

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Re: [Wikitech-l] Preformatted blank articles? (was
	Experiment on new pages and GFDL)

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

Moin,

On Friday 09 December 2005 20:05, David Gerard wrote:
> Anthony DiPierro wrote:
> > Right.  It's not perfect.  Just better.  At least if someone is lazy
> > and doesn't attribute something and then someone else catches them,
> > it can be fixed.
> > If we added a "references" field to the edit page, even if it was
> > optional, the number of attributions would probably increase even
> > more.  The field would be unformatted, so someone could of course
> > type "I just knew it" or "copied from some website" or even "poop"
> > for their reference, but it'd be one more thing to look into if
> > someone put their reference as "Wikipedia".
>
> I put forward an idea a while ago which people weren't too keen on, but
> I think it's time for it to be presented again: when a new article is
> created, prefill it with text. e.g.
[snipa bit]

- From my experience with people very new to wikis, I also set up a new link
in the menu ala "Create new article". When clicked it asks about the
title, and then bounces them back to the wiki, the edit box open and a
text similar to yours already filled in.

People view this as _much_ easier than mucking about with the URL, putting
a link in somewhere else, and/or starting with an empty edit box.

The most FAQ was "How do I start a new article?" followed by "And why is
this so complicated?", closely followed by "How do I add a headline
again?"

Especially in-frequent contributors tend to forget these things very quick
and since the computer should help the humans and not vice versa, I
finally patched my local Mediawiki installation to fix this issue.
Everyone's been happy since :)

Best wishes,

Tels

- --
 Signed on Fri Dec  9 21:09:24 2005 with key 0x93B84C15.
 Visit my photo gallery at http://bloodgate.com/photos/
 PGP key on http://bloodgate.com/tels.asc or per email.

 This email violates U.S. patent #6,756,999 <http://tinyurl.com/2vuqm>:

  [ [ Konsoles* ] [ Mozilla ] [ KMail ]]

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from_name: MacGyverMagic/Mgm

body:
We don't have a patrol yet, but I like the idea.
We could get a lot of images fixed this way.

Mgm

On 12/9/05, Sherool <jamydlan at online.no> wrote:
> Despite the huge warning on the upload page whenever I check the upload
> log I always find several images with no info what so ever, and a lot that
> do have a copyright tag (usualy promo or screenshot), but no source. I
> know there is a image tagging project, but AFAIK they work off database
> dumps with means most of the images will float around for months before
> they pick them up (at least the ones that never make it into articles), so
> by the time they get the latest dump there are usualy several thousands
> new images to work though.
>
> I would think it would be a better approach to catch these images shortly
> after whey where uploaded, that way we might even "catch" the "upload and
> run" users before they sign off for good, and get them to actualy fix
> theyr images. Maybe some of the existing RC patroling tools could be
> modified to detect images uploaded with no tags and source or something.
> There are fortunately not THAT many uploads (compared to regular edits),
> each page in the upload log span about an hour (using the default 50
> uploads per page).
>
> A more "permanent" solution might be something like Steve block suggested
> here
> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Fair_use#Required_fields_when_uploading>.
> That is change the upload form to include a required "source" field, and
> simply refuse the upload if the field is not filled in (same with
> copyright tag). People could naturaly just write "asdf" or whatever to
> bypass that, but at least then we know the lack of source is not a "good
> faith" oversight and send it straight to IFD (maybe even CSD, though that
> would require a new criterea). But that would still require people to
> patrol for these images, no amount of dire warnings will help if it's not
> enforced.
>
> --
> [[User:Sherool]]
>
> _______________________________________________
> 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] Turn off AfD

body:
Keith Old wrote:

> I would have no problem with adding a requirement to notify the original
> author as part of a requirement for nomination. We should also look at
> systems where communities possibly affected by a decision are advised of the
> decision. Posting  articles on relevant noticeboards  is one way of doing
> it.

You wouldn't, but the AFD regulars resist any such move furiously.

People are happy to agree with these ideas on wikien-l. But I strongly
suggest they try saying it on [[WT:AFD]] and see for themselves how
resistant the AFD regulars are to any change to the deletion process
short of anyone pulling a complete replacement deletion system out of
thin air.

- d.


body:
I think educating editors should be tried before be try any sort of
technical solution, so I'm all for a template. At least, that way
people can't claim they didn't know how to include the references we
require (which is now clearly said on edit pages by the way as well)

Mgm

On 12/9/05, Anthony DiPierro <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
> On 12/9/05, David Gerard <fun at thingy.apana.org.au> wrote:
> > Anthony DiPierro wrote:
> >
> > > Right.  It's not perfect.  Just better.  At least if someone is lazy
> > > and doesn't attribute something and then someone else catches them, it
> > > can be fixed.
> > > If we added a "references" field to the edit page, even if it was
> > > optional, the number of attributions would probably increase even
> > > more.  The field would be unformatted, so someone could of course type
> > > "I just knew it" or "copied from some website" or even "poop" for
> > > their reference, but it'd be one more thing to look into if someone
> > > put their reference as "Wikipedia".
> >
> >
> > I put forward an idea a while ago which people weren't too keen on, but
> > I think it's time for it to be presented again: when a new article is
> > created, prefill it with text. e.g.
> >
> >
> >
> > A '''pagetitle''' is ... (say what the article is about, with a bit of
> > introductory detail)
> >
> > ==More detail==
> >
> > (If there's more to say about it, put in sections with == == on the name
> > of each section)
> >
> > ==See also==
> >
> > ==References==
> > * (List the sources you used in writing this article)
> > *
> > *
> >
> > ==External links==
> > * (List the few most relevant external web pages on the subject (home
> > pages, etc) that you know of)
> >
> >
> >
> > While this would just be wikitext, and any experienced Wikipedia regular
> > could of course format an article how they liked, new editors would be
> > presented clearly with what we expect from a new article.
> >
> > With this in place, I think we could even allow anons to create articles
> > again on en:. They certainly wouldn't just put "so what do you want me
> > to type?"
> >
> > I'm not sure if Mediawiki has new article prefill as yet, but it can't
> > be that hard. The prefill wikitext could even be a Mediawiki: space message.
> >
> > (Example of a new article I created today: [[XCB]]. I have something
> > like the above template in my head when I write an article.)
> >
> >
> > > Now, adding a references section would preferably add a column to a
> > > database table.  Whether or not that would require scheduled downtime,
> > > I don't know.
> >
> >
> > Sounds like much more work than the above. The above would set out that
> > we do expect references and so on. Ultimately, I think guiding new
> > editors in how to do the right thing would work better than trying to
> > force a given article format in the database.
> >
> >
> > - d.
> >
> > [cc: to wikitech-l]
>
> Hmm, you're really talking about something completely different from
> me, though.  First of all, this would be for all edits, not just new
> articles.  But secondly, whatever you put in that field wouldn't go
> into the article at all, it'd go into the article history (next to the
> comments field or something).  Unlike references in the article
> itself: 1) we'd encourage people to put their reference for *every
> edit*, not just major references, 2) the edit would be forever tied to
> the reference, 3) you could include sources which wouldn't go in the
> references section (from another article, from memory), 4) there'd be
> no complaints about spamming (I've seen references to web pages
> removed because they were considered ads), 5) In cases where the
> source you use is already in the references section, you'd be able to
> note that you used that source for *this edit* too.
>
> I guess there is an argument that this would be redundant work for
> those who already put references in the ==References== section, but in
> my experience that represents a very small portion of edits, whereas
> the vast majority of edits should mention a source somewhere.  Of
> course the best argument is that this should just go in the comments
> section, which is why I'm somewhat hesitant about whether or not it's
> a good idea.
> _______________________________________________
> 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:
On 09/12/05, MacGyverMagic/Mgm <macgyvermagic at gmail.com> wrote:

> If we have a systemetic bias, it's reasonable to assume it also
> portrudes to the featured articles we have.

First-cut analysis of [[WP:FA]], plus or minus a margin of error (I
handcounted, and my list totals 828 not the given 826, oops):

Art, architecture, and archaeology - 20
Awards and decorations - 9
Biology and medicine - 44
Chemistry - 9
Computing - 28
Culture and society - 31
Education - 4
Economics - 15
Food and drink - 7
Geography and places - 66
Geology, geophysics, and mineralogy - 9
History - 68
Language and linguistics - 18
Law - 8
Literature - 54
Mathematics - 12
Media - 36
Music - 55
Philosophy - 7
Physics and astronomy - 35
Politics and government - 75
Psychology - 4
Religion and beliefs - 26
Royalty, nobility, and heraldry - 31
Sport and games - 48
Technology - 32
Transport - 31
War - 46

Some of these are a little vague - Computing and Technology might need
reassessing, various odd articles could be classed elsewhere, the
usual odd grouping of spaceflight and astronomy, and Culture and
Society is a catch-all miscellaneous category which includes
[[Exploding whale]], [[Octopus card]], [[Pet skunk]] and four articles
on flags.

But, it's good enough for our test.

Highest ten proportions are:

9% - Politics and government
8% - History
8% - Geography and places
7% - Music
7% - Literature
7% - Sport and games
6% - War
5% - Biology and medicine
4% - Media
4% - Physics and Astronomy

Politics and Government has 75 articles. 28.5 of these are
"essentially American", 15 of these "essentially British", 5
"essentially Canadian", 3 "essentially Australian".

("Essentially X" means an article that's to do with a topic mostly
specific to one country. Cases where I wasn't sure I split the
difference; feel free to guess which ones)

I invite people to look at the other categories and see if anything
interesting emerges

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


subject: [WikiEN-l] Turn off AfD

body:
JAY JG wrote:
> From: Tony Sidaway <f.crdfa at gmail.com>
>> On 12/9/05, Keith Old <keithold at gmail.com> wrote:

>> > If we got rid of AfD, we'd have to sort through the Deletion logs,

>> Only for a short while.  After a few waggy fingers and blocks, the
>> administrators performing inappropriate out-of-process deletions would
>> stop.  Trust me on this.  Calvinball.

> Here's an even better idea; let's not mess with something that's working
> reasonably well.

Assumption of fact not in evidence. AFD is not working reasonably well.
Deletion of pages is one thing; the current culture of AFD is utterly
poisonous to the community and has an appalling tendency to assumption
of bad faith, *especially* when anyone dares question how it currently
works. (wikien-l is apparently regarded as an enemy of AFD now.
Goodness!) I believe there's an arbitration case on at the moment
concerning precisely this atmosphere of bad faith perpetuated on AFD.

- d.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Turn off AfD

body:
Keith Old wrote:

> Alternatively, we shouldn't shut down a system that works reasonably well
> and performs an important task without having something that works better.

Important task, yes. Works reasonably well, no. It's poisonous and the
edge cases are being decided in ways harmful to the community.

- d.


from_name: Dori

body:
On 12/9/05, ?var Arnfj?r? Bjarmason <avarab at gmail.com> wrote:
> I made a plot[1] of account creations on the English Wikipedia based
> on Newuserlog data, there has been quite a spike since anonymous page
> creation got disabled, although the numbers are a bit inaccurate since
> it has also been in the press lately.
>
> [1]: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5c/Account_creations_on_the_English_Wikipedia.png

Time to start selling low UID accounts on eBay. Just in time for the
fundraising too.

Dori


subject: [WikiEN-l] Does WP have legal advice?

body:
On 09/12/05, Matt Brown <morven at gmail.com> wrote:
> The problem as I see it is that the Wikimedia Foundation might not
> want to appear to be passing out legal advice to our contributors ...

Indeed. The WMF takes legal advice when it feels the need to take
advice, as I understand it; when an active legal issue arises where
we're doing something particularly wrong, Things Get Done With
Emphasis, Underlined, In Parentheses And Quotated.

(or something like that)

Recall, for example, the missing-articles-in-Britannica list deletions...

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


subject:
[WikiEN-l] Next experiment: switch off AFD for a month. (was
	Guardian in defense of Wikipedia)

body:
Further to MGM's point, as we get more popular, more attention will be paid
to us and we cannot afford to carry thousands of bad articles if we can
avoid it.

Last week, we had editors of a Dartmouth campus newspaper try and sneak in
an article about molecular economics and its supposed founder. It was picked
up in AfD and deleted. If it had not been picked up, we would have had more
embarrassing publicity.

In earlier years, the Siegenthaler incident would not have received nearly
as much attention. We need to ensure quality control issues receive more
attention not less.

Regards.

Keith Old

Keith Old
User:Capitalistroadster
On 12/9/05, MacGyverMagic/Mgm <macgyvermagic at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> I don't see how you can refer to 5000 articles that need deletion as
> being equivalent to something as positive as growth.
>
> What you are forgetting is that such articles can be found by Google and
> thus by readers. Those 5000 articles will damage not only Wikipedia's
> credibility, but also use Wikipedia resources.
>
> Also, quite a lot of them would simply be against basic policy, yet not
> speediable, meaning we'd basically being allowing stuff in against policy,
> which others would see as a reason to drop in more.
>
> Ignoring a problem won't make it go away.
>
> Mgm
> _______________________________________________
> 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: Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason

body:
I was playing with some more plotting and made a plot of article
creations, deletions and undeletions on the English Wikipedia, enjoy:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_%28technical%29#Article_creations.2C_deletions_and_undeletions


subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Plots of article creations,
	deletions and undeletions on the English Wikipedia


body:
I would love to submit more articles for peer review, but I simply
don't have the time and knowledge to commit to much of them. Another
reason why I spend more time on AFD is because there's more articles
listed there about which I can form some sort of researched opinion. I
also vote on FPC and FAC and FLC when I can, but peer review just
requires knowledge you don't always have to offer.

Question: Of those estimated 42,000 good articles, can you give some
sort of break down in subject. If we have a systemetic bias, it's
reasonable to assume it also portrudes to the featured articles we
have.

Mgm


from_name: Daniel P. B. Smith

subject: [WikiEN-l] Turn off article creation AND deletion.

body:
How about this for an experiment: turn off article creation _and_
deletion for a while? Freeze the table of contents (not that we have
one)...

So that all anyone could possibly do is to edit existing articles?

It would force everyone to pay attention to the articles that exist
already, and with 857,833 of them you'd think people could find
something worth their attention.

With deletion being impossible, AfD would become unnecessary... as
would DRV. So, that should make one faction happy. On the other hand,
there would be no opportunity to add subtrivial topics. (Or trivial
topics, or significant topics). That should make another faction happy.


from_name: Andrew Gray

body:
[oops, sent to MGM not list]

On 09/12/05, MacGyverMagic/Mgm <macgyvermagic at gmail.com> wrote:

> Wikipedia is supposed to have a good Mathematics coverage yet only 12
> are featured. A quick glance also shows that a lot of science has poor
> coverage in the featured article. Too many people are focussing on
> politics.

My gut feeling is that a mathematical concept is a bit tougher to
actually write a good interesting FA on than for, say, an equivalently
obscure concept in astronomy. (But then, we have one good and prolific
astronomer writing...) I suspect we have a good deal of decent
workable mathematics content, but it's harder to bring up to FA level.

I was pleasantly surprised that the proportion of sf in Literature
wasn't massive.

> Excuse me while I go off to find a Food article to feature.

Best of luck. [[Coffee]] was a failed FAC in October, and probably has
promise...

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


subject: [WikiEN-l] Why Turn of AFD?

body:
Granted, the post I made in the other thread contained an opinion, but
so did the Concutator's.

I think the people who are suggesting to shut off AFD as an experiment
are trying to solve a problem by addressing the wrong symptoms. So
with this post, I'll try to dig up the motives behind the idea.

1. Deletion is a neccesary evil. Even Kappa, who is considered
extremely inclusionist by a lot of wikipedians, occasionally uses AFD
to list something, so there's clearly deletions by policy that need to
happen yet are not covered by speedy criterions. AFD is the only
recourse which allows all Wikipedians to have their say on the issue
in an ordered manner right now and has additional benefits I list
below. (Cuncatator, would you agree with this?)

2. Speedy criterions need to be objective which is why formulating
them is so hard. It's simply impossible to make anything that should
be deleted speediable, because deletion policy requires
interpretation. There's almost always exceptions to the rule.

3. Deletion will create ill-feelings no matter how they are dealt
with. People who created the article or care about the subject of one
may feel 'bitten'. Regardless whether we use Pure Wiki Deletion,
Uncontested Deletion, AFD, Speedy or any other matter.

4. AFD show contested articles to a larger public and often lead to
evidence being produced which wouldn't otherwise been found and the
saving of an article which would otherwise have been deleted. Any
method like Pure Wiki Deletion would require you to dig through your
watchlist and Recent changes on a daily basis to see if any articles
you care about have a deletion discussion going.

5. Central listing avoids nominated articles from hiding in obscurity
if disgrunted editors or vandals remove a template something which
cannot be done with categories or any other method I've heard
suggested so far.

6. It's not the fact that all the deletion discussion are listed at
AFD that is causing the ill-feelings but the actions and reactions of
certain editors. Discontinuing AFD for any length of time would not
address these feelings.

All these points (facts as far as I can tell) indicate, to me, we
should be focussing on how people act on AFD and how authors of
deleted content take it rather than get rid of the process itself.

Could any of the people suggesting turning off AFD say which of the
facts I list here, they don't agree with. I would also like to see
some facts countering my points and tell me why AFD should stop (even
temporarily) rather than adjusted or refined.

Mgm


subject: [WikiEN-l] Turn off AfD

body:
> >Since you allow then to delete anything they feel like they don't have
> >to be responcible. No messing around with does this fit criteria 7A or
> >whatever.  We'd also probably find out if the 3RR applies to admin
> >actions. Personaly I suspect the resulting problems would provide a
> >fairly solid answer as to why the try it an see aproach isn't always a
> >good idea.
> >
> >--
> >geni
> >
That last line is pretty much my view.

Anon article creation blocking was based on the fact a lot of nonsense
articles are created by anons, so not allowing them to create such
articles would alleviate a lot of new pages patrol. I think Jimmy made
a reasonable assumption here.

Even if he didn't, he is our benevolent dictator. If he required us to
stand on our heads every time we didn't source our edits, we'd have to
do it. He's the boss.

Mgm


subject: [WikiEN-l] Why Turn of AFD?

body:
Anthony DiPierro wrote:

> Furthermore, how many people actually look at AfD every single week to
> check if any articles they care about are being deleted?  I'd imagine
> it's not many.  The time that articles are kept on AfD is already far
> too short to expect that many objectors will notice in time.

Damn right. When did it go from seven days to five? Is this to make AFD
easier at the expense of the encyclopedia?

- d.


from_name: Geoff Burling

body:
On Fri, 9 Dec 2005, Mark Wagner wrote:

> The reason that far more articles are being listed on VfD than are
> being listed on peer review is twofold: Listing something on VfD
> involves a much smaller time commitment, and there is much more
> material suitable for deletion than is suitable for listing on peer
> review.  At a rough estimate, a VfD listing takes 20 minutes over five
> days, while a peer review listing takes 5-10 hours over the course of
> a week.

And that may be the weakness of the FAC process: articles that aren't
above average will never even reach Peer review, & an otherwise solid
& useful contribution remains unrecognized. Your point is borne out in
the statistics of this process: about two-thirds of all articles that
get to Peer review end up FAs. Add Former FAs to FAs, & the proportion
is even higher. People tend to submit articles to the process that they
are certain will be approved, & not as an inquiry into the quality
of the material.

The process I am trying to describe as "an inquiry into the quality
of the material" is how I use AfD. I often stumble across an article that
I suspect should be deleted, but does not fall under the guidelines of
"Speedy delete", so I nominate it on AfD with a careful argument for its
deletion. At that point, I am asking for advice or more information on
the article, & whether it is kept, deleted, or whatever is not an urgent
matter to me; if someone persuasively explains that I am mistaken about
the article, then I would be more than happy to withdraw my nomination
& fight to keep the article.

Back to my point, which is that Peer review does not work to sift out
articles that are good or even competent. It is used to find only the
Himalayas & Alps of quality, & for the rest of Wikipedia one is left to
assume that it is either a swamp of stubs & cleanup projects, or a vast
nondescript flat plain of mediocrity. If that is the case, then we
badly need something like [[Category:Good articles]] to help find the
competent, yet not excellent work -- at least until the article rating
feature is added. (Although the 2 systems might work well in parallel
for a while.)

Geoff


subject:
[WikiEN-l] Preformatted blank articles? (was Experiment on new
	pages and GFDL)

body:
> In the other thread I propose requiring comments for every edit, but
> only for users that aren't logged in.  Let's test it out on them
> first, and see how it goes :).  One tweak I just thought of now though
> is we'd probably be better off limiting this to only the article
> namespace.
>
> (Now, how to handle a top post...do I delete the rest or keep it?  ohwell)
>
> Anthony
>
I don't see why we should limit that to anons there's enough newbies
and regulars who fail to cite sources on a regular basis. Anyone
should be encouraged (if not forced) to do so. I don't see the
advantage of just doing that to anons.

Obvious spelling errors shouldn't really need a source, so there's a
few crinks to iron out.

Mgm


subject: [WikiEN-l] Turn off AfD

body:
> For my part, I don't think removing the rules over deletion and
> letting admins do whatever they want (subject to review and reversal,
> of course, and if some admin goes around deleting articles like
> [[George Bush]], reprimand and loss of admin powers) is such a bad
> thing that trying it for a week would be a mistake.  In fact, if you
> combined this with allowing users to see the content of those deleted
> articles, I actually think it'd be the best solution.
>
> Anthony

AFD holds people accountable for their action and asks what the
community actually wants. While I'd love more freedom in deleting
obvious crap, I think it should be based on policy rather than some
freedom.

I'm sure we'd get at least some accusations of abuse of admin powers
of people who feel their opinion wasn't heard when something not
specifically falling in policy gets deleted. Admins should have a
recourse if they're not sure.

Mgm


from_name: Sam Korn

subject: [WikiEN-l] Turn off AfD

body:
On 12/9/05, Anthony DiPierro <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
> Maybe you could give a few examples of such subjects, preferably from
> AfD?  I can't think of anything that's verifiable and a noun and
> shouldn't at least be kept as a redirect.

[[Historical persecution of Muslims]]
[[Historical persecution by Muslims]]

and suchlike.

--
Sam


from_name: Amgine

subject: [Wikitech-l] Inactive wikis

body:
There is a list of inactive wikis which should be locked at
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Inactive_wikis which are currently spam
traps, with many more to be added. I was wondering if this was still a
Steward privilege, or if we need to ask developers to lock these?

Amgine


body:
On Fri, 9 Dec 2005, MacGyverMagic/Mgm wrote:

> Question: Of those estimated 42,000 good articles, can you give some
> sort of break down in subject. If we have a systemetic bias, it's
> reasonable to assume it also portrudes to the featured articles we
> have.
>
Well, except for a tiny portion of this estimated number, we don't
know where they are: if I knew where I could find them, I'd be cataloging
them, not writing emails! ;-)

Of the tiny portion -- 291 articles when I looked at the article tonight --
the 3 largest categories are "Rail transport", "Music", and "Chemistry
and materials science". I wouldn't dare to suggest that this somehow
represents the relative proportion of Good articles out there: each of
these groupings represents the work of a devoted group of Wikipedians
eager to promote the quality work in their own corners of our project.
All of those Rail transport articles are due to an active Portal team
devoted to railroads; the large number of Music articles are due in a
large part to the efforts of TUF-KAT (one of the Original Wikipedians),
who is very familiar in that area; & these Chemistry articles are the
product of a focussed effort led by Walkerma to systematically improve
Wikipedia's articles on that subject.

We've all heard claims that our math & computer material is very good,
but because many of the people who contributed in those areas have either
moved on to other parts of the project or left Wikipedia -- due to
Wikipedia-related reasons (e.g., burn-out) or non-Wikipedia reasons --
most of that quality work is not easily found. Had TUF-KAT left Wikipedia,
for example, I doubt we'd have more than 10 or 12 articles under "Music";
& if Mav wasn't so busy with other Wikipedia responsibilities, we might
also have 30-40 Good articles under Geology.

I guess it's time for me to leave off writing articles about Ethiopia
& her history, & spend my time finding some of those 42,000+ articles.

Geoff


body:
> First-cut analysis of [[WP:FA]], plus or minus a margin of error (I
> handcounted, and my list totals 828 not the given 826, oops):
>
> Art, architecture, and archaeology - 20
> Awards and decorations - 9
> Biology and medicine - 44
> Chemistry - 9
> Computing - 28
> Culture and society - 31
> Education - 4
> Economics - 15
> Food and drink - 7
> Geography and places - 66
> Geology, geophysics, and mineralogy - 9
> History - 68
> Language and linguistics - 18
> Law - 8
> Literature - 54
> Mathematics - 12
> Media - 36
> Music - 55
> Philosophy - 7
> Physics and astronomy - 35
> Politics and government - 75
> Psychology - 4
> Religion and beliefs - 26
> Royalty, nobility, and heraldry - 31
> Sport and games - 48
> Technology - 32
> Transport - 31
> War - 46
>
> Some of these are a little vague - Computing and Technology might need
> reassessing, various odd articles could be classed elsewhere, the
> usual odd grouping of spaceflight and astronomy, and Culture and
> Society is a catch-all miscellaneous category which includes
> [[Exploding whale]], [[Octopus card]], [[Pet skunk]] and four articles
> on flags.
>
> But, it's good enough for our test.
>

> Awards and decorations - 9
> Chemistry - 9
> Education - 4
> Economics - 15
> Food and drink - 7
> Geology, geophysics, and mineralogy - 9
> Language and linguistics - 18
> Law - 8
> Mathematics - 12
> Philosophy - 7
> Psychology - 4
> Religion and beliefs - 26
> Royalty, nobility, and heraldry - 31

Wikipedia is supposed to have a good Mathematics coverage yet only 12
are featured. A quick glance also shows that a lot of science has poor
coverage in the featured article. Too many people are focussing on
politics.

Excuse me while I go off to find a Food article to feature.

Mgm


subject: [WikiEN-l] Turn off AfD

body:
You wouldn't, but the AFD regulars resist any such move furiously.

People are happy to agree with these ideas on wikien-l. But I strongly
suggest they try saying it on [[WT:AFD]] and see for themselves how
resistant the AFD regulars are to any change to the deletion process
short of anyone pulling a complete replacement deletion system out of
thin air.

I would oppose moving deletions to such places, but I have yet to see
proof people oppose informing people with knowledge about a deletion.
I've done so myself on several occasions.

Please reply to my newly started thread. It's not AFD that's
poisonous. People will always feel ill-will when deletion is concerned
no matter what method is used. It is how people act and react on AFD.
We need to treat the cause not the symptom.

It's simply impossible to not use deletion. Some subjects will always
be contentious and need discussion instead of a speedy criterion to
cover them.

Mgm


from_name: Kelly Martin

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Turn off AfD

body:
On 12/9/05, Michael Snow <wikipedia at earthlink.net> wrote:
> The problem is that a great deal of policing depends on people using
> their watchlists and/or Recent Changes. Deletion and undeletion show up
> on neither.

Deletion is evident in CDVF.

Kelly


subject: [WikiEN-l] Why Turn of AFD?

body:
On 12/9/05, Anthony DiPierro <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
> I disagree that it's not possible to come up with objective criteria
> for deletion.  I disagree with the sentiment that "Deletion will
> create ill-feelings no matter how they are dealt with", because some
> methods of dealing with it causes much more ill-feelings than others.
> I don't think showing contested articles to a larger public for less
> than a week is beneficial.  If it's that important, the public will
> find it anyway.  If it's not that important, then it's no big loss,
> especially if the action can be reversed a month, two months, three
> years later.
I didn't say it was impossible to come up with objective criteria,
just hard to find some everyone agrees with for some types of
articles.

Correction: We can't make everything that needs to be deleted
speediable. Some things need interpretation and thus discussion. (I
said anything)

People are not online all the time so Recentchanges and Watchlists
aren't going to cover everything they care about that is nominated for
deletion. I for one, would hate to trawl through hours of edit logs
when you can just have them all neatly logged in one place. For
example, I wouldn't have noticed Emerson Spartz being nominated for
deletion. That was important to me and it would've made it hard for me
to find if AFD wasn't centralized. We shouldn't make people search for
debates just because they hurt someone's feelings.

> I don't think it's necessary to keep "nominations" from
> hiding in obscurity.  Again, if it's important, someone will notice it
> and reverse it.  If it isn't, then it doesn't matter anyway.  This is
> especially true because we already point out that an article has been
> deleted when someone actually tries to read that article.
Speedy deletion nominations aren't permanently logged in a central
place, only in the edit history. They disappear from the directory as
soon as the tag is removed. Have you got any idea how often speedy
tags are removed? Just because I don't notice them being removed,
doesn't mean it's not important.

> Furthermore, how many people actually look at AfD every single week to
> check if any articles they care about are being deleted?  I'd imagine
> it's not many.  The time that articles are kept on AfD is already far
> too short to expect that many objectors will notice in time.
What point of mine was this aimed at?


body:
But [[Butter]] and [[Black pepper]] were nominated and doing well, so
it is possible.

Mgm

On 12/9/05, Andrew Gray <shimgray at gmail.com> wrote:
> [oops, sent to MGM not list]
>
> On 09/12/05, MacGyverMagic/Mgm <macgyvermagic at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Wikipedia is supposed to have a good Mathematics coverage yet only 12
> > are featured. A quick glance also shows that a lot of science has poor
> > coverage in the featured article. Too many people are focussing on
> > politics.
>
> My gut feeling is that a mathematical concept is a bit tougher to
> actually write a good interesting FA on than for, say, an equivalently
> obscure concept in astronomy. (But then, we have one good and prolific
> astronomer writing...) I suspect we have a good deal of decent
> workable mathematics content, but it's harder to bring up to FA level.
>
> I was pleasantly surprised that the proportion of sf in Literature
> wasn't massive.
>
> > Excuse me while I go off to find a Food article to feature.
>
> Best of luck. [[Coffee]] was a failed FAC in October, and probably has
> promise...
>
> --
> - Andrew Gray
>  andrew.gray at dunelm.org.uk
> _______________________________________________
> 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:
On 09/12/05, Anthony DiPierro <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
> On 12/9/05, ?var Arnfj?r? Bjarmason <avarab at gmail.com> wrote:
> > I was playing with some more plotting and made a plot of article
> > creations, deletions and undeletions on the English Wikipedia, enjoy:
> >
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_%28technical%29#Article_creations.2C_deletions_and_undeletions
>
> This is awesome.  Now can someone point out the hour that this
> experiment was started?  (I'd have just added this comment to the page
> itself, but I'm not allowed to edit the Village Pump.)

Looking at [[Special:Newpages]], the last IP-created new page which
survives is [[Inehrm]], created at 19:00, 5 December 2005. The
activity that day does not seem too unusual.

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


subject: [WikiEN-l] Turn off AfD

body:
The Cunctator wrote:

> Back in the day when the "admin" class was created the claim by people
> like Jimbo is that in the long run nearly everyone would have admin
> powers; that it would be no special thing. I was skeptical for obvious
> reasons. But I'm still willing to believe that's what we're heading
> towards.

Yep. Anyone who thinks becoming an admin is a big deal hasn't looked too
closely at some of our admins.

- d.


subject: [Wikitech-l] Stupid Mediawiki Tricks: logical templates

body:
[[:en:Category:If Templates]]
[[:en:Category:Boolean Templates]]

Check out some of the code in them, too, but make sure you haven't eaten
first.

The perpetrators of this l33tn3ss are trying to gut [[:en:WP:AUM]] by
consensus, because everyone knows database performance and computer
science in general can be determined by voting. Or maybe it can't.

What would the Stupid Mediawiki Tricks in these things do to the
database and the cache structure? If it's as bad as I suspect it would,
could some of you please stop by [[:en:WT:AFD]] and describe reality to
them?

- d.