from_name: Jens Ropers

subject: [WikiEN-l] A future for Nupedia? Academic degrees have real usefulness

body:
> Message: 4
> Date: Sat, 11 Sep 2004 16:31:37 -0700 (PDT)
> From: Robert <rkscience100 at yahoo.com>

Again, I think we're looking at a fundamental misunderstanding here:

I DID NOT and I am not trying to ''exclude'' academics. We need
academics. The higher qualified the better. The more of them choose to
join our review club the better.
("review club" proposed here:
http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2004-September/
030521.html)

Nobody (not me, anyway) has been, or is contesting that academic
individuals, their knowledge and the academic education system have
real usefulness. Again, the more academics join us, the better. The
only thing I am lobbying you all against is that we (a) make degrees a
requirement of some sort at any stage in the process and/or (b)
automatically value input from an academic more than input from a
non-academic. I still think it is obvious (to me anyway) that ''most''
of the time academics will prevail with their views.
''But they will do so '''based on the merit of what they say'' and NOT
based on the recognition of their title.''

Currently, no contributor is allowed to argue: "But I am a senior
professor of quantum dynamics, so I win and you shut up!" It is VERY
important that this remains so. Yes, there should be academics in the
review club, and no, they should not ever even mention their titles.
'''They should converse as EQUALS with all other fellow reviewers.'''
No one, not even a professor of quantum dynamics, should be allowed to
settle a dispute with a reference to their prior achievement (ie.
title, etc.). They should thus have ONE vote, just as everybody else.
This will not stop their valid views from prevailing.

Giving everybody the chance to truly converse as equals will bring out
the best in both academics and laymen alike.

(NB: My idea to ban even mentioning degrees is merely a ''safeguard
against self-censorship'' of non-academics. Because most non-academics
will indeed "shut up" if they notice the other person to have a title
-- out of exaggerated awe, even if they have perfectly points to make.)

Titles or degrees shouldn't be a requirement for joining ANY chapter of
the review club either. Qualified academics will ''automatically'' join
the relevant review boards. We do ''not'' have to look for "experts
with titles" in any way. We do ''not'' have to expressly set out to
install a quota of accredited academics into the review boards. Given
the mere establishment of ''sensible, disciplined and democratic''
fora, academics will join them in large numbers.

And they will be more productive there if we allow ANY interested
individuals to join as well, with requirements of ''constructiveness,
not of prior achievement'' in fields of knowledge work. Every parent
knows that it's children's questions that teach us the most.

> A stable version of Wikipedia has a questionable future if
> it does not rely on people with academic degrees as a very
> imporant part of our editorial review process.

We should continue to rely on ''people'' (a fair share of whom happen
to hold academic degrees). We should not rely on "degrees" per se.

> Anything
> less will result it in being considered one step above "fan
> fiction" by high-school, college and university professors.

Yes, outside esteem is an issue, because the traditional system of
knowledge review (see above link) is so well established. But again, as
mentioned here:
http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2004-September/030552.html
, outside and Wikipedian academics will, in time, do that work for us:
Just as those academics already in our midst, they will increasingly
come to recognize our value and '''become opinion leaders''', telling
those who need their truths "straight from the horse's mouth" that we
really ARE ''all that''.

> There is an evident distrust towards academic degrees here,
> and it doesn't help us.

No there isn't. Academics are welcome. '''I just want to avoid building
automatic bias towards opinions of degree holders back into a
revolutionarily unbiased system (the Wikipedia).'''

> It seems to stem from a
> misunderstanding of egalitarianism that many Wikipedia
> contributors have. Some people seem to think that
> egalitarianism means that all people are equally competant
> to review an article.

Well, I don't believe that.
But everybody should be given an equal shot at contributing to the
review process. Any less well thought out views will just not get very
far. BUT: --this is important to comprehend-- mostly less competent
people intermittently have very valid and well thought out
contributions to make. Under the traditional system of knowledge
review, those are almost always lost.

> This is just as true as saying that
> all people are equally tall, and that all food in a
> supermarket is equally nutritious.  In other words, the
> proposition is violently false.

moot point

> I'd honestly be willing to bet my life that a dozen Ph.D.s
> in Physics will produce better editorial oversight and
> corrections than a dozen self-selected Internet junkies,
> when it comes to reviewing Physics articles.  I'd honestly
> be willing to bet my life that a dozen Ph.D.s in American
> Literature will produce better editorial oversight and
> corrections than a dozen self-selected Internet junkies,
> when it comes to reviewing American literature articles.

What I believe you're missing is that the "Internet junkies" contain a
fair share of Ph.D.s -- and they will ''automatically'' find their way
into the relevant review boards.

> Accepting the fact that some people have studied a lot and
> have earned an academic degree does not prevent anyone else
> from contributing.

That's exactly what I seek to ensure, both with the edit process AND,
crucially, with the next generation of our review process.

> It does not prevent anyone else from
> offering corrections or edits.  It isn't even
> anti-egalitarian.  True egalitarianism only means that all
> people have a right to study a subject, and to try and
> become experts in said subject.  It does *not* mean that
> all people are already experts on said subject!
>
>
> Robert (RK)

Thanks and regards,
Jens Ropers

PS:
Selected related posts (mostly by me ;-) :
http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2004-September/030496.html
http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2004-September/030523.html
http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2004-September/030519.html
http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2004-September/030506.html
http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2004-September/030507.html
http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2004-September/030521.html
(same link as above)
http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2004-September/030551.html
http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2004-September/030552.html
(same link as above)


list: wikitech-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Krzysztof Kowalczyk

subject:
[Wikitech-l] Re: An urgent Proposal: A fair,
	effective and free rewarding system for WikiPedia volunteers

body:
On Sun, 12 Sep 2004 17:17:26 -0400, Delirium <delirium at hackish.org> wrote:
> Krzysztof Kowalczyk wrote:
>
> >However, just pointing the fact that its possible that the research
> >migh be wrong is not an argument. You can apply this silly reasoning
> >to any research ever done, especially in psychology, given that
> >isolating primary factors isn't easy in psychological studies.
> >
> >
> Indeed, that in itself is probably enough to take the research with the
> very large grain of salt.  Only occasionally do strong claims in
> psychological studies end up actually being accurate ones.  Even
> correlations in psychology are very error-prone, given how difficult it
> is to design an unbiased experiment, and causational claims are doubly so.
>
> (Just recently I read an article in a refereed journal giving good
> reason to believe that _all_ studies done to date on antidepressants are
> invalid.  And that's an area where there's been tons of work with
> billions of dollars spent on very carefully trying to prove results.)

You're just repeating this extremely faulty argument "some research
has been found invalid therefore all research is invalid".

But more importantly, if you dismiss the value of published research,
how do you propose we carry on an intelligent discussion? What
arguments can I possibly use that you'll accept as valid?

Also, how do you stack up layman's personal opinion (e.g. Timwi's)
against published research? Is it of the same value/importance to you?
More? Less?

And finally, as quoted by
http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000070.html and
http://www.uwo.ca/uwofa/ft/6.2/#ph1 :

"... at least two dozen studies over the last three decades have
conclusively shown that people who expect to receive a reward for
completing a task or for doing that task successfully simply do not
perform as well as those who expect no reward at all."

Kohn, A. 1993. Why incentive plans cannot work! Harvard Educational
Review nos. 9/10: 45-63.

Note the word "conclusively".

If you proceed to invalidate pretty strong evidence with mere
hand-waving, then there's really little point in having a discussion
on this subject.

Krzysztof Kowalczyk | http://blog.kowalczyk.info


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] [patch] blog thru User_talk and enchanced rdf feed

body:
Joel Reed wrote:
> A relatively small set of changes allows users to use all
> of mediawiki's great formatting and hyperlinking capabilities
> to blog thru their User talk page.

I'm not sure that's something we want to encourage. Wikis aren't blogs
and aren't meant to be; they are shared spaces, not individual outposts.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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list: wikien-l

from_name: Delirium

subject: [WikiEN-l] WP in UK press

body:
Matthew Larsen wrote:

>is it wrong?
>
>
Yes.  The vast majority of our content is not in the public domain; it
is licensed under the GFDL.

-Mark


list: foundation-l

subject: [Foundation-l] Rewarding volunteers

body:
Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales wrote:

>Algorithmic reputation systems are always a temptation, just because
>they are possible.  But human reputation systems are much more nuanced
>and powerful.
>
>
I wouldn't mind a combination of the two---for example, being able to
say "I think so-and-so has been doing a very good job lately".
Wikipedia is getting big enough that I can keep track of a handful of
people I personally think are doing a good job, but even finding out
who, say, the 10 people I trust most themselves trust is a daunting
task, and one that could be simplified by algorithms.  Then I could have
information like "I don't know this person myself, but it looks like a
large number of the people I trust trust him/her", which could be useful.

Even slightly more complex systems, like having a few multiple
ratings---perhaps one for factual knowledge, one for neutrality, one for
quality writing, and one for wikiquette---would be useful IMO.

Note that I'd propose this _not_ as a global rating, but as a very
user-specific rating, with hopefully a small horizon: it would give me
ratings based on what I personally rated people, and what the immediate
people I rated did (probably not more than two degrees of separation).
It wouldn't give a rating like "so and so is rated excellently in
general".  So in that sense, it wouldn't solve the "reward" problem that
was proposed here, but would solve a different problem---I used to know
all the regular Wikipedians (and even review almost all of each day's
edits and new pages!), but that is nearly impossible these days, so some
algorithmic way to help me deal with the information overload would be
helpful.  Perhaps "show me all new pages created by people who are not
known either by me or by the people I know," and various other such filters.

-Mark


list: wikimedia-l

subject: [Foundation-l] Rewarding volunteers


from_name: Keith Maxwell

subject: [WikiEN-l] A future for Nupedia?

body:
Fellow Wikipedians,

I agree with this proposal providing that all experienced users who over a period of time have made valuable contributions to the subject in question are eligible to approve edits after an election.

I would think that the editorial board would consist of a number of people with qualifications in the relevant area and people with an interest in the topic. For example while most if not all people in technical areas like maths and physics would have degrees if not advanced degrees, the people who write articles on areas of general interest such as sport or popular culture would be more varied.

It should be seen as a method of ensuring that we consolidate what we have and provide assurances that Wikipedia is a generally reliable information source rather than excluding anyone from making a contribution. The individuals contributions to Wikipedia rather than just credentialism should be the key to becoming part of the editorial board.

Daniel Mayer <maveric149 at yahoo.com> wrote:
--- Jens Ropers wrote:
> We don't have to give them "that bit of comfort". They will get around
> to reading and trusting our content anyway.

And yet they are not and are in fact warning others to stay away from it. My
best friend, whose opinion I regard very highly, is a grade school teacher. She
is very intelligent, liberal minded, and has listened to me describe Wikipedia
and how it works. It pains me greatly to concede that she will not allow any of
her students to use our content as a reference due to the fact that it is not
approved by people with relevant degrees. She went so far as insinuate that the
mere existence of Wikipedia is harmful due to the fact that children *will*
innocently use it, thinking it is an authoritative source. The librarian at her
school is similarly convinced as well as the two other librarians I've talked
to about this.

We can only go so far with FA-like selection processes (granted that will often
be upwards of 90% - the rest largely being perception). I in fact pointed to
our FA list as an example and my best friend repeated the same objections.
Again, each subject area board should formulate their own selection criteria
and it is *they* who should decide what mix of criteria are needed to approve
articles and who can approve them. Limiting what they can do at this point is a
huge mistake.

-- mav

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from_name: Daniel Mayer

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Re: When Powerful Jewish or Social-Marxist-PC Lobbies
	Censor the Internet....

body:
--- Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Where is it written that the ArbCom has juridiction over the mailing
> list ? And when and by who was it decided ?

It is being proposed right now on the arbitration policy page.

> We should first ban editors because they damage wikipedia. That might be
> because they damage the community or because they damage articles. Would
> we deny them the possibility to discuss their ban if necessary ?

They have that chance during the arbitration process. In this case the user in
question is now trolling the mailing list.

-- mav

_______________________________
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Shop for Back-to-School deals on Yahoo! Shopping.
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list: wikipedia-l

from_name: yuanml

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: One Chinese Wikipedia

body:
I had said your request is proper, the SC UI scare away TC users.

If we split the community now, then how about the combination of the two
after we develope the software into real.
We talk about the software seriously in Chinese Wikipedia now.
In my opinion, the combination will benefit the two ultimately.
Just like your request is proper, is my request of the combination proper?
please give me an answer.

let's design a solution for all.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Why Academics are Useful to Wikipedia

body:
--- Geoff Burling <llywrch at agora.rdrop.com> wrote:
> In short, if faced with choosing between an expert who does not care to
> conform to the Wikipedia way (by which I mean is willing to engage in
> give-&-take in the writing of material) & a non-expert who is willing
> to learn & "play nice" with other contributors, I would choose the
> latter. And I hope I am not alone in this preference.

You explained the strengths and weaknesses extremely well, but your conclusion
is based on an either/or choice. I very firmly believe that this is not an
either/or choice and that we should leverage the strengths of both against
their weaknesses (I too have come across PhD's - in print and in person - who
espouse nearly crank theories).

So a particular subject area approval board may decide to have one or more
experts read an article along with one or more non-expert but trusted
Wikipedians who are self-taught in the topic area. Each person reading the
article would grade the article based on whether or not it covers its topic
area well, is a fair treatment (presenting important but non-mainstream views
with the appropriate detail and caveats), and whether or not there are obvious
errors of fact.

Each would have *equal* veto power over not approving the article by giving it
a sub-standard grade in any of several different categories. Conflicts of
judgment will have to be worked out among the judges.

Rather egalitarian, no?

-- mav

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body:
--- Matthew Larsen <mat.larsen at gmail.com> wrote:

> This is all well and good, having a review board and experts stuff and all...
>
> But is it really necessary?

Yes - we are getting slammed in the media (and by school teachers and
librarians) for being an untrustable source *and* we want a way to approve
content for publication.

-- mav

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subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: One Chinese Wikipedia

body:
Some explanation on redirect, in fact Vina has mentioned it:

"the most recent decision is to reduce duplicate articles in Chinese wiki
where the tranditional and simplified version differs in charset only."

We took vote for that, and current policy is the one most supported.
We take the policy in order to reduce the complexity for future trad-simp conversion.
Some traditional articles was redirects to simplified articles,
in the meantime some simplified articles was redirects to traditional articles also.
traditional articles and simplified articles are essentially equal in this case.
But the number of the two kind redirection is different,
because of the SC users is more than TC users.


from_name: Yann Forget

subject: [Wikipedia-l] UTF-8 problem

body:
Hi,

There are problems to make links to Wikipedias which use non Latin scripts on
Wikipedias which are still not in UTF-8 (en:, sv:, da:, etc.). It would be
good if they get converted soon.

i.e. Link to [[gu:??????]] in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gujarat
and http://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gujarat

Does someone know how to correct this now?

Thanks,
Yann
--
http://www.non-violence.org/ | Site collaboratif sur la non-violence
http://www.forget-me.net/ | Alternatives sur le Net
http://fr.wikipedia.org/ | Encyclop?die libre
http://www.forget-me.net/pro/ | Formations et services Linux


from_name: Arwel Parry

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: WP in UK press

body:
In message <000501c498b8$0e944920$d4000450 at Galasien>, Charles Matthews
<charles.r.matthews-XZoyATsUNX5Wk0Htik3J/w at public.gmane.org> writes
>A positive article 'Wiki's wacky but it works' in today's London Observer,
>Business section, by John Naughton who typically writes on Internet topics.
>It takes the line that WP is good at 'self-healing', and is generally better
>(more comprehensive) than Britannica Online.
>
>Charles

Link at
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/business/story/0,6903,1302435,00.html

--
Arwel Parry
http://www.cartref.demon.co.uk/


subject: [WikiEN-l] A future for Nupedia?

body:
Fellow Wikipedians,

I apologise for failing to make it clear earlier that the stable edition was what I was talking about and who would have the authority to decide that an article was ready for publication. I think that the editorial board or committee for a particular subject elected by all registered members should approve articles published on that medium. The board should be elected regularly say yearly.

The wikipedia should continue as it is with everyone being able to edit freely.

Regards

Andrew Cleveland <imthesponge at hotmail.com> wrote:
I think that another wiki with "approved" versions of articles is a good
idea, so that it can be an authoritative source by current standards.
However, it shouldn't get in the way of editing articles on the regular
wiki. Requiring approval for edits would ruin the dynamics of being able to
modify an article anytime and having those changes be visible by anon users
(people just happening upon it) and editable immediately.

>From: Keith Maxwell
>Reply-To: English Wikipedia
>To: English Wikipedia
>Subject: RE: [WikiEN-l] A future for Nupedia?
>Date: Sun, 12 Sep 2004 14:54:21 +1000 (EST)
>
>Fellow Wikipedians,
>
>I agree with this proposal providing that all experienced users who over a
>period of time have made valuable contributions to the subject in question
>are eligible to approve edits after an election.
>
>I would think that the editorial board would consist of a number of people
>with qualifications in the relevant area and people with an interest in the
>topic. For example while most if not all people in technical areas like
>maths and physics would have degrees if not advanced degrees, the people
>who write articles on areas of general interest such as sport or popular
>culture would be more varied.
>
>It should be seen as a method of ensuring that we consolidate what we have
>and provide assurances that Wikipedia is a generally reliable information
>source rather than excluding anyone from making a contribution. The
>individuals contributions to Wikipedia rather than just credentialism
>should be the key to becoming part of the editorial board.
>

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from_name: Roman Maurer

subject: [Wikipedia-l] UTF-8 problem

body:
Yann Forget pravi:

> There are problems to make links to Wikipedias which use non Latin scripts on
> Wikipedias which are still not in UTF-8 (en:, sv:, da:, etc.).
> [...]
> Does someone know how to correct this now?

For Slovenian letters ??? (but it should also work for others unicode
characters) we use converter from one of our contributors at
http://members.lycos.co.uk/forumchars/main.html

While some alphabets (Japanese and Russian come to mind) get converted
to HTML entities automaticaly, I noticed that Estonian and Slovenian use
the same word (Tad?ikistan), but [[et:Tad?ikistan]] works in English
Wikipedia, while [[sl:Tad?ikistan]] does not.  See thread at:
http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/intlwiki-l/2004-February/002861.html

So converter is the way to go, at least for Slovenian.
--
	Pozdrav,
	  Roman


from_name: 簡睦旼

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: One Chinese Wikipedia

body:
Mention of the software, I have some questions here:

Yes, Traditional Chinese and Simplified Chinese are originated from the
same language. But now it had grown into two different language.  The problem of translating Simplified Chinese to Traditional Chinese is not only about characters (While translating from Simplified character to Traditional character is already a headache).Many of the phrases and idioms are different.

I wonder how software can solve this kind of problem. The only
way I think of to solve this problem is to redirect it one by one. Since
both SC and TC are living languages, this kind of phrases can
grow non-stop, making redirecting a hardwork.

Therefore, I think splitting into zh-tw isn't really too bad an idea.
Traditional Chinese users can build up their own database, while
some of the items can redirect to zh wp.

---------------------------------
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???????????
??????????


subject:
[Wikitech-l] Re: An urgent Proposal: A fair,	effective and free
	rewarding system for WikiPedia volunteers

body:
Krzysztof Kowalczyk wrote:

>However, just pointing the fact that its possible that the research
>migh be wrong is not an argument. You can apply this silly reasoning
>to any research ever done, especially in psychology, given that
>isolating primary factors isn't easy in psychological studies.
>
>
Indeed, that in itself is probably enough to take the research with the
very large grain of salt.  Only occasionally do strong claims in
psychological studies end up actually being accurate ones.  Even
correlations in psychology are very error-prone, given how difficult it
is to design an unbiased experiment, and causational claims are doubly so.

(Just recently I read an article in a refereed journal giving good
reason to believe that _all_ studies done to date on antidepressants are
invalid.  And that's an area where there's been tons of work with
billions of dollars spent on very carefully trying to prove results.)

-Mark


from_name: Joel Reed

body:
A relatively small set of changes allows users to use all
of mediawiki's great formatting and hyperlinking capabilities
to blog thru their User talk page.

The following patch provides the capability to blog through
Mediawiki's user talk page by providing a simple option to
post new sections to the top of the user talk page, and
providing a SpecialTalkfeed.php page, based on SpecialRecentchanges.php
which includes the section content in the RDF feed so that
the blog may be nicely aggregrated by tools like PlanetPlanet.
(See http://www.planetplanet.org/)

Changes in patch
--------------------------------------------------------
1) Adds a new special page, SpecialTalkfeed.php
2) Adds new preference, "Add all new sections to the top
of the page by default"
3) When adding a new section, and only then, adds option
to "Add this new section to the top of the page".
4) Adds a "rdf feed" hyperlink when on a user talk page.

How do you run a blog out of the User Talk page?
--------------------------------------------------------
1) Under editing preferences, turn on "Add all new sections
to the top of the page by default".
2) If a Sysop, protect the page. (It would be nice if non-sysops
could protect their User_talk pages)
3) To make a new blog post, click "+" for "add new section".
NOTE: If you didn't change your preferences above, be sure to
select "Add this new section to the top of the page" at the
bottom of the page before saving.
4) Thats it! The "rdf feed" option at the top of the User talk
page gives a link to a feed that should be used for aggregators.

Limitations
--------------------------------------------------------
1) Section titles must be unique for SpecialTalkfeed.php to
find the proper section content to place in the RDF feed.

2) No automatic expiration or archiving of older posts/sections.

These limitations could be fixed in a future patch if need be.

This is my first mediawiki patch, so a review of SpecialTalkfeed.php
would be wonderful.

jr
--
------------------------------------------------------------
Joel W. Reed                                    412-257-3881
----------   http://home.comcast.net/~joelwreed/  ----------
-------------- next part --------------
diff -up -urN mediawiki-1.3.3-orig/includes/Article.php mediawiki-1.3.3/includes/Article.php
--- mediawiki-1.3.3-orig/includes/Article.php	2004-09-01 18:04:40.000000000 -0400
+++ mediawiki-1.3.3/includes/Article.php	2004-09-11 17:06:58.000000000 -0400
@@ -809,13 +809,18 @@ class Article {

 	/* Side effects: loads last edit */
-	function getTextOfLastEditWithSectionReplacedOrAdded($section, $text, $summary = ''){
+	function getTextOfLastEditWithSectionReplacedOrAdded($section, $text, $sectiontop, $summary = ''){
 		$this->loadLastEdit();
 		$oldtext = $this->getContent( true );
 		if ($section != '') {
 			if($section=='new') {
-				if($summary) $subject="== {$summary} ==\n\n";
-				$text=$oldtext."\n\n".$subject.$text;
+				if($summary) $subject="== {$summary} {$sectiontop} ==\n\n";
+        if ($sectiontop=='1') {
+          $text=$subject.$text."\n\n".$oldtext;
+        }
+				else {
+				  $text=$oldtext."\n\n".$subject.$text;
+        }
 			} else {

 				# strip NOWIKI etc. to avoid confusion (true-parameter causes HTML
diff -up -urN mediawiki-1.3.3-orig/includes/EditPage.php mediawiki-1.3.3/includes/EditPage.php
--- mediawiki-1.3.3-orig/includes/EditPage.php	2004-09-07 21:42:28.000000000 -0400
+++ mediawiki-1.3.3/includes/EditPage.php	2004-09-11 17:06:27.000000000 -0400
@@ -11,7 +11,7 @@ class EditPage {

 	# Form values
 	var $save = false, $preview = false;
-	var $minoredit = false, $watchthis = false;
+	var $minoredit = false, $watchthis = false, $sectiontop = false;
 	var $textbox1 = "", $textbox2 = "", $summary = "";
 	var $edittime = "", $section = "";
 	var $oldid = 0;
@@ -75,6 +75,7 @@ class EditPage {
 		$this->preview = $request->getCheck( 'wpPreview' );
 		$this->save = $request->wasPosted() && !$this->preview;
 		$this->minoredit = $request->getCheck( 'wpMinoredit' );
+		$this->sectiontop = $request->getCheck( 'wpSectiontop' );
 		$this->watchthis = $request->getCheck( 'wpWatchthis' );

 		$this->oldid = $request->getInt( 'oldid' );
@@ -175,7 +176,7 @@ class EditPage {
 			$userid = $wgUser->getID();

 			$text = $this->mArticle->getTextOfLastEditWithSectionReplacedOrAdded(
-				$this->section, $this->textbox1, $this->summary);
+         $this->section, $this->textbox1, $this->sectiontop, $this->summary);
 			# Suppress edit conflict with self

 			if ( ( 0 != $userid ) && ( $this->mArticle->getUser() == $userid ) ) {
@@ -306,6 +307,7 @@ class EditPage {
 		$summary = wfMsg( "summary" );
 		$subject = wfMsg("subject");
 		$minor = wfMsg( "minoredit" );
+		$sectionmsg = wfMsg( "sectiontop" );
 		$watchthis = wfMsg ("watchthis");
 		$save = wfMsg( "savearticle" );
 		$prev = wfMsg( "showpreview" );
@@ -330,6 +332,7 @@ class EditPage {
 		if( !$this->preview ) {
 			if( $wgUser->getOption( "watchdefault" ) ) $this->watchthis = true;
 			if( $wgUser->getOption( "minordefault" ) ) $this->minoredit = true;
+			if( $wgUser->getOption( "sectiontopdefault" ) ) $this->sectiontop = true;

 			// activate checkbox also if user is already watching the page,
 			// require wpWatchthis to be unset so that second condition is not
@@ -346,6 +349,16 @@ class EditPage {
 			"{$minor}";
 		}

+	  $sectiontophtml = "";
+
+    if ($this->section == "new")
+    {
+      $sectiontophtml =
+			  "<input tabindex='3' type='checkbox' value='1' name='wpSectiontop'".($this->sectiontop?" checked='checked'":"").
+			  " accesskey='".wfMsg('accesskey-sectiontop')."' id='wpSectiontop' />".
+			  "{$sectionmsg}";
+    }
+
 		$watchhtml = "";

 		if ( 0 != $wgUser->getID() ) {
@@ -354,7 +367,7 @@ class EditPage {
 			"{$watchthis}";
 		}

-		$checkboxhtml = $minoredithtml . $watchhtml . "
";
+		$checkboxhtml = $minoredithtml . $watchhtml . "
" . $sectiontophtml . "
";

 		if ( "preview" == $formtype) {
 			$previewhead="
" . wfMsg( "preview" ) . "
\n
" .
diff -up -urN mediawiki-1.3.3-orig/includes/SkinPHPTal.php mediawiki-1.3.3/includes/SkinPHPTal.php
--- mediawiki-1.3.3-orig/includes/SkinPHPTal.php	2004-09-05 10:43:45.000000000 -0400
+++ mediawiki-1.3.3/includes/SkinPHPTal.php	2004-09-12 16:47:06.000000000 -0400
@@ -355,6 +355,11 @@ if( defined( "MEDIAWIKI" ) ) {
 							'text' => wfMsg('addsection'),
 							'href' => $this->makeUrl($this->thispage, 'action=edit&section=new')
 						);
+						$content_actions['feed-atom'] = array(
+							'class' => false,
+							'text' => "RDF Feed",
+							'href' => $this->makeSpecialUrl('Talkfeed', 'user='. urlencode( $wgUser->getName()))
+						);
 					}
 				} else {
 				        $oid = ( $oldid && ! isset( $diff ) ) ? "&oldid={$oldid}" : '';
diff -up -urN mediawiki-1.3.3-orig/includes/SpecialPage.php mediawiki-1.3.3/includes/SpecialPage.php
--- mediawiki-1.3.3-orig/includes/SpecialPage.php	2004-08-12 10:56:47.000000000 -0400
+++ mediawiki-1.3.3/includes/SpecialPage.php	2004-09-12 16:42:36.000000000 -0400
@@ -15,7 +15,8 @@ $wgSpecialPages = array(
 	"Randompage"        => new SpecialPage( "Randompage" ),
 	"Lonelypages"       => new SpecialPage( "Lonelypages" ),
 	"Uncategorizedpages"=> new SpecialPage( "Uncategorizedpages" ),
-	"Unusedimages"      => new SpecialPage( "Unusedimages" )
+	"Unusedimages"      => new SpecialPage( "Unusedimages" ),
+	"Talkfeed"          => new SpecialPage( "Talkfeed" ),
 );
 global $wgDisableCounters;
 if( !$wgDisableCounters )
diff -up -urN mediawiki-1.3.3-orig/includes/SpecialPreferences.php mediawiki-1.3.3/includes/SpecialPreferences.php
--- mediawiki-1.3.3-orig/includes/SpecialPreferences.php	2004-07-30 06:58:53.000000000 -0400
+++ mediawiki-1.3.3/includes/SpecialPreferences.php	2004-09-11 16:53:28.000000000 -0400
@@ -427,7 +427,8 @@ class PreferencesForm {
 		$this->getToggle( "showtoolbar" ) .
 		$this->getToggle( "previewontop" ) .
 		$this->getToggle( "watchdefault" ) .
-		$this->getToggle( "minordefault" ) . "
+		$this->getToggle( "minordefault" ) .
+    $this->getToggle( "sectiontopdefault" ) . "
 	</fieldset>

 	<fieldset>
diff -up -urN mediawiki-1.3.3-orig/includes/SpecialTalkfeed.php mediawiki-1.3.3/includes/SpecialTalkfeed.php
--- mediawiki-1.3.3-orig/includes/SpecialTalkfeed.php	1969-12-31 19:00:00.000000000 -0500
+++ mediawiki-1.3.3/includes/SpecialTalkfeed.php	2004-09-12 16:40:24.000000000 -0400
@@ -0,0 +1,202 @@
+<?php
+
+require_once( "Feed.php" );
+
+# based on Article.php's getSection
+function getSections($text,$title)	{
+
+				global $wgParser;
+				$parserOptions = ParserOptions::newFromUser( $wgUser );
+
+# strip NOWIKI etc. to avoid confusion (true-parameter causes HTML
+# comments to be stripped as well)
+				$striparray=array();
+				$parser=new Parser();
+				$parser->mOutputType=OT_WIKI;
+				$striptext=$parser->strip($text, $striparray, true);
+
+# now that we can be sure that no pseudo-sections are in the source,
+# split it up by section
+				$secs =
+								preg_split(
+												'/(^=+.*?=+|^<h[1-6].*?' . '>.*?<\/h[1-6].*?' . '>)/mi',
+												$striptext, -1,
+												PREG_SPLIT_DELIM_CAPTURE);
+
+				$sections=array();
+				$sec_cnt = count($secs)/2;
+
+				for ($i=1; $i < $sec_cnt; $i++)
+				{
+								$headline=$secs[$i*2-1];
+								preg_match( '/^(=+).*?=+|^<h([1-6]).*?' . '>.*?<\/h[1-6].*?' . '>/mi',$headline,$matches);
+								$hlevel=$matches[1];
+
+# translate wiki heading into level
+								if(strpos($hlevel,'=')!==false) {
+												$hlevel=strlen($hlevel);
+								}
+
+								$rv=$secs[$i*2];
+								$count=$i+1;
+
+								$break=false;
+								while(!empty($secs[$count*2-1]) && !$break) {
+												$subheadline=$secs[$count*2-1];
+												preg_match( '/^(=+).*?=+|^<h([1-6]).*?' . '>.*?<\/h[1-6].*?' . '>/mi',$subheadline,$matches);
+												$subhlevel=$matches[1];
+												if(strpos($subhlevel,'=')!==false) {
+																$subhlevel=strlen($subhlevel);
+												}
+												if($subhlevel > $hlevel) {
+																$rv.=$subheadline.$secs[$count*2];
+												}
+												if($subhlevel <= $hlevel) {
+																$break=true;
+												}
+												$count++;
+								}
+
+# reinsert stripped tags
+								$rv=$parser->unstrip($rv,$striparray);
+								$rv=$parser->unstripNoWiki($rv,$striparray);
+								$rv=trim($rv);
+
+								$headline = preg_replace('/^== /', "", $headline);
+								$headline = preg_replace('/ ==$/', "", $headline);
+
+								$parserOutput = $wgParser->parse($rv, $title, $parserOptions);
+								$sections[$headline] = $parserOutput->getText();
+				}
+				return $sections;
+}
+
+function wfSpecialTalkfeed( $par )
+{
+	global $wgUser, $wgLang, $wgTitle, $wgMemc, $wgDBname;
+	global $wgRequest, $wgSitename, $wgLanguageCode;
+	global $wgFeedClasses;
+	$fname = "wfSpecialTalkfeed";
+
+	# Get query parameters
+	$feedFormat = $wgRequest->getVal( "feed" );
+  if ($feedFormat == "") { $feedFormat = "rss"; }
+	$defaultDays = 45;
+
+	$days = $wgRequest->getInt( 'days', $defaultDays );
+	$hideminor = $wgRequest->getBool( 'hideminor', $wgUser->getOption( 'hideminor' ) ) ? 1 : 0;
+	$from = $wgRequest->getText( 'from' );
+	$hidebots = $wgRequest->getBool( 'hidebots', true ) ? 1 : 0;
+	$hideliu = $wgRequest->getBool( 'hideliu', false ) ? 1 : 0;
+	$user = $wgRequest->getVal( 'user', "");
+
+	# Get query parameters from path
+	if( $par ) {
+		$bits = preg_split( '/\s*,\s*/', trim( $par ) );
+		if( in_array( "hidebots", $bits ) ) $hidebots = 1;
+		if( in_array( "bots", $bits ) ) $hidebots = 0;
+		if( in_array( "hideminor", $bits ) ) $hideminor = 1;
+		if( in_array( "minor", $bits ) ) $hideminor = 0;
+		if( in_array( "hideliu", $bits) ) $hideliu = 1;
+	}
+
+	$sql = "SELECT MAX(rc_timestamp) AS lastmod FROM recentchanges";
+	$res = wfQuery( $sql, DB_READ, $fname );
+	$s = wfFetchObject( $res );
+
+	$rctext = wfMsg( "recentchangestext" );
+
+	# The next few lines can probably be commented out now that wfMsg can get text from the DB
+	$sql = "SELECT cur_text FROM cur WHERE cur_namespace=4 AND cur_title='Recentchanges'";
+	$res = wfQuery( $sql, DB_READ, $fname );
+	if( ( $s = wfFetchObject( $res ) ) and ( $s->cur_text != "" ) ) {
+		$rctext = $s->cur_text;
+	}
+
+	list( $limit, $offset ) = wfCheckLimits( 100, "rclimit" );
+	$now = wfTimestampNow();
+	$cutoff_unixtime = time() - ( $days * 86400 );
+	$cutoff_unixtime = $cutoff_unixtime - ($cutoff_unixtime % 86400);
+	$cutoff = wfUnix2Timestamp( $cutoff_unixtime );
+	if(preg_match('/^[0-9]{14}$/', $from) and $from > $cutoff) {
+		$cutoff = $from;
+	} else {
+		unset($from);
+	}
+
+	$sk = $wgUser->getSkin();
+	$showhide = array( wfMsg( "show" ), wfMsg( "hide" ));
+
+	if ( $hideminor ) {
+		$hidem = "AND rc_minor=0";
+	} else {
+		$hidem = "";
+	}
+
+	if( $hidebots ) {
+		$hidem .= " AND rc_bot=0";
+	}
+
+	if ( $hideliu ) {
+		$hidem .= " AND rc_user=0";
+	}
+
+	$hideliu = ($hideliu ? 1 : 0);
+	$urlparams = array( "hideminor" => $hideminor, "hideliu" => $hideliu, "hidebots" => $hidebots );
+	$hideparams = wfArrayToCGI( $urlparams );
+
+	$uid = $wgUser->getID();
+	$sql2 = "SELECT recentchanges.*" . ($uid ? ",wl_user" : "") . " FROM recentchanges " .
+	  ($uid ? "LEFT OUTER JOIN watchlist ON wl_user={$uid} AND wl_title=rc_title AND wl_namespace=rc_namespace & 65534 " : "") .
+		"WHERE rc_timestamp > '{$cutoff}' {$hidem} " .
+		($user ? "AND rc_title='{$user}' " : "") .
+	  "ORDER BY rc_timestamp DESC LIMIT {$limit}";
+
+	$res = wfQuery( $sql2, DB_READ, $fname );
+	$rows = array();
+	while( $row = wfFetchObject( $res ) ){
+		$rows[] = $row;
+	}
+
+	$feed = new $wgFeedClasses[$feedFormat](
+					$wgSitename . " - " . wfMsg( "recentchanges" ) . " [" . $wgLanguageCode . "]",
+					htmlspecialchars( wfMsg( "recentchangestext" ) ),
+					$wgTitle->getFullUrl() );
+	$feed->outHeader();
+
+	foreach( $rows as $obj ) {
+					if ($obj->rc_comment == "") continue;
+
+					$fragment = wfMungeToUtf8(str_replace( " ", "_", $obj->rc_comment));
+					$title = Title::makeTitle( $obj->rc_namespace, $obj->rc_title);
+
+					if (count($sections) == 0)
+					{
+									$sql3 = "SELECT cur_text FROM cur WHERE cur_id=" . $obj->rc_cur_id;
+									$res3 = wfQuery( $sql3, DB_READ, $fname );
+									$row3 = wfFetchObject($res3);
+									$sections = getSections($row3->cur_text, $title);
+									wfFreeResult( $res3 );
+					}
+
+					$description = $sections[$obj->rc_comment];
+					if ($description == "") continue;
+
+					$talkpage = $title->getTalkPage();
+					$item = new FeedItem(
+									$obj->rc_comment,
+									$description,
+									$title->getFullURL()	. "#" . $fragment,
+									$obj->rc_timestamp,
+									$user,
+									$talkpage->getFullURL()
+									);
+
+					$feed->outItem( $item );
+	}
+
+	$feed->outFooter();
+	wfFreeResult( $res );
+}
+
+?>
diff -up -urN mediawiki-1.3.3-orig/languages/Language.php mediawiki-1.3.3/languages/Language.php
--- mediawiki-1.3.3-orig/languages/Language.php	2004-09-05 03:39:56.000000000 -0400
+++ mediawiki-1.3.3/languages/Language.php	2004-09-11 16:43:15.000000000 -0400
@@ -121,6 +121,7 @@ this (alternative: like this 'Edit box has full width',
 	'watchdefault' => 'Add pages you edit to your watchlist',
 	'minordefault' => 'Mark all edits minor by default',
+	'sectiontopdefault' => 'Add all new sections to the top of the page by default',
 	'previewontop' => 'Show preview before edit box and not after it',
 	'nocache' => 'Disable page caching'
 );
@@ -512,6 +513,7 @@ Please log in again after you receive it
 'summary'		=> 'Summary',
 'subject'		=> 'Subject/headline',
 'minoredit'		=> 'This is a minor edit',
+'sectiontop'		=> 'Add this new section to the top of the page.',
 'watchthis'		=> 'Watch this page',
 'savearticle'	=> 'Save page',
 'preview'		=> 'Preview',
@@ -1282,6 +1284,7 @@ amusement.',
 # Keyboard access keys for power users
 'accesskey-search' => 'f',
 'accesskey-minoredit' => 'i',
+'accesskey-sectiontop' => 't',
 'accesskey-save' => 's',
 'accesskey-preview' => 'p',
 'accesskey-compareselectedversions' => 'v',
@@ -1289,6 +1292,7 @@ amusement.',
 # tooltip help for some actions, most are in Monobook.js
 'tooltip-search' => 'Search this wiki [alt-f]',
 'tooltip-minoredit' => 'Mark this as a minor edit [alt-i]',
+'tooltip-sectiontop' => 'Add new section to top of page [alt-t]',
 'tooltip-save' => 'Save your changes [alt-s]',
 'tooltip-preview' => 'Preview your changes, please use this before saving! [alt-p]',
 'tooltip-compareselectedversions' => 'See the differences between the two selected versions of this page. [alt-v]',


from_name: John Collison

subject: [Foundation-l] Rewarding volunteers

body:
I have to say I agree with Jimbo on this one. I was thinking about
Wikipedia in the future for a while and I think we have to be careful
where we go from here. Think about it, Wikipedia started out with a
simple vision: a free encyclopedia where anyone could edit anything.
Now, sysops, developers etc are getting more power, anons less trusted,
and there is talk of paying developers. If we're not cautious, we could
end up just like a conventional online encyclopedia. Sort of like the
way animal farm went :-/.
I think we should try and preserve the original idea of Wikipedia (and
Wikimedia projects in general).

  -- John Collison (Ludraman)
         P.S. Sorry if I've made some mistake here it's my first time
posting on the mailing list!

On 12 Sep 2004, at 15:21, Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales wrote:

> Just to say my usual bit about this, I'm all for rewarding volunteers,
> and the best way to do that is with kind words, mutual respect, and
> admiration for good deeds.  Mathematical formulas can never replace
> taking the time to say "thank you" or "I am a fan of your work" when
> you see an article that you like.
>
> Algorithmic reputation systems are always a temptation, just because
> they are possible.  But human reputation systems are much more nuanced
> and powerful.
>
> --Jimbo
>
>
> --
> "La n??fle est un fruit." - first words of 50,000th article on
> fr.wikipedia.org
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


subject: [Foundation-l] Rewarding volunteers


from_name: David Gerard

subject: [WikiEN-l] Robert Brookes

body:
On 09/12/04 01:14, Fred Bauder wrote:
>From: David Gerard <fun at thingy.apana.org.au>

>>(The RFC is remarkable. A question for arbcom members: how long
>>would a new arbcom case take to come to a decision on? And is
>>"go to mediation" considered appropriate for a case of repeated
>>personal abusiveness?)

 > It might move quite quickly, but trying to skip mediation may make it move
 > slower that it otherwise would.

That's what I thought. Thank you :-)

- d.


subject:
[WikiEN-l] When Powerful Jewish or Social-Marxist-PC Lobbies
	Censor the Internet....

body:
On 09/12/04 05:18, Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales wrote:

> Would an admin of this list kindly remove Mr Paul Vogel and ban his address
> from posting.  He is not welcome to post this kid of trash here.

Actioned.

- d.


from_name: Matthew Larsen

subject: [WikiEN-l] WP in UK press

body:
is it wrong?

On Sun, 12 Sep 2004 19:02:48 +0200, ?var Arnfj?r? Bjarmason
<avarab at gmail.com> wrote:
> "It's an 'open source' project - all of its content is in the public
> domain. You can find it at www.wikipedia.org."
>
> Some quality journalism by the guardian.
>
>
>
> On Mon, 13 Sep 2004 00:06:16 +0800, John Lee <johnleemk at yahoo.com> wrote:
> > The article in question can be found at:
> > http://observer.guardian.co.uk/business/story/0,6903,1302435,00.html
> >
> > John Lee
> > ([[User:Johnleemk]])
> >
> >
> >
> > Charles Matthews wrote:
> >
> > >A positive article 'Wiki's wacky but it works' in today's London Observer,
> > >Business section, by John Naughton who typically writes on Internet topics.
> > >It takes the line that WP is good at 'self-healing', and is generally better
> > >(more comprehensive) than Britannica Online.
> > >
> > >
> > _______________________________________________
> > WikiEN-l mailing list
> > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
> >
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

--
Matthew Larsen
   > mat.larsen at gmail.com
   > 07739 785 249


from_name: Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason

subject: [WikiEN-l] WP in UK press

body:
"It's an 'open source' project - all of its content is in the public
domain. You can find it at www.wikipedia.org."

Some quality journalism by the guardian.

On Mon, 13 Sep 2004 00:06:16 +0800, John Lee <johnleemk at yahoo.com> wrote:
> The article in question can be found at:
> http://observer.guardian.co.uk/business/story/0,6903,1302435,00.html
>
> John Lee
> ([[User:Johnleemk]])
>
>
>
> Charles Matthews wrote:
>
> >A positive article 'Wiki's wacky but it works' in today's London Observer,
> >Business section, by John Naughton who typically writes on Internet topics.
> >It takes the line that WP is good at 'self-healing', and is generally better
> >(more comprehensive) than Britannica Online.
> >
> >
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: UTF-8 problem

body:
Le Sunday 12 September 2004 16:46, Tim Starling a ?crit :
> Yann Forget wrote:
> > Hi,
> >
> > There are problems to make links to Wikipedias which use non Latin
> > scripts on Wikipedias which are still not in UTF-8 (en:, sv:, da:, etc.).
> > It would be good if they get converted soon.
> >
> > i.e. Link to [[gu:??????]] in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gujarat
> > and http://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gujarat
> >
> > Does someone know how to correct this now?
>
> You need to use a browser which converts unicode into numeric character
> entities rather than a series of question marks. For example, Internet
> Explorer or Mozilla are suitable. If you don't have a system capable of
> this automatic conversion, you could try one of the many client-side and
> web-based tools written for this purpose, e.g.

I use Konqueror, and yes, it creates [[gu:??????]].

> http://users.wpi.edu/~aram/unicode.php

Thanks, that useful.

> -- Tim Starling

Yann

--
http://www.non-violence.org/ | Site collaboratif sur la non-violence
http://www.forget-me.net/ | Alternatives sur le Net
http://fr.wikipedia.org/ | Encyclop?die libre
http://www.forget-me.net/pro/ | Formations et services Linux


from_name: Ray Saintonge

body:
Daniel Mayer wrote:

>--- Matthew Larsen <mat.larsen at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>>This is all well and good, having a review board and experts stuff and all...
>>
>>But is it really necessary?
>>
>>
>Yes - we are getting slammed in the media (and by school teachers and
>librarians) for being an untrustable source *and* we want a way to approve
>content for publication.
>
I think that your stand on this is overly reactive, and not pro-active.
These responses are a sign of success, not of failure.   Your reaction
to the teacher and the librarian is premised on their being right.
Contrast this with the view expressed in the Observer article.  Having
WP generaly accepted by the schools may still be five or ten years down
the road.  It would not surprise me if some of these teachers who reject
Wikipedia would then turn around and treat one of the commercial
duplicates of Wikipedia as authoritative just because it can't be edited
by everybody.

Reacting to these situations by adding more bureaucracy could easily but
unwittingly subvert the ideas that made Wikipedia what it is to-day.

Ec


from_name: Jeff Warnica

subject:
[Wikitech-l] Re: An urgent Proposal: A fair, effective and
	free rewarding system for WikiPedia volunteers

body:
On Sun, 2004-12-09 at 14:32 -0700, Krzysztof Kowalczyk wrote:
> And finally, as quoted by
> http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000070.html and
> http://www.uwo.ca/uwofa/ft/6.2/#ph1 :
>
> "... at least two dozen studies over the last three decades have
> conclusively shown that people who expect to receive a reward for
> completing a task or for doing that task successfully simply do not
> perform as well as those who expect no reward at all."

To jump in here, the key word is "expect". I haven't read the studies,
nor am I a student of psych, but it seems to me that there is a
significant difference between work directly leading to a reward, and
work possibly leading to a reward. I don't think that any of these
studies are relevant to the conversation.


subject: [WikiEN-l] WP in UK press

body:
Yes

On Sun, 12 Sep 2004 19:02:48 +0200, ?var Arnfj?r? Bjarmason
<avarab at gmail.com> wrote:
> "It's an 'open source' project - all of its content is in the public
> domain. You can find it at www.wikipedia.org."
>
> Some quality journalism by the guardian.
>
>
>
> On Mon, 13 Sep 2004 00:06:16 +0800, John Lee <johnleemk at yahoo.com> wrote:
> > The article in question can be found at:
> > http://observer.guardian.co.uk/business/story/0,6903,1302435,00.html
> >
> > John Lee
> > ([[User:Johnleemk]])
> >
> >
> >
> > Charles Matthews wrote:
> >
> > >A positive article 'Wiki's wacky but it works' in today's London Observer,
> > >Business section, by John Naughton who typically writes on Internet topics.
> > >It takes the line that WP is good at 'self-healing', and is generally better
> > >(more comprehensive) than Britannica Online.
> > >
> > >
> > _______________________________________________
> > WikiEN-l mailing list
> > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
> >
>


body:
--- Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> I think that your stand on this is overly reactive, and not pro-active.
> These responses are a sign of success, not of failure.   Your reaction
> to the teacher and the librarian is premised on their being right.

When they say that they do not trust Wikipedia, will not use it, and will go so
far as warn others from using it, then they *are* right about that. I do not
suppose that their reasoning behind those actions and positions are correct.

-- mav

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
New and Improved Yahoo! Mail - 100MB free storage!
http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail


body:
Krzysztof Kowalczyk wrote:

>You're just repeating this extremely faulty argument "some research
>has been found invalid therefore all research is invalid".
>
>
No, it's a probabilistic argument: "research in this field, even
research previously considered rock solid, has on numerous occasions
later been found to be completely invalid, therefore it is inadvisable
to place a large degree of confidence in research results in the field."

I don't think many people will argue that psychology has a very good
track record.  Up until just 30 years ago, psychologists and
psychiatrists nearly uniformly agreed that homosexuality was,
scientifically speaking, a mental illness, a finding they finally
retracted only after people _outside_ the field attacked them
continuously over a period of many years.  Anti-depressant studies have
a similarly suspicious history.  In general, I'd be wary of any study
coming out of that area, unless it's been rigorously vetted by people
outside the field.

>But more importantly, if you dismiss the value of published research,
>how do you propose we carry on an intelligent discussion? What
>arguments can I possibly use that you'll accept as valid?
>
>
Oh, some published research is more reliable and relevant.  I'd still
take it with a grain of salt, but I'd be more interested in the large
body of economics literature on how incentive payments (such as bonuses)
impact employee performance.  As far as I know, it's currently a
disputed topic, with some studies claiming to show positive impact, some
studies claiming to show negative impact, and some studies claiming to
show no measurable impact.  There's also some relevant literature on the
effects of paid labor on the availability and quality of volunteer labor.

-Mark


subject: [Foundation-l] Rewarding volunteers

body:
Erik Moeller wrote:

>Of all the online projects I've ever been involved in, Wikimedia is the
>most paranoid about power and money. I prefer facts to paranoia, and
>progress to stagnancy.
>
>
While I won't entirely disagree, I do think the paranoia serves its
purpose.  In addition to being the most paranoid, Wikimedia is also the
most _successful_ of the online projects I've been involved in---I've
seen quite a few other projects go pretty bad after money and power
hierarchies began to become heavily involved.

-Mark


subject: [Foundation-l] Rewarding volunteers


subject: [WikiEN-l] WP in UK press

body:
and he will probably never write about it again! nice one!

On Sun, 12 Sep 2004 20:50:44 +0200, ?var Arnfj?r? Bjarmason
<avarab at gmail.com> wrote:
> I contacted him about this misstatement and hopefully he'll correct it.
>
>
>
>
> On Sun, 12 Sep 2004 14:38:38 -0400, Delirium <delirium at hackish.org> wrote:
> > Matthew Larsen wrote:
> >
> > >is it wrong?
> > >
> > >
> > Yes.  The vast majority of our content is not in the public domain; it
> > is licensed under the GFDL.
> >
> > -Mark
> >
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > WikiEN-l mailing list
> > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
> >
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

--
Matthew Larsen
   > mat.larsen at gmail.com
   > 07739 785 249


from_name: Charles Matthews

subject: [WikiEN-l] WP in UK press

body:
?var Arnfj?r? Bjarmason wrote

> I contacted him about this misstatement and hopefully he'll correct it.

It might have been a deliberate over-simplification, of course.

Charles


body:
Geoff Burling wrote

> * Arrogance. By the fact they have arrived at the end of a long
> road of training, academics tend to be prima donnas;

Amusing argument (though I know what you mean), precisely because the
endless tenure-track, US style, is said to militate against women.

Actually, I'd say that arrogance is typical of the high-self-esteem academic
subjects, not those that give people low self-esteem.  Leave it to others to
pick the bones out of that, but it's an important distinction to bear in
mind.

Charles


from_name: Jens Ropers

subject: [Foundation-l] Rewarding volunteers

body:
On 12 Sep 2004, at 18:51, John Collison wrote:

> I have to say I agree with Jimbo on this one. I was thinking about
> Wikipedia in the future for a while and I think we have to be careful
> where we go from here. Think about it, Wikipedia started out with a
> simple vision: a free encyclopedia where anyone could edit anything.
> Now, sysops, developers etc are getting more power, anons less
> trusted, and there is talk of paying developers. If we're not
> cautious, we could end up just like a conventional online
> encyclopedia. Sort of like the way animal farm went :-/.
> I think we should try and preserve the original idea of Wikipedia (and
> Wikimedia projects in general).
>
>  -- John Collison (Ludraman)
>         P.S. Sorry if I've made some mistake here it's my first time
> posting on the mailing list!

<aol>
	I STRONGLY second that!!!
</aol>

-- Jens [[User:Ropers|Ropers]]
     www.ropersonline.com


subject: [Foundation-l] Rewarding volunteers


subject: [WikiEN-l] WP in UK press

body:
I contacted him about this misstatement and hopefully he'll correct it.

On Sun, 12 Sep 2004 14:38:38 -0400, Delirium <delirium at hackish.org> wrote:
> Matthew Larsen wrote:
>
> >is it wrong?
> >
> >
> Yes.  The vast majority of our content is not in the public domain; it
> is licensed under the GFDL.
>
> -Mark
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] Fwd: [Foundation-l] Rewarding volunteers

body:
I'm taking the liberty of also forwarding John's below crucial and
spot-on observation to the WikiEN-l mailing list -- I would hope that
that's ok.

-- Jens

Begin forwarded message:

> From: John Collison <john at collison.ie>
> Date: 12 September 2004 18:51:12 GMT+02:00
> To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List <foundation-l at wikimedia.org>
> Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Rewarding volunteers
> Reply-To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List
> <foundation-l at wikimedia.org>
>
> I have to say I agree with Jimbo on this one. I was thinking about
> Wikipedia in the future for a while and I think we have to be careful
> where we go from here. Think about it, Wikipedia started out with a
> simple vision: a free encyclopedia where anyone could edit anything.
> Now, sysops, developers etc are getting more power, anons less
> trusted, and there is talk of paying developers. If we're not
> cautious, we could end up just like a conventional online
> encyclopedia. Sort of like the way animal farm went :-/.
> I think we should try and preserve the original idea of Wikipedia (and
> Wikimedia projects in general).
>
>  -- John Collison (Ludraman)
>         P.S. Sorry if I've made some mistake here it's my first time
> posting on the mailing list!
>
> On 12 Sep 2004, at 15:21, Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales wrote:
>
>> Just to say my usual bit about this, I'm all for rewarding volunteers,
>> and the best way to do that is with kind words, mutual respect, and
>> admiration for good deeds.  Mathematical formulas can never replace
>> taking the time to say "thank you" or "I am a fan of your work" when
>> you see an article that you like.
>>
>> Algorithmic reputation systems are always a temptation, just because
>> they are possible.  But human reputation systems are much more nuanced
>> and powerful.
>>
>> --Jimbo
>>
>>
>> --
>> "La n??fle est un fruit." - first words of 50,000th article on
>> fr.wikipedia.org
>> _______________________________________________
>> foundation-l mailing list
>> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
>> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>>
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] WP in UK press

body:
Why do you think that he will never write about wikipedia again?
Because i wrote him and to correct a mistake i made?

I think you overestemate his fragility as a journalist.

On Sun, 12 Sep 2004 20:02:12 +0100, Matthew Larsen <mat.larsen at gmail.com> wrote:
> and he will probably never write about it again! nice one!
>
> On Sun, 12 Sep 2004 20:50:44 +0200, ?var Arnfj?r? Bjarmason
>
>
> <avarab at gmail.com> wrote:
> > I contacted him about this misstatement and hopefully he'll correct it.
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > On Sun, 12 Sep 2004 14:38:38 -0400, Delirium <delirium at hackish.org> wrote:
> > > Matthew Larsen wrote:
> > >
> > > >is it wrong?
> > > >
> > > >
> > > Yes.  The vast majority of our content is not in the public domain; it
> > > is licensed under the GFDL.
> > >
> > > -Mark
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > _______________________________________________
> > > WikiEN-l mailing list
> > > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> > > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
> > >
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > WikiEN-l mailing list
> > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
> >
>
>
> --
> Matthew Larsen
>    > mat.larsen at gmail.com
>    > 07739 785 249
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] WP in UK press

body:
s/i made/he made/

On Sun, 12 Sep 2004 21:07:57 +0200, ?var Arnfj?r? Bjarmason
<avarab at gmail.com> wrote:
> Why do you think that he will never write about wikipedia again?
> Because i wrote him and to correct a mistake i made?
>
> I think you overestemate his fragility as a journalist.
>
>
>
> On Sun, 12 Sep 2004 20:02:12 +0100, Matthew Larsen <mat.larsen at gmail.com> wrote:
> > and he will probably never write about it again! nice one!
> >
> > On Sun, 12 Sep 2004 20:50:44 +0200, ?var Arnfj?r? Bjarmason
> >
> >
> > <avarab at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > I contacted him about this misstatement and hopefully he'll correct it.
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > On Sun, 12 Sep 2004 14:38:38 -0400, Delirium <delirium at hackish.org> wrote:
> > > > Matthew Larsen wrote:
> > > >
> > > > >is it wrong?
> > > > >
> > > > >
> > > > Yes.  The vast majority of our content is not in the public domain; it
> > > > is licensed under the GFDL.
> > > >
> > > > -Mark
> > > >
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > _______________________________________________
> > > > WikiEN-l mailing list
> > > > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> > > > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
> > > >
> > >
> > >
> > > _______________________________________________
> > > WikiEN-l mailing list
> > > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> > > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
> > >
> >
> >
> > --
> > Matthew Larsen
> >    > mat.larsen at gmail.com
> >    > 07739 785 249
> >
>


from_name: Tomasz Wegrzanowski

body:
On Sun, Sep 12, 2004 at 11:47:13AM -0700, Ray Saintonge wrote:
> There are certainly undetermined factors involved.  A long accepted
> premise among economists is that people would act rationally.
> Rationality in this context was defined in terms of bettering one's
> economic situation.  This thread of rationality could be applied very
> conveniently at both the micro- and macroeconomic level.  For the
> economist taking time off work to care for a sick child is not a
> rational act.

But of course it is rational. The benefit due to improvement in one's child's
health is much greater than loss because of not working.

Even in the most diehard classical economy, the money is just a means for
getting the actual goods, and in this case you can obtain much more valuable
goods some other way.

I don't mean that classical economy is correct, or that people are acting
rationally in some way, but this example is terribly wrong.


from_name: Geoff Burling

body:
On Sun, 12 Sep 2004, Daniel Mayer wrote:

> --- Geoff Burling <llywrch at agora.rdrop.com> wrote:
> > In short, if faced with choosing between an expert who does not care to
> > conform to the Wikipedia way (by which I mean is willing to engage in
> > give-&-take in the writing of material) & a non-expert who is willing
> > to learn & "play nice" with other contributors, I would choose the
> > latter. And I hope I am not alone in this preference.
>
> You explained the strengths and weaknesses extremely well, but your conclusion
> is based on an either/or choice.

Mav, either you misread me, or I failed to communicate my point properly.

I spoke of 2 qualities: expertise & willingness to "play nice". My conclusion
was to state that I value the willingness to "play nice" over expertise --
if forced to choose. In the vast majority of cases, we aren't faced with
such a stark choice.

> I very firmly believe that this is not an
> either/or choice and that we should leverage the strengths of both against
> their weaknesses (I too have come across PhD's - in print and in person - who
> espouse nearly crank theories).

That was my point, too.
>
> So a particular subject area approval board may decide to have one or more
> experts read an article along with one or more non-expert but trusted
> Wikipedians who are self-taught in the topic area.

[snip]

Okay, I was talking about Academics in general on Wikipedia. (And I suspect
now I'll be hearing from the academics currenting busy contributing to
Wikipedia.)

Last time I ventured my two cents concerning the print Wikipedia, the response
I got led me to conlcude that there was no support for forking Wikipedia even
in the slightest to make the content more acceptible -- which is what any
approval board would end up doing. Then the project seemed to go into
hibernation. Then it seemed that a group was working on it. Now it appears
we are back to discussing what should be done.

I'm withholding further comment until it's clear (well, at least to me)
what is going on with this version of Wikipedia. I'm just as happy as anyone
to opine about something, but I'd rather work on the print version of
Wikipedia than be one more voice in this neverending discussion. (And those
who are doing the work will most likely appreciate the lowered noise level.)

Geoff


from_name: Stan Shebs

body:
Daniel Mayer wrote:

>--- Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
>
>>I think that your stand on this is overly reactive, and not pro-active.
>>These responses are a sign of success, not of failure.   Your reaction
>>to the teacher and the librarian is premised on their being right.
>>
>
>When they say that they do not trust Wikipedia, will not use it, and will go so
>far as warn others from using it, then they *are* right about that. I do not
>suppose that their reasoning behind those actions and positions are correct.
>
Ironically, telling students not to use Wikipedia is about the surest
way there is to get them to look at it! :-) Sort of like corporate IT
departments ordering people not to install Linux...

Many people will become convinced when they go to look at articles
on subjects where they're knowledgeable, and find that the content
matches what they know. My dad the retired research chemist looked
at the Mossbauer effect article and found it pretty accurate, and it
even mentioned a few technical details that he'd long forgotten about.
He also had a couple relevant personal anecdotes, but alas, no
published source to verify against.

Stan


from_name: Edward Peschko

subject: [Foundation-l] Rewarding volunteers

references:
<9GovFw6hpVB@erik_moeller> <4144E30C.2080407@hackish.org>
	<742dfd06040912211468ac7ca5@mail.gmail.com>

body:
> >
> > >Of all the online projects I've ever been involved in, Wikimedia is the
> > >most paranoid about power and money. I prefer facts to paranoia, and
> > >progress to stagnancy.
> > >
> > While I won't entirely disagree, I do think the paranoia serves its
> > purpose.  In addition to being the most paranoid, Wikimedia is also the
> > most _successful_ of the online projects I've been involved in---I've
> > seen quite a few other projects go pretty bad after money and power
> > hierarchies began to become heavily involved.
>

well, I'll throw in my two cents worth (note - coming from a relative
newbie to mediawiki) ...

I don't think that mediawiki should necessarily have only one
approach to moderation or karma. Mediawiki could support multiple
versions if these policies were decided via namespace.

The moderation/karma policy for the base namespace could be
then be picked empirically.  Simply try multiple policies in
smaller mediawikis, see which one works best, and then turn
that policy 'on' for wikipedia itself. If none of them work out,
either make a command decision to keep moderation out or keep working
on finding one..

Ed

(
    ps -
       FWIW - I don't think its *wise* to have a 'one size fits all'
       policy for mediawiki. For some things - like controversial
       discussion - a policy like slashdot's works quite well.
       Ditto for science and/or research...
)


subject: [Foundation-l] Rewarding volunteers


subject: [Wikitech-l] An update to LanguageIs.php

body:
Could LanguageIs.php be updated in CVS from the version on meta
( http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=LanguageIs.php&action=raw&ctype=text/css
).

It adds the following:
* Back ported fixes from the CVS version
* NS_MEDIAWIKI and  NS_MEDIAWIKI_TALK have been translated into Icelandic
* Four magic keywords have been translated ( perhaps we'll translate
the rest later
* Math is now rendered as PNG as is the consensus on the Icelandic wikipedia.

As well as this other system messages in the MediaWiki name space have
been significantly updated on is.wikipedia.org since the last pull
from there into CVS, almost all the system messages which are commonly
used ( save  for preferences ) have been translated.

http://is.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Kerfiss%C3%AD%C3%B0a:Allmessages&ot=php

Please add this to REL_1.4 and back port it to REL_1.4 if possible (
since the fixes are very minor ).

-?var Arnfj?r? Bjarmason


from_name: Anthere

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Re: If you want to include a point-of-view,
	then write it.

body:
Robert a ?crit:
> Jimbo writes:
>
>>RK, you need to take it through the mediation process
>>and if that fails, through the arbitration process.
>>Ranting on the mailing list is not helpful.
>
>
>
> You seem to misunderstand my point: Mediation is about
> coming to terms on what should be in an article.
> Fortunately, that particular kind of problem isn't being
> discussed here.

Hum. No. I disagree Robert.
Mediation is about discussing an issue you have with another editor, and
which prevents one or both of you from happily and satisfactorily
contribute. It is not necessarily about an article, but may deal with a
conflict between 2 people.

Sincerely, Anthere

> Danny doesn't make any edits to these articles; I perceived
> him as being abusive, and that is a violation of Wikipedia
> etiquette. He has made it clear that he has no intention of
> adding to the articles in question, despite my own repeated
> invitations for him to do so. He just was insulting me,
> which is not the point of our project.
>
> As regards JFW, I didn't bring any concerns to the list, it
> was JFW who did this!  I did reply, of course, to explain
> my confusion at his letter.  Summary: JFW can add any info
> he likes; I'd be happy to see this. I repeatedly have
> agreed with him on all the points he makes about NPOV and
> article content, and so I do not understand why he has made
> himself believe the opposite.  I did, however, strongly
> object made to a false claim about my not providing quotes
> that he asked for. If someone doesn't like the content of
> the quotes, they should complain to the author, not me!
> (Of course, if you missed his original letter here, and
> only saw my response, I can see how you would assume I was
> venting inappropriately.)
>
>
> Here is my point, and I think that its what everyone here
> has always assumed as obvious:  If you want to include a
> point-of-view, then write it.  Never criticise others for
> not writing what you wish you had written yourself. This
> point, which I have made twice now, surely is not
> "ranting".
>
> Sincerely,
>
> Robert (RK)
>
>
>
>
> __________________________________
> Do you Yahoo!?
> Yahoo! Mail Address AutoComplete - You start. We finish.
> http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail


body:
This is all well and good, having a review board and experts stuff and all...

But is it really necessary?

On Sun, 12 Sep 2004 15:16:37 -0700 (PDT), Daniel Mayer
<maveric149 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> --- Geoff Burling <llywrch at agora.rdrop.com> wrote:
> > In short, if faced with choosing between an expert who does not care to
> > conform to the Wikipedia way (by which I mean is willing to engage in
> > give-&-take in the writing of material) & a non-expert who is willing
> > to learn & "play nice" with other contributors, I would choose the
> > latter. And I hope I am not alone in this preference.
>
> You explained the strengths and weaknesses extremely well, but your conclusion
> is based on an either/or choice. I very firmly believe that this is not an
> either/or choice and that we should leverage the strengths of both against
> their weaknesses (I too have come across PhD's - in print and in person - who
> espouse nearly crank theories).
>
> So a particular subject area approval board may decide to have one or more
> experts read an article along with one or more non-expert but trusted
> Wikipedians who are self-taught in the topic area. Each person reading the
> article would grade the article based on whether or not it covers its topic
> area well, is a fair treatment (presenting important but non-mainstream views
> with the appropriate detail and caveats), and whether or not there are obvious
> errors of fact.
>
> Each would have *equal* veto power over not approving the article by giving it
> a sub-standard grade in any of several different categories. Conflicts of
> judgment will have to be worked out among the judges.
>
> Rather egalitarian, no?
>
> -- mav
>
>
> __________________________________
> Do you Yahoo!?
> Yahoo! Mail - 50x more storage than other providers!
> http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

--
Matthew Larsen
   > mat.larsen at gmail.com
   > 07739 785 249


subject:
[WikiEN-l] Re: When Powerful Jewish or Social-Marxist-PC Lobbies
 Censor the Internet....

body:
Daniel Mayer a ?crit:
> --- "Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales" <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
>
>
>>Would an admin of this list kindly remove Mr Paul Vogel and ban his address
>>from posting.  He is not welcome to post this kid of trash here.
>
>
> I agree. I also think that is hard ban covered WikiEN-l from the start, since
> that is part of the ArbCom's jurisdiction.
>
> -- mav

Where is it written that the ArbCom has juridiction over the mailing
list ? And when and by who was it decided ?

We should first ban editors because they damage wikipedia. That might be
because they damage the community or because they damage articles. Would
we deny them the possibility to discuss their ban if necessary ?


body:
On 09/12/04 22:23, Daniel Mayer wrote:
> --- Matthew Larsen <mat.larsen at gmail.com> wrote:

>>This is all well and good, having a review board and experts stuff and all...
>>But is it really necessary?

> Yes - we are getting slammed in the media (and by school teachers and
> librarians) for being an untrustable source *and* we want a way to approve
> content for publication.

1. We must do something.
2. This is something.
3. Therefore we must do this.

It's the jump from 2. to 3. that I'm entirely unconvinced by.

I suggest that a more Wiki-like process - something that plays to our
strengths - should be tried before instituting a review board, at least
inside Wikimedia rather than as a forked thing.

- d.


from_name: phil hunt

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: A future for Nupedia?

body:
On Sat, 11 Sep 2004 22:29:46 -0700, Stan Shebs <shebs at apple.com> wrote:
>Daniel Mayer wrote:
>To trot out yet another GNU comparison, most components of GNU and
>Linux have been disparaged by computer scientists and leading
>technologists ("just a hobby system", "no one would ever use it
>for anything important", etc). The interesting thing that happened
>is that over time, some experts (like me) got pulled into the
>projects, and in other cases, the less-expert simply tried
>imitating what experts did, sometimes several times before
>settling on something that worked in practice. The cumulative
>result has shut up a lot of skeptics (and I've had the distinct
>pleasure of some of them saying "Stan, you were right" - aaah...).
>But it did take a long time - GNU is almost 20 years old, and Linux
>is 13, at 3 1/2 years only the true believers worked on them.

Some people seem to have a deep-seated psychological block regrading
the possibility of an unpaid collaborative project over the Internet
achiveing anying worthwhile I suspect they have fundamentally
pessimistic beliefs about human nature: people aren't good at
co-operating, and no-one would do anything worthwhile unless they
are paid to do it. It's sad that people have these delusions,
however, as you point out, over time and with sufficient evidence,
many will change their minds.

Is this a problem? The success of Wikipedia depends on Wikipedians
creating articles. Those who don't like the Wikipedia concent aren't
going to be creating articles anyway, so it is no loss. However, if
they are in a position to sway others away from using Wikipedia,
then some of those people who would eventually become Wikipedians
won't do so, or will do so later.

>Getting back to WP, one of the things I don't think people appreciate
>is the number of bonafide experts already reviewing WP articles on a
>daily basis. It would be very hard for someone to get something by me
>in the GCC or GDB articles for instance; I know articles in other
>areas also have experts' eyes watching intently.

This is probably most true regarding software, particularly open
source software. There's a degree of truth in the jibe that
Wikipedia is an encyclopedia built by Slashdotters.

> It would be a
>pretty low impact simply to have a place to document the existing
>experts (real names with CVs, no hiding behind pseudonyms). The
>recognition alone, even without any special privileges, would attract
>some experts, and the power structure works right - editors will
>tend to defer to the known experts (that happens already) but
>still be able to challenge those who get out of line.

Good idea.

>Going a little further, I could imagine pages having a link going
>to a list of real-name editors who have publicly declared themselves
>to be watching the article.

Yes, in the same way we have a "talk" page attaching to a page.

> Those seeking reassurance can then
>peruse the list to see if they're sufficiently impressed. Conversely,
>it's an incentive to the watchers, whose reputation will suffer if
>the articles they're publicly watching are poor in some way.
>
>Stan

--
"It's easier to find people online who openly support the KKK than
people who openly support the RIAA" -- comment on Wikipedia
(Email: zen19725 at zen dot co dot uk)


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: An update to LanguageIs.php

body:
Apperently this file is broken, i'll submit a new one at bugzilla.

On Sun, 12 Sep 2004 23:12:43 +0200, ?var Arnfj?r? Bjarmason
<avarab at gmail.com> wrote:
> Could LanguageIs.php be updated in CVS from the version on meta
> ( http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=LanguageIs.php&action=raw&ctype=text/css
> ).
>
> It adds the following:
> * Back ported fixes from the CVS version
> * NS_MEDIAWIKI and  NS_MEDIAWIKI_TALK have been translated into Icelandic
> * Four magic keywords have been translated ( perhaps we'll translate
> the rest later
> * Math is now rendered as PNG as is the consensus on the Icelandic wikipedia.
>
> As well as this other system messages in the MediaWiki name space have
> been significantly updated on is.wikipedia.org since the last pull
> from there into CVS, almost all the system messages which are commonly
> used ( save  for preferences ) have been translated.
>
> http://is.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Kerfiss%C3%AD%C3%B0a:Allmessages&ot=php
>
> Please add this to REL_1.4 and back port it to REL_1.4 if possible (
> since the fixes are very minor ).
>
> -?var Arnfj?r? Bjarmason
>


from_name: John Lee

subject: [WikiEN-l] WP in UK press

body:
The article in question can be found at:
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/business/story/0,6903,1302435,00.html

John Lee
([[User:Johnleemk]])

Charles Matthews wrote:

>A positive article 'Wiki's wacky but it works' in today's London Observer,
>Business section, by John Naughton who typically writes on Internet topics.
>It takes the line that WP is good at 'self-healing', and is generally better
>(more comprehensive) than Britannica Online.
>
>


from_name: Sj

subject: [Foundation-l] Rewarding volunteers

body:
On Sun, 12 Sep 2004 20:00:12 -0400, Delirium <delirium at hackish.org> wrote:
> Erik Moeller wrote:
>
> >Of all the online projects I've ever been involved in, Wikimedia is the
> >most paranoid about power and money. I prefer facts to paranoia, and
> >progress to stagnancy.
> >
> While I won't entirely disagree, I do think the paranoia serves its
> purpose.  In addition to being the most paranoid, Wikimedia is also the
> most _successful_ of the online projects I've been involved in---I've
> seen quite a few other projects go pretty bad after money and power
> hierarchies began to become heavily involved.

Well-put, Mark.  "Stagnant" isn't a word that I normally associate
with Wikipedia.

As for your previous feature suggestion,
> "show me all new pages created by people who are not
> known either by me or by the people I know,"

it emphasizes an important point -- the best filtering features aren't
based on global properties that have been applied to a particular
*user* or *article* (this article has a Quality Rating of 7.4, this
user is Highly Trusted)...  since this implies a level of certainty
about the judgement of some users which other users may doubt.  The
best features allow the viewing user to choose whose opinions to
aggregate.

I think a mark of a good filtering system will be that it both allows
normal editors to watch edits by trolls, and allows trolls to watch
edits by their favorite antagonists... and allows everyone to watch
for edits by vandals.

--
+sj+


subject: [Foundation-l] Rewarding volunteers


from_name: Tim Starling

subject:
[Wikitech-l] Re: Questions: How to bulk-copy/clone
 MediaWiki:namespace pages from Wiki A to Wiki B (same server)

body:
Thomas Gries wrote:
> Question:
> ... when (how) are these changes in Language.php reflected in the
> running wiki? In other words: the change in Skin.php is effective
> immediately, but when(how) will the change in Language.php be effective
> (e.g. "copied" to the MediaWiki:namespace) ?

As soon as maintenance/rebuildMessages.php is run. The feature will
still work before it is copied to the MediaWiki namespace. If the page
isn't present, MessageCache.php will go through the rest of the fallback
sequence, which includes Language.php.

> My program patch uses for
> example a call to wfMsg('EmailnotificationMessage1') and
> wfMsg('EmailnotificationMessage2')

I suggest you use an initial lower case letter for message names.
Separating words with an underscore rather than an embedded upper case
letter would be more stylistically consistent.

-- Tim Starling


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: UTF-8 problem

body:
Yann Forget wrote:
> Hi,
>
> There are problems to make links to Wikipedias which use non Latin scripts on
> Wikipedias which are still not in UTF-8 (en:, sv:, da:, etc.). It would be
> good if they get converted soon.
>
> i.e. Link to [[gu:??????]] in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gujarat
> and http://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gujarat
>
> Does someone know how to correct this now?

You need to use a browser which converts unicode into numeric character
entities rather than a series of question marks. For example, Internet
Explorer or Mozilla are suitable. If you don't have a system capable of
this automatic conversion, you could try one of the many client-side and
web-based tools written for this purpose, e.g.

http://users.wpi.edu/~aram/unicode.php

-- Tim Starling


body:
Stan Shebs wrote:

> Daniel Mayer wrote:
>
>> --- Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
>>
>>> I think that your stand on this is overly reactive, and not
>>> pro-active.  These responses are a sign of success, not of
>>> failure.   Your reaction to the teacher and the librarian is
>>> premised on their being right.
>>
>> When they say that they do not trust Wikipedia, will not use it, and
>> will go so
>> far as warn others from using it, then they *are* right about that. I
>> do not
>> suppose that their reasoning behind those actions and positions are
>> correct.
>
> Ironically, telling students not to use Wikipedia is about the surest
> way there is to get them to look at it! :-) Sort of like corporate IT
> departments ordering people not to install Linux...
>
> Many people will become convinced when they go to look at articles
> on subjects where they're knowledgeable, and find that the content
> matches what they know. My dad the retired research chemist looked
> at the Mossbauer effect article and found it pretty accurate, and it
> even mentioned a few technical details that he'd long forgotten about.
> He also had a couple relevant personal anecdotes, but alas, no
> published source to verify against.

There's also irony in what you say.  People like your dad who are
comfortable in their own area of expertise are able and willing to
compare Wikipedia to what they know and reach favorable conclusions.
The school teacher who lacks the detailed knowledge for verifying our
facts seems more willing to reject Wikipedia without evidence.  Instead
of showing bias toward established resources, teachers should really be
guiding children to question everything on the net, and to develop good
critical habits.

Ec


from_name: Erik Moeller

subject: [Foundation-l] Rewarding volunteers

body:
John-
> simple vision: a free encyclopedia where anyone could edit anything.
> Now, sysops, developers etc are getting more power,

That happened when?

Sysops have no irreversible powers and are accountable to their own peers
as well as the entire community. On the English Wikipedia, there is a
ridiculously complex procedure for dealing with obvious problem users,
which in most cases never amounts to anything. Trolls and morons violate
policies with impunity on a regular basis. Just check the history of any
controversial article on Wikipedia.

Developer "powers" were actually recently reduced by creating a new class
of privileged users trusted by the community, stewards. Developers have
no privileges when it comes to policy decisions over normal users.

Important policy decisions have been increasingly *democratized* in the
last few months, and a board was elected in order to replace the previous
benevolent dictator model. Before that, there even was a time when
Wikipedia had an Editor in Chief who quite aggressively pursued a singular
vision of building the project.

So, given that the trend is the exact opposite of what you claim it is, I
can either deduce that you know nothing about Wikimedia's history, or that
you are living in a parallel universe superimposed over own where time
runs in the opposite direction. Which is it?

> anons less trusted,

Anons were *never* trusted, and for good reason. Trust is based on
experience, and you cannot build experiences with someone you don't know.
Even so, using technological improvements like templates, people send
polite messages to even vandals and spammers before they are blocked:

     Thanks for experimenting with Wikipedia. Your test worked, and has
     now been removed. Please use Wikipedia:Sandbox for any other tests
     you want to do, since testing material in articles will normally
     be removed quickly. Please see the welcome page if you would like
     to learn more about contributing to our encyclopedia. Thanks.

We have an almost masochistic relationship to abusers, we tolerate them
until it starts to bleed. For every deletion, there is a debate, and when
the debate becomes long, that usually means the content isn't deleted (no
consensus!). We tolerate the crappiest articles you can imagine about the
most insignificant fictional character in a minor video game franchise. If
you suggested publicly that as a project with 1,000,000 articles we no
longer need to allow people to edit who are not even willing to go through
a 15-second-registration-process, the resulting outcry in the wikisphere
would cause major floods and earthquakes.

> and there is talk of paying developers.

Yes, we are actually thinking about running a trial to get certain
features *which users ask for* or *which the Wikimedia Foundation and its
democratically elected Board of Trustees deem useful* implemented. We
might use money donated for that purpose to promote the development of
open source software. We might give people who cannot directly contribute
to software development the *choice* to contribute to the progress of the
software by other means - the horror!

Of all the online projects I've ever been involved in, Wikimedia is the
most paranoid about power and money. I prefer facts to paranoia, and
progress to stagnancy.

Regards,

Erik


subject: [Foundation-l] Rewarding volunteers


from_name: Vina Wang

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: One Chinese Wikipedia

body:
>Therefore, I think splitting into zh-tw isn't really too bad an idea.
>Traditional Chinese users can build up their own database, while
>some of the items can redirect to zh wp.
How is this redirect going to work?  As far as I know, redirect only works within one wiki.  Are you suggesting that the article will explicitly point to the zh wp, something like [[:zh:topic x]]?  This would make it very hard for anyone to find the link to replace once there is actually "topic x" written, since the WhatLinksHere feature does not work across wikis.

Is there any plans for a "sibling wiki", where redirect or some such feature will actually work?

-Vina

---------------------------------
Yahoo!??Messenger6.0
???????????
??????????
_______________________________________________
Wikipedia-l mailing list
Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l


from_name: Daniel Mayer

body:
--- Geoff Burling <llywrch at agora.rdrop.com> wrote:
> Last time I ventured my two cents concerning the print Wikipedia, the
> response I got led me to conlcude that there was no support for forking
> Wikipedia even in the slightest to make the content more acceptible -- which
> is what any approval board would end up doing. Then the project seemed to go
> into hibernation. Then it seemed that a group was working on it. Now it
> appears we are back to discussing what should be done.

What? How do you come to that conclusion? There *will* be no fork at *all* -
the only thing that will be done is selecting one version of an article that is
approved in some way. Any future approved version would be based on the
development version (that is, a regular Wikipedia article which would be in
perpetual development), not the last stable version.

-- mav

_______________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Shop for Back-to-School deals on Yahoo! Shopping.
http://shopping.yahoo.com/backtoschool


body:
--- David Gerard <fun at thingy.apana.org.au> wrote:
> If you don't suppose they are correct, why do we need to throw a
> spanner into the works of Wikipedia to mollify them? You haven't
> demonstrated the burning need to follow a course of action you
> here admit isn't actually necessarily justifiable.

We need a way to select content for the print/stable version and to make sure
that that content is good quality and can be trusted.

-- mav

_______________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Shop for Back-to-School deals on Yahoo! Shopping.
http://shopping.yahoo.com/backtoschool


body:
--- Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> I am very aware of this. I know it is currently a proposition.
>
> But here, you claim that it has been the case from the very beginning,
> and this is obviously very untrue.

No it is not - that is a matter of some debate. The proposed rule is aimed at
codifying what was obvious to begin with (that the ArbCom has jurisdiction over
the English Wikipedia mailing list). Whether or not that means a ban on
Wikipedia automatically extends to WikiEN-l is another issue.

> On the other hand, we banned people from the list due to poor behavior
> *on* the list.

Yes and Paul Vogel demonstrated very clearly an inability to behave correctly
*on* the list. Thus his hard ban was extended here as well.

> I consider the whole idea a very ***bad*** idea, and wonder what will be
> next. Will you also claim that the arbcom have juridiction over irc ?

No - I have argued *specifically* against that and I'm fairly annoyed by your
insinuation that *I* am trying to conduct a power grab.

> Sorry, but this is really something I do not second *at all*.
> At the most, I'd say that the english mailing lists moderator should
> feel *very confident* to ban from the list a user banned from
> en:wikipedia if he begin to be bugging everyone seriously.

Just as an admin should feel *very confident* to block a person from the
English Wikipedia if that user was under a hard ban. I don't see *any*
difference at *all.*

> Just in case, I will myself not recognise valid the juridication of the
> arbcom over any mailing list other than the english mailing list. For
> example, it should be the role of the moderator of wikipedia-l to ban a
> user, and certainly not of the english arbcom.

THIS IS THE ENGLISH MAILING LIST!!! :) And that is the *only* mailing list the
ArbCom could possibly have jurisdiction over - as I stated already.

-- mav

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
New and Improved Yahoo! Mail - Send 10MB messages!
http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail


from_name: joel

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: [patch] blog thru User_talk and enchanced rdf feed

body:
Brion Vibber <brion <at> pobox.com> writes:
>
> Joel Reed wrote:
> > A relatively small set of changes allows users to use all
> > of mediawiki's great formatting and hyperlinking capabilities
> > to blog thru their User talk page.
>
> I'm not sure that's something we want to encourage. Wikis aren't blogs
> and aren't meant to be; they are shared spaces, not individual outposts.

Yes perhaps "blogging" shouldn't be encouraged. I can only say
having one set of formatting/linking constructs, one set of user
accounts, one db to backup, one site to visit, etc. is valuable
to my company. Basically, I just hacked out a better feed for
aggregators and let people organize their user talk page by
newest section first.

I just wanted to make code available we are using internally as a way
of saying thanks for mediawiki.

jr


body:
Daniel Mayer a ?crit:
> --- Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>>Where is it written that the ArbCom has juridiction over the mailing
>>list ? And when and by who was it decided ?
>
>
> It is being proposed right now on the arbitration policy page.

I am very aware of this. I know it is currently a proposition.

But here, you claim that it has been the case from the very beginning,
and this is obviously very untrue.

I think I can fairly say this, as I have been seconding Ed Poor for a
while, while the arbcom was already active, and to my knowledge, Ed and
I never ban anyone from this mailing list upon the reason the arbcom
banned him.

On the other hand, we banned people from the list due to poor behavior
*on* the list.

>>We should first ban editors because they damage wikipedia. That might be
>>because they damage the community or because they damage articles. Would
>>we deny them the possibility to discuss their ban if necessary ?
>
>
> They have that chance during the arbitration process. In this case the user in
> question is now trolling the mailing list.
>
> -- mav

I would hope that we talk from a more general perspective than just the
current case. The fact is that the arbcom did *not* have juridiction
over the mailing lists, and not only are some people trying to change
that, but you are trying to say it has always been the case.

I consider the whole idea a very ***bad*** idea, and wonder what will be
next. Will you also claim that the arbcom have juridiction over irc ?

Sorry, but this is really something I do not second *at all*.
At the most, I'd say that the english mailing lists moderator should
feel *very confident* to ban from the list a user banned from
en:wikipedia if he begin to be bugging everyone seriously.

Just in case, I will myself not recognise valid the juridication of the
arbcom over any mailing list other than the english mailing list. For
example, it should be the role of the moderator of wikipedia-l to ban a
user, and certainly not of the english arbcom.


from_name: David Gerard

body:
On 09/13/04 02:54, Daniel Mayer wrote:
> --- Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:

>>I think that your stand on this is overly reactive, and not pro-active.
>>These responses are a sign of success, not of failure.   Your reaction
>>to the teacher and the librarian is premised on their being right.

> When they say that they do not trust Wikipedia, will not use it, and will go so
> far as warn others from using it, then they *are* right about that. I do not
> suppose that their reasoning behind those actions and positions are correct.

If you don't suppose they are correct, why do we need to throw a
spanner into the works of Wikipedia to mollify them? You haven't
demonstrated the burning need to follow a course of action you
here admit isn't actually necessarily justifiable.

- d.


from_name: Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales

body:
Ray Saintonge wrote:
> For the economist taking time off work to care for a sick child is
> not a rational act.

This statement betrays an almost complete ignorance of economic
theory.

In any event, this discussion should be taken to a different list from
wikitech-l.

--Jimbo


body:
Anthere wrote:
> Mediation is about discussing an issue you have with another editor, and
> which prevents one or both of you from happily and satisfactorily
> contribute. It is not necessarily about an article, but may deal with a
> conflict between 2 people.

Anthere is absolutely right.

--Jimbo