from_name: Fastfission

subject: [WikiEN-l] New York Times article on WP v. EB

body:
Lest anyone think WP only gets bad press, there was a nice article in
the New York Times this morning on the front of the Science section
about the WP v. EB comparison. Among other things, it features the
fact that the prestigious reviewer of one of our articles had a
similar error to the one criticized WP for in his own book on the
subject (when asked about this, he notes that it must be a
typographical error -- that's gotta sting!), and notes that "many of
the purported blunders seem open to debate."

At times the author seems downright explicitly against the model of
EB: "The idea that perfection can be achieved solely through
deliberate effort and centralized control has been given the lie in
biology with the success of Darwin and in economics with the failure
of Marx."

The author notes that even though one can write really silly things on
WP articles, they generally get cleaned up pretty quickly.

He ends on a pretty positive note: "Whatever their shortcomings,
neither encyclopedia appears to be as error-prone as one might have
inferred from Nature, and if Britannica has an edge in accuracy,
Wikipedia seems bound to catch up."

Check it out:
George Johnson, "The Nitpicking of the Masses vs. the Authority of the
Experts" ''New York Times'' (January 3, 2006).
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/03/science/03comm.html

FF


list: wikien-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Brock Batsell

subject: [WikiEN-l] The userbox fad

body:
Kelly Martin wrote:
> The difference is that the chess tournament didn't violate copyright,
> and when told to stop violating copyright, scream that its free speech
> rights were being violated.
>
> The userbox aficianadoes are.
>
> Kelly
>
>
Kelly?

Say an article contained an image not legally usable in Wikipedia. The
appropriate action in that case is to delete the image, and remove it
from the article, not to delete the article altogether. How, in any way,
shape, or form, is the appropriate action for dealing with an image not
legally usable in a template to delete the template altogether? The
appropriate action is to delete the image and remove it from the
template (it can be replaced with simple text or a free image).

Please don't use the copyright issue as a crutch ? the reason you
deleted the templates wasn't because of the images, it was because you
dislike them. It's perfectly acceptable for you to have an opinion on
userboxes. What's unacceptable is using your administrative powers to
delete those userboxes without any clear consensus. I'm okay with
skipping process sometimes if it's unnecessarily cumbersome and there's
clear consensus, but that is *obviously* not the case here.

--
Regards,
[[en:User:Bbatsell]]


subject: [WikiEN-l] The userbox fad

body:
Well, but unlike bumper stickers, you never go out to find support
from others based on them.

I think blocs are a bad idea especially if voting in any form is used
to make sense of "consensus". Though I don't know where exactly to
draw the line between that and asking a few other well-respected users
for their opinions at times. There *is* a line there, but it's a fuzzy
one.

FF

On 1/3/06, charles matthews <charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com> wrote:
> "Tony Sidaway" wrote
>
> >The scope for abuse  of these userboxes has been amply demostrated.
> They fulfil no function useful to the encyclopedia that isn't done
> equally well by simply stating one's affiliations on one's user page.
> They must die.
>
> They fulfil a function, or you wouldn't be bringing it up.  I am against all
> polarising moves on WP, since I think we need to gather in the centre ground
> to do the job. (Like not making centre versus center a big deal, for
> example.)
>
> But I don't think you're going to win on this one.  I would quite agree that
> they are no better than bumper stickers, in many cases.
>
> Charles
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Kelly Martin

subject: [WikiEN-l] Worthy admins? (was "The userbox fad")

body:
On 1/3/06, charles matthews <charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com> wrote:
> I certainly remember a time - and it can't have been so long ago - when it
> was generally assumed that one could reason with Wikipedians.  Indeed we
> were rather reluctant to write off individuals as irrational.
>
> Does that not scale, then?

Based on my experiences in the last three months as an Arbitrator, no.

Kelly


subject: [WikiEN-l] The userbox fad

body:
Trying to be rational about this... what are the terms which the
userboxes violate?

1. Aesthetics. I agree, but not much of an argument to make.

2. Bloc voting. Is this against the rules? Is there a good way to
avoid this anyway? Can we say we have or want to have a policy against
*enabling* bloc voting (since userboxes do not compell someone to vote
or even to vote in one way)? "Enabling abuse" is a hard charge when
some of the "abuse" may or may not be formally against the rules, I
think.

3. Copyright issues. These would not be hard to deal with if it
weren't for the bloc nature of the userboxes, in my opinion.

4. Technical problems. Do they hurt the server? Undue strain? Etc.? I
haven't heard that they do but if they did that would be a pretty
straightforward argument. But I'm not sure it is true. (And I'm not
trying to imply you were making this argument, because you weren't.)

5. Fulfill no useful function. Again, a hard line to draw. Neither
does illustrating a user page with images at all, technically. Though
one could argue that such an action -- along with userboxes -- serve
to create a happy user, which is what is essential to Wikipedia
participation.

6. Causing more damage than they do good. This seems like the general
argument and I think it could even count as a rationale to get rid of
something, if it were unequivocally true. I don't know how one would
go about proving this, though. I imagine that, outside of a number of
notable instances, most userboxes live uninteresting lives on user
pages.

Other approaches? In any event, I think a good argument has to be made
along lines of this sort to really compel policy. Otherwise there is
just going to be a lot of antagonism. If the real gripes are
individual users who abuse userboxes, there are other ways to deal
with that without alienating those who happen to enjoy them. It is not
a mystery that people like to self-identify their interests and
qualities, as I'm sure you would acknowledge.

As an aside, personally I think just ignoring them will cause them to
go away for the mostpart. I could be wrong, but this is just my guess.
Calling it a "fad" is, I think, completely apt, and fads are -- by
definition -- short-lived.

FF

On 1/3/06, Tony Sidaway <f.crdfa at gmail.com> wrote:
> December 2005 saw a fivefold increase in edits on pages in template
> space whose titles started with the characters "User_".  From about
> 1200 in November, the number of such edits rose to 6100.
>
> Userboxes started innocously enough, first seeing widespread use with
> the Babel project, intended to inform users of one another's language
> skills.  But they haven't stayed that way.  From helping editors to
> locate one another by skill, they have evolved into a way for editors
> to group by conviction.  Last month one editor used userbox
> information to locate dozens of people who shared his religious
> persuasion in an overt attempt to destroy the consensual
> decision-making process of Wikipedia.  The religious userbox page
> (yes, such a page exists) lists some fifty userboxes intended to
> identify and group editors by expressed religion.  There is also a
> page for grouping according to political ideology.
>
> The scope for abuse  of these userboxes has been amply demostrated.
> They fulfil no function useful to the encyclopedia that isn't done
> equally well by simply stating one's affiliations on one's user page.
> They must die.
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Jan Vanoverpelt

subject: [Wikitech-l] Image hotspot in wiki?

body:
I would like to place a (hyper)link on an image so that when the reader
clicks on the image, he is redirected to a "normal" wiki-page instead of to
the imagepage of the image. But I do NOT want to put a textual link on or
near the image (the link has to be placed on the image itself). Is it
possible to make such kind of hotspot on an image in a wiki and if
yes...how?

thanks in advance!

Jan


from_name: Jakob Voss

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Conditional templates

body:
Someone wrote:
>
>>Everything else is too complex for authors anyway.
>
> Clearly people want features in the software that the developers are
> too busy or unmotivated to implement.  The barrier to becoming a
> Mediawiki developer is high, but the barrier to creating a conditional
> template is not.  Authors/editors/endusers *don't need* to edit the
> complex templates; they need to edit the articles, which are becoming
> more and more daunting the more features are added to the syntax.  If
> the intermediately-skilled programmers can make editing simpler and
> easier for the end users, isn't that a good thing?

Templates that do some calculations, recursion and other stuff won't be
easier to the end users. *Conditional* templates are useful but
templates that do some magic scripting are not needed *that* much to
impose all the disatvantages.

> Of course, the best solution would be to implement infoboxes and the
> like directly in the Mediawiki software, in a way that doesn't require
> end users to code anything.  But until that happens, people are going
> to use as many shortcuts as they can to make it easy on newcomers.

That's fine.

>>What the **** is that? We don't need geek-features but a simple solution.
>>
>>>(warning: obscene code alert).
>
> Stop being so hostile to people trying to improve the Wikipedia.

Sorry for my language.

Greetings,
Jakob


from_name: Domas Mituzas

subject: [Wikitech-l] reporting features

body:
Dear developers,

when reporting features are developed, please consider that software
may be used on a site with millions of rows in tables. Please always
check if indexes can be used for whole report, if not, please
consider avoiding such feature, or consult people with access to
database on #wikimedia-tech. If you actually have access to database,
do not hesitate to EXPLAIN a query on our live datasets and evaluate
costs of operation. Otherwise site goes down or crawls and both users
and operators are frustrated ;-) Remember, less data query needs to
read - faster it is!!!!!! :) And better for performance is when no
data is read, of course ;-)

Thanks,
Domas


from_name: Stan Shebs

subject: [WikiEN-l] Proposal on userbox disagreement

body:
Tony Sidaway wrote:

>
>We must stamp hard on this or we will have permitted these new editors
>to rebuild Wikipedia in the form of a network of people classified by
>political and religious alliances.
>
You keep saying this, but haven't yet explained how "stamping hard"
on userboxes is supposed to prevent new editors from classifying
themselves by politics and religion, or seeking out likeminded
editors.

Stan


subject: [WikiEN-l] The userbox fad

body:
On 1/3/06, Brock Batsell <wikipedia at theskeptik.com> wrote:
> Say an article contained an image not legally usable in Wikipedia. The
> appropriate action in that case is to delete the image, and remove it
> from the article, not to delete the article altogether. How, in any way,
> shape, or form, is the appropriate action for dealing with an image not
> legally usable in a template to delete the template altogether? The
> appropriate action is to delete the image and remove it from the
> template (it can be replaced with simple text or a free image).

One gets tired of doing that over and over again.  Zach and I spent
months fighting with these people over our policy about the use of
unlicensed media on user pages.  They simply refuse to listen; they
are convinced that they have the right to do whatever they want
without regard to policy, common sense, or really anything else.

Kelly

Kelly

>
> Please don't use the copyright issue as a crutch ? the reason you
> deleted the templates wasn't because of the images, it was because you
> dislike them. It's perfectly acceptable for you to have an opinion on
> userboxes. What's unacceptable is using your administrative powers to
> delete those userboxes without any clear consensus. I'm okay with
> skipping process sometimes if it's unnecessarily cumbersome and there's
> clear consensus, but that is *obviously* not the case here.
>
> --
> Regards,
> [[en:User:Bbatsell]]
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Anthony DiPierro

subject: [WikiEN-l] The userbox fad

body:
On 1/3/06, Kelly Martin <kelly.lynn.martin at gmail.com> wrote:
> The difference is that the chess tournament didn't violate copyright,
> and when told to stop violating copyright, scream that its free speech
> rights were being violated.
>
> The userbox aficianadoes are.
>
> Kelly

Judging from some of the images I've seen you delete, you have
absolutely no idea what does and doesn't violate copyright.

Anthony


from_name: SCZenz

body:
Here's what I think we should do.  I don't expect it to be popular, but
compromises never are...

1. The userbox wikiproject go through and get rid of all userbox images used
that have inappropriate copyright permissions for userpages, including fair
use images.  Likewise they make sure there are no meta-template issues in
the userboxes.  The Wikiproject agrees to police these problems itself in
the future.

2. Kelly Martin aknowledges that there are many serious contributors who
like userboxes, so her decision to delete userboxes in defiance of those
contributors' opinions was an overreaction.

3. We all go back to the live-and-let-live attitude that lets us write an
encyclopedia.

SCZenz


from_name: Joy S

subject: [WikiEN-l] Userbox fads

body:
I see the copyright issue as a valid one. If copyrighted images are
being used inappropriately in the userboxes, then certainly the images
should be removed.

Having said that...the vitriol I've seen expressed regarding userboxes
seems to go above and beyond a concern for copyright laws.  Barring a
server issue, I have to ask, what's the fuss?  Most of the arguments
against them seem to boil down to "I don't like them, so, rather than
just not have them on my own userpage, I don't want them on anyone
else's either."

This whole thing reminds me of H. L. Mencken's joke about the
definition of a Puritan: a person who is worried that someone,
somewhere, someplace is having fun.

Joyous


from_name: slimvirgin at gmail.com

subject: [WikiEN-l] The userbox fad

body:
On 1/3/06, Tony Sidaway <f.crdfa at gmail.com> wrote:
> Categorization people by skill or by services provided is a good use
> of user boxes.  But the beliefs and religions userboxes provide a
> handy telephone book for people interested in pushing a point of view
> an unscrupulous enough to spam user talk pages or contact likely
> supporters by email.
>
> The categories must die too.

I agree. I hadn't even thought of that until Kelly mentioned it: that
the boxes can be used to group editors via "what links here" and
thereby influence editing and votes. Jimbo's point that when we log in
we're Wikipedians,
http://mail.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2005-December/035945.html
(and not Democrats, pro-lifers, or whatever) could perhaps be written
into policy explicitly somewhere, and anything detrimental to that,
including some categories, be regarded as a violation of the policy.

Sarah


body:
On 1/3/06, Ben Emmel <bratsche1 at gmail.com> wrote:
> I think a simple way to do this is to start having a minimum number of net
> supports. 30, perhaps. This insures that the candidate is known enough
> around Wikipedia. When the readership and editor numbers of Wikipedia
> increases, so can the net support number, in order to accurately reflect the
> population.

Please vote here
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Requests_for_adminship#Proposal_on_minimum_positive_votes
>
> My personal policy is to only vote for a candidate if I can personally vouch
> for their editing, conflict handling, and janitorial abilities.

I used to do that, but nowadays I hardly recognize any of the names,
because they seem mostly to be people who fight vandalism rather than
making substantive edits to articles. So I'm mostly at a loss as to
how to vote and have largely given up.

Sarah


from_name: Ben Emmel

subject: [WikiEN-l] The userbox fad

body:
On 1/3/06, Tony Sidaway <f.crdfa at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> None.  It is the categorization that is the problem, facilitated to
> some extent by the convenience of userboxes (the ease of typing {{user
> bigendinan}} compared to "[[Category: Bigendian wikipedians]]).
>
> Categorization people by skill or by services provided is a good use
> of user boxes.  But the beliefs and religions userboxes provide a
> handy telephone book for people interested in pushing a point of view
> an unscrupulous enough to spam user talk pages or contact likely
> supporters by email.
>
> The categories must die too.
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

Why do you not view the religion or viewpoint boxes the same as those with
geographical location or language? If I am doing some RC patrol, and notice
a questionable edit to a Hindu article, wouldn't a [[Category:Hindu
Wikipedians]] be useful? That way, I can search out a user to look into the
edit. Same thing goes for an edit to an article on Communism: I don't claim
to be an expert on that subject, so shouldn't I be able to search out an
editor using [[Category:Communist Wikipedians]]?

--
Ben Emmel
Wikipedia - User:Bratsche
bratsche1 at gmail.com
"A fool sees not the same tree that a wise man sees."
-- William Blake


from_name: geni

subject: [WikiEN-l] The userbox fad

body:
On 1/3/06, slimvirgin at gmail.com <slimvirgin at gmail.com> wrote:
> Exactly right. Almost every block is at serious risk now of being
> reversed by an admin who's never read the blocking policy, has had
> very little interaction with the community, and who got elected with
> under 20 votes, but decides he quite liked something the blocked user
> once posted, and so therefore he has to unblock,

That has always happened. Back when I was inforceing the 3RR I quite
regalry had blocks pulled. I never really viewed it as a problem

> leading to wheel
> wars, endless explanations of the most obvious things on WP:AN/I, and
> a consequent unwillingness on the part of other admins to block
> troublemakers until they become serious problems (and even then it can
> be difficult: see the Marsden situation).

We've always tended to avoid blocking people untill they become a
serious problem.

> Unfortunately, part of this
> problem is fueled by the philosophy that adminship is "no big deal,"
> which if Jimbo reads this thread, I ask that he consider commenting on
> somewhere, because I've lost count of the number of support votes I've
> seen quoting it, leading to yet another unknown and possibly clueless
> admin being promoted. Combine poor admins with hundreds of users who
> are turning Wikipedia into a social club, and you have a giant mess.
>
> Sarah

I had to have a notice put up to request wider interest back when I
applied. When did that last happen?
--
geni


from_name: candy

subject: [Wikitech-l] immediate help required

body:
Hi all,

I am trying to import the full english wikipedia in mediawiki 1.4. As
its 1.4 it does not have importdump.php. I am trying to use mwdumper.
But it gives a strange error.

I used the following command :

java -server -jar mwdumper.jar --format=sql:1.4 pages_full.xml.bz2 |
mysql -u root -p wikidb

where "wikidb" was the database i created while installing mediawiki1.4

It asks for password ..which i put in ..then it gives the following error:

Error 1146(42SO2) at line 31 : Table 'wikidb.old' does not exist

And then continues running adding pages and their revisions.So it runs
but will it work ? Given i get that error at first ?

... any clues ??

Previously , I have imported into mediawiki1.5 using importdump.php ...
but because of some reasons I have to move to 1.4 now..

You help will be highly appreciated

Candy


body:
On 1/3/06, SCZenz <sczenz at gmail.com> wrote:
> 2. Kelly Martin aknowledges that there are many serious contributors who
> like userboxes, so her decision to delete userboxes in defiance of those
> contributors' opinions was an overreaction.

This continues to be founded in the mistaken notion that I disapprove
of user boxes.  Until you people actually read and understand what
I've had to say about why I did what I did, I have no real incentive
to "negotiate" with any of you.

Kelly


from_name: Adrian Buehlmann

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Conditional templates

body:
"Phil Boswell" <phil.boswell at gmail.com>
wrote in message news:dp0a7t$b6g$1 at sea.gmane.org
> [snip]
> ... Other users, in a mad attempt to escape from the
> [[WP:AUM]] bludgeon, are driven to perpetrate atrocities like this:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Template:Infobox_TV_channel&oldid=33042068
> (warning: obscene code alert).

Upgrade of the madness :-). I've reduced the obscenity factor by adding newlines:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Adrian_Buehlmann/work/Infobox_TV_channel/2006-01-02
[Please note that "if" is a paramater (not that dead template with the same name)].

Test Transclusions at:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Adrian_Buehlmann/work/Infobox_TV_channel/2006-01-02
[all calls require a parameter "if" with empty value. Which is ugly]

State of the art by Netohlic:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Template:Infobox_TV_channel&oldid=33229897
[uses a CSS trick]

Comparison:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User%3AAdrian_Buehlmann%2Fwork%2FInfobox_TV_channel%2F2006-01-02&diff=33607727&oldid=33607479

Adrian Buehlmann


from_name: Chris Jenkinson

subject: [WikiEN-l] The userbox fad

body:
slimvirgin at gmail.com wrote:
> Exactly right. Almost every block is at serious risk now of being
> reversed by an admin who's never read the blocking policy, has had
> very little interaction with the community, and who got elected with
> under 20 votes, but decides he quite liked something the blocked user
> once posted, and so therefore he has to unblock, leading to wheel
> wars, endless explanations of the most obvious things on WP:AN/I, and
> a consequent unwillingness on the part of other admins to block
> troublemakers until they become serious problems (and even then it can
> be difficult: see the Marsden situation). Unfortunately, part of this
> problem is fueled by the philosophy that adminship is "no big deal,"
> which if Jimbo reads this thread, I ask that he consider commenting on
> somewhere, because I've lost count of the number of support votes I've
> seen quoting it, leading to yet another unknown and possibly clueless
> admin being promoted. Combine poor admins with hundreds of users who
> are turning Wikipedia into a social club, and you have a giant mess.

I'm not sure how this whining about new admins is helpful. Rather than
stirring up bad feeling amongst admins, perhaps you could do something
more productive about the situation, such as asking new admins to
explain their actions, voting oppose to people you think are unfamiliar
with admin policy, etc.?

I, in general, don't see how complaining about inexperience among new
admins, is going to give them the experience necessary. I think it
should stop, and more productive behaviour should start.

Chris


from_name: SPUI

subject: [WikiEN-l] The userbox fad

body:
Kelly Martin wrote:
> The difference is that the chess tournament didn't violate copyright,
> and when told to stop violating copyright, scream that its free speech
> rights were being violated.
>
> The userbox aficianadoes are.

Way to assume good faith.


subject: [WikiEN-l] The userbox fad

body:
slimvirgin at gmail.com wrote:
> I'm not sure that's true, Ryan. They do a lot of harm, it's just
> usually less dramatic.

Show me the evidence!

Chris


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] immediate help required

body:
candy wrote:
> It asks for password ..which i put in ..then it gives the following error:
>
> Error 1146(42SO2) at line 31 : Table 'wikidb.old' does not exist

Perhaps you didn't create the tables first?

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 249 bytes
Desc: OpenPGP digital signature
URL: <http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/attachments/20060103/e7f2db2e/attachment.pgp>


from_name: Steve Bennett

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Ads on Wikipedia?

body:
> The argument in favour of ads appears to be 'if we don't use
> them, we're throwing away a big potential revenue stream'.
> How long before the idea of allowing advertisers 'final
> approval' of articles on which their ads appear appears on
> the basis that 'by not doing it, we're throwing away a big
> potential revenue stream'?

Ah, the old slippery slope idea. IMHO, that particular slope is not
particularly slippery. Wikipedia would *not* be Wikipedia if NPOV was
sacrificed for advertising $$$. There are clear guidelines that would
clearly be breached by doing that. Wikipedia with ads doesn't cross any
lines, other than a somewhat ambiguous promise from Jimbo some years
back that it wouldn't happen without community support.

> You might argue that this is someting of a logical fallacy
> (see, for instance, [[Slippery slope]]), but I am very

Whoops, I just did that :)

> concerned about the idea of opening up the principles of the
> project to anything other than 'making an encyclopaedia'.
> 'Making an encyclopaedia while keeping our advertisers happy'
> isn't in the mission statement as far as I'm concerned.

"Making an ad-free encyclopaedia" is also not the mission statement, as
far as I can see. In fact, if you look at the whole reasoning for using
the GFDL, the goal seemed to be making whatever concessions were
necessary and removing all restrictions to ensure the widest possible
dissemination of the work. Refusing ads seems to go against that
particular goal.

Steve


body:
jayjg wrote:
> Here's an example of what I mean.  I noticed that a specific administrator,
> in the last 12 hours, managed to get into a delete wheel war with another
> admin, get himself blocked for 3RR, and then unblocked himself.  He then
> unblocked an obvious troll, without informing the blocking admin, and
> blocked another editor permanently, accusing him of being a sockpuppet, with
> no evidence that I am aware of.  My curiousity piqued, I looked at his
> recent edits, and discovered that *none* of his past 600 edits have been to
> an article, but do find a comment he has posted today saying that Jimbo is
> "too busy asking for money" to deal with Wikipedia issues.  I then do an
> editcount, and discover that of his 8700 edits, only 1800 are to articles,
> the *exact same number* of edits he has made to his User page.  I look at
> his User page, and discover *86* user boxes on it.
>
> What is going on here?

If you think he shouldn't be an admin, I invite you to file an RFAr
about it, rather than complaining to the mailing list, which does
nothing but create ill will amongst contributors.

Chris


from_name: Guettarda

body:
On 1/3/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> Dispute resolution is not an admin task
> Dispute resolution is not an admin task
> Dispute resolution is not an admin task
> Dispute resolution is not an admin task
> Dispute resolution is not an admin task
> Dispute resolution is not an admin task
> Dispute resolution is not an admin task
> Dispute resolution is not an admin task
> Dispute resolution is not an admin task
> Dispute resolution is not an admin task
> Dispute resolution is not an admin task
> Dispute resolution is not an admin task
> Dispute resolution is not an admin task
> Dispute resolution is not an admin task
> Dispute resolution is not an admin task
> Dispute resolution is not an admin task
>
> People keep seem to be forgeting this.
>
> --
> geni

Thanks Geni.  I was trying to think of a way to say that


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: immediate help required

body:
All the tables are there as created during the mediawiki installation.
But it never creates something called wikidb.old ! As i said i have done
the importing using importdump.php with mediawiki 1.5. Even then there
was no wikidb.old.
Did someone try mwdumper as yet ? Did anyone import dump to mediawiki
1.4. If yes what did you use ?

candy

Brion Vibber wrote:
> candy wrote:
>
>>It asks for password ..which i put in ..then it gives the following error:
>>
>>Error 1146(42SO2) at line 31 : Table 'wikidb.old' does not exist
>
>
> Perhaps you didn't create the tables first?
>
> -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
>
>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l


subject: [WikiEN-l] The userbox fad

body:
> What purpose is served by this editor's participation in Wikipedia?
> Does this person really qualify as a "Wikipedian"?

You can ask the same question of "social members" of tennis, bridge, or
music clubs. Ultimately their benefit, if any, is indirect. Maybe they
donate, maybe they encourage other users, maybe they resolve disputes,
maybe they participate on mailing lists, maybe (as suggested) their user
box edits are helping others.

No, I don't really think so either. But they're probably not more
harmful than someone that makes some well-meaning but factually
incorrect errors to a wide range of articles.

Steve


from_name: FxParlant

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Captcha in progress

body:
Hello,

As many times mentioned, people using authimage captcha are desperate to
upgrade to mediawiki1.5.

http://wiki.matfyz.cz/wiki/MediaWiki:Tuning

http://www.fxparlant.net/Captcha_Mediawiki_1.3
http://www.fxparlant.net/Captcha_Mediawiki_1.5

The image is shown, but it doesn't validate. Surely because of SESSION
pecularities since mediawiki 1.5

If someone is smart enough to create a captcha, could he simply get this
 one working.

Desperately yours
Fran?ois

Tino Reichardt wrote:
> * Brion Vibber <brionatpobox.com> wrote:
>
>>I've been tinkering with an extension to provide for a captcha to
>>reduce
>>automated linkspamming while still staying out of the way for common
>>use.
>
> Yes.
>
>
>>My preliminary code is running now on test.leuksman.com; the actual
>>"captcha" part is a really primitive plain text hack which would take
>>all of a few minutes for a dedicated attacker to crack, but don't
>>worry
>>about that -- I'm not testing the protection yet, just the framework
>>it
>>plugs into.
>
> Is test.leuksman.com down ?
>
>
>>As for a 'real' captcha generator to put into this system; I'm not too
>>sure what code is already out there that's not awful. There's a Drupal
>>plugin which would be easy to rip GPL'd PHP code from, but it doesn't
>>seem very robust.
>
>
> Maybe you take a look to this (temporary) site:
> http://www.mcmilk.de/projects/wiki-captcha/
>
> I just wrote it for my own wiki today ...
> For testing: http://www.mcmilk.de/wiki/extensions/captcha/
>
>
>
>>There's a set of samples of various captcha output and their
>>weaknesses
>>here: http://sam.zoy.org/pwntcha/
>
>
> Hm... I think my version belongs to the better ones ... and it should be
> easy, to add some more features.
>
>
>>Obviously it would be good to either find something on the 'hard
>>captchas' list rather than 'defeated captchas', or roll our own that
>>doesn't suck too bad.
>
> Does my suck too bad ;) ?
>
>
>>There's also the question of whether we can feasibly provide an audio
>>alternative or whathaveyou.
>
> I have no one :)
>
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] The userbox fad

body:
> You really ought to learn to pick your battles. Yes, some
> people do things on Wikipedia that are less than entirely
> productive. But some of these things boost community morale
> and connect people with each other in fun ways. Yes, in an
> ideal world, we would spend all our time working on the
> encyclopedia and doing nothing else. But tha door swings both
> ways. In that world, you would spend all your time working on
> the encyclopedia, not launching a crusade over trivial crap like this.

Even more importantly, we're not paid. I'd be pissed off if I ran a
company building an encyclopaedia and my employees spent 8 hours a day
drawing silly pictures on the walls, and only half an hour on Friday
evenings working on the task. But if they're volunteers, and they're
working from home, drawing on their walls - what do I care? I'm getting
half an hour of free work a week here.

Steve


body:
> I almost hate to say this, but with the growing size and
> popularity of Wikipedia, we might need to start treating
> adminship truly as a big deal.

So what you're saying is: Too much privilege (and prestige) and not
enough responsibility? How do we fix it?

Steve


subject: [Wikitech-l] $formCallback=null

body:
Hello

Still searching a way to get authimage working in mediawiki 1.5 and
above, I found this reference to captcha in EditPage.php (version 1.6
phase3)

/**
 * Send the edit form and related headers to $wgOut
 * @param $formCallback Optional callable that takes an OutputPage
 *                      parameter; will be called during form output
 *                      near the top, for captchas and the like.
 */
function showEditForm( $formCallback=null ) {

Could someone tell me how to use this ?
Is it endly, the way to catch the validation?

Thanks a lot,
Fran?ois

For references:
http://wiki.matfyz.cz/wiki/MediaWiki:Tuning (version 1.4)
http://www.fxparlant.net/Captcha_Mediawiki_1.3
http://www.fxparlant.net/Captcha_Mediawiki_1.5


from_name: Kelly Martin

subject: [WikiEN-l] The userbox fad

body:
On 1/3/06, Ryan Delaney <ryan.delaney at gmail.com> wrote:
>  If you're deleting userboxes because they are copyright violations, then
> fine. But what I've been hearing is that you're deleting them because
> they're a waste of time and cause Wikipedia editors to factionalize by POV.
> Not fine.

Then you are listening to people who are not telling the truth.

Kelly


body:
My proposal was more to deal with the immediate problem and associated
wheel warring, which has at least in my experience been very ugly.

But I think you might be right, Tony.  This new development is
disturbing in general.  I don't favor a rush to action, but we do need
a reasoned consensus (among people who actually edit articles) about
what to do--and I think I'd support, personally, a policy against POV
userboxes.

SCZenz

On 1/3/06, Tony Sidaway <f.crdfa at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 1/3/06, SCZenz <sczenz at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> >
> > 2. Kelly Martin aknowledges that there are many serious contributors who
> > like userboxes, so her decision to delete userboxes in defiance of those
> > contributors' opinions was an overreaction.
> >
>
> This has nothing to do with Kelly Martin.  To give an indication of
> the scale and rapidity of the growth of this problem, editing of
> userboxes in December exceeded by a good margin all editing of
> userboxes, ever, prior to that month.  Of 44 templates listed under
> beliefs, I counted only 3 that existed before December, and the vast
> majority seem to have been created in the past two weeks.
>
> We must stamp hard on this or we will have permitted these new editors
> to rebuild Wikipedia in the form of a network of people classified by
> political and religious alliances.
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: charles matthews

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Ads on Wikipedia?

body:
"Steve Bennett" wrote

>. In fact, if you look at the whole reasoning for using
> the GFDL, the goal seemed to be making whatever concessions were
> necessary and removing all restrictions to ensure the widest possible
> dissemination of the work. Refusing ads seems to go against that
> particular goal.

The problems with goal-directedness: it might actually matter how you get
'there'; and 'there' might not mean the same thing to everyone.  In fact my
wikimeet experience convinces me that the 'there' is not a large factor in
people's motivation.  They want the process to be fun, as in lively, making
light of hassles, rewarding, that kind of thing.  They want 'can do'  as an
attitude, but certainly not 'suits' and too much business talk.  And these
are the folk who actually write for hours, for nothing, to post the pages
and turn the red links blue.

Charles


from_name: Thomas Gries

subject: [Wikitech-l] Image hotspot in wiki?

body:
Look for the <imagelink> extension . This does what you want.
http://cvs.berlios.de/cgi-bin/viewcvs.cgi/enotifwiki/enotifwiki/extensions/
(originally written by Brion Vibber)

Jan Vanoverpelt schrieb:

>I would like to place a (hyper)link on an image so that when the reader
>clicks on the image, he is redirected to a "normal" wiki-page instead of to
>the imagepage of the image. But I do NOT want to put a textual link on or
>near the image (the link has to be placed on the image itself). Is it
>possible to make such kind of hotspot on an image in a wiki and if
>yes...how?
>
>thanks in advance!
>
>Jan
>_______________________________________________
>Wikitech-l mailing list
>Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>
>
>
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] The userbox fad

body:
slimvirgin at gmail.com wrote:
> I was wondering why you were being aggressive, Chris, but now I
> realize you're User:Talrias, the admin who reduced Marsden's block
> twice, even though, as I believe you admitted, you were unfamiliar
> with the situation. Without wanting to get into a row with you, I must
> admit that that was the kind of incident that has caused me concern,
> though by no means the only one. I want to stress that I'm not
> alleging bad faith, but I feel that admins have to be able to trust
> each other's judgement, even when we may disagree with it, so that
> blocks aren't constantly being done and undone; and that speaks
> directly to the issue of how we elect new admins, because if we want
> to trust their judgement, and have them trust ours, there has to be a
> shared philosophy or vision, and that requires a minimum amount of
> community interaction before they're promoted. Without community
> interaction, there's no respect for the community. But with too much
> community interaction, there might be less respect for the
> encyclopedia. So electing admins who have the right balance of edits
> is a tricky business, a very "big deal" in my view.

I wasn't being agressive because it was you, please don't think that. I
would have said the same, whoever made the point you did (and in fact,
I've replied in kind to other people who have said similar things). I
just don't agree with what you're saying.

Yes, I am unfamiliar with Marsden's situation. The only contact I have
had with him was a question he asked me on my ArbCom candidacy
statement, my reply, and a follow-up comment he made. The question he
left was perfectly civil, and his follow-up comment was a bit "cabal
theoryish" but didn't contain any personal attacks or rude comments.
That's my background experience with him. My actions on his blocking
weren't at all related to this, in fact I did not recognise the name
from my ArbCom candidacy until afterwards.

I explained my reasons for reducing the length of Marsden's block at the
time - they were, and still are, that I am perfectly willing to accept a
time-limited block of a user from another admin. Admins are chosen by
the community and are on the whole a pretty responsible bunch. I'm trust
them to block when appropriate and when blocks are inappropriate.
However, what I don't do, is assume that when an admin blocks
permanently, the person being blocked actually deserves a permanent
block. If someone is going to be indefinitely banned from contributing
to Wikipedia, that is indeed something. I hope that Wikipedia will be
around in 10 years' time, and a number of indefinitely banned people
will have matured significantly and may consider contributing to
Wikipedia, but won't because of immature behaviour on their parts 10
years previously. Yes, one contributor to Wikipedia is not going to make
a significant difference, but I think we should be fair with our blocks
and bans. I don't think banning indefinitely is fair, but if we're going
to do it, I think it should come from the Arbitration Committee, which
despite its flaws does look over each bit of evidence, gives the person
a chance to explain their actions and typically comes to a fair decision
when blocking annoying contributors.

I've heard it argued that the Arbitration Committee would come to the
same decision anyway, so what's the point in hearing the case in the
first place? I respectfully disagree with this point of view. An
Arbitration Committee case typically has evidence attached which makes
it possible for uninvolved bystanders to review and form their own
decisions on the merits of the ban. Blocking by community typically
comes with few pieces of evidence which makes it more difficult to form
a fair opinion. I found the argument on the admins' noticeboard for
limiting the block duration more persuasive than having an indefinite
ban, so I shortened the duration of the ban, rather than removing it
completely - as I respect that other admins have already blocked him for
disruptive behaviour. I'm quite willing to take this on good faith. I
just don't like the idea that someone can be blocked indefinitely by an
admin, especially since Marsden's talk page has hardly any reasoning for
the block, nor is the block reason for him particularly descriptive - it
now says "Snowspinner was right". I want more than this. I don't think
that's too much to ask.

Thanks for giving me the chance to expand my previous comments on this,

Chris


from_name: Petr Kadlec

subject: [Wikitech-l] Image hotspot in wiki?

body:
On 1/3/06, Jan Vanoverpelt <jan.vanoverpelt at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> I would like to place a (hyper)link on an image so that when the reader
> clicks on the image, he is redirected to a "normal" wiki-page instead of
> to
> the imagepage of the image. But I do NOT want to put a textual link on or
> near the image (the link has to be placed on the image itself). Is it
> possible to make such kind of hotspot on an image in a wiki and if
> yes...how?
>

I consider it to be a hack, but here you are: see e.g.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Click

HTH,
-- [[cs:User:Mormegil | Petr Kadlec]]


from_name: SCZenz

body:
Any of which people, Kelly?  Are you gonna categorize me, too?

There are multiple issues I've seen raised:

1. Userboxes in general are silly.  This doesn't justify unilateral
action, which is what people have been asking you to aknowledge.

2. That there are copyright issues with userbox images.  Those have to
be dealt with, but unilateral deletion wasn't the right solution there
either--removing the images would've sufficed.

3. I've also heard (from Tony, I'm not sure if you've said it), that
many userboxes are being used for inappropriate vote-garnering.  If
that's true, we can darn well build a consensus to delete them.

What I'd like to aknowledge, as an admin who doesn't care about
userboxes either way but thinks that respecting consensus is good for
our community, is that you ought to have done more talking and less
deleting.  Is that so unreasonable?

SCZenz

On 1/3/06, Kelly Martin <kelly.lynn.martin at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 1/3/06, SCZenz <sczenz at gmail.com> wrote:
> > 2. Kelly Martin aknowledges that there are many serious contributors who
> > like userboxes, so her decision to delete userboxes in defiance of those
> > contributors' opinions was an overreaction.
>
> This continues to be founded in the mistaken notion that I disapprove
> of user boxes.  Until you people actually read and understand what
> I've had to say about why I did what I did, I have no real incentive
> to "negotiate" with any of you.
>
> Kelly
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


body:
"Carbonite"  wrote

>The reality is that de-admining isn't a simple process and it's only
likely to be successful in clear cases of admin misconduct. In cases
where an admin hasn't blatantly abused his powers, but has made many
poor judgement calls, there's not much that can be done.

I certainly remember a time - and it can't have been so long ago - when it
was generally assumed that one could reason with Wikipedians.  Indeed we
were rather reluctant to write off individuals as irrational.

Does that not scale, then?

Charles


from_name: Jtkiefer

subject: [WikiEN-l] The userbox fad

body:
> If you're deleting userboxes because they are copyright violations, then
>fine. But what I've been hearing is that you're deleting them because
>they're a waste of time and cause Wikipedia editors to factionalize by POV.
>Not fine.
>
>Ryan
>
>
I don't have a position (yet) on the whole useless template issue but in
terms of copyvio templates it should suffice to just remove the image
and since in many cases people are stubbornly opposed to removal of
fairuse images that should not be on templates and userboxes then the
user should be informed of the rules regarding fairuse images and the
template should be protected if the are repeatedly added and a block may
be appropriate if the user blatantly continues to violate copyright rules.

-Jtkiefer


from_name: Mark Williamson

subject: [Wikitech-l] Image hotspot in wiki?

body:
Please respond directly to posts to the ML.

Markq

On 03/01/06, Amgine <amgine at saewyc.net> wrote:
> On 1/3/06, Jan Vanoverpelt <jan.vanoverpelt at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > >
> > > I would like to place a (hyper)link on an image so that when the reader
> > > clicks on the image, he is redirected to a "normal" wiki-page instead of
> > > to
> > > the imagepage of the image. But I do NOT want to put a textual link on or
> > > near the image (the link has to be placed on the image itself). Is it
> > > possible to make such kind of hotspot on an image in a wiki and if
> > > yes...how?
>
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Jporter/iconmap_extension
>
> Icon images linking to MediaWiki pages.
>
> Amgine
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>

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


subject: [Wikitech-l] Site downtime due to upload server crash

body:
The site was offline recently for about 20-30 minutes, with some additional
downtime of uploads only, while our upload fileserver amane was broken.

Quick summary of affairs before I run off to dinner:

* amane's mount of izwinger:/home had broken in some way, such that accesses
were hanging
** amane's syslog shows a large number of RPC failures for zwinger's NFS for the
last few hours

* user ssh logins to amane failed due to the broken /home
* lighttpd ran out of connections, with lots of stuck php processes, likely
because thumbnail rendering used files on /home

* amane's nfs server still worked, so the site ran internally
* root ssh login worked, and i was able to kill lighty and remount /home

* however shortly after I tried restarting lighty, it died more thoroughly: i
was unable to continue the ssh session (stuck) and new ssh sessions didn't get
past opening port 22
* at this point amane's nfs died too
* can't find anything in syslog relating to that

* from this point the whole site was broken
* there's a donation link on the error page, which points to a wiki page so it's
also broken
* tried to change the error page to link to the separate fundraising server, but
the update didn't quite take before we finsihed

* we had the colo reboot the machine
* they had to call us back for more info because the machine was not properly
labeled
* amane is not on the serial console server!

* after rebooting, things settled down after a few minutes
* site seems ok at the moment

Recommendations for future:
* make sure all servers are marked
* important machines *must* be on the serial console when installed
* the site should still work if images are offline. check code that works with
image files to make it fail more gracefully
* check NFS mount settings, try to set them up to a more failure-friendly way

and of course
* try to get a backup image server online
* have a way to switch to it automatically

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 249 bytes
Desc: OpenPGP digital signature
URL: <http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/attachments/20060103/91fff324/attachment.pgp>


subject: [WikiEN-l] Beebday dawns ...

body:
Peering at the Alexa graphs, it seems that WP has within the past day or so
gone ahead of bbc.co.uk, the BBC website, on all three standard measures.
This means that either we enter the Top 20 Websites very shortly - or the
servers China Syndrome on us (which considering that two of the three graphs
are for practical purpose going vertical in 2006, and the third shows page
hits doubling in December, they might well do).

WP Air - message from the flight crew - please fasten your seatbelts,
clear-air turbulence ahead - and the rest is in your hands, if not laps.

Charles


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Adrenalin

subject: [Wikipedia-l] mo. cyrillic -> mo-cyr., when ?

body:
So, is this problem solution on some admin to-do list ?

(srry list, but this problem is really important to me..)

--
Wish you a new better year!
Adrenalin from Moldova.


subject:
[WikiEN-l] Fair use outside of mainspace (was: Proposal on
	userbox...)

body:
"Fair use" images can't possibly be used on user pages or template
pages without violating copyright, as far as I can see.  I'm prepared
to fight the good fight on this, image by image, if my help is
requested.  But that means removing images, and deleting them if
they're not used elsewhere--not deleting templates.

SCZenz

On 1/3/06, jkelly at fas.harvard.edu <jkelly at fas.harvard.edu> wrote:
>
>   "Fair use" images aren't allowed in template- and user-space by our current
> guidelines (although there was some edit-warring where that clause was removed
> last week, if I recall).  Enforcing this in any way is problematic, because the
> number of people who like to decorate their userpages with professional graphic
> design is larger than the number of people devoted to free content.
>
>                       Jkelly
>
> > I support that and I suggest that a note be posted on AN/I immediately
> > to the effect that all fairuse images outside of the article space are
> > subject to immediate deletion and that our fairuse and userbox
> > guidelines be changed to reflect that.
> >
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


body:
[OT Alert]

> In fact, judging by the number of edits some people make, WP
> is the only reason they get up in the morning. And the only
> thing they do all day.

Hey I did that for two weeks. But I was unemployed. And in my job
interview (for a tech writing position) I raved about Wikipedia. And
ironically the first document I was asked to proofread started, by total
coincidence, with the words "According to Wikipedia".

Steve


subject: [WikiEN-l] The userbox fad

body:
jayjg wrote:
> Chris, considering that you were the person who wheel-warred on Marsden's
> blocking (Marsden was eventually banned by Jimbo), while admitting you did
> not know the details of the case, and incorrectly claiming that permanent
> bans could only be applied by the Arbitration Committee (though the policy
> quite clearly says otherwise), I'm not surprised you reacted negatively to
> those comments.  Nevertheless, this list *is* the place to discuss these
> things.

It's the place to discuss them, yes, but I don't see how the kinds of
comments being made are helping. I don't think we should do this kind of
general name-calling and criticism of individual behaviour and instead
try and suggest alternate mechanisms for getting new admins.

I don't think I claimed that permanent bans could only be applied by the
Arbitration Committee, I said that in my opinion permanent bans /should/
only be applied by the Arbitration Committee. If I said what you claim,
then I apologise and I clarify it to mean what I've just written above.

Yes, I shortened Marsden's ban, and when someone set it to indefinite I
changed it back to a shortened ban, but at no time did I remove the ban
and I discussed it appropriately on the admins' noticeboard at all
times. Maybe I acted before discussing, and I shouldn't have reshortened
the ban after my actions were undone the first time, but I think you and
SlimVirgin are placing far too much significance on this minor event
than it actually deserves.

Chris


from_name: geni

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: WikiEN-l Digest, Vol 30, Issue 19

body:
On 1/3/06, W. Guy Finley <wgfinley at dynascope.com> wrote:
> On 1/3/06 1:08 PM, "wikien-l-request at Wikipedia.org"
> <wikien-l-request at Wikipedia.org> wrote:
>
> > From: Ryan Delaney <ryan.delaney at gmail.com>
> > Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> > Date: Wed, 4 Jan 2006 05:37:24 +1100
> > To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at wikipedia.org>
> > Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] The userbox fad
> >
> > On 1/4/06, Kirill Lokshin <kirill.lokshin at gmail.com> wrote:
> >>
> >> On the other hand, many people don't care about the userboxes, but are
> >> instead upset over the way with which their deletion has been handled.
> >> More deletions at this point may solve the userbox problem, but not
> >> the community interaction problem.
> >
> >
> > If there's anything to be learned from this, it's that unproductive members
> > of the community do less harm than trying to take away their toys does. You
> > end up alienating a lot more people than you thought you would.
> >
> > Ryan
>
>
> Not to sound elitist but I probably will but WHO CARES if we alienate a few
> people who are more interested in making a sticker book than an
> encyclopedia?  If someone is so riled that their little sticker that says
> "Caring Cat Owner" (yes, it does exist at Template:User_Caring_Cat_Owner) is
> no longer allowed, so much so that they decided to leave the project then I
> say don't let the door hit ya in the ass on the way out.  We ARE NOT going
> to miss those people.
>

As a general rule we can get by after loseing pretty much anyone. that
doesn't mean we should.

> If this community and this project should have learned any damn thing from
> the Siegenthaler fiasco it is that QUALITY matters more than QUANTITY and
> that translates on down the line.  I would rather have 100 thoughtful
> editors than 1000 who don't have a clue.
>

Evidence that useing user boxes = editor that doesn't have a clue

> Does this mean that I think we should have some sort of test or requirement
> for editors?  Of course not.  Does it mean that we shouldn't let everyone on
> in to contribute?  Of course not.  What it does mean is that any addition to
> the project needs to be closely scrutinized with a cost/benefit analysis --
> does this feature, project, fork, or what have you offer more benefit to the
> project than it could cause harm?  We apply the same criteria to special
> protection -- do anonymous editors add more benefit to controversial
> articles than they could cause harm?  Absolutely not and we've developed a
> process to deal with that.
>

Maybe but once we throw in a cost benifit analyisis of doeing cost
benifit analyisis I think we find that they are not worthwhile.

> In the case of user boxes, outside of the babel boxes, I think this whole
> matter has demonstrated without a single doubt ABSOLUTELY NOT and they
> should be terminated.
>
> --Guy  (User:Wgfinley)
>

Nah I like it when people admit their baises. Saves a lot of time. To
be honest how often do you read user pages anyway? Personaly I feel
sorry for anyone reading mine.

--
geni


body:
On 1/3/06, Ryan Delaney <ryan.delaney at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 1/4/06, Carbonite <carbonite.wp at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > The solution (and problem) lies in the selection of admins, which I
> > believe has become too lax. We need to recognize that adminship on a
> > top 30 website IS a big deal. Even one admin who's unfamiliar with
> > policy or who gets into wheel wars can cause major issues. We need
> > stricter screening of candidates, preferably as soon as possible.
> >
> > Carbonite
>
>
>  Incidentally, I agree with this, but the problem is that it will really
> become harder and harder to screen candidates accurately. Do you have any
> suggestions on how this could be done in some kind of scalable fashion?
>
> Ryan

Make them do a better job of screening themselves. Rather than hitting
them with a stupidly long sanitised reading list tell them what it
really involves. Of course we would have to start by figureing out
what admins really do.

--
geni


from_name: Conrad Dunkerson

body:
SCZenz wrote:

> 1. The userbox wikiproject go through and get rid of all userbox images used
> that have inappropriate copyright permissions for userpages, including fair
> use images.  Likewise they make sure there are no meta-template issues in
> the userboxes.  The Wikiproject agrees to police these problems itself in
> the future.

As I understand it, they have been working on both of those tasks for a
while now. The huge spike in userbox edits in December was due to these
folks going through and replacing all 'userbox' templates with 'user'
templates and updating them on the page of every person using them.
Basically... they're a pretty organized crowd over there so I expect
these meta-template and copyright issues will be sorted out in fairly
short order.

> 2. Kelly Martin aknowledges that there are many serious contributors who
> like userboxes, so her decision to delete userboxes in defiance of those
> contributors' opinions was an overreaction.
>
> 3. We all go back to the live-and-let-live attitude that lets us write an
> encyclopedia.

Heh... and people say I'm a dreamer. :]


subject: [WikiEN-l] The userbox fad

body:
On 1/3/06, slimvirgin at gmail.com <slimvirgin at gmail.com> wrote:
> I'm not talking about the user boxes, Ryan, I'm talking about users
> who treat Wikipedia as a social club and not an encyclopedia. The
> user-box issue is the first time I've seen some of them act en masse.
> My point was that I'm glad we've seen it over a relatively minor issue
> (though I feel bad for the targets of it), because it might prompt
> some action before it gets to the point where they're dictating
> policy. Just because some of the user-box editors, if I can call them
> that, make few edits to the encyclopedia doesn't mean none do, or even
> that most don't, obviously.
>
> Sarah

The problem is that wikipedia requires a certian level of social
interaction. Trying to draw lines in the sand tends not to work.

--
geni


list: foundation-l

from_name: Aphaia

subject: [Foundation-l] Day 18 Fund Drive Report

body:
Just a remark;

On 1/3/06, Daniel Mayer <maveric149 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Copied from:
> http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Fund_drives/2005/Q4/Day_18

> ==Selected donor comments==
> Let's all thank everybody who donated on this day by reading their comments.
> *"???????????" by
> anonymous

This message is written in Japanese.
Translation:
I use it always as reference.

--
Aphaea@*.wikipedia.org
email: Aphaia @ gmail (dot) com


list: wikimedia-l

subject: [Foundation-l] Day 18 Fund Drive Report


subject: [WikiEN-l] Beebday dawns ...

body:
On 1/3/06, charles matthews <charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com> wrote:
> Peering at the Alexa graphs, it seems that WP has within the past day or so
> gone ahead of bbc.co.uk, the BBC website, on all three standard measures.
> This means that either we enter the Top 20 Websites very shortly - or the
> servers China Syndrome on us (which considering that two of the three graphs
> are for practical purpose going vertical in 2006, and the third shows page
> hits doubling in December, they might well do).
>
> WP Air - message from the flight crew - please fasten your seatbelts,
> clear-air turbulence ahead - and the rest is in your hands, if not laps.
>
> Charles

Which I suspect makes us the top adfree site on the planet.

--
geni


body:
SCZenz wrote:

>Here's what I think we should do.  I don't expect it to be popular, but
>compromises never are...
>
>1. The userbox wikiproject go through and get rid of all userbox images used
>that have inappropriate copyright permissions for userpages, including fair
>use images.  Likewise they make sure there are no meta-template issues in
>the userboxes.  The Wikiproject agrees to police these problems itself in
>the future.
>
>2. Kelly Martin aknowledges that there are many serious contributors who
>like userboxes, so her decision to delete userboxes in defiance of those
>contributors' opinions was an overreaction.
>
>3. We all go back to the live-and-let-live attitude that lets us write an
>encyclopedia.
>
>SCZenz
>
>
I support that and I suggest that a note be posted on AN/I immediately
to the effect that all fairuse images outside of the article space are
subject to immediate deletion and that our fairuse and userbox
guidelines be changed to reflect that.

-Jtkiefer


body:
On 1/3/06, Jtkiefer <jtkiefer at wordzen.net> wrote:
> I support that and I suggest that a note be posted on AN/I immediately
> to the effect that all fairuse images outside of the article space are
> subject to immediate deletion and that our fairuse and userbox
> guidelines be changed to reflect that.

Changed?  That's been policy for at least four months now.

Kelly


from_name: Matt Brown

subject: [WikiEN-l] Userbox fads

body:
On 1/3/06, Joy S <wiki.joy at gmail.com> wrote:
> This whole thing reminds me of H. L. Mencken's joke about the
> definition of a Puritan: a person who is worried that someone,
> somewhere, someplace is having fun.

Most userboxes were just in fun, but there were a few quite
mean-spirited ones that I saw - I'm sure people would insist they were
"just joking", but I saw a fair few being used by people I didn't
think were joking (based on their edits and expressions of opinion
elsewhere).

-Matt


from_name: Daniel Mayer

subject: [Foundation-l] Day 19 Fund Drive Report

body:
Copied from:
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Fund_drives/2005/Q4/Day_19
--------------------------------------------------------------

=Tuesday 3 January=
'''Day 19''' was another record day of fundraising! Today saw the second highest number of
donations ever made in a single day, 1193, and the second highest total donated; $33,474.07 (both
PayPal figures). 	The average donation this day was $28.06.

Grand total at end of day: '''274,703.84'''

Breakdown of Day 19 PayPal donations:
 AUD     1,061.64   (796.76 USD)
 CAD 	1,475.92   (1,214.55 USD)
 EUR 	4,762.05   (5,784.41 USD)
 GBP 	1,588.38   (2,848.44 USD)
 JPY 	30,861.00  (278.83 USD)
 USD 	22,551.08
 Total 	33,474.07 USD

==Special thanks to those who gave large donations==
An anonymous gave $500, the largest donation for the day. There were also many donors who gave the
equivalent of about $100 or more (listed in no particular order); Alex Tan, jdavid grimshaw,
Bonaventure Saptel, Roger D Moore, paul RIVIER, Laurence Ronayne, Alfonso Martin-Maldonado Martin,
Jan Kelly, Richard Morin, Carl Hewitt, Mahalie M Pech, Jeffrey Puritz, CHANG ZEN TSAI, Sam
Pullara, Anand Desai, Michael Koziarski, A N T AAN DE STEGGE, Robert Zeller, KER JAR SONG, Andrew
Gallagher, James Taylor, Douglas Hainline, Marco Beri, Dai Barr, William Armstrong, David Astels,
John Lawler, Chris Bartle, Eric Towers, Errol Alpay, James M Orrell, John Broughton, Norma Pierce,
Jose Luis Cordova, Fredrik Johansson, Asa Canaway, and 50 anonymous donors.

==Selected donor comments==

Let's all thank everybody who donated on this day by reading their comments.

:Full listing at: http://fundraising.wikimedia.org/2005q4/index.php/2006-01-03/detail/

*"You are an amazing conduit, fusing the best aspects of the global community and its shared
knowledge. I salute you!" by anonymous
*"This is why the internet was created. The money is a trifle compared with the benefits." by
Richard Escobedo
*"A more relevant resource than my text books." by anonymous
*"I'm amazed at the quality of the entries - thank you, Wikipedia" by anonymous
*"Ironiquement, c'est pour cette merveilleuse source d'information libre que je finis par d?lier
ma bourse, n'en d?plaise ? ceux qui exige qu'on les paie pour acc?der ? leur contenu." by
anonymous
*"Wikipedia, I don't know how I ever did without you! Accept this donation as a gesture of my
gratefulness." by anonymous
*"Wikipedia A site I use in my day-to-day studies. A wealth of knowledge, A Wonderful and 'free'
service thank you." by isaac bullen
*"Grazie per cio' che fate. Viva la cultura libera." by anonymous
*"Use and love Wikipedia every day. Even on a student budget, I'm glad to help!" by Benjamin Van
Der Veen
*"knowledge, clean and simple as it should be." by Laurence Ronayne
*"I do hope knowledge will spread and defeat violence which is caused by ignorance" by francesco
pirotti
*"I'm happy to give some cash, especially since I havne't had time to contribute info as much as
I've planned to!" by Mahalie M Pech
*"Teachers...tell your students..." by James North
*"In memory of Preston G. Simpson" by anonymous
*"Die Informationen helfen mir immer weiter. Ich m?chte daher Wikipedia unterst?tzen" by Claudia
Frank
*"Wikipedia is changing the world. Thanks to all contributors and good luck!" by Frank Wagner
*"This is a fantastic service which I use every single day. Do keep up the great work!" by Marc
Leger
*"Wikipedia saves me money on textbooks and teaches me new things every day. Without a doubt, a
staple of the internet." by anonymous
*"This is the greatest gift the human race has ever given. The most noble pursuit. I wish I could
give more." by Thomas Laugle
*"Wikipedia.org es por mucho la mejor p?gina de busqueda en Internet me a ayudado a mi por 2 a?os
y siempre ha resuelto mis dudas." by Lourdes Carvajal
*"Wikipedia stands right alongside the Internet and the World Wide Web in its promise for the
advancement of humankind's civilized development." by JOEL H ROBERTS
*"in loving memory of Jim Zlogar" by Jeffrey Will
*"Wikipedia to me is a huge fountain which quenches the never ending thirst for knowledge - Thank
you" by mohan sagar
*"Wikipedia is the most exciting and useful site I have found on the Internet. I have literally
spent days here doing research for an upcoming book. Thanks guys, I hope we can indeed take back
the web." by John McAlister
*"Crescat scientia, vita excolatur" by anonymous
*"Just like contributing to public radio: you don't have to, but you ought to" by DAVIDE ANDREA

Some of my personal favorites:
*"Wikimedia is a Home schooling parents dream, thank you." by Vicki Grech
*"I feel truly privileged to be living in a time when I can participate in something as
world-changing as Wikipedia etc. ? keep it up!" by anonymous
*"This is one of the things that raises the quality of the Internet as a whole" by Lorenzo
Bolognini
*"Restores your faith that there are rational, conscientious, intelligent people out there." by
anonymous
*"i use your services, like public television, its only decent and right to contribute.Thank you
Wikipedia!" by anonymous
*"An absolutely brilliant idea! Jimmy Wales for the Nobel Peace Prize!" by Douglas Hainline
*"Stop wasting time reading comments and write an article!" by Eric Towers

-- Daniel Mayer

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


subject: [Foundation-l] Day 19 Fund Drive Report


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Day 19 Fund Drive Report


body:
On 1/3/06, Guettarda <guettarda at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 1/3/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >
> > Dispute resolution is not an admin task
> >
> > People keep seem to be forgeting this.
>
> Thanks Geni.  I was trying to think of a way to say that

It isn't, but being able to handle a dispute in an adult and
reasonable manner certainly IS required.  Most administrative tasks
have a high potential to be controversial (e.g. deletion, blocking)
and I don't want to appoint someone who won't be able to handle such
situations.

-Matt


from_name: Geoff Burling

subject: [WikiEN-l] The userbox fad

body:
On Wed, 4 Jan 2006, Tony Sidaway wrote:

> On 1/4/06, Ryan Delaney <ryan.delaney at gmail.com> wrote:
> > >
> > > When the house is on fire, you don't hold a discussion.  It's been
> > > suggested elsewhere that the usera engaged in this fad are not regular
> > > editors.   They can go back to wherever they came from.
> >
> >
> > The house isn't on fire.
>
> Have you examined the figures?   This is a massive growth.  Political
> and belief-based userboxes have increased tenfold since the end of
> November.  A database check tells me that of our 3500 or so userboxes,
> 1500 were created in December, and a further 250 have been created in
> the first three days of January alone.  This is a serious push to
> reform Wikipedia as a network of users linked according to beliefs and
> preferences that can be accessed by a point-of-view pusher at the
> touch of a button.
>
> The house is on fire.

Userboxes destroy Wikipedia! Film/jpeg/mpeg4/ogg files at 11.

(Someone had to say it.)

Geoff


from_name: Steve Bennett

body:
> The solution (and problem) lies in the selection of admins,
> which I believe has become too lax. We need to recognize that
> adminship on a top 30 website IS a big deal. Even one admin
> who's unfamiliar with policy or who gets into wheel wars can
> cause major issues. We need stricter screening of candidates,
> preferably as soon as possible.

What's strange to me is that it seems that WP is one of the few places
where you could really provide a comprehensive CV of all the good you've
done and why you should be admin.  Why not ask candidates to provide X
diffs demonstrating their dispute resolution skills, and invite
nay-sayers to provide diffs of bad judgement? Simple statistics should
mandatorily be collected which would show roughly what sort of Wikipedia
member they are: How many different talk pages have they left comments
on? How many user talk pages have they left 2 or more comments on? How
long have they been active? What is their activity pattern? How many
edits have all the people voting for them made?

I like stats!

Steve


body:
On 1/3/06, SCZenz <sczenz at gmail.com> wrote:
> 1. Userboxes in general are silly.  This doesn't justify unilateral
> action, which is what people have been asking you to aknowledge.

Since I did not take unilateral action on the basis that "userboxes
are silly", I see no reason to acknowledge this.  Were I to publicly
acknowledge this, it would be taken as an admission that I deleted the
userboxes I did because they were "silly".

> 2. That there are copyright issues with userbox images.  Those have to
> be dealt with, but unilateral deletion wasn't the right solution there
> either--removing the images would've sufficed.

I've grown tired of removing the same image from the same userbox
repeatedly.  I dealt with this issue a while back, and I'm tired of
it.  And I can't block effectively block these people, as their admin
buddies will just unblock them and whine.

> 3. I've also heard (from Tony, I'm not sure if you've said it), that
> many userboxes are being used for inappropriate vote-garnering.  If
> that's true, we can darn well build a consensus to delete them.

I did delete several templates because I felt that they facilitated
dividing Wikipedians amongst factional lines.  It is my opinion that
this is harmful to the encyclopedia, a position which flows from
comments made by Jimbo on this list.  I deleted those templates
because I believe that content that harms the encyclopedia has no
place or purpose and violates several of our core policies.  I'm not
sure that it would have been "better" for me to try to spur a
discussion: my experience is that discussions on Wikipedia go nowhere
when they are made in the hypothetical, absent any actual controversy.
 Perhaps I could have nominated a few of them for deletion, but that
would not have raised the underlying question (the templates in
question would likely merely have been deleted as "silly" without
reaching the underlying issues, and/or a few users would have gone
ballistic and melted down all over the project, and the entire problem
would have recurred in three months).  I certainly did not expect the
explosive shitstorm that occured; I underestimated the degree of the
attachment that at least some of the userboxers held for their
userboxes, and the shallowness of their committment to the project,
and I underestimated the extent to which  the "process before product"
mentality has spread through the community.

I therefore accept culpability for incorrectly assuming that
Wikipedians would put the project of writing the encyclopedia ahead of
their personal amusement, and for failing to realize the degree to
which Wikipedians have become process-bound (and, apparently
hierarchical).  As a longer-term and respected Wikipedian, I do feel
that I have failed in my responsibility to indoctrinate newer
Wikipedians in the Tao of Wiki, and that this failure has led to many
of the problems we have today.

Kelly


from_name: Erik Moeller

subject:
[Wikitech-l] Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Developer help
	needed

body:
Fred Bauder:
> Please consider my request at Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/
> Developer help needed
>
> The problem is that semi-protection as now coded relies on % of users
> rather than on measurement of edits. This permits stockpiling of
> sleeper accounts which can later be activated as sockpuppets  defeating
> semi-protection.

Wouldn't such stockpiling be rendered fairly ineffective by the
autoblocker, or does that only affect anonymous users?

Erik


from_name: Ilya N.

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Wikipedia Day 2006 : 5 years wikifying knowledge

body:
I love these ideas. Jimbo?

On 1/3/06, Anthere <Anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> Walter Vermeir wrote:
> > Soon it will be again [[w:en:Wikipedia:Wikipedia day|]] on January 15.
> >
> > This year it is the 5th anniversary of Wikipedia. Should we not do
> > something?
> >
> > If so, then it is high time to make the preparations.
> >
> >
> > I have some ideas what could be done ...
> >
> > On January 15th, Wikipedia Day, only for one day, Wikipedia goes ..
> >
> > - Retro! Change the default skin of the largest Wikipedias to
> > "Nostalgia". (most of the now existing Wikipedias did not exist in 2001
> > and have not even ever have used the usemod wiki.)
> >
> > - Change to logo of those wikis back to the old Wikipedia logo.
> (Pre-Nohat)
> >
> > - Change the style of the main pages back to one of more earlyer
> > incarnations. Basic style.
> >
> > - On the main pages the main story is for once Wikipedia. The Wikipedias
> > write a article, does not even have to be NPOV (Wikipedia namespace?)
> > about the early history of there Wikipedia, about the very first users,
> >   anecdotes about how some policy's or things not seem normal come to
> > be. The first attention of the media for Wikipedia. And this until
> today.
> >
> > Jimbo could write also something about how he looks at the last five
> > years back now and how he thinks about the future of Wikipedia.
> >
> > It would also be a great opportunity for all the current Wikipedians who
> > where not here from the start to get the feeling a bit how it was only 5
> > years ago.
> >
> > This Wikipedia day would be in the first place be for the Wikipedians
> > them self.
> >
> > Any for supporters for this idea?
> >
> > Greetings,
> > Walter
>
>
> Switch back to software phase I during the full day ... would be my
> favorite. or have a version of these times set up and fully working just
> to see how it was :-)
>
> ant
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

--
~Ilya N.
http://w3stuff.com/ilya/ (My website; DarkLordFoxx Media)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Ilyanep (on Wikipedia)


from_name: jkelly at fas.harvard.edu

body:
  "Fair use" images aren't allowed in template- and user-space by our current
guidelines (although there was some edit-warring where that clause was removed
last week, if I recall).  Enforcing this in any way is problematic, because the
number of people who like to decorate their userpages with professional graphic
design is larger than the number of people devoted to free content.

                      Jkelly

> I support that and I suggest that a note be posted on AN/I immediately
> to the effect that all fairuse images outside of the article space are
> subject to immediate deletion and that our fairuse and userbox
> guidelines be changed to reflect that.
>


from_name: Karl A. Krueger

body:
On Wed, Jan 04, 2006 at 02:11:45AM +0000, Tony Sidaway wrote:
> I don't want to stop new editors classifying themselves by politics or
> religion.  I want to stop them abusing powerful Wikipedia resources
> such as templates and categories in order to find people who share
> their opinions, because this would be the end of consensus-based
> decision-making on Wikipedia.

Hear, hear.  This is much the same situation as Wikipedians for Decency
-- which sought to create a "WikiProject" for the purpose of alerting
pro-censorship editors to the presence of sexual content in articles --
only multiplied many times over.

We have an NPOV policy for this encyclopedia project of ours.  A logical
consequence of this is that it's not OK to use project resources for the
purpose of contravening that policy.

Instead of helping all the Catholics or Communists or Conspiracy-buffs
to hook up and help each other in revert wars, maybe we should be
finding ways of helping people of -differing- views come together and
develop mutual respect so we can work to improve the neutrality and
well-roundedness of articles.

--
Karl A. Krueger <kkrueger at whoi.edu>


body:
Consensus-based decision-making is part of the Tao of Wiki too, isn't
it?  I agree with most of what you've written about the danger of
userboxes, but I don't agree with the approach that's been taken.  I
don't think action by the few against the views of the many can
succeed on Wikipedia--it's designed so it can't.

So if the majority of Wikipedians are really against common sense as
you see it, there are two solutions I can see:

1. We reach some kind of compromise policy (explicit or de facto) on userboxes.

2. Jimbo tells us what to do about this.  If the majority of the
community has really lost its way, and compromise is impossible, then
he's the one whose job it is to clarify what concrete changes have to
be made to preserve our mission.

SCZenz

On 1/3/06, Kelly Martin <kelly.lynn.martin at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 1/3/06, SCZenz <sczenz at gmail.com> wrote:
> > 1. Userboxes in general are silly.  This doesn't justify unilateral
> > action, which is what people have been asking you to aknowledge.
>
> Since I did not take unilateral action on the basis that "userboxes
> are silly", I see no reason to acknowledge this.  Were I to publicly
> acknowledge this, it would be taken as an admission that I deleted the
> userboxes I did because they were "silly".
>
> > 2. That there are copyright issues with userbox images.  Those have to
> > be dealt with, but unilateral deletion wasn't the right solution there
> > either--removing the images would've sufficed.
>
> I've grown tired of removing the same image from the same userbox
> repeatedly.  I dealt with this issue a while back, and I'm tired of
> it.  And I can't block effectively block these people, as their admin
> buddies will just unblock them and whine.
>
> > 3. I've also heard (from Tony, I'm not sure if you've said it), that
> > many userboxes are being used for inappropriate vote-garnering.  If
> > that's true, we can darn well build a consensus to delete them.
>
> I did delete several templates because I felt that they facilitated
> dividing Wikipedians amongst factional lines.  It is my opinion that
> this is harmful to the encyclopedia, a position which flows from
> comments made by Jimbo on this list.  I deleted those templates
> because I believe that content that harms the encyclopedia has no
> place or purpose and violates several of our core policies.  I'm not
> sure that it would have been "better" for me to try to spur a
> discussion: my experience is that discussions on Wikipedia go nowhere
> when they are made in the hypothetical, absent any actual controversy.
>  Perhaps I could have nominated a few of them for deletion, but that
> would not have raised the underlying question (the templates in
> question would likely merely have been deleted as "silly" without
> reaching the underlying issues, and/or a few users would have gone
> ballistic and melted down all over the project, and the entire problem
> would have recurred in three months).  I certainly did not expect the
> explosive shitstorm that occured; I underestimated the degree of the
> attachment that at least some of the userboxers held for their
> userboxes, and the shallowness of their committment to the project,
> and I underestimated the extent to which  the "process before product"
> mentality has spread through the community.
>
> I therefore accept culpability for incorrectly assuming that
> Wikipedians would put the project of writing the encyclopedia ahead of
> their personal amusement, and for failing to realize the degree to
> which Wikipedians have become process-bound (and, apparently
> hierarchical).  As a longer-term and respected Wikipedian, I do feel
> that I have failed in my responsibility to indoctrinate newer
> Wikipedians in the Tao of Wiki, and that this failure has led to many
> of the problems we have today.
>
> Kelly
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Peter Mackay

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Ads on Wikipedia

body:
> From: wikien-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org
> [mailto:wikien-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org] On Behalf Of Ray Saintonge
>
> Peter Mackay wrote:
> >I don't think Google would have any trouble attracting "a
> few thousand
> >ambitious know-it-alls". Surely you don't think that WP has cornered
> >the market on such people?
> >
> He-he.  We also haven't cornered the market for trolls and
> vandals.  The first ones they would get would be the ones we
> got rid of, and who are now looking for a place to carry on
> their activity. 8-)

This is all getting very hypothetical, but I think that if Google or
Microsoft or Yahoo put out a call for editors, those who responded would
tend to be constructive people, who would deal with vandalism in a
common-sense way.

Peter (Skyring)


body:
I'm not all of Wikipedia, and not everyone agrees with my personal
analysis.  I don't propose a poll; I do think we need to gague
consensus somehow.  How about a policy proposal, or a discussion at
the village pump?

SCZenz

On 1/3/06, Philip Sandifer <snowspinner at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On Jan 3, 2006, at 9:16 PM, SCZenz wrote:
> >
> > 3. I've also heard (from Tony, I'm not sure if you've said it), that
> > many userboxes are being used for inappropriate vote-garnering.  If
> > that's true, we can darn well build a consensus to delete them.
>
>
> You just built it. Right there. You showed how they do not conform to
> Wikipedia's policy and purpose. Thus, assuming they do exist, they
> can be deleted freely. Because that's what consensus is - the
> conclusion of a sensible discussion.
>
> Or do you mean we can hold a stupid poll to delete them?
>
> -Phil
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Alphax (Wikipedia email)

subject: [WikiEN-l] [Fwd: [HelpDesk-l] advertising on Wikipedia]

body:
I thought this was topical given current discussions...

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: [HelpDesk-l] advertising on Wikipedia
Date: Mon, 2 Jan 2006 19:51:48 -0500
From: admin <pscolnik at kensingtonga.com>
Reply-To: Help desk for questions about Wikimedia projects
<helpdesk-l at Wikimedia.org>
To: <helpdesk-l at wikimedia.org>

I thought that authors were not allowed to advertise on Wikipedia. In the
article on lanolin, the author mentions Lansiloh, a commercial brand of
lanolin.

Thank you.

Janny Hyman

-------- End forwarded message -----------

Ho hum...

--
Alphax - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax
Contributor to Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia
"We make the internet not suck" - Jimbo Wales
Public key: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax/OpenPGP
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 556 bytes
Desc: OpenPGP digital signature
Url : http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/attachments/20060103/cd083ede/attachment.pgp


from_name: Kirill Lokshin

subject: [WikiEN-l] The userbox fad

body:
On 1/3/06, Tony Sidaway <f.crdfa at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Have you examined the figures?   This is a massive growth.  Political
> and belief-based userboxes have increased tenfold since the end of
> November.  A database check tells me that of our 3500 or so userboxes,
> 1500 were created in December, and a further 250 have been created in
> the first three days of January alone.  This is a serious push to
> reform Wikipedia as a network of users linked according to beliefs and
> preferences that can be accessed by a point-of-view pusher at the
> touch of a button.
>
> The house is on fire.

The other possible explanation, of course, is that users have been
creating them as userpage eye candy, and that the rate of growth is
caused by (1) users seeing a political userbox on another user's page
and deciding to make their own, and (2) the existence of the userbox
WikiProject, which has undertaken a systematic creation of such boxes
for every possible political belief.

At the very least, if (admittedly silly) things like {{user hell}} are
intended for POV-pushing, I'm having trouble seeing the particular POV
that users are being mobilized for here.

Kirill Lokshin


from_name: Walter Vermeir

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia Day 2006 : 5 years wikifying knowledge

body:
Soon it will be again [[w:en:Wikipedia:Wikipedia day|]] on January 15.

This year it is the 5th anniversary of Wikipedia. Should we not do
something?

If so, then it is high time to make the preparations.

I have some ideas what could be done ...

On January 15th, Wikipedia Day, only for one day, Wikipedia goes ..

- Retro! Change the default skin of the largest Wikipedias to
"Nostalgia". (most of the now existing Wikipedias did not exist in 2001
and have not even ever have used the usemod wiki.)

- Change to logo of those wikis back to the old Wikipedia logo. (Pre-Nohat)

- Change the style of the main pages back to one of more earlyer
incarnations. Basic style.

- On the main pages the main story is for once Wikipedia. The Wikipedias
write a article, does not even have to be NPOV (Wikipedia namespace?)
about the early history of there Wikipedia, about the very first users,
  anecdotes about how some policy's or things not seem normal come to
be. The first attention of the media for Wikipedia. And this until today.

Jimbo could write also something about how he looks at the last five
years back now and how he thinks about the future of Wikipedia.

It would also be a great opportunity for all the current Wikipedians who
where not here from the start to get the feeling a bit how it was only 5
years ago.

This Wikipedia day would be in the first place be for the Wikipedians
them self.

Any for supporters for this idea?

Greetings,
Walter

--
Contact: walter AT wikizine DOT org
Wikizine.org - for the members of the Wikimedia community


from_name: SCZenz

body:
I don't believe in being quite that bold with admin powers.  I'd
rather build consensus--how else can whether there's a *meaningful*
objection or not be judged?

SCZenz

On 1/3/06, Philip Sandifer <snowspinner at gmail.com> wrote:
> Be bold - until somebody raises a meaningful (i.e. non-procedural)
> objection to your actions, you are entitled to make good faith
> changes that a reasonably persuasive argument can be made for.
>
> -Phil
>
> On Jan 3, 2006, at 11:54 PM, SCZenz wrote:
>
> > I'm not all of Wikipedia, and not everyone agrees with my personal
> > analysis.  I don't propose a poll; I do think we need to gague
> > consensus somehow.  How about a policy proposal, or a discussion at
> > the village pump?
> >
> > SCZenz
> >
> > On 1/3/06, Philip Sandifer <snowspinner at gmail.com> wrote:
> >>
> >> On Jan 3, 2006, at 9:16 PM, SCZenz wrote:
> >>>
> >>> 3. I've also heard (from Tony, I'm not sure if you've said it), that
> >>> many userboxes are being used for inappropriate vote-garnering.  If
> >>> that's true, we can darn well build a consensus to delete them.
> >>
> >>
> >> You just built it. Right there. You showed how they do not conform to
> >> Wikipedia's policy and purpose. Thus, assuming they do exist, they
> >> can be deleted freely. Because that's what consensus is - the
> >> conclusion of a sensible discussion.
> >>
> >> Or do you mean we can hold a stupid poll to delete them?
> >>
> >> -Phil
> >> _______________________________________________
> >> WikiEN-l mailing list
> >> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> >> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> >> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
> >>
> > _______________________________________________
> > WikiEN-l mailing list
> > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> > To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Leif Knutsen

subject: [WikiEN-l] Science and the truth

body:
I agree with the notion that wikipedia should profess the truth, but my problem in allowing us to label certain fields, beliefs, or whatever, as ?quackery,? or ?pseudoscience,? etc., is manifold:
- It assumes that our readers need such labels because they can't make an informed judgment otherwise - this seems to me the opposite of what we are trying to do here
- I don't know who among us is qualified to determine what is true or not - my personal experience is that those who most loudly invoke scientific jargon are also most prone to abuse it
- and last but not least, what is unassailable science this year is archaic superstition the next year.
Sent wirelessly from my Blackberry.


from_name: geni

subject: [WikiEN-l] The userbox fad

body:
On 1/3/06, Kelly Martin <kelly.lynn.martin at gmail.com> wrote:
> The difference is that the chess tournament didn't violate copyright,
> and when told to stop violating copyright, scream that its free speech
> rights were being violated.
>
> The userbox aficianadoes are.
>
> Kelly

Oh people do that all the time. Generaly they quit once you have
explained things to them. Deleting the entire userbox is not required
to deal with copyvios.

--
geni


body:
On 1/3/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
> What's strange to me is that it seems that WP is one of the few places
> where you could really provide a comprehensive CV of all the good you've
> done and why you should be admin.  Why not ask candidates to provide X
> diffs demonstrating their dispute resolution skills, and invite
> nay-sayers to provide diffs of bad judgement? Simple statistics should
> mandatorily be collected which would show roughly what sort of Wikipedia
> member they are: How many different talk pages have they left comments
> on? How many user talk pages have they left 2 or more comments on? How
> long have they been active? What is their activity pattern? How many
> edits have all the people voting for them made?
>
> I like stats!
>
> Steve
>

Dispute resolution is not an admin task
Dispute resolution is not an admin task
Dispute resolution is not an admin task
Dispute resolution is not an admin task
Dispute resolution is not an admin task
Dispute resolution is not an admin task
Dispute resolution is not an admin task
Dispute resolution is not an admin task
Dispute resolution is not an admin task
Dispute resolution is not an admin task
Dispute resolution is not an admin task
Dispute resolution is not an admin task
Dispute resolution is not an admin task
Dispute resolution is not an admin task
Dispute resolution is not an admin task
Dispute resolution is not an admin task

People keep seem to be forgeting this.

--
geni


from_name: Amgine

subject: [Wikitech-l] Image hotspot in wiki?

body:
On 1/3/06, Jan Vanoverpelt <jan.vanoverpelt at gmail.com> wrote:

> >
> > I would like to place a (hyper)link on an image so that when the reader
> > clicks on the image, he is redirected to a "normal" wiki-page instead of
> > to
> > the imagepage of the image. But I do NOT want to put a textual link on or
> > near the image (the link has to be placed on the image itself). Is it
> > possible to make such kind of hotspot on an image in a wiki and if
> > yes...how?

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Jporter/iconmap_extension

Icon images linking to MediaWiki pages.

Amgine


subject: [WikiEN-l] Beebday dawns ...

body:
On 1/3/06, Jim Redmond <jim at scrubnugget.com> wrote:
>
> charles matthews wrote:
>
> > Peering at the Alexa graphs, it seems that WP has within the past day
> > or so gone ahead of bbc.co.uk, the BBC website, on all three standard
> > measures.
>
> Heavens.  It's true.  The current one-day ranking for wikipedia.org is
> 20; for bbc.co.uk, it's 22.  <boggle>

That does make sense, Wikipedia is awfully slow today.

Garion


from_name: Philip Sandifer

subject: [WikiEN-l] The userbox fad

body:
When last I checked, voting in general was against the rules.
Wikipedia is not a democracy, and never has been - it has always been
run based on the endpoints of reasoned discussions of the issues
among editors who are committed to Wikipedia's core issues. The
problem is that these discussions are being increasingly railroaded
by loud blocs of people who have realized that a poll takes less
time, and that when people assume good faith it's easy to get away
with a lot of shouting without being shut down, such that when
anybody does finally decide to pull the plug there's an uproar. I
looked at Kelly's RfC today, and was floored to see it describing the
percentage vote for censure so far. First of all, RfCs are not votes,
second of all, they are not votes for some motion of censure, third
of all, what the fuck?

This is a systemic failure of the system. The first step in fixing it
is to very explicitly clarify how we work. The second step is to
expend the effort to actually work that way.

-Phil

On Jan 3, 2006, at 7:30 PM, Tony Sidaway wrote:

> On 1/3/06, Fastfission <fastfission at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> 2. Bloc voting. Is this against the rules?
>
> Yes, of course it is.  Good grief!
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l


from_name: Gerard Meijssen

subject: [Foundation-l] ISO/DIS 639-3:

body:
Hoi,
Often this question about ISO 639 pops up and it is confused even more
by SIL codes.. Today the question about the mch code was raised..
http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=mch this clearly shows
that SIL now uses these codes on their website .. Consequently, there is
no need for the old SIL codes anymore.

Thanks,
    GerardM


subject: [Foundation-l] ISO/DIS 639-3:


subject: [Wikitech-l] ISO/DIS 639-3:


body:
On Jan 3, 2006, at 9:16 PM, SCZenz wrote:
>
> 3. I've also heard (from Tony, I'm not sure if you've said it), that
> many userboxes are being used for inappropriate vote-garnering.  If
> that's true, we can darn well build a consensus to delete them.

You just built it. Right there. You showed how they do not conform to
Wikipedia's policy and purpose. Thus, assuming they do exist, they
can be deleted freely. Because that's what consensus is - the
conclusion of a sensible discussion.

Or do you mean we can hold a stupid poll to delete them?

-Phil


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Ads on Wikipedia?

body:
> The problems with goal-directedness: it might actually matter
> how you get
> 'there'; and 'there' might not mean the same thing to
> everyone.  In fact my
> wikimeet experience convinces me that the 'there' is not a
> large factor in
> people's motivation.  They want the process to be fun, as in
> lively, making
> light of hassles, rewarding, that kind of thing.  They want
> 'can do'  as an
> attitude, but certainly not 'suits' and too much business
> talk.  And these
> are the folk who actually write for hours, for nothing, to
> post the pages
> and turn the red links blue.

Interesting, you have somehow linked the discussion about ads with the
discussion about userboxes. Are ads and userboxes the two extremes of a
"the end" vs "the means" dichotomy?

Steve