from_name: Michael R. Irwin

body:
Ray Saintonge wrote:

>Michael R. Irwin wrote:
>
>
>
>
>>Certainly I would advise you to
>>comply strictly with all provisions of the U.S. Patriot Act when called
>>upon by warrant to cooperate with U.S. Federal authorities, unless you
>>enjoy small cubicle environments.
>>
>>
>>
>That's remarkably inconsistent of you.  You begin by complaining about
>excessive secrecy then contradict yourself by supporting a piece of
>totalitarian trash that would impose just that, notably in forbidding
>people who have received information requests from letting anyone know
>that they have received such requests.  When it comes to circumventing
>laws the U.S. Patriot Act is fair game.
>
>
Nothing inconsistent about it at all.

Nothing I wrote should be construed as "supporting" the totalitarian
trash.   If you wish to attempt to circumvent the U.S. Patriot Act; and
you are a self responsible adult by the standards of your society,
culture and yourself; you are welcome (from me) to attempt do so
elsewhere.  I advise you against it unless you enjoy anonymous
occupation of small cubicle cells or have a death wish or actually
believe freedom and inalienable human rights is worth a little
discomfort or great personal risk.   Personally I think the wikimedia
projects are quite valuable and useful in undercutting the
justifications used for the activation of the totalitarian trash
embodied in the Patriot Act.  Thus, IMHO, any contemplated acts of civil
disobedience likely to bring swift and accurate reprisals from the
powers that be in the U.S. are best done elsewhere away from wikimedia
sponsored projects.   This is true whether you, I or others are good
little wikimedians just wishing to avoid trouble at any price or all out
patriots just itching to score some effective points on the
totalitarians currently in charge.

If you are a U.S. voter I will point out that it is likely to be more
effective voting representatives into office who will take out the
totalitarian trash rather than resisting smart missiles launched by the
U.S. military from hundreds of miles away or secret warrants or
decisions made out of view of the public, allegedly for the benefit of
the U.S. public.

If you are not a U.S. citizen, I should point out that large social
systems with lots of momentum often take large aggregate inputs and time
to change course.  A choice to actively resist U.S.G. totalitarian trash
may be a life or death altering decision that is effectively irrevocable
for the next few decades or centuries.

>
>
>>I suggest the community members present on the Foundation-L mailing list
>>consider a placebo vote regarding whether the Wikimedia Foundation
>>should issue an apology to Eric and reimburse him for the long distance
>>calls necessary to recover his editing priveleges.
>>
>>
>>
>"Placebo vote" sounds like an interesting concept.  I interpret such a
>vote as one designed to make people feel good without accomplishing
>anything. :-)
>
>
If it makes Eric aware that he is still a valued member of the larger
local community of participants even after an alleged or actual error or
two then it will have accomplished quite a bit.  There is no "edit
boldly" or initiative without an occasional mistake.    This could
probably be supported by reference to Murphy's law, thermodynamic
maximization of entropy, original sin, or something if I were not
feeling so lazy at the moment.

>
>
>>>The Foundation officers
>>>and Board members have a fiduciary obligation to the organization, as I
>>>do as a lawyer for my client.
>>>
>>>Certain members of the community (and notably, not Mr. Moeller) have
>>>expressed dissatisfaction about WP:OFFICE and its use.  There is a
>>>healthy debate yet to be had about it.  We can have that debate, but I
>>>also have to make clear that the Foundation's obligations are greater
>>>than loyalty to any one user.  Even someone with the history of
>>>contributions to Mr. Moeller.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>Are the Wikimedia Foundation's obligations greater than loyalty to a
>>single founder or stacked Board of Directors?
>>
>>In the event of a conflict do you work for the stacked Board, Jimmy
>>Wales, or the Foundation?  Is your client the stacked Board, Jimmy
>>Wales, or the Wikimedia Foundation?  What is the legal signature on
>>checks sent to your office in response to invoices?  Does U.S. and/or
>>Florida law distinguish between individuals in offices and the
>>organization itself?
>>
>>
>>
>This sounds like cross-examination to me.
>
>
It is an interesting and critical point.   People unfamilar with law as
it is practiced in the United States have a tendency towards gullibility
when a well educated lawyer in a crisp three piece suit getting paid big
bucks gives them free advice.   There was an unqualified (literally, not
a high school graduate IIRC) office girl who had been placed in a
government management position a few years back who took her boss's (the
alleged embezzler being investigated by Congress) lawyers' advice and
stone walled (attempted to take the fifth, remaining silent rather than
self incriminate) Congress during some hearings regarding tens or
hundreds of millions of dollars worth of embezzlement and fraud.   She
may still be in jail for contempt of Congress.   There was some loose
talk about disbarring "her lawyers" for advising her to oppose Congress
by citing the fifth (which apparently does not apply to Congressional
hearings after Congress has granted immunity from personal prosecution)
but AFAIK nothing ever came of it.   It turns out that a lawyer
representing his client is apparently free (of consequences) to give
others poor legal advice (lie or attempt to deceive people other than
his client regarding matters of law) if it serves the interests of their
official paying client or some other similar self serving mumbo jumbo.

I guess frames of reference are relevent to other fields of endeaver
besides physics. Are they my, our, their, the Foundation, the Board,
ET's, friend of the court,  other stakeholders' lawyers or merely
representing their own business or personal interests?

Drat!  I forgot to ask whether his firm does business with Bomis or
Wikia or other businesses owned, operated or invested in by members of
the stacked Board.  Maybe next time.

Hmm ... also forgot to ask whether he volunteers time as an editor at
any Wikimedia projects or operates any investigatory sock puppets. ....
Maybe the time after the next time minus negative three or four?

I guess what I should have or could have asked is:   In your
professional opinion, would it reduce current or future legal
liabilities and/or expenses if different guidelines (from the apparently
nonexistent ones or the ones currently in use) regarding conflicts of
interest or potential conflicts of interest were developed and
implemented by the Wikimedia Foundation?

>I am often highly critical of the current management format, but I can
>also see enough dangers in a totally democratic system to be wary of
>such a model.
>
>
I also would be skeptical of a "pure" "democracy" of one sock puppet one
vote.    I doubt it is even feasible to set up such a structure up as a
U.S. liability limited non profit or for profit corporation.  It is my
understanding that U.S. law requires specific accountable points of
contact when filing for the legal priveleges granted to regulated legal
organizations.   However, there is a wide range of lattitude left to the
individual registered organization in the U.S. regarding how they
"manage" their own affairs within the constraints of the law.   The
dichotomy of our current and past discussion alternating between
unilateral bandwidthianism (the guy with control of the centralized
editing bandwidth makes the rules) and total chaos (one sock puppet one
vote) barely scratches the surface of the range of possibilities
available in the good old USA.

regards,
lazyquasar


list: wikimedia-l

source: pipermail-mbox

subject: [Foundation-l] Indefinite block and desysopping by User:Danny


list: wikien-l

from_name: Fred Bauder

subject: [WikiEN-l] [[WP:NOT EVIL]]

body:
Including information that has the effect of being hurtful or
embarrassing to another person when there is very little information
content added is the issue.

This is probably going to be a stretch for us, a rather subtle
matter. There is a dark side to published information. Some of it is
quite hurtful without adding appreciably to the body of human knowledge.

Fred

On Apr 22, 2006, at 2:50 AM, herostratus at comcast.net wrote:

> An proposal that might slightly reduce the need for out-of-process
> actions (e.g., Brian Peppers, Lolicon pic):
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:NOT_evil
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] allow me to edit

body:
You need to use another ip. There is a lot of activity by a lot of
users on this ip. I'm not sure which one made the trouble, but you
are the victim of shared karma.

Fred
On Apr 18, 2006, at 1:56 PM, Siyabonga Khawula wrote:

> hi
> Can you please allow me to edit in wikipedia because The computer
> says I am Blocked. can you mplease unblock me.
>
> my IP number is 146.230.128.29.
>
> Thank you
>
>
> --------------------------------------------------------------------
> Please find our disclaimer at http://www.ukzn.ac.za/disclaimer
> --------------------------------------------------------------------
> <<<<gwavasig>>>>
> _______________________________________________
> 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: foundation-l

from_name: Birgitte SB

subject: [Foundation-l] CheckUser (thoughts)

body:
--- Anthere <Anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:

>
> What that suggest me is this
>
> We should not have checkusers with the tool access
> on a one project/one
> language, but a POOL of COMMON checkusers. Those
> should all have good
> technical abilities. Those would have access
> everywhere. They would be
> listed on meta with their language ability. The
> biggest projects would
> be used to always ask to their favorites. The small
> languages will try
> to find the one with a basic knowledge of their
> language if they wish.
>
> But all in all, checkusers should be a common good,
> just as our
> developers right now are (and, hell, just as your
> board members are).
>
> Ant
>

I think this is a good solution also.  I would also
like to see people with current access have an option
of joining the pool or not.  That should preveent us
repeating the problem of thinking we have people to
help the smaller project on paper, but in reality no
one has the time or else feels uncomfortable working
with unfamilar projects.  Honestly I am sure there are
some members of enWP arcom who have access but do not
have time to answer requests at large.  I have never
had an issue with working through someone else to get
this information.  I do not mind not having a local
checkuser.  However I would like to be sure that this
pool will actually be made up people who are wiling to
make themselves available.  And I can understand how
the very large projects do need dedicated checkusers
for something like arbcom.  So I think we need a
policy  that allows for a large pool of people to work
checkuser at large along with some dedicated to
projects.  I know this sounds alot like the current
policy.  However the pool of checkusers should be
larger and and full of more technical expertise than
the pool of stewrads.  Also they will be people who
have explicitly offered to use their access for
problems on small projects.  So although it  looks
similar to current policy on paper, I think that it
would have different results.

Birgitte SB

__________________________________________________
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subject: [Foundation-l] CheckUser (thoughts)


subject: [Foundation-l] CheckUser (thoughts)

body:
The biggest problem with the English arbitrators is that due to the
press of arbitration business they have little time to do justice to
checkuser requests from other users. Access is vital to carrying out
arbitration duties in some cases, however.  One side effect is that
some arbitrators have been drawn away from arbitration duties,
perhaps for the good of the project as a whole, but drawn away
nevertheless.

I think the technical expertise problem is exaggerated, so long as
the investigator relies on investigations of editing patterns also.

Fred

On Apr 22, 2006, at 7:03 AM, James D. Forrester wrote:

> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
>
> Anthere wrote:
>
> [Snip "CheckUser is a bit of a mess"]
>
>
>> I plead guilty for part of this.
>>
>
> I don't think that it's fair to blame anyone in particular for a
> possibly non-optimal situation; certainly, what with your sterling
> work
> getting an agreeable, if not perfect, policy in place, we would have
> been in a much worse position without you. :-)
>
>
>> I also think the arbcom of last summer
>> has a responsability in this, since it was asking for the arbcom
>> to have
>> access, regardless of technical ability of its members.
>>
>
> I disagree with this; we said that we had one or two members who were
> (far) more than sufficiently expert to be able to carry out the
> analysis, and that it would be more sensible to have them carry it out
> directly, rather than via the developers in the scant few moments they
> weren't busy doing their fantastic work running the sites.
>
>
>> And for what is
>> worth, I think Jimbo also has a responsability in this, since he
>> himself
>> decided all english arbcom members would have access.
>>
>
> Except, err, we don't all have access; we chose who on our project has
> both a sufficient (very great) level of trust, and also sufficient
> technical expertise (or the willingness and aptitude to improve their
> skills in this area a little). For example, I have elected not to have
> access to the tool (though more for reasons of time).
>
>
>> Then, there was a third mistake I think (it is not an accusation,
>> just
>> an analysis). It was to make a tool dividing projects and languages.
>> Originally, we had a common set of volunteers to help us all. And
>> this
>> was good. I am pretty sure some people did not know Brion intimately
>> enough to *trust* him, but they were told he was fine by people they
>> trusted, and they went to ask him with no fear. And Jimbo had no fear
>> either.
>>
>> Now, people have checkuser status only on one project/one
>> language. Just
>> as if Brion had help ip checking on the french wiktionary, whilst Tim
>> was dedicated to the english wikipedia and Taw to the polish
>> wikibooks.
>> It makes NO sense whatsoever. The *only* unigue advantage of the
>> current
>> system is to understand the language of the project the checkuser
>> make
>> the job.
>>
>
> I agree, this is indeed a problem.
>
> [Snip]
>
>
>> What that suggest me is this
>>
>> We should not have checkusers with the tool access on a one
>> project/one
>> language, but a POOL of COMMON checkusers. Those should all have good
>> technical abilities. Those would have access everywhere. They
>> would be
>> listed on meta with their language ability. The biggest projects
>> would
>> be used to always ask to their favorites. The small languages will
>> try
>> to find the one with a basic knowledge of their language if they
>> wish.
>>
>> But all in all, checkusers should be a common good, just as our
>> developers right now are (and, hell, just as your board members are).
>>
>
> I think that this solution has some merit, but there exists the tricky
> problem of language - if one does not read Russian, then no matter how
> accurate and wide one's technical knowledge is, there is no point
> being
> asked to carry out CheckUser checks on people. It isn't merely about
> technical proficiency, but about judgement of editing patterns, of
> style, and of content. This is something that is definitely
> language-specific.
>
> Yours sincerely,
> - --
> James D. Forrester
> Wikimedia : [[W:en:User:Jdforrester|James F.]]
> E-Mail    : james at jdforrester.org
> IM (MSN)  : jamesdforrester at hotmail.com
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
> Version: GnuPG v1.4.2 (MingW32)
> Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org
>
> iD8DBQFESimhd7WnstdBQBkRAluVAJ9e+HWFpVDjs36+e1SkQqBaSUNP1ACbBkid
> 3R+fXP3EjNJR5QLP8wpGJ7s=
> =FCbz
> -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


subject: [Foundation-l] CheckUser (thoughts)


subject: [Foundation-l] CheckUser (thoughts)

body:
This is certainly correct in my case. You can make me feel bad by
making requests to me personally, but you can't enlarge my time or
energy.

Fred

On Apr 22, 2006, at 7:32 AM, Birgitte SB wrote:

> Honestly I am sure there are
> some members of enWP arcom who have access but do not
> have time to answer requests at large.


subject: [Foundation-l] CheckUser (thoughts)


from_name: Jesse Martin

subject: [Foundation-l] CheckUser (thoughts)

body:
On 4/22/06, Anthere <Anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> We should not have checkusers with the tool access on a one project/one
> language, but a POOL of COMMON checkusers. Those should all have good
> technical abilities. Those would have access everywhere. They would be
> listed on meta with their language ability. The biggest projects would
> be used to always ask to their favorites. The small languages will try
> to find the one with a basic knowledge of their language if they wish.
>
> But all in all, checkusers should be a common good, just as our
> developers right now are (and, hell, just as your board members are).
>
> Ant

I agree with this proposal.

The smaller wikis cannot benefit from checks because there are far too few
users with global CheckUser access; on the other hand, they cannot have
local checks because their candidates are unknown to and not trusted by the
wider community. Local CheckUser access furthermore causes previously
discussed confidentiality problems, since the number of users required would
be disproportionately high in order to serve every project in need.

Having a relatively small number of users with global CheckUser access,
perhaps combined with the proposed 'Guest' CheckUser process, will much
better serve a middle ground between access and confidentiality. These users
would probably be most active on projects they participate most in, serving
as the de facto local CheckUser agents. Projects without such local agents
would likely still be forced to wait, but the larger number of CheckUser
agents may help alleviate waiting times on the Meta request page.

-- Jesse Martin ([[User:Pathoschild]])


subject: [Foundation-l] CheckUser (thoughts)


from_name: herostratus at comcast.net

subject: [WikiEN-l] [[WP:NOT EVIL]]

body:
An proposal that might slightly reduce the need for out-of-process actions (e.g., Brian Peppers, Lolicon pic):

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:NOT_evil


subject: [WikiEN-l] The problem with flagging things with {{office}}

body:
Perhaps The Economist has a different policy, or magazines might in general,
but not repeating the incorrect information is standard practice at
newspapers. This is what I do for a living, so I consider myself properly
informed on this particular topic.

k

On 4/22/06, Delirium <delirium at hackish.org> wrote:
>
> Katefan0 wrote:
> > News organizations make it a point not to repeat the original error that
> was
> > made; we take pains to state the corrected information only in a
> correction.
> >
> Well, simply asserting that's the case doesn't make it so.  Here's a
> representative quote of a recent correction from _The Economist_; their
> corrections all take basically this form:
>
> "Correction: In 'Open, but not as usual' (March 18th), we said
> non-registered users could not modify most Wikipedia entries; they can,
> save for some controversial ones. Also, a chart of Wikipedia's articles
> and contributors incorrectly showed a downturn in December 2005, because
> we used incomplete data. We apologise."
>
> Lest you object that isn't potentially libelous, here's an apology for
> an error that is (from a few months ago):
>
> "In our article last week on the Volcker report on the UN oil-for-food
> scandal ('Naming names') we mistakenly identified a company cited in the
> report as being the Taurus Group of New Zealand. In fact, the Taurus
> Group listed in the report is 'an oil trading consortium based in Europe
> and the Caribbean'. The Taurus Group in New Zealand and its subsidiaries
> have had nothing to do with Iraq. Our apologies to all concerned."
>
> In fact I can't recall ever having seen a correction that *didn't*
> restate (at least in paraphrase) the incorrect statement being
> corrected, since otherwise the apology would be out of context and make
> no sense.
>
> -Mark
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Kelly Martin

subject: [Foundation-l] CheckUser (thoughts)

body:
On 4/22/06, Anthere <Anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> And the checkusers with the technical ability... pretty much offer to
> help anyone who needs help.

I can't speak for all 59 people who have CheckUser access, but I must
state that I don't "help any one who needs help".  The culture on
enwiki regarding CheckUser is to be pretty stingy about its use, and
we don't use it without demonstrated good cause.  I think we reject
about 90% of requests.

I am much more likely to accept a request if it comes from someone I
know to be reliable.  Note that this does not mean all admins, as I
don't know all admins to be reliable.  Anybody else has to convince me
that there is a basis for suspicion.

> We should not have checkusers with the tool access on a one project/one
> language, but a POOL of COMMON checkusers. Those should all have good
> technical abilities. Those would have access everywhere. They would be
> listed on meta with their language ability. The biggest projects would
> be used to always ask to their favorites. The small languages will try
> to find the one with a basic knowledge of their language if they wish.

I think this is fundamentally a good idea, although I also think that
the appointment of CheckUsers should come down from the Foundation,
not up from member wikis; at the very least, every appointment should
must also be approved by the Foundation or by some body set up by the
Foundation for that purpose.  And the Foundation absolutely must be in
possession of identifying information for each and every CheckUser:
real name, location, email address, preferably other means of contact.

Kelly


subject: [Foundation-l] CheckUser (thoughts)


subject: [Foundation-l] CheckUser (thoughts)

body:
On 4/22/06, Fred Bauder <fredbaud at ctelco.net> wrote:
> The biggest problem with the English arbitrators is that due to the
> press of arbitration business they have little time to do justice to
> checkuser requests from other users. Access is vital to carrying out
> arbitration duties in some cases, however.  One side effect is that
> some arbitrators have been drawn away from arbitration duties,
> perhaps for the good of the project as a whole, but drawn away
> nevertheless.

This is probably the reason why Essjay and myself do the bulk of the
checkuser activities on enwiki.

Kelly


subject: [Foundation-l] CheckUser (thoughts)


from_name: Pete Bartlett

subject: [WikiEN-l] Ian McKellen's article - a challenge

body:
British actor Sir Ian McKellen has described his biography on Wikipedia as "objectionable" in an interview with film magazine Empire (full quote at end of mail).

There are several things that are interesting about this case

- The article used to be featured. Here is the featuring process: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Featured_article_candidates/Ian_McKellen. The process was a complete failure as it concentrated almost exclusively on how to correctly address him rather than the fact that article only had one source and that source was far too much about Sir Ian's sexuality rather than a true biography.

- It recently got de-featured. Here is the de-featuring process: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Featured_article_removal_candidates/Ian_McKellen. Seems to be a success. Correctly identifying that biography was unbalanced and out-of-date.

So we recognised that the article was poor but didn't fix it! Argh, wiki process failing!

Now I see from the article talk page that we have had good correspondence with Sir Ian's webmaster in the past. So here is my challenge: Get someone or a group of people who know how to write and know about film to get the article back to Featured Status, and then get in touch with the Sir Ian through the webmaster to get his feedback on the improvements that have been made.

Anyone up for the challenge?

Pcb21, who will chip in where he can but can't help with the real meat of the article

Fair use quote follows:

"Empire: I looked you up on Wikipedia...
 McKellan: I don't understand Wikipedia. I've looked myself up on it and it's thoroughly objectionable. It's just taken, as the basis of my career, an article that was written about five years ago, and why someone doesn't correct it.. is that how it's done?
 Empire: Pretty much. If you want to change something, you can go on and correct it yourself.
 McKellan: Oh... I suppose if you wanted to know someone's dates, or where they were born, it would be quite useful."


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [WikiEN-l] Wheel culture

body:
Delirium wrote:

>Matt Brown wrote:
>
>
>>On 4/20/06, Ben Lowe <ben.lowe at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>
>>>I still haven't heard a reason why admins shouldn't revert admin actions "at all" except
>>>that it's wheel-warring, which is a rather circular answer (fitting, I suppose for a wheel).  So
>>>I suppose my response to "We shouldn't be undoing each other's admin actions
>>>at all" is that we also shouldn't be making any mistakes at all.  But it
>>>happens, and so should be able to unhappen.
>>>
>>>
>>My preferred policy change would not be 'we shouldn't ever undo admin
>>actions' but rather 'we shouldn't undo admin actions instantly and
>>without discussion'.
>>
>>Very few things are so, so critical that there isn't time to discuss.
>>
>>
>A correlary ought to be: We shouldn't *do* admin actions instantly and
>without discussion, for the same reason.
>
In many cases that's just not practical.  There's always a lot of
uncontroversial routine cleanup jobs that need doing.  Full discussion
of these is tantamount to needing written permission from your wife each
and every time you want to wash the dishes.

Ec


subject: [WikiEN-l] Wheel culture

body:
Oskar Sigvardsson wrote:

> Simply disagreeing with someone, or thinking that they break some
>
>policies are not enough for desysopping. Such an action is never
>punitive, which means that an admin can (and should) only lose their
>status for misuse of their priviliges. Can you name anyone lately? I
>mean, other than Eloquence. If you can't then stop writing these
>inflammatory messages, that serve no point whatsoever. If you can,
>then do something about it, and stop writing these inflammatory
>messages that serve no point whatsoever.
>
As a rule of thumb suspensions of privileges that exceed 24-hours should
be considered punitive.  When there are dangerous uncertainties about
things that are happening 24 hours will be enough time to investigate.
If after a best effort this still isn't enough one extend the time 24
hours at a time.

Ec


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Adrian

subject: [Wikitech-l] Faulty breaker replaced

body:
Shouldn't it have been replaced the first time?

-----Original Message-----
From: wikitech-l-bounces at wikimedia.org
[mailto:wikitech-l-bounces at wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Brion Vibber
Sent: 22 April 2006 10:57
To: Wikimedia developers
Subject: [Wikitech-l] Faulty breaker replaced

The 800 amp breaker that failed twice on us has been replaced by the
datacenter
with a shiny new one.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject: [WikiEN-l] Who wins

body:
Pete Bartlett wrote:

>>I personally think this is yet another example of WP:V being swept aside under an
>>avalanche of Google hits, a problem in several areas at present where
>>all the POV pushers have to do is spam as many blogs and web boards as
>>they can find and suddenly an article must be verifiable (it's just
>>that the reliable source is a long way down the list, honest).  A
>>supposed meme which inspires such fierce passions and which has had
>>its fans searching the world at the urging of a website, but which can
>>only come up with a single mention in a foreign-language newspaper,
>>does not sound to me like the kind of thing for an encyclopaedia. More
>>something for a Wikicities project.  but then, I am older than your
>>average Wikipedian, and I've seen my kids obsessed by, and lose
>>interest in, many things along the way.  Whether Warhammer is "better"
>>than Pokemon I wouldn't like to say...
>>Guy (JzG)
>>
>>
>
>As I too become long in the tooth I come more and more to the opinion
>that it is waste of time trying to find "one size fits all" standards of notability and verifiability
>to apply to all articles. Seems to just generate year after year of policy-fiddling and pointless arguing.
>
You make me feel like a walrus.

>So I wonder if it would be more pragmatic to drop these arbitary thresholds and just say "sources are required".
>Each article has the best sources we can find for that topic. If the best sources are blogs then fine -
>the reader is left to him/herself to determine notability based on their own frame of references.
>
>Well-established material gets book citations.
>New material gets journal citations.
>Internet memes gets blog citations.
>Horses for courses.
>
>This idea is analogous to the idea of NPOV - we just provide the data and the reader does the hard work.
>
>
I still don't like blogs, and I attach far more importance to
verifiability than notability.

Unfortunately, your suggestion requires a more than liberal application
of common sense.  That alone dooms it.

Too many people live in the kind of ordered universe that can be
completely defined by a set of rules that is always insufficient to the
task.

Ec


subject: [WikiEN-l] Wheel culture

body:
Ben Lowe wrote:

>> The
>>first person to undo the original admin action has started the wheel
>>war, and it's that first undoing that shouldn't be happening (except
>>where the original admin can't be contacted and it has to be done
>>quickly). But as a rule, we shouldn't be undoing each other's admin
>>actions at all.
>>
>>
>I think "wheel war" is a great term that overly bold admins can throw at
>people who disagree with them, making it seem like it is the fault of the
>reverter, that the one returning things to the status quo is the rouge, when
>in fact it could simply be that the original admin's edits were
>unwarranted.  Or stupid.  I still haven't heard a reason why admins
>shouldn't revert admin actions "at all" except that it's wheel-warring,
>which is a rather circular answer (fitting, I suppose for a wheel).  So I
>suppose my response to "We shouldn't be undoing each other's admin actions
>at all" is that we also shouldn't be making any mistakes at all.  But it
>happens, and so should be able to unhappen.
>
Sometimes it takes a little friction to stop the wheel from spinning ...
Just like the wheels on your car.

Ec


subject: [WikiEN-l] Who wins

body:
Guy Chapman aka JzG wrote:

>On Thu, 20 Apr 2006 23:30:35 -0700 (PDT), you wrote:
>
>
>> Umm... No? What's so bad about it? Wikipedia has an article saying two
>>blogs contain a sentence "Fred is Gay" and the reader draws the inference
>>that the owner of those blogs is seriously retarded. Big deal.
>>
>>
>Yes, big deal.  Ask the lawyers.
>
To quote a famous poem:

> A poet could not but be gay,
>
> In such a jocund company:
>
Cf. http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/I_Wandered_Lonely_as_a_Cloud

Ec


from_name: Mark Ryan

subject: [WikiEN-l] Stout monks found

body:
On 22/04/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> The Cabal blesses and welcomes Phil Sandifer, Kelly Martin, John Lee
> and Steve Bennett to the hallowed sewage farms of wikien-l. All hail!
> I'll drop you all an email with instructions on shortly. You are now
> the happy recipients of any crap forwarded to wikien-l-owner as well,
> and let me tell you it gets special.

They wouldn't be my first choices, but then again you can't always
base your decisions upon physical attraction and raw intelligence. ;)
j/k

In all seriousness, I welcome our new list admins and encourage them
to clear the moderation queue often (people were starting to complain
about its stagnancy).

~Mark Ryan


from_name: Oskar Sigvardsson

body:
On 4/20/06, James D. Forrester <james at jdforrester.org> wrote:
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
>
> Using the {{office}} template to tag problem content is a nice idea,
> but, I would imagine, has a rather serious drawback: Wikitruth.info
> (amongst other 'helpful' critics) seems to have a sysop working for
> them. Were we to flag an article that was libellous with {{office}}, you
> can bet that they would go and dig out the deleted sections, and repost
> it to their wonderful service. Now Wikimedia has been informed that they
> are likely to be sued, and in response has done something knowing that
> it would increase the publication and spread of this libel. - we're then
> liable for their reposting of the content, and "utterly screwed". I
> know, I know, "that's not what was intended". Well, tough, that's the
> way the Real World(tm) works.

A small point, but you don't need to be an admin to access the deleted
material. You need to have a finger and be...you know....sentient. For
instance here: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=NewsMax.com&oldid=48758172
is the NewsMax.com article and here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Jack_Thompson_%28attorney%29&oldid=43110194
is Jack Thompson pre-office. The articles arn't deleted, just blanked.

--Oskar


from_name: Philip Welch

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Wheel warring in the wake of the Eloquence/Danny
	incident

body:
On Apr 20, 2006, at 8:28 AM, Fred Bauder wrote:

> It is just not good practice to reverse another
> administrator's actions. That needs to be part of our culture, not
> some wishy-washy notion that it is OK to wheel war when the other
> administrator is "wrong".

Amen to that. Sadly (and to name names), a certain administrator
whose name begins with "T" and ends with "ony Sidaway" has, in the
past, been allowed to (and even congratulated for) reverting other
administrators' actions multiple times while the ruling culture
derides any criticism of this as "lynching".

My point? Any prohibition against wheel warring must be *objective*
and *applied across the board*. Unless every case, without exception,
of violating any wheel-warring policy is met with immediate
desysopping (pending further review) then the wheel-warring policy
will be selectively enforced to enable certain administrators to
"win" wheel wars against unfavored administrators.

--
Philip L. Welch
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Philwelch


subject: [WikiEN-l] Wheel warring

body:
On Apr 20, 2006, at 2:37 PM, Kelly Martin wrote:

> I concur entirely with Sarah's definition of when a wheel war begins.
> This culture of "free whacks at the post" has to go.  NOBODY is
> entitled to revert without discussion.  3RR says we're willing to
> tolerate it for regular editors.  Admins are expected to be above
> this.  Any admin who doesn't want to play by this rule is invited to
> visit [[m:Requests for permissions]].

Kelly, I'm glad to see you come around to this position, but I hope
you are aware that Wikipedia doesn't set policy by your say-so :)

--
Philip L. Welch
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Philwelch


subject:
[WikiEN-l] Wheel culture (was:Indefinite block and
	desysopping...)

body:
On Apr 20, 2006, at 2:53 PM, Kelly Martin wrote:

> No, we don't.  50% of admin actions in March 2006 were performed by 29
> of our nearly 900 admins; 90% by 170.  We could probably lose 500
> admins without any real impact on our ability to get administrative
> work done.  Note also that sending articles to AfD or prod doesn't
> require an admin.

Here's an interesting question: assuming those statistics are the
same each month, is it the same 29 admins each month, or does it turn
over? Some months/days I really dig into CSD and PROD backlog, other
months/days I'm too busy with real life to devote that much time.

--
Philip L. Welch
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Philwelch


subject: [WikiEN-l] Wheel warring

body:
On Apr 20, 2006, at 3:01 PM, Steve Bennett wrote:

> How's this for a definition:
> X blocks
> Y unblocks
>
> If X disagrees with Y's unblock, then Y has wheel warred. If X
> reinstates the block, then X has wheel warred too.
>
> This covers the situation where X makes a mistake and Y fixes it - X
> agrees with the mistake, and no damage is caused. If Y fears that X
> may accuse him of wheel warring, he shouldn't be undoing X's actions.
> (or should be prepared for the consequences)

I would argue that X has the prerogative to reblock here, since Y
wheel-warred (something that should not have happened) and after
something that should not have happened, it's generally acceptable to
reinstate the status quo ante.

--
Philip L. Welch
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Philwelch


body:
On Apr 20, 2006, at 3:49 PM, Steve Bennett wrote:

> Would it be worth asking less active admins to consider handing in
> their mops, on the understanding that they can ask for them back
> without having to go through RfA again? Just to keep the number of
> mops out there down a bit?

What's the point? Are we running out of mops?

--
Philip L. Welch
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Philwelch


from_name: Zero

body:
I'm not quite certain. If I recall, is there not a rule that restricts from a notable person from making edits to thier own page...?

"Will (Zsinj) Bumgarner" <wbzsinj at gmail.com> wrote: Pete Bartlett wrote:

>Fair use quote follows:
>
>"Empire: I looked you up on Wikipedia...
> McKellan: I don't understand Wikipedia. I've looked myself up on it and it's thoroughly objectionable. It's just taken, as the basis of my career, an article that was written about five years ago, and why someone doesn't correct it.. is that how it's done?
> Empire: Pretty much. If you want to change something, you can go on and correct it yourself.
> McKellan: Oh... I suppose if you wanted to know someone's dates, or where they were born, it would be quite useful."

What I don't understand is when people look themselves up and see
erroneous information, they don't just go and fix it. It's as if they
have something to prove by saying "Wikipedia sucks" instead of
contributing to the effort and making Wikipedia better.

--Zsinj
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body:
On Apr 22, 2006, at 12:17 PM, Phil Sandifer wrote:

>> Amen to that. Sadly (and to name names), a certain administrator
>> whose name begins with "T" and ends with "ony Sidaway" has, in the
>> past, been allowed to (and even congratulated for) reverting other
>> administrators' actions multiple times while the ruling culture
>> derides any criticism of this as "lynching".
>
> Congratulations! Your skill at trolling has increased!
> Congratulations! Your skill at thread derailment has increased!
> Congratulations! Your skill at cliched personal attacks has increased!
> Congratulations! You are now a level 2 Wiki-EN user!

Thanks for your most instructive reply. I see you conveniently
snipped out the entire point that this post was leading to, which I
will repeat thrice for emphasis, since you didn't seem to get it the
first time:

My point? Any prohibition against wheel warring must be *objective*
and *applied across the board*. Unless every case, without exception,
of violating any wheel-warring policy is met with immediate
desysopping (pending further review) then the wheel-warring policy
will be selectively enforced to enable certain administrators to
"win" wheel wars against unfavored administrators.

My point? Any prohibition against wheel warring must be *objective*
and *applied across the board*. Unless every case, without exception,
of violating any wheel-warring policy is met with immediate
desysopping (pending further review) then the wheel-warring policy
will be selectively enforced to enable certain administrators to
"win" wheel wars against unfavored administrators.

My point? Any prohibition against wheel warring must be *objective*
and *applied across the board*. Unless every case, without exception,
of violating any wheel-warring policy is met with immediate
desysopping (pending further review) then the wheel-warring policy
will be selectively enforced to enable certain administrators to
"win" wheel wars against unfavored administrators.

--
Philip L. Welch
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Philwelch


subject: [WikiEN-l] Why the uproar over wikitruth

body:
Tony Sidaway wrote:

>On 4/21/06, Molu <loom91 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>
>>  I can't see how reposting of our content will make us legally more liable than we already were.
>>
>>
>Well I don't think this is the way the law is likely to see it.  In
>the famous 1990s Prodigy case, an information provider that policed
>its forums in much the same way that Wikipedia polices its content was
>found to be a publisher of information, and thus subject to third
>party liability for content.  Under the Communications Decency Act
>which provides a general exemption from third party liability to
>online information providers, this exemption does not extend to
>liability for publication by agents of the provider.  A Wikipedia
>administrator who uses his special powers to publish defamatory
>content or copy copyright-infringing content would tend to advance the
>case against Wikipedia for third-party liability.
>
The fallacy there is in suggesting that all admins are agents of
Wikipedia.  There is nothing in any description of admins that allows
them to do anything on any site outside of a particular project.  A
Wikipedia admin does not thereby receive the right to be an admin on any
sister project or even on a Wikipedia in any other language.  Perhaps
you should review the meaning of "agent".

>This has not been tested in court, but it would be very expensive to
>test it and Wikipedia probably would prefer to spend more of its money
>on equipment and technicians than on teams of attorneys.
>
We do ourselves as much harm by presuming that there is a legal case
there.  Sound risk management policies do not require that we stiffle
ourselves by allowing for every conceivable far-fetched possibility.

Ec


from_name: Jürgen Herz

subject: [Wikitech-l] Faulty breaker replaced

body:
Adrian wrote:
> Shouldn't it have been replaced the first time?

That was also my thought.

I guess they act according to the motto "One time is never, two times is
always".

J?rgen


subject: [WikiEN-l] [[WP:NOT EVIL]]

body:
On Apr 22, 2006, at 1:50 AM, herostratus at comcast.net wrote:

> An proposal that might slightly reduce the need for out-of-process
> actions (e.g., Brian Peppers, Lolicon pic):
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:NOT_evil

Interesting, I'll have to look at it. I have to ask--is this a
prelude to being bought out by Google? ;)

--
Philip L. Welch
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Philwelch


body:
Anthony DiPierro wrote:

>Also, the phrasing "no longer publishing it" implies that Wikimedia at
>one time *did* publish it.  But that's most likely not true.
>
I factually disagree with that.  If the material was there for even a
few minutes it was published by Wikimedia, but that alone does not
determine the case.  What happened when Wikimedia became aware that the
material was there is far more important.

Ec


body:
geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote: On 4/22/06, Philip Welch  wrote:
> On Apr 20, 2006, at 2:53 PM, Kelly Martin wrote:
>
> > No, we don't.  50% of admin actions in March 2006 were performed by 29
> > of our nearly 900 admins; 90% by 170.  We could probably lose 500
> > admins without any real impact on our ability to get administrative
> > work done.  Note also that sending articles to AfD or prod doesn't
> > require an admin.
>
> Here's an interesting question: assuming those statistics are the
> same each month, is it the same 29 admins each month, or does it turn
> over? Some months/days I really dig into CSD and PROD backlog, other
> months/days I'm too busy with real life to devote that much time.

>The top group are probably those killing pictures.

--
geni

What do you mean, "Killing pictures"....?  Massive image deletions...?- Zero
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subject: [WikiEN-l] [[WP:NOT EVIL]]

body:
Hoo boy. The wikipedia haters will be all over that policy. If said document proceeds to become a guideline, expect many cases of vandalism. I agree with the spirit of what's being attempted here, though.

Philip Welch <wikipedia at philwelch.net> wrote: On Apr 22, 2006, at 1:50 AM, herostratus at comcast.net wrote:

> An proposal that might slightly reduce the need for out-of-process
> actions (e.g., Brian Peppers, Lolicon pic):
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:NOT_evil

Interesting, I'll have to look at it. I have to ask--is this a
prelude to being bought out by Google? ;)

--
Philip L. Welch
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Philwelch

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subject: [WikiEN-l] Wheel warring

body:
On Apr 22, 2006, at 12:54 PM, Steve Bennett wrote:

>> But X's block is clearly dissputed. Thus the status quo is no block.
>> Wikipedia defults to doing nothing.
>
> We should probably keep this discussion general, about admin actions
> in general. What if X's action was an unblock, for example? Or a page
> unprotect...

An unblock or unprotect cannot exist without a block or protect.
Unblocks and unprotects are by definition reversions.

--
Philip L. Welch
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Philwelch


from_name: John Tex

subject:
[WikiEN-l] 2 Questions for Jimbo about WP:OFFICE and things that
	aren't labeled WP:OFFICE.

body:
JimboWales said:
>Since WP:OFFICE is done publicly and under intense scrutiny from the
>community and the external world, I hardly see any need for a special
>narrow committee to be specifically tasked with overseeing it.

It seems that this was not true in this particular case.  Danny did not add
the WP:OFFICE tag.  There was every indication that it was not an office
action.  If it was a WP:OFFICE action, why did Danny not tag it as such?

>What should people do when they see a WP:OFFICE action?  Treat it as a
>call for attention from the absolute best within ourselves, the absolute
>best within our community.

That makes perfect sense but again there was originally no indication this
was a WP:OFFICE action.  So, the question I think many of us want answered
is, "What should people do when they see something appears to NOT be an
office action"?

Johntex


from_name: Daniel P. B. Smith

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Wikipedia's two kinds of material: "derivative/compiled"
	and "original/group-authored."

body:
Wikipedia currently contains two different kinds of material.

a) "Derivative/compiled." (Accurate and verifiable, but... boring).
The developers of these articles act as editors, not as authors. This
is material that is produced by synthesisizing, paraphrasing, and
organizing published material from reliable sources. Ideally, those
sources are cited. When they are, the articles are accurate and
reliable. Editors play some creative role in synthesis, presentation,
and deciding which facts are important.

Some of the best examples of this kind of article--not the only ones,
but reasonably pure illustrations of what I mean--are those that are
produced by continously following unfolding news stories; for
example, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-invasion_Iraq%2C_2003?2006.

In theory, according to the verifiability policy, these are the only
articles Wikipedia should contain.

b) "Original/group-authored." The developers of these articles act as
authors, not as editors. The result is an article that is _mostly_
written off-the-top-of-the-head from the personal knowledge of
editors. When the process works, the community of editors is able to
establish a meritocratic social pecking order in which the most
knowledgeable manage to convince the less knowledgeable to respect
their authority, and material that can muster group consensus is
likely to be quite reliable _though unsourced_. (Valid _material_
does not "float to the top." In a social group, the most
knowledgeable editors _may_ "float to the top.")

In theory, Wikipedia should not contain any "original/group-authored"
articles. They do not meet the verifiability policy, and no reader
can be sure about the facts in them.

On the other hand category "B" is where you find some of the material
that can be found "only in Wikipedia," covering subject areas that
aren't covered by other encyclopedias; you find some of the freshest
and most interesting material, and some authoritative-SOUNDING and
plausible answers to questions that are hard to answer elsewhere.

Should we create a formal distinction between these two kinds of
material? Label them separately? Have different policies coverning them?


from_name: slimvirgin at gmail.com

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Wikipedia's two kinds of material:
	"derivative/compiled" and "original/group-authored."

body:
On 4/22/06, Daniel P. B. Smith <wikipedia2006 at dpbsmith.com> wrote:
> In theory, Wikipedia should not contain any "original/group-authored"
> articles. They do not meet the verifiability policy, and no reader
> can be sure about the facts in them.
>
> On the other hand category "B" is where you find some of the material
> that can be found "only in Wikipedia," ...
>
> Should we create a formal distinction between these two kinds of
> material? Label them separately? Have different policies coverning them?
>
>
What would the quality-control mechanism be?

Sarah


from_name: SJ

subject: [WikiEN-l] TONIGHT : New Haven meetup, Richter's, 9 PM

body:
Dear all,

A few Wikipedians are at the "Access to Knowledge" conference @ Yale
this weekend, and we're meeting at Richter's tonight for drinks after
dinner, ca. 9 PM.

Come join us!  If you need directions, &c, you can reach me at (617)  529 4266.

-- SJ


from_name: Anthere

subject: [Foundation-l] CheckUser (thoughts)

body:
The more I think about it, the more I wonder if we did not make entirely
a mistake (me definitly included)

History of checkuser (please take a seat and have a tea, it will be long)

1) originally, Brion took care of ip checking upon requests. He did the
checks apparently only when he knew the one asking (=trusted). It was
done directly in the database (so, required developer status and meant
no log of checks)

2) when requests became more numerous, Tim Starling and perhaps others
started to help

3) came a moment when not only requests were too numerous (and
developers probably tired of doing this), but on top, some editors had
the developer status only to make ip checks (I understood it was the
case of Taw at least). There was apparently a will to clean up who had
access, and to limit it to those who were *really* developing

At this point, it was largely admitted that the job was the one of a
developer. A *technical* job. Though I know at least one person had
access to the db last summer or fall to do this and is not to my
knowledge a developer (Elian, can you confirm this ?)

4) Tim developped the tool. Apparently, the first to have access to it
were Taw and David. Both developers. All was fine.

5) This is the moment where it slipped.
First David started saying that more people would be needed for the
english wikipedia checks. Requests generally came from the arbcom quite
naturally. Without the tool, the arbcom would have asked Brion or Tim to
do the checks. With the tool, it was quite a natural direction.... to
request access for the arbcom members. And here was the first mistake !

On top, other languages (who were previously asking Brion or Tim, and
had no more developers available to do this at that moment) started
asking for access. And what was insisted upon was the "confidentiality"
side, much more than the "technicality" side. Second mistake.

But quite clearly.... the technical consideration is just as important
than the confidentiality consideration.

I plead guilty for part of this. I also think the arbcom of last summer
has a responsability in this, since it was asking for the arbcom to have
access, regardless of technical ability of its members. And for what is
worth, I think Jimbo also has a responsability in this, since he himself
decided all english arbcom members would have access.

Then, there was a third mistake I think (it is not an accusation, just
an analysis). It was to make a tool dividing projects and languages.
Originally, we had a common set of volunteers to help us all. And this
was good. I am pretty sure some people did not know Brion intimately
enough to *trust* him, but they were told he was fine by people they
trusted, and they went to ask him with no fear. And Jimbo had no fear
either.

Now, people have checkuser status only on one project/one language. Just
as if Brion had help ip checking on the french wiktionary, whilst Tim
was dedicated to the english wikipedia and Taw to the polish wikibooks.
It makes NO sense whatsoever. The *only* unigue advantage of the current
system is to understand the language of the project the checkuser make
the job.

And as a result of this mix-up... because of the need to "trust" the
checkuser, we have zizanie (does that exist in english ?). We have
internal fight and rancor).

The small languages are complaining they are left aside

The non-wikipedia projects are complaining they are left aside

The stewards are complaining they do not have the technical ability to
do this

And the checkusers with the technical ability... pretty much offer to
help anyone who needs help.

What that suggest me is this

We should not have checkusers with the tool access on a one project/one
language, but a POOL of COMMON checkusers. Those should all have good
technical abilities. Those would have access everywhere. They would be
listed on meta with their language ability. The biggest projects would
be used to always ask to their favorites. The small languages will try
to find the one with a basic knowledge of their language if they wish.

But all in all, checkusers should be a common good, just as our
developers right now are (and, hell, just as your board members are).

Ant


subject: [Foundation-l] CheckUser (thoughts)


from_name: Gallagher Mark George

subject: [WikiEN-l] Indefinite block and desysopping by User:Danny

body:
G'day BorgHunter,

> maru dubshinki wrote:
>
> >We shouldn't examine that data, however. Very bad precedent, and poor
> >for privacy, especially since we aren't dealing with out-and-out
> >vandals here, but merely critics.
> >
> But should critics of Wikipedia be admins of Wikipedia? I don't
> believe
> so. However, I suppose it's up to Jimbo and the Board if they want
> to
> expend the energy to look into it. As for privacy...it's not
> against the
> privacy policy, and besides which, I'm not sure that's an invasion
> of
> privacy anyway. You're sending data to the Wikimedia servers every
> time
> you visit a page, and that info is logged, and you (should) know
> that. I
> have no problems with the devs looking through page access logs,
> myself.

Be careful with "critics of Wikipedia".  *I'm* a critic of Wikipedia.  So are many of the people who post to this list, chat on IRC, or discuss ways to improve certain areas on-site.

There's a difference between "person who criticises Wikipedia" and "person who tries to harm Wikipedia".

Cheers,

--
Mark Gallagher


from_name: Essjay

subject: [Foundation-l] CheckUser (thoughts)

body:
Kelly Martin wrote:
> On 4/22/06, Anthere <Anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>> And the checkusers with the technical ability... pretty much offer to
>> help anyone who needs help.
>>
>
> I can't speak for all 59 people who have CheckUser access, but I must
> state that I don't "help any one who needs help".  The culture on
> enwiki regarding CheckUser is to be pretty stingy about its use, and
> we don't use it without demonstrated good cause.  I think we reject
> about 90% of requests.
>
> I am much more likely to accept a request if it comes from someone I
> know to be reliable.  Note that this does not mean all admins, as I
> don't know all admins to be reliable.  Anybody else has to convince me
> that there is a basis for suspicion.
>
>
I agree here; we tend to be careful with what requests we run. I think,
however, that Anthere was referring to some of our recent comments,
rather than our proclivity to run particular requests; that is, Kelly &
I have been saying "We'd be happy to do checks for other wikis if we had
access to do them," and Anthere's comment is in relation to this, that
we are willing to help any other project that needs us if given access.
>> We should not have checkusers with the tool access on a one project/one
>> language, but a POOL of COMMON checkusers. Those should all have good
>> technical abilities. Those would have access everywhere. They would be
>> listed on meta with their language ability. The biggest projects would
>> be used to always ask to their favorites. The small languages will try
>> to find the one with a basic knowledge of their language if they wish.
>>
>
> I think this is fundamentally a good idea, although I also think that
> the appointment of CheckUsers should come down from the Foundation,
> not up from member wikis; at the very least, every appointment should
> must also be approved by the Foundation or by some body set up by the
> Foundation for that purpose.
I don't have a problem with requests coming from Arbitration Committees;
I think that qualifies as a "body set up by the Foundation" and the
current policy would qualify AC's as "for that purpose." I don't think
the Board has the time to handle all requests; as I understand it, they
don't even oversee the creation of new developers, but rather leave that
to the existing root-level developers en banc.
> And the Foundation absolutely must be in
> possession of identifying information for each and every CheckUser:
> real name, location, email address, preferably other means of contact.
>
Obviously, something I'd disagree with, being rather committed to not
ending up with my personal information on an attack site (as happened to
a good friend of mine from Wikipedia this past week), nor do I want my
wiki contributions to end up on my employer's desk (as also happened to
my friend, and is the reason he is no longer a Wikipedian).  If it comes
down to having to submit to losing my career or keep working on this
project, as much as I love Wikimedia, and as dedicated as I am to it,
I'm afraid I'll have to go. I just can't afford to lose everything I've
spent my life obtaining in order to chase sockpuppets, nor, considering
some of the mentally unstable individuals we attract, do I wish to put
my life and the lives of people I love in danger. As long as I can help
this project without having to put my life or career in jeopardy, I'm
more than willing to do it, but the day I have to say "My life's work
and indeed my life itself is less important than Wikipedia" is the day I
need to get out of it entirely. I'd venture to guess that there are a
significant number of other users who feel the same way.

Essjay

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Essjay
Wikipedia:The Free Encyclopedia
http://www.wikipedia.org/


subject: [Foundation-l] CheckUser (thoughts)


subject: [WikiEN-l] Wheel warring

body:
On Apr 22, 2006, at 1:35 PM, Steve Bennett wrote:

>> An unblock or unprotect cannot exist without a block or protect.
>> Unblocks and unprotects are by definition reversions.
>
> Hmm. Admin A protects a page then forgets about it. Two weeks later,
> Admin B notices the error and unprotects it. Admin C quickly jumps on
> him, and reprotects it. You're not going to argue that B is at fault,
> while C is simply restoring order in the force, are you...

I'm only arguing that Admin B is, in fact, reverting an
administrative action.

--
Philip L. Welch
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Philwelch


subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikitruth

body:
Tony Sidaway wrote:

>On 4/20/06, Pete Bartlett <pcb21 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>
>>I believe them when they say they are pro-Wikipedia.
>>
>>
>That's a tad unbelievable.  Have you actually *looked* at the content
>of the site?  They're blatant trolls just dripping with the most
>poisonous malice, and they boast about their claimed abuse of
>administrator powers to put up copyright infringing and defamatory
>content that has been removed from the main site.
>
A person who makes an accusation of malice can leave himself open to the
same charge.

If they infringe copyrigh or engage in defamation they're on their own
if they have to defend themselves in court.  Republishing copyvio
material is not a violation of GFDL since GFDL could not apply to the
original short-lived copyvio.  The original writer may have a copyright
in the defamatory material, but would probably be wise not to insist on
his copyrights.

Ec


subject: [Foundation-l] CheckUser (thoughts)

body:
On 4/22/06, Anthere <Anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:

> We should not have checkusers with the tool access on a one project/one
> language, but a POOL of COMMON checkusers. Those should all have good
> technical abilities. Those would have access everywhere. They would be
> listed on meta with their language ability. The biggest projects would
> be used to always ask to their favorites. The small languages will try
> to find the one with a basic knowledge of their language if they wish.
>
> But all in all, checkusers should be a common good, just as our
> developers right now are (and, hell, just as your board members are).
>
> Ant
>
I agree with this; making checkuser a global permission would be
absolutely fine with me.

Jesse Martin wrote:
> I agree with this proposal.
>
> The smaller wikis cannot benefit from checks because there are far too few
> users with global CheckUser access; on the other hand, they cannot have
> local checks because their candidates are unknown to and not trusted by the
> wider community. Local CheckUser access furthermore causes previously
> discussed confidentiality problems, since the number of users required would
> be disproportionately high in order to serve every project in need.
>
> Having a relatively small number of users with global CheckUser access,
> perhaps combined with the proposed 'Guest' CheckUser process, will much
> better serve a middle ground between access and confidentiality. These users
> would probably be most active on projects they participate most in, serving
> as the de facto local CheckUser agents. Projects without such local agents
> would likely still be forced to wait, but the larger number of CheckUser
> agents may help alleviate waiting times on the Meta request page.
>
>
I can't speak for other checkers, I can only speak for myself, but I
guarantee that I will not make any project wait an undue amount of time
(I don't consider 24 hours or so to be undue, unless it is an absolute
emergency [e.g., a mass vandal attack that needs checkuser to pull the
IP and rangeblock]; even checkusers have to venture into the offline
world once in a while :-D ).

However, I can say that the amount of time you wait will be dramatically
reduced by pointing out your request somewhere I look frequently, i.e.,
my en.wiki talk page, email, or on IRC. I check my meta watchlist once,
maybe twice a day, because there just isn't enough activity on Meta to
require checking it every fifteen minutes. I check my en.wiki talk page
whenever the little bar pops up on my page; I never ignore it (as it
drives me crazy until I do check it. I get an alert whenever I get a new
email, and a new private message forces itself to the front of my
screen. My point: Mediums that notify me of new activity immediately get
checked more frequently.

 As I understand it, requests are made and will continue to be made on a
page on Meta; rather than expecting stewards or checkusers to put the
page on autorefresh and check it every ten seconds, it would be helpful
for users who want a check done right away to call our attention to it.
I think others can testify that whenever they point a request out to me
directly, rather than just waiting for the next time someone checks the
page, I get it taken care of right away; I think this is a pretty
standard practice, really: pointing a developer to the bugzilla report
you filed gets it noticed more quickly, pointing a steward to your
permissions request gets it done right away, etc.

Essjay

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Essjay
Wikipedia:The Free Encyclopedia
http://www.wikipedia.org/


subject: [Foundation-l] CheckUser (thoughts)


from_name: Jay R. Ashworth

subject: [Wikitech-l] Dumps

references:
<BAY24-DAV4ED55ACDB804A2A8DB777B6B80@phx.gbl>
	<e2dp4q$rke$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<BAY24-DAV86A64672DC80BB3D687AAB6B80@phx.gbl>

body:
On Sat, Apr 22, 2006 at 08:23:19PM +0200, trevor wrote:
> I would someone to install the dumps on my site. Basically I would like to
> feature an encyclopaedia on my site. I would of course give all the credit
> to Wikimedia. You are probably saying why not just link to them but this
> would give my site a nice feature. I am a new site and looking for new
> features to make my site be worthwhile for companies to advertise on. Any
> improvements will be paid using paypal.

Not being officially associated with WMF at all; I'm probably the best
person to tell you that you're out of your fool mind.

Explaining to you why that is is such a large task that I almost
despair of attempting it.  But, short version: that's like saying "I'd
like to put a 900 horse Indy engine in my mini-pickup, because I think
I could haul a bigger trailer that way".

Cheers,
-- jra
--
Jay R. Ashworth                                                jra at baylink.com
Designer                          Baylink                             RFC 2100
Ashworth & Associates        The Things I Think                        '87 e24
St Petersburg FL USA      http://baylink.pitas.com             +1 727 647 1274

     A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text.
     Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?

     A: Top-posting.
     Q: What is the most annoying thing on Usenet and in e-mail?


from_name: James D. Forrester

subject: [Foundation-l] CheckUser (thoughts)

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

Anthere wrote:

[Snip "CheckUser is a bit of a mess"]

> I plead guilty for part of this.

I don't think that it's fair to blame anyone in particular for a
possibly non-optimal situation; certainly, what with your sterling work
getting an agreeable, if not perfect, policy in place, we would have
been in a much worse position without you. :-)

> I also think the arbcom of last summer
> has a responsability in this, since it was asking for the arbcom to have
> access, regardless of technical ability of its members.

I disagree with this; we said that we had one or two members who were
(far) more than sufficiently expert to be able to carry out the
analysis, and that it would be more sensible to have them carry it out
directly, rather than via the developers in the scant few moments they
weren't busy doing their fantastic work running the sites.

> And for what is
> worth, I think Jimbo also has a responsability in this, since he himself
> decided all english arbcom members would have access.

Except, err, we don't all have access; we chose who on our project has
both a sufficient (very great) level of trust, and also sufficient
technical expertise (or the willingness and aptitude to improve their
skills in this area a little). For example, I have elected not to have
access to the tool (though more for reasons of time).

> Then, there was a third mistake I think (it is not an accusation, just
> an analysis). It was to make a tool dividing projects and languages.
> Originally, we had a common set of volunteers to help us all. And this
> was good. I am pretty sure some people did not know Brion intimately
> enough to *trust* him, but they were told he was fine by people they
> trusted, and they went to ask him with no fear. And Jimbo had no fear
> either.
>
> Now, people have checkuser status only on one project/one language. Just
> as if Brion had help ip checking on the french wiktionary, whilst Tim
> was dedicated to the english wikipedia and Taw to the polish wikibooks.
> It makes NO sense whatsoever. The *only* unigue advantage of the current
> system is to understand the language of the project the checkuser make
> the job.

I agree, this is indeed a problem.

[Snip]

> What that suggest me is this
>
> We should not have checkusers with the tool access on a one project/one
> language, but a POOL of COMMON checkusers. Those should all have good
> technical abilities. Those would have access everywhere. They would be
> listed on meta with their language ability. The biggest projects would
> be used to always ask to their favorites. The small languages will try
> to find the one with a basic knowledge of their language if they wish.
>
> But all in all, checkusers should be a common good, just as our
> developers right now are (and, hell, just as your board members are).

I think that this solution has some merit, but there exists the tricky
problem of language - if one does not read Russian, then no matter how
accurate and wide one's technical knowledge is, there is no point being
asked to carry out CheckUser checks on people. It isn't merely about
technical proficiency, but about judgement of editing patterns, of
style, and of content. This is something that is definitely
language-specific.

Yours sincerely,
- --
James D. Forrester
Wikimedia : [[W:en:User:Jdforrester|James F.]]
E-Mail    : james at jdforrester.org
IM (MSN)  : jamesdforrester at hotmail.com
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subject: [Foundation-l] CheckUser (thoughts)


from_name: Will (Zsinj) Bumgarner

body:
Pete Bartlett wrote:

>Fair use quote follows:
>
>"Empire: I looked you up on Wikipedia...
> McKellan: I don't understand Wikipedia. I've looked myself up on it and it's thoroughly objectionable. It's just taken, as the basis of my career, an article that was written about five years ago, and why someone doesn't correct it.. is that how it's done?
> Empire: Pretty much. If you want to change something, you can go on and correct it yourself.
> McKellan: Oh... I suppose if you wanted to know someone's dates, or where they were born, it would be quite useful."

What I don't understand is when people look themselves up and see
erroneous information, they don't just go and fix it. It's as if they
have something to prove by saying "Wikipedia sucks" instead of
contributing to the effort and making Wikipedia better.

--Zsinj


from_name: cwarner

subject: [WikiEN-l] Blocked by Administrator (abuse of power)

body:
I've been blocked by an Administrator who is clearly abusing his
administrative rules in regards to 3RR. He's reverted a change I've made
in regards to the Lou Dobbs article located here
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lou_Dobbs please also see the following
discussion
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Lou_Dobbs#Removed_Dobbswatch.com_.26_Opinion_Journal.

He claims there is concensus; there is none. The article section in
question has been tagged with the NPOV Dispute tag and submitted for a
request for arbitration here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:RFAR

I've followed the guidelines of Wikipedia and have been banned
subsequently for doing so. Through out this process I have been
threatened numerous times for following the guidelines set forth by
Wikipedia policy.

This hasn't gone without notice as others have said the same thing (see
discussion) as well as having my reverts, reverted by parties who took
the time to read the discussion (see diffs).

I'm posting here as i've been blocked and protocol has allowed me this
option. I will exhaust every avenue within Wikipedia guidelines until
they are no more to exhaust.

Administrators should not abuse their power and that is exactly what is
taking place here. This is my public notice of such activity.

Thank you,
Christopher Warner


from_name: Pete Bartlett

body:
 ----- Original Message ----
From: Steve Bennett

>On 22/04/06, MacGyverMagic/Mgm  wrote:
>> As for unbalanced: I still have no idea what people's fascination is
>> with celeb's sexuality. Anything more than a line unbalances an
>> article. Say what their sexuality is if relevant, put in a source and
>> go on. We don't need entire sections on the subject unless the subject
>> himself has frequently discussed it.
 >
>I agree. I have my own ideas why such paragraphs get written but I'll
>keep them to myself. In general, unless you can honestly start the
>paragraph with "X's sexuality has been fiercely debated", then
>anything beyond "According to some biographers, X was gay" is probably
>too much.
 >
>Steve

 I fear you are barking up Tom Cruise's tree rather
than Sir Ian McKellan's! The latter has been a high-profile campaigner
for gay rights - he was a co-founder of Stonewall for instance. So some
talk of that in his article is right and proper.

Having said that, up until about a month ago the article came almost
exclusively from an interview in a gay magazine, so the
whole feel of the article came through a "pink filter" that was misleading
in a general encyclopedia. On top of that it was way out of date. That is my
guess for what he was finding objectionable.

Having said *that*, I now realise the article has already been getting
improvements over the last few weeks, presumably since the Empire
interview was done.

Pete


from_name: Phil Sandifer

subject: [WikiEN-l] Who wins

references:
<mailman.1339.1145570112.3721.wikien-l@Wikipedia.org>
	<20060421063035.82267.qmail@web32115.mail.mud.yahoo.com>
	<b05h42ta5rnubtkcabp6npjv40pmlj9d5u@4ax.com>

body:
On Apr 21, 2006, at 4:13 AM, Guy Chapman aka JzG wrote:

> On Thu, 20 Apr 2006 23:30:35 -0700 (PDT), you wrote:
>
>>  Umm... No? What's so bad about it? Wikipedia has an article
>> saying two
>> blogs contain a sentence "Fred is Gay" and the reader draws the
>> inference
>> that the owner of those blogs is seriously retarded. Big deal.
>
> Yes, big deal.  Ask the lawyers.
> Guy (JzG)
> --

We don't need WP:V to be our sole line of protection against this,
though, and we certainly don't need to behave stupidly in relation to
other sources over this.

The problem with libelous crap is not that, prior to Siegenthaler, we
allowed it. It is that prior to Siegenthaler and continuing to the
present, we have been insufficiently skilled at catching it and
fixing it. We know and have always known what libelous crap looks
like. We do not need to try to make a definition of verifiability
that a trained monkey could follow - especially not when that
definition is wrong.

We have always had the policy of not reporting on trivial crap in
articles. That your hypothetical "Fred is Gay" bloggers insist on its
content in Wikipedia is neither here nor there. We look at it, we see
that it is not, in fact, of sufficient widespread interest to be
worth reporting, we remove it. If they are dicks about it, we ban
them. The end. We do not need to change policies to say that we can
remove it - we have always and will always have the right to make any
changes we want to articles to improve them.

I will say again: The problems we have with libelous materials are
not problems with our policies - they were fine before, and are
substantially less fine now than they were a year ago.

-Phil


body:
On Apr 22, 2006, at 2:07 PM, Will (Zsinj) Bumgarner wrote:

> Pete Bartlett wrote:
>
>> Fair use quote follows:
>>
>> "Empire: I looked you up on Wikipedia...
>> McKellan: I don't understand Wikipedia. I've looked myself up on
>> it and it's thoroughly objectionable. It's just taken, as the
>> basis of my career, an article that was written about five years
>> ago, and why someone doesn't correct it.. is that how it's done?
>> Empire: Pretty much. If you want to change something, you can go
>> on and correct it yourself.
>> McKellan: Oh... I suppose if you wanted to know someone's dates,
>> or where they were born, it would be quite useful."
>
> What I don't understand is when people look themselves up and see
> erroneous information, they don't just go and fix it. It's as if they
> have something to prove by saying "Wikipedia sucks" instead of
> contributing to the effort and making Wikipedia better.

It is not your responsibility to avoid having shitty things said
about you on a major website.

-Phil


from_name: Kelly Martin

subject: [WikiEN-l] Wheel warring

body:
On 4/22/06, Philip Welch <wikipedia at philwelch.net> wrote:
> Kelly, I'm glad to see you come around to this position, but I hope
> you are aware that Wikipedia doesn't set policy by your say-so :)

I realize that some people refuse to see wisdom when confronted with it. :)

Kelly


body:
On 4/22/06, Philip Welch <wikipedia at philwelch.net> wrote:
> Here's an interesting question: assuming those statistics are the
> same each month, is it the same 29 admins each month, or does it turn
> over?

It obviously does vary from month to month, but there are some people
who are consistently in the top 25.  I'm supposedly working on some
stuff to report this more nicely, but as my toolserver account expires
on May 1 and has not been reviewed, I probably won't actually do it.

Kelly


body:
On Apr 22, 2006, at 3:11 PM, Philip Welch wrote:
>
> Amen to that. Sadly (and to name names), a certain administrator
> whose name begins with "T" and ends with "ony Sidaway" has, in the
> past, been allowed to (and even congratulated for) reverting other
> administrators' actions multiple times while the ruling culture
> derides any criticism of this as "lynching".

Congratulations! Your skill at trolling has increased!
Congratulations! Your skill at thread derailment has increased!
Congratulations! Your skill at cliched personal attacks has increased!
Congratulations! You are now a level 2 Wiki-EN user!

-Phil


from_name: TGGG85 at aol.com

body:
Hey Chris! You might be glad that you are not alone in all of the nonsense. I
was blocked by an Administrator who accused me of VANDALISM without showing
any proof. What kind of drugs are these people taking? This is an example of
what happens when the wrong people are entrusted with power. They become petty
tyrants.
   Most of the Administrators are fair people. There are some who abuse their
priviliege of power and it appears that you have encountered one. So, my
advice is to persist with your protest and find some allies. You have found one in
me.


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: sannse

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Indefinite block and desysopping by User:Danny

body:
Anthere wrote:
> [...]

I think the reaction of the WP:Office was too bold. Erik is a
> long time serious editor. Not a wild kid. He is accessible to reason.
> Blocking, even for 2 hours (and needless to say for indefinite time) is
> not suitable without discussion first. Unsysoping with no discussion
> either is just plain not okay.
>
> I appreciate that the whole issue was very stressing for Danny, hence
> his reaction. Danny is directly in contact with critical situations,
> which is difficult for him.
>
> Nevertheless, Danny, you appear as the "voice" of the Foundation on
> en.wiki, so you should be careful to act as much as possible as the
> members of the Foundation would act.
>
> It would be *talking*.
>
>
> Anthere

Talking of talking... I wonder whether you have talked to Danny and the
others involved in this to find out whether he /did/ talk to people
before blocking Erik?  By the reasoning above that seems a reasonable
thing to do before condemning him for not doing so.  Baring in mind that
he might feel that those conversations were confidential and that he is
obliged not to pass on details of course.

--sannse


from_name: Fred Bauder

subject: [WikiEN-l] [[WP:NOT EVIL]]

body:
Yes indeed, a sanitized version must be worked up for distribution in
Mainland China. Their national slogan, "Is it helpful; is it kind".

Fred

On Apr 22, 2006, at 1:38 PM, Philip Welch wrote:

> On Apr 22, 2006, at 1:50 AM, herostratus at comcast.net wrote:
>
>
>> An proposal that might slightly reduce the need for out-of-process
>> actions (e.g., Brian Peppers, Lolicon pic):
>>
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:NOT_evil
>>
>
> Interesting, I'll have to look at it. I have to ask--is this a
> prelude to being bought out by Google? ;)
>
> --
> Philip L. Welch
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Philwelch
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> 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: ben

subject: [Wikitech-l] Faulty breaker replaced

body:
On Apr 22, 2006, at 6:14 AM, Adrian wrote:

> Shouldn't it have been replaced the first time?

It was given a clean bill of health by the manufacturer after the
first incident.

bw.


from_name: maru dubshinki

body:
On 4/22/06, Zero <megamanzero521 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> I'm not quite certain. If I recall, is there not a rule that restricts from a notable person from making edits to thier own page...?

Guideline, pretty sure.

~maru


body:
I think the external links critical of Lou Dobbs which you repeatedly
removed are quite appropriate. They are a bit dated, but are sharp
criticisms of Lou Dobbs from substantial sources. You were relying
too much on detailed parsing of a Wikipedia guideline and edit
warring over it. I love Lou Dobbs and agree with him about illegal
immigration and many other things, but he is very much an
outrageously point of view reporter;  our article needs a few links
which sharply criticize him.

Fred

On Apr 22, 2006, at 12:32 PM, cwarner wrote:

> I've been blocked by an Administrator who is clearly abusing his
> administrative rules in regards to 3RR. He's reverted a change I've
> made
> in regards to the Lou Dobbs article located here
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lou_Dobbs please also see the following
> discussion
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Lou_Dobbs#Removed_Dobbswatch.com_.
> 26_Opinion_Journal.
>
> He claims there is concensus; there is none. The article section in
> question has been tagged with the NPOV Dispute tag and submitted for a
> request for arbitration here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:RFAR
>
> I've followed the guidelines of Wikipedia and have been banned
> subsequently for doing so. Through out this process I have been
> threatened numerous times for following the guidelines set forth by
> Wikipedia policy.
>
> This hasn't gone without notice as others have said the same thing
> (see
> discussion) as well as having my reverts, reverted by parties who took
> the time to read the discussion (see diffs).
>
> I'm posting here as i've been blocked and protocol has allowed me this
> option. I will exhaust every avenue within Wikipedia guidelines until
> they are no more to exhaust.
>
> Administrators should not abuse their power and that is exactly
> what is
> taking place here. This is my public notice of such activity.
>
> Thank you,
> Christopher Warner
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> 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: Walter van Kalken

subject:
[Foundation-l] [Wikipedia-l] Indefinite block and desysopping
 by User:Danny

body:
What I find the most mistifying up to this date is no word of "prince"
Danny himself. Shouldn't he at least have said something here. Everybody
is speculating here. But what kind of use is it if Danny keeps being
protected no matter what he does. and if he keeps being allowed to
decide singlehandedly like over my stewardship which he took under cover
of temporary destewardship and it will be debated. Now he refuses any
debate about it and he told me : If it is up to me you never ebcome
steward because you are an idiot.
Danny is acting solitary more and more and is abusing his position.

Waerth/Walter


from_name: Gerard Meijssen

subject: [Wikitech-l] Import rights

body:
Dominik Bach wrote:
> A new ripuarian Wikipedia has been set up on ksh.wikipedia.org. The testwiki with 9000+ pages should be transferred from wikoelsch.dergruenepunk.de and have already been exported from there. Purodha has been given temporary Bureaucrat status on ksh.wikipedia.org. However, import priviliges are disabled. How can these be activated? This Wikipedia has been for a month without articles, and we really want to hurry up to prevent a big mess, which would occur when new articles are created and then overwritten by the imported ones. Thank you for your help, Dominik
>
Hoi,
The one thing that astonishes me is that the Ripuarian name is used for
the ksh acronym. Given that ksh is K?lsch as you can verify here:
http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=ksh I wonder why you
use the Ripuarian name. Ripuarian is considered to be a higher level
linguistically then K?lsch, it means that there cannot be
standardisation within Ripuarian. If in effect ksh is K?lsch, then I am
fine with it but in that case please do not use the word Ripuarian.
Thanks,
   GerardM


from_name: Tony Bruguier

subject: [Foundation-l] Optional advertisement on wikipedia

body:
Hi,

I'm new to this list, so please forgive me if I mess up. There's been
some talk about advertisement on wikipedia or not. Why not make it
optional, so that each user decides if he/she wants to see the
advertisement? That way, users can "support" wikipedia or not. I don't
think that'd be a sell out.

Tony
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Bruguiea


from_name: Anthere

subject: [Foundation-l] CheckUser (thoughts)

body:
James D. Forrester wrote:
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
>
> Anthere wrote:
>
> [Snip "CheckUser is a bit of a mess"]
>
>
>>I plead guilty for part of this.
>
>
> I don't think that it's fair to blame anyone in particular for a
> possibly non-optimal situation;

No. The issue is absolutely not to *blame* anyone. We all tried to find
a solution at that time, and we may just not have found the best
solution. I wanted to insist that I was part of that bad choice because
I think it is more honest and because I do not want anyone jumping on
this and saying "but it is your fault, so why do you bug us today ?".
We did what we thought best. It is worth analysing (imho) where and why
we chose directions which were not the best so that we can now modify this.

>>What that suggest me is this
>>
>>We should not have checkusers with the tool access on a one project/one
>>language, but a POOL of COMMON checkusers. Those should all have good
>>technical abilities. Those would have access everywhere. They would be
>>listed on meta with their language ability. The biggest projects would
>>be used to always ask to their favorites. The small languages will try
>>to find the one with a basic knowledge of their language if they wish.
>>
>>But all in all, checkusers should be a common good, just as our
>>developers right now are (and, hell, just as your board members are).
>
>
> I think that this solution has some merit, but there exists the tricky
> problem of language - if one does not read Russian, then no matter how
> accurate and wide one's technical knowledge is, there is no point being
> asked to carry out CheckUser checks on people. It isn't merely about
> technical proficiency, but about judgement of editing patterns, of
> style, and of content. This is something that is definitely
> language-specific.
>
> Yours sincerely,
> - --
> James D. Forrester

Yup. But this is no different of what developers were doing for us
before. For example, when Tim Starling made a check for us, he was not
alone. It was rather an exchange where userA explained the issue, Tim
gave a couple of answers, depending on the answers userA explored and
possibly ask more information from Tim.

It is interesting though, that you give the example of a russian
problem. We currently have standing in the board queue on OTRS, a
request from a russian editor, asking that we investigate the case of a
sysop abuse over there. The request travelled back and fro between the
info en queue and the board queue. And since no one on either queue
reads russian... well nothing happens. The *good* solution would be to
know a trusted russian editor, who could be asked to give information.

Similarly, the investigation could be carried by a team made of the
checkuser and a trusted russian editor.

I absolutely agree that there is a language issue. Which suggests that
we should do our best to have at least one russian-speaking checkuser.
But would it be more reasonable to have one russian-speaking checkuser
with overall activity over all russian-speaking projects plus the
serbian ones because he would also speak serbian

or one checkuser in ru.wikipedia, one in ru.wikibooks, one in
ru.wiktionary, one in sr.wikipedia etc...

ant


subject: [Foundation-l] CheckUser (thoughts)


from_name: Anthony DiPierro

body:
On 4/22/06, Ilmari Karonen <nospam at vyznev.net> wrote:
> Steve Bennett wrote:
> > There are lots of good reasons not to put your hand up to become an
> > administrator. But to be fair, this was a really exceptional example,
> > and far from "par for the course".
>
> True, but it's a pretty scary example.  It seems to me that if it can
> happen to someone like Eloquence, it can happen to anyone (except
> _maybe_ Jimbo, I guess).  And most of us don't have Eloquence's
> reputation to back us up.
>
> --
> Ilmari Karonen

It can, of course, happen to anyone, with "it" being a desysopping and
block of a user.  Presumably if it happened to Jimbo the board would
act quickly to correct it (his business partners make up at least 4/5
of the board, with a majority holding lifetime positions, after all).
And in the case of Erik, Jimbo stepped in rather quickly to correct
it.

Anthony


from_name: Andre Engels

subject: [Foundation-l] CheckUser (thoughts)

body:
2006/4/22, Anthere <Anthere9 at yahoo.com>:

> Now, people have checkuser status only on one project/one language. Just
> as if Brion had help ip checking on the french wiktionary, whilst Tim
> was dedicated to the english wikipedia and Taw to the polish wikibooks.
> It makes NO sense whatsoever. The *only* unigue advantage of the current
> system is to understand the language of the project the checkuser make
> the job.

Not just understanding the language, also knowing the community,
including for example the background of the request. For example, I
once (before I de-sysoped myself) did a checkuser on two Dutch users A
and B, where B was believed to be a sockpuppet of A. Doing the check,
I found that B was not A, but that he was identical to some other
user.

I have chosen to report (to the sysops) about this outcome by saying
exactly the above. I did not give the actual other identity of B
(although later it came to be known through no action of mine),
because he was not involved under his other name in the dispute in
question. Someone who was not as well-versed might not know what issue
the request was about, or whether simply saying that he was a known
user would identify him, or even whether this other identity of B was
the better-known one etc.

--
Andre Engels, andreengels at gmail.com
ICQ: 6260644  --  Skype: a_engels


subject: [Foundation-l] CheckUser (thoughts)


body:
On 4/22/06, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> Anthony DiPierro wrote:
>
> >Also, the phrasing "no longer publishing it" implies that Wikimedia at
> >one time *did* publish it.  But that's most likely not true.
> >
> I factually disagree with that.  If the material was there for even a
> few minutes it was published by Wikimedia, but that alone does not
> determine the case.  What happened when Wikimedia became aware that the
> material was there is far more important.
>
> Ec

You have a right to your opinion.  But I think it's hard to justify
that position with the CDA:
"No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be
treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by
another information content provider."

Note that I'm not saying the CDA can necessarily be used as a defense
by Wikitruth.  Going back to your quote: "It would probably depend on
whether Wikimedia could simultaneously argue that (a) deleting
material -- where admins could still access it -- qualified as no
longer  publishing it and (b) Wikimedia is not responsible for the
actions of admins who obtain that material."  I would say the argument
is a) they aren't a publisher, but merely provide an interactive
computer service.

The Prodigy case is irrelevant, because the CDA was passed after that
case.  In fact, section 230 of the CDA was created in large part as a
response to the Prodigy case.  See [[Section 230 of the Communications
Decency Act]].

Anthony


from_name: Jimmy Wales

subject: [WikiEN-l] Libel chill

body:
Delirium wrote:
> Basically: Are WP:OFFICE actions supposed to always be publicly
> announced and scrutinized by the community?  It was my impression that
> they were, but some of the discussion in this set of threads has made
> the issue more murky.

WP:OFFICE should be done publicly.  I am certain that at least old time
Wikipedians would have enough of a clue to not act like jerks if we
can't explain right away what is going on.

We should be very clear about the distinction between things done under
the rubric of WP:OFFICE (which means at the moment Danny and/or Brad for
the most part although in some cases I suppose it could go further than
that) and things done by me in accordance with our longstanding
community traditions.

--
#######################################################################
#    Office: 1-727-231-0101       |  Free Culture and  Free Knowledge #
#    http://www.wikipedia.org     |     Building a free world         #
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from_name: Jakob Voss

subject:
[Foundation-l] Wiki trademark issue for ZH Wikipedia in
	mainland China

body:
Hi,

> We have found an Chinese had registered "Wiki" and "??" (in literly it
> also means "Wiki" in Chinese) as his trademarks at 2005/11/23 in mainland
> China. Since we now have WP and WN, there might be some trademark issues in
> mainland China. Do you have any advice or suggestions that we can do?

There is Trademark in China? ;-) Alawyer should point the Trademark
office to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_Wikipedia#Naming and/or
other sources (publications) to show that the name ?? is used since
long before 2005. According to the Chinese trademark law (Article 11,
paragraph 1 and Chapter V)
http://www.chinaiprlaw.com/english/laws/laws11.htm generic names are not
allowed so you have to prove that Wiki and ?? are generic names for
special kind of websites that were invented by Ward Cunningham.
Wikimedia Foundation does not have Trademark on Wiki or ?? neither
because nobody can have a trademark on this.

But I don't know any chinese lawyer. At least you can find out how to
submit a application for adjudication to the Chinese Trademark Review
and Adjudication Board. The best way is to find a chinese lawyer who has
handled such an application before and who is willing to help for free.

Greetings,
Jakob

P.S: In Germany a baker has trademark for "Wiki" for cakes since 1956
but this is ok because Wikis and cakes are different things. Sadly he
does not produce the cakes anymore,I would like to taste it :-)