from_name: Mark Bergsma

subject:
[Wikitech-l] Squid: Conversion of disk cache reads into cache
 misses when disk bandwidth is saturated

body:
Sent to a Squid developer I just had a discussion with on IRC...

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Squid: Conversion of disk cache reads into cache misses when
disk bandwidth is saturated
Date: Sun, 30 Apr 2006 14:07:29 +0200
From: Mark Bergsma <mark at ...>

Hi. As discussed on IRC, a summary:

We are having some problems efficiently using disk caches in our
Wikimedia Squid cache cluster. When the disk cache is too big, disk
cache reads can easily saturate all of the available disk bandwidth on
all disks. This makes Squid very slow as it keeps queuing up the
requests. Therefore we deploy many Squids without disk caches and have
them memory only, which results in much faster Squids (lower request
times with much shorter distribution tails), but the total hit rate suffers.

It would be neat if Squid could decide to convert a disk cache read to a
cache miss when the relevant cache_dir is overloaded. That would make
Squid more load-tolerant reduces the need for administrators to tune and
readjust disk caches for each server over time.

As Squid already does this for cache *writes*, this should be fairly
easy to implement for reads too. Let me know when you have something,
I'll be happy to test patches on a test server in our cluster. I'll
stick around on IRC too...

Thanks,

--
Mark

mark at nedworks.org


list: wikitech-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Tim Starling

subject: [Wikitech-l] Why does Article::getDB() use DB_MASTER?

body:
Brion Vibber wrote:
> Jitse Niesen wrote:
>
>>Why is DB_MASTER used instead of DB_SLAVE?
>
>
> Lagged slaves were too unreliable; you would often see the previous version
> after saving an edit.

Note that it in a typical page view, it only loads the page table row from
the master. It then tries to load the revision and text rows from a slave
using the up-to-date revision ID given by the master. If the revision is not
present, it falls back to a load from the master. The overhead from doing
this short, simple page table query to the master appears to be minimal.
Most of the other operations in Article.php are write operations, and thus
need the master connection.

-- Tim Starling


list: wikien-l

from_name: Cheney Shill

subject: [WikiEN-l] Checkuser verification errors

body:
Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote: On Sun, 30 Apr 2006 13:57:21 -0400, Katefan0 wrote:

>What's the point, really? You've already admitted you're a sock of
>Halliburton Shill. Your email address is halliburton_shill at yahoo.com.
>Exactly why are you protesting findings of that to which you've already
>admitted?

Point of information: he acknowledges that he previously edited as
Halliburton Shill, but that he no longer does - as I understand it
because the username was deemed inappropriate.  That is different.
Guy (JzG)
Thank you, JzG. That's more or less accurate.  I was actually told by admins to get a new username because Halliburton Shill would not be allowed.  I was not blocked from using Wiki, nor did I use Pro-Lick to re-vote on Halliburton Shill issues.  Everything can be more or less found here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Halliburton_Shill
But it really should be kept in mind that it has nothing to do with the checkuser errors I'm addressing here.~~~~Pro-Lick

---------------------------------
How low will we go? Check out Yahoo! Messenger?s low  PC-to-Phone call rates.


from_name: Rob Church

subject: [Wikitech-l] [MediaWiki-CVS] SVN: [13955] trunk/phase3

body:
On 30/04/06, Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com> wrote:
> robchurch at svn.leuksman.com wrote:
> > Revision: 13955
> [snip]
> > -             $wgUser = $u;
> > -             $wgUser->setCookies();
> [snip]
> > +             # Call hooks
> >               wfRunHooks( 'AddNewAccount', array( $u ) );
>
> Calling the hook here, now before $wgUser is set, caused a privacy leak for a
> few minutes. IP addresses of people registering new accounts were broadcast on
> Recent Changes and the IRC feeds until the change was reverted.
>
> I've removed the offending entries from the recentchanges tables.

Well, "oh fuck" seems like a good first response. Closely followed by,
"I've fixed this again in r13971, holding back on calling hooks until
an appropriate time. Testing with Newuserlog (which I suspect is the
reason all hell broke loose) shows it now works as expected."

On a more serious note; clearly this is a more direct cockup than I've
made so far, so I'll apologise profusely for it. If someone could
double and triple check that commit before taking it live, I'd be
extremely grateful.

Rob Church


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Filip Maljkovic

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Interface upload, how-to

body:
>
>
>What about translating things like "User talk:" and "[[Image:Foo.jpg...]]" etc (i.e. namespaces)?
>
>-- Matt
>[[sw:User:Matt Crypto]]
>
>
You cannot translate them. Well, you can, but you have to have a
developer commit the changes. Consider going to the freenode IRC channel
(#wikimedia-tech) or posting a bug report at bugzilla
(http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org).
Filip


from_name: Ryan Delaney

subject: [WikiEN-l] Blocked by Alkivar without Justification

body:
You guys have been trolled.

Ryan

On 4/30/06, Timwi <timwi at gmx.net> wrote:
>
> TGGG85 at aol.com wrote:
> > Someone unblocked me without an explanation. [...] All of this
> > nonsense alienates talented and expert writers. [...] Wikipedia is
> > getting to be a tiresome place for innovation which rubs some
> > administrators the wrong way. ENOUGH ALREADY!
>
> So, uhm... you want to be blocked again?... I don't understand this
> posting.
>
> _______________________________________________
> 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: daniwo59 at aol.com

subject: [Foundation-l] Free advertising on Wikipedia

body:
Over the past few weeks, OTRS has seen quite a few messages concerning
companies that are putting information about themselves onto Wikipedia for
advertising purposes, insisting that it is their right to do this. An article in  an
online SEO (search engine optimization) magazine described how to mine
wikipedia to get web traffic. We have had emails from such diverse groups as  talent
agencies (we will take the copyright off our own website, as long as it  is
included in Wikipedia), a Dominatrix, a vaporizer (I have no choice but to
keep inserting my links on your site so as to fend off the competitors), and
many others. In fact, this appears to be a growing trend in Wikipedia, as is
evidenced by similar phone calls to the office (I did not write the article
about my, my PR firm wrote it, and I paid them good money so you can't take it
off). Shoppingtelly.uk has written that as long as we allow links to the BBC,
they will insist on their "rights" to put links to their site on Wikipedia.

This is a worrying trend on the English Wikipedia which raises issues of
POV, notability, and verifiability. Ironically, we do not allow paid
advertising, but we are buckling when people use our site in order to get free
advertising.

I do not know the solution to this problem--several have been raised, but  in
my mind none is completely satisfactory. I am simply posting this here in the
 hope that it will elicit discussion and, perhaps, a real policy decision to
counter this worrying trend.

Danny


list: wikimedia-l


from_name: Ben McIlwain

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

daniwo59 at aol.com wrote:
>
> Over the past few weeks, OTRS has seen quite a few messages concerning
> companies that are putting information about themselves onto Wikipedia for
> advertising purposes, insisting that it is their right to do this. An article in  an
> online SEO (search engine optimization) magazine described how to mine
> wikipedia to get web traffic. We have had emails from such diverse groups as  talent
> agencies (we will take the copyright off our own website, as long as it  is
> included in Wikipedia), a Dominatrix, a vaporizer (I have no choice but to
> keep inserting my links on your site so as to fend off the competitors), and
> many others. In fact, this appears to be a growing trend in Wikipedia, as is
> evidenced by similar phone calls to the office (I did not write the article
> about my, my PR firm wrote it, and I paid them good money so you can't take it
> off). Shoppingtelly.uk has written that as long as we allow links to the BBC,
> they will insist on their "rights" to put links to their site on Wikipedia.
>
> This is a worrying trend on the English Wikipedia which raises issues of
> POV, notability, and verifiability. Ironically, we do not allow paid
> advertising, but we are buckling when people use our site in order to get free
> advertising.
>
> I do not know the solution to this problem--several have been raised, but  in
> my mind none is completely satisfactory. I am simply posting this here in the
> hope that it will elicit discussion and, perhaps, a real policy decision to
> counter this worrying trend.

One good solution is liberal usage of the spam blacklist and an
increased awareness that the spam blacklist exists.  We can shut these
guys down cold ... if anytime a spam URL is added it is acted upon and
added to the blacklist.

The problem is that the blacklist is on Metawiki, not enwiki, so
administrators such as myself can't do anything about it on our own and
have to go running to a Meta admin.  Maybe we could add some sort of
spam blacklist queue on Enwiki that is regularly viewed by meta admins?
 Or more liberally giving out meta adminship might help too.

- --
Ben McIlwain ("Cyde Weys")

~ Sub veste quisque nudus est ~
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from_name: Gregory Maxwell

body:
On 4/30/06, Ben McIlwain <cydeweys at gmail.com> wrote:
> One good solution is liberal usage of the spam blacklist and an
> increased awareness that the spam blacklist exists.  We can shut these
> guys down cold ... if anytime a spam URL is added it is acted upon and
> added to the blacklist.

This is necessary but not sufficient.

In many places our editors are asleep at the switch when it comes to
external links... once there are 20 externals on an article, no one..
not the readers, not the editors, are going to follow all of them.
Some of these articles have no regular editors, and passing editors
often don't want to anger a regular editor by removing a favorite
link... and when there are regular editors, they sometimes ignore
external additions.. additional links are a lot less cut and dry than
"penis penis penis nazi batman" vandalism.

An example,  I removed about 45 external links from [[Genealogy]] the
other day after an admin pointed out that someone needed to clean it
up. Another 45ish still remain in the external link section.  Some
were removed because they were listed 3 or more times. Some were
removed because they were just sites of advertisements with little to
no information. One obviously tried to install spyware. One was a
mirror of another site (with lots of added adsense). Others simply
required you to pay before you could determine if they had anything
useful. ...  just about all of these links (minus the spyware perhaps)
could have been easily found using google.

I probably managed to remove a few good link as well, but it was clear
that there had been almost *zero* edit oral oversight of these links.
 When we allow articles to have large lists of links without solid
editorial oversight, we are no more useful than google... and worse:
we are more subject to manipulation than the authors of the links.

It is my belief that almost every page with more than 10-20 externals
is in the same position of low to no oversight on the externals, and
many with more than 5 externals.

About 38,000 pages on enwiki have more than 10 externals, 14,000 have
more than 20. About 118,000 have more than 5.

> The problem is that the blacklist is on Metawiki, not enwiki, so
> administrators such as myself can't do anything about it on our own and
> have to go running to a Meta admin.  Maybe we could add some sort of
> spam blacklist queue on Enwiki that is regularly viewed by meta admins?
>  Or more liberally giving out meta adminship might help too.

There are many meta admins in the admin channel on IRC, I promise that
you are never far from one. :)

The problem is that the SBL isn't useful for an infinite number of
one-off spammers.


from_name: Guy Chapman aka JzG

body:
On Sun, 30 Apr 2006 13:57:21 -0400, you wrote:

>What's the point, really? You've already admitted you're a sock of
>Halliburton Shill. Your email address is halliburton_shill at yahoo.com.
>Exactly why are you protesting findings of that to which you've already
>admitted?

Point of information: he acknowledges that he previously edited as
Halliburton Shill, but that he no longer does - as I understand it
because the username was deemed inappropriate.  That is different.
Guy (JzG)
--
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG


body:
On 4/30/06, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
[snip]
> I probably managed to remove a few good link as well, but it was clear
> that there had been almost *zero* edit oral oversight of these links.
>  When we allow articles to have large lists of links without solid
> editorial oversight, we are no more useful than google... and worse:
> we are more subject to manipulation than the authors of the links.
>
> It is my belief that almost every page with more than 10-20 externals
> is in the same position of low to no oversight on the externals, and
> many with more than 5 externals.

A list of pages which I suspect of having low edit-oral-ness (whatever
that is) of their external links is now available.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Gmaxwell/externalmania

The page doubles as a browser stress test. Enjoy.


from_name: Dan Rosenthal

body:
Uh, actually, you did get blocked for 3RR violations using your many socks
on [[Abortion]]. -Swatjester

On 4/30/06, Cheney Shill <halliburton_shill at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote: On Sun, 30 Apr 2006
> 13:57:21 -0400, Katefan0 wrote:
>
> >What's the point, really? You've already admitted you're a sock of
> >Halliburton Shill. Your email address is halliburton_shill at yahoo.com.
> >Exactly why are you protesting findings of that to which you've already
> >admitted?
>
> Point of information: he acknowledges that he previously edited as
> Halliburton Shill, but that he no longer does - as I understand it
> because the username was deemed inappropriate.  That is different.
> Guy (JzG)
> Thank you, JzG. That's more or less accurate.  I was actually told by
> admins to get a new username because Halliburton Shill would not be
> allowed.  I was not blocked from using Wiki, nor did I use Pro-Lick to
> re-vote on Halliburton Shill issues.  Everything can be more or less found
> here:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Halliburton_Shill
> But it really should be kept in mind that it has nothing to do with the
> checkuser errors I'm addressing here.~~~~Pro-Lick
>
>
>
> ---------------------------------
> How low will we go? Check out Yahoo! Messenger's low  PC-to-Phone call
> rates.
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

--
Dan Rosenthal
IWVO National Legislative Director


list: wiktionary-l

from_name: GerardM

subject: [Wiktionary-l] Editability of WiktionaryZ

body:
Hoi,
After a long time, I am exceedingly pleased that we have our first
editability on the WiktionaryZ project. As you may know, WiktionaryZ
is currently in a pre alpha stage. It is not feature complete yet but
we are improving things step by step.

Editing is now open to a limited group of people that will slowly but
surely grow. Requirements are that you have a user on WiktionaryZ.org
and inform about your babel information.

At this moment we still have a limited number of languages but this
will be increased as soon as possible, for instance we really want to
have languages like Chinese, Arabic, Russian and Swahili...

Thanks,
    GerardM


from_name: Galen Williams

subject: [WikiEN-l] Unfair Blocking

body:
*I have been blocked for using my first name, Ban, as a username. Your
username policy says nothing that could indicate "Ban" as being an
impersonation of someone, offensive, or otherwise worthy of any level of
blocking. Here is the error message:*

*Your user name or IP address has been blocked from editing*.
You were blocked by Anonymous
editor<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Anonymous_editor>for the
following reason (see our blocking
policy <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Blocking_policy>): "username"

Your IP address is *64.233.172.4*.

*If there is some obvious reason for blocking me that I cannot see, then can
I use "Ban Galen?"*

*Thank you for your time.*

*: Ban Galen :*


from_name: Ray Saintonge

body:
daniwo59 at aol.com wrote:

>
>Over the past few weeks, OTRS has seen quite a few messages concerning
>companies that are putting information about themselves onto Wikipedia for
>advertising purposes, insisting that it is their right to do this. An article in  an
>online SEO (search engine optimization) magazine described how to mine
>wikipedia to get web traffic. We have had emails from such diverse groups as  talent
>agencies (we will take the copyright off our own website, as long as it  is
>included in Wikipedia), a Dominatrix, a vaporizer (I have no choice but to
>keep inserting my links on your site so as to fend off the competitors), and
>many others. In fact, this appears to be a growing trend in Wikipedia, as is
>evidenced by similar phone calls to the office (I did not write the article
>about my, my PR firm wrote it, and I paid them good money so you can't take it
>off). Shoppingtelly.uk has written that as long as we allow links to the BBC,
>they will insist on their "rights" to put links to their site on Wikipedia.
>
>This is a worrying trend on the English Wikipedia which raises issues of
>POV, notability, and verifiability. Ironically, we do not allow paid
>advertising, but we are buckling when people use our site in order to get free
>advertising.
>
>I do not know the solution to this problem--several have been raised, but  in
>my mind none is completely satisfactory. I am simply posting this here in the
> hope that it will elicit discussion and, perhaps, a real policy decision to
>counter this worrying trend.
>
Thank you for sharing this problem with us.

"Vaporizer" sounds too much like a Dalek; "You will be exterminated" :-)

Not even dedicated and recognized Wikipedians have a "right" to dictate
content, so someone who is wotking through a PR firm shouldn't expect
any better.  If the firm told him such a thing there are issues that he
will need to work out with them.

The falacy in shoppingtelly's arguments is based in the fact that the
BBC does not itself add links to itself.  If shoppingtelly has anything
useful on its site someone someday will make a proper unbiased link
there.  It's just unlikely to be to their advertising material any more
than it is to advertising material on the BBC.

The premise in your inquiry is that we are dealing with clear cases of
spam.  There is probably no one way to identify this stuff ahead of
time, and most links will still take exploring to learn what's going
on.  I don't see any need to "buckle" when the spamming is obvious.

Ec


from_name: Steve Block

subject: [WikiEN-l] Verifiability equating to notability

body:
Philip Welch wrote:
> On Apr 23, 2006, at 4:21 PM, Steve Block wrote:
>
>> I had a bash at creating a proposal which would define notability on
>> wikipedia as meaning that an article or topic is mentioned in a third
>> party reliable source.
>
> I can provide multiple third party reliable sources as evidence that
> there is a four way stop on the intersection between Merman Drive and
> Terre View Drive in Pullman, Washington. Does that mean that
> aforementioned four way stop is worthy of mention in Wikipedia?

What this guideline is trying to do is define notability within the
verifiability chain.

It attempts to close the door on the possibility of allowing wikipedians
to decide what is and isn't notable, something I believe is against both
the original research and POV policies.  We should seek to summarise
claims of importance, where those claims are verifiable.

If there are no outside sources, how do we write an encyclopedic article
on the topic, how do we quantify the value of the topic, without
breaking the original research policy?  Yes, I could write an article on
my street, for which verifiability exists in many sources, as do the
businesses and houses upon it.  I could detail, through land registry
searches, phone books and electoral rolls, the history of the street.
But this violates original research; I have compiled a new narrative.  I
have summarised something which does not actually exist, and for someone
to verify it they would have to repeat the research.  Jimbo prescribed
against this way back, stating that something is encyclopedic if "it is
information which is verifiable and which can be easily presented in an
NPOV fashion."

Verifiability, NOR and NPOV do not mean we can write articles on topics
we happen to feel should have them, they mean we should write articles
on topics for which we have good sources, the summation of which do not
amount to the original research through creating a novel narrative, and
which does not impart greater weight to the topic than exists in the
wider world, represented by the reliable sources we seek.

If we source only from the primary source, the topic itself, we cannot
do anything but present information from a biased point of view. Yes, it
is disappointing that there exists categories of information for which
Wikipedia would be a wonderful repository, but for which no other
sources exist for us to summate. However, that cannot be something we
should seek to remedy. Wikipedia is not a place for original research.
To me, that means Wikipedia cannot be a place to make claims of
importance for any topic. Such claims should already be established
within reliable sources, before we can attempt to document them. It is
unfortunate that closers in afd discussions are not mindful of this, but
it is the case that Wikipedia is a tertiary source. Wikipedia is not a
repository for primary research.

So is your four way stop worthy of an article?  On the strength of your
description, I would say no, because you are imparting undue weight to
it by creating such an article, you are presenting information for your
own point of view rather than summarising someone else's, and if the
article states only that four way stop on the intersection between
Merman Drive and  Terre View Drive in Pullman, Washington then I'd
consider speedying it per A1.

Steve Block

--
No virus found in this outgoing message.
Checked by AVG Free Edition.
Version: 7.1.385 / Virus Database: 268.5.1/327 - Release Date: 28/04/06


from_name: Fastfission

body:
Maybe they have, but it did bring up one of the most entertaining Wiki
conspiracy theories yet broached. In order to justify their power,
Wikipedia Admins impersonate vandals, allowing for broad and
unfettered expansion of vandalism-fighting abilities and the increased
respect and acquiescence of others! Yes!

(Just for kicks, someone should vandalize [[Reichstag]] with a
sockpuppet account and then, under their admin name, demand permanent
page protection as a consequence.)

FF

On 4/30/06, Ryan Delaney <ryan.delaney at gmail.com> wrote:
> You guys have been trolled.
>
> Ryan
>
> On 4/30/06, Timwi <timwi at gmx.net> wrote:
> >
> > TGGG85 at aol.com wrote:
> > > Someone unblocked me without an explanation. [...] All of this
> > > nonsense alienates talented and expert writers. [...] Wikipedia is
> > > getting to be a tiresome place for innovation which rubs some
> > > administrators the wrong way. ENOUGH ALREADY!
> >
> > So, uhm... you want to be blocked again?... I don't understand this
> > posting.
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > WikiEN-l mailing list
> > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> > To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
> >
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: brion at pobox.com

subject: [Wikitech-l] MediaWiki automated test run failure 2006-05-01

body:
An automated run of parserTests.php showed the following failures:

Running test Table security: embedded pipes (http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2006-April/034637.html)... FAILED!
Running test Magic Word: {{NUMBEROFFILES}}... FAILED!
Running test BUG 1887, part 2: A <math> with a thumbnail- math enabled... FAILED!
Running test Language converter: output gets cut off unexpectedly (bug 5757)... FAILED!

Passed 301 of 305 tests (98.69%) FAILED!


from_name: Brion Vibber

body:
Andre Engels wrote:
> I think that the solution should be to remove many more links than are
> done now. When I read that Gregory Maxwell removed 45 links from a
> page and kept another 45, in my opinion he has been rather reserved -
> rare is in my opinion the page that needs more than 3 links. Wikipedia
> is not a link collector.
>
> I'll be going through pages on my watchlist and see whether there are
> any inappropriate links and remove them, then check whether they exist
> elsewhere on Wikipedia if they appear to be not on the most likely
> page (which would make it seem they have been spammed).

Perhaps this is a good time to push reenabling rel="nofollow" on en.wikipedia.org.

Domas and I visited the Google campus last week after the MySQL users
conference, and chatted a bit with some folks from the search quality team. They
assure us that, yes, rel="nofollow" *does* help prevent linkspam from having its
intended effect and that, yes, at least some of the SEO folks end up giving up
on sites because of it (though of course not all, and not immediately).

While this automated protection doesn't prevent eyeballs from seeing or
following links, it does keep them from autospamming the search engines that we
all rely on in our daily surfing.

The argument for turning it off centered on the idea that "good internet
citizens" help "good sites" by linking to them, and that on en.wikipedia.org
there's enough eyeballs to immediately remove linkspam.

Apparently that's just not so. Good internet citizens need to recognize this and
keep our communal resources clean. Wikipedia is not a link farm!

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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body:
Andre Engels wrote:
> I think that the solution should be to remove many more links than are
> done now. When I read that Gregory Maxwell removed 45 links from a
> page and kept another 45, in my opinion he has been rather reserved -
> rare is in my opinion the page that needs more than 3 links. Wikipedia
> is not a link collector.
>
> I'll be going through pages on my watchlist and see whether there are
> any inappropriate links and remove them, then check whether they exist
> elsewhere on Wikipedia if they appear to be not on the most likely
> page (which would make it seem they have been spammed).

Perhaps this is a good time to push reenabling rel="nofollow" on en.wikipedia.org.

Domas and I visited the Google campus last week after the MySQL users
conference, and chatted a bit with some folks from the search quality team. They
assure us that, yes, rel="nofollow" *does* help prevent linkspam from having its
intended effect and that, yes, at least some of the SEO folks end up giving up
on sites because of it (though of course not all, and not immediately).

While this automated protection doesn't prevent eyeballs from seeing or
following links, it does keep them from autospamming the search engines that we
all rely on in our daily surfing.

The argument for turning it off centered on the idea that "good internet
citizens" help "good sites" by linking to them, and that on en.wikipedia.org
there's enough eyeballs to immediately remove linkspam.

Apparently that's just not so. Good internet citizens need to recognize this and
keep our communal resources clean. Wikipedia is not a link farm!

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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body:
Andre Engels wrote:
> I think that the solution should be to remove many more links than are
> done now. When I read that Gregory Maxwell removed 45 links from a
> page and kept another 45, in my opinion he has been rather reserved -
> rare is in my opinion the page that needs more than 3 links. Wikipedia
> is not a link collector.
>
> I'll be going through pages on my watchlist and see whether there are
> any inappropriate links and remove them, then check whether they exist
> elsewhere on Wikipedia if they appear to be not on the most likely
> page (which would make it seem they have been spammed).

Perhaps this is a good time to push reenabling rel="nofollow" on en.wikipedia.org.

Domas and I visited the Google campus last week after the MySQL users
conference, and chatted a bit with some folks from the search quality team. They
assure us that, yes, rel="nofollow" *does* help prevent linkspam from having its
intended effect and that, yes, at least some of the SEO folks end up giving up
on sites because of it (though of course not all, and not immediately).

While this automated protection doesn't prevent eyeballs from seeing or
following links, it does keep them from autospamming the search engines that we
all rely on in our daily surfing.

The argument for turning it off centered on the idea that "good internet
citizens" help "good sites" by linking to them, and that on en.wikipedia.org
there's enough eyeballs to immediately remove linkspam.

Apparently that's just not so. Good internet citizens need to recognize this and
keep our communal resources clean. Wikipedia is not a link farm!

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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body:
Andre Engels wrote:
> I think that the solution should be to remove many more links than are
> done now. When I read that Gregory Maxwell removed 45 links from a
> page and kept another 45, in my opinion he has been rather reserved -
> rare is in my opinion the page that needs more than 3 links. Wikipedia
> is not a link collector.
>
> I'll be going through pages on my watchlist and see whether there are
> any inappropriate links and remove them, then check whether they exist
> elsewhere on Wikipedia if they appear to be not on the most likely
> page (which would make it seem they have been spammed).

Perhaps this is a good time to push reenabling rel="nofollow" on en.wikipedia.org.

Domas and I visited the Google campus last week after the MySQL users
conference, and chatted a bit with some folks from the search quality team. They
assure us that, yes, rel="nofollow" *does* help prevent linkspam from having its
intended effect and that, yes, at least some of the SEO folks end up giving up
on sites because of it (though of course not all, and not immediately).

While this automated protection doesn't prevent eyeballs from seeing or
following links, it does keep them from autospamming the search engines that we
all rely on in our daily surfing.

The argument for turning it off centered on the idea that "good internet
citizens" help "good sites" by linking to them, and that on en.wikipedia.org
there's enough eyeballs to immediately remove linkspam.

Apparently that's just not so. Good internet citizens need to recognize this and
keep our communal resources clean. Wikipedia is not a link farm!

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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body:
On 4/30/06, Robin Shannon <robin.shannon at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 01/05/06, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
> > A list of pages which I suspect of having low edit-oral-ness (whatever
> > that is) of their external links is now available.
> >
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Gmaxwell/externalmania
>
> Looking at that page i notice that lots of them are lists (in fact the
> majority). Many of these lists are complete and will not need editing
> ever again (for historical things) or very rarely into the future.
> Perhaps a lost of these should be semi-locked or is that unwiki?

I didn't see any lists that were complete, but I haven't looked closely.
I know that a good number of pages have already been fixed based on
this list.. even the ones that have lots of link that look good, many
of them still have a bad link or two lurking, you have to check them
all.. and no one is, which was my point. :)


from_name: Pete Bartlett

subject: [WikiEN-l] The onward march of the meaning of "original research"

body:
Charles Matthews wrote:
>Further, there could hardly be a better example of how 'original research',
>launched by Jimbo as a way to deal with crank theories, has been spandexed
>as an argument.

The ever onwards and upwards stretching of what constitutes "original research"
by the policy wonks is slowly starting to create problems for content creators.

Over at the Tree of Life wikiproject we like to have people upload photos of
any species they don't recognise and we try to identify them before dispatching
them to a suitable article. That hasn't come under threat yet as "original research"
but I fear it is only a matter of time.

Pete


subject:
[WikiEN-l] The onward march of the meaning of "original
	research"

body:
----- Original Message ----
From: geni <geniice at gmail.com>
>I know that policy wonks appear to
>have replaced deletionists as the people to blame for everything but
>it is worth remebering that they do want to see wikipedia suceed they
>just see a slightly different root.

Well the deletionists have won the war so we have to move on ;).

Just because everyone wants to see Wikipedia succeed doesn't mean
everyone is equally helpful to the project. After a while contributing
policy becomes a lot easier than contributing content and because
we are all here as hobbyists there is a natural inclination to do the
easier thing whilst still "helping" Wikipedia. Thus there is a natural
tendency to go down the wrong "root".

Pete

p.s. Yes I do appreciate the irony of chatting on a policy mailing
list whilst moaning about policy, but it has to be done :).


body:
>Taking an image in a zoo and noting the
>species that is written on the cage is different from just taking an
>image and having other people guess what species it might be.

Good example actually. From the "by the book" perspective, the
zoo picture is better because it has a label beside the cage that
can be cited.

>From the "ignore all rules and just create a great encyclopedia"
perspective, the in-the-wild picture is better because it shows
the species in their natural habitat.


from_name: Essjay

body:
Gregory Maxwell wrote:
> On 4/30/06, Ben McIlwain <cydeweys at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> The problem is that the blacklist is on Metawiki, not enwiki, so
>> administrators such as myself can't do anything about it on our own and
>> have to go running to a Meta admin.  Maybe we could add some sort of
>> spam blacklist queue on Enwiki that is regularly viewed by meta admins?
>>  Or more liberally giving out meta adminship might help too.
>>
>
> There are many meta admins in the admin channel on IRC, I promise that
> you are never far from one. :)
>
Agree totally; I'm a meta admin, and I'm happy to put stuff on the list,
as long as it is really spam. I wouldn't have a problem with having a
"Requests for blacklisting" page, or with checking it regularly (though
I'm sure it'd be overwhelmed in short order; perhaps one time [just one]
that we could make a request page sysop-only [via protection]?).

Also, I support Brion's suggestion; I trust that after all the work he's
done, he has both the best interests of the site and the best
understanding of what's going on (technically). Go get 'em, Brion <ties
scarf around Brion's sword as he rushes into battle with the spammers> :-D

Essjay

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


from_name: Anthony DiPierro

body:
On 4/30/06, Steve Block <steve.block at myrealbox.com> wrote:
> Philip Welch wrote:
> > On Apr 23, 2006, at 4:21 PM, Steve Block wrote:
> >
> >> I had a bash at creating a proposal which would define notability on
> >> wikipedia as meaning that an article or topic is mentioned in a third
> >> party reliable source.
> >
> > I can provide multiple third party reliable sources as evidence that
> > there is a four way stop on the intersection between Merman Drive and
> > Terre View Drive in Pullman, Washington. Does that mean that
> > aforementioned four way stop is worthy of mention in Wikipedia?
>
> What this guideline is trying to do is define notability within the
> verifiability chain.
>
> It attempts to close the door on the possibility of allowing wikipedians
> to decide what is and isn't notable, something I believe is against both
> the original research and POV policies.  We should seek to summarise
> claims of importance, where those claims are verifiable.
>
I've always considered NOR to be *part of* the verifiability rules.
It is a description of what sources count toward verifiability.  For
that matter, both rules are really an explanation of what NPOV means -
"assert facts, including facts about opinions ? but don't assert
opinions themselves".  NOR and V go on to describe what is meant by
"facts".

I guess what I'm saying is you can't really eliminate any of those
three rules without significantly affecting the interpretation of the
other one, or to quote NPOV: "Because the three policies are
complementary, they should not be interpreted in isolation from one
other, and editors should therefore try to familiarize themselves with
all three."

> Verifiability, NOR and NPOV do not mean we can write articles on topics
> we happen to feel should have them, they mean we should write articles
> on topics for which we have good sources, the summation of which do not
> amount to the original research through creating a novel narrative, and
> which does not impart greater weight to the topic than exists in the
> wider world, represented by the reliable sources we seek.
>
I don't see how V, NOR, and NPOV imply that we should not impart
greater weight to a topic than exists in the wider world.  For that
matter I don't even understand what that means.

> If we source only from the primary source, the topic itself, we cannot
> do anything but present information from a biased point of view. Yes, it
> is disappointing that there exists categories of information for which
> Wikipedia would be a wonderful repository, but for which no other
> sources exist for us to summate. However, that cannot be something we
> should seek to remedy. Wikipedia is not a place for original research.
> To me, that means Wikipedia cannot be a place to make claims of
> importance for any topic. Such claims should already be established
> within reliable sources, before we can attempt to document them. It is
> unfortunate that closers in afd discussions are not mindful of this, but
> it is the case that Wikipedia is a tertiary source. Wikipedia is not a
> repository for primary research.
>
To this point I still can't really figure out what you're trying to
say.  That paragraph above is pretty much indisputable.

> So is your four way stop worthy of an article?  On the strength of your
> description, I would say no, because you are imparting undue weight to
> it by creating such an article, you are presenting information for your
> own point of view rather than summarising someone else's, and if the
> article states only that four way stop on the intersection between
> Merman Drive and  Terre View Drive in Pullman, Washington then I'd
> consider speedying it per A1.
>
I'd say it needs to be expanded if that's all it says.  Using those
secondary sources provided by the person adding the information I'm
sure you could come up with a nice little article on the subsection of
Pullman where the street is located, or maybe on [[Streets and
intersections in Pullman, Washington]], or something like that.  Right
now it's far too hypothetical, so I don't know exactly what the best
solution would be, though.

But as I pointed out when the comment was first made, it's not clear
whether or not the four-way stop on that intersection is verifiable
without resorting to original research.  It might be, and it might not
be.  It would, of course, be the job of the person adding the
information to show that it is.

Speedy deletion of such true information doesn't make any sense to me
though.  At the least move the information into the talk page of the
Pullman, Washington article, please.

Anthony


body:
Hoi,
Just saying that we should liberaly ban "spam" is too easy because the
devil is in the details. A few days ago there was an article on
slashdot suggesting that an American chain manipulates its Wikipedia
article. Some people will agree some won't. When somebody calls and
says that he has "bought" his wikipedia article, it is easy; you
cannot buy a particular type of content on Wikipedia. It does however
not necessarily mean that such an organisation does not have its
relevancy. A kneejerk reaction is not necessarily always the right
thing.

On the other hand you have people who have a beef with an organisation
and insist on being negative about an organisation and do not allow
for a NPOV article about such an organisation. In my opinion this is
another side of the same coin.

There are also the people who do nothing but adding links to their
info site and, as always there are people who think this a good idea
and people who opine that it detracts from the Wikipedia article ....

I would in conclusion say, in case of obvious spam at least remove the
external links and when the article is plain advertisement, make it
NPOV or delete.

Thanks,
    GerardM

On 5/1/06, Ben McIlwain <cydeweys at gmail.com> wrote:
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
>
> daniwo59 at aol.com wrote:
> >
> > Over the past few weeks, OTRS has seen quite a few messages concerning
> > companies that are putting information about themselves onto Wikipedia for
> > advertising purposes, insisting that it is their right to do this. An article in  an
> > online SEO (search engine optimization) magazine described how to mine
> > wikipedia to get web traffic. We have had emails from such diverse groups as  talent
> > agencies (we will take the copyright off our own website, as long as it  is
> > included in Wikipedia), a Dominatrix, a vaporizer (I have no choice but to
> > keep inserting my links on your site so as to fend off the competitors), and
> > many others. In fact, this appears to be a growing trend in Wikipedia, as is
> > evidenced by similar phone calls to the office (I did not write the article
> > about my, my PR firm wrote it, and I paid them good money so you can't take it
> > off). Shoppingtelly.uk has written that as long as we allow links to the BBC,
> > they will insist on their "rights" to put links to their site on Wikipedia.
> >
> > This is a worrying trend on the English Wikipedia which raises issues of
> > POV, notability, and verifiability. Ironically, we do not allow paid
> > advertising, but we are buckling when people use our site in order to get free
> > advertising.
> >
> > I do not know the solution to this problem--several have been raised, but  in
> > my mind none is completely satisfactory. I am simply posting this here in the
> > hope that it will elicit discussion and, perhaps, a real policy decision to
> > counter this worrying trend.
>
> One good solution is liberal usage of the spam blacklist and an
> increased awareness that the spam blacklist exists.  We can shut these
> guys down cold ... if anytime a spam URL is added it is acted upon and
> added to the blacklist.
>
> The problem is that the blacklist is on Metawiki, not enwiki, so
> administrators such as myself can't do anything about it on our own and
> have to go running to a Meta admin.  Maybe we could add some sort of
> spam blacklist queue on Enwiki that is regularly viewed by meta admins?
>  Or more liberally giving out meta adminship might help too.
>
> - --
> Ben McIlwain ("Cyde Weys")
>
> ~ Sub veste quisque nudus est ~
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
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>
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> =ncLH
> -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


body:
On 4/30/06, daniwo59 at aol.com <daniwo59 at aol.com> wrote:
>
> Over the past few weeks, OTRS has seen quite a few messages concerning
> companies that are putting information about themselves onto Wikipedia for
> advertising purposes, insisting that it is their right to do this. An article in  an
> online SEO (search engine optimization) magazine described how to mine
> wikipedia to get web traffic. We have had emails from such diverse groups as  talent
> agencies (we will take the copyright off our own website, as long as it  is
> included in Wikipedia), a Dominatrix, a vaporizer (I have no choice but to
> keep inserting my links on your site so as to fend off the competitors), and
> many others. In fact, this appears to be a growing trend in Wikipedia, as is
> evidenced by similar phone calls to the office (I did not write the article
> about my, my PR firm wrote it, and I paid them good money so you can't take it
> off). Shoppingtelly.uk has written that as long as we allow links to the BBC,
> they will insist on their "rights" to put links to their site on Wikipedia.
>
> This is a worrying trend on the English Wikipedia which raises issues of
> POV, notability, and verifiability. Ironically, we do not allow paid
> advertising, but we are buckling when people use our site in order to get free
> advertising.
>
> I do not know the solution to this problem--several have been raised, but  in
> my mind none is completely satisfactory. I am simply posting this here in the
>  hope that it will elicit discussion and, perhaps, a real policy decision to
> counter this worrying trend.
>
> Danny

Are the current solutions failing?  Do you have some examples of
violations of Wikipedia policies which have remained in the
encyclopedia for any significant amount of time before being removed?

It seems to be my take on things that while the phone calls might be
annoying to you the rest is pretty well handled by the normal wiki
processes, and will be best handled by improving those normal wiki
processes.  Closing down VFD so people have more time to focus on
ensuring that the information in the wiki is NPOV and verifiable would
probably increase the efficiency a lot too.

Anthony


body:
Erik Moeller wrote:
> 2) Due to mirrors, enabling or disabling nofollow has hardly any
> visible effect on search engine rankings. In that case, it would be a
> placebo effect.

I can't agree here.

1) Mirrors running MediaWiki on a database dump already get rel="nofollow" by
default unless they explicitly switched it off.

2) Screen-scrapers would be getting rel="nofollow" in their copies too --
something they currently DO NOT GET, thus multiplying the effect of linkspam.

While it's hypothetically possible for them to strip it, why would they bother?
It makes no difference to them, they just want text content to bring search
engine users to *their* ads and links.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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body:
Erik Moeller wrote:
> 2) Due to mirrors, enabling or disabling nofollow has hardly any
> visible effect on search engine rankings. In that case, it would be a
> placebo effect.

I can't agree here.

1) Mirrors running MediaWiki on a database dump already get rel="nofollow" by
default unless they explicitly switched it off.

2) Screen-scrapers would be getting rel="nofollow" in their copies too --
something they currently DO NOT GET, thus multiplying the effect of linkspam.

While it's hypothetically possible for them to strip it, why would they bother?
It makes no difference to them, they just want text content to bring search
engine users to *their* ads and links.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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body:
Erik Moeller wrote:
> 2) Due to mirrors, enabling or disabling nofollow has hardly any
> visible effect on search engine rankings. In that case, it would be a
> placebo effect.

I can't agree here.

1) Mirrors running MediaWiki on a database dump already get rel="nofollow" by
default unless they explicitly switched it off.

2) Screen-scrapers would be getting rel="nofollow" in their copies too --
something they currently DO NOT GET, thus multiplying the effect of linkspam.

While it's hypothetically possible for them to strip it, why would they bother?
It makes no difference to them, they just want text content to bring search
engine users to *their* ads and links.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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body:
Erik Moeller wrote:
> 2) Due to mirrors, enabling or disabling nofollow has hardly any
> visible effect on search engine rankings. In that case, it would be a
> placebo effect.

I can't agree here.

1) Mirrors running MediaWiki on a database dump already get rel="nofollow" by
default unless they explicitly switched it off.

2) Screen-scrapers would be getting rel="nofollow" in their copies too --
something they currently DO NOT GET, thus multiplying the effect of linkspam.

While it's hypothetically possible for them to strip it, why would they bother?
It makes no difference to them, they just want text content to bring search
engine users to *their* ads and links.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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from_name: Joe Anderson

body:
I don't know if streets were your best example. Streets rarely survive an
AfD (on grounds of notability).

Joe

On 4/30/06, Steve Block <steve.block at myrealbox.com> wrote:
>
> Philip Welch wrote:
> > On Apr 23, 2006, at 4:21 PM, Steve Block wrote:
> >
> >> I had a bash at creating a proposal which would define notability on
> >> wikipedia as meaning that an article or topic is mentioned in a third
> >> party reliable source.
> >
> > I can provide multiple third party reliable sources as evidence that
> > there is a four way stop on the intersection between Merman Drive and
> > Terre View Drive in Pullman, Washington. Does that mean that
> > aforementioned four way stop is worthy of mention in Wikipedia?
>
> What this guideline is trying to do is define notability within the
> verifiability chain.
>
> It attempts to close the door on the possibility of allowing wikipedians
> to decide what is and isn't notable, something I believe is against both
> the original research and POV policies.  We should seek to summarise
> claims of importance, where those claims are verifiable.
>
> If there are no outside sources, how do we write an encyclopedic article
> on the topic, how do we quantify the value of the topic, without
> breaking the original research policy?  Yes, I could write an article on
> my street, for which verifiability exists in many sources, as do the
> businesses and houses upon it.  I could detail, through land registry
> searches, phone books and electoral rolls, the history of the street.
> But this violates original research; I have compiled a new narrative.  I
> have summarised something which does not actually exist, and for someone
> to verify it they would have to repeat the research.  Jimbo prescribed
> against this way back, stating that something is encyclopedic if "it is
> information which is verifiable and which can be easily presented in an
> NPOV fashion."
>
> Verifiability, NOR and NPOV do not mean we can write articles on topics
> we happen to feel should have them, they mean we should write articles
> on topics for which we have good sources, the summation of which do not
> amount to the original research through creating a novel narrative, and
> which does not impart greater weight to the topic than exists in the
> wider world, represented by the reliable sources we seek.
>
> If we source only from the primary source, the topic itself, we cannot
> do anything but present information from a biased point of view. Yes, it
> is disappointing that there exists categories of information for which
> Wikipedia would be a wonderful repository, but for which no other
> sources exist for us to summate. However, that cannot be something we
> should seek to remedy. Wikipedia is not a place for original research.
> To me, that means Wikipedia cannot be a place to make claims of
> importance for any topic. Such claims should already be established
> within reliable sources, before we can attempt to document them. It is
> unfortunate that closers in afd discussions are not mindful of this, but
> it is the case that Wikipedia is a tertiary source. Wikipedia is not a
> repository for primary research.
>
>
> So is your four way stop worthy of an article?  On the strength of your
> description, I would say no, because you are imparting undue weight to
> it by creating such an article, you are presenting information for your
> own point of view rather than summarising someone else's, and if the
> article states only that four way stop on the intersection between
> Merman Drive and  Terre View Drive in Pullman, Washington then I'd
> consider speedying it per A1.
>
> Steve Block
>
>
> --
> No virus found in this outgoing message.
> Checked by AVG Free Edition.
> Version: 7.1.385 / Virus Database: 268.5.1/327 - Release Date: 28/04/06
>
> _______________________________________________
> 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: Birgitte SB

subject: [Foundation-l] RfC: A Free Content and Expression Definition

body:
--- Erik Moeller <eloquence at gmail.com> wrote:

> Wikimedia

>The definition makes it easy to resolve the question
>of which licenses
>to allow or disallow across projects. For example, a
>Wikimedia-wide
>policy could be that: "All content in all projects
>must be free
>content as per the Free Content Definition 1.0, with
>the exception of
>works which are used under exemptions granted by
>national copyright
>laws, such as 'fair use' in the United States. These
>exemptions are
>defined on a per-project and per-language basis."

I have a problem with Wikimedia adopting this proposal
as Wikisource certainly has a place for documents
availble under licences forbidding modification.  I do
not have specific examples in mind, but we already
have policy of protecting all works from modification
once they have been proofread to a certain degree.  I
wonder if your awarenes of this issue was behind the
reason Wikisource was excluded from your breakdown of
the ramications of the definition on each project.  I
can understand why you would want to define "free
content" in this way, however I am strongly against
Wikimedia adopting this definition as policy across
projects.

Birgitte SB

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
http://mail.yahoo.com


from_name: Andre Engels

body:
2006/5/1, daniwo59 at aol.com <daniwo59 at aol.com>:

> I do not know the solution to this problem--several have been raised, but  in
> my mind none is completely satisfactory. I am simply posting this here in the
>  hope that it will elicit discussion and, perhaps, a real policy decision to
> counter this worrying trend.

I think that the solution should be to remove many more links than are
done now. When I read that Gregory Maxwell removed 45 links from a
page and kept another 45, in my opinion he has been rather reserved -
rare is in my opinion the page that needs more than 3 links. Wikipedia
is not a link collector.

I'll be going through pages on my watchlist and see whether there are
any inappropriate links and remove them, then check whether they exist
elsewhere on Wikipedia if they appear to be not on the most likely
page (which would make it seem they have been spammed).

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


body:
--- Erik Moeller <eloquence at gmail.com> wrote:

> On 5/1/06, Birgitte SB <birgitte_sb at yahoo.com>
> wrote:
>
> > I have a problem with Wikimedia adopting this
> proposal
> > as Wikisource certainly has a place for documents
> > availble under licences forbidding modification.
> I do
> > not have specific examples in mind, but we already
> > have policy of protecting all works from
> modification
> > once they have been proofread to a certain degree.
>
> These are completely separate statements. Protecting
> a page from
> editing is entirely different from using legal
> powers to stop others
> from distributing a modified version of that page.
> Page protection is
> a policy matter, forbidding derivatives is a matter
> of law. I feel
> that documents which cannot legally be distributed
> in altered form
> have no place on Wikisource. But that is exactly the
> discussion we
> need to have, especially on the Board level.
>
> Erik

Yes I realize they are seperate issues, I just
mentioned that to show the culture of Wikisource
currently supports not modifing documents since I
could not name any legal examples.  I am sure there
are many documents availble under the terms of no
modification that Wikisource would love to have.  I do
not know why you think such works would have no place
simply beacuse they cannot be modified.  I see no
value whatsoever in being able to modify the works of
Charles Dickens, the Paris Peace Accords, or the
Constitution of Singapore.  In all honesty I see think
this is true for 90% of material on Wikisource.  I do
not know what works we would have to exclude by
adopting such a policy, but I am certain that they are
works which do have a place on Wikisource.

Birgitte SB

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
http://mail.yahoo.com


from_name: Kelly Martin

body:
On 5/1/06, Erik Moeller <eloquence at gmail.com> wrote:
> I don't much like the idea of effectively punishing thousands of
> perfectly fine sites because of a few people who pee in the proverbial
> public pool.

How does turning on nofollow punish anyone?  Nobody is entitled to
free pagerank just because they've been listed on Wikipedia.

I see no good reason not to turn on nofollow for en.  I also note that
de has been nofollow for quite a while now.

Kelly


body:
--- Erik Moeller <eloquence at gmail.com> wrote:

> On 5/1/06, Birgitte SB <birgitte_sb at yahoo.com>
> wrote:
> > I see no
> > value whatsoever in being able to modify the works
> of
> > Charles Dickens, the Paris Peace Accords, or the
> > Constitution of Singapore.  In all honesty I see
> think
> > this is true for 90% of material on Wikisource.  I
> do
> > not know what works we would have to exclude by
> > adopting such a policy, but I am certain that they
> are
> > works which do have a place on Wikisource.
>
> The Creative Commons CC-BY-ND license defines
> "derivative works"
> (which are forbidden) as follows:
>
> - - - - -
> "Derivative Work" means a work based upon the Work
> or upon the Work
> and other pre-existing works, such as a translation,
> musical
> arrangement, dramatization, fictionalization, motion
> picture version,
> sound recording, art reproduction, abridgment,
> condensation, or any
> other form in which the Work may be recast,
> transformed, or adapted,
> except that a work that constitutes a Collective
> Work will not be
> considered a Derivative Work for the purpose of this
> License. For the
> avoidance of doubt, where the Work is a musical
> composition or sound
> recording, the synchronization of the Work in
> timed-relation with a
> moving image ("synching") will be considered a
> Derivative Work for the
> purpose of this License.
>
>
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/2.5/legalcode
>
> - - - - -
>
> I'm sure you will agree that derivative works, as
> per this meaning,
> are useful and essential to Wikisource.
> Translations, dramatizations,
> fictionalizations, art reproductions, and so forth,
> are all made
> impossible under licenses which forbid derivatives.
>
> Erik
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
>
Derivative works are by no means essential for
Wikisource.  The fact that we cannot translate a work
for the French Wikisource does not lessen the value to
the English Wikisource.  There is already a policy in
place which allows the works of French writers to
treated as public domain in the English Wikisource yet
forbidden the French Wikisource per disscusion on this
very list.  I see this situation as much less
problematic.  We are not going to be dealing with
fictional works under this license, but rather the
sort of documents that can be misrepresented by
modifications.  These are works which if unavailable
to Wikisource will be irreplaceable.  This is not at
all like Wikipedia.  If WP has an image of a butterfly
that is under a license you do not like, then you can
go take your own picture and release under GFDL.  If
Wikisource cannot host a Constitution or treaty, we
cannot simply make our own version released under the
GFDL.  You said before these works have no place at
Wikisource, but I do not think you have a real
understanding of what Wikisource is trying to be well
enough to make such a judgment.  If you simply want
Wikisource to be a dumping ground for the material you
cannot get enough votes to delete from Wikipedia but
would otherwise would fit WP's goald then you would be
right.  However if you expect Wikisource to be it's
own project, with self-determined goals, you must let
us judge what has a place within those goals.  The
ability to modify material is for the most part not a
concern at Wikisource; it is not a concern to anyone
who comes to find things at Wikisource, and it not a
concern of the editors adding material.

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
http://mail.yahoo.com


body:
Anthony DiPierro wrote:
> Which leads to a question - what would Google and the other search
> engines *want* Wikipedia to do?  Anyone think they'd have a good shot
> at getting an official answer?

They want us to turn on nofollow; at least their anti-SEO team does. :)

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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body:
Anthony DiPierro wrote:
> Which leads to a question - what would Google and the other search
> engines *want* Wikipedia to do?  Anyone think they'd have a good shot
> at getting an official answer?

They want us to turn on nofollow; at least their anti-SEO team does. :)

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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body:
Anthony DiPierro wrote:
> Which leads to a question - what would Google and the other search
> engines *want* Wikipedia to do?  Anyone think they'd have a good shot
> at getting an official answer?

They want us to turn on nofollow; at least their anti-SEO team does. :)

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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body:
Anthony DiPierro wrote:
> Which leads to a question - what would Google and the other search
> engines *want* Wikipedia to do?  Anyone think they'd have a good shot
> at getting an official answer?

They want us to turn on nofollow; at least their anti-SEO team does. :)

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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subject: [Wikitech-l] SoC: Upload form improvements

body:
Patrick Aljord wrote:
> Ok but I'm not a ajax expert so I'd probably reuse stuff from
> script.aculo.us. Would that be ok?

Is it GPL or GPL-compatible?

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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body:
--- Erik Moeller <eloquence at gmail.com> wrote:

> On 5/1/06, Birgitte SB <birgitte_sb at yahoo.com>
> wrote:
>
> > Derivative works are by no means essential for
> > Wikisource.
>
> I disagree. A document that cannot legally be
> translated, for
> instance, cannot be called a free document.
> Wikisource is, by
> definition and philosophy, a repository of free
> works, similar to what
> Commons provides for non-textual materials. If you
> use the logic "but
> the document is important", you are on a slippery
> slope of changing
> Wikisource into a repository for materials under
> _any_ license which
> allows free downloads, including "permission granted
> to Wikimedia" and
> similar non-free arrangement.
>

That is not the case whatsoever.  We are commited to
hosting freely distributable works.  Please not put
words in my mouth.  You are trying to define "free" in
way to exclude such documents, that does not make them
non-free in general.  In all truth no matter how you
limit the licenses, the material of Wikimedia will not
be universally free everywhere.  Such a blanket
guarantee is not possible, so we must do our best to
keep things both as free and available as possible.
It is a balancing act not a black and white line.  Why
else is there an exception for fair use?

> > The fact that we cannot translate a work
> > for the French Wikisource does not lessen the
> value to
> > the English Wikisource.  There is already a policy
> in
> > place which allows the works of French writers to
> > treated as public domain in the English Wikisource
> yet
> > forbidden the French Wikisource per disscusion on
> this
> > very list.
>
> That's interesting. Could you point me to this
> policy? I recall the
> discussion, but not the conclusion.
>
> Erik

We do not have any sorts of crosslanguage policy, but
that was the end result.  Yann was told that the
French Wikisource must remove the works while some of
them have always been available on the English
Wikisource in translation and have never violated the
enWS copyright policy.  There now exists a soft fork
of Wikisource.  I will not try to pin this on any one
decision over these matters, but I understand the
frustrations which the editors must have felt lead
them to such action.

BirgitteSB

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
http://mail.yahoo.com


from_name: maru dubshinki

subject: [WikiEN-l] Unfair Blocking

body:
On 5/1/06, Galen Williams <banbanbananaman at gmail.com> wrote:
> *I have been blocked for using my first name, Ban, as a username. Your
> username policy says nothing that could indicate "Ban" as being an
> impersonation of someone, offensive, or otherwise worthy of any level of
> blocking. Here is the error message:*
>
> *Your user name or IP address has been blocked from editing*.
> You were blocked by Anonymous
> editor<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Anonymous_editor>for the
> following reason (see our blocking
> policy <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Blocking_policy>): "username"
>
> Your IP address is *64.233.172.4*.
>
> *If there is some obvious reason for blocking me that I cannot see, then can
> I use "Ban Galen?"*
>
> *Thank you for your time.*
>
> *: Ban Galen :*

Heh. It is unfortunate that your chosen name is "ban", and we "ban"
vandals. Anyhoo, I've unblocked you, since you don't seem to be
foaming at the mouth.

~maru


from_name: charles matthews

body:
 "Steve Block"  wrote

> It attempts to close the door on the possibility of allowing wikipedians
> to decide what is and isn't notable, something I believe is against both
> the original research and POV policies.  We should seek to summarise
> claims of importance, where those claims are verifiable.

Err ... why?  This may be what we resort to in some cases (garage bands).
But it is a bad idea in other cases (e.g. academics).  And I think we all
should be allowed to express opinions on notability.  In some areas, for
example the arts, poetry, if you go by tallying up awards and honours and
suchlike 'objective' credits, you will only reproduce the contours of the
'academic art' of the time.  Thus missing what is coming up, for example.

Further, there could hardly be a better example of how 'original research',
launched by Jimbo as a way to deal with crank theories, has been spandexed
as an argument.

Charles


from_name: Gregory Maxwell

body:
On 5/1/06, Kelly Martin <kelly.lynn.martin at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 5/1/06, Erik Moeller <eloquence at gmail.com> wrote:
> > I don't much like the idea of effectively punishing thousands of
> > perfectly fine sites because of a few people who pee in the proverbial
> > public pool.
>
> How does turning on nofollow punish anyone?  Nobody is entitled to
> free pagerank just because they've been listed on Wikipedia.
>
> I see no good reason not to turn on nofollow for en.  I also note that
> de has been nofollow for quite a while now.

I'm with Kelly on this one.

It seems to me that if a sites pagerank is dramatically impacted by
their addition to wikipedia, then the addition of that link to
Wikipedia is to some extent a form of original research. Wikipedia
does not exist to improve the popularity of other websites.

We also must consider the social impact:  The knowledge that being
linked from Wikipedia so dramatically impacts google results causes
users to distrust the motivations of people who have added a link more
than they would otherwise. It's poisonous.

Erik's concept a time delay isn't a new idea... it's one that has
already been disregarded, at least for this application: even if we
ignore the technical fun of using external links table at realtime,
we're still left with the fact that it's pointless.  For links that
are removed in a short span of time the SEO gains no advantage
(mirrors haven't had a chance to mirror, google hasn't had a chance to
spider), our concern stems from links which remain due to a lack of
editorial oversight.

Furthermore, On several Wiki's I'm involved with no follow has been a
godsend, dramatically cutting spam in a short span of time.

I don't think that no follow will solve all problems, but it's a
start. If it reduces external link spamming by 10%, then it will have
made an improvement larger than is possible with any other simple
method.

There are many technical measures which can and will be applied, but I
don't see them as solving the root problem... because the root problem
is editorial, it's social, it's not easy, and it's not something that
the computers can wave away for us.


body:
On 5/1/06, Erik Moeller <eloquence at gmail.com> wrote:
> OR
>
> 2) Due to mirrors, enabling or disabling nofollow has hardly any
> visible effect on search engine rankings. In that case, it would be a
> placebo effect.

This hyphothesis would appear to be invalidated by our expirence
removing spam from english Wikipedia. It is fairly common that a spam
site will vanish off google right after removing it from enwiki, far
too quickly for most of the mirrors to catch up.

For the few mirrors that we have a good enough relationship with to
send a live OAI feed to, we can probably suggest that they nofollow
externals coming in from Wikipedia.  It's doubtful that they'd have a
problem with doing this.

When it comes down to it though,  most of the mirrors that have
significant placement on the search engines are engaged in spamming
SEO behavior themselves.  If someone wants on one of those sites,
there are probably even easier methods than inserting their content in
wikipedia and waiting for it to be mirrored.

> As I said, I think timing the addition of external links and enabling
> nofollow only for recent additions might be a reasonable compromise.

Only if someone can demonstrate some evidence that we are really good
about removing bad links once they go in, and that anyone gives a darn
if they get impact during the 24 hous their ill fated link survives.
...


body:
--- Birgitte SB <birgitte_sb at yahoo.com> wrote:

>
>
> --- Erik Moeller <eloquence at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Wikimedia
>
> >The definition makes it easy to resolve the
> question
> >of which licenses
> >to allow or disallow across projects. For example,
> a
> >Wikimedia-wide
> >policy could be that: "All content in all projects
> >must be free
> >content as per the Free Content Definition 1.0,
> with
> >the exception of
> >works which are used under exemptions granted by
> >national copyright
> >laws, such as 'fair use' in the United States.
> These
> >exemptions are
> >defined on a per-project and per-language basis."
>

I would like to appeal to everyone to re-read the
above paragraph.  If Wikimedia wants to take the high
road and stick to the strictest principles regarding
"free content", the exception allowing fair use must
be removed from that statement.  If Wikimedia wishes
to be more flexible, then each project should be
allowed to draft it's own exceptions.  The English
Wikisource does not allow anything under fair use at
all, the English Wikipedia allows anything legally
allowed in regards to US fair use.  Such material is
much less free than the any non-derivatives existing
on enWS.  Also fair use is pervasive thoughout enWP,
where any ND at enWS could be clearly marked and
compartmentalized.  This is how I feel on the matter
and I will strongly oppose policy being enacted with
wording given above.

Birgitte SB

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
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body:
On 5/1/06, Erik Moeller <eloquence at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 5/1/06, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Erik's concept a time delay isn't a new idea... it's one that has
> > already been disregarded, at least for this application: even if we
> > ignore the technical fun of using external links table at realtime,
> > we're still left with the fact that it's pointless.  For links that
> > are removed in a short span of time the SEO gains no advantage
> > (mirrors haven't had a chance to mirror, google hasn't had a chance to
> > spider), our concern stems from links which remain due to a lack of
> > editorial oversight.
>
> That depends entirely, of course, on how long the time delay is. It
> could be as long as 30 days. A link which survives that long,
> continuously, may very well be a good link that deserves to be there.

You've fallen for the myth of editorial review...

What you say might be true if significant numbers of people people
were checking links other than at the moment of addition (i.e. when
they were the top most diff), but they don't.

If a link survives it's initial addition due to inattentiveness of the
editors it will stay a long time.  Must I beat this one into your head
with wikiwide statistics on link lifetimes as well? :)

In the past I've computed the density of lifetimes of links which were
inserted then later removed. It's quite computationally expensive to
do so, which is why I haven't updated it any time recently.  ... but I
can, if I must do so to convince people that links are either removed
right away or mostly not at all.


from_name: Cheney Shill

body:
Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:This, too, accords with my reading of the situation.  It was this
tendentious editing, not sock confusions resulting from the username
issues, which resulted in the block.
Guy (JzG)

This is getting away from my question of how to resolve checkuser errors.  Nonetheless, here's a response.

Tendentious by definition is POV pushing.  POV pushing on Wikipedia is pushing an opinion that is inconsistent with what verifiable sources provide.  However, my edits were all based on the overwhelming majority of sources (i.e., reputable and reliable).  The list the main contributors to the article (of which I remain one despite my now nearly 3 week block) compiled:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Abortion/Archive_18#Medical.2C_Reliable.2C_.26_Reputable_Sources_WP:RS
Compare those with an example of my edit to the current, unsourced version:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Abortion&diff=46469735&oldid=46458320

I was also the first to put up an RFC regarding the abortion article's introductory paragraph:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia%3ARequests_for_comment%2FMaths%2C_science%2C_and_technology&diff=44170296&oldid=44101473
As a result, I'm finding it difficult to see how my edits qualify as tendentious.

---------------------------------
Love cheap thrills? Enjoy PC-to-Phone  calls to 30+ countries for just 2?/min with Yahoo! Messenger with Voice.


body:
On 5/1/06, Erik Moeller <eloquence at gmail.com> wrote:
> I would be interested in your data, even if it is old, on what the the
> average lifetime of removed links is. That might be a good cutoff
> point for nofollow. I should also note that just because this is
> currently the case doesn't mean that it will have to stay that way.
> There's probably lots of ways to generate useful reports for editors
> from the externallinks table.

Okay.

Externallinks is nice but of somewhat limited usefulness...  It's
already been used to despam enwiki of spam that can be detected from
lots of duplicate links. We often use it to scan for SBLed stuff.. But
it hits its limits.

To find link removal times I have to scan all revisions. Weee!


body:
On 5/1/06, Erik Moeller <eloquence at gmail.com> wrote:
> It is clear that we need a definition. With the help of feedback from
> the likes of Richard Stallman and Lawrence Lessig, and an increasing
> number of collaborators, I have drafted up a first version of such a
> definition, called the "Free Content and Expression Definition":
>
>         http://freecontentdefinition.org/Definition

A somewhat off topic question, but I wanted to make sure this was clear.

Is Erik authorized to speak to other groups (such as the FSF) as a
representative of the Wikimedia foundation?

In the past I've encountered confusion when speaking to folks at the
FSF whom thought they'd been told something official by the foundation
but they hadn't.   I think we need to keep track of who is speaking
for us today, and make sure that they aren't saying things which are
inconsistent with the work in various areas that other people have
been working on.

Thanks.


body:
On 5/1/06, Kelly Martin <kelly.lynn.martin at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 5/1/06, Erik Moeller <eloquence at gmail.com> wrote:
> > I don't much like the idea of effectively punishing thousands of
> > perfectly fine sites because of a few people who pee in the proverbial
> > public pool.
>
> How does turning on nofollow punish anyone?  Nobody is entitled to
> free pagerank just because they've been listed on Wikipedia.
>
> I see no good reason not to turn on nofollow for en.  I also note that
> de has been nofollow for quite a while now.
>
> Kelly

I tend to agree, though I don't think nofollow will have much of an
impact either way.  Maybe it'll slightly decrease the incentive for
vandals to add links, but probably not much.

One definite advantage I did see during the times that nofollow was on
was that there was less fighting over what links to include, what not
to include, and what to include through some kludge where the link
wasn't clickable.  Some people are on a mission to make sure Wikipedia
doesn't link to certain websites which they find socially unacceptable
(diploma mills are one example).  Anything that reduces the temptation
for people to engage in these wars is a good thing.

In the end, nofollow has little impact on the goal of Wikipedia - to
create an encyclopedia.

Anthony


body:
On 5/1/06, Jan Kulveit <jk-wikifound at ks.cz> wrote:
> On Mon, May 01, 2006 at 04:40:23PM +0200, Erik Moeller wrote:
> > I see two possibilities:
> >
> > 1) Wikipedia specifically has a very high influence on a site's
> > ranking. In this case, turning off nofollow will alter the shape of
> > the web in search engines which respect it. If the average quality of
> > links in Wikipedia is higher than the average quality of links outside
> > Wikipedia, the quality of these search engine results as a whole will
> > deteriorate. This is not about entitlement, it is about using the
> > influence we have responsibly.
> >
>
> The quality of Wikipedia should be given more weight than to task
> of  responsibly influencing search engines. If turning nofollow on leads
> to decrease of spammers effort, it would be good for Wikipedia quality.
>
Ultimately Wikipedia is big enough that the search engines could
easily manually override its nofollow suggestion anyway.

Which leads to a question - what would Google and the other search
engines *want* Wikipedia to do?  Anyone think they'd have a good shot
at getting an official answer?

Anthony


body:
On 5/1/06, Jan Kulveit <jk-wikifound at ks.cz> wrote:
[snip]
> 3. still, there is the risk of RC patrol. solution? spam indirectly e.g.,
> create "useful" and "noncommercial" pages which won't be removed by RC
> patrollers on sight (what about list of useful telephone numbers...
> yet another weather service... seen in practice )

A point here.. this is a common form of spam. For example, at one
point in time someone made mirror of all the linux documentation
project content, slathered it with ads, and replaced links in
Wikipedia.  When I found it months later, their LDP mirroring was out
of date... still no one else had fixed them.

We see people doing the same sort of thing with Wikipedia content.

> 4. link from such lower-profile pages would be less effective because
> lower keyword density & lower inter-Wikipedia page rank
> 5. so... let's do some inter-wiki SEO, create wikilinks so the spammed
> wiki pages get higher interwiki rank, optimize the text for keywords...
>
> results:
> -> spam will be on pages with little editorial review
> -> masked as noncommercial / informative pages
> -> editing with malicious agenda of influencing interlink
> structure

And even when no one is doing this, editors are left paranoid about
people doing it... because the incentives for corrupting out site in
this manner are so great.

It really is miserable.


body:
On 5/1/06, Joe Anderson <computerjoe.mailinglist at googlemail.com> wrote:
> I find [[WP:V]] and [[WP:NOR]] all to be very linked together.
>
> [[Streets and intersections in Pullman, Washington]] would be seen as
> listcruft.
>
> Joe

What's listcruft?

Anthony


body:
--- Erik Moeller <eloquence at gmail.com> wrote:

> On 5/1/06, Birgitte SB <birgitte_sb at yahoo.com>
> wrote:
>
> > That is not the case whatsoever.  We are commited
> to
> > hosting freely distributable works.
>
> The frontpage of en.wikisource.org states:
>
> "Wikisource ? The Free Library ? is an online
> collection of free
> content source texts built by its contributors."
>
> Even before the free content definition, the [[free
> content]] article
> Wikisource links to has stated:
>
> "Free content, or free information, is any kind of
> functional work,
> artwork, or other creative content having no legal
> restriction
> relative to people's freedom to use, redistribute,
> improve, and share
> the content."
>
> Given this, it can be said that en.wikisource itself
> disagrees with
> you that "freely distributable" is sufficient. I
> believe it is crucial
> that Wikimedia projects follow a consistently high
> standard of freedom
> for the works they host. This gives users certainty
> about the freedoms
> they have, and compels those who wish to contribute
> content to choose
> a permissive model rather than the least permissive
> which is still
> acceptable.
>
> Your argument for allowing non-free materials is a
> short term
> argument. It is based on the consideration that
> there are texts which
> are currently not available under free terms. If we
> follow your
> advice, we will host those materials, but give the
> people who hold
> rights over them no incentive to relax those
> restrictions. If we
> remain steadfast in our convictions, we can build
> upon the works which
> are currently accessible to us -- more than enough
> to grow a community
> -- and use our influence to compel more and more
> people to share our
> definition of freedom.
>
> I find it hard to believe that you would even
> seriously make the
> argument that Wikisource should host texts which
> cannot be translated
> into other Wikisources.

Please pay me the compliment of believing what I say,
however it stretches your credulity or however you
would like to interpret the Main Page.  Here is a link
to most recent dissucion which took place on the most
active and prominent page on enWS.  Not single person
spoke out against accepting the ND license.

http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Wikisource:Scriptorium#Non_commercial_texts

<snip>

> > Why else is there an exception for fair use?
>
> Fair use images are treated very differently from
> any free content.
> 1) It has always been policy on en.wikipedia.org
> that an article can
> never consist of fair use materials alone. All
> articles are at most
> enriched with fair use content, but their basis must
> always be free
> content. Material copied straight from the web is
> deleted immediately,
> and all the text must be licensed under the GFDL or
> more permissive
> terms.
> 2) Fair use images can be deleted when orphaned,
> replaced when a free
> alternative is found, removed when the fair use
> argument is questioned
> or a copyright holder complains. They are
> essentially "allowed on
> parole".
>
> We can further develop this distinction if we are
> clear and consistent
> about only allowing two classes of material, free
> content and limited
> fair use to enrich that content.
>
> Erik

When you have managed to limit fair use materials, I
will examine the limits and re-evaluate my opiion.
Currently enWP has pretty much any fair use material
they can get away with.  If the Foundation is willing
to be that flexible there should be room for other
limited licenses especially where the marterial is
most valuable without modifications.  I do not believe
ND licences should be adopted on Wikipedia or other
projects.  Wikisource is in a uniquie situation where
our content is desired in a fixed form without
modifications.  We have only the smallest number of
articles that have even begun to be translated by
editors and there a no active projects of
translations.  We should not exclude works simply
because they cannot be translated, when it is highly
unlikely there would even be such an interest.  I am
unconvinced that anything is gained by excluding ND
licenses from Wikisource.  As I said before if the
Foundation wishes to follow the strictest principles
of "free content" they should forbid fair use as well
as non-derivative.  However as long as these
descisions continue to be arbitrary, I will fight to
see that they are made so that Wikisource can be the
best site possible with a balance of freedom and
availabilty.

Birgitte SB

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body:
Based on just the title [[Streets and intersections in Pullman,
Washington]], I don't see how such an article would necessarily be
pointless or a list.

I suppose that wouldn't necessarily stop it from being deleted as
"listcruft", though...

Anthony

On 5/1/06, Joe Anderson <computerjoe.mailinglist at googlemail.com> wrote:
> Listcruft is a term on AfD used for the deletion of lists. Generally, it is
> used for pointless lists.
>
> On 5/1/06, Anthony DiPierro <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
> >
> > On 5/1/06, Joe Anderson <computerjoe.mailinglist at googlemail.com> wrote:
> > > I find [[WP:V]] and [[WP:NOR]] all to be very linked together.
> > >
> > > [[Streets and intersections in Pullman, Washington]] would be seen as
> > > listcruft.
> > >
> > > Joe
> >
> > What's listcruft?
> >
> > Anthony
> > _______________________________________________
> > WikiEN-l mailing list
> > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> > To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
> >
>
>
>
> --
> Joe Anderson
>
> [[User:Computerjoe]] on en, fr, de, simple, Meta and Commons.
> _______________________________________________
> 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: geni

body:
On 5/1/06, Pete Bartlett <pcb21 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Over at the Tree of Life wikiproject we like to have people upload photos of
> any species they don't recognise and we try to identify them before dispatching
> them to a suitable article. That hasn't come under threat yet as "original research"
> but I fear it is only a matter of time.
>
> Pete

No the issue of pictures has been raised before. It is generaly
accepted that since they pretty much have to be original reseach we
are not going to worry about them. I know that policy wonks appear to
have replaced deletionists as the people to blame for everything but
it is worth remebering that they do want to see wikipedia suceed they
just see a slightly different root.

--
geni


body:
On 5/1/06, Arne Klempert <klempert at gmail.com> wrote:
> If you take a look back in history, Wikipedia benefited (and still
> benefits) extremely from links and their impact on our PageRank. So it
> might be a little bit unfair to add nofollow tags to *all* of our
> links, just because it seems to be a simple solution to one of our
> many problems. The world wide web is not a one-way street ;)

No one is proposing all our externals be nofollowed. Only ones
submitted by users.

But when talking about gains in readership, ... we get more by simply
failing to do a good job (i.e. incorrect bioagraphies) ...  So to that
extent, I can agree with you: perhaps no follow will bring us lots of
attention some day, when the actions of some spammer end up causing
the next media-blitz. :)

But really, what is the goal of Wikipedia?  It is to make a free
content encyclopedia.  It is not to be most popular website, or even
the most read encyclopedia. It's not to help SEOs or search engines...

> > It doesn't help us sfaict, indeed it probably harms us as we can be
> > seen as detrimental to the quality of search engine results as we - in
> > effect - promote spam and other sites.
>
> This might be true, but only if there are more bad links than good
> ones. Without having counted them, I'm sure that this is not the case.

> Btw, the German Wikipedia still has to deal with link spammers, even
> though nofollow is activated.

Yes, it's not a complete solution.. no one suggested that.  De Wiki's
external density is 1/2 that of enwiki (De has an average of 1.3409
externals per article, while en has 2.4671 externals per article).


from_name: Timwi

body:
geni wrote:
> On 5/1/06, Pete Bartlett <pcb21 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>>Over at the Tree of Life wikiproject we like to have people upload photos of
>>any species they don't recognise and we try to identify them before dispatching
>>them to a suitable article. That hasn't come under threat yet as "original research"
>>but I fear it is only a matter of time.
>
> No the issue of pictures has been raised before. It is generaly
> accepted that since they pretty much have to be original reseach we
> are not going to worry about them.

That's not quite what he said. He said that the identification of a
species depicted in an image could be regarded as original research --
not taking the image itself. Taking an image in a zoo and noting the
species that is written on the cage is different from just taking an
image and having other people guess what species it might be.


subject: [WikiEN-l] "should not be written by an interested party"

body:
I agree with Steve's definition of an interested party.  In this context, that would basically apply to people who's jobs directly or indirectly depend on a political party's success.  Politicians, fund raisers, a PR company that does most of its business for a party, a business that receives billions in goernment contracts.  WIki has a nice article that covers most of this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conflict_of_interest

Joe Anderson <computerjoe.mailinglist at googlemail.com> wrote: IMO, taking the interested party has a NPOV, it's fine.

For example, a member of the Democrat Party is an interested part in the
Democratic Party article, should they be able to edit it? Same goes for the
NGS and Wikipedia.

On 5/1/06, Steve Bennett  wrote:

> A vocal opponent is not an interested party. An interested party is a
> party with, well, an interest in the matter, like a shareholder,
> employee etc. For Wikipedia purposes, you can pretty much consider
> interested party to mean the party itself.

---------------------------------
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from_name: Robin Shannon

body:
On 01/05/06, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
> A list of pages which I suspect of having low edit-oral-ness (whatever
> that is) of their external links is now available.
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Gmaxwell/externalmania

Looking at that page i notice that lots of them are lists (in fact the
majority). Many of these lists are complete and will not need editing
ever again (for historical things) or very rarely into the future.
Perhaps a lost of these should be semi-locked or is that unwiki?

paz y amor,
-rjs.

--
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