subject: [WikiEN-l] *shakes head*

body:
On 6/21/05, michaelturley at myway.com <michaelturley at myway.com> wrote:
>

>
> The very fact that my opinion is characterized as a "problem with authority" says that ambi thinks of her adminship as "authority".  Is that the original intent?  (From [[Wikipedia:Administrators]] "Administrators are not imbued with any special authority".)

Ambi is an arbcom member. Arbcom has at least some authority.

--
geni


list: wikien-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: JAY JG

subject: [WikiEN-l] *shakes head*

body:
>From: "michaelturley at myway.com" <michaelturley at myway.com>
>I '''sincerely''' think an admin should face a temporary penalty for as
>little as a snide remark.
>Receive, perhaps not; face, absolutely.

If we're going to start sanctioning people for nasty comments, there are far
more serious examples out there.  As is typical, a certain group of people
want to set an absurdly high code of conduct for admins, who actually
contribute hugely to the project, while the daily onslaught of insults,
swearing, personal attacks, and general nastiness from all sorts of
non-admin editors gets ignored because we want to reform them, not scare
them away.  After all, with enough patience, forberance, and wikilove, some
day, on some article, they might even make a valuable edit.

Jay.


from_name: Alphax

subject:
[WikiEN-l] RickK leaving: adminship has become much more than
	"no big deal" and that's poisonous

body:
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michaelturley at myway.com wrote:
<snip>
> Part of the more general problem I see here that causes this is that
> granting administratorship at Wikipedia is meant to be "no big deal",
> yet anything that even hints at removing such, even for an hour or
> two, is the seen as end of the world as we know it.  If granting
> administrator status truly is "no big deal", it shouldn't be that
> much less common to remove it, if only temporarily.  Instead, we have
> more and more policies and procedures that excuse and insulate
> administrators from the "no big deal" portion and say "forgive the
> administrator for being mean because you really were a jerk" or
> "don't worry about the administrator driving off new users because
> he's so good at catching vandals."
>

This is why I look forward to graduated user rights levels. The
abilities to block, delete, protect, and revert should all be assigned
individually, not as a lump sum just for "doing a few hours RC patrol,
having a bajillion edits and working on a featured article". Sure, those
things make a person a good Wikipedian, but does that justify adminship?
We seem to have a lot of hot-headed admins about (not just the rouge
ones) - and when an admin decides to throw a hissy fit, block, revert
and delete pages, and announce that they are fed up with the whole
thing, it only serves to re-inforce some people's beliefs that people
should be stripped of their admin priveleges.

> If we truly want to live up to the perception and ideal that
> adminship is "no big deal", it should be a matter of routine to
> revoke admin priviledges for a few hours for something as little as a
> single foul mouthed comment, even if provoked and egged on by peers.
> If this is done, perhaps we will see less admins defending their
> actions at any cost, and more "shrugging it off" and proceeding with
> business.
>

Indeed; at present, it takes the intervention of a steward (which I've
always thought of as being comparable to a Herculean effort) for someone
to have admin priveleges removed; even so, it must be at the request of
said admin, or the result of an RfAr, or something equally vile. For
example, there are several Wikipedians on en who are listed as
"missing", and yet still have their mystical powers. Who knows what
would happen if they ever returned. I agree that admins should be
elected, and elected by the community; but reading the votes at RfA
gives me the feeling that members of the Cabal are elected by the Cabal,
for the Cabal, and Cabal memebership is some kind of certificate you
hang on your wall, much like a diploma. Yes, you can lose it, but it
requires breaking, entering, pillaging, and arson.

> For an example of an insulating policy, what's the point of getting
> another user to certify an RfC if it's only meant to be a request for
> <i>comments</i>?  To paraphrase a comment I posted earlier on WP,
> it's as if people think of it as two people ganging up on a third to
> administer a lashing.  It probably comes from being the first
> "formal" step of dispute resolution, but we should try to de-escalate
> the seriousness of RfC so we have a more basic forum for public
> commentary.
>

Also, how come only users get subpages at RfC, and not
articles/policies/whatever? And why is an RfC only ever a /bad/ thing?
Why is there never a /positive/ RfC? As in "I think this is really
great, what do you think?"

> I didn't mean for this to be a rant, but I hope this is an
> appropriate place for such comments.  I also hope that anyone not
> interested will sell me an indulgence for the price of fifteen good
> edits as penance.
>

The mailing list is the home of all good rants not unleashed at RfAr,
IRC or WP:VP :)

> Michael Turley User:Unfocused
>

- --
Alphax
OpenPGP key: 0xF874C613 - http://tinyurl.com/cc9up
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax
There are two kinds of people: those who say to God, 'Thy will be done,'
and those to whom God says, 'All right, then, have it your way.' - C. S.
Lewis
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from_name: Poor, Edmund W

subject: [WikiEN-l] Ed Poor puts the ME in melodrama

body:
Ray wrote:

> I'm glad to hear you prove my point.  US presidency? Don't you think
> that the world would be well served by having GWB take three
> months off?
> :-)
>
> If being a sysop is not a source of power they won't miss it,
> and they
> won't be missed since at any given time there will always be
> enough left
> to wield the mop and broom.  How is it that being required to take a
> vacation is "punishing"?
>
> You say that it isn't a source of power, but then ask people to "stop
> trying to fight the power."  Isn't that just a little inconsistent?

Okay, I have a confession to make. Are you all sitting down? Good.

/deep breath/ Hi, my name's Ed, and I'm a Wikiholic.

* Hi, Ed!

I feel inordinate pride in being a Wikipedia Administrator.

* /a chorus of murmurs fills the room/

Even though Jimbo said it should be no big deal.

* Be strong, Ed! We're here for you, Ed!

And when they said /choke, sob/

* Yes?

That they might take /gasp/ my ... Oh, I can't say it ...

* You can do it, Ed!

Er, could I have a glass of water, please.

* /audience member brings him a paper cup filled with water/

/sips, pauses/ Well, I ...


list: wikipedia-l

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Automatically checking for copyright violations

body:
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Mark Williamson wrote:
> ...and it would also flag every single page in Wikipedia, because they
> can also be found in absoluteastronomy, etc.
>
> If you're talking about new pages only, it might be OK but it depends
> how long search strings are -- is it looking for 7 words in a row that
> are identical, 10 words, or 50?
>
> Mark
>

I've always held that anything over 5-6 words is plagiarism, unless it
is quoted. Quotations are fair use provided they are cited appropriately.

Then again, if someone changes every seventh word, in a sentance of 25
words, that's still 14-18 words ripped straight from another source.

- --
Alphax
OpenPGP key: 0xF874C613 - http://tinyurl.com/cc9up
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax
There are two kinds of people: those who say to God, 'Thy will be done,'
and those to whom God says, 'All right, then, have it your way.' - C. S.
Lewis
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subject: [WikiEN-l] RickK deleted his talk page

body:
>From: MacGyverMagic/Mgm <macgyvermagic at gmail.com>
>
>They did?

Yes.

>I don't think it's right to delete user talk pages when they
>contain significant amounts of discussion. So those deserve as much
>attention as Rick's page.

What kind of attention, and from whom?

>I don't think Rick needs to be sanctioned
>for it, though. But I doubt he'd mind de-sysoping if he's serious
>about leaving.

I think de-sysopping would be like kicking him when he's down.  Most people
who leave when upset return anyway.

Jay.


from_name: Gregory Maxwell

subject: [WikiEN-l] RickK deleted his talk page

body:
On 6/21/05, JAY JG <jayjg at hotmail.com> wrote:
> I think de-sysopping would be like kicking him when he's down.  Most people
> who leave when upset return anyway.

Agreed here, we should just restore the page and only consider
desysoping if shows malicious intent by continuing to redelete the
page.


from_name: Roger Luethi

body:
On Mon, 20 Jun 2005 21:57:37 +0200, Angela wrote:
> The second part of the email suggests it is too difficult to contact
> us about copyright violations. With the addition of the "contact us"
> link in the sidebar, I thought this would stop being a problem. Is
> there any other way of making it easier?

How about clarifying policies so editors actually know what they are
supposed to do? I've been harping about this on quite a few occasions:
All clearly spelled out policy is concerned with "the most recent edit
is a copyvio". What if it is only noticed several or many edits later?

I have looked for WP policy on this very issue, and like others who
did the same, I could not find anything conclusive.

In my opinion, we must revert to the last version that was not a
copyvio, and then salvage whatever we can from later edits. However,
in my experience, mine is a minority position. Which is why I gave up
on tracking down copyvios -- what's the point if people reinstate the
copyvio version and then change a couple of words to disguise what
they did?

Roger


list: wikitech-l

subject:
[Wikitech-l] Re: [Wikipedia-l] Automatically checking for copyright
	violations


from_name: Chad Perrin

subject: [WikiEN-l] Anarchy and punishment (was: RickK leaving)

body:
On Tue, Jun 21, 2005 at 06:36:07AM -0700, Poor, Edmund W wrote:
> Anarchy and punishment don't go well together, and I'm glad Ambi brought
> them up.
>
> Thanks to the US military, the world has the Internet. Okay, it would
> have come about sooner or later, but the same fun-loving guys who
> launched the GPS satellites funded much of the research: the Pentagon
> deserves a little credit. A drop. A smidgen.
>
> But due to the Internet's design criteria - notably, that it should keep
> working despite nuclear war, and route around failure points
> automatically - there is no central control, no government.
>
> But many people have this "working model" of society, as well as
> Internet collaboration : that THEY can each be the boss, the ruler, the
> one who metes out punishments for all those who do not conform to their
> standards. It's tempting; I know; I've succumbed many times to the Lure
> of Authority. And I think Jimbo was very wise not to appoint me to the
> arbcom - but to the Mediation Committee instead.
>
> But I wish we would ALL stop it. Stop all these vendettas and
> punishments and Lone Ranger campaigns to make the world over the way WE
> ALONE know is right.
>
> Let's find ways to cooperate together on this encyclopedia project.
> Something other than anarchy, please. And don't let's set up a court
> system either. There's got to be a better way.

Beautifully put.  I agree, keeping in mind that I haven't read any of
what preceded this message in this thread, and am unlikely to.  Taken in
a vacuum, though, I agree with this 100%.

Fat chance, though.  Spite is a primary motivator of humans everywhere.

--
Chad Perrin
[ CCD CopyWrite | http://ccd.apotheon.org ]


subject:
[WikiEN-l] RickK leaving: adminship has become much more than "no
	big deal" and that's poisonous

body:
On 6/21/05, michaelturley at myway.com
> If we truly want to live up to the perception and ideal that adminship is "no big deal", it should be a matter of routine to revoke admin priviledges for a few hours for something as little as a single foul mouthed comment, even if provoked and egged on by peers.  If this is done, perhaps we will see less admins defending their actions at any cost, and more "shrugging it off" and proceeding with business.

I don't agree. Admins non-admin activities should be kept to the same
fairly low standard that user edits are usually held to.. we can't fit
human interaction into nice little boxes, so there isn't a good way to
define how people should behave for regular users or administrators.
So an admin should be blocked in the same way we'd block any other
contributor, ... a fairly infrequent event for substantial
contributors as all admins are... only dished out when it's clear they
need to cool off.

Now, there are cases where adminship itself should be revoked. But
that should only happen in cases of specific abuse of those abilities.
 Administrators are just regular users, there is nothing wondrous and
mysterious that admin power grants.. only the ability to edit
protected pages, to protect pages, to block and unblock, to see
deleted content, restore deleted content, and delete content, and the
autorevert button. All of these activities leave a written record.

It would be nice if all users could have access to these abilities,
but due to the potential of  difficult to correct abuse we must limit
these abilities.  It is highly likely that after mediawiki 1.5 is in
use we may being to issue and remove admin powers in tiers as well.

There are some administrative actions which should be unacceptable and
result in quick deadminship with little judgement applied, for example
unblocking yourself.  There are other activities (admin action revert
wars) that should indicate administrative cool offs like 3rr, but it's
not easy to achieve that today due to technical limitations.  Standard
blocks might be acceptable in the same role.

I think we've complicated adminship by imposing additional unspoken
requirements on the position. Technical adminship should remain as it
was intended: will you use the admin functions to further the ends of
wikipedia rather than your own personal agenda? If so you should have
access to them.  We should have another class of users if we wish to
award kindness, respectability, community involvement.  The two groups
don't always map 1:1 and the requirements to keep the positions
shouldn't be the same.  We shouldn't remove admin functions for
someone who is a jerk but almost always uses the functions correctly
(i.e. avoids using them in their own disputes), but I don't want to
send new users to go talk to them.

In the case of RickK, not only did he cross the line we set for all
editors by excessive reverting of a disputed issue, but he abused his
admin powers by blocking the party that disagreed with him and then
protecting the page when additional editors engaged. A 24 hour cool of
was appropriate if not for the 3RR than for the sloppy use of admin
functions.


from_name: Andrew Venier

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: [Wiktionary-l] Article on LISA

body:
Rowan Collins wrote:

>I don't agree with this view, stated in several places in this thread.
>I haven't read any of the articles in full, but from the portions
>quoted on and messages posted to this list, I don't see anything that
>resembles a claim that this is a "fait accompli", or that resembles
>selling shares in anything. What I see is the following:
>
>
Perhaps it would be a good idea to read the articles then, to see the
statements in context and understand why they come across this way to
more than one person.


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Automatically checking for copyright violations

body:
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Tim Starling wrote:
> Alphax wrote:
>
>>I've always held that anything over 5-6 words is plagiarism, unless it
>>is quoted. Quotations are fair use provided they are cited appropriately.
>
>
> Your unattributed quote "quotations are fair use" is plagiarism, and
> that is unacceptable. You should give Joseph Carter credit where it is
> due. He wrote "attributed quotations are fair use" in a post to
> debian-legal: http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2001/05/msg00001.html
> , and your post was clearly ripped off from that.
>

Well then, better let Joseph Carter know that Gilbert B. Rodman wrote,
in 1998 - http://www.iaspm.net/rpm/CopyRi_1.html - "reasonable"
quotations are "fair use."

- --
Alphax
OpenPGP key: 0xF874C613 - http://tinyurl.com/cc9up
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax
There are two kinds of people: those who say to God, 'Thy will be done,'
and those to whom God says, 'All right, then, have it your way.' - C. S.
Lewis
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body:
On 6/21/05, Alphax <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:

> This is why I look forward to graduated user rights levels. The
> abilities to block, delete, protect, and revert should all be assigned
> individually, not as a lump sum just for "doing a few hours RC patrol,
> having a bajillion edits and working on a featured article". Sure, those
> things make a person a good Wikipedian, but does that justify adminship?

Actually, yes.. and no.
Adminship should be granted to everyone who has the ability to
correctly use the admin functions correctly almost all of the time.
This means never using them as a favor, to add bias, or to slant power
in a dispute. This is a pretty low bar and it's the only bar we need
over those functions to keep wikipedia working well.  I'm not sure
that granular access will help all that much as most people who can be
trusted to use any one of them could probably use them all without
issue (cept perhaps the revert button).

For practical reasons we can't just give adminship to all editors and
only take it away from the abusers: because abusers would keep
inventing new identities to keep getting adminship.

But that doesn't leave us with holding a near popularity contest as
the only option:  We could require that once a user demonstrates a
substantial time and effort investment in the main namespace they are
automatically admined absent any preexisting strong evidence that they
are already a problem editor.  (So even if a troll wants to keep
getting adminship to abuse it, he must do a kiloedit or two to the
actual articles, ... sounds like a fair trade even it means
occasionally we get a troll admin that causes a little damage before
we deadmin them).  We could control the influx of new people causing a
lot of work for those monitoring their behavior by only adding a fixed
number every month, selected at random from the top 10% by edit count
of eligible nonadmin users) .  I know many think that edit count is a
poor judge, but if you only count the main namespace I think the sort
of people who will make good users of the admin fuctions will tend to
rack up the edits (by doing rc partol and such).

Once a user abused their administrative powers, it should be
revoked... with the usual allowances for minor screwups and human
nature.  It has been pointed out elsewhere, that adminship shouldn't
be a wonderful award. As a result we probably should deal with
adminship behavioural burps by temp-deadmining, but rather by a temp
block.

I think there is also the room for setting aside special titles and
roles to recognize our appreciation of  substantial contributors of
all forms... But it is silly of us to conflate this honor with the
award of some technical functions.


from_name: Tim Starling

body:
Alphax wrote:
> I've always held that anything over 5-6 words is plagiarism, unless it
> is quoted. Quotations are fair use provided they are cited appropriately.

Your unattributed quote "quotations are fair use" is plagiarism, and
that is unacceptable. You should give Joseph Carter credit where it is
due. He wrote "attributed quotations are fair use" in a post to
debian-legal: http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2001/05/msg00001.html
, and your post was clearly ripped off from that.

Seriously though, I have seen a case where a Wikipedian slapped a
copyvio tag on something because it shared some phrases with a webpage.
The author complained that he had spent hours reading multiple sources,
and rewriting the information therein in his own words. That is
unequivocally acceptable under copyright law, and the tag was soon
removed. There's no need to be paranoid. We should be careful not to
accuse people of plagiarism who are merely paraphrasing or rewriting.

-- Tim Starling


from_name: Sean Barrett

subject: [WikiEN-l] I will be leaving the project

in_reply_to:
<bd4c411e05062112341fa128b2@mail.gmail.com> (message from Kelly
	Martin on Tue, 21 Jun 2005 14:34:23 -0500)

body:
> On 6/21/05, Sean Barrett <sean at epoptic.org> wrote:
> > I am very much copyright-unparanoid, but in the absence of any
> > credible indication that the entity calling itself CoolCat wrote the
> > material, we must presume the opposite.  If CoolCat disagrees with
> > that presumption, the burden of proof is on she/he/it.
>
> Whatever happened to "assume good faith"?

It was overruled by the DMCA.

To put it a little less tersely, what we have here is a user who is
presuming too much on our good faith.  CoolCat submitted material that
is also published elsewhere.  When questioned (politely, I assume),
CoolCat made the important claim of being the copyright owner, yet
refused to supply critical pieces of data to support that claim.

If I were to start uploading Encarta articles, and when challenged on
their copyright status, claim to be the sole owner of their copyright,
are you going to say "okay, I'm going to assume your claim is made in
good faith," or are you going to ask for more information supporting
my surprising claim, or are you going to copyvio the appropriate
articles and ban me so I'll stop?

As Jimbo so wonderfully put it, this is a game of Calvinball, and the
Wikipedia is Calvin.  The "assume good faith" rule only applies until
the Wikipedia starts losing.  Then we realize that Friday the
Thirteenth falls on Wednesday next month, which means that all
unauthenticated claims of copyright ownership have to leave the
playground.

--
 Sean Barrett     | Tee-Eye-Double-Guh-Er! That spells "Tigger"!
 sean at epoptic.com |


body:
On 6/21/05, Andrew Venier <avenier at venier.net> wrote:
> When it comes to copyright problems, all one has to do is anonymously
> claim "I wrote it" when it is found to have been published earier
> elsewhere?  That can't be right.

I agree completely, but at the same time we have imposed an even lower
standard in the past, especially on images.

It's not appropriate to suddenly 'fix' our behavior for a single user
that we have decided we dislike.  And that the copyvio claim has been
argued with means we should not act with extreme haste.

There was no need to aggressively revert the changes, in fact, such
reversions probably do nothing to strengthen our legal standing even
if the text is in violation since the copyvio version was still in the
history.

If you'd like to assist me in pushing stricter copyright conformance
I'd love the help... Can you think of away to educate users that works
peformed off of copyrighted score, even if the orignal music was
written a zillion years ago, are almost always covered under the
copyright of the score?   Or how about "this shouldn't deserve
copyright" isn't acceptable for photographs of household goods stolen
off the Internet?


from_name: Guaka

body:
On Tue, 2005-06-21 at 00:31 +0200, Sabine Cretella wrote:
> >Hmmm... :) as a sidenote: wik2dict can now create Debian packages. It
> >would be cool if someone could offer server space and bandwidth to put
> >these up.

> How much do you need? I have my own server and up to now I do not use
> bandwidth and space completely - so it depends on how much it is.
>
> It could be easily integrated in the translator's portal for download
> (www.wesolveitnet.com) - there's already a download part or we cold use
> a subdomain.

I think to have most DICTs of the bigger languages will be 1,5 GB. I
currently have 1.2 GB in my /usr/share/dictd, but that's with an older
version of the English Wikipedia.

Maybe we can simply start with some Wiktionaries. Just reply in private
for the details I need to know.

ciao,
Kasper


subject:
[WikiEN-l] Re: RickK leaving: adminship has become much more than
 "no big deal" and that's poisonous

body:
Alphax wrote:
> Indeed; at present, it takes the intervention of a steward (which I've
> always thought of as being comparable to a Herculean effort) for someone
> to have admin priveleges removed; even so, it must be at the request of
> said admin, or the result of an RfAr, or something equally vile.

If you think it's too hard to get a steward to desysop someone, you
could always become a steward yourself. The process of becoming a
steward is reasonably democratic. Just state your platform and try to
get elected.

Of course stewards aren't the real problem, before the introduction of
stewards there were a few instances where I was responsible for such
things. An admin violated policy, everyone got angry, I had my finger on
the desysop button and I was encouraging the community to make a
decision, but there was no consensus. Then as now, many people thought
that revoking admin privileges was something you just don't do, except
in some unspecified case of extreme behaviour, like deleting the main
page or something. There was a lack of direction, few people seemed to
believe in the importance of discipline. Frustrated, I later argued that
all rules pertaining to the conduct of sysops were just guidelines, to
be broken at will, because there was no method for enforcing those rules.

I've long thought that the best way to deal with community apathy is by
passionate leadership. I had hoped that the arbcom would fill this role,
and I guess they have been improving over time in this respect. That
doesn't mean other members of the community can't fulfill a similar role
in a less legalistic environment -- by climbing the ladder of technical
power, by proposing policies and enforcing them, and by inspiring other
users to join them in lobbying developers and the Board for changes
which are in their interests.

This is of course the exact opposite to the position of Michael Turley
and Erik, who believe that the problem is in the existence of a power
structure, rather than the solution. Some Wikipedians believe that all
our problems can be traced to a deviation from anarchy, and that the
solution lies in denigrating would-be leaders by calling them "janitors"
or "bureaucrats". I respectfully disagree with this philosophy, I put my
hope in enlightened democratic leadership rather than the mob.

Some people complain that those in power are a cabal, rather than an
accountable and democratic body. I'd prefer it if they'd use a more
accurate word (despots?), but besides that, it will remain a perfectly
valid criticism for as long as there is no easy way for the community to
remove them from power.

-- Tim Starling


from_name: Jack Lynch

subject: [WikiEN-l] Per-article blocking (was: RickK leaving)

body:
I also think this is an excellent idea

Jack (Sam Spade)

On 6/21/05, Poor, Edmund W <Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com> wrote:
> Sorry to keep changing subject headings, but there thread are tough to
> follow.
>
> Professer Lih wrote:
>
> > I would like to see article protection as a preferred first
> > step before blocking someone over 3RR. The 3RR would be
> > better if it required this. And as much as people say, "It's
> > just a 24 hour ban, get over it," most would consider it a
> > stain on their reputation within the community if they were
> > blocked. As we can see from the RfA votes, these things do
> > get dredged up.
>
> What about reviving the idea of blocking a user from editing a
> particular article? If someone blocked me from editing one of the gitmo
> articles for a couple of days, I'd "get the message" and I wouldn't feel
> the need for a dramatic exit.
>
> As a matter of fact, I'm blocked right now - but only by virtue of
> voluntarily following the advice of Ta Bu Shi. (Technically, I'm not
> blocked, but I'm avoiding the page as he suggested.)
>
> This would be great for newbies, especially the "unsigned-in" at
> libraries and school. It's a big shock to be blocked from all edits. You
> can't even say "sorry" on a talk page! But being blocked from editing
> Elvis Presley for one hour - while you can TALK ABOUT YOUR EDITS on the
> talk page - would be great.
>
> I bet our team of programmers have already written the code for this
> feature. How about it, Tim Starling? Can you and Magnus and Brion
> provide something like this?
>
> Uncle Ed
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Matt Brown

body:
On 6/21/05, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 6/21/05, Sean Barrett <sean at epoptic.org> wrote:
> > CoolCat made the important claim of being the copyright owner, yet
> > refused to supply critical pieces of data to support that claim.
>
> So what do you expect someone to provide to substantiate a claim of
> original authorship?  A copyright regiserted with the copyright
> office? ... right.

>From a quick reading of the article's talk page, CoolCat would not
provide anything except the assertion of authorship, claiming a desire
for anonymity precluded anything else.  The pointing out that
associating yourself with being the author of another site's article
could ruin that anonymity anyway didn't produce any results.

The largest reason, I think, why CoolCat's assertion did not help was
that this user has been found to have violated copyright before.
"Assume good faith until burned", I guess.

-Matt


from_name: Jeremy Hanson

subject: [WikiEN-l] Block has expired, but still can't edit.

body: My block has expired, but I still can't edit anything.


from_name: Bryan Derksen

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Re: RickK leaving: adminship has become much more than
	"no big deal" and that's poisonous

body:
Ray Saintonge wrote:

> Kelly Martin wrote:
>
>> Yes, people who are doing their job well deserve to lose it.
>>
> For them consider it a vacation with full salary.
>
I would rather have a 20% raise, personally.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Content, reason and the ArbCom

body:
David Gerard wrote:

>Transclusion of article text is a VERY bad thing. It's basically a way to
>put a handle into lots of articles to change them without it showing on
>recent changes. I really don't see why wikiprojects think they can vote to
>pull shit like this, and why those templates shouldn't just be subst: and
>then promptly deleted.
>
>
I also think the transclusion is a Bad Thing, but I don't think the text
should be subst:ed since that would leave Wikipedia with multiple copies
of the same text scattered around. If they later need fixing it's
unlikely that a new arrival will know where to find the other copies. I
believe these transcluded articles should simply be linked to instead,
just like every other similar case on Wikipedia where there's a
"summary" article covering multiple detailed "sectional" articles (TV
shows or movie franchises, for example).

The discussion of this issue seems to have petered out about ten days
ago on all the talk: pages where I was following it, does anyone know if
there's more recent discussion someplace I've missed?


subject: [WikiEN-l] *shakes head*

body:
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Hash: SHA1

Rebecca wrote:
> I swear, this whole discussion is making me want to follow you out of Wikipedia.
>
> I have no idea why we tolerate this growing group of idiots who just
> camp out on wikien-l and VFD with some sort of problem with authority.
> I just saw one of them (who has barely made any edits to the main
> namespace in the last fortnight) seriously suggest that admins should
> be desysopped for as little as a snide remark. I'm getting really sick
> of this.
>
> -- ambi
>

Ooh ooh, was it me? I'm pretty certain I've already made someone else's
hitlist:

> Also, someone said something about the cabal choosing the cabal when
> it comes to RFA. Personally, I find this ridiculous. The only reason
> admins are voting, is because they are already trusted and have the
> experience to see who makes a good admin. Besides, admins make up 1%
> of the Wikipedia population at most, if you made some effort to
> involve other users, you could easily have more non-admins join in
> such discussion. -Mgm
>

Go ahead, make my day. Block me. For a week :)

- --
Alphax
OpenPGP key: 0xF874C613 - http://tinyurl.com/cc9up
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax
There are two kinds of people: those who say to God, 'Thy will be done,'
and those to whom God says, 'All right, then, have it your way.' - C. S.
Lewis
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body:
Gregory Maxwell wrote:

>On 6/21/05, Sean Barrett <sean at epoptic.org> wrote:
>
>
>>CoolCat made the important claim of being the copyright owner, yet
>>refused to supply critical pieces of data to support that claim.
>>
>>
>So what do you expect someone to provide to substantiate a claim of
>original authorship?  A copyright regiserted with the copyright
>office? ... right.
>
ObSimpsonsQuote:
Twitchy Police Academy Student: "When do we get the freakin' GUNS!?"
Chief Wiggum: "Hey, I told you before, you don't get a gun until you
tell me your name."

I'm not involved in this dispute at all, but one of the other emails in
this thread mentioned that CoolCat refuses to give his real name or the
name of the publisher. This doesn't seem like a particularly onerous
request to make.


subject: [WikiEN-l] *shakes head*

body:
Rebecca wrote:

>Oh no, let me rephrase. I don't think there was necessarily a "golden
>age" when we didn't have problems with antisocial users - we've always
>had that. I think the last few months have generally been the best
>period we've had, as we finally got rid of the obvious ones (i.e.
>Lir). Lately, though, this list seems to be taken up with a growing
>number of people who seem to take care not to break any bannable
>rules, but whose contributions to Wikipedia seem to consist entirely
>of trying to persecute admins (or hanging out on VFD). It's like the
>Red Faction all over again - except considerably more subtle.
>
>
Ah, I see. I don't have a clear enough intuitive grasp of the frequency
to agree or disagree, but that does seem plausible to me; Wikipedia's
developing immune system has been forcing troublemakers to evolve into
new forms. I guess I'm just lucky I haven't run afoul of the new breed
much. :)


from_name: Rebecca

body:
On 6/21/05, Dan Grey <dangrey at gmail.com> wrote:
> Haven't people made attempts at formulating a policy for de-sysopping
> before now, and been shot down in flames?
>
> This is a bit like the content-committee discussion - I'm not sure how
> much of a problem there really is. When have we ever truly needed to
> desysop someone? Can anyone point to an example?
>
> Admins, by and large, behave perfectly well. I would hope that the
> community is selecting those who are trustworthy to be admins, and
> that peer-pressure from the responsible majority will keep the odd
> rouge in line.

As far as I remember, three users have been desysopped. It is a big
thing - and it so it should be, which is why it's dealt with the way
it is now. Our admins are generally our contributors that have been
here the longest and in almost all cases, have put in tireless amounts
of work to improve the encyclopedia (and anyone who isn't an admin,
unless they either don't want to be an admin, or are in some way a
dick, should be one in the future with a few more contributions).

I'm getting really damned sick of all this admin-bashing on wikien-l.
We seem to be getting a small clique of very loud users who seem to
contribute remarkably little to the project apart from persecuting
users who actually *do* (and loudly defending those that don't).
Wikipedia is not an experiment in anarchy. If you start punishing good
users without a very good reason, they will leave. This is a volunteer
project - we rely on the people who are prepared to put in hours and
hours of work. The people that are prepared to do this (without
causing scores of controversy), become admins. We've seen enough good
users leave because of people - and you know who are - who seem to get
some bizarre kick out of chasing good users away from the project.

-- ambi


subject: [WikiEN-l] *shakes head*

body:
I swear, this whole discussion is making me want to follow you out of Wikipedia.

I have no idea why we tolerate this growing group of idiots who just
camp out on wikien-l and VFD with some sort of problem with authority.
I just saw one of them (who has barely made any edits to the main
namespace in the last fortnight) seriously suggest that admins should
be desysopped for as little as a snide remark. I'm getting really sick
of this.

-- ambi


from_name: James D. Forrester

body:
On Tuesday, June 21, 2005 7:10 PM, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net>
wrote:

> If being an administrator is no big deal then removing that status
> should be no big deal as well.

Fatal exception: Parse error.

Getting to be a sysop is "no big deal" because it just means that you've
gained our trust, and almost everyone in the world could probably do that,
if they wished to do so. Thus, by removing sysop status means telling the
target that they have failed to live up to this oh-so-easy thing. It is, in
fact, an absolutely massive thing to do.

I can't see how this isn't absolutely obvious to everyone, really - perhaps
they live in non-Euclidian spaces? :-)

Yours,
--
James D. Forrester -- Wikimedia: [[W:en:User:Jdforrester|James F.]]

Mail: james at jdforrester.org | jon at eh.org | csvla at dcs.warwick.ac.uk
IM  : (MSN) jamesdforrester at hotmail.com


from_name: Rowan Collins

body:
On 21/06/05, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> >I also worry that, at least in one way or another, UW will turn out to
> >be not quite as great as you had anticipated, and the currently
> >existing community structure will be in a shambles.
> >
> Thank you!  This has been one of my key objections all along.  It's been
> like selling shares in a South Sea Bubble.

I don't agree with this view, stated in several places in this thread.
I haven't read any of the articles in full, but from the portions
quoted on and messages posted to this list, I don't see anything that
resembles a claim that this is a "fait accompli", or that resembles
selling shares in anything. What I see is the following:

Some people have had an idea for a new project, which if it worked as
envisioned would be extremely powerful and useful. But rather than,
like most of us do, leaving it as just another idea, they've pursued
their ideas: worked out proposals; procured resources; considered how
to go about implementing it; etc

In doing so, they have sought to persuade others to also contribute to
their cause - not by "selling shares", but by asking people to
contribute ideas, skills, etc, towards making it happen. Obviously
this requires them to share their vision of what the end result might
be - to answer "Why are you doing this?" - of course, they might be
wrong, and I don't see anyone denying that, only saying that it's
worth a try.

I don't see that there's anything wrong in having conviction in your
own dreams - it's a quality I'm distinctly deficient in, to my own
annoyance. When Gerard says "The current Wiktionaries will be
converted to the Ultimate Wiktionary" this is part of his *plan*, of
his *dream*. If it doesn't happen, he will, presumably, be
disappointed, but is that really a reason to give up before he's even
begun? Would it really make any difference if he said "might, if it
works, be converted..."? Clearly, some believe it *will* work (and
therefore will make existing wiktionaries redundant) and others that
it won't work (in which case it won't exist to replace anything), and
they can use their effort to work towards it or not appropriately.

Now, leaving aside that I've always been sceptical that a Wiktionary
*could* work with nothing more powerful than a bunch of wikis (since I
don't know to what extent the current setup is and isn't working
effectively), let's look at the *risks* involved in Gerard et al's
"marketting zeal":

Scenario 1: an "alpha" version is set up, and proves
unpopular/ineffective compared to the existing "bunch of wikis"
approach. Result: some programmers waste some time writing a piece of
software that never gets used for anything; if they didn't enjoy the
challenge, this may be a blow, but only to them. Everyone else goes
back to doing whatever it is they're doing on the existing wikis.

Scenario 2: an Ultimate Wiktionary is set up, comes into active use,
but the community is split over whether or not it is effective, with
some preferring the old wikis. Result: this seems to me the worst
danger, and I presume is what is meant by "...the currently existing
community structure will be in a shambles". It could end up creating a
fork, or forcing "the community" to make some kind of decision on
which route to follow, with a "put up or shut up" message to the
losing side of the debate. At worst, it could lead to *both* projects
(many-wiktionaries and UW) being abandoned.

But how likely is that latter scenario, really? If there are
fundamental problems with the system, or the concept itself, it will
simply fail to win over users from the existing setup, and it will go
away. If there are improvements that need to be made before it can be
used as the primary tool by the communities, the community will demand
those improvements. Damage will be done only if it is good enough to
convince some people, but bad enough that others remain unconvinced
that it will *ever* be as good as the existing setup. I don't think
the risk of that happening is anything like great enough to give up at
this stage.

And Scenario 3, of course, is that UW becomes a much more powerful and
useful resource than the sum of the existing Wiktionary projects.

--
Rowan Collins BSc
[IMSoP]


from_name: Jon

body:
Fred - let me clarify the position as far as the English and Welsh national curriculum is concerned.

In 2002 the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority, which sets the English and Welsh National Curriculum for state schools, for the first time added into the history curriculum that children should be taught what BCE/CE means. Nothing more than that - just what it means. That in itself caused angry letters to be written to some newspapers, and the Evening Standard article to which someone else has already provided the URL to.

The QCA (no doubt aware of the public outcry that would occur if they did anything different) made clear that this does not mean they are introducing BCE/CE notation - they themselves continue and will continue to use BC/AD notation. They did note that children could, if they wished, use BCE/CE notation. Despite the QCA continuing to use BC/AD notation itself, a very very small number of renegate "right-on" teachers have insisted their pupils use BCE/CE - only for an angry response from parents to follow.

In summary - the English and Welsh national curriculum requires children to be taught what BCE/CE means. The QCA continues and will continue to use BC/AD notation, which remains the form of notation used throughout the QCA's syllabuses. Wherever there have been attempts by a small number of teachers acting on their own initiative to require BCE/CE notation in UK, they have normally been met by an angry response.

Jon

Fred Bauder wrote:

It seems to have been adopted as part of the curriculum in the UK.

Fred

On Jun 21, 2005, at 10:12 AM, David Gerard wrote:

> Fred Bauder (fredbaud at ctelco.net) [050621 23:45]:
>
>
>> My proposed decision simply stated what is true, that common era
>> notation is finding favor in the scholarly community.
>>
>
>
> That's a bit US POV-centric. It's certainly not true outside the US.
>
>
> - d.
>
>
>
>

---------------------------------
How much free photo storage do you get? Store your holiday snaps for FREE with Yahoo! Photos. Get Yahoo! Photos


from_name: Anthere

body:
Rebecca a ?crit:
 > On 6/21/05, Anthere
<anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
 >
 >>I would recommand some rules I proposed more than a year ago on meta. I
 >>believe a few projects follow them as well.  There are two ideas
 >>
 >>* an editor is gone, does not edit any more  ---> he will be removed
 >>sysop status. If he needs them back, he can ask and sysop position is
 >>granted back pretty easily. But we do not pretend we have 600 sysops
 >>while only 100 are active.
 >
 >
 > Why? We've never had a problem with an editor returning from hiatus
 > and mysteriously going nuts. This was proposed once before, and turned
 > down very strongly, as it is a solution without a problem.

If only because rules and habits are no more the same now that they were
3 years ago. There is an expectation that the candidate sysop knows the
project quite well, know the people, know the rules... and I believe
this is also why there is this requirement of number of edits which the
english wikipedia insist so much upon. I do not say it is good or not
good, I just observe it.

I also think that if an editor away for 3 years just came back now... he
would neither know the rules, nor be known himself by current editors.

Trust, or the way trust is "measured" as changed over the years.

If it was not the case, some editors who have been active for more than
3 years on wikipedia, who have been sysops for more than 2 years...
would not lose sysophood on the german wikipedia these days.

 >>* an editor must be lightly confirmed once a year. Without making a big
 >>mess of it. If several people question the status, it will just be
removed.
 >
 >
 > This is a terrible, terrible idea, Anthere. The standards at the
 > moment are fairly good for newish users, as a means of working out
 > whether they are trusted enough by the community to become admin
 > users. Anyone who edits in controversial areas, does RC patrol, or is
 > involved in any meta issues at all invariably makes enemies on
 > Wikipedia, with a couple of exceptions who have the patience and
 > diplomacy of a saint (ala Jwrozenzweig or Michael Snow). If you sack
 > an editor as an admin because they had to be voted again at the end of
 > a year and they've made some enemies (as opposed to doing something
 > seriously wrong), you're bound to have a lot of editors mysteriously
 > resigning a little after one year after becoming an admin. I've said
 > it before, and I've said it again - this is a volunteer project. If
 > you punish good, long-term users without very good reason, they will
 > quit. And this is a Bad Thing for the project as a whole.
 >
 > -- ambi

Hmmmm, you have a point.

Well, I do think that if someone is doing a *good* job, he can afford to
make some ennemies, but still be trusted enough by the community or by a
large enough number of the community, so that a couple of votes against
him will *not* remove him sysop status.

On the other hand, if this sysop has made SO MANY ennemies during his
activity as a sysop, so many that he has say 60% of editors voting
against him staying a sysop... well, I would say this person should
maybe not stay sysop. It might be that it drives him away to remove him
his status, which would be extremely unfortunate. But I see no sense in
keeping a problematic editor sysop, only to avoid losing him as an editor.

This is mostly a question of trust. We can all agree we sometimes
disagree with others on some decisions. That does not mean we consider
them bad persons or do not trust them. We just ponctually disagree on
one issue. If we are a good community, when the time comes for voting,
we can decide to agree we trust a person, even though we think he acts
as a cowboy sometimes. If we are a good balanced community, good long
term sysops will not be "punished".

Trust can be gained, or lost. But if it is lost, I see no point in
pretending it is still there. It means work for the community to "check"
each action of a non-trusted sysop.

Imho.

Ant


from_name: katimawan .

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia in Cebuano

body:
I express my support for the Cebuano Wikipedia, representing a language that is one of the two most widely spoken indigenous in the Philippines (the other being Tagalog).  As has been mentioned here, it is about time that the non-Tagalog Philippine languages be given their own Wikipedias.  The leading Philippine languages are spoken by millions of speakers, and according to many experts, a population of one million entitles a language group to a university.  Wikipedia can be the encyclopedia in these languages.

All Philippine languages have been declining relative to Tagalog for decades, and a Wikipedia in the major languages would help intellectualize them and raise their prestige among their speakers, especially the younger generation.  This goes for Cebuano as well as for my native Kapampangan, for which I have also proposed a Wikipedia.  The snowballing move to offer them in schools once again (their use in the educational system was abolished shortly after the declaration of martial law), and help ensure their revival, will gain momentum if they are given this recognition by the people behind Wikipedia (right now, Cebuano is being used as the medium of instruction in selected schools in the first two grades of primary school in Cebu; in Pampanga, the city government of the capital of San Fernando starts offering Kapampangan as a subject at all levels of elementary school this June).  Wikipedia has the power to help revitalize languages, which may otherwise be in danger of declining and
 eventually disappearing.  People have been talking about preserving or reviving languages while there is still time, rather than waiting until it's too late.  That is why the requests come with a special sense of urgency and passion in them.  Here, with the Philippine languages, is a clear opportunity for Wiki to make a difference.  Let's not waste it.

Edwin

> Message: 7
> Date: Sun, 19 Jun 2005 13:39:18 -0700
> From: Mark Williamson
> Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia in Cebuano
> To: wikipedia-l at wikimedia.org
> Message-ID: <849f98ed0506191339251cb18c at mail.gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1

> That is because the people who are responsible for the creation of new
> Wikipedias do not keep their eye on the appropriate channels. The last
> two Wikipedias that were created, I requested personally from Brion on
> IRC (os: and fur:).

> The last time a Wikipedia was created quickly was for tum.wikipedia.
> And tum.wikipedia didn't have very good chances.

> Mark

> On 19/06/05, Boris Lohnzweiger wrote:
>
> I am not sure who is in fact responsible for this but I noticed no new
> Wikipedias have been set up for quite a few months now. The Cebuano
> editors are so committed. Their request should be given the highest priority. > They shouldn't be kept hanging on the line anymore!
>
> Boris
>

---------------------------------

Correo Yahoo!
Comprueba qu? es nuevo, aqu?
http://correo.yahoo.es


list: foundation-l

from_name: Angela

subject: [Foundation-l] Licenses

body:
On 21/06/05, Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:

> I do ask the board: When the Ultimate Wiktionary is life, do we allow
> all and any use of our data and do we allow at least other Open or Free
> organisations to use the content of the UW in their applications without
> restrictions ?

If the content is going to be that of the existing Wiktionaries, then
no. We can not allow use "without restrictions" since that content is
GFDL which means restrictions are in place (such as needing to keep
the text under the same license).

Angela


list: wikimedia-l

subject: [Foundation-l] Licenses


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: *shakes head*

body:
Rebecca wrote:
> I swear, this whole discussion is making me want to follow you out of Wikipedia.
>
> I have no idea why we tolerate this growing group of idiots who just
> camp out on wikien-l and VFD with some sort of problem with authority.
> I just saw one of them (who has barely made any edits to the main
> namespace in the last fortnight) seriously suggest that admins should
> be desysopped for as little as a snide remark. I'm getting really sick
> of this.

Sorry, I should have read Alphax's post more closely before hastily
agreeing to part of it. Of course admins do a great job, they're
dedicated to Wikipedia and passionate about its cause, for the most part
they stick to the rules and strive for community consensus in everything
they do. There have been cases where admins have violated policy,
lashing out in the heat of the moment, and I think those cases call for
punishment in proportion to the crime.

In this particular case, I don't think Silsor is guilty of any crime
apart from bruising a fragile ego.

-- Tim Starling


from_name: Skyring

subject: [WikiEN-l] *shakes head*

body:
On 6/21/05, blankfaze <blankfaze at gmail.com> wrote:

> I hear you, ambi. Seems like each day this place and the people here make me
> want to be here less and less. So much hostility, incompetence, malice...
> It's not like it used to be, that's for sure.

Sounds like a management problem to me. What's changed between "the
good old days" and now?

--
Peter in Canberra


from_name: Gregory Maxwell

body:
On 6/21/05, Sean Barrett <sean at epoptic.org> wrote:
> CoolCat made the important claim of being the copyright owner, yet
> refused to supply critical pieces of data to support that claim.

So what do you expect someone to provide to substantiate a claim of
original authorship?  A copyright regiserted with the copyright
office? ... right.


from_name: Andrew Lih

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wikitorials shutdown

body:
On 6/21/05, David Gerard <fun at thingy.apana.org.au> wrote:
> Andrew Lih (andrew.lih at gmail.com) [050621 17:00]:
>
> > On 6/21/05, Stirling Newberry <stirling.newberry at xigenics.net> wrote:
> > > http://www.bopnews.com/archives/003730.html#3730
>
>
> How annoying. I thought it was a marvellous experiment, and was
> surprised how non-crap the results were. (e.g. beter than Indymedia, though
> that's not hard).
>
>
> > LA Times' Wikitorials will perhaps go down in history as the [[Disco
> > Demolition Night]] of the Internet.
>
>
> I don't think it was that bad ;-)

The more the LA Times talks about it, the more I'm convinced they
don't "get it". To wit:

"As long as we can hit a high standard and have no risk of vandalism,
then it is worth having a try at it again," said Rob Barrett, general
manager of Los Angeles Times Interactive.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-wiki21jun21,0,1952611.story?coll=la-home-headlines

"No risk of vandalism" eh? :)

-User:Fuzheado


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Per-article blocking (was: RickK leaving)

references:
<E506B3FF6BC1254C9AC1B948C380BC280217F7F9@sm-nyny-xm05.nena.wdpr.disney.com>
	<d9abjf$49d$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<20050622004233.GC7309@thingy.apana.org.au>

body:
On 6/21/05, David Gerard <fun at thingy.apana.org.au> wrote:
> It would certainly make 3RR blocks much less controversial.
> Mind you, I'm now trying to think of possible social side effects.

It would be a nice tool, but it I suspect it would make 3RR
ineffective:  We can't give people time to cool off if we're only
telling them they must take their war to another page.   The idea
behind 3RR is to have some time to cool off and for many users that
means taking a walk away from Wikipedia.

If we do set this up we should also make sure that it quietly places a
simmlar block on the IP.


from_name: Gerard Meijssen

body:
Ray Saintonge wrote:

> Gerard Meijssen wrote:
>
>> As to our community structure, it will evolve. Ultimate Wiktionary is
>> part of that evolution. You can not seriously expect that in a
>> project that doubles in size every four to six months our community
>> will not be affected. UW will not be as I expect, I see
>> opportunities  and I try to realise them. Many of the expectations
>> are dependant on what the UW community will be. It will not be like
>> the Wikipedia communities, it will not be like the Wiktionary
>> communities, it will be distinctly different but it will be Open and
>> Free.
>
>
> In one of your other posts you stated that some decisions about your
> UW had already been taken. If a UW community is to "evolve" that will
> begin when the software is usable by all who might be a part of that
> community.  At that time _all_ of your pre-release decisions will be
> open to discussion and evolution.  Anything else would be a work of
> [[intelligent design]].
>
> Ec
>
Is it not obvious that many decisions have been taken? Ultimate
Wiktionary will be based on a database that has its functionality in a
wiki, it will contain all words in all languages. It will have a user
interface specifically for the Ultimate Wiktionary. These things have
been decided. If at some stage people find that another scheme is
better, there is no stopping them improving on what is on offer. If you
think that the discussion starts when there is something is usable, you
do not understand what software development is about. This is the time
that people have to discuss what UW will be. If you do not use arguments
now, if you do not think now, at that stage you will have lost your
opportunity to be part of the decisions that will be taken before that time.

Using words like intelligent design is funny, because it is an
intelligent design that we are looking for. It will be evolution that
will show us what will happen with the UW functionality and  how the
Wiktionary [[phenomenon]] will evolve.

Thanks,
    GerardM


list: wiktionary-l


body:
On 6/21/05, Rebecca <misfitgirl at gmail.com> wrote:

> As far as I remember, three users have been desysopped. It is a big
> thing - and it so it should be, which is why it's dealt with the way
> it is now. Our admins are generally our contributors that have been
> here the longest and in almost all cases, have put in tireless amounts
> of work to improve the encyclopedia (and anyone who isn't an admin,
> unless they either don't want to be an admin, or are in some way a
> dick, should be one in the future with a few more contributions).

There's a problem right there. Not every editor has the same set of
wants and needs. Just because someone is a good editor doesn't mean
that they will be a good admin.

You've outlined adminship as something like having a driver's licence
- everyone should be able to get one once they are off their Learner's
Permit - when to my mind it should be something more like becoming a
Justice of the Peace or a police constable.

Look at the way you've defined entry and exit paths. Easy to get in
and hard to get out. There's an imbalance in the process.

I'm not just flapping my keyboard here. I'm one of a very small number
of "admins" in a web community of a size comparable to Wikipedia, and
I've been given the task of creating a class of special users, who
will have privileges and recognition beyond that of the average
member. Given the nature of the tasks they will have to do, the
selection process is crucial, and I'm wondering how to go about it. Do
I set an arbitrary bar of membership time and number of actions
performed, or do I make it a matter of having those "in the know"
selecting "people like us"?

The example of Wikipedia is before me, and I'm trying to find out out
what works and what mistakes to avoid.

--
Peter in Canberra


body:
On 6/21/05, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> It would be hand If you want a shared ip to stop doing something.

Oh, thats probably worth it alone.. though, it won't help the random
drive by vandals, because they'll just as happily go on editing some
other page.


from_name: Erik Moeller

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Re: RickK leaving: adminship has become much more
	than "no big deal" and that's poisonous

body:
Anthere:

> If only because rules and habits are no more the same now that they were
> 3 years ago. There is an expectation that the candidate sysop knows the
> project quite well, know the people, know the rules..
...
> I also think that if an editor away for 3 years just came back now... he
> would neither know the rules, nor be known himself by current editors.

I think it is completely fair to indicate on the list of administrators
if an admin hasn't made edits for some months or even years. In fact,
this is exactly what we're doing on

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

This helps users to know whom they can contact for help and expect an
answer.

However, revoking someone's status just because they *might* become
active again without knowing the rules seems to violate the "Assume Good
Faith" principle. If an admin pauses for 6 months and then goes back to
performing admin operations, I expect them to make an effort to look at
what's changed first. If they don't make such an effort themselves,
again, it is not our duty to punish them, but to revert actions which
have been made accidentally in violation of newly established rules, and
to educate them.

Adminship is about trust. If we trust a person, we should know that they
will try to do the right thing, even under changed circumstances.
Therefore, we shouldn't have to take someone's privileges away just to
make sure they don't do anything bad -- because this could indicate to
them that we no longer *trust* them. I don't want to send this kind of
message to people like Mintguy, Vicky Rosenzweig, April, Salsa Shark,
Optim, Mirwin, Maximus Rex, or Zoe.

I believe this is especially true if an admin is still active on
*Wikimedia*, but just not on the same project anymore.

Erik


body:
On 6/21/05, Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> I would recommand some rules I proposed more than a year ago on meta. I
> believe a few projects follow them as well.  There are two ideas
>
> * an editor is gone, does not edit any more  ---> he will be removed
> sysop status. If he needs them back, he can ask and sysop position is
> granted back pretty easily. But we do not pretend we have 600 sysops
> while only 100 are active.

Why? We've never had a problem with an editor returning from hiatus
and mysteriously going nuts. This was proposed once before, and turned
down very strongly, as it is a solution without a problem.

> * an editor must be lightly confirmed once a year. Without making a big
> mess of it. If several people question the status, it will just be removed.

This is a terrible, terrible idea, Anthere. The standards at the
moment are fairly good for newish users, as a means of working out
whether they are trusted enough by the community to become admin
users. Anyone who edits in controversial areas, does RC patrol, or is
involved in any meta issues at all invariably makes enemies on
Wikipedia, with a couple of exceptions who have the patience and
diplomacy of a saint (ala Jwrozenzweig or Michael Snow). If you sack
an editor as an admin because they had to be voted again at the end of
a year and they've made some enemies (as opposed to doing something
seriously wrong), you're bound to have a lot of editors mysteriously
resigning a little after one year after becoming an admin. I've said
it before, and I've said it again - this is a volunteer project. If
you punish good, long-term users without very good reason, they will
quit. And this is a Bad Thing for the project as a whole.

-- ambi


body:
On 6/21/05, Andrew Lih <andrew.lih at gmail.com> wrote:
> - An article level block would probably be less stigmatized, so
> possibility of more blocks happening

This is a good reason against their use... all blocks no matter how
small or how deserved are something of a slap... To a normal editor
it's a reminder that there is some more powerful force that will take
away your ability to edit if you run afoul of them and you can't
figure out a way to evade the block.   ... They will make people want
to lash   back, and if they have no means to block someone themselves
some will find another way to hurt back.

Blocks are bad energy, they are needed and  we should not be afraid to
use them where they are required, but we don't want to create the
image that any sort of block is harmless.


body:
On 6/21/05, Matt Brown <morven at gmail.com> wrote:
> From a quick reading of the article's talk page, CoolCat would not
> provide anything except the assertion of authorship, claiming a desire
> for anonymity precluded anything else.  The pointing out that
> associating yourself with being the author of another site's article
> could ruin that anonymity anyway didn't produce any results.
>
> The largest reason, I think, why CoolCat's assertion did not help was
> that this user has been found to have violated copyright before.
> "Assume good faith until burned", I guess.

Well for whatever it's worth, I've had a private conversation with him
and I find his story compelling.  I don't know if I can really offer
any more than that.

I would just like to reiterate that even if I am mistaken this is far
from the most likely disputed copyright claim on the project at all...
and I'd really like to know where all the 'ohh copyvio are bad' folks
are hiding every time I go up against a stuborn user whos feelings are
hurt that I want to delete their beloved google image search. :-/


from_name: MacGyverMagic/Mgm

subject: [WikiEN-l] Really need mediator

body:
Drop by [[WP:MC]] if you want to  see list of current mediators or go
to [[Wikipedia:Mediation Cabal]] for and give a quick summary to draw
some attention of other people interested in mediating disputes.

-Mgm

On 6/21/05, Chip Berlet <c.berlet at publiceye.org> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I really need a mediator to deal with the editing disagreements between me and Sam Spade. I requested mediation some time ago.
>
> Here is Sam Spade's latest:
>
> "First your spurious accusation of plagiarism, and now you accuse me of vandalism. This, combined with dozens of other ugly statements on your part seem to be leading up to a rather damining arbcom case. I suggest you chill the fuck out. [[User:Sam Spade|Sam Spade]] 15:34, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)"
>
> After I pointed out an obvious case of plagiarism by him on the [[Political Correctness]] page he seemed to start following me around Wiki provoking confrontations.  His most recent effort was pasting a entire old contested section back into the [[Fascism]] article--complete with duplicate sentences and much duplicated material.  When this was pointed out, he suggested it was the job of the other editors to find the duplicate material and delete it. This is vandalism.
>
> Please help.  I know some people value Sam Spade as an editor, but my experience is that when he does not get his way, he becomes a bully, promoting a very POV right-wing bias.  I am on the political left, but do try to edit here on Wiki in an NPOV way.  A centrist mediator would be best to divide out what is political disagreement and what is personal antagonism.
>
> So I am resorting to this list in an effort to find an unbiased mediator.
>
> [[User:Cberlet|Chip Berlet]]
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>
>
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] RickK deleted his talk page

body:
They did? I don't think it's right to delete user talk pages when they
contain significant amounts of discussion. So those deserve as much
attention as Rick's page. I don't think Rick needs to be sanctioned
for it, though. But I doubt he'd mind de-sysoping if he's serious
about leaving.

--Mgm

On 6/21/05, JAY JG <jayjg at hotmail.com> wrote:
> >From: Rhobite <rhobite at gmail.com>
> >
> >RickK has deleted his own talk page. I think it should be undeleted,
> >and RickK should be de-sysop'ed.
>
> Other admins have deleted their own Talk: and User: pages upon leaving
> without sanction or even comment.  Other editors have had their Talk: and
> User: pages deleted for them upon leaving, and have subsequently returned
> without having them restored.
>
> Jay.
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Puddl Duk

body:
>
> Well for whatever it's worth, I've had a private conversation with him
> and I find his story compelling.  I don't know if I can really offer
> any more than that.
>
> I would just like to reiterate that even if I am mistaken this is far
> from the most likely disputed copyright claim on the project at all...
> and I'd really like to know where all the 'ohh copyvio are bad' folks
> are hiding every time I go up against a stuborn user whos feelings are
> hurt that I want to delete their beloved google image search. :-/

It seems that a lot of people have had ''private'' conversations with
Coolcat. Some glaring admissions are the administrators processing his
copyvios (myself in a couple of cases).

I've been treated very harshly by people who have apperantly heard
these stories, and yet these administrators take no action except
bashing me (see [[Talk:GAP_Project]]).

I don't reject the possibility that Coolcat is the copyright owner of
the stuff he keeps submitting (on the GAP_Project). But I won't accept
anonymous licence granting of previously published material when
clearing copyright violations. This is the same criteria I applied to
all copyvio's I've processed.

Duk


from_name: JAY JG

body:
>From: Tim Starling <t.starling at physics.unimelb.edu.au>
>
>Poor, Edmund W wrote:
> > What about reviving the idea of blocking a user from editing a
> > particular article? If someone blocked me from editing one of the gitmo
> > articles for a couple of days, I'd "get the message" and I wouldn't feel
> > the need for a dramatic exit.
>
>Are there any objections to this? I'm accustomed to all blocking-related
>features being controversial, but this one seems to be unusually
>well-supported.
>
>-- Tim Starling

In my experience, when this kind of person is blocked from editing one
article (e.g. via page protection), he or she typically moves on to start
edit warring on a related article.  A good example is one of the people
currently being proposed for RfAR, who has managed to get perhaps 10
articles protected so far, one after another, returning to the originals for
further revert warring when they are unprotected again.

Jay.


from_name: Kelly Martin

body:
On 6/21/05, Matt Brown <morven at gmail.com> wrote:
> The largest reason, I think, why CoolCat's assertion did not help was
> that this user has been found to have violated copyright before.
> "Assume good faith until burned", I guess.

I've seen CoolCat repeatedly accused of copyright infringement but the
ones I've reviewed I've found that those accusations lacked substance.
 He's involved in one of the more contentious edit wars (Kurd issues
in Turkey) that we have running right now and there are some people
who will stoop to underhanded techniques to "win".  Apparently,
alleging copyright infringement is a very effective technique to
silence your opponents.  And it seems that we're playing right into
that strategy.

Kelly


body:
> I've seen CoolCat repeatedly accused of copyright infringement but the
> ones I've reviewed I've found that those accusations lacked substance.
>  He's involved in one of the more contentious edit wars (Kurd issues
> in Turkey) that we have running right now and there are some people
> who will stoop to underhanded techniques to "win".  Apparently,
> alleging copyright infringement is a very effective technique to
> silence your opponents.  And it seems that we're playing right into
> that strategy.
>
> Kelly

Take a look at [[Diagnosis: Murder]]. After copying from two different
websites he claims he got permission from one of them, but can't
remember which. Based on this he files a request for Undeletion of the
copyright violations.

I've yet to see an apology from him for the original plagiarism and
copyright violation.

Duk


from_name: Magnus Manske

subject: [Wikitech-l] alpha2 bug

body:
While doing some minor updates to the validation feature, I noticed that
in a freshly checked-out MediaWiki alpha2, I can not save any edits as a
logged-in user, I always get the preview instead.

As an anon, it works fine, though.

So, before complaining about me not using CSS again... ;-)

Magnus

(too lazy to put that on bugzilla; probably just a microbug, anyway...)


from_name: David Gerard

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wikitorials shutdown

body:
Andrew Lih (andrew.lih at gmail.com) [050621 17:00]:

> On 6/21/05, Stirling Newberry <stirling.newberry at xigenics.net> wrote:
> > http://www.bopnews.com/archives/003730.html#3730

How annoying. I thought it was a marvellous experiment, and was
surprised how non-crap the results were. (e.g. beter than Indymedia, though
that's not hard).

> LA Times' Wikitorials will perhaps go down in history as the [[Disco
> Demolition Night]] of the Internet.

I don't think it was that bad ;-)

- d.


from_name: geni

body:
Such a  feature would make things a lot simpler

--
geni


from_name: Thomas Gries

subject: [Wikitech-l] fckeditor -> MediaWiki 2.0

body:
http://www.fckeditor.net
http://sourceforge.net/projects/fckeditor/

Some enthusiasts for integrating this as plug-in or extension into
MediaWiki 2.0 ???

Full support by
Wikinaut


from_name: Alphax

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

Mark Williamson wrote:
> In myself, much astonishment can be found. Tim, sources copyrighted
> have been, by you, off-ripped.
>
> "was clearly ripped off from" from
> http://www.windowsitpro.com/Articles/Index.cfm?ArticleID=19265&DisplayTab=Article,
> has, by you, been clearly plagiarised.
>
> Unacceptability can be multitudinous in the plagiarism-like acts.
>
> Easily can be spotted plagiarism, since obviously longer sequence than
> 4 words from some oddly-existing source must have been themselves
> plagiarised.
>
> On you shame I cast.
>
> Mark
>

Lucasfilm. Will. Sue. You. For. Patent. Infringement. Of. Yoda.

(And Shatner and Paramount are chasing me with rusty pitchforks! Argh!)

- --
Alphax
OpenPGP key: 0xF874C613 - http://tinyurl.com/cc9up
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax
There are two kinds of people: those who say to God, 'Thy will be done,'
and those to whom God says, 'All right, then, have it your way.' - C. S.
Lewis
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Version: GnuPG v1.4.1 (MingW32)
Comment: Using GnuPG with Thunderbird - http://enigmail.mozdev.org

iD8DBQFCuBxg/RxM5Ph0xhMRAvfBAKCoYMi0SMP031t9B9ZHaBuCgOg22QCeOFwf
aMZiLM0oBX2KOzu005DzI+c=
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from_name: Svante Welin

subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia ideals

body:
Hello,
my name is Svante Welin, and I am a Swedish freelance journalist
writing an article about the Wikipedia project, focusing mostly on the
Swedish Wikipedia.

One thing I'd like to know more about, though - and here is where I
hope you can help out - is more on the idealistic issue of the
Wikipedia project. What I'm saying is... I've found lot of information
on the servers, statistics and technical data history of the Wikipedia
project. Even though this is interesting, I'm looking for something
more. What do people behind the project think about the potentially
revolutionary democratic encyclopedia Wikipedia has put into place?
Pros? Cons? What future do you think Wikipedia could have, what are
the possibilities?

Any other thoughts related to these questions are welcome. Especially
from people who've been involved in the project from the beginning, or
for a long period of time.

Thanks,
Svante Welin
Sweden


from_name: Michael Snow

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Per-article blocking

body:
JAY JG wrote:

>> > For how long would these individual article blocks remain?
>>
>> Just like current user blocks, the duration can be set by the
>> blocker/admin. I would assume that a 24 hour block for a 3RR violation
>> could for just the article in question, not for the entire Wikipedia.
>
> I fail to see the advantage then; they would likely just move on to
> revert-warring on some other article, and then return to the original
> after 24 hours.

The advantage is that it gives the antisocial more rope to hang
themselves with, while simultaneously taking a lot of the sting out of
being blocked, for those who aren't simply on Wikipedia to push an
agenda. Yes, the battlefields may shift occasionally, but the process of
building a case for arbitration against serious offenders can move much
more rapidly. Then you won't have to wait as impatiently to get a
sanction that lasts longer than 24 hours, in situations where this
proves necessary.

Back in the day when the three-revert rule was only a guideline, I
brought an arbitration case against three of the most prolific revert
warriors of the time. I think the arbitrators found the evidence
persuasive in part because I could point to a long list of pages that
had to be protected due to their revert wars. This is straightforward
and a lot easier to deal with than wading through diffs to figure out
who said what personal attack to whom. The same principle would apply to
somebody who gets blocked from 10 different articles on closely related
topics in short succession. With this kind of track record established,
I'm confident that arbitration would quickly consider hearing such a case.

--Michael Snow


body:
>From: Tim Starling <t.starling at physics.unimelb.edu.au>
>
>JAY JG wrote:
> > In my experience, when this kind of person is blocked from editing one
> > article (e.g. via page protection), he or she typically moves on to
> > start edit warring on a related article.  A good example is one of the
> > people currently being proposed for RfAR, who has managed to get perhaps
> > 10 articles protected so far, one after another, returning to the
> > originals for further revert warring when they are unprotected again.
>
>Well, the feature I have in mind would allow the user to be blocked from
>an arbitrary list of articles. In the scenario you refer to, the effect
>would be the same for the badly behaving user, they would continue to
>move from article to article. The difference is that other editors would
>still be able to edit the articles left behind. Since the collateral
>damage is lower, action could be taken sooner, and the bad user would
>run out of related articles to edit more quickly.

For how long would these individual article blocks remain?

Jay.


from_name: Dan Grey

body:
Annual 're-affirmation' would be a nightmare on WP - there's, what,
400+ admins? That means we'd need to do _more_ than one of these
_every day_.

This - all of this discussion in fact - still looks like a solution
hunting *desperately* for a problem.

Dan

On 21/06/05, Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>
> Rebecca a ?crit:
> > On 6/22/05, Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Hmmm, whatever.
> I do not want to imply you are wrong and I am right Ambi. Please do not.
>
> Only that your certainty in the previous mail that it would be
> " a terrible, terrible idea, Anthere" is just a tiny bit shaken by the
> fact already two projects as I know of, chose this way of reconfirmation
> of sysophood (annually I think, not certain though). I do not list meta
> within these two, as indeed it is a bit special project, with less
> chance of edit wars (though there are some).
>
> But the point is, some communities on other wikipedia projects chose
> this path voluntarily. There is no real reason why a community would be
> entirely right to go one way and another entirely wrong to go another,
> and vice-versa. I do not know which is the best way and I doubt I could
> find out alone. But this path was already chosen voluntarily by
> *consensus*. So, it can't be entirely a terrible idea :-).
>
> Ant
>


from_name: Wikipedia Romania (Ronline)

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Moldovan Wikipedia Proposal

body:
Hi to all,

This is Ronline from the Romanian Wikipedia. We have
currently (in the past week especially) had quite a
lot of controversy about the Moldovan Wikipedia at
http://mo.wikipedia.org.

The reason I'm raising the issue here is to gauge the
response of the wider community towards my proposal
and also what's happening over at mo:

Mo.wikipedia.org was founded a while ago, but until
about  this year, it basically had no content and
simply contained a redirect link to the Romanian
Wikipedia, since Moldovan is identical to Romanian,
renamed for political reasons (I won't go into the
whole story now, you can see
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moldovan_language).

Anyway, so a few months ago, a user called Vertaler
came and added some Cyrillic content to the Moldovan
Wikipedia. Cyrillic is a script used by a minority of
Moldovans. Node_ue (Mark Williamson) supported that
and said that he wishes to convert mo.wikipedia.org
into a Cyrillic-Moldovan Wikipedia, with all Latin
content being placed at ro.wikipedia.org in order to
avoid duplication.

After negotation with Node, I have come forward with a
proposal that he has agreed with, which seeks to
establish mo.wikipedia.org as a biscriptal
Latin/Cyrillic Wikipedia in interface, and a
biscriptal portal, but with Cyrillic content hosted on
mo.wikipedia in order to avoid duplication with
ro.wiki.

The entire proposal is at
http://mo.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Ronline/Propunere,
in English and Romanian.

Now, the reason I've come here is because some users
from the Romanian Wikipedia do not agree with keeping
a Moldovan Wikipedia for Cyrillic content, because
they believe that a Moldovan language doesn't exist
(most linguists agree with this) and that since
Wikipedia is neutral, it shouldn't have a Wikipedia in
a language renamed for political reasons like
Moldovan. Also, since Cyrillic is no longer the
official script in Moldova (it used to be during
Communist times), there is no place for it as mo.wiki.
Other users agree to Cyrillic content, but not under
the "Moldovan language" name.

The controversy, which can be viewed at
http://mo.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Паӂина
принчипалэ,
has been exacerbated by the fact that there has been
mutual distrust between Node on one hand, and a series
of Romanian users, on the other. Node has blamed the
Romanian users for being "nationalist" and "radical"
and "anti-Moldovan", this being the reason why they
don't support a Moldovan Wikipedia. The Romanian users
have labelled Node a "Stalinist" and claim that he is
not listening to them even though they are in the
majority.

Danutz, a Romanian user, pointed out that it is unfair
that Node is the only user which supports the Moldovan
Wikipedia, when he does not even speak
Moldovan/Romanian very well (it seems he has some
Moldovan roots, though) and has placed himself as
sysop undemocratically (without any community
consensus - note, though, that at that time the
Romanian visitors weren't yet aware of the mo.wiki).
They therefore feel that an abuse of power is taking
place, especially since Node is saying that the
Romanian users shouldn't be able to have a say because
they aren't Moldovan (in which case, the Romanian
users claim that Node also doesn't have a right
because he can "barely" speak Romanian/Moldovan).

Now, personally, I have taken a very neutral stance
and compelled both sides to argue more rationally and
stop the criticism. I also am entirely committed to
hearing both sides out and acting in a professional
manner.

We have made some headway recently, and I have struck
an agreement with Node over my proposal, which he
seems to support. Some of the Romanian users, however,
still do not agree with all parts of the proposal,
some of them asking for a separate subdomain for a
Moldovan-Cyrillic wiki. What do people say to that? I
would personally agree to that, meaning a mo.wiki
which is simply a portal, and a mo-cyr.wikipedia.org
which hosts only Cyrillic content.

I have presented my case here in order to gauge public
response. I have also opened a consultation period
with the community to allow for any complaints to the
proposal, at
http://mo.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Ronline/Propunere.
I'd just like to hear some opinions of people which
aren't involved in this case so we can get more
neutral, unaffiliated viewpoints.

Thanks,

Ronline

____________________________________________________
Yahoo! Sports
Rekindle the Rivalries. Sign up for Fantasy Football
http://football.fantasysports.yahoo.com


from_name: Chris Owen

subject: [WikiEN-l] Policy proposal on dealing with disputes over names

body:
We seem to have a lot of nationalist edit wars over
placenames. I'm sure not many people will have
forgotten the Gdansk/Danzig fiasco. A similar row is
currently going on at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Macedonian_Slavs
(Greeks and ex-Yugoslavs fighting over names, yet
again; they're actively trolling for votes on
Wikipedia and offline as well). I'm sure we'll have
similar arguments about other disputed names in
future.

I believe that what we need is a consistent approach
to dealing with such issues. I've put together a
proposal at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:ChrisO/Naming_disputes
which sets out some criteria for resolving naming
disputes.  These boil down to:

* The most common use in English of a name takes
precedence;
* If the common name conflicts with the official name,
use the common name ''except'' for conflicting
scientific and dialect names;
* If neither the common name nor the official name is
prevalent, use the name (or a translation thereof)
that the subject uses to describe itself or
themselves.

Objective criteria that should be considered are:

* Is the name in common usage in English?
* Is it the official current name of the subject
(official in terms of being used in a legal context,
e.g. a constitution?)
* Is it the name used by the subject to describe
itself or themselves?
* If an historic name is mentioned in the article, is
it in an accurate context?

Subjective criteria that should not be used are:

* Does the subject have a moral right to use the name?
* Does the subject have a legal right to use the name?
* Does the name infringe on someone else's legal or
moral rights?
* Is the use of the name politically unacceptable?

Of course, there's more to it than that - notably that
really intractable disputes should be resolved by a
neutral committee of administrators (not the ArbCom,
which shouldn't waste its time on low-level disputes
of this sort). The alternative is to put such
questions to votes that will just end up being pissing
contests between rival POV-pushers, which is what
we're doing at the moment.

Comments welcomed...

- ChrisO

___________________________________________________________
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subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: RickK deleted his talk page

body:
> The page should be undeleted because it is under GFDL.
> Rick deleting his page should absolutely not be an argument for
> punishment. He is just upset. Let him the time to cool down :-)

It's been undeleted

--
geni


body:
>On 6/22/05, JAY JG <jayjg at hotmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > For how long would these individual article blocks remain?
>
>Just like current user blocks, the duration can be set by the
>blocker/admin. I would assume that a 24 hour block for a 3RR violation
>could for just the article in question, not for the entire Wikipedia.

I fail to see the advantage then; they would likely just move on to
revert-warring on some other article, and then return to the original after
24 hours.

Jay.


body:
Maybe I've missed something, but what's the big deal? What is this all about?

This seems to have all been kicked off by the RickK incident. An admin
broke a rule and was treated accordingly, as any other editor who knew
the rule would've been, admin or not. Job done. (The fact he threw a
hissy fit as a result is neither here nor there. That's his problem.)

Then we seemed to make some quantum leap - now trying to put up all
kinds of test and hoops for admins to jump through - why, for goodness
sake?! Do we have hoards of marauding admins blocking genuine users at
will, deleting stuff randomly, and protecting pages when they
shouldn't? Er, no, we don't.

What we do have in the admins is a community of people who have been
recognized as being trust-worthy. They work together and discuss
problems and far more often than not come to reasonable, logical
solutions.

Dan


from_name: Anthere

body:
Rebecca a ?crit:
> On 6/22/05, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
>
>>If being an administrator is no big deal then removing that status
>>should be no big deal as well.  Perhaps being desysopped should be
>>automatic for everybody afte maybe a year.  There could then be a three
>>month waiting period before being readmitted.  Three months of enforced
>>humility might be good for some people.  Since this would apply to ALL
>>admins there could be no claim of descrimination.
>
>
> Oh, come off it, Ec. You treat sysop status like it's being elected
> President of the United States. It is a mop and a broom that
> occasionally proves to be somewhat useful. It isn't a source of power
> or any such thing. It is just that taking that mop and broom away
> without a damn good reason - in effect, punishing people, is not
> helpful, as in a volunteer project, punishing people without good
> reason will make them leave.

Prayer of the evening.

May the holder of a broom and a mop
In my house feel welcome
To take care of spider nets and dust
The mopper just fired herself.

I


from_name: elwp at gmx.de

subject: [Wikitech-l] smaller dumps

body:
I've uploaded a new version of dumpBackup.php to
Bugzilla (#2310 [1]) that understands the following
options:

--splitrevisions :
	Split revisions in sections for better
	compression. (see [2] and [3])

--usebackrefs :
	Another optimisation that enhances compression.
	(... and makes the dump slightly more
	complicated.) Only meaningful with the
	--splitrevisions option.

--namespaces=n,m,... :
	Dump only the given namespaces. (Can be used to
	dump "encyclopedic" and "non-encyclopedic" content
	separately.)

--day=yyyymmdd :
	Dump revisions of that day only. (For dayly
	incremental dumps.) Note that this is pretty
	useless unless regular dumps of the log table
	(with page deletions and moves) are made
	available.

Dumping with --splitrevisions and --usebackrefs compresses
more than 8 times better than without these options, and it
is faster. (German Wikipedia; for details see [4]).

In SpecialExport.php I added 4 options ('splitrevisions',
'usebackrefs', 'limit' and 'newerthan'). The rationale for
'limit' and 'newerthan' is described in bug #1748 [5]. Maybe
the corresponding GUI elements can be removed because the
options are mainly useful for download scripts.

I also tried to write a new XML schema, but I don't think
it is the best solution. I'd be glad if someone could
write a better one. (It should specify e.g. that in

abc
 abc is a string and in

0
 0 is an integer. I
don't know how to do this.)

[1] http://bugzilla.wikipedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=2310
[2] http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2005-June/030001.html
[3] http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2005-June/030047.html
[4] http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:El/dumpBackup.php
[5] http://bugzilla.wikipedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1748

--
Weitersagen: GMX DSL-Flatrates mit Tempo-Garantie!
Ab 4,99 Euro/Monat: http://www.gmx.net/de/go/dsl


body:
Rebecca a ?crit:
> On 6/22/05, Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>>If only because rules and habits are no more the same now that they were
>>3 years ago. There is an expectation that the candidate sysop knows the
>>project quite well, know the people, know the rules... and I believe
>>this is also why there is this requirement of number of edits which the
>>english wikipedia insist so much upon. I do not say it is good or not
>>good, I just observe it.
>
>
> Have we ever had someone return from hiatus and not know the rules -
> or have serious problems because of changes made while they're away?
> I've never seen such a case.

I do not know the rules any more. In particular the specificities on the
3R rules :-)

I will not use sysop power any more on en.wikipedia but for issues which
appear entirely obvious to me; because I think I could possibly not do
what is currently supported by the community.

Not that it is an issue at all, just a statement.

>>I also think that if an editor away for 3 years just came back now... he
>>would neither know the rules, nor be known himself by current editors.
>
>
> If this becomes an issue, deal with it. As it has never happened
> before, I'm a bit cynical.
>
>
>>Trust can be gained, or lost. But if it is lost, I see no point in
>>pretending it is still there. It means work for the community to "check"
>>each action of a non-trusted sysop.
>
>
> And where's the evidence that this is the case? We've had three sysops
> desysopped, and even then, I don't recall anyone having to
> specifically check each of their actions. There's a big difference
> between angering a small, but vocal bunch of people who hang around
> VFD and RFA all the time, and having serious issues that actually need
> action. In the eventuality that that does happen, this is what we have
> the arbitration committee for.
>
> -- ambi

Hmmm, whatever.
I do not want to imply you are wrong and I am right Ambi. Please do not.

Only that your certainty in the previous mail that it would be
" a terrible, terrible idea, Anthere" is just a tiny bit shaken by the
fact already two projects as I know of, chose this way of reconfirmation
of sysophood (annually I think, not certain though). I do not list meta
within these two, as indeed it is a bit special project, with less
chance of edit wars (though there are some).

But the point is, some communities on other wikipedia projects chose
this path voluntarily. There is no real reason why a community would be
entirely right to go one way and another entirely wrong to go another,
and vice-versa. I do not know which is the best way and I doubt I could
find out alone. But this path was already chosen voluntarily by
*consensus*. So, it can't be entirely a terrible idea :-).

Ant


body:
Gregory Maxwell a ?crit:
> On 6/21/05, JAY JG <jayjg at hotmail.com> wrote:
>
>>I think de-sysopping would be like kicking him when he's down.  Most people
>>who leave when upset return anyway.
>
>
> Agreed here, we should just restore the page and only consider
> desysoping if shows malicious intent by continuing to redelete the
> page.

The page should be undeleted because it is under GFDL.
Rick deleting his page should absolutely not be an argument for
punishment. He is just upset. Let him the time to cool down :-)


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] alpha2 bug

body:
Magnus Manske wrote:
> Brion Vibber wrote:
>> Can you confirm that PHP sessions are set up and working correctly?
>
> Sessions do *not* work, for some reason; I didn't notice because I chose
> "stay logged in". Anyway, I'm using a standard Window$ installation;
> this shouldn't happen.

Typically php.ini ships with session.save_path set to /tmp, which is
nearly always bogus on Windows -- you have to change it to get things to
work.

It's rather annoying, you'd think they could fix that in their own
distributions. :P

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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