subject: [WikiEN-l] Office actions

body:
> On 12/15/06, Parker Peters <onmywayoutster at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > On 12/15/06, Earle Martin <wikipedia at downlode.org> wrote:
> > >
> > > On 15/12/06, Stephen Bain <stephen.bain at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > > On 12/15/06, Earle Martin <wikipedia at downlode.org> wrote:
> > > > > On 14/12/06, Matthew Brown <morven at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > > > > I suspect in many circumstances Danny will not be able to
> respond
> > to
> > > > > > such questions, since he doesn't want an official decision of
> the
> > > > > > Foundation on record.
> > > > >
> > > > > I thought this project was founded on accountability.
> > > >
> > > > Editors are accountable for their own actions.
> > > >
> > > > The Foundation rightly does not want to be accountable for other
> > > > people's actions.
> > >
> > > I have no idea where you got the idea that I was asking the Foundation
> > > to be responsible for other people's actions. I'll quote you again the
> > > text (quoted above) that I was replying to:
> > >
> > > "Danny... doesn't want an official decision of the Foundation on
> > record."
> > >
> > > In this case, it was an "office action", which appears to generally
> > > equate to "putting stuff in the memory hole".
> > >
> > > Is it Foundation policy to hide official decisions of the Foundation?
> > > Or is it Danny policy? Either way, it appears that the management of
> > > this project is asymptotically approaching that of the Open[sic]
> > > Directory Project.
> > >
> > > --
> > > Earle Martin
> >
> >
> > Given that the risk of violating an Office action is Danny having you
> > banned/desysopped/draped in sackcloth and ashes, I think that the
> > boundaries
> > of Office actions need to be spelled out pretty clearly. Hiding them is
> > not
> > good for the project.
> >
> > Parker
> > ____

>On 12/15/06, James Hare <messedrocker at gmail.com> wrote:Yes. We all know
what happened to Erik Moeller.
>
>And now let's not speak of that incident ever again.

James,

to "not speak of something again" isn't helpful either. Right or wrong,
eventually cleared up or not, that incident seems entirely relevant to the
questions being asked today, because another admin is trying - in very good
faith - to get the answers he needs so that he doesn't step on the toes of
OFFICE.

If those answers aren't provided, if OFFICE isn't willing to tell an
administrator what he needs to know, or even to give him a "well we can't
say 100% but we know you are acting in good faith so if we have to undo
something you do, no hard feelings/punishment will be coming your way", then
we've got a pretty big problem on our hands.

Parker


list: wikien-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Parker Peters

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Completely unreasonable block and behavior by admin
	friends of Itaqallah to win a content dispute

body:
On 12/15/06, Alphax (Wikipedia email) <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Parker Peters wrote:
> > I've asked Jimbo to step in and stop you and David Gerard from trying to
> > flame me.
> >
>
> Well, now that that's sorted out, could we please get the same coherent
> evidence that you presented to Jimbo?
>

Given that it's in the form of a long IRC conversation, I'd have to ask
Jimbo's permission to publish that here.

I can condense it, but give me a while to put the email together.

I'm also going to include response to Itaqallah's email that he passed
through Luna earlier. It should be enlightening.

Parker


from_name: Guettarda

subject: [WikiEN-l] Office actions

body:
On 12/15/06, James Hare <messedrocker at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> I may be senior to many Wikipedians but I wasn't around in the stone ages!
> :)

Interesting.  I thought everyone newer than me was a rank newbie... (yeah, I
know, I've been here a whole 3 months longer than you).

On 12/15/06, Angela <beesley at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > On 12/16/06, James Hare <messedrocker at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > > He may have been the first permabanned user to become elected to the
> > Board
> > > of Trustees!
> >
> > Erik wasn't exactly "permabanned", and neither was he the first
> > trustee to be elected after being blocked. I wonder how many people
> > remember that Jimmy blocked an account Anthere was using many years
> > ago. :)
> >
> >
> >
> http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Mediator&diff=1570530&oldid=1569877
> >
> > Angela
> > _______________________________________________
> > WikiEN-l mailing list
> > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> > To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
> >
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Jimmy Wales

subject: [WikiEN-l] Office actions

body:
Ray Saintonge wrote:
> This is all fine, but Office actions should not be a technique for
> sweeping issues under the rug indefinitely.

I agree completely.  The message of WP:OFFICE should not be "hands OFF"
but "hands ON".

The core idea is that the process SHOULD work like this:

1. A hysterical phone call comes in to the office.  There might or might
not be legal threats.  The hysteria might or might not be justified.
But someone is sad, and Wikipedia is not here to make people sad.  So we
want to respond in a helpful and loving way.

2. The article is stubbed and tagged as WP:OFFICE.  This is a message to
good editors: "Please help us.  This article is making someone unhappy.
  We want to make sure that it is a thoughtful, fair, neutral article.
We need GOOD editors to pay attention to it, and help us make it good."

I would recommend protection or semi-protection at this point, but with
the idea that even if protected admins are (as compared to normal
protection) actually encouraged to come help with the article.

3.  After some reasonable period of time, hopefully 24 hours, but
perhaps as long as a week, the article has become a shining beauty.  The
subject of the biography (and really, these are most often biographies)
is either made happy (because a horrible error was corrected, a troll
was vanquished, or whatever) or made at least satisfied (the story of
the negative thing he or she did once is now placed in appropriate
context, properly cited, including citations to his or her own response
and defense).

4. Joy.

-----

In fact, this is far too often not what happens.

A few things can go wrong with this.

Perhaps trolls scream that the OFFICE is being paid off to censor Wikipedia.

Perhaps trolls scream that Jimbo is pulling the strings for his friends.

Perhaps young and excitable Wikipedia contributors think that the point
of the exercise is to SHOW PEOPLE that you CAN'T PUSH WIKIPEDIA AROUND,
and go out to try to dig up well-cited dirt on the person, creating an
even more horribly bad and biased article than we started with, forcing
us to start all over again.

Perhaps good contributors who respect WP:OFFICE think "Gee, trouble
here, I will just stay out of the way"... and then nothing happens.

Perhaps no one really cares in the first place, such that if the article
has been out-of-process speedied, it would have slipped through the cracks.

Etc.

I am unsure exactly how to redesign the process so that we get the good
outcome more often, and the bad outcome less often.

An example of the good outcome can be seen at [[Ron Jeremy]], which was
NOT subject WP:OFFICE, but rather subject to a controversial blanking by
an ordinary editor.  It has become an excellent article which continues
to improve, because good editors are keeping unsourced cruft out of the
article completely.

--Jimbo

  If someone has made a
> statement that may be libellous, and it is so alleged by a person who
> may be affected a bit of time needs to be taken to gather the
> appropriate verifiability.
>
> If an educational institution is not accredited we do need to mention
> which list(s) of accredited institutions we have checked to back our
> position.  But note too that we are supporting a negative position.  If
> they are accredited they should have no problem establishing that.  A
> failure to find their name on any reliable list, combined with their
> refusal to answer about their accreditation would be very difficult for
> them to sustain in any litigation.
>
> I have no idea who if anyone has been threatening lawsuits, but students
> and alumni would likely not have standing for this.  Perhaps the
> university administration?  Surely the foundation is not responsible for
> the legal defence of its editors, but a plaintiff is likely to want to
> make the Foundation at least a co-defendent in a law suit, It should be
> prepared to defend itself against groundless, vexatious, or SLAPP
> lawsuits.  If it ends up defending an editor at the same time so much
> the better.
>
> Ec
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Erica Flynn

subject: [WikiEN-l] Non-stupid WikiEN-l thread - Edition 4 I think

body:
On 12/15/06, James Hare <messedrocker at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> In light of petty squabbles, I decided to bring back the non-stupid thread
> fad.
>
> - What is your favorite article on Wikipedia, and why?

Though not my favorite (not sure what that would be), I enjoy [[List of
lists of fictional
things<http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=List_of_lists_of_fictional_things&redirect=no>]]
which someone renamed to just [[Lists of fictional
things<http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=List_of_lists_of_fictional_things&redirect=no>]]
(a simpler name, but not nearly so amusing).

- If there was an article you'd love to see become FA, which one and why?

[[Milwaukee, Wisconsin]] or [[Michelle Kwan]]. I've worked on both --
actually it probably wouldn't be that much work to get Kwan up to FA status;
it just hasn't been done yet. I'm from Milwaukee and it would just be cool
to see that be featured.

- Favorite pictures?

[[Image:Cyanocitta-cristata-004.jpg]] , a beautiful picture of a Blue Jay.
It's my wallpaper at work, and my coworker liked it so much it's her
wallpaper now too.

- Favorite anything?

[[Category:Geek holidays]], [[Wikipedia:Unusual articles]]

--James
_______________________________________________

Erica
[[User:Fang Aili]]


body:
On 12/15/06, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
>
> Alphax (Wikipedia email) wrote:
> > Parker Peters wrote:
> >> I've asked Jimbo to step in and stop you and David Gerard from trying
> to
> >> flame me.
> >>
> >
> > Well, now that that's sorted out, could we please get the same coherent
> > evidence that you presented to Jimbo?
>
> It was a complex situation.  Parker tends to present it with a lot of
> moral conclusions that I think overstep the evidence to a degree.

The point is, there was a bit of an edit war in which both sides were
> not behaving in a particularly shining Wikipedia way.  There were
> misleading edit summaries.  (Parker views this as deliberate lying, I
> see it as carelessness in the heat of a stupid fight.)
>

One person got indef banned.  The other did not.

Actually, one got blocked for five days, but piled on and run through the
mud first, while the other edit warrior was being held blameless.

One is an admin, the other is not.

Actually, as far as I'm aware Itaqallah isn't an admin, but Tariqabjotu (the
blocking admin) has strong ties to him, including being an "ex" member of
the same Guild.

And, as is usual for this kind of situation, there are many many many
> complexities.

Which makes the possible conflicts of interest going on even more
unsettling.

  The person who was banned, should have been banned long
> before, if you ask me.

And I stated, for the record, that it's my view that the edit warring on
that page merits some disciplinary action towards most of the other editors
on it, and that the lack of this while RunedChozo is being attacked as if he
were the Antichrist is a problem.

Opinions may vary.

And indeed they do.

Parker


body:
Not to worry, Jimbo, I'm condensing it down now into a "salient points"
summary version related to the edit only.

Parker

On 12/15/06, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
>
> Parker, if you email me that log for review, I am happy that we publish
> it.
>
> I just want to review it to make sure I didn't say anything in private
> that would be inappropriate to say in public.
>
> Parker Peters wrote:
> > On 12/15/06, Alphax (Wikipedia email) <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
> >> Parker Peters wrote:
> >>> I've asked Jimbo to step in and stop you and David Gerard from trying
> to
> >>> flame me.
> >>>
> >> Well, now that that's sorted out, could we please get the same coherent
> >> evidence that you presented to Jimbo?
> >>
> >
> > Given that it's in the form of a long IRC conversation, I'd have to ask
> > Jimbo's permission to publish that here.
> >
> > I can condense it, but give me a while to put the email together.
> >
> > I'm also going to include response to Itaqallah's email that he passed
> > through Luna earlier. It should be enlightening.
> >
> > Parker
> > _______________________________________________
> > WikiEN-l mailing list
> > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> > To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
> >
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: James Hare

subject: [WikiEN-l] Office actions

body:
Yes. We all know what happened to Erik Moeller.

And now let's not speak of that incident ever again.

On 12/15/06, Parker Peters <onmywayoutster at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 12/15/06, Earle Martin <wikipedia at downlode.org> wrote:
> >
> > On 15/12/06, Stephen Bain <stephen.bain at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > On 12/15/06, Earle Martin <wikipedia at downlode.org> wrote:
> > > > On 14/12/06, Matthew Brown <morven at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > > > I suspect in many circumstances Danny will not be able to respond
> to
> > > > > such questions, since he doesn't want an official decision of the
> > > > > Foundation on record.
> > > >
> > > > I thought this project was founded on accountability.
> > >
> > > Editors are accountable for their own actions.
> > >
> > > The Foundation rightly does not want to be accountable for other
> > > people's actions.
> >
> > I have no idea where you got the idea that I was asking the Foundation
> > to be responsible for other people's actions. I'll quote you again the
> > text (quoted above) that I was replying to:
> >
> > "Danny... doesn't want an official decision of the Foundation on
> record."
> >
> > In this case, it was an "office action", which appears to generally
> > equate to "putting stuff in the memory hole".
> >
> > Is it Foundation policy to hide official decisions of the Foundation?
> > Or is it Danny policy? Either way, it appears that the management of
> > this project is asymptotically approaching that of the Open[sic]
> > Directory Project.
> >
> > --
> > Earle Martin
>
>
> Given that the risk of violating an Office action is Danny having you
> banned/desysopped/draped in sackcloth and ashes, I think that the
> boundaries
> of Office actions need to be spelled out pretty clearly. Hiding them is
> not
> good for the project.
>
> Parker
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


body:
In light of petty squabbles, I decided to bring back the non-stupid thread
fad.

- What is your favorite article on Wikipedia, and why?

- If there was an article you'd love to see become FA, which one and why?

- Favorite pictures?

- Favorite anything?

--James


subject: [WikiEN-l] Office actions

body:
He may have been the first permabanned user to become elected to the Board
of Trustees!

(Although his ban was lifted... I was talking about the nasty office issue.)

On 12/15/06, Alphax (Wikipedia email) <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> James Hare wrote:
> > Yes. We all know what happened to Erik Moeller.
> >
>
> ... he got elected to the Board?
>
> --
> Alphax - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax
> Contributor to Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia
> "We make the internet not suck" - Jimbo Wales
> Public key: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax/OpenPGP
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>
>
>
>


body:
Alphax/Geni/everyone else,

Here is the evidence, for you to peruse. The first part is a repost from
earlier emails, second is my condensation of salient points that Jimbo and I
went over on IRC, and the final will be an analysis of Itaqallah's claim
(which I consider spurious and deceptive) that the sources in the item he
reverted did not support the text given.

Phase 1: FayssalF/Svest's misconstruing of a block log.

FayssalF/Svest (I really don't like deceptive signatures, as an aside: your
username should be in your signature!) made a comment on WP:ANI:"Ummmmmmm!
Talking about an admin who got a clean block log? This is
yours<http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Log&type=block&page=User:RunedChozo>(5
blocks w/in 1 month). Please behave. --
*Szvest <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:FayssalF> *
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Wikiquote-logo.svg>
*Wiki me up (r)* <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:FayssalF> 19:15, 11
December 2006 (UTC)"

The block log in question:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Log&type=block&page=User:RunedChozo

I went through the list, counting up until the time when Svest made his
post. Here's what I discovered (you can follow them yourself, from bottom
up):
#1 - block by Aecis, related to a good-faith page move related to commentary
left on WP:ANI about a page needing to be moved. Blocked for ignoring a
warning posted to the page, but looks to me like a well-meaning mistake that
resulted in a block. Aecis's comment on RunedChozo's page concurs with this.
#2 - First 3RR,  not uncommon for new users. Block by William for
"infinite".
#2.5 - William resets this to a proper 24 hours; Shouldn't really even count
this as a "new" block since it's William fixing his own mistake. Svest
counts this as "Three."
#3 - Future Perfect at Sunrise - surprisingly friendly with Itaqallah -
blocks RunedChozo for a massive 72 hours. 3RR not even violated.
#4 - William blocks for 3RR: 72 hours yet again. RunedChozo contests,
claiming he didn't actually break the line, and is yelled at for "gaming the
system." If we have 3RR, fine, but now they're just hounding this user, not
to mention slapping on out-of-process ridiculously long blocks compared to
what policy states.

We have policy on 3RR, and it says 24 hours. I find it amazing how quickly
two admins decided that a tripling of the normal time was appropriate.

Phase 2: Analysis of the edits reported by RunedChozo at WP:ANI. Jimbo and I
went through this line by line on IRC, so I'll present it in the same
fashion.

A bit of further analysis on the history on this page: it appears that
RunedChozo isn't the only editor that edit wars on that page. Itaqallah and
others have been continually reverting and edit warring with other editors
on it, to the point where it's almost two articles side by side: each side
seems to call up their preferred version from the history, then "tweak" it,
before dropping it in as a "revert." Besides being a rather pale attempt at
gaming the 3RR system (see also: Complex Reverts), it causes a bloody mess
when trying to untangle the article later.

Thus the analysis is long, and many changes I will mention only to tag with
"multiple version problem."

The edit in question:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Muhammad_as_a_diplomat&diff=93627974&oldid=93625725

The edit summary was "rv unsourced OR".

Change one: major difference appears the "to which both parties had agreed"
line. Other portions of this change appear semantic and a result of the
multiple version problem. However, change has no relation to edit summary,
and appears to be related to edits introduced by Arrow740 and not
RunedChozo. Conclusion: Not related to case.

Change two: asked/requested. Semantics only, likely multiple version
problem. Conclusion: not related to case.

Change three: Block of text removed. This is the same block of text
introduced by RunedChozo, the same Itaqallah refers to in his email to us.
Conclusion: This is the bone of contention, but we analyzed the whole thing
just to be sure, so I'll continue.

Change four: One paragraph split into two due to image removal/reinsertion.
Beyond image, no text difference. Likely multiple version problem again,
Conclusion: not related to case.

Change five: preceding/succeeding: semantics only, multiple version problem.
Conclusion: not related to case.

Change six: readdition of Al-Mubarakpuri quote. Not sure what relevance the
quote has to article. Also not a "removal" by Itaqallah, so we deemed it of
no relevance to the case.

Change seven: Merely referencing a Koranic quote, versus inserting the
entire quote into the article. After a side discussion over whether having
the whole quote did anything for the article, we deemed this not related to
the case.

Change eight: "Quotefarm" template. We weren't sure what this is, but deemed
it not related to the case.

Change nine: removal of first name of Irfah Shahid, change of "It" to "He":
semantics, likely related to multiple version problem. Conclusion: not
related to the case.

As you can see, the only edit Jimbo and I deemed relevant to the case was
indeed Change Three. Because the text block includes a definite Source:
statement, we deemed that the edit summary was indeed deceptive.

The second bone of contention was this edit:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Muhammad_as_a_diplomat&diff=93628886&oldid=93628310

with the edit summary of "try using the talk page: we have already discussed
these changes".

However, Jimbo and I checked the talk page, and saw no discussion at all
related to the only edit up above relevant to the case, which indicates that
this edit summary is deceptive as well, though not quite as bad given that
Itaqallah and others have been in ongoing edit wars on this article and we
have the Multiple Version Problem going on.

Which leads us to the next, in which Itaqallah sent Luna an email and asked
her to forward it, making the claim now that his edit summary is "valid"
because the sources somehow do not support the edit.

Phase three: Rebuttal to Itaqallah's claim

Now, the first thing to consider is that despite Itaqallah's claim that the
"source" (singular) does not support the edit in question, what is given
there is actually three sources: biographies of Mohammed by the Muslim
scholars Ibn Hisham, Al-Waqidi, and Ibn Sa'ad.

Regrettably, Itaqallah is correct in his assertion that the sources are only
published in Arabic. Why this is is probably a question better left for
another time.

Unfortunately for Itaqallah, plenty of scholarly study of the life of
Mohammed has been done, by people who are versed in Arabic and competent to
read and analyze those sources, so we have a good number of scholarly and
Muslim leadership quotes which seem to concur with the edit in question.

*Bernard Lewis* (he seems to be a favorite source by many of our stridently
anti-Israel editors, too): "the murder of a Muslim by a Meccan for what
appears to have been a purely private difference of opinion served as *casus
belli* for the final attack and the conquest of Mecca."

*John Glubb*: "It is possible that the Prophet himself was ill content at
the prospect of having to wait ten years before he could march on Mecca,
which now seemed as ready as a ripe plum to fall into his lap. He may
consequently have welcomed the opportunity Beni Kinana had supplied,
enabling him to break the truce."

*Carl Brockelmann*: Muhammad "was simply waiting for a pretext to settle
accounts with [Quraysh] once and for all. A brawl between a Bedouin tribe
converted to Islam and some partisans of Quraysh, in which some townsmen
from Mecca itself are supposed to have taken part, presented a pretext for
declaring the peace broken."

MA Khan (in an article analyzing the 2003 OIC speech by Dr. Mahathir
Mohammed in which he called for a truce which would lead to the later
destruction of Israel): "Although a 10-year truce was signed, Muhammad broke
the agreement and attacked Mecca within two years as his force became strong
enough to overrun the coveted city. From the treaty of Hudaibiyya and the
subsequent capture of Mecca and Ka'ba two years later, the evident message
of the master tactician Prophet of Islam is such: *'When you are weaker
against your enemy, do not jump into a suicidal war. In stead, sign a truce
of nonaggression for a while during which you could build up the force and
ammunition and when you are strong enough to overrun the enemy, dump the
truce and launch the attack'*."

Yassir Arafat, in a radio address on May 4, 1994:
"I see this agreement as being no more than the agreement signed between our
Prophet Muhammad and the Quraysh in Mecca."
"Umar ibn al-Khattab, the prophet had been right to insist on the agreement,
for it helped him defeat the Quraysh and take over their city of Mecca. In a
similar spirit, we now accept the peace agreement, but [only in order] to
continue on the road to Jerusalem."

Now, the Muslim writers have their own side, and claim it was the Meccans
who broke the truce. Our article on Mohammed, however, mentions next to none
of this, and certainly not the historical controversy involved in it. The
comment by Yassir Arafat is most relevant, since it directly indicates that
Muslim scholarly opinion sees the Meccan treaty as not a peaceful treaty,
but one to buy time to build up military force.

Do I think the edit was one-sided? Absolutely. Did it deserve to be
completely stripped out? Probably not. And on the whole, the article
[[Mohammed the Diplomat]], after spending a good amount of time going
through the references and page history, appears to be very  biased in favor
of making Mohammed look as good as possible, rather than an NPOV
presentation of diplomatic episodes in Mohammed's life and noting fairly
when there is a controversy over his actions.

And as for Itaqallah's claim that the source did not support the edit, well,
I'm afraid that appears from my research so far to be not the case at all.

Parker


subject: [WikiEN-l] Office actions

body:
On 12/15/06, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
>
> James Hare wrote:
> > Yes. We all know what happened to Erik Moeller.
> >
> > And now let's not speak of that incident ever again.
>
> Exactly.  Drummed from the project in shame, never to be heard from
> again. ;-)
>
> (In case anyone reading this doesn't get this obscure reference, there
> was an unfortunate incident which was quickly cleared up regarding
> WP:OFFICE and some confusions surrounding it, and Erik is of course
> still a valued member of the community and in fact a member of the board.)
>
> The point is, mistakes are made, errors are reversible, assuming good
> faith and trying to listen to each other is always better than the
> alternatives.
>

Precisely, Jimbo.

And assuming good faith, and asking what the boundaries are before doing
something when OFFICE is potentially involved, would seem to be a good
course of action, would it not?

Parker


body:
>
> [[Milwaukee, Wisconsin]] or [[Michelle Kwan]]. I've worked on both --
> actually it probably wouldn't be that much work to get Kwan up to FA
> status;
> it just hasn't been done yet. I'm from Milwaukee and it would just be cool
> to see that be featured.
>

Wow, Wisconsin, eh? I hear that's a really bad place. At least that's what
these two guys with wings on their backs told me, right before they
convinced a nun that God doesn't exist...

(blatant movie reference, carry on!)

Parker


subject: [WikiEN-l] Office actions

body:
I may be senior to many Wikipedians but I wasn't around in the stone ages!
:)

On 12/15/06, Angela <beesley at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 12/16/06, James Hare <messedrocker at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > He may have been the first permabanned user to become elected to the
> Board
> > of Trustees!
>
> Erik wasn't exactly "permabanned", and neither was he the first
> trustee to be elected after being blocked. I wonder how many people
> remember that Jimmy blocked an account Anthere was using many years
> ago. :)
>
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Mediator&diff=1570530&oldid=1569877
>
> Angela
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Evan Martin

subject: [Wikitech-l] New Extension - The wiki NMA... WhatsDown

body:
On 12/15/06, Rob Church <robchur at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 15/12/06, Edward Z. Yang <edwardzyang at thewritingpot.com> wrote:
> > This extension will murder performance. You cannot do the socket
> > connection at runtime without incurring significant delays in page serving.
>
> It's not a problem, since it's not like we'll ever use it on Wikimedia
> anyway. To be perfectly blunt about it; if other people want to
> install inefficient custom code on their wikis...well, it's their
> servers, their requirements, and their problem.

If the code were slightly rearranged, so that it begins all of the
connections simultaneously and only then selects on all of them, it'd
at least get the runtime down to 2 seconds in the worst case.  As it
is, it's 2*(number of host-ports).


subject: [WikiEN-l] Office actions

body:
Alphax (Wikipedia email) wrote:
> Earle Martin wrote:
>> In this case, it was an "office action", which appears to generally
>> equate to "putting stuff in the memory hole".
>>
>> Is it Foundation policy to hide official decisions of the Foundation?
>> Or is it Danny policy? Either way, it appears that the management of
>> this project is asymptotically approaching that of the Open[sic]
>> Directory Project.
>>
>
> That's grounds for moderation, citizen.

I don't think Earle needs to be put on moderation, I think Earle needs a
big hug.

Earle, I can tell you that nothing is approaching anything like the Open
Directory Project.  Is there a problem that WP:OFFICE articles have
tended to sit there in the "wrong version" for too long, and that good
editors are unsure how to proceed?

Absolutely.

But that's a problem that everyone wants to fix in an open, transparent,
and loving way.  It is not very helpful to accuse Danny or the
Foundation of any sort of "memory hole" policies or of becoming closed
like the ODP.

Please, let's all always move forward by assuming good faith.  Good
people, trying to do a good thing for the world, balancing many complex
and competing concerns.  It's a complex mess.  That's because the world
is a complex mess.  We're all doing our best here.

--Jimbo


from_name: Rob Church

body:
On 15/12/06, Edward Z. Yang <edwardzyang at thewritingpot.com> wrote:
> This extension will murder performance. You cannot do the socket
> connection at runtime without incurring significant delays in page serving.

It's not a problem, since it's not like we'll ever use it on Wikimedia
anyway. To be perfectly blunt about it; if other people want to
install inefficient custom code on their wikis...well, it's their
servers, their requirements, and their problem.

Rob Church


subject: [WikiEN-l] Office actions

body:
James Hare wrote:
> Yes. We all know what happened to Erik Moeller.
>
> And now let's not speak of that incident ever again.

Exactly.  Drummed from the project in shame, never to be heard from
again. ;-)

(In case anyone reading this doesn't get this obscure reference, there
was an unfortunate incident which was quickly cleared up regarding
WP:OFFICE and some confusions surrounding it, and Erik is of course
still a valued member of the community and in fact a member of the board.)

The point is, mistakes are made, errors are reversible, assuming good
faith and trying to listen to each other is always better than the
alternatives.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Office actions

body:
Alphax (Wikipedia email) wrote:
> Given the number of people who don't understand or don't care that what
> happens on Wikipedia can have real-world implications, a suitable degree
> of "HERE BE DRAGONS" /is/ needed.

So I agree with you about that... to a degree.

The problem is that far too often, when something is tagged WP:OFFICE it
just sits there, for months, with everyone scared to do anything.  This
is the opposite of what is intended.

--Jimbo


subject:
[WikiEN-l] Completely unreasonable block and behavior by admin
 friends of Itaqallah to win a content dispute

body:
Alphax (Wikipedia email) wrote:
> Parker Peters wrote:
>> I've asked Jimbo to step in and stop you and David Gerard from trying to
>> flame me.
>>
>
> Well, now that that's sorted out, could we please get the same coherent
> evidence that you presented to Jimbo?

It was a complex situation.  Parker tends to present it with a lot of
moral conclusions that I think overstep the evidence to a degree.

The point is, there was a bit of an edit war in which both sides were
not behaving in a particularly shining Wikipedia way.  There were
misleading edit summaries.  (Parker views this as deliberate lying, I
see it as carelessness in the heat of a stupid fight.)

One person got indef banned.  The other did not.

One is an admin, the other is not.

And, as is usual for this kind of situation, there are many many many
complexities.  The person who was banned, should have been banned long
before, if you ask me.

Opinions may vary.


from_name: wikipedia2006 at dpbsmith.com

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Reverberating self-reinforcing autoregenerative circular
	sourcing

body:
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Ivy_League#A_Rutgers.2FIvy_reference_from_the_Daily_News and followup, and be afraid. Be very afraid.

In brief: The first known college football game took place between Rutgers and Princeton, and the Ivy League sort of coalesced out of a group of schools that had been playing each other for year. There is dispute about a statement that "both [Rutgers and the College of William and Mary] declined invitations to join the Ivy League at its formation in 1954."  Clearly there was discussion about what colleges should be included, and clearly Rutgers was talked about. But it's not so clear whether Rutgers was invited and declined, or whether Rutgers was considered and rejected. Or something in between, or both, or neither, or what. (It's like the question of whether or not John Bolton "resigned.")

The editor who says Rutgers was invited and declined has a source that falls beautifully into borderline territory. He insists that he's seen it in microfilm copies of the Rutgers student newspaper, and that he's seen it recently, but declines to pin the exact citation down to anything more than the entire microfilm archive itself. But that's NOT the reason why I'm posting this.

Here's the scary part.

Someone found what looked like a valuable confirming source: a recent article in the New York Daily News that said, "Rutgers might have joined the fledgling Ivy League and altered its destiny. But the school declined the offer - arguably the dumbest mistake in its history. Ever since then, Rutgers has scrambled to prove itself worthy of playing football with the big boys."

Good, right? Unfortunately the reporter did not cite his source. So someone contacted that reporter and asked.

And, guess what: the reporter's source was the Wikipedia article.


body:
On 12/15/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 15/12/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > My own favourite is [[Xenu]]. It was the numbah one source during Tom
> > Cruise's public meltdown in 2005. And for obvious reasons, it's
> > referenced to the hilt.
>
>
> I should add the really fun part was seeing sentences I'd written
> lifted directly by the media. Hell yeah, use my stuff ;-D
>

So what's it like having your own SP declare?

Parker


subject: [WikiEN-l] Office actions

body:
Go forward, Guy, with my blessing and protection.

But this really needs a longer term solution, and I agree with you that
discussing it here (even with the unnecessary flaming around the edges
of the discussion) seems helpful in sorting through this.

Guy Chapman aka JzG wrote:
> On Fri, 15 Dec 2006 09:46:11 -0500, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com>
> wrote:
>
>> I am unsure exactly how to redesign the process so that we get the good
>> outcome more often, and the bad outcome less often.
>
> Stating the case here has already helped.  We should work on
> [[WP:OFFICE]] to ensure that it reflects this aim.  I am very happy to
> hear that we should be working to fix up these articles, since it is
> often the case that several editors are motivated to do just that.
>
> Sometimes it's not quite so simple (as with Gregory Lauder-Frost,
> whose friends made baseless claims in respect of our ability to
> document his verifiable conviction for fraud, a notable and
> significant fact by any rational assessment).
>
> In this case, hopefully it is simple.  We have impeccable sources for
> a number of significant facts which bear directly on why this place
> was ever considered notable in the first place.  We can work on those,
> applying the highest standards of care.
>
> Hopefully the evidence of this care, through showing our working, will
> be sufficient to ward off trouble, but there is still the niggling
> concern that fiddling with OFFICEd articles has in the past led to
> summary disciplinary actions.  I'd really rather that didn't happen to
> me.
>
> Guy (JzG)


body:
Parker, if you email me that log for review, I am happy that we publish it.

I just want to review it to make sure I didn't say anything in private
that would be inappropriate to say in public.

Parker Peters wrote:
> On 12/15/06, Alphax (Wikipedia email) <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Parker Peters wrote:
>>> I've asked Jimbo to step in and stop you and David Gerard from trying to
>>> flame me.
>>>
>> Well, now that that's sorted out, could we please get the same coherent
>> evidence that you presented to Jimbo?
>>
>
> Given that it's in the form of a long IRC conversation, I'd have to ask
> Jimbo's permission to publish that here.
>
> I can condense it, but give me a while to put the email together.
>
> I'm also going to include response to Itaqallah's email that he passed
> through Luna earlier. It should be enlightening.
>
> Parker
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] Office actions

body:
Angela wrote:
> On 12/16/06, James Hare <messedrocker at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> He may have been the first permabanned user to become elected to the Board
>> of Trustees!
>
> Erik wasn't exactly "permabanned", and neither was he the first
> trustee to be elected after being blocked. I wonder how many people
> remember that Jimmy blocked an account Anthere was using many years
> ago. :)
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Mediator&diff=1570530&oldid=1569877

Did you know that this is, as far as I can remember, the first time I
ever knew that account was being used by Anthere? :)

--Jimbo


body:
On 12/15/06, James Hare <messedrocker at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> SP declare? Whu?
>
> On 12/15/06, Parker Peters <onmywayoutster at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > On 12/15/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> > >
> > > On 15/12/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> > >
> > > > My own favourite is [[Xenu]]. It was the numbah one source during
> Tom
> > > > Cruise's public meltdown in 2005. And for obvious reasons, it's
> > > > referenced to the hilt.
> > >
> > >
> > > I should add the really fun part was seeing sentences I'd written
> > > lifted directly by the media. Hell yeah, use my stuff ;-D
> > >
> >
> > So what's it like having your own SP declare?
> >
> > Parker

Scientology leadership declares that anyone who is involved in "deliberately
keeping people out of Scientology" or somesuch is a Suppressive Person (as
opposed to a PTS, a Potential Trouble Source, who is merely to be watched
closely).

SP's are fair game for harassment, legal attacks, and pretty much anything
else Scientologists can come up with in order to try and destroy them or at
least their reputation. Once you've officially had an "SP Declare", no
Scientologist is allowed to talk with you, do business with you, or anything
like that, and if they're brought forth in a court of law with you involved
(especially if Scientology lawyers brought the lawsuit), they're religiously
bound to lie as nastily as possible to try to destroy you.

Anyone who's had run-ins with Scientology before knows about it, but they
try to keep it a secret the rest of the time, to keep the suckers, er,
"customers" coming in.

Parker


body:
On 12/15/06, Parker Peters <onmywayoutster at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>
> On 12/15/06, James Hare <messedrocker at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > SP declare? Whu?
> >
> > On 12/15/06, Parker Peters <onmywayoutster at gmail.com> wrote:
> > >
> > > On 12/15/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com > wrote:
> > > >
> > > > On 15/12/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > >
> > > > > My own favourite is [[Xenu]]. It was the numbah one source during
> > Tom
> > > > > Cruise's public meltdown in 2005. And for obvious reasons, it's
> > > > > referenced to the hilt.
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > I should add the really fun part was seeing sentences I'd written
> > > > lifted directly by the media. Hell yeah, use my stuff ;-D
> > > >
> > >
> > > So what's it like having your own SP declare?
> > >
> > > Parker
>
>
> Scientology leadership declares that anyone who is involved in
> "deliberately keeping people out of Scientology" or somesuch is a
> Suppressive Person (as opposed to a PTS, a Potential Trouble Source, who is
> merely to be watched closely).
>
> SP's are fair game for harassment, legal attacks, and pretty much anything
> else Scientologists can come up with in order to try and destroy them or at
> least their reputation. Once you've officially had an "SP Declare", no
> Scientologist is allowed to talk with you, do business with you, or anything
> like that, and if they're brought forth in a court of law with you involved
> (especially if Scientology lawyers brought the lawsuit), they're religiously
> bound to lie as nastily as possible to try to destroy you.
>
> Anyone who's had run-ins with Scientology before knows about it, but they
> try to keep it a secret the rest of the time, to keep the suckers, er,
> "customers" coming in.
>
> Parker
>

See [[Suppressive Person]] and [[Fair Game (Scientology)]] as well.

Parker


subject:
[Wikitech-l] can I add parameters to hooks used by two
	extensions (spellchecker and svn blame-like view)

body:
On 12/15/06, Jay R. Ashworth <jra at baylink.com> wrote:
> On Wed, Dec 13, 2006 at 05:10:06PM -0500, Dave Grogan wrote:
> > >> Yeah, there are only about 8 good ones that are really distinctive, and
> > >> then after about 20 you can get into some hairy situations.  It's not
> > >> that bad though because usually an off-green is next to an off-red or
> > >> something.  It's only bad when a color and two of its off-colors are all
> > >> close.  I might have it wrap after 10 but add a hover feature that will
> > >> pop up the contributor's name.
> > >
> > > You've seen the IBM work on this sort of thing, right?
> >
> > No.  Please inform.
>
> In light of your posting today, I guess I'd better get to answering
> this.  I can't find the link I blogged (I'm too witty for my own good,
> clearly), but I spotted it at Metafilter about 8 months to a year ago,
> and it was a graphical waterfall style representation of how a
> Wikipedia page changes over time.  ISTR they weren't releasing the code
> at that time, but the details are lost to me.
>
> I don't know that it's directly relevant to what you want to do, but it
> might bear investigation.  I'll look a little further.

I think you're referring to this one:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_History_Flow_tool


from_name: jayjg

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Admins who pretend to quit (was Re: MONGO and the
	ArbComm)

body:
On 12/14/06, Parker Peters <onmywayoutster at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 12/14/06, M Roget <mroget at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > On 12/13/06, Sarah (slimvirgin at gmail.com> wrote:
> > >On 12/12/06, George Herbert <george.herbert at gmail.com
> > <http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l>> wrote:
> > >*> On 12/12/06, Parker Peters <onmywayoutster at gmail.com
> > <http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l>> wrote:
> > *>* >>
> > *>* >> On 12/12/06, Luna <lunasantin at gmail.com
> > <http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l>> wrote:
> > *>>*> > MONGO: I lost count.
> > *>* >> Slimvirgin: at least 3 instances, one of which was "if you don't
> > ban this
> > *>* >> user I'm leaving."
> > *>* >> FloNight: at least 2 instances.
> > *
> > >I left once for about a week, and I believe FloNight left once too.
> > >Please get your facts straight.
> >
> > If you were serious about leaving and not just pretending to in order to
> > elicit a reaction why didn't you ask to by desysopped when you quit?
> >
> > Michel
> > ___
>
>
> After looking back at the affair, it seems to me that Slim and Flo's
> "leaving" was a ruse to get another admin punished for attempting to mend
> fences with one of Wikipedia's detractors.
>
> Parker

Looking back on your "contributions" to wikien-l, it seems to be that
your own "leaving" Wikipedia was a ruse to pretend to be an admin,
rather than just another banned troll who is now trolling wikien-l
instead.

Jay.


list: foundation-l

from_name: Jeff V. Merkey

subject:
[Foundation-l] [ANNOUNCE] Open Source Protocol Reconstruction
	Project for Linux

body:
We have open sourced this project for our Linux based appliances and
file systems from Solera Networks.   The program reconsutructs
 web session and email, and we are adding FTP, P2P, and other Linux
kernel protocols. May be useful for the Wiki community to playback
troublesome sessions.  At any rate, its GPL.

Jeff

    LINDON, Utah, Dec. 15 /PRNewswire/ -- Solera Networks, Inc., the
technology leader in network packet record and playback appliances, today
announced that source code for DataEcho, a web session reconstruction
application, will be made available under the GNU General Public License.
The company has established a community website at
http://sourceforge.net/projects/data-echo. Source code and Windows
installers are available for download now.
   DataEcho reconstructs historical web browsing and email traffic from
captured network packets, for monitoring insider security threats and
policy compliance. It is a useful adjunct to network protocol analyzers
such as Sniffer(TM) or WireShark.


list: wikimedia-l


body:
On 12/15/06, jayjg <jayjg99 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 12/14/06, Parker Peters <onmywayoutster at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 12/14/06, M Roget <mroget at gmail.com> wrote:
> > >
> > > On 12/13/06, Sarah (slimvirgin at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > >On 12/12/06, George Herbert <george.herbert at gmail.com
> > > <http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l>> wrote:
> > > >*> On 12/12/06, Parker Peters <onmywayoutster at gmail.com
> > > <http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l>> wrote:
> > > *>* >>
> > > *>* >> On 12/12/06, Luna <lunasantin at gmail.com
> > > <http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l>> wrote:
> > > *>>*> > MONGO: I lost count.
> > > *>* >> Slimvirgin: at least 3 instances, one of which was "if you
> don't
> > > ban this
> > > *>* >> user I'm leaving."
> > > *>* >> FloNight: at least 2 instances.
> > > *
> > > >I left once for about a week, and I believe FloNight left once too.
> > > >Please get your facts straight.
> > >
> > > If you were serious about leaving and not just pretending to in order
> to
> > > elicit a reaction why didn't you ask to by desysopped when you quit?
> > >
> > > Michel
> > > ___
> >
> >
> > After looking back at the affair, it seems to me that Slim and Flo's
> > "leaving" was a ruse to get another admin punished for attempting to
> mend
> > fences with one of Wikipedia's detractors.
> >
> > Parker
>
> Looking back on your "contributions" to wikien-l, it seems to be that
> your own "leaving" Wikipedia was a ruse to pretend to be an admin,
> rather than just another banned troll who is now trolling wikien-l
> instead.
>
> Jay.

If you're quite done flaming the messenger?

Thank you.

Parker


subject:
[Wikitech-l] [Fwd: [ANNOUNCE] Open Source Protocol Reconstruction
 Project for Linux]

body:
FYI.   Having this code integrated into mediawiki or wikiadmin tools may
be useful for tracking vandals or establishing
forensic evidence for folks who are misusing wikimedia sites.

Jeff


subject:
[Wikitech-l] [ANNOUNCE] Open Source Protocol Reconstruction	Project
	for Linux

body:
>
>
>We have open sourced this project for our Linux based appliances and
>file systems from Solera Networks.   The program reconsutructs
> web session and email, and we are adding FTP, P2P, and other Linux
>kernel protocols. May be useful for the Wiki community to playback
>troublesome sessions.  At any rate, its GPL.
>
>Jeff
>
>    LINDON, Utah, Dec. 15 /PRNewswire/ -- Solera Networks, Inc., the
>technology leader in network packet record and playback appliances, today
>announced that source code for DataEcho, a web session reconstruction
>application, will be made available under the GNU General Public License.
>The company has established a community website at
>http://sourceforge.net/projects/data-echo. Source code and Windows
>installers are available for download now.
>   DataEcho reconstructs historical web browsing and email traffic from
>captured network packets, for monitoring insider security threats and
>policy compliance. It is a useful adjunct to network protocol analyzers
>such as Sniffer(TM) or WireShark.
>
>_______________________________________________
>foundation-l mailing list
>foundation-l at wikimedia.org
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>
>
>


from_name: Anthere

subject: [Foundation-l] Wikimedia Foundation's help to the projects

body:
Michael Snow wrote:
> Erik Moeller wrote:
>
>
>>On 12/14/06, Birgitte SB <birgitte_sb at yahoo.com> wrote:
>>
>>
>>>I don't believe you understand how useful it would be
>>>to just have some one say "That particular case is
>>>unknown.  The most similar case to this is Foobar."
>>>Even if there were a table of questions that people
>>>have asked in the past with yes/no/unknown and no
>>>futher advice would be extremely helpful.  I think it
>>>a false expectation of yours that we are expecting
>>>clearcut answers.  Really we have been mucking through
>>>copyright questions as best we can for some time; we
>>>are all well aware there are often not answers only
>>>arguments.  Just being able to eliminate some
>>>arguments as invalid would be very helpful.
>>
>>Aside from the potential issues with the WMF "officially" giving such
>>advice to the communities, Brad (our GC and ED) simply doesn't have
>>the time to do this. Let's brainstorm about how we can get juriwiki-l
>>going, i.e. a functioning, community-driven group of advisors with
>>demonstrable legal expertise.
>>
>>At the moment juriwiki-l is configured so that postings from the
>>outside are moderated and replied to by a group of insiders. Is there
>>any real issue, from a legal point of view, with making it a public
>>mailing list? This is perhaps something Brad can answer.
>
>
> In the context of rethinking the various internal, private mailing
> lists, I'm not sure whether it will be considered appropriate to
> continue juriwiki-l in its present form. As Anthere noted, the list is
> not all that active at present. However, it has had sporadic use and a
> variety of sensitive subjects were discussed there with an expectation
> of confidentiality. So I would strongly oppose simply converting it to a
> public list and making the accompanying archives public.
>

Obviously, it would be a huge change of caracteristics. Just a
correction though Michael, imho the juriwiki has no archives. It is was
done on purpose to avoid any information being released afterwards by
new members.

ant

> If a public list dedicated to legal issues is thought desirable, it
> should be launched separately. We had wikilegal-l before, but that too
> dwindled into oblivion.
>
> --Michael Snow


body:
SP declare? Whu?

On 12/15/06, Parker Peters <onmywayoutster at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 12/15/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > On 15/12/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > > My own favourite is [[Xenu]]. It was the numbah one source during Tom
> > > Cruise's public meltdown in 2005. And for obvious reasons, it's
> > > referenced to the hilt.
> >
> >
> > I should add the really fun part was seeing sentences I'd written
> > lifted directly by the media. Hell yeah, use my stuff ;-D
> >
>
> So what's it like having your own SP declare?
>
> Parker
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] Office actions

body:
On 12/15/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> <snip>
>
> Try [[Jack Thompson (attorney)]] I suspect the subject still has
> issues with the article but at least it now covers more of his life
> than his campains against certian types of computer games.
> --
> geni

The subject is also an overly litigious bag of hot air...

Parker


body:
On 12/15/06, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:
>
> On Fri, 15 Dec 2006 12:37:03 -0500, "James Hare"
> <messedrocker at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> >Please refrain from accusing people of trolling. It's really not that
> >pleasant.
>
> The trolling itself is worse, though :-)
>
> Guy (JzG)

I've spent a lot of time discussing this with Jimbo, he's already emailed
two people who were vexatiously trolling me, and I'd prefer not to have
people trying to troll me. It does nothing for the discussion.

In other words, stop trying to [[shoot the messenger]] please. I agree with
about half of what I've seen you write, and I wish you didn't have this chip
on your shoulder making you accuse anyone who disagrees with you of
trolling. It doesn't help the debate in any fashion.

That goes for you too, Jay.

Parker


body:
Jeff V. Merkey wrote:

Corrected URL.

http://sourceforge.net/projects/data-echo

Jeff

>>
>>
>> We have open sourced this project for our Linux based appliances and
>> file systems from Solera Networks. The program reconsutructs
>> web session and email, and we are adding FTP, P2P, and other Linux
>> kernel protocols. May be useful for the Wiki community to playback
>> troublesome sessions. At any rate, its GPL.
>>
>> Jeff
>>
>> LINDON, Utah, Dec. 15 /PRNewswire/ -- Solera Networks, Inc., the
>> technology leader in network packet record and playback appliances,
>> today
>> announced that source code for DataEcho, a web session reconstruction
>> application, will be made available under the GNU General Public
>> License.
>> The company has established a community website at
>> http://sourceforge.net/projects/data-echo. Source code and Windows
>> installers are available for download now.
>> DataEcho reconstructs historical web browsing and email traffic from
>> captured network packets, for monitoring insider security threats and
>> policy compliance. It is a useful adjunct to network protocol analyzers
>> such as Sniffer(TM) or WireShark.
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> foundation-l mailing list
>> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
>> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>>
>>
>>
>


subject:
[Wikitech-l] [ANNOUNCE] Open Source Protocol Reconstruction
	Project for Linux


from_name: Stephen Bain

subject: [Foundation-l] wikipedia.it

body:
On 12/15/06, Anthere <Anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> Okay, we may need to do a DRASTIC action.

I'm sure people at the Foundation are aware of this, but for the
list's benefit, the Foundation internationally registered several of
the trademarks recently through WIPO, and as far as I can tell at
least "Wikimedia" and "Wikipedia" are now registered trademarks in
several countries including Italy.

I'm not familiar with all of the methods for dealing with domain name
registration in other countries, but does the fact that these
squatters are squatting with registered trademarks (registered in the
country that the domain is registered in) help us?

--
Stephen Bain
stephen.bain at gmail.com


subject: [Foundation-l] wikipedia.it


from_name: bbatsell

subject: [WikiEN-l] Office actions

body:
On Dec 15, 2006, at 11:54 AM, geni wrote:

>
> The divide between editors and admins should be as small small as
> posible. At the moment most of the admin powers are ah procedural.
> They are not really ment to be related to content. I would not like to
> see that change. There are too many traps on that path.

I agree in principle and in nearly every other instance, but working
in the legal profession myself, I understand how important and
damaging certain actions can be to future civil action.  Looking at
[[WP:OFFICE]], I see that 8 articles are under protection, and 1
should probably be delisted and can't be fixed by anyone.  We're not
talking about an enormous backlog of OFFICE-protected articles, and I
think each article that needs editing could have that done by one or
two enterprising administrators.  In my mind, it's not that big of a
deal.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Office actions

body:
On 12/15/06, Earle Martin <wikipedia at downlode.org> wrote:
> On 14/12/06, Matthew Brown <morven at gmail.com> wrote:
> > I suspect in many circumstances Danny will not be able to respond to
> > such questions, since he doesn't want an official decision of the
> > Foundation on record.
>
> I thought this project was founded on accountability.

Editors are accountable for their own actions.

The Foundation rightly does not want to be accountable for other
people's actions.

--
Stephen Bain
stephen.bain at gmail.com


from_name: George Herbert

subject: [WikiEN-l] Office actions

body:
On 12/15/06, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
>
> Alphax (Wikipedia email) wrote:
> > Given the number of people who don't understand or don't care that what
> > happens on Wikipedia can have real-world implications, a suitable degree
> > of "HERE BE DRAGONS" /is/ needed.
>
> So I agree with you about that... to a degree.
>
> The problem is that far too often, when something is tagged WP:OFFICE it
> just sits there, for months, with everyone scared to do anything.  This
> is the opposite of what is intended.
>
> --Jimbo

I'm extremely glad you came here and said this, as the impression which has
been filtering out, as I saw it, was that OFFICE meant that even senior
trusted editors had to stay hands-off unless you happened to be "In the
OFFICE loop" on a particular problem.

I agree with something I think Guy said earlier, that even having the "This
is OFFICE because of reason XYZ" descriptor on articles, rather than "It's
OFFICE (implied don't touch)", would be a huge improvement.

I am perfectly willing to help with problem articles, IF I know what the
problem is and I won't get yelled at or blocked for doing so.

--
-george william herbert
george.herbert at gmail.com


body:
On 12/15/06, Parker Peters <onmywayoutster at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 12/15/06, jayjg <jayjg99 at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > On 12/14/06, Parker Peters <onmywayoutster at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > On 12/14/06, M Roget <mroget at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > >
> > > > On 12/13/06, Sarah (slimvirgin at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > > >On 12/12/06, George Herbert <george.herbert at gmail.com
> > > > <http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l>> wrote:
> > > > >*> On 12/12/06, Parker Peters <onmywayoutster at gmail.com
> > > > <http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l>> wrote:
> > > > *>* >>
> > > > *>* >> On 12/12/06, Luna <lunasantin at gmail.com
> > > > <http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l>> wrote:
> > > > *>>*> > MONGO: I lost count.
> > > > *>* >> Slimvirgin: at least 3 instances, one of which was "if you
> > don't
> > > > ban this
> > > > *>* >> user I'm leaving."
> > > > *>* >> FloNight: at least 2 instances.
> > > > *
> > > > >I left once for about a week, and I believe FloNight left once too.
> > > > >Please get your facts straight.
> > > >
> > > > If you were serious about leaving and not just pretending to in order
> > to
> > > > elicit a reaction why didn't you ask to by desysopped when you quit?
> > > >
> > > > Michel
> > > > ___
> > >
> > >
> > > After looking back at the affair, it seems to me that Slim and Flo's
> > > "leaving" was a ruse to get another admin punished for attempting to
> > mend
> > > fences with one of Wikipedia's detractors.
> > >
> > > Parker
> >
> > Looking back on your "contributions" to wikien-l, it seems to be that
> > your own "leaving" Wikipedia was a ruse to pretend to be an admin,
> > rather than just another banned troll who is now trolling wikien-l
> > instead.
> >
> > Jay.
>
>
> If you're quite done flaming the messenger?
>
> Thank you.
>
> Parker

Depends. Are you quite done trolling the list?

Thank you,

Jay.


subject:
[WikiEN-l] Reverberating self-reinforcing autoregenerative
	circular sourcing

body:
AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

On 12/15/06, wikipedia2006 at dpbsmith.com <wikipedia2006 at dpbsmith.com> wrote:
>
> See
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Ivy_League#A_Rutgers.2FIvy_reference_from_the_Daily_Newsand followup, and be afraid. Be very afraid.
>
> In brief: The first known college football game took place between Rutgers
> and Princeton, and the Ivy League sort of coalesced out of a group of
> schools that had been playing each other for year. There is dispute about a
> statement that "both [Rutgers and the College of William and Mary] declined
> invitations to join the Ivy League at its formation in 1954."  Clearly there
> was discussion about what colleges should be included, and clearly Rutgers
> was talked about. But it's not so clear whether Rutgers was invited and
> declined, or whether Rutgers was considered and rejected. Or something in
> between, or both, or neither, or what. (It's like the question of whether or
> not John Bolton "resigned.")
>
> The editor who says Rutgers was invited and declined has a source that
> falls beautifully into borderline territory. He insists that he's seen it in
> microfilm copies of the Rutgers student newspaper, and that he's seen it
> recently, but declines to pin the exact citation down to anything more than
> the entire microfilm archive itself. But that's NOT the reason why I'm
> posting this.
>
> Here's the scary part.
>
> Someone found what looked like a valuable confirming source: a recent
> article in the New York Daily News that said, "Rutgers might have joined the
> fledgling Ivy League and altered its destiny. But the school declined the
> offer - arguably the dumbest mistake in its history. Ever since then,
> Rutgers has scrambled to prove itself worthy of playing football with the
> big boys."
>
> Good, right? Unfortunately the reporter did not cite his source. So
> someone contacted that reporter and asked.
>
> And, guess what: the reporter's source was the Wikipedia article.
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


body:
Please refrain from accusing people of trolling. It's really not that
pleasant.

On 12/15/06, jayjg <jayjg99 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 12/15/06, Parker Peters <onmywayoutster at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 12/15/06, jayjg <jayjg99 at gmail.com> wrote:
> > >
> > > On 12/14/06, Parker Peters <onmywayoutster at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > > On 12/14/06, M Roget <mroget at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > > >
> > > > > On 12/13/06, Sarah (slimvirgin at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > > > >On 12/12/06, George Herbert <george.herbert at gmail.com
> > > > > <http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l>> wrote:
> > > > > >*> On 12/12/06, Parker Peters <onmywayoutster at gmail.com
> > > > > <http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l>> wrote:
> > > > > *>* >>
> > > > > *>* >> On 12/12/06, Luna <lunasantin at gmail.com
> > > > > <http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l>> wrote:
> > > > > *>>*> > MONGO: I lost count.
> > > > > *>* >> Slimvirgin: at least 3 instances, one of which was "if you
> > > don't
> > > > > ban this
> > > > > *>* >> user I'm leaving."
> > > > > *>* >> FloNight: at least 2 instances.
> > > > > *
> > > > > >I left once for about a week, and I believe FloNight left once
> too.
> > > > > >Please get your facts straight.
> > > > >
> > > > > If you were serious about leaving and not just pretending to in
> order
> > > to
> > > > > elicit a reaction why didn't you ask to by desysopped when you
> quit?
> > > > >
> > > > > Michel
> > > > > ___
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > After looking back at the affair, it seems to me that Slim and Flo's
> > > > "leaving" was a ruse to get another admin punished for attempting to
> > > mend
> > > > fences with one of Wikipedia's detractors.
> > > >
> > > > Parker
> > >
> > > Looking back on your "contributions" to wikien-l, it seems to be that
> > > your own "leaving" Wikipedia was a ruse to pretend to be an admin,
> > > rather than just another banned troll who is now trolling wikien-l
> > > instead.
> > >
> > > Jay.
> >
> >
> > If you're quite done flaming the messenger?
> >
> > Thank you.
> >
> > Parker
>
> Depends. Are you quite done trolling the list?
>
> Thank you,
>
> Jay.
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Christophe Millet

subject:
[Foundation-l] two wanted: Polish editors and Wikiversity
	description

body:
Hello,

2. is any Wikiversity folk willing to expand
>
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Translation_requests/WMF/Our_projects/En:#Wikiversity
> (it will be shown at the foundation wiki)

The information about Wiktionary on this page was incredibly outdated,
I've updated.
Wikipedia seems uptodate (except the logo?), but I don't know about
wikiquote,
wikibooks, ...
It would be good if people from these communities could check that.

The 1,000,000 media files on commons should also appear on this page I
think.

Thanks,
Kip.


from_name: Steve Summit

body:
dpbsmith wrote:
> Good, right? Unfortunately the reporter did not cite his source.
> So someone contacted that reporter and asked.
>
> And, guess what: the reporter's source was the Wikipedia article.

Yowza.  Just like the apocryphal small town where the City Hall
manager set the town hall's clock based on the factory whistle,
and unbeknownst to him the factory superintendent...

On the one hand I'm tempted to wring my hands and say, *how*
can we better get across to responsible people (like presumably
newspaper editors) the well-known fact that Wikipedia is not
necessarily reliable and can't be relied on as a sole source?

But on the other hand, Wikipedia is now "good enough" that this
kind of thing is absolutely inevitable.  (I'm a responsible
person, and I'm pretty sure *I* take Wikipedia articles at
face value more often than I strictly ought to.)

It's like consumer-grade GPS receivers: everybody knows they're
not 100% accurate; the manufacturers all include various
disclaimers, but they work so magically well, most of the time,
that it's all but inevitable that, say, a sailor somewhere is
going to try to rely on his GPS receiver to navigate a narrow
channel in the fog, where the width of the channel is down on
a par with the GPS uncertainty radius...

(Apologies for the rambling.  No, I don't know what the right
answer is.)


subject: [WikiEN-l] Office actions

body:
On 12/15/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 12/15/06, Sam Korn <smoddy at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 12/15/06, Guettarda <guettarda at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > Interesting.  I thought everyone newer than me was a rank newbie...
> (yeah, I
> > > know, I've been here a whole 3 months longer than you).
> >
> > Doesn't everyone think that?
> >
>
> After a while you adjust that to everyone who joined after you made it to
> admin.

The sad thing is that the ranks of people who joined around the same time as
me are starting to thin.  I've gotten used to the fact that most of the
regulars when I joined don't edit much any more, but it's sad to see that
the people who joined around the same time as I did (mid to late 2004)
aren't around much either.  What really makes me feel old is all the people
who have come, become stalwarts of the community, and then burned out...who
weren't even editing back when I had my RFA.  It makes you feel rather
ent-ish ;)


from_name: Steve Sanbeg

body:
On Fri, 15 Dec 2006 10:31:18 +0000, Rob Church wrote:

> On 15/12/06, Edward Z. Yang <edwardzyang at thewritingpot.com> wrote:
>> This extension will murder performance. You cannot do the socket
>> connection at runtime without incurring significant delays in page serving.
>
> It's not a problem, since it's not like we'll ever use it on Wikimedia
> anyway. To be perfectly blunt about it; if other people want to
> install inefficient custom code on their wikis...well, it's their
> servers, their requirements, and their problem.
>
>
> Rob Church

If you need the functionality anyway, doing it on the wiki shouldn't be
much worse than using a CGI.  So it could be useful on small site, i.e. to
document a service and monitor it on the same site.

I'd think it could benefit from some improvements, such as to allow a
parameter in LocalSettings to restrict where it can connect to; and have
its own cache, so you can view it as often as you want from as many pages,
without hitting the same address many times a second.  That would be a
nice benefit to using the wiki.

 -Steve


from_name: Delirium

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Reverberating self-reinforcing autoregenerative
 circular sourcing

body:
wikipedia2006 at dpbsmith.com wrote:

>And, guess what: the reporter's source was the Wikipedia article.
>
I recently found this on a "serious" subject as well.  Back in 2003 I
wrote an article on [[Sulaiman Abu Ghaith]], an Al Qaeda spokesman.
Almost nothing has been reported on him since then.  When recently
researching to make sure nothing new has turned up, I stumbled across a
BBC News "Who's Who in Al Qaeda?" article that seemed to say as
much---that his current whereabouts are unknown, and it's unclear
whether he's in Iranian custody (as reported in 2003) or even in Iran at
all.  I almost cited this for the article's last sentence, which says
exactly that.  The problem---it's the *verbatim* same sentence.  The BBC
not only got its information from the article I wrote in 2003, but
lifted my sentence word for word!  (archive.org can verify that the
sentence in Wikipedia long predates the BBC's use of it, and it uses an
idiosyncratic grammatical construction, so there it's very unlikely to
be a coincidence.)  Fortunately, the claim that nobody's reported
anything on him since 2003 is pretty trivially verifiable, so this
source isn't entirely needed, but it's still a bit unnerving that
apparently I am now the world authority---indirectly via the BBC via
Wikipedia---on Al Qaeda whereabouts.

Details here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Sulaiman_Abu_Ghaith


body:
On 12/15/06, Parker Peters <onmywayoutster at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 12/15/06, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:
> >
> > On Fri, 15 Dec 2006 12:37:03 -0500, "James Hare"
> > <messedrocker at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > >Please refrain from accusing people of trolling. It's really not that
> > >pleasant.
> >
> > The trolling itself is worse, though :-)
> >
> > Guy (JzG)
>
>
> I've spent a lot of time discussing this with Jimbo, he's already emailed
> two people who were vexatiously trolling me, and I'd prefer not to have
> people trying to troll me. It does nothing for the discussion.
>
> In other words, stop trying to [[shoot the messenger]] please. I agree with
> about half of what I've seen you write, and I wish you didn't have this chip
> on your shoulder making you accuse anyone who disagrees with you of
> trolling. It doesn't help the debate in any fashion.
>
> That goes for you too, Jay.

There's no message, though, aside from "I'm a troll, please feed me".

Jay.


from_name: Aphaia

subject: [Foundation-l] wikipedia.it

body:
On 12/15/06, Stephen Bain <stephen.bain at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 12/15/06, Anthere <Anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> >
> > Okay, we may need to do a DRASTIC action.
>
> I'm sure people at the Foundation are aware of this, but for the
> list's benefit, the Foundation internationally registered several of
> the trademarks recently through WIPO, and as far as I can tell at
> least "Wikimedia" and "Wikipedia" are now registered trademarks in
> several countries including Italy.

As far as I know, as of July 2006 this registration of Wikipedia was
in total refusal of protection in both European Committee and Japan.
Was there any drastic situation?

--
KIZU Naoko
  Wikiquote: http://wikiquote.org
  * Nessuna poesia prima di noi *


subject: [Foundation-l] wikipedia.it


from_name: Dave Grogan

subject: [Wikitech-l] ideas for implementing a rendered svn blame view

body:
I'm about to try to implement a view similar to the one I've already
posted but instead of displaying the ownership of raw text, it will
display ownership of rendered text.  The raw-text ownership extension
already provides an association between raw wiki text and its owner.  I
am looking for advice on how to proceed.  I have a couple of ideas.

The first is to modify the association as the parser does its thing,
performing the same substitutions as the parser.  The difficulty is that
the parser would have to relay precisely what text it has replaced and I
am not sure how this would work.  I have considered using offset from
beginning of the text block but this seems to be difficult, problematic,
and finnicky.

In addition to keeping an association between raw wiki text and
authorship, an association between parsed text and ownership could be
constructed.  In this case the word-level (or char level or whatever)
diff engine would compare parsed texts, not raw texts.  In this case, a
post processor could modify the parsed text (just ignoring html tags) to
mark up who authored it.  I am not at this time concerned with the
problem of the performance of the diff engine.

Ideas are welcome.


from_name: Guy Chapman aka JzG

subject: [WikiEN-l] MONGO and the ArbCom

references:
<lo0un252neiq4cchotk8qkd0ob78976qug@4ax.com>	<457F5066.7030507@gmail.com>	<picvn2htapil2hktq8a2qftpns7uk09g4m@4ax.com>	<38a7bf7c0612130123k34e5ad32l4aff73e249bc001f@mail.gmail.com>	<4580625E.4060203@telus.net>	<d9v0o25f6upqovmngpl6d7gh0upeirjloo@4ax.com>	<4580E5B4.9050001@telus.net>	<4u12o2dqm3bgajn58fu2jsgnqr3rou8c9g@4ax.com>	<458254F5.6070602@telus.net>
	<bdm4o213vnejkjpntkp63vok73pjefu1fj@4ax.com>
	<4582687F.3070909@telus.net>

body:
On Fri, 15 Dec 2006 01:18:55 -0800, Ray Saintonge
<saintonge at telus.net> wrote:

>Gee!  We almost agree!

Damn!  Must re-read looking for points of disagreement... ;-)

>Perhaps we don't even need to get into the "parts of the theory".  If
>their primary theory makes no sense at all it follows that what is
>derived from that also makes no sense.

Oh yes, I'm all for that.

So, now we come back to the controlled demolition hypothesis for the
WTC.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controlled_demolition_hypothesis_for_the_collapse_of_the_World_Trade_Center

How should we handle that, do you think?  My strong preference here
would be to keep it short and to the point: a theory advanced by Steve
Jones, unsupported by any peer-reviewed evidence, not accepted by the
mainstream, beloved of the conspiracy theorists.  We might justifiably
link to the very detailed rebuttal of his hypothesis by Blanchard, and
possibly even discuss it as having offered a prosaic explanation for
the questions raised by Jones, if we can find a reliable source that
identifies it as doing so.  I can't find any reliable sources
attesting to the accuracy or validity of the controlled demolition
hypothesis, and that is something which indicates that we should
employ great care in documenting it.

Seems to me that we should start by removing:
* Multiple news reports of what Steve Jones said (it's not in dispute)
* YouTube videos of the collapse (OR, not sources, copyright issues)
* All links to 9/11 conspiracy websites masquerading as sources

Right now what I see in that article is the two sides duking it out
and in the process elevating the hypothesis far beyond any objectively
provable merit it might have.  Again, this hypothesis has never, as
far as I can tell, been published in a reputable peer-reviewed
journal.

A good quote from Sen. Moynihan:  ?Everyone is entitled to his own
opinion, he is not entitled to his own facts.?  So let's get the
opinion out and leave the facts :-)

Guy (JzG)
--
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG


from_name: Earle Martin

subject: [WikiEN-l] Office actions

references:
<5fb3o251ibvnjflns0pifu7ao6f8hg3d7t@4ax.com>
	<42f90dc00612141222u6bece7aen8cba66dc48ca2018@mail.gmail.com>
	<7de99f2d0612141442r3f0edc55i58156ebd09edbdbc@mail.gmail.com>
	<f30e42de0612141709j76bd64a4v4eda9b2c287839c8@mail.gmail.com>

body:
On 15/12/06, Stephen Bain <stephen.bain at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 12/15/06, Earle Martin <wikipedia at downlode.org> wrote:
> > On 14/12/06, Matthew Brown <morven at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > I suspect in many circumstances Danny will not be able to respond to
> > > such questions, since he doesn't want an official decision of the
> > > Foundation on record.
> >
> > I thought this project was founded on accountability.
>
> Editors are accountable for their own actions.
>
> The Foundation rightly does not want to be accountable for other
> people's actions.

I have no idea where you got the idea that I was asking the Foundation
to be responsible for other people's actions. I'll quote you again the
text (quoted above) that I was replying to:

"Danny... doesn't want an official decision of the Foundation on record."

In this case, it was an "office action", which appears to generally
equate to "putting stuff in the memory hole".

Is it Foundation policy to hide official decisions of the Foundation?
Or is it Danny policy? Either way, it appears that the management of
this project is asymptotically approaching that of the Open[sic]
Directory Project.

--
Earle Martin
            http://downlode.org/
http://purl.org/net/earlemartin/


subject: [Foundation-l] Fwd:  wikipedia.it

body:
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Aphaia <aphaia at gmail.com>
Date: Dec 15, 2006 1:35 PM
Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] wikipedia.it
To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List <foundation-l at wikimedia.org>
Ugh, I sent my latest post unwillingly

On 12/15/06, Stephen Bain <stephen.bain at gmail.com> wrote:
> I'm sure people at the Foundation are aware of this, but for the
> list's benefit, the Foundation internationally registered several of
> the trademarks recently through WIPO, and as far as I can tell at
> least "Wikimedia" and "Wikipedia" are now registered trademarks in
> several countries including Italy.

As far as I know, as of July 2006 this registration of Wikipedia was
in total refusal of protection in both European Committee and Japan.
> Was there any drastic situation?
< Was there any drastic sitnation change?

Sorry

--
KIZU Naoko
  Wikiquote: http://wikiquote.org
  * Nessuna poesia prima di noi *

--
KIZU Naoko
  Wikiquote: http://wikiquote.org
  * Nessuna poesia prima di noi *


subject: [Foundation-l] Fwd:  wikipedia.it


from_name: Jay R. Ashworth

body:
On Wed, Dec 13, 2006 at 05:10:06PM -0500, Dave Grogan wrote:
> >> Yeah, there are only about 8 good ones that are really distinctive, and
> >> then after about 20 you can get into some hairy situations.  It's not
> >> that bad though because usually an off-green is next to an off-red or
> >> something.  It's only bad when a color and two of its off-colors are all
> >> close.  I might have it wrap after 10 but add a hover feature that will
> >> pop up the contributor's name.
> >
> > You've seen the IBM work on this sort of thing, right?
>
> No.  Please inform.

In light of your posting today, I guess I'd better get to answering
this.  I can't find the link I blogged (I'm too witty for my own good,
clearly), but I spotted it at Metafilter about 8 months to a year ago,
and it was a graphical waterfall style representation of how a
Wikipedia page changes over time.  ISTR they weren't releasing the code
at that time, but the details are lost to me.

I don't know that it's directly relevant to what you want to do, but it
might bear investigation.  I'll look a little further.

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


body:
On Fri, Dec 15, 2006 at 10:54:53AM -0800, Evan Martin wrote:
> > I don't know that it's directly relevant to what you want to do, but it
> > might bear investigation.  I'll look a little further.
>
> I think you're referring to this one:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_History_Flow_tool

I meant that one, yes, Evan; thank you kindly.

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


from_name: Stan Shebs

body:
charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com wrote:
> "James Hare" wrote
>
>
>> - What is your favorite article on Wikipedia, and why?
>>
>
> [[List of glaciers]] is cool. I just think having such a list is great. I started it, admittedly, in an atypical moment, but the coolness and increments are due to others.
>
Wow, it's much expanded since I last looked at it, two years ago!

Looks like it's ready for the flaming debate on inclusion - "all
glaciers are notable" vs "icecruft", which Google shows to be a term
waiting to be coined... :-)

Stan


from_name: Mark Wagner

subject: [WikiEN-l] Top posting poll; was Re: MONGO and the ArbCom

body:
On 12/14/06, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > M I i N d T- E p R o W s E t A i V n E g - i P s O t S h T e I o N n G l F
> > > y O w R a M y E to go. :-)
>
> You just stole at least a minute, probably two, of my life trying to
> decipher your email, and I want them back.

!gnitsop evaewretni daer ot drah *taht* lla ton s'tI

--
Mark
[[User:Carnildo]]


from_name: Erik Moeller

subject: [Foundation-l] Non-commercial images

body:
On 12/15/06, luke brandt <shojokid at gmail.com> wrote:
> From what I understand (but please someone correct me if I misunderstood
> the reports) the Wikimedia Board didn't vote last time these matters
> were raised because it prefers to allow autonomy.

On issues such as whether we should allow NC images I, as member of
the current Board, definitely don't think there should be any project
level autonomy at all. If we want to keep our content compatible
across languages and projects, we need to apply a consistent standard
of freedom.

I think this will have to be discussed with the current Board.
Unfortunately we're very taken up by fundraising preparations and
other critical planning issues at the moment; I do hope to bring it up
at the next face-to-face meeting in Janaury.

At this time, I would strongly, strongly ask anyone advocating the use
of NC content in a project to reconsider. It would hurt Wikikimedia
tremendously.
--
Peace & Love,
Erik


subject: [Foundation-l] Non-commercial images


from_name: Rob Smith

body:
On 12/15/06, Parker Peters <onmywayoutster at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> >
> > [[Milwaukee, Wisconsin]] or [[Michelle Kwan]]. I've worked on both --
> > actually it probably wouldn't be that much work to get Kwan up to FA
> > status;
> > it just hasn't been done yet. I'm from Milwaukee and it would just be
> cool
> > to see that be featured.
> >
>
> Wow, Wisconsin, eh? I hear that's a really bad place. At least that's what
> these two guys with wings on their backs told me, right before they
> convinced a nun that God doesn't exist...
>
> (blatant movie reference, carry on!)
>
> Parker
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l

I think [[Mildred Harnack]]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mildred_Harnack

should get some attention from the Wisconsin project and could be worked
into a FA; fascinating story, the drama of her Arrest, trial, and death
could be expanded with more details.  Amazing there isn't a high school
named for her in Milwaukee.

nobs


body:
geni wrote:
> On 12/15/06, Stan Shebs <stanshebs at earthlink.net> wrote:
>
>> Wow, it's much expanded since I last looked at it, two years ago!
>>
>> Looks like it's ready for the flaming debate on inclusion - "all
>> glaciers are notable" vs "icecruft", which Google shows to be a term
>> waiting to be coined... :-)
>>
>
> Nyet in this case the deletionists are being pro-active and are
> working on removeing the glaciers themselves.
>
Oy vey, that suggests the ultimate stage of Wikipediholism - altering
the real world so as influence articles! I can see it now - evil
cackling as the insane Wikipedian holds a lighter up to a corner of the
last remaining copy of the cited source for an article, and after
watching it burn, rushing back to the terminal to type in
"{{unreferenced}}" ...

Stan


from_name: elvis at chan.de

subject: [Foundation-l] Non-commercial images

body:
Quoting Erik Moeller <erik at wikimedia.org>:

> On 12/15/06, luke brandt <shojokid at gmail.com> wrote:
>> From what I understand (but please someone correct me if I misunderstood
>> the reports) the Wikimedia Board didn't vote last time these matters
>> were raised because it prefers to allow autonomy.
>
> On issues such as whether we should allow NC images I, as member of
> the current Board, definitely don't think there should be any project
> level autonomy at all. If we want to keep our content compatible
> across languages and projects, we need to apply a consistent standard
> of freedom.
[...]
> At this time, I would strongly, strongly ask anyone advocating the use
> of NC content in a project to reconsider. It would hurt Wikikimedia
> tremendously.

would this be the end of "fair use" images in the wikipedia? (since
fair use is mostly an usa construct afaik)*

(and i am not really sure what a non comercial image is)


subject: [Foundation-l] Non-commercial images


subject: [WikiEN-l] Office actions

body:
On Sat, 16 Dec 2006 00:51:21 +1100, "Stephen Bain"
<stephen.bain at gmail.com> wrote:

>My reading of the conversation: Guy was wondering why he hadn't heard
>any answers from Danny in regard to fairly specific questions he had
>asked about what he could or could not do to the page.

I'd just like to confirm that this was one of the two questions I
needed answered; the other was: what should we do in order to avoid
having OFFICEd articles in a state of perpetual stagnation, often at
the "wrong version".  Talk pages of these articles often contain a lot
of debate, much of it focused on why we can't get any kind of answer
from OFFICE.  Sometimes the answer is perfectly reasonable - Brad
needs to consider a issue, for example - other times, the answer is
"dunno".  It's fine to reply with "sorry, we can't say", but no reply
at all is very hard to deal with.

>Matthew
>suggested one reason would be that Danny doesn't want it on record
>that the Foundation has said "yes you can add this to an article" or
>similar statements, because the Foundation doesn't want to be
>accountable for what editors do in that type of situation.

That sounds like a bit of a conspiracy theory to me.  Much more likely
that he has no easy answer and Foundation hasn't equipped him with a
set of usable guidelines.  Not that Danny is stupid or lacking
initiative, but he is, I understand, very busy.

Guy (JzG)
--
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG


from_name: Thomas Dalton

subject: [WikiEN-l] Office actions

body:
> I am unsure exactly how to redesign the process so that we get the good
> outcome more often, and the bad outcome less often.

I think the OFFICE template needs a parameter telling people what the
complaint was. We can't fix something if we don't know what's broken
about it.

It seems you're hoping that people will turn it into a perfect
article, and thus fix whatever was complained about in the process,
however it is very difficult to make an article perfect, and often the
ones that are complained about aren't articles people are very
inclined to work on (popular articles are usually good articles
already). If we knew precisely what needed fixing we could fix that
quickly and be done with it. No-one wants to start a job without any
way of knowing when they're finished other than by reaching
perfection.


from_name: Tomasz Ganicz

body:
2006/12/15, Aphaia <aphaia at gmail.com>:
> Hello,
> 1. is any Polish editor willing help to update Fundraising page on the
> foundation wiki?

There is a real-life meeting of Polish Wikimedia Chapter tommorow, and
we are all busy with it. I may do it on Sunday night/Monday - or I can
ask someone during  the meeting.

--
Tomek "Polimerek" Ganicz
http://pl.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Polimerek
http://www.poli.toya.net.pl
http://www.ptchem.lodz.pl/en/TomaszGanicz.html


subject: [WikiEN-l] Office actions

body:
On Fri, 15 Dec 2006 09:46:11 -0500, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com>
wrote:

>I am unsure exactly how to redesign the process so that we get the good
>outcome more often, and the bad outcome less often.

Stating the case here has already helped.  We should work on
[[WP:OFFICE]] to ensure that it reflects this aim.  I am very happy to
hear that we should be working to fix up these articles, since it is
often the case that several editors are motivated to do just that.

Sometimes it's not quite so simple (as with Gregory Lauder-Frost,
whose friends made baseless claims in respect of our ability to
document his verifiable conviction for fraud, a notable and
significant fact by any rational assessment).

In this case, hopefully it is simple.  We have impeccable sources for
a number of significant facts which bear directly on why this place
was ever considered notable in the first place.  We can work on those,
applying the highest standards of care.

Hopefully the evidence of this care, through showing our working, will
be sufficient to ward off trouble, but there is still the niggling
concern that fiddling with OFFICEd articles has in the past led to
summary disciplinary actions.  I'd really rather that didn't happen to
me.

Guy (JzG)
--
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG


from_name: Alphax (Wikipedia email)

subject: [WikiEN-l] First fair use criterium

body:
Stan Shebs wrote:
> Timwi wrote:
>> I've just had an idea.
>>
>> One of the "problems" cited for "replaceable" fair-use images is that
>> they give the (false) impression that an image is no longer needed for
>> the relevant article, right?
>>
>> Well, maybe it would make sense to mark nonfree images in the article
>> somehow. A red border, perhaps.
>>
> I've had the same thought, but there are lots of unreplaceable nonfree
> images. I'm sure the art types would be freaked out if paintings by
> recent artists all had red borders around them - especially for some
> modern works where it might not be clear whether the red border was part
> of the painting or not. :-)
>

*cough* <blink> tags around a giant red "PLEASE FIND A FREE REPLACEMENT"
are the only way to do it.

--
Alphax - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax
Contributor to Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia
"We make the internet not suck" - Jimbo Wales
Public key: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax/OpenPGP

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body:
geni wrote:
> On 12/13/06, Parker Peters <onmywayoutster at gmail.com> wrote:
>> I am here PRECISELY to discuss and remedy problems with Wikipedia.
>
> evidences?
>

He used to be a sysop. {{citation needed}}

--
Alphax - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax
Contributor to Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia
"We make the internet not suck" - Jimbo Wales
Public key: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax/OpenPGP

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subject:
[WikiEN-l] Admins who pretend to quit (was Re: MONGO and the
 ArbComm)

body:
Parker Peters wrote:
> I'd respond to this, as I think this is a very good point, but the
> censorists have decided my messages shall all vanish into the ether.
>

Oh, the irony...

--
Alphax - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax
Contributor to Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia
"We make the internet not suck" - Jimbo Wales
Public key: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax/OpenPGP

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subject: [WikiEN-l] Office actions

body:
Jimmy Wales wrote:

>Alphax (Wikipedia email) wrote:
>
>
>>Given the number of people who don't understand or don't care that what
>>happens on Wikipedia can have real-world implications, a suitable degree
>>of "HERE BE DRAGONS" /is/ needed.
>>
>>
>
>So I agree with you about that... to a degree.
>
>The problem is that far too often, when something is tagged WP:OFFICE it
>just sits there, for months, with everyone scared to do anything.  This
>is the opposite of what is intended.
>
>
That's what I am unclear on (and I imagine some others are too).  My
original understanding of WP:OFFICE was that it was a quick-fix
lockdown: while the Foundation is trying to sort out an imminent
problem, the page gets stubbed or blanked and has a WP:OFFICE banner on
it, giving the Foundation a bit of temporary breathing room to do the
sorting out.

But it seems that's not what it's *actually* being used for, since the
banner sometimes stays for months and there doesn't seem to be any of
that "sorting out" activity going on in the meantime.  So what is
actually intended?  That the article be rewritten cautiously from
scratch?  How long does the WP:OFFICE banner (and protection) stay on in
that case?  Basically I'm unsure what, as a normal editor, I should do
with regards to such pages.  My original understanding was that I should
just leave the page alone for a few days, pending someone figuring out
the situation and re-opening editing from a new starting point.  But
maybe that's not the process?

-Mark


from_name: Jordan Turner

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Completely unreasonable block and behavior by admin
	friends of Itaqallah to win a content dispute

body:
On 12/15/06, Parker Peters <onmywayoutster at gmail.com> wrote:

Actually, as far as I'm aware Itaqallah isn't an admin, but Tariqabjotu (the
> blocking admin) has strong ties to him, including being an "ex" member of
> the same Guild.
>

What? So, we were both Muslim at some point... big deal. We were both part
of the same WikiProject four months ago... okay... I don't understand how
that constitutes strong ties. Note how rarely I have posted to his talk page
and how rarely he has posted to mine. Instead of condemning my actions on
the basis that Itaqallah and I both share some views, please take a look at
my actions themselves. Was RunedChozo being incivil? Yes. Was he evading a
block? Most likely. Was a five-day block reasonable? Your opinion, but one
admin suggested a week-long block even before the block evasion, and when I
blocked RunedChozo for a mere sixteen hours, people said that was mild.
These events have absolutely nothing to do with Itaqallah; RunedChozo was
not blocked for edit-warring with Itaqallah (I didn't even take a look at
that situation), but for the incivility and block evasion. Please assume
some good faith and stop using my religious beliefs as a reason to discredit
me.

-- Tariq Ab- Jo- Tu-


from_name: David Gerard

subject: [WikiEN-l] Non-stupid WikiEN-l thread - Edition 4 I think

body:
On 15/12/06, James Hare <messedrocker at gmail.com> wrote:

> In light of petty squabbles, I decided to bring back the non-stupid thread
> fad.
> - What is your favorite article on Wikipedia, and why?

My own favourite is [[Xenu]]. It was the numbah one source during Tom
Cruise's public meltdown in 2005. And for obvious reasons, it's
referenced to the hilt.

> - If there was an article you'd love to see become FA, which one and why?

FAC now seriously considers defeaturing articles because their
references aren't in whatever is the current fashion on FAC; I feel
the point is being lost somewhere.

> - Favorite pictures?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Zombie-process.png - that's gotta
be the best diagram ever for anything. You don't even need an
explanation.

> - Favorite anything?

I love that I can look up an obscure *anything* or *anyone* in English
Wikipedia and have a passing chance of finding at least a few
paragraphs. We appear to have achieved usefulness! (Which you could
tell from our completely silly popularity. But anyway.)

- d.


body:
On 15/12/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:

> My own favourite is [[Xenu]]. It was the numbah one source during Tom
> Cruise's public meltdown in 2005. And for obvious reasons, it's
> referenced to the hilt.

I should add the really fun part was seeing sentences I'd written
lifted directly by the media. Hell yeah, use my stuff ;-D

- d.