subject: [WikiEN-l] Cruft

body:
On 5/3/06, Rob Church <robchur at gmail.com> wrote:
...
> "Last night in #wikipedia-en, I formed a new wiki project with seven
> members or so. In the absence of an interim leader, I appointed me as
> overlord general and appointed two others as general advisors, or
> councillors.
>
> Formal elections, with election co-ordinators, to be held in six
> months. We haven't decided what to call it; but don't panic, we've got
> a councillor for Naming, and s/he is going to set up a committee to
> help decide. I expect we'll vote on it.
>
> Next, we'll get a bot to spam people with links to it, set up a
> newsletter (councillor for Publishing, methinks - and a press crew)
> and hold regular meetings.
>
> We start the actual work in 2008. This is all preparation."
>
> Sound familiar?
>
> Rob Church

Hmm. Your ideas intrigue me. I would like to subscribe to your newsletter.

~maru


list: wikien-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Mark Gallagher

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

body:
G'day Steve,

> Actually I don't think we have a problem with people editing articles
>  even if they do have a conflict of interest. It's better if they
> declare that conflict, of course. People editing articles about
> *themselves* seems to cause the most problems though, because they
> take changes so personally, and insist that they know themselves
> better than any published source could...

Of course, we also see it going the other way.  A person's article is
wrong, or concentrates too much on the trivial (e.g. Ian McKellan's
sexuality), or is insulting.  Someone comes along and fixes it, and gets
reverted: "WP:AUTO!  You vandal!"

And then you get people who'll insist that an article MUST remain the
way it is simply because its subject doesn't want it to.  People who
just want to send a big "FUCK YOU" to anyone who would dare --- dare!
--- criticise a Wikipedia article.  Imagine if Seigenthaler had shown up
and really *did* remove the defamatory sentence from his article, only
to be reverted and blocked --- "don't edit your own article!  Vandal!"

Moderation in all things.  Ask Jimmy Wales what it's like to have an
inaccurate bio of yourself on Wikipedia.  Ask Chip Berlet what it's like
to have most of your bio written by conspiracy nuts.  I've never been
notable enough for an article and (God willing) never will be, but if I
were, I don't think there'd be anything wrong with stepping in to defend
my own bio from vandalism and the rantings of fuckwits.

--
Mark Gallagher
"What?  I can't hear you, I've got a banana on my head!"
- Danger Mouse

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subject: [WikiEN-l] Cruft

body:
G'day Joe,

> I accept that some may see it as uncivil, but I for one do not.
>
> The fact I do not find it uncivil does not make me a hypocrite.
>
> I will be more careful using it in the future though.
>
> I find it interesting how it isn't AfD which is under question, but me.

Fair enough, fair enough.  By the way, you might've noticed that those
of us on the list who want to be considerate and all that have (in
addition to not calling one another hypocrites or cruft-mongers ;-))
adopted a policy of interleaving our replies below each point of the
previous post, and deleting any points not responded to or irrelevant
(heh) cruft, like old .sig blocks and so on.  It would be really quite
bonza if you'd follow suit.

Cheers,

--
Mark Gallagher
"What?  I can't hear you, I've got a banana on my head!"
- Danger Mouse

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list: wikitech-l

from_name: William Allen Simpson

subject: [Wikitech-l] Problem with references when transcluding

body:
Steve Bennett wrote:
> On 03/05/06, Adrian Buehlmann <ligulem at pobox.com> wrote:
>> BTW you do also have problems with the coordinates on the top right.
>> They are written over each other. So this looks rather bad.
>
> It's not *that* bad. I haven't gotten around to investigating what's
> causing that mess :)
>
Ah, that would be the span id="coordinates" used on several *pedia.  All
shared by your capitals.  You'll need a .css of your own to prevent display.

(See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Coor_title_dms)


from_name: Anthony DiPierro

subject: [WikiEN-l] Verifiability equating to notability

body:
On 5/3/06, Philip Welch <wikipedia at philwelch.net> wrote:
> On May 3, 2006, at 4:38 AM, Anthony DiPierro wrote:
>
> > That would be incredible, but somehow I doubt there are that many
> > dedicated Wikipedians that it's going to happen.
> >
> > Anyway, I look forward to the day when I can use Wikipedia to find out
> > about the local coffee shops and Linux User Groups and radio stations
> > and indie artists.  If that means I have to stop myself from clicking
> > on a link to [[Harrisburg Street, St. Petersburg]] and reading about
> > the width of the sidewalks, it's well worth it.
> >
> > Otherwise, if you can think of some way that Wikipedia can allow
> > what's interesting to me but not allow what I personally find to be
> > "cruft", without boring me with the nearly impossible task of going
> > through every VFD discussion myself, I'd love to hear it.
>
> Actually, it would be not too bad to put together city guides and
> such, either within Wikipedia or within a separate project. But there
> is so much more content of such wider interest waiting to be
> developed that we shouldn't divide our efforts.

The same could be said of *any* category of articles.  Why write about
presidents, or hurricanes, or rock stars, or fortune 500 companies,
when there is so much else to do?  I'd personally rather read about
coffee shops and indie artists than fortune 500 companies and rock
stars anyway.

Anthony


subject:
[Wikitech-l] two similar messages: Undeletedrevisions
	and	Undeleterevisions

body:
Timwi wrote:
> Brion Vibber wrote:
>>> MediaWiki:Undeleterevisions
>>> $1 revisions archived
>> This is displayed with the list of deleted revisions, showing what is stored in
>> the archive of deleted pages.
>
> Hm, maybe this would be clearer if it was changed to: "$1 deleted
> revisions found"?
>
And the Undeleterevisions tag could differ by more than 1 character?


from_name: Steve Bennett

body:
On 03/05/06, Phil Boswell <phil.boswell at gmail.com> wrote:
> > And if instead of actually fixing the article directly, the injured
> > party simply left a message on the talk page, and possibly at village
> > pump or something too? No room for cries of vandal, and probably
> > someone would quickly investigate and fix it.
> >
>
> You're assuming that someone entirely unfamiliar with Wikipedia should, when
> alerted to an unsympathetic and possibly damaging article about them, be
> able to understand when the mantra "anybody can edit" suddenly becomes
> invalid, and furthermore deduce the alternate avenues of change which they
> should pursue, all the while leaving a version of their article on display
> which might well be somewhat distressing to them?

Well, you're making a bit of a leap between an abstract, ideal
situation which I describe, and its immediate concrete realisation. I
take your point though.

>
> We should be more careful not to bite newbies, especially when we
> have...however inadvertent it might have been, and I'm AGFing here like
> crazy...caused them distress before they even arrive here. We do not exactly
> improve our general reputation by fostering an atmosphere which potentially
> allows people to insert damaging and downright mean disinformation into a
> biographical article, lie in wait for the subject should they turn up, and
> add insult to injury by castigating their well-meaning if naive efforts to
> correct the situation.

Agreed.

Any idea how often people edit their own articles? That is, how
frequently an outsider publicly makes it known that they are editing
their own article? Once a day? Once a week?  We could always have a
set of processes for these situations, where users who are good with
the kid gloves can take them by the hand and help them get the best
out of an awkward situation. There is still the problem of becoming
aware of these situations.

Steve


from_name: Gregory Szorc

subject: [Wikitech-l] Towards MW 2.0

body:
I was curious what the current plans are for MW 2.0.  Will it just be
announced sometime during the quarterly release schedule?  Will it be a
considerable rewrite?

If the later, I have an interesting idea for SoC.  How about somebody
rewrite the MW 1.6 core.  Details of the rewrite would include

*Changing everything to PHP 5 (better OO support in core)
**If not PHP 5, then at least better OO'ize the code
*Eliminating $wg global usage.
**Perhaps replacing with a registry of sorts
**Perhaps create a master MediaWiki object that has the $wgTitle, $wgUser
variables and gets passed around
*Numerous little things that everybody hates about the current core

We call the result of this rewrite MediaWiki 1.99, or something ridiculous.
MediaWiki 1.99 has the full functionality of MediaWiki 1.6.  The only
difference is a re-factored core.  Now, we have two branches of MediaWiki
for developers to work on.  We have the 1.6 branch for minor updates on
Wikipedia, etc.  We have the 1.99 branch for drastic changes to how
MediaWiki works.  The 1.99 branch allows developments such as LiquidThreads,
a well-thought-out API, permissions system, wiki farms, etc to be worked out
independently of the stable 1.6 branch.  In addition, database schema can be
changed easily.

Thoughts?

Gregory Szorc
gregory.szorc at gmail.com


body:
On 5/3/06, Philip Welch <wikipedia at philwelch.net> wrote:
> On May 3, 2006, at 10:12 AM, Anthony DiPierro wrote:
>
> >> Actually, it would be not too bad to put together city guides and
> >> such, either within Wikipedia or within a separate project. But there
> >> is so much more content of such wider interest waiting to be
> >> developed that we shouldn't divide our efforts.
> >
> > The same could be said of *any* category of articles.  Why write about
> > presidents, or hurricanes, or rock stars, or fortune 500 companies,
> > when there is so much else to do?  I'd personally rather read about
> > coffee shops and indie artists than fortune 500 companies and rock
> > stars anyway.
>
> I'm going to take a wild guess and say that [[Zoe's Cafe, Pullman,
> Washington]] will be of interest to fewer readers than [[Hurricane
> Katrina]].
>
And I bet you [[Pok?mon Crystal]] is interesting to more people than
[[Huelva (province)]].  Going with whatever is the most popular is not
something I think Wikipedia should do.

> There are probably some fascinating and unique coffee shops that we
> can have articles on, but the one down the street from me probably
> isn't one of them.
>
> --
> Philip L. Welch
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Philwelch

Anthony


from_name: Elliott F. Cable

subject: [Wikitech-l] Towards MW 2.0

body:
Wikimedia sites aren't well integrated, nor are they meant to be. I
am talking swarms of sites, many more than wikimedia has or plans to
have - separate sites, not language translations. For instance, we
are constantly changing what are currently called mediawiki:
namespace messages - for us, an integration closer to that of images
(where the message would be pulled off of meta if it doesn't exist
locally) would be more ideal. Also, pages can be shared or marked as
global on meta, in which case they are (again) treated the same.
Help: namespace would be global, so the help documents would only
have to be written once and maintained on one site; same for user
pages, as users are global already (more support for that would be
integrated, as well as different preferences on different network
sites, and keep the sessions across wikis), and project: pages would
be eschewed, as information about each project would be on meta -
again, more customizations like this focused on a hub-sattelite
architecture. Our main goal is just using perl, however - much of
mediawiki is very well done and salvageable! We're just planning on
working in something more powerful than... php... ^^/

I am sure mediawiki works for you; I'm just saying it doesn't work
for us, thus we're doing it another way. Why blow up at me? Many
people prefer Perl over PHP; actually, all the ones I know well do...
I have yet (until the other message in this thread ("Is there some
rule that says mediawiki must be written in a language
which encourages, nay demands!, unmaintainable results?") I have
actually never in my coding life heard somebody support php as a
viable language to develop in... perhaps I'm just crazy. Whatever.
I'm not saying you should change MediaWiki to perl, that'd be lots of
largely-useless work for you.

On May 3, 2006, at 1:05 PM, Rob Church wrote:

> On 03/05/06, Gregory Szorc <gregory.szorc at gmail.com> wrote:
>> On 5/3/06, Elliott F. Cable <ecable at avxw.com> wrote:
>>>
>>> including a lot more support for integration between wikis on a
>>> network.
>>
>> If you are referring to the ability of MediaWiki to host multiple
>> wikis and
>> have more robust support for permissions.
>
> Um...one can't run multiple wikis with MediaWiki?
>
> I KNEW IT! THIS WIKIMEDIA THING IS AN ELABORATE CON! A HOAX! YOU HAVE
> PULLED THE WOOL OVER ALL OUR EYES, VIBBER! I DEMAND VENGEANCE!
>
> [Please don't stab me.]
>
>
> Rob Church
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l


from_name: Rob Church

subject: [WikiEN-l] Watchlist feature requests

body:
> On 5/3/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Thanks, works well (just had to modify it a bit to work on en)! So it
> > seems my request of checkboxes to rapidly remove large numbers of
> > watched articles already existed, but I never noticed it.

Note also the existence of the "clear" function, e.g.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Watchlist/clear (comes with a
confirmation).

> > The monobook changes above improve the functionality somewhat though.
> >
> > Out of curiosity, what's the process for getting a change incorporated
> > into the standard monobook.js?

Convince a local sysop to edit MediaWiki:Monobook.js, or possibly
(depending upon compatibility), MediaWiki:Common.css.

Rob Church


body:
On 5/3/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 03/05/06, Anthony DiPierro <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
> > As for "an article with no claim to notability", I actually have no
> > idea what that phrase means.
>
> An article has to establish the notability of its subject. If it
> doesn't do that, it's subject to speedy deletion.
>
> ...I recite.
>
Seems like circular reasoning to me.  An article which doesn't show
any reason why it shouldn't be deleted, is subject to speedy deletion.

If that's a criteria for speedy deletion, I'm not sure why there's a
need for any others!

> > Stubbing only works if there's something there you can verify in the
> > first place.  Stubbing an article without verifying that your stub is
> > accurate first is a very bad idea IMO, because it gives false
> > credibility to the possibly inaccurate statement.
>
> Heh: '''John Smith''' was a rap singer [citation needed].
>
> Steve

I used to modify AfD nominations to say something like "John Smith
might be a person".  Got reverted half the time though, to the
original article with all the unverifiable statements in it.

But if an article really does say nothing more than "John Smith was a
rap singer [citation needed]", I think the encyclopedia would be
better off purging it after a few weeks of begging for a citation.  If
John Smith really is a rap singer and someone can prove it, it's easy
enough to re-add the information later.

Anthony


from_name: Jimmy Wales

body:
Peter Jacobi wrote:
> There are even topics so obscure ([[New Kadampa Tradition]] comes
> to my mind), that only vocal opponents and vocal proponents
> contribute. Should they already be considered "interested
> parties"? Shall we hope, that they will battle it out so that the
> result is NPOV?

The philosophy that NPOV is achieved by warring parties is one that I
have always rejected, and in practice, I think we can easily see that it
absolutely does not work.

I would prefer to have no article on [[New Kadampa Tradition]] than to
have one which is a constant battleground for partisans, taking up huge
amounts of times of good editors, legal people, and me.

What is preferred, of course, is that thoughtful, reasonable people who
know something about the subject interact in a helpful way to seek
common ground.

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


from_name: Chad Perrin

subject: [Wikitech-l] Towards MW 2.0

body:
On Wed, May 03, 2006 at 01:26:06PM -0400, Gregory Szorc wrote:
> I was curious what the current plans are for MW 2.0.  Will it just be
> announced sometime during the quarterly release schedule?  Will it be a
> considerable rewrite?
>
> If the later, I have an interesting idea for SoC.  How about somebody
> rewrite the MW 1.6 core.  Details of the rewrite would include
>
> *Changing everything to PHP 5 (better OO support in core)

If you're going to rewrite it -- why not rewrite it in another language?

--
Chad Perrin [ CCD CopyWrite | http://ccd.apotheon.org ]
"A script is what you give the actors.  A program
is what you give the audience." - Larry Wall


subject: [WikiEN-l] Cruft

body:
On 03/05/06, Brian Salter-Duke <b_duke at octa4.net.au> wrote:
> 1. General jargon of which cruft is just one.
> 2. Being put to AfD within hours or sometimes minutes of starting the
> article. I think this is most offensive. New editors are finding their
> way. They are not obsessed with WP. They have a life. They will take
> time to develop the article. If someone thinks the article is bad, they
> make a note of it and follow it for a week or so, talk to the editor on
> his talk page and perhaps the article talk page. It is sheer bad manners
> and certainly biting the newbie to push something to Afd so quickly. There
> is no hurry. WP is not going to be perfect tomorrow if you speedy delete
> a few articles.
> 3. Comments on Afd like, "looks non-verifiable to me", "seems
> non-notable" and other comments that show the nominator has not done
> enough homework before jumping to conclusions. I have seen quite a few
> AfDs withdrawn recently after the nom realises that the debate is
> showing they were quite wrong. Nominating something for deletion has its
> responsabilities.
> 4. Nominations which are basically "I do not understand this, so lets
> see whether people want to delete it". We should want to improve and
> keep stuff, noit delete it.

To me, all of this strongly points to the fact that we need an
intermediate step before the voting phase. If I come across an article
that I think should probably be deleted, quite a lot is expected of me
- I have to become "the nominator", effectively leading the campaign
to delete the article, take into account the background of the user
who created it, doing homework on it and so on.

I suggest we should have a simple template along the lines of prod,
which would add a discreet label along the lines of "This topic may
not be suitable for Wikipedia - can someone check it out?" or "There
may be copyright issues in this article - verify please" or whatever.

AfD is a nasty process, and there is no need to subject a well meaning
newbie to it. But there is also a need for experienced editors to
tactfully remove unwelcome articles from Wikipedia. At all costs, save
AfD for the actual disputes where people are already in conflict, and
a vote is really called for.

Steve


body:
Mark Gallagher wrote:
> And then you get people who'll insist that an article MUST remain the
> way it is simply because its subject doesn't want it to.

Such people should be beaten hard with the nearest available cluebat.

> Moderation in all things.

Ok you are right.  Such people should be beaten _moderately_ with the
nearest available cluebat. ;-)

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


subject: [Wikitech-l] Towards MW 2.0

body:
On 5/3/06, Rob Church <robchur at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 03/05/06, Gregory Szorc <gregory.szorc at gmail.com> wrote:
> > I was curious what the current plans are for MW 2.0.  Will it just be
> > announced sometime during the quarterly release schedule?  Will it be a
> > considerable rewrite?
> >
> > If the later, I have an interesting idea for SoC.  How about somebody
> > rewrite the MW 1.6 core.
>
> Why the 1.6 core? 1.7alpha is in constant development and is in use on
> Wikimedia sites.

I said 1.6 because it is the latest official release.  In reality, it
doesn't matter where you make the branch point since changes from the
development branch would be difficult to apply to the new core because of
internal changes.  If you had an intention of running the new core for
Wikipedia, then the branch point should be as up to date as possible since
you would have to re-patch the new core.  However, the whole purpose of
rewriting the core is to provide a true development branch point for major
changes (db schema, parser rewrite, etc).

Greg


body:
Phil Boswell wrote:
> You're assuming that someone entirely unfamiliar with Wikipedia should, when
> alerted to an unsympathetic and possibly damaging article about them, be
> able to understand when the mantra "anybody can edit" suddenly becomes
> invalid, and furthermore deduce the alternate avenues of change which they
> should pursue, all the while leaving a version of their article on display
> which might well be somewhat distressing to them?

Bingo!  Phil has it exactly right.  The problem we are seeing, again and
again, is this attitude that some poor victim of a biased rant in
Wikipedia ought to not get pissed and take us up on our offer of "anyone
can edit" but should rather immerse themselves in our arcane internal
culture until they understand the right way to get things done.

I do not know what is going to change, but something BIG has got to
happen and SOON about this issue, because the amount of time it is
consuming for some of our best editors is getting way out of control.

> We should be more careful not to bite newbies, especially when we
> have...however inadvertent it might have been, and I'm AGFing here like
> crazy...caused them distress before they even arrive here. We do not exactly
> improve our general reputation by fostering an atmosphere which potentially
> allows people to insert damaging and downright mean disinformation into a
> biographical article, lie in wait for the subject should they turn up, and
> add insult to injury by castigating their well-meaning if naive efforts to
> correct the situation.

That is a very brilliant statement.

And we need to recognize that this is an accurate statement of the facts
of a great many of the problem cases that end up in WP:OFFICE.  Not
everyone is a wikipedian, and some of these non-wikipedians are using
Wikipedia to troll other people.  We need to find a new way.

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


from_name: Cheney Shill

body:
Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote: Phil Boswell wrote:
> You're assuming that someone entirely unfamiliar with Wikipedia should, when
> alerted to an unsympathetic and possibly damaging article about them, be
> able to understand when the mantra "anybody can edit" suddenly becomes
> invalid, and furthermore deduce the alternate avenues of change which they
> should pursue, all the while leaving a version of their article on display
> which might well be somewhat distressing to them?

Bingo!  Phil has it exactly right.  The problem we are seeing, again and
again, is this attitude that some poor victim of a biased rant in
Wikipedia ought to not get pissed and take us up on our offer of "anyone
can edit" but should rather immerse themselves in our arcane internal
culture until they understand the right way to get things done.

I do not know what is going to change, but something BIG has got to
happen and SOON about this issue, because the amount of time it is
consuming for some of our best editors is getting way out of control.

I agree completely.  The simplest and quickest BIG thing would be to make it VERY, UNEQUIVOCALLY clear that consensus only applies to policy and guidelines, not to article content.  All to often, and despite the warning on the consensus page regarding groups taking over articles, admins use consensus as the deciding factor to keep a version of an article up that goes completely against verifiability or NPOV, violating NOR at the same time by accepting the claims, arguments, and votes of the group.~~~~Pro-Lick

---------------------------------
Blab-away for as little as 1?/min. Make  PC-to-Phone Calls using Yahoo! Messenger with Voice.


from_name: Philip Welch

subject: [WikiEN-l] Cruft

body:
On May 3, 2006, at 1:47 PM, charles matthews wrote:

>>>> If someone wants to join that community, they have to learn the
>>>> jargon. Even the most welcoming communities work this way.
>>>
>>> No they don't.  You're describing rude, myopic communities with
>>> little real
>>> interest in outreach.  Not a global voluntary organisation.
>>
>> Only rude, myopic communities have their own jargon?
>
> Not at all.  Medical doctors have jargon, for example.  But only
> certain
> people actually do expect what you say, that is, to join the
> community you
> must immerse yourself in the jargon.  The analogy here is not with
> becoming
> a doctor, but in taking part in a discussion with one

Exactly. People who become Wikipedians should learn the jargon, and
it's quite clear that at AfD, the opinions of *wikipedians* are the
opinions that matter. Not the opinions of every anonymous contributor
who comes in a vain ballot-stuffing attempt.

>> The purpose of jargon is to make communication easier within a group.
>> Everyone here knows what "cruft" is.
>
> Actually, the thread demonstrates the precise opposite: it is used
> by people
> who have really no idea of its denotation and connotations.

The explication I read at [[Cruft]] and at the Jargon File's entry
for "cruft" fit well within what I understood the meaning of "cruft"
to be on Wikipedia.

>> In AfD contexts, it's extraneous
>> content not suitable for inclusion in the encyclopedia.
>
> Well, the actual usage is as a pejorative-type suffix; what you are
> smuggling there into 'extraneous'.

That's not what I'm smuggling there, that's what the word means, and
that's what I and many others have always understood it to mean. The
fact that large numbers of people don't know that only reiterates my
point that we should educate Wikipedians about the jargon.

"Listcruft" is cruft in the form of a list. "Fancruft" is cruft of
interest only to fans of the topic in question.

>> We're all willing to explain that to newbies. And anyone who's
>> offended by the
>> word "cruft" needs to grow a thicker skin, because once we start
>> making up euphemisms for it, we'll end up with even more impenetrable
>> jargon than we have now.
>
> As I say, myopic rude jargon-using people miss the point of the
> Wikipedia
> mission; which is not to send people away seething.  Hacker
> mentality must
> die.

Once again: you deride "myopic rude jargon-using people" for their
incivility, not realizing that calling people "myopic" and "rude"
just because they use technical jargon is in itself uncivil.

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


body:
Steve Bennett wrote:
> Any idea how often people edit their own articles? That is, how
> frequently an outsider publicly makes it known that they are editing
> their own article? Once a day? Once a week?  We could always have a
> set of processes for these situations, where users who are good with
> the kid gloves can take them by the hand and help them get the best
> out of an awkward situation. There is still the problem of becoming
> aware of these situations.

Agreed, fully, with both the problem and the general direction of a
solution.

WP:OFFICE should be a last resort, and long before we get to that point,
we need a way for non-partisan, good wikipedians, who (despite the
userboxers and myspacers clogging up the system lately) are still very
much in control of the project, to find and concentrate some very strong
brainpower on these articles.

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


body:
On 03/05/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
> > By the way, [[LUG]]s generally aren't attached to streets, they're
> > usually attached to entire metropolitan areas.  In fact, I suspect a
> > well-written article on the [[Suncoast Linux Users Group]], for
> > example, would survive a VFD vote today.
>
> I'm sad to hear that well-writtenness is a criteria in AfDs. If it's
> not well-written someone should just fix it.

Agreed. On the other side of the coin, though...sometimes it takes a
mite of brilliant prose to make people realise that it's worth
replicating the effort throughout a page.

Rob Church


from_name: geni

body:
On 5/3/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
> Why do we delete "horrible" articles if they don't shape up "really
> soon"? What's soon? Why don't we want horrible articles hanging around
> for 2 years? Are "horrible" articles better or worse than stubs on the
> same topics?
>

They can often be worse

> > By the way, [[LUG]]s generally aren't attached to streets, they're
> > usually attached to entire metropolitan areas.  In fact, I suspect a
> > well-written article on the [[Suncoast Linux Users Group]], for
> > example, would survive a VFD vote today.
>
> I'm sad to hear that well-writtenness is a criteria in AfDs. If it's
> not well-written someone should just fix it.
>

Someone?

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Cleanup_by_month

15000 articles.

Looks like anyone who might be that someone has enough work on their
hands already.
--
geni


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] Towards MW 2.0

body:
Gregory Szorc wrote:
> I was curious what the current plans are for MW 2.0.  Will it just be
> announced sometime during the quarterly release schedule?  Will it be a
> considerable rewrite?

Whether there will even be a 2.0 is an open question. So far we've made huge
changes in internal structure incrementally, without having to rewrite
everything, and there's no obvious reason why this can't continue.

> If the later, I have an interesting idea for SoC.  How about somebody
> rewrite the MW 1.6 core.  Details of the rewrite would include

A core rewrite is I think not going to work for SoC. :)

> *Changing everything to PHP 5 (better OO support in core)

We already require PHP 5 for 1.7, and will be making more use of the new
features as things get refactored.

> *Eliminating $wg global usage.

This too happens piece by piece. Most non-configuration globals have been pruned
from most code, though there's still further work to be done.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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subject: [WikiEN-l] Cruft

body:
On May 3, 2006, at 2:14 PM, charles matthews wrote:

>> Exactly. People who become Wikipedians should learn the jargon, and
>> it's quite clear that at AfD, the opinions of *wikipedians* are the
>> opinions that matter. Not the opinions of every anonymous contributor
>> who comes in a vain ballot-stuffing attempt.
>
> Ah, cruft is some sort of shibboleth then.  You don't know what
> cruft is,
> you must be an outsider.

You're doing a remarkably good job at misunderstanding my posts today.

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


from_name: Fastfission

subject: [WikiEN-l] Upload by default to Commons?

body:
On 5/3/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> If the copy of the painting was made within the uk it is quite posible
> it is under copyright. Or at least the copyright status would be
> rather complex.

Only in the UK, and even that is ambiguous only because there haven't
been any cases challenging that yet (as far as I know). No copyright
status would be recognized in the US at all. I think it's pretty
low-priority on our copyright issues, given that as far as I know
there's no evidence that a photo of 15th century 2-D art would be
considered copyrighted in the UK. (Museums are of course shaking in
their boots over the idea, but that's only because they stand to
potentially lose money over it. As a principle it is entirely unsound
that an exact reproduction of a public domain work should generate any
new copyrights; it completely undermines the idea of the public domain
in the first place.)

>
> > The image deletion process is, unfortunately, institutionalizing the
> > assumption of bad faith.
>
> There is a differnce between assumeing good faith and assumeing judgement

I agree completely. I think the burden of proof in copyright matters
has to be with the uploader, which does somewhat undercut "assume good
faith" in situations where things have been improperly or ambiguously
tagged.

FF


subject: [WikiEN-l] Cruft

body:
On 5/3/06, Phil Boswell <phil.boswell at gmail.com> wrote:
> Absolutely. Unfortunately some people's idea of "removing all the crud they
> don't like" involves deleting articles on subjects with which they are not
> familiar (since such subjects must therefore be 'non-notable' by
> definition).
> --
> Phil

In that case why do our maths and physics articles seem to surive so
well (dito our chemistry articles)? People don't seem to delete stuff
relateing to subjects they are not familiar with. At most you could
complain people try and delete stuff on subjects they are slightly
familiar with.

--
geni


from_name: Ben Garney

subject: [Wikitech-l] Towards MW 2.0

body:
On 5/3/06, Elliott F. Cable <ecable at avxw.com> wrote:
>
>
> I'm not saying you should change MediaWiki to perl, that'd be lots of
> largely-useless work for you.

So in essence you're working on a different codebase, in a different
language, with different design goals... this seems like a strange basis for
any conversation about MediaWiki on this mailing list, and a situation prone
to people reacting in ways that don't make sense to one another. ;)

I've seen large sites written in a variety of languages (Google has at least
one major web app written using Java, the GarageGames website is all PHP and
one of the top 3 sites for games programming according to Alexa, there are
several big portal sites on ColdFusion, slashdot is still in Perl last I
checked, and even some guys doing things in C++!). Whatever works for your
team and situation is best, of course, but I don't think the _viability_ of
projects in non-PERL languages is really open to question. They seem to be
doing quite well. :)

--
Ben Garney
Torque Technologies Director
GarageGames.Com, Inc.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Cruft

body:
On 03/05/06, Gallagher Mark George
<m.g.gallagher at student.canberra.edu.au> wrote:
>encyclopaedia article).  Articles that need work and could one day
become real gems, >however, are put on AfD all the time, and this is a
pity.

This should never happen. AfD is totally superfluous when the *topic*
belongs in WP. Someone should just remove all the crud they don't like
and turn it into a stub at worst.

Steve


body:
Hello,

Have a look at this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Stevage/mwreuropeancapitals#Notes

Here, I have transcluded about 10 articles into one. Some of the sub
articles use the new referencing system. Unfortunately here, the Rome
article only actually defines 1 reference, but ends up with 58,
because all the references defined in earlier articles transcluded
into the parent article are shown again.

Is there a workaround? Could this bug be fixed? The simplest solution
would appear to be making <refs> only be shown the first time a
<references> section is used. In subsequent <references> sections they
should not be shown.

Thanks,
Steve


body:
On 03/05/06, Anthony DiPierro <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
> sprinkle it with {{fact}}, cut out any dubious statements, and put it
> on some list along the lines of ([[Wikipedia:horrible articles which
> will be removed if they don't shape up really soon]]) for a couple
> weeks and delete it if it doesn't get improved to where it's
> verifiable and from a perspective of history (or have a chance of
> quickly getting there).

Why do we delete "horrible" articles if they don't shape up "really
soon"? What's soon? Why don't we want horrible articles hanging around
for 2 years? Are "horrible" articles better or worse than stubs on the
same topics?

> By the way, [[LUG]]s generally aren't attached to streets, they're
> usually attached to entire metropolitan areas.  In fact, I suspect a
> well-written article on the [[Suncoast Linux Users Group]], for
> example, would survive a VFD vote today.

I'm sad to hear that well-writtenness is a criteria in AfDs. If it's
not well-written someone should just fix it.

Steve


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [WikiEN-l] Cruft

body:
Philip Welch wrote:

>On May 2, 2006, at 5:11 PM, Ray Saintonge wrote:
>
>
>>>Again, what connotations does "cruft" carry other than something
>>>being low-quality or otherwise worthy of deletion?
>>>
>>>
>>The connotation that anything contributed by the person who put the
>>material there is worthless.
>>
>>
>How? "Cruft" refers to the content in question. I've contributed
>cruft. I have never taken it to have that connotation, and unlike
>many of us here, I have participated in AfD quite a bit in the past.
>
That kind of literalism allows me to be as stupid as the circumstances
require.  It's a fine rhetorical tactic.

Using a more common example:  The literal approach is that if I say that
a comment you have made is a lie it is not the same as calling you a
liar.  The connotation that you are a liar is there but not the denotation.

Ec


body:
On 03/05/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> Someone?
>
> See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Cleanup_by_month
>
> 15000 articles.
>
> Looks like anyone who might be that someone has enough work on their
> hands already.

Yep. But the vast majority of those articles are good enough that
they're better than a conspicuous hole where they used to be. I don't
object to us aiming for higher standards, but I do object to us nuking
anything that's trying to get there - if slowly.

Steve


subject: [WikiEN-l] Cruft

body:
On 5/3/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
> People have an unstated bias in favour of sciences, and against
> popular culture. I don't know if this is a bad thing or not. The most
> badly written article on the most obscure beetle known to mankind will
> not be nominated. Every article on a fictional subject of popular
> culture is battling for its life from the moment it's born ;)
>
> Steve

Because people don't know about the sciences but everyone knows a bit
about polular culture. I doubt many people who haven't studied
chemistry know what a [[Biaxial nematic]] is. However everyone knows
what a website or a band is. A lot of people will know a bit about
fictional characters. The other thing is verifiability. Science is
practicaly defined by pulication but even fairly well writen pop
culture articles such as [[G-Man (Half-Life)]] have zero citations.

--
geni


subject: [WikiEN-l] Cruft

body:
On 03/05/06, Phil Boswell <phil.boswell at gmail.com> wrote:
> Absolutely. Unfortunately some people's idea of "removing all the crud they
> don't like" involves deleting articles on subjects with which they are not
> familiar (since such subjects must therefore be 'non-notable' by
> definition).

Sorry, I was referring to remove content within the article, not
deleting the article itself.

But I do agree with your perception of the term "non-notable".

Steve


from_name: Kirill Lokshin

body:
On 5/3/06, Mark Wagner <carnildo at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 5/3/06, Kirill Lokshin <kirill.lokshin at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > The image deletion process is, unfortunately, institutionalizing the
> > assumption of bad faith.  See, for example,
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:PUI#April 30 (specifically the
> > discussion of the Himmler photo); people seem to be approaching the
> > issue of image sourcing with the intent to delete as many images as
> > possible, preferably for purely bureaucratic reasons.
>
> When it comes to image uploads and tagging, I don't assume bad faith.
> I assume cheerfully aggressive cluelessness.  I wish the problems were
> caused by people acting in bad faith -- it'd be easier to deal with,
> then.

Fair enough.  I'll point out, though, that "aggressive cluelessness"
is hardly limited to people who upload images.  It's just as easy to
add one of a number of nice little "This image will die a horrid death
in a week unless the uploader satisfies Chapter V, Subsection 12,
paragraph xvii of the Great Wikipedia Image Rulebook" templates to an
image as it is to upload it in the first place; and while I understand
that many images can't be readily identified by anyone other than the
original uploader, you'd think that people would make some minimal
effort for the really, REALLY obvious ones.

Kirill Lokshin


from_name: Adrian Buehlmann

body:
"Steve Bennett" <stevage at gmail.com> wrote
in message
news:f1c3529e0605030601o1b77dbccg73ca468da98aa226 at mail.gmail.com
> Hello,
>
> Have a look at this:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Stevage/mwreuropeancapitals#Notes
>
> Here, I have transcluded about 10 articles into one. Some of the sub
> articles use the new referencing system. Unfortunately here, the Rome
> article only actually defines 1 reference, but ends up with 58,
> because all the references defined in earlier articles transcluded
> into the parent article are shown again.
>
> Is there a workaround? Could this bug be fixed? The simplest solution
> would appear to be making <refs> only be shown the first time a
> <references> section is used. In subsequent <references> sections they
> should not be shown.
>
> Thanks,
> Steve

Hi Steve

It's a rather suboptimal idea anyway what you are doing. Why do you want
to include several full fledged articles like [[en:Berlin]] and [[en:London]]
into the same page? This won't work anyway.

This is an editorial issue, not a technical one.

The technical problem you beleive to have is just a hint that you
are trying to fit a square pig into a round hole :-)

BTW you do also have problems with the coordinates on the top right.
They are written over each other. So this looks rather bad.


list: foundation-l

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

body:
On 5/3/06, Pawe? Dembowski <fallout at lexx.eu.org> wrote:
> > Sure, but at the same time we should acknowledge that an encyclopedia
> > article that is legal to copy, distribute, improve, and translate, for
> > any purpose (including commercial ones), in the vast majority of the
> > world, is "free enough", even if the pictures can't be cut out and put
> > in your car commercial.  IOW, some fair use can be allowed while the
> > work remains free.
>
> The same can be said about "educational use only" images, which in my
> opinion are much better than dubious "fair use".

Yep.  Hopefully this new definition will resolve that discrepancy.

Anthony


list: wikimedia-l


subject: [WikiEN-l] Cruft

body:
On 5/3/06, maru dubshinki <marudubshinki at gmail.com> wrote:
> I'd have to say G-man is an abberation. There is no well-defined or
> accepted reference system for citing games as references, as opposed
> to articles sourced from books and movies (take a look at
> [[Palpatine]]). How would you even do it?

You don't. That would be original reseach. Instead you find other
people who have written about G-man (people must have done) and cite
them. With the various gameing magazines around you should be able to
get some quite good sources

--
geni


body:
On 5/3/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi all,
>   The "Upload file" link in the left pane of monobook still takes you
> to the page for uploading an image to the English wikipedia. In most
> cases, it would be more helpful to be uploading the image to Commons
> (US fair use being the notable exception).
>
> Since I notice that certain other wikipedias at least make a commons
> upload link equally prominent, is it time we considered removing the
> upload-to-EN link entirely, or hiding it somewhere for those that
> really do want to upload fair use images? And instead, provide a link
> to upload to commons?
>

I don't think commons needs the deluge of unfree images it would recive

> Or perhaps I'm missing something - is there any reason I should ever
> want to upload something to EN, other than fair use?
>
> Steve

Vandalism.

--
geni


subject: [WikiEN-l] Cruft

body:
On May 3, 2006, at 3:18 PM, Ray Saintonge wrote:
>>> The connotation that anything contributed by the person who put the
>>> material there is worthless.
>>>
>> How? "Cruft" refers to the content in question. I've contributed
>> cruft. I have never taken it to have that connotation, and unlike
>> many of us here, I have participated in AfD quite a bit in the past.
>>
> That kind of literalism allows me to be as stupid as the circumstances
> require.  It's a fine rhetorical tactic.

Ah, you bastion of civility!

> Using a more common example:  The literal approach is that if I say
> that
> a comment you have made is a lie it is not the same as calling you a
> liar.  The connotation that you are a liar is there but not the
> denotation.

That's a remarkably poor analogy. The term "lie", by denotation,
means that whoever made the statement did so knowing it was false.
You cannot call one of my statements a "lie" without directly and
literally calling me a liar.

On the other hand, if you say that a comment I have made is simply
untrue, you are not saying anything about my motivations or good
faith. This is more analogous to referring to content as "cruft".

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


from_name: Neil Harris

body:
Gallagher Mark George wrote:
> G'day Steve,
>
>
>> Or perhaps I'm missing something - is there any reason I should ever
>> want to upload something to EN, other than fair use?
>>
>
> If you wanted to upload a copyvio, it's probably preferable you do so on en-WP, where there's more people ready and watching (no disrespect intended to Commons admins, they're fine people).  Also, any damage caused is thus limited to en-WP, rather than spread across other languages as the other 'pedias attempt to use that creamy image goodness.
>
> Frankly, the number of dodgy images uploaded by irresponsible, selfish or just downright stupid people every day is enough to make one break down and gibber in terror.  The last thing we want to do is inflict our problems on Commons ...
>
>
> Cheers,
>
>
Perhaps we should again consider restricting uploads to accounts that
are not "new", in the same sense used for the semi-protection mechanism,
as per earlier discussion?

-- Neil


from_name: Ivan Krstic

subject: [Wikitech-l] Towards MW 2.0

body:
Chad Perrin wrote:
> If you're going to rewrite it -- why not rewrite it in another language?

Any kind of core rewrite as a SoC project is sheer lunacy. In fact, the
best thing that can happen is for this thread to die young :)

It's something we might want to discuss at Hacking Days, however.

--
Ivan Krstic <krstic at fas.harvard.edu> | GPG: 0x147C722D


from_name: Steve Bennett

body:
On 03/05/06, Adrian Buehlmann <ligulem at pobox.com> wrote:
> It's a rather suboptimal idea anyway what you are doing. Why do you want
> to include several full fledged articles like [[en:Berlin]] and [[en:London]]
> into the same page? This won't work anyway.
>
> This is an editorial issue, not a technical one.
>
> The technical problem you beleive to have is just a hint that you
> are trying to fit a square pig into a round hole :-)

I'm trying to produce a WikiReader the
SimplestWayThatCouldPossiblyWork. Doing it this way actually gets damn
close. By using the printable version, you can basically define a
simple structure that transcludes other pages, then print it out, and
you grab a whole set of pages on a useful topic in one hit.

My concern with the actual WikiReader project is that there's a lot of
human intervention required to produce each pdf, which probably
explains why only 2 have actually been released - and of course
they're both out of sync with the actual Wikipedia version. By keeping
it live, you always have the latest version - and there is no human
intervention required whatsoever.

I think it's not so much fitting a square peg into a round hole, as
trying to soup up a lawn mower to compete with race cars. Sure, it's
not going to win, but how fast can we get this baby to go?

>
> BTW you do also have problems with the coordinates on the top right.
> They are written over each other. So this looks rather bad.

It's not *that* bad. I haven't gotten around to investigating what's
causing that mess :)

Anyway, it's now bug #5810.

Steve


from_name: Thommandel at aol.com

body:
In a message dated 5/3/2006 1:50:45 P.M. Central Daylight Time,
jwales at wikia.com writes:

Mark  Gallagher wrote:
> And then you get people who'll insist that an article  MUST remain the
> way it is simply because its subject doesn't want it  to.

Such people should be beaten hard with the nearest available  cluebat.

> Moderation in all things.

Ok you are right.   Such people should be beaten _moderately_ with the
nearest available  cluebat. ;-)

What kind of statement is this? Are you joking or are you serious?  I  am not
a Wikipedian, nor do I have any desire to become one. I happened across  the
plasma cosmology page and was dismayed by the incorrect and misinformed
information presented there. When I tried to make corrections, which is how this
thing is supposed to work out, all my efforts were reverted. I have been
insulted repeatedly, blocked twice because I suggested that such behavior would
amount to legal action in the real world,  now I have been blanked because  my
citations on the talk page are beyond, I presume, the attention span of the
big bang group in charge of the plasma cosmology page who don't like what I have
 done.  Wikipedia is NOT produced by the people. the people may make the
initial contributions, but it soon taken over by the powers to be. And if those
admins are challenged, they resort to personal attacks and intimidation. At
least that has been my experience.  When I raised the question of "ethics"  on
this list, the reply was "A good wikipedian can do what he damn well
pleases."  A few agreed and that was the end of ethics. Not all Wikireaders  are
stupid, and when a cancer is not only allowed but supported by admins, then  it is
only a matter of time. And that time will come.  You can call me a  crank and
infer a pathology all you want, I know what I am without relying on  some high
school student's opinion.  It is sad though when the one person  who had a
wonderful idea and saw it though fails to lift himself above the  lowest.

Tommy mandel


body:
[Cross-post to wikien-l, wikitech-l and mediawiki-l; apologies for duplication]

On 03/05/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi all,
>   The "Upload file" link in the left pane of monobook still takes you
> to the page for uploading an image to the English wikipedia. In most
> cases, it would be more helpful to be uploading the image to Commons
> (US fair use being the notable exception).
>
> Since I notice that certain other wikipedias at least make a commons
> upload link equally prominent, is it time we considered removing the
> upload-to-EN link entirely, or hiding it somewhere for those that
> really do want to upload fair use images? And instead, provide a link
> to upload to commons?

Allow me to recall a #mediawiki anecdote from about a week ago. A user
new to the software wanted to set up about three wikis using a fourth
as a mini version of our Commons (their own implementation); the
"usage" side had been established, but the user queried whether or not
uploads from all wikis could be diverted to the new.

Given that the "slave" wikis would all have access to the "master"
database (excuse the confusing mix of terminologies for those who are
placing this into 'SQL context), I considered it wouldn't be too
difficult.

Now for the relevant bit. It's been discussed before, a little, and I
touched upon it in a recent discussion sparked off from the newbie's
questions...but it could be feasible for us to replace our
Special:Upload pages with something a bit more intelligent. Making use
of the licencing dropdowns, we could, I think, redirect free images to
Commons in a seamless fashion (after checking existence and providing
a courteous note to the user, of course).

This has advantages and disadvantages. The user's upload experience is
simple, and the image can be used as before without trouble. On the
other hand, deliberate or accidental mis-selection of the licence
[cw]ould result in an influx of non-free materials arriving on the
Commons.

Nevertheless, I think the idea has potential, and it's something I
might be interested in helping to hack together in the future. I'll
throw it out here and see what people think. And since I'm at it, I'll
cross-post to mediawiki-l and wikitech-l, too.

Rob Church


subject: [Wikitech-l] [WikiEN-l] Upload by default to Commons?


subject: [WikiEN-l] Cruft

body:
On 03/05/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> In that case why do our maths and physics articles seem to surive so
> well (dito our chemistry articles)? People don't seem to delete stuff
> relateing to subjects they are not familiar with. At most you could
> complain people try and delete stuff on subjects they are slightly
> familiar with.

People have an unstated bias in favour of sciences, and against
popular culture. I don't know if this is a bad thing or not. The most
badly written article on the most obscure beetle known to mankind will
not be nominated. Every article on a fictional subject of popular
culture is battling for its life from the moment it's born ;)

Steve


list: commons-l

from_name: Kernigh

subject: [Commons-l] Direct copy to commons

body:
Magnus Manske <magnus.manske at ...> writes:

> My Commons helper tool [1] can now directly copy an image from a
> wikipedia to the commons, using a perl script written by Eloquence.
>
> Note that this is now the default behaviour for the "CO" button on
> "missing images" as well.

Can this be extended to also copy images from other Wikimedia projects,
particularily Wikibooks and Wikisource?

Actually I have hacked Eloquence's script to go in reverse, downloading
images instead of uploading them. I have not made the script public yet,
but basically I download files, edit files.txt, and reupload them to a
different wiki.

-- [[User:Kernigh]]
   http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Kernigh


from_name: Rob

body:
On 5/3/06, Thommandel at aol.com <Thommandel at aol.com> wrote:
 > blocked twice because I suggested that such behavior would
> amount to legal action in the real world

Why on earth would a dispute over plasma cosmology result in legal
action in the real world?


from_name: Guettarda

subject: [WikiEN-l] Copyright?

body:
On 5/3/06, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:
>
> SPUI has repeatedly tagged http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Sbekele
> as a copyvio of http://www.cbsintl.com/people.htm.  I refused to
> speedy it on that basis, so SPUI blanked it and added the copyvio
> template.  Sbekele self-identifies as Sophia Bekele, CEO of CBS
> International, and therefore presumably the copyright owner.  Since
> this is user space, and the content is an "about us" bio, not
> commercial content, I think that blanking and deletion are a bit
> excessive.  On the other hand, copyright is copyright I guess.  What
> does the panel think?

Yeah, it's a copyvio.  Since the user doesn't appear to have explicitly
released the material under a GFDL-compatible license, and since the user
has not provided an proof that they are who they say they are, it's correct
to consider it a copyvio.  Please note, the original says:

*Copyright (c) 1997-2005 CBS International All rights reserved.*


body:
On 5/3/06, Kirill Lokshin <kirill.lokshin at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 5/3/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
> > You make some excellent points. A way of easily migrating free images
> > once checked by confirmed users would solve my original problem. Can
> > you elaborate on these increasingly stringent demands?
>
> Aside from the propensity of random people to tag 15th-century
> paintings with {{nsd}}? ;-)
>

If the copy of the painting was made within the uk it is quite posible
it is under copyright. Or at least the copyright status would be
rather complex.

> The image deletion process is, unfortunately, institutionalizing the
> assumption of bad faith.

There is a differnce between assumeing good faith and assumeing judgement

> See, for example,
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:PUI#April 30 (specifically the
> discussion of the Himmler photo); people seem to be approaching the
> issue of image sourcing with the intent to delete as many images as
> possible, preferably for purely bureaucratic reasons.
>
> Kirill

People are just playing safe. Keeping an image we knew there were
doubts about would be hard to defend.

--
geni


from_name: Gregory Szorc

subject: [Wikitech-l] Towards MW 2.0

body:
On 5/3/06, Ivan Krstic <krstic at fas.harvard.edu> wrote:
>
> Chad Perrin wrote:
> > If you're going to rewrite it -- why not rewrite it in another language?
>
> Any kind of core rewrite as a SoC project is sheer lunacy. In fact, the
> best thing that can happen is for this thread to die young :)
>
> It's something we might want to discuss at Hacking Days, however.
>
>
How is it "sheer lunacy?"  Do you doubt the abilities of good programmers?
Google is paying $4500 for a student to complete this work.  Student coding
can go anywhere from $10 to $25/hr on average.  Let's say it is $25/hr.
That is 180 hours, or 4.5 40 hour weeks.

I am not proposing a FULL rewrite of the core, but a core re-organization.
We keep the same classes, but just re-arrange things.  We eliminate the use
of global variables, assign visibility keywords to class functions, etc.
This has been on the table for quite some time.  Once this is done, you can
start hacking away at the new core, replacing, deleting, and modifying
classes as you see fit.  The benefit to doing it this way instead of the
natural progression of the Wikipedia development branch is that the
Wikipedia developers don't have to spend the time "upgrading" the core to
better OO.  Their time can be spent doing actual development on MediaWiki.
Think of the proposal as a glorified code audit/refactorization.

Greg


subject: [Wikitech-l] Towards MW 2.0

body:
Gregory Szorc wrote:
> Do you doubt the abilities of good programmers?

I certainly do, when they're students who are working alone and who
might disappear from the face of the planet after SoC finishes, as turns
out to be the case with a vast majority of SoC projects.

> Think of the proposal as a glorified code audit/refactorization.

A rewrite implies starting from scratch. Making the MW code less ugly,
which is what it sounds like you want do, is another matter entirely.

--
Ivan Krstic <krstic at fas.harvard.edu> | GPG: 0x147C722D


body:
On 5/3/06, Rob Church <robchur at gmail.com> wrote:
> Nevertheless, I think the idea has potential, and it's something I
> might be interested in helping to hack together in the future. I'll
> throw it out here and see what people think. And since I'm at it, I'll
> cross-post to mediawiki-l and wikitech-l, too.
>
>
> Rob Church

We need the ability to upload images onto en to deal with vandalism.
Secondaly how would [[MediaWiki:Bad image list]] work?

--
geni


from_name: Magnus Manske

subject: [Commons-l] Direct copy to commons

body:
My Commons helper tool [1] can now directly copy an image from a
wikipedia to the commons, using a perl script written by Eloquence.

Note that this is now the default behaviour for the "CO" button on
"missing images" as well.

You can also call the commonshelper with GET parameters (in the URL).
This might assist an organized effort to copy GFDL/PD/CC images to the
commons.

Magnus

[1] http://tools.wikimedia.de/~magnus/commonshelper.php

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from_name: Rob Church

body:
On 03/05/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> We need the ability to upload images onto en to deal with vandalism.
> Secondaly how would [[MediaWiki:Bad image list]] work?

We could change things a bit, of course; if the shared image repo.
version of the file is protected, then we could disallow local
uploads.

In addition, I believe (but don't quote me on it) that the bad image
list is applied to commons stuff too by virtue of the order of
execution.

Rob Church


from_name: geni

body:
On 5/3/06, Kirill Lokshin <kirill.lokshin at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 5/3/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 5/3/06, Kirill Lokshin <kirill.lokshin at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > On 5/3/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > > You make some excellent points. A way of easily migrating free images
> > > > once checked by confirmed users would solve my original problem. Can
> > > > you elaborate on these increasingly stringent demands?
> > >
> > > Aside from the propensity of random people to tag 15th-century
> > > paintings with {{nsd}}? ;-)
> > >
> >
> > If the copy of the painting was made within the uk it is quite posible
> > it is under copyright. Or at least the copyright status would be
> > rather complex.
>
> Curious.  I was under the impression that Bridgeman v Corel drew no
> distinction based on where the copy was made (if the copy is accurate,
> how could you tell?), and that _any_ (two-dimensional, slavish, etc.)
> reproduction of a PD artwork was considered PD under US law.
>
> Kirill

But not under UK law. So if an image was copyed and published in the
uk it may or may not be copywriten. So you have an image published in
the uk that may be copywriten. Then the Berne convention turns up and
I lost interest in trying to figure stuff out. In any case you then
have the problem of UK editors. Copyright law in this area appears to
be a mess. We need sources so we can deal with the problem of it being
clarified (For example if Bridgeman v Corel was overturned knowing
which images were copied directly from PD sources by wikipedians would
be kinda hand since we would then know what not to delete).

--
geni


body:
Hi all,
  The "Upload file" link in the left pane of monobook still takes you
to the page for uploading an image to the English wikipedia. In most
cases, it would be more helpful to be uploading the image to Commons
(US fair use being the notable exception).

Since I notice that certain other wikipedias at least make a commons
upload link equally prominent, is it time we considered removing the
upload-to-EN link entirely, or hiding it somewhere for those that
really do want to upload fair use images? And instead, provide a link
to upload to commons?

Or perhaps I'm missing something - is there any reason I should ever
want to upload something to EN, other than fair use?

Steve


from_name: Gregory Maxwell

subject: [Wikitech-l] Towards MW 2.0

body:
On 5/3/06, Elliott F. Cable <ecable at avxw.com> wrote:
> We're working on a complete re-write of MW in Perl. Well not exactly
> a port, but we like lots of mediawiki features, and will be really
> looking at it for tips, we just like perl more and need a few things
> customized to work with our goal instead of the messed up wikimedia
> one; including a lot more support for integration between wikis on a
> network.

Perl?

You're kidding right?

Is there some rule that says mediawiki must be written in a language
which encourages, nay demands!, unmaintainable results?


subject: [WikiEN-l] Cruft

body:
On 03/05/06, maru dubshinki <marudubshinki at gmail.com> wrote:
> I'd have to say G-man is an abberation. There is no well-defined or
> accepted reference system for citing games as references, as opposed
> to articles sourced from books and movies (take a look at
> [[Palpatine]]). How would you even do it? If a game is broken down
> into well-defined levels or segments, it is possible, but it is still
> difficult, and suppose it's a more free-form game than a rigid RPG or

At first glance, that article has a lot of OR in it. It would be a
great article if at least we could point to bulletin boards, forums,
wikis, or whatever proving that people (other than Wikipedians) have
spent time analysing this character and trying to determine who he is
or what he does. Then the article could be more on the social
phenomenon. There are occasional fleeting references to "the half life
community" or "fans of the game", but surprisingly, no links can be
given to substantiate that these debates have actually taken place.

In a word: this article is a perfect example of where blogs and forums
*should* be cited, if only as primary sources.

Citing the game itself is probably the wrong direction to be going here.

Steve


body:
On 03/05/06, Elliott F. Cable <ecable at avxw.com> wrote:
> I just had to comment on this - I have never seen a square pig in my
> entire life, but if I *DID* find a square pig, I'd defiantly
> immediately try to stick it in a round hole i found. Just my 2?...

You'd be trying to "defy" me, or Adrian? :)

Steve


body:
On 03/05/06, Kirill Lokshin <kirill.lokshin at gmail.com> wrote:
> 1. Most en: contributors don't have a Commons account; until single
> login is actually implemented, having to sign up for a new account
> will just be an annoyance.
> 1.a. Even if users _do_ sign up to Commons, they are unlikely to check
> their talk pages there on a regular basis, which would make contacting
> them far more difficult.
> 2. Images uploaded to Commons with what turns out to be an unsuitable
> license are likely to be deleted out of hand, with no notification to
> the user; such images on en: can be retagged as fair use if needed.
> 3. Conversely, Commons does not (at present) have the infrastructure
> in place to deal with the flood of new uploads we see on en:, making
> it more likely that non-free images will slip through the cracks.
>
> Having a more streamlined process for migrating free images to Commons
> would be better, in my opinion; but even that might not be possible
> with the increasingly stringent demands being placed on image tagging.

You make some excellent points. A way of easily migrating free images
once checked by confirmed users would solve my original problem. Can
you elaborate on these increasingly stringent demands?

Steve


from_name: Joe Anderson

subject: [WikiEN-l] Cruft

body:
I agree with Steve.

On 5/3/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 03/05/06, Brian Salter-Duke <b_duke at octa4.net.au> wrote:
> > 1. General jargon of which cruft is just one.
> > 2. Being put to AfD within hours or sometimes minutes of starting the
> > article. I think this is most offensive. New editors are finding their
> > way. They are not obsessed with WP. They have a life. They will take
> > time to develop the article. If someone thinks the article is bad, they
> > make a note of it and follow it for a week or so, talk to the editor on
> > his talk page and perhaps the article talk page. It is sheer bad manners
> > and certainly biting the newbie to push something to Afd so quickly.
> There
> > is no hurry. WP is not going to be perfect tomorrow if you speedy delete
> > a few articles.
> > 3. Comments on Afd like, "looks non-verifiable to me", "seems
> > non-notable" and other comments that show the nominator has not done
> > enough homework before jumping to conclusions. I have seen quite a few
> > AfDs withdrawn recently after the nom realises that the debate is
> > showing they were quite wrong. Nominating something for deletion has its
> > responsabilities.
> > 4. Nominations which are basically "I do not understand this, so lets
> > see whether people want to delete it". We should want to improve and
> > keep stuff, noit delete it.
>
> To me, all of this strongly points to the fact that we need an
> intermediate step before the voting phase. If I come across an article
> that I think should probably be deleted, quite a lot is expected of me
> - I have to become "the nominator", effectively leading the campaign
> to delete the article, take into account the background of the user
> who created it, doing homework on it and so on.
>
> I suggest we should have a simple template along the lines of prod,
> which would add a discreet label along the lines of "This topic may
> not be suitable for Wikipedia - can someone check it out?" or "There
> may be copyright issues in this article - verify please" or whatever.
>
> AfD is a nasty process, and there is no need to subject a well meaning
> newbie to it. But there is also a need for experienced editors to
> tactfully remove unwelcome articles from Wikipedia. At all costs, save
> AfD for the actual disputes where people are already in conflict, and
> a vote is really called for.
>
> Steve
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

--
Joe Anderson

[[User:Computerjoe]] on en, fr, de, simple, Meta and Commons.


body:
On 5/3/06, Gallagher Mark George <m.g.gallagher at student.canberra.edu.au> wrote:
> I agree: if a copy is accurate, you couldn't tell.

Unless I know where the original object is.

>  BUT, that's American law.  If a copy is made in the UK (say by a museum), and the >uploader is also a Yukian, could he be held liable by Yukian courts for copyright >infringement if the museum claims copyright?
>
> I don't know --- IANAL, IJPOOTV.
>
> --
> MarkGallagher

IANALE

However Lewis v King suggests that the English courts would regard it
as within their juristiction.

As

--
geni


subject: [WikiEN-l] Watchlist feature requests

body:
On 03/05/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 03/05/06, Rob Church <robchur at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Note also the existence of the "clear" function, e.g.
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Watchlist/clear (comes with a
> > confirmation).
>
> I confess I had never noticed those links there before. They're sort
> of buried in the text. Why not just put them next to the Hide links:
>
> Hide bot edits. | Hide my edits. | Edit watchlist | Unwatch all

I like that idea. Will do so when I get a moment. :)

> > Convince a local sysop to edit MediaWiki:Monobook.js, or possibly
> > (depending upon compatibility), MediaWiki:Common.css.
>
> Who decides what gets in or not? Seems like there are squillions of
> extensions available, so there's presumably some kind of process for
> deciding what extensions are inflicted on everyone and which aren't?

That's down to consensus.

Rob Church


subject: [WikiEN-l] Watchlist feature requests

body:
On 5/3/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 03/05/06, Rob Church <robchur at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Note also the existence of the "clear" function, e.g.
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Watchlist/clear (comes with a
> > confirmation).
>
> I confess I had never noticed those links there before. They're sort
> of buried in the text. Why not just put them next to the Hide links:
>
> Hide bot edits. | Hide my edits. | Edit watchlist | Unwatch all
>
> > Convince a local sysop to edit MediaWiki:Monobook.js, or possibly
> > (depending upon compatibility), MediaWiki:Common.css.
>
> Who decides what gets in or not? Seems like there are squillions of
> extensions available, so there's presumably some kind of process for
> deciding what extensions are inflicted on everyone and which aren't?
>
> Steve

Not really. I think things are just discused on the talk page.

--
geni


subject: [WikiEN-l] Cruft

body:
On #wikipedia last night, a user pointed out I may be in violation of
[[m:Don't be a dick]]. This is most probably true.

This whole thing has gone out of proportion, and I accept that both of my
actions maybe seen as incivil (albeit in good faith).

I still, however, think the term hypocrite was unneccessarily harsh and I
think the fact I am chair of [[WP:CJ]] is irrelevant.

Thanks,

Joe

On 5/3/06, Joe Anderson <computerjoe.mailinglist at googlemail.com> wrote:
>
> I agree with Steve.
>
>
> On 5/3/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > On 03/05/06, Brian Salter-Duke <b_duke at octa4.net.au> wrote:
> > > 1. General jargon of which cruft is just one.
> > > 2. Being put to AfD within hours or sometimes minutes of starting the
> > > article. I think this is most offensive. New editors are finding their
> > > way. They are not obsessed with WP. They have a life. They will take
> > > time to develop the article. If someone thinks the article is bad,
> > they
> > > make a note of it and follow it for a week or so, talk to the editor
> > on
> > > his talk page and perhaps the article talk page. It is sheer bad
> > manners
> > > and certainly biting the newbie to push something to Afd so quickly.
> > There
> > > is no hurry. WP is not going to be perfect tomorrow if you speedy
> > delete
> > > a few articles.
> > > 3. Comments on Afd like, "looks non-verifiable to me", "seems
> > > non-notable" and other comments that show the nominator has not done
> > > enough homework before jumping to conclusions. I have seen quite a few
> > > AfDs withdrawn recently after the nom realises that the debate is
> > > showing they were quite wrong. Nominating something for deletion has
> > its
> > > responsabilities.
> > > 4. Nominations which are basically "I do not understand this, so lets
> > > see whether people want to delete it". We should want to improve and
> > > keep stuff, noit delete it.
> >
> > To me, all of this strongly points to the fact that we need an
> > intermediate step before the voting phase. If I come across an article
> > that I think should probably be deleted, quite a lot is expected of me
> > - I have to become "the nominator", effectively leading the campaign
> > to delete the article, take into account the background of the user
> > who created it, doing homework on it and so on.
> >
> > I suggest we should have a simple template along the lines of prod,
> > which would add a discreet label along the lines of "This topic may
> > not be suitable for Wikipedia - can someone check it out?" or "There
> > may be copyright issues in this article - verify please" or whatever.
> >
> > AfD is a nasty process, and there is no need to subject a well meaning
> > newbie to it. But there is also a need for experienced editors to
> > tactfully remove unwelcome articles from Wikipedia. At all costs, save
> > AfD for the actual disputes where people are already in conflict, and
> > a vote is really called for.
> >
> > Steve
> > _______________________________________________
> > WikiEN-l mailing list
> > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> > To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
> >
>
>
>
> --
> Joe Anderson
>
> [[User:Computerjoe]] on en, fr, de, simple, Meta and Commons.
>

--
Joe Anderson

[[User:Computerjoe]] on en, fr, de, simple, Meta and Commons.


subject: [Wikitech-l] Towards MW 2.0

body:
On 5/3/06, Elliott F. Cable <ecable at avxw.com> wrote:
>
> including a lot more support for integration between wikis on a
> network.

If you are referring to the ability of MediaWiki to host multiple wikis and
have more robust support for permissions, then look no further than my SoC
application.  If you have something else in mind, please share.

In the ideal world, we have a formalized parser syntax complete with XML
representation and a robust web API and MediaWiki is just a nice interface
to the web API.  Nothing more.  Nothing less.  But that's my middleware mind
speaking...


subject: [WikiEN-l] Cruft

body:
On 03/05/06, Joe Anderson <computerjoe.mailinglist at googlemail.com> wrote:
> On #wikipedia last night, a user pointed out I may be in violation of
> [[m:Don't be a dick]]. This is most probably true.
>
> This whole thing has gone out of proportion, and I accept that both of my
> actions maybe seen as incivil (albeit in good faith).
>
> I still, however, think the term hypocrite was unneccessarily harsh and I
> think the fact I am chair of [[WP:CJ]] is irrelevant.

The what of the what?

"Last night in #wikipedia-en, I formed a new wiki project with seven
members or so. In the absence of an interim leader, I appointed me as
overlord general and appointed two others as general advisors, or
councillors.

Formal elections, with election co-ordinators, to be held in six
months. We haven't decided what to call it; but don't panic, we've got
a councillor for Naming, and s/he is going to set up a committee to
help decide. I expect we'll vote on it.

Next, we'll get a bot to spam people with links to it, set up a
newsletter (councillor for Publishing, methinks - and a press crew)
and hold regular meetings.

We start the actual work in 2008. This is all preparation."

Sound familiar?

Rob Church


from_name: Chad Perrin

subject: [Wikitech-l] Towards MW 2.0

body:
On Wed, May 03, 2006 at 04:43:26PM -0400, Gregory Maxwell wrote:
> On 5/3/06, Elliott F. Cable <ecable at avxw.com> wrote:
> > We're working on a complete re-write of MW in Perl. Well not exactly
> > a port, but we like lots of mediawiki features, and will be really
> > looking at it for tips, we just like perl more and need a few things
> > customized to work with our goal instead of the messed up wikimedia
> > one; including a lot more support for integration between wikis on a
> > network.
>
> Perl?
>
> You're kidding right?
>
> Is there some rule that says mediawiki must be written in a language
> which encourages, nay demands!, unmaintainable results?

No, there isn't.  That's probably why they're using Perl instead of
Visual Basic.

Bad coding practice creates unmaintainable code, not Perl.

--
Chad Perrin [ CCD CopyWrite | http://ccd.apotheon.org ]
Brian K. Reid: "In computer science, we stand on each other's feet."


body:
On 03/05/06, Neil Harris <neil at tonal.clara.co.uk> wrote:
> Perhaps we should again consider restricting uploads to accounts that
> are not "new", in the same sense used for the semi-protection mechanism,
> as per earlier discussion?

Yes, I confess that I can't think of many situations where a brand new
account is going to be uploading something we badly need.

Of course, if we do do this, we should provide an alternative channel
for those special cases, just as we did for article creation. Perhaps
there could be an email address where images with source information
could be sent, or a page where people can post links to their images,
assuming they're on the web.

If our problem is a firehose of images coming in that we can't deal
with, then it makes sense to restrict that to a more manageable stream
until we can develop processes for dealing with massive unrestricted
uploads.

Steve


from_name: Ben Garney

subject: [Wikitech-l] Towards MW 2.0

body:
On 5/3/06, Tels <nospam-abuse at bloodgate.com> wrote:
>
> Moin,
>
> On Wednesday 03 May 2006 22:43, Gregory Maxwell wrote:
> > On 5/3/06, Elliott F. Cable <ecable at avxw.com> wrote:
> > > We're working on a complete re-write of MW in Perl. Well not exactly
> > > a port, but we like lots of mediawiki features, and will be really
> > > looking at it for tips, we just like perl more and need a few things
> > > customized to work with our goal instead of the messed up wikimedia
> > > one; including a lot more support for integration between wikis on a
> > > network.
> >
> > Perl?
> >
> > You're kidding right?
> >
> > Is there some rule that says mediawiki must be written in a language
> > which encourages, nay demands!, unmaintainable results?
>
> You just insulted me as a Perl programmer that all my code is
> unmaintanable. Please have a look at:

 I'd humbly suggest that there are better things to discuss here than if
certain languages are more maintainable than others. A good programmer can
write maintainable code in any language; similarly a bad programmer can
write crap anywhere, too.

Are we here to have a meaningful discussion about MW, or just engage in
useless language debates?

--
Ben Garney
Torque Technologies Director
GarageGames.Com, Inc.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Cruft

body:
On 5/3/06, Bryan Derksen <bryan.derksen at shaw.ca> wrote:
> geni wrote:
> > On 5/3/06, maru dubshinki <marudubshinki at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >> I'd have to say G-man is an abberation. There is no well-defined or
> >> accepted reference system for citing games as references, as opposed
> >> to articles sourced from books and movies (take a look at
> >> [[Palpatine]]). How would you even do it?
> >>
> >
> > You don't. That would be original reseach.
> No, that would be citing a _primary_ source, which is entirely within
> the policies and guidelines of Wikipedia. Indeed, in many cases the game
> itself would probably be a lot easier to get ahold of for verification
> than old issues of game magazines that might discuss it.

By that standard I could give you the instructions for doing various
chemical experiments (ones that don't appear in the lititure) as a
source.

--
geni


subject: [Wikitech-l] Towards MW 2.0

body:
On Wed, May 03, 2006 at 02:45:15PM -0700, Ben Garney wrote:
>
> I've seen large sites written in a variety of languages (Google has at least
> one major web app written using Java, the GarageGames website is all PHP and
> one of the top 3 sites for games programming according to Alexa, there are
> several big portal sites on ColdFusion, slashdot is still in Perl last I
> checked, and even some guys doing things in C++!). Whatever works for your
> team and situation is best, of course, but I don't think the _viability_ of
> projects in non-PERL languages is really open to question. They seem to be
> doing quite well. :)

I'm pretty sure the point wasn't "non-Perl languages aren't viable", but
that PHP is a huge pile of functions held together by an anemic syntax,
and they'd prefer to use something a little more robust than that.
Python, Ruby, C/C++, Java, or Lisp might well have been the option if
the programmers discussing this liked those languages better, I would
guess -- but, apparently, they like Perl.  Frankly, I sympathize.

Of course, PHP is still very useful.  It's just not typically my own
first choice for anything beyond the occasional bit of markup-embedded
control structures and includes.

--
Chad Perrin [ CCD CopyWrite | http://ccd.apotheon.org ]
unix virus: If you're using a unixlike OS, please forward
this to 20 others and erase your system partition.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Cruft

body:
On 03/05/06, maru dubshinki <marudubshinki at gmail.com> wrote:
> Why can't we cite games though? I'm sensing a distinct dislike of
> citing anything not easily represented in textual form. Obscure books
> and monographs impossible for anyone to get ahold of? Sure. A
> multi-million copy selling game whose cutscenes and game events are
> not easily cited? No way.

I'm not clear on what you mean by citing a game? And the motivations
of doing so. Using "The blue monster appears on levels 7, 23 and 37,
and bonus level Z3 if you finish the first 50 levels without taking
hit" as a citation is unmanageable.

But yeah it's a grey area. I suspect I've debated this before, and I
was on the other side last time :) Most likely if there's anything
worth "citing" in there, there would be another, secondary source,
which would be more appopriate in any case.

Steve


from_name: Alphax (Wikipedia email)

subject: [WikiEN-l] Cruft

body:
Jesse W wrote:
> On May 3, 2006, at 12:18 AM, Pete Bartlett wrote:
>
>>>> We're not hunting down newbies and forcing them to participate in
>>>> deletion discussions.
>>> Yes, we are, every time we nominate one of their articles.
>> I know we already put {{afd}} tags on pages, but I think it should be
>> mandatory to alert article creators on their talk page that an afd
>> has been started on their article.
> Er. [[WP:OWN]]?  Images are an exception, as nearly all images are the
> work of one or two people at most.  Articles are not.  Articles can,
> and often are, watched.  Wikipedians ought to pay attention to their
> watchlists if they wish to express opinions about their contributions.
>

More often than not, people who have made major contributions to an
aritcle will have some knowledge on the subject, and their input will be
helpful.

>> It is amazing how often AfD debates
>> do not benefit from the opinion of the original creator.
> It is not amazing.  Most people do not feel the need to continue to
> respond to questions about their contributions to Wikipedia after they
> have contributed them.  This is unsurprising.
>
> I throughly oppose a requirement to notify people who have expressed
> (through not using their watchlists) a desire not to continue
> discussing their contributions.
>

How many articles are on your watchlist? Do /you/ check every edit that
appears on your watchlist?

--
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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from_name: Jimmy Wales

body:
>>> And then you get people who'll insist that an article  MUST remain the
>>> way it is simply because its subject doesn't want it  to.
>>
>> Such people should be beaten hard with the nearest available  cluebat.
>>
>>> Moderation in all things.
>>
>> Ok you are right.   Such people should be beaten _moderately_ with the
>> nearest available  cluebat. ;-)
>
> What kind of statement is this? Are you joking or are you serious?

Oh the irony of being ask whether a pair of silly sentences containing
the word 'cluebat' is a joke or not.

/me looks for his cluebat.

--Jimbo


subject: [WikiEN-l] Cruft

body:
Me or General Eisenhower :P

On 5/3/06, Rob Church <robchur at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 03/05/06, Joe Anderson <computerjoe.mailinglist at googlemail.com> wrote:
> > On #wikipedia last night, a user pointed out I may be in violation of
> > [[m:Don't be a dick]]. This is most probably true.
> >
> > This whole thing has gone out of proportion, and I accept that both of
> my
> > actions maybe seen as incivil (albeit in good faith).
> >
> > I still, however, think the term hypocrite was unneccessarily harsh and
> I
> > think the fact I am chair of [[WP:CJ]] is irrelevant.
>
> The what of the what?
>
> "Last night in #wikipedia-en, I formed a new wiki project with seven
> members or so. In the absence of an interim leader, I appointed me as
> overlord general and appointed two others as general advisors, or
> councillors.
>
> Formal elections, with election co-ordinators, to be held in six
> months. We haven't decided what to call it; but don't panic, we've got
> a councillor for Naming, and s/he is going to set up a committee to
> help decide. I expect we'll vote on it.
>
> Next, we'll get a bot to spam people with links to it, set up a
> newsletter (councillor for Publishing, methinks - and a press crew)
> and hold regular meetings.
>
> We start the actual work in 2008. This is all preparation."
>
> Sound familiar?
>
>
> Rob Church
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

--
Joe Anderson

[[User:Computerjoe]] on en, fr, de, simple, Meta and Commons.


from_name: Filip Maljkovic

subject: [WikiEN-l] [Mediawiki-l]  Upload by default to Commons?

body:
Rob Church wrote:
> [snip]
> Now for the relevant bit. It's been discussed before, a little, and I
> touched upon it in a recent discussion sparked off from the newbie's
> questions...but it could be feasible for us to replace our
> Special:Upload pages with something a bit more intelligent. Making use
> of the licencing dropdowns, we could, I think, redirect free images to
> Commons in a seamless fashion (after checking existence and providing
> a courteous note to the user, of course).
>
That's a brilliant idea. I'd really like to see it implemented. Not only
for English Wikipedia, but for all Wikimedia projects.
> This has advantages and disadvantages. The user's upload experience is
> simple, and the image can be used as before without trouble. On the
> other hand, deliberate or accidental mis-selection of the licence
> [cw]ould result in an influx of non-free materials arriving on the
> Commons.
>
Even though I'm not a Commons expert, I can deduce that Commons too has
a problem with wrong licenses, hence some of the deletion.
> [snip]
Filip

P.S. Sorry for doubleposts... I used Reply to all


subject:
[Wikitech-l] [Mediawiki-l] [WikiEN-l] Upload by default to
	Commons?


from_name: Philip Welch

subject: [WikiEN-l] Cruft

body:
On May 3, 2006, at 4:05 PM, Anthony DiPierro wrote:

>> "Listcruft" is cruft in the form of a list. "Fancruft" is cruft of
>> interest only to fans of the topic in question.
>
> I still don't understand the point of the term.  If all "cruft" means
> is something not suitable for inclusion in the encyclopedia, isn't it
> redundant?

You're right, it is question-begging to say "delete this article
because it is cruft". But sometimes an article is just so obviously
cruft that identifying it as such is all that's worth doing.

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


from_name: Steve Bennett

body:
On 03/05/06, Anthony DiPierro <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
> By a horrible article I mean one with no verifiable content
> whatsoever.  Depending whether or not the person creating the article
> seems to be acting in good faith I'd say it should stay around between
> no time at all and two weeks or so.

Ah, so you mean an article with no claim to notability, or a suspected
hoax? Both candidates for speedy deletion :) If all the content is
unverifiable, it could always be trimmed down without going through
AfD at all.

> And IMO yes, an article which is not verifiable is worse than nothing
> at all.  It should be corrected as soon as possible, and keeping it
> around in the main namespace for very long is not acceptable (still
> IMO, of course).

How about stubbing it and moving the content to the talk page, gently
redirecting the newbie there? I'm just speculating a bit here...

> I agree with that point to some extent (at some point you've gotta
> just stop feeding the trolls though).  In any case, how well written
> an article is *does* tend to affect the outcome of votes on deletion.

Pity.

Steve


subject: [WikiEN-l] Watchlist feature requests

body:
On 03/05/06, Rob Church <robchur at gmail.com> wrote:
> Note also the existence of the "clear" function, e.g.
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Watchlist/clear (comes with a
> confirmation).

I confess I had never noticed those links there before. They're sort
of buried in the text. Why not just put them next to the Hide links:

Hide bot edits. | Hide my edits. | Edit watchlist | Unwatch all

> Convince a local sysop to edit MediaWiki:Monobook.js, or possibly
> (depending upon compatibility), MediaWiki:Common.css.

Who decides what gets in or not? Seems like there are squillions of
extensions available, so there's presumably some kind of process for
deciding what extensions are inflicted on everyone and which aren't?

Steve


from_name: Timwi

subject:
[Wikitech-l] two similar messages: Undeletedrevisions and
	Undeleterevisions

body:
Brion Vibber wrote:
>
>>MediaWiki:Undeleterevisions
>>$1 revisions archived
>
> This is displayed with the list of deleted revisions, showing what is stored in
> the archive of deleted pages.

Hm, maybe this would be clearer if it was changed to: "$1 deleted
revisions found"?


from_name: Fred Bauder

subject: [WikiEN-l] Howto prevent administrator privilege abuse

body:
Should such a thing happen you need to follow the dispute resolution
procedures. Emails to arbitrators will get you in if you are blocked.

Fred

On May 3, 2006, at 1:30 PM, Raphael Wegmann wrote:

> Hello,
>
> I have a question regarding administrator privilege abuse:
> What mechanism exists to prevent administrators from
> blocking users with whom they disagree in a content dispute?
> AFAIK a report should be filed on
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:RFC/
> ADMIN#Use_of_administrator_privileges
> but a blocked user cannot do so before his block expires
> and for an indefinitely blocked user, it will never be possible
> using regular means. I don't think it's in the interest
> of Wikipedia to let administrators have a final say in
> a content dispute by blocking disagreeing parties for
> disruption (vaguely defined as posing a threat to the normal
>              functioning of Wikipedia)
> or
> vandalism (which btw. requires them to assume
>             bad faith as per WP:VANDAL).
>
> Thank you for your comments
> --
> Raphael
> _______________________________________________
> 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: Justin Cormack

body:
On 3 May 2006, at 17:50, Philip Welch wrote:

> On May 3, 2006, at 4:48 AM, Justin Cormack wrote:
>
>> The problem I have with all this stuff is the people who dont
>> understand
>> that an encyclopaedia is a historic record, and that just try to
>> write
>> this stuff about what things are now. Unless people are prepared to
>> write from a historical perspective it is a guidebook not an
>> encyclopaedia.
>
> In this case, the coffee shop used to be a Hi-Co, and the bar was
> only built in the last couple of months.

Thats not a historical perspective, its what you remember. Unless
you are going to write about the economic shifts in coffee shop
viability in this area, and the architecture of the bar its still
just guidebook stuff.

There are serious scholarly guides to tiny details (eg [[Pevsner]]'s
architectural guidebooks to the UK) that could be used to build
a detailed infrastructure of small scale place articles, and
its a potentially interesting project, but there must not be a guide
book mentality to it, there must be sources, history, and *reasons why*
not just lists.

Justinc


from_name: Jay R. Ashworth

subject:
[Wikitech-l] [wsimpson@greendragon.com: Wikipedia watching (was:
	Tier 2 - Lease?)]

body:
FYI; forwarded from NANOG.  William, don't even bother yelling at mefor
crossing it.  :-).

Cheers,
-- jra

----- Forwarded message from William Allen Simpson <wsimpson at greendragon.com> -----

Date: Wed, 03 May 2006 12:40:58 -0400
From: William Allen Simpson <wsimpson at greendragon.com>
To: nanog list <nanog at merit.edu>
Subject: Wikipedia watching (was: Tier 2 - Lease?)

>At 01:58 AM 5/3/2006, Richard A Steenbergen wrote:
>>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tier_1_carrier
>>
>>As of this exact moment that I'm posting, that article is actually
>>reasonably accurate. Of course I'm sure in 5 minutes 100 people will be

Berkman, Scott wrote:
> Interesting to notice someone (perhaps from this list?) has removed
> Cogent from the T1 list.  They did however leave
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cogent alone.
>
Gentlefolk, don't forget that *you* can fix the entries.  For several
years, I and most anybody I know locally here would just fix things
whenever we noticed a silly mistake, without logging on.

Last year, at the urging of some folks in various fields, I finally
added a user name.  However, because of their arcane rules about not
writing articles that are/were based on original work, I cannot
actually help much in my areas of most significant expertise.

I urge you to add a user name, and "watch" some articles.  The amount
of misinformation in some fields, including networking, is astounding.

Now, it's gotten rather large.  When Wikipedia goes down, users call
support.  They have a technical list, but it's hard to help much, as
the supporting documentation has not kept up with installation and
operations.  A problem I'm sure we all recognize!

They are basically holding things together and bailing with both hands.

--
William Allen Simpson
    Key fingerprint =  17 40 5E 67 15 6F 31 26  DD 0D B9 9B 6A 15 2C 32

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

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

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

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


subject: [WikiEN-l] Watchlist feature requests

body:
On 03/05/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Who decides what gets in or not? Seems like there are squillions of
> > extensions available, so there's presumably some kind of process for
> > deciding what extensions are inflicted on everyone and which aren't?
> >
> > Steve
>
> Not really. I think things are just discused on the talk page.

Heh, that's the kind of process I was looking for, thanks.

Steve