from_name: Mark Ryan

body:
On 29/03/07, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> She asked me about this on television.  I danced around it as best I
> could, but basically it was not fun. :(
> --Jimbo

Ignoring the underlying issue here for the moment, just about nobody
watches Sunday nowadays anyway. It's not a mainstream Australian
program. It averages about 200,000 viewers. So it's not a huge public
relations drama in Australia for us.

Are we sure the inaccuracy wasn't inserted by Fanning herself, in
order to find something to complain about in the interview?

~Mark Ryan


list: wikien-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Denny Colt

subject: [WikiEN-l] Jimbo's requested poll on WP:ATT is "dead"

body:
Full diclosure: I personally support the ATT merger.

I have been informed that the poll is dead. I am posting here, as Jimbo is
more likely to see this sooner as he's overseas.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Attribution/Poll#If_the_poll_is_dead

A group of users appear to be strongly opposed to any wide-scale public
polling to gauge if ATT has full support, which was requested specifically
by Jimbo. Per users such as WAS 4.25 the poll is specifically 'dead'.

--
- Denny


from_name: William Pietri

subject: [WikiEN-l] Getting hammered in a tv interview is not fun

body:
David Gerard wrote:
> On 30/03/07, William Pietri <william at scissor.com> wrote:
>
>
>> When people catch us in errors, aren't we better off
>> going with positive responses that begin with, "Yes, exactly..."?
>>
>
>
> You got it. "Of course. Wikipedia is not *reliable* in the sense it's
> all checked. It can't be by the process it's written by. You have to
> think when you're reading. But if you do, it's good and useful."
>
> ("But what if people take it as gospel?" "We can't and don't promise
> to think for people. You have to do that for yourself.")
>
> I take this line every time this comes up - live radio, if not TV -
> and it works fine. It would have worked here too.
>

Exactly.

In that first bit, I like to say, "Just like anything else on the
internet, you can't turn your brain off." That's awfully hard to deny.
And then I can point out Wikipedia's advantages over almost anything
else on the Internet, like a comprehensive record of every edit, an
attached discussion page, a way to check out the record of any
contributor, and transparent policies that you can help shape.

Another approach is to point out that errors and omissions are the
engine that has driven Wikipedia's growth. People see a mistake and they
fix it. Then they realize with amazement, that this isn't an
encyclopedia produced by some mysterious "them"; it's us!

And it's always fun to toss the complaint back in their lap. "Well if
you knew it was a mistake, why didn't you fix it?" That's not entirely
fair, of course. But neither is the expectation of perfection that
underlies a lot of those grumbles.

William


from_name: Anthony

body:
On 3/30/07, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 3/30/07, Anthony <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
> > On 3/29/07, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > On 3/29/07, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> > > > I hope the horse I am beating is still alive: we have to be absolutely
> > > > ruthless about removing "I think I heard it somewhere"
> > > > pseudo-information from Wikipedia, and especially from biographies.
> > > >
> > >
> > > We don't have the resources to this without straight deleting about
> > > 95%+ of bios. <i>And that still wouldn't solve the problem</I>
> > >
> > Why wouldn't it solve the problem?
> >
>
> Because there would still be problems in the remaining bios and plenty
> of false stuff about people in articles on towns and schools.
>
Ah, I now understand that you were talking about deleting entire
articles, and not merely removing the unsourced statements from them.

With that in mind, I do think we have the resources, and accomplishing
it would be really simple.  Just set a hard and fast rule that
everything in an article must be sourced, and then make it clear that
removal of unsourced statements is exempt from the three revert rule.

Pass those two rules, and I think Wikipedia will get rid of the vast
majority of unsourced statements in articles very quickly.

The problem is, I think there are a significant number of Wikipedians
who don't *want* that.  That probably makes it a board edict or
nothing.

Anthony


from_name: doc

body:
geni wrote:
> On 3/30/07, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
>> geni wrote:
>>> If the people dealing with copyvios can stay within the rules and be
>>> effective so can the BLP people. If they want extra powers they can
>>> get them through the normal means.
>> This is exactly the attitude I am trying to combat.  It's this idea that
>> the people fighting for BLPs are somehow violating the rules while the
>> people inserting crap are not.  This is total nonsense.
>>
>> --Jimbo
>
>
> Nyet. We have our deletion policies. The people dealing with BLP are
> known to ignore them. While doing this as a one off may not be a
> problem doing this on any scale is.
>
I'm sorry, with due respect to Geni, this is the type of myopic response
that drives me crazy. Let's worry about our policies, in house-rules,
and that the rights of Wikipedians are respected - because that's
obviously more important than doing the Right Thing, unharming real
people, or otherwise focusing on article quality? (That was sarcasm).

The problem with deletion process is that people tend to !vote "ah,
she's sort of notable so keep - the POV problems are a matter for
clean-up not deletion" and then walk away. This eventualism is useless
for BLP. Often we need to say - "unless someone cleans up this bio RIGHT
NOW it must die." If it is just a matter of removing a bit, then OTRS
folk can do that, but often the thing is intrinsically POV and the
sources are all biased.


body:
On 3/30/07, Denny Colt <wikidenny at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Full diclosure: I personally support the ATT merger.
>
> I have been informed that the poll is dead. I am posting here, as Jimbo is
> more likely to see this sooner as he's overseas.
>
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Attribution/Poll#If_the_poll_is_dead
>
> A group of users appear to be strongly opposed to any wide-scale public
> polling to gauge if ATT has full support, which was requested specifically
> by Jimbo. Per users such as WAS 4.25 the poll is specifically 'dead'.
>
> --
> - Denny

Nominated per community concern:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Miscellany_for_deletion/Wikipedia:Attribution/Poll

If there is support to gauge the community's will on ATT on this wide a
scale I imagine it will be kept. If not... I guess we don't care what the
will of the masses is.
--
- Denny


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Yury Tarasievich

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Be-x-old

body:
On 30/03/07, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com> wrote:
> > You are an entity, yes, set out to destroy the existing Belarusian
> > language and culture and replace it with your version -- okay, your
> > right. But get yourself your own blessed language code for that.
>
> Now, now. They may hate you because they think you're communists or
> evil or whatever, but still, I wouldn't say they're out to _destroy
> the existing Belarusian language and culture_. They just want to
> modify it.

Well, just think one logical step more and realise what would *really*
mean such *hypothetical* modification -- everything kicked back to
square one. 50 years of development (and I'm talking bare agreed
minimum here, it's more like 70-75 of continuity) virtually cancelled.
Popular reputation of language down the drain, for if one group of
trouble-makers could impose their particular "vision", why not
another? Why bother when Russian is so *sufficient*?

With revolutions and world wars and empire falls, the stability is at
real premium here, but no, it's just ought to be some "real thing" and
devil take all dissenters. They and only they know what the "real"
language is, and everybody "ought" to talk it. Cooperation they want,
my foot.

Anyway, that's what their spiritual leaders write openly: "This Soviet
deviation blah blah must die, so that the real one could be
reinstated". I'm not naming names right now but I keep those articles.

Sorry folks, flew off the handle a bit.
---


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] Latest dumps missing md5sums.txt

body:
Petr Kadlec wrote:
> I have noticed the latest dumps do not contain MD5 checksums ? the
> 200703xx directory does not contain the file at all (the links leads
> to 404 - Not Found), the "latest" directory returns a zero-sized file.
>
> I noticed that on cswiki dump I tried to download, then verified it on
> a few other randomly selected databases.

Thanks for the report; this is now fixed and checksums will appear for
the next run of each db and all new ones dumped starting now.

-- brion vibber (brion @ wikimedia.org)


body:
On 3/30/07, Anthony <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
> With that in mind, I do think we have the resources, and accomplishing
> it would be really simple.  Just set a hard and fast rule that
> everything in an article must be sourced, and then make it clear that
> removal of unsourced statements is exempt from the three revert rule.
>
OK, apparently this is already the case, at least for biographies of
living people, according to wp:3rr.

So I guess I'm wrong.

Anthony


from_name: Guy Chapman aka JzG

body:
On Thu, 29 Mar 2007 19:36:11 -0600, Bryan Derksen
<bryan.derksen at shaw.ca> wrote:

>I don't see it as a good example, myself. The edit in question was
>referenced with an appropriate and well-formatted external source

A student email directory?  In what way is that not original research?

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


from_name: Petr Kadlec

body:
Hi!

I have noticed the latest dumps do not contain MD5 checksums ? the
200703xx directory does not contain the file at all (the links leads
to 404 - Not Found), the "latest" directory returns a zero-sized file.

I noticed that on cswiki dump I tried to download, then verified it on
a few other randomly selected databases.

Regards,
-- [[cs:User:Mormegil | Petr Kadlec]]


from_name: Monk

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Be-x-old

body:
Hi,

> > You are an entity, yes, set out to destroy the existing Belarusian
> > language and culture and replace it with your version -- okay, your
> > right. But get yourself your own blessed language code for that.
> Now, now. They may hate you because they think you're communists or
> evil or whatever, but still, I wouldn't say they're out to _destroy
> the existing Belarusian language and culture_. They just want to
> modify it.

Excuse me, Mark, but nobody hates "them" (those who prefer normative
version), because everyone who prefers classical version understands
that two versions should coexist and this is ok. But those who prefer
norm version really hate, as we could clearly see in Yury's letters,
because of lack of strength - they just don't have enough supporters
in Belarus. I just don't understand, why they try to get support by
hate, not by good.

MONK


from_name: Marc Riddell

subject: [WikiEN-l] BLP - a case study

body:
> Marc Riddell wrote:
>> Respect is something which cannot be legislated or regulated; it is part
>> civility and part empathy - the ability to respect another being should be
>> built in to us all.

on 3/29/07 6:09 PM, Stan Shebs at stanshebs at earthlink.net wrote:
>>
> "Should be", yeah. Interesting to ponder how it is that we have
> thousands of editors who seem to lack a great many human qualities. My
> cynical theory is that an encyclopedia that *anyone* can edit is going
> to attract a disproportionate number who would never be accepted into,
> or have been ejected from other kinds of collaborative projects; and
> because one of our fundamental principles is to assume good faith, we
> are slow to get rid of those that are simply not ever going to be a net
> positive.
>
> Stan
>
We are, once again, in the area of the Wikipedia culture.

And, once again, we are asking the question: What is Wikipedia? Is it a
free-for-all romp, or a serious attempt to collect and report facts that
truly advance our knowledge and understanding of, and appreciation and
respect for, the subject? For the sake of this argument, let's assume the
latter.

Assuming good faith is a noble quality (and I mean that sincerely, not
sarcastically). And, when WP was young and had a much smaller group of
editors, with very similar beliefs and set of ethics, this worked. However,
today this is, apparently, not the case. This then requires a greater
control of the behaviors of these editors ? a control that may have been
unthinkable in the beginning. Today WP is full of guidelines regulating the
behavior of its editors. And these guidelines evolved out of necessity ? as
both the Community and the Project grew.

We cannot regulate a person?s values or beliefs - nor should we try. But we
can and should regulate that person?s behaviors when it affects the
Community as a whole.

Adding gratuitous, disrespectful text to a person?s Article is a behavior ?
and is especially cheap and destructive when that person is no longer alive
to refute it. And it needs to be made an intrinsic part of the WP culture
that adding such crap to an Article is unacceptable. This junk should be
deleted every time it is encountered. And, perhaps over time, those who
insist on adding it will give up and move on to a culture where this
behavior is acceptable.

How do we know which behaviors are disrespectful? As Justice Potter Stewart
said of pornography: ?I know it when I see it.?

Marc Riddell

--
* Practice random acts of kindness. *


from_name: Rob Church

subject:
[Wikitech-l] MediaWiki 1.9.3 rebuildall.php reports double the
	number of articles

body:
On 30/03/07, Jeffrey V. Merkey <jmerkey at wolfmountaingroup.com> wrote:
> php process goes to sleep and never wakes up.   rebuildall.php reports
> the following wrong article count:

Be careful, there are two totals at work here:

* "Article" count, which is all pages in a content namespace (main
namespace or $wgContentNamespaces) which aren't redirects, and which
contain at least one internal link - this is what shows up as "good
pages", "content pages" etc.
* "Page" count, which is all pages in all namespaces, including redirects.

rebuildTextIndex.php is referring to all pages, since that's what it
reindexes; initStats.php counts *both* and stores them in different
columns in site_stats.

The totals might still be *wrong*, of course, but the definitions
often confuse people.

Rob Church


subject:
[Wikitech-l] Unable to set my wiki in English (en)... always
	Spanish (es)

body:
On 30/03/07, thomas Armstrong <tarmstrong at gmail.com> wrote:
> I didn't know that option... When was it created?

It's been around for ages, and is referenced in the FAQ...

Rob Church


from_name: MacGyverMagic/Mgm

subject: [WikiEN-l] Naming

body:
It has been shown in the past that vandals and trolls have no problem with
harrassing users in the real world.
I think the choice should be left to the account owner, but I would lean
towards using pseudonyms to avoid real world harrasment.
In a position of trust the foundation can ask for a real name, but there's
no real need for them to be known to the public.
We tell people to not post their email address on-wiki to avoid spam. Not
using your real name is basically part of safe internet use.

Mgm

On 3/30/07, ikiroid <ikiroid at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> I'm wondering the value of presenting one's identity vs. using a
> pseudonym.
> Sites such as meatball advocate the use of true names, but Essjay did have
> a
> point in one of his observations that using a real name can leave an
> editor
> more vulnerable. Does anyone believe wikipedia should lean more towards
> one
> of the two sides?
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Bryan Derksen

body:
Guy Chapman aka JzG wrote:
> On Thu, 29 Mar 2007 19:36:11 -0600, Bryan Derksen
> <bryan.derksen at shaw.ca> wrote:
>
>> I don't see it as a good example, myself. The edit in question was
>> referenced with an appropriate and well-formatted external source
>
> A student email directory?  In what way is that not original research?

Original research would have been if someone "pieced together" what
university she went to through indirect clues - for example finding one
source that says she lives in that city and another source that says
she's a student and concluding that that she therefore goes to that
_particular_ university.

In this case the reference is a primary source that says "these people
go to this university." A perfectly good reference to cite when saying
"this person goes to this university." That's hardly a creative act of
information synthesis.


from_name: John Lee

body:
On 3/30/07, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
>
> geni wrote:
> >
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_%28news%29#Robert_Mugabe.27s_daughter_-_news_story_originating_from_Wikipedia.3F
>
> So that's the best example I have seen in a while.

Wow. Just wow. This is both exhilarating and frightening - exhilarating in
that what we do on WP can have a tremendous effect on the world, and
frightening in that in cases like this, this can be a tremendous negative
effect.

I think raising the notability bar without moving our bios of living people
offWP will be far too controversial and chaotic. I would be in favour of
doc's proposal to create a separate wiki for living people - it could be a
Wikia wiki or something run by WMF. The point is to divert this offWP so as
to get people specialising in this sort of thing to make the policies for
articles on living people. (Specialisation of labour seems to be a good idea
here.) Then we will be free to raise the notability bar on WP as arbitrarily
as we like without worrying that we will be getting rid of useful
information.

Or alternatively, we could just get to work on stable versions. The BLP
articles most prone to such mishaps rarely have many edits anyhow.

Johnleemk


subject: [WikiEN-l] CheckUser access requests? Huh?

body:
On 3/30/07, Stephen Bain <stephen.bain at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 3/30/07, Ron Ritzman <ritzman at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > What I want to know is why they don't just open up checkuser to more
> > admins? Anybody who is trusted with tools that allow him to make pages
> > go away (including the main page) and keep anybody they want from
> > editing would not be trusted with checkuser. Or is it a matter of the
> > technical knowledge needed to properly interpret checkuser results?
>
> CheckUser involves access to sensitive, confidential information, and
> involves a drastically higher level of trust than is required of an
> admin. Page protection and deletion are reversible actions, the
> release of private information is not.

So if this involves sensitive information, then how exactly is anyone who
isn't as trusted as an admin going to be trustworthy enough to get these
rights.
Not every admin is going to be suitable, but I can't think of any non-admin
for the job either.

Mgm


from_name: Ihar Hrachyshka

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Be-x-old

body:
? ???, 30/03/2007 ? 09:22 +0300, Monk ????:
> Hi,
>
> > > You are an entity, yes, set out to destroy the existing Belarusian
> > > language and culture and replace it with your version -- okay, your
> > > right. But get yourself your own blessed language code for that.
> > Now, now. They may hate you because they think you're communists or
> > evil or whatever, but still, I wouldn't say they're out to _destroy
> > the existing Belarusian language and culture_. They just want to
> > modify it.
>
> Excuse me, Mark, but nobody hates "them" (those who prefer normative
> version), because everyone who prefers classical version understands
> that two versions should coexist and this is ok. But those who prefer
> norm version really hate, as we could clearly see in Yury's letters,
> because of lack of strength - they just don't have enough supporters
> in Belarus. I just don't understand, why they try to get support by
> hate, not by good.
You are wrong. Your supporters blame in LJ, forums, Meta that we are
communists and russifictors. Some people blame we are "pidors" and
"suki" in your community forum in LJ. Administrators of be-x-old that
are also administrators of that forum didn't delete such posts. And
after all of that we try to support your willing to restore your Wiki,
write here emails with supporting words, distribute info about
possibilities to help your status. Do you think it's a good state for
community?
We do it not for people like I described here, but for people that can
think and shut their mouth if they are wrong.
PS: If I would know that all the contributors of be-x-old think the same
as I described then I wouldn't even say a word for your Wiki. Say "thank
you" for those who think twice before showing their negative emotions
and missculturness everywhere they could.
PSPS: possibly too rude, but I don't know how else I can make you here
our voice. So excuse me if something wrong.
>
> MONK
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l


subject: [WikiEN-l] Daniel Brandt & other banned users posting still

body:
Gregory Kohs (of MyWikiBiz) emailed me to tell about his attempts to get an
article fixed.
I can speak from my own experience (and his) that OTRS can easily get
clogged which means posts to that list take a long time to be responded to.
So that makes me think. What other email addresses can banned people write
to in order to get something fixed without posting to the wiki?

Mgm

On 3/29/07, Oldak Quill <oldakquill at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 29/03/07, MacGyverMagic/Mgm <macgyvermagic at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 3/29/07, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
> > >
> > > On 3/29/07, Denny Colt <wikidenny at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > > My question: *if* there is concensus to allow banned users to post
> if
> > > "some
> > > > people feel like letting them", why not SAY that in the
> banning/blocking
> > > > policy? Because that seems to be... the practice.
> > >
> > > Quite clearly two unrelated policies are in conflict in this instance:
> > > 1) WP:AUTO says that you can't edit your own article; you should post
> > > complaints on the talk page instead.
> > > 2) WP:BAN says that banned editors can't edit anything, except
> > > possibly their own user talk page.
> > >
> > > No one ever thought of the situation where the subject of an article
> > > is a banned editor. Now that it's happened, the conflict has to be
> > > resolved by setting a priority to the above. Consensus in this thread
> > > appears to be that WP:AUTO overrules WP:BAN. Problem solved. Have a
> > > nice day and thank your mother for the rabbits.
> > >
> > > Steve
> >
> >
> > I don't see why a banned user would need to edit the wiki to complain.
> We
> > have multiple email addresses to which complaints can be addressed.
> > This way, the banning policy is upheld and the complaint is taken into
> > consideration. Both policies would be upheld without any conflict
> occuring
> > that would need us to put one policy over the other.
>
> Problem articles can be dealt with far more effectively if they are
> dealt with on wiki by Wikipedians. Back channels tend to be populated
> by administrators aware of past problems and who are a lot more wary
> and unforgiving of users who have been problematic in the past.
>
> --
> Oldak Quill (oldakquill at gmail.com)
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Be-x-old

body:
Yeah, we all know how much support and unity alternativers enjoy in real life.

They are regularly going around the country, visiting cities and
villages taking roll-calls and numbers they get are *unbelievable*.
They produced 1 (one) slim book on their own orthography after 15
years of quarrels, and that surely settles down any disputable issues
which the whole enterprise rises. They are maintaining language
courses teaching the alternative version with tens of participators,
which is *everything* compared to meagre ~80,000 state schools
graduates per year.

All the Internet chats, which are for years filled with filth against
the normative anything, where foul-mouthing the millions of Belarusian
people as "red cattle, idiots, and when do they die out already?" --
this is a sign of brotherly love, yes.

Okay, let folks judge what they could see in Yury's letters, but this
discussion is laughable, and I'm bowing out of this discussion for
now, sorry for bother.

---


from_name: Jan Marozau

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Be-x-old

body:
First, slogan was to vote against communist orthography, not communists.
 and it was just an element of PR-technology, not symbol of hate.
Second, the only aim of voting against was not to tolerate the split of one
unified and whole Belarusian Wikipedia.

2007/3/30, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com>:
>
> Don't think I haven'tr seen the livejournal posts about "coming to
> vote against the communists".
>
> Mark
>
>


from_name: Sam Blacketer

body:
On 3/30/07, wikien-l-request at lists.wikimedia.org
<wikien-l-request at lists.wikimedia.org> wrote:
> From: Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net>
>
> A student email directory?  In what way is that not original research?

I'd call that a primary source; however to link the appearance of a name
in there to a known identity is original research. For instance, if a
student directory included "Blacketer, Samuel Peter" (unlikely ;-) this
would be a primary source for saying that someone called by that
name was a student at that institution, but it would be original research
to link that name to a person about whom you know some other
information.

In this case the name Bona Mugabe didn't even appear where it was
claimed.

--
Sam Blacketer
London E15


subject: [WikiEN-l] Light entertainment

body:
I added a question to the RFA.

Your comment that it's "pleasing" that it's turning into a debate on the
system rather than your nomination worries me a bit because it means your
nomination could be considered a violation of WP:POINT to get this
discussion going, but I'll assume good faith for now. If you think the
current RFA process doesn't work, I believe submitting a new process rather
than nominating yourself using the process you dislike is the way to go,
IMO.

Mgm

On 3/30/07, Earle Martin <wikipedia at downlode.org> wrote:
>
> Some of you may recall that a few months back I had a go at the RfA
> process (and failed, of course [1]). Well, I'm demonstrating again
> that I clearly don't know what's good for me:
>
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_adminship/Earle_Martin_2
>
> I'm losing, of course, but this time it's turning into a big
> discussion between the pro-RfA-system and anti-RfA-system camps. This
> is pleasing. While I'm not explicitly asking for your votes (although
> I certainly wouldn't say no to them), any replies to comments on the
> page would be of interest, for policy discussion's sake.
>
>
> [1]
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/htdig/wikien-l/2006-October/055827.html
>
> --
> Earle Martin
>            http://downlode.org/
> http://purl.org/net/earlemartin/
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
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>


from_name: Avi

subject: [WikiEN-l] Light entertainment

body:
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1
  I am afraid I would disagree with you here, Jossi. If Earle truly wanted to become an admin, then he is not disrupting the system to make a point. He wants to be an admin ? in his own way. It would be a point issue if he was completely uninterested in being an admin and just ran to expose the flaws in the system. While this may be an example of a decision someone would disagree with, which should be noted in the Support/Oppose/Neutral section of the RfA, it is not a classic point issue, I believe. Poor judgement, maybe; point, no.

  - --Avi
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jossifresco at mac.com wrote:
  From: Jossi Fresco <jossifresco at mac.com>
To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at lists.wikimedia.org>
Date: Fri, 30 Mar 2007 08:21:57 -0700
Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Light entertainment

On Mar 30, 2007, at 3:29 AM, Earle Martin wrote:

> My intention in starting this RfA was to genuinely apply for
> adminship, albeit in my own fashion, because I am not afraid of openly
> stating what I believe in.
Basically, an excellent example of [[WP:POINT]].

-- Jossi

----
User:Avraham
pub 1024D/785EA229 3/6/2007 Avi (Wikipedia-related Key) <avi_wiki at yahoo.com>
    Primary key fingerprint:  D233 20E7 0697 C3BC 4445 7D45 CBA0 3F46 785E A229

---------------------------------
TV dinner still cooling?
Check out "Tonight's Picks" on Yahoo! TV.


body:
Slim Virgin wrote:
> On 3/29/07, Bryan Derksen <bryan.derksen at shaw.ca> wrote:
>> Slim Virgin wrote:
>>> We're going to have more than a major hole in our coverage if we lose a lawsuit.
>> Why? Aside from requiring us to take down whatever libelous
>> misinformation we lost the case over (which we would want to do
>> _anyway_), what limitation would it put on Wikipedia's coverage?
>
> If someone with money were to sue Wikipedia for having damaged him --
> or were to finance a lawsuit brought by someone else -- it could end
> up costing a great deal because of the global distribution of the
> content, and perhaps also because we've not shown ourselves to be
> deadly serious about getting rid of defamation. Unlike news
> organizations Wikipedia has no libel insurance so it could put us out
> of business.

Okay, I guess I'll accept it as a hypothetical worst-case scenario. So
Wikimedia Foundation goes out of business. The database is GFDL, we can
set up a new foundation and resume editing elsewhere. A major hassle but
IMO better than compromising the fundamental goal of writing a
comprehensive free encyclopedia.

I don't consider this scenario likely, though. We _are_ serious about
removing libel, we've got powerful policies to that effect, and the site
is laden with disclaimers in case we temporarily miss some. I have faith
that the legal system is not _completely_ insane, as evidenced by the
fact that numerous other sources that could be much more damaging have
yet to be sued out of existence.

>>> The ideal thing would be to come up with a working definition of
>>> "borderline notable" and to give those people the right to have their
>>> bios deleted on request. But this being Wikpedia, we'll never agree on
>>> a definition.
>> Largely because IMO such a thing is impossible to define in anything
>> like an objective manner.
>
> We could come up with an imperfect working definition.

It would result in unending conflict. I'd rather look for ways to
sidestep the issue by improving the maintainability of even "borderline
notable" bios.

>>> Another good idea is not to allow living bios on people who have not
>>> already had a bio published by a reliable source. That would massively
>>> reduce our coverage, but it would solve almost all of our problems.
>> It would leave at least one really massive problem though; we'd lack
>> coverage of everyone who doesn't already have a bio published by a
>> reliable source (for whatever value of "reliable source" gets settled
>> on). For a resource that's claiming to be a general encyclopedia this
>> would be a _massive_ omission.
>
> It would be an omission for sure. It would mean only truly notable
> people got WP bios.

Based on an admittedly imperfect definition of who's notable, though. In
this case _very_ imperfect since there are plenty of people who a lot of
editors would consider obviously notable who haven't had biographies
published about them. Lacking articles on them would (IMO rightly) be
seen as a flaw in Wikipedia.

>> Also, I'd like to know how you know that there's a "huge number" of
>> vanity articles and attack pages on Wikipedia.
>
> I don't know how many there are, and I've not kept any kind of
> records. I know that I've encountered a large number of problematic
> bios, or biographical material inside other articles, where people
> with grudges have inserted false material maliciously, or for a laugh.
> And the problems of vanity articles are well known, though less
> pressing.

Well, my subjective experience has been the opposite of yours. Lacking
an objective measure of some sort I guess there's not much more to be
said on this one.

> I'm guessing that this kind of thing goes on a lot under the radar,
> and that one day we're going to do it to the wrong person. I'd like to
> see an imaginative solution before that happens.

I think the best way to approach this would be to get better radar. Our
existing policies and practices should be just fine, it may simply be a
question of applying them properly.


from_name: thomas Armstrong

body:
Hi.

Using MediaWiki 1.6.10, I installed it, but it always shows texts in
Spanish ('http://wiki.foo.com/index.php/Portada' URL, "art?culo",
"discusi?n", ...).

- My webbrowser is not in Spanish (nor my OS),
- I deleted my webbrowser cache,
- I'm not a wiki registered user,
- $wgLanguageCode = "en";     (within 'LocalSettings.php')
- $wgContLanguageCode = 'en';    (within 'includes/Setup.php')

How can I set to English?

Thank you very much.


subject: [WikiEN-l] More concerns about wide scale article protection

body:
Unfortunately, we still get messages to the help desk and through other
channels from people who come across a high-profile article when it's in a
vandalized state.
The most-viewed pages are attractive targets for vandals as well as honest
readers. If you keep those unprotected more people are going to see the
vandalism even if it's reverted quickly. If these articles are protected,
vandalism is still easy to spot by vandalhunters but not so much by the
casual reader.

Mgm


from_name: Jeff V. Merkey

subject:
[Wikitech-l] MediaWiki 1.9.3 rebuildall.php reports double the
 number of articles

body:
Rob Church wrote:

>On 30/03/07, Jeffrey V. Merkey <jmerkey at wolfmountaingroup.com> wrote:
>
>
>>php process goes to sleep and never wakes up.   rebuildall.php reports
>>the following wrong article count:
>>
>>
>
>Be careful, there are two totals at work here:
>
>* "Article" count, which is all pages in a content namespace (main
>namespace or $wgContentNamespaces) which aren't redirects, and which
>contain at least one internal link - this is what shows up as "good
>pages", "content pages" etc.
>* "Page" count, which is all pages in all namespaces, including redirects.
>
>rebuildTextIndex.php is referring to all pages, since that's what it
>reindexes; initStats.php counts *both* and stores them in different
>columns in site_stats.
>
>The totals might still be *wrong*, of course, but the definitions
>often confuse people.
>
>
>Rob Church
>
>
This should be documented to avoid confusing people in the future. I
will add this
description to the Data Dumps page. I restarted rebuildall.php again
after it crashed
and it appears the lockup was caused by a low memory condition -- it was
still running this morning (though
quite SLLOOOOOOWWWWWWLLLYYYY ....) . I am re-running it on a
system more free memory. This other problem appears to be PHP related. I
wanted to
check because off counters could cause aberrant program behavior.

Jeff


from_name: Jimmy Wales

body:
geni wrote:
> If the people dealing with copyvios can stay within the rules and be
> effective so can the BLP people. If they want extra powers they can
> get them through the normal means.

This is exactly the attitude I am trying to combat.  It's this idea that
the people fighting for BLPs are somehow violating the rules while the
people inserting crap are not.  This is total nonsense.

--Jimbo


from_name: Mohamed Magdy

subject:
[Wikitech-l] Unable to set my wiki in English (en)... always
 Spanish (es)

body:
thomas Armstrong wrote:
> Hi.
>
> Using MediaWiki 1.6.10, I installed it, but it always shows texts in
> Spanish ('http://wiki.foo.com/index.php/Portada' URL, "art?culo",
> "discusi?n", ...).
>
> - My webbrowser is not in Spanish (nor my OS),
> - I deleted my webbrowser cache,
> - I'm not a wiki registered user,
> - $wgLanguageCode = "en";     (within 'LocalSettings.php')
> - $wgContLanguageCode = 'en';    (within 'includes/Setup.php')
>
> How can I set to English?
>
> Thank you very much.
>

Try to set the language in Special:Preferences to English.


body:
On 3/29/07, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ellen_Fanning
>
> This article said that "She is the sister of [[Powderfinger]] frontman
> and solo artist, [[Bernard Fanning]]."
>
> Not true.
>
> She asked me about this on television.  I danced around it as best I
> could, but basically it was not fun. :(
>
> Fortunately, this bit of incorrect information was not negative.  But it
> made it hard for me to make a positive image for us.
>
> I edited out the bad bit, but I left in the previous line:
>
> "Ellen Fanning is married and has two young sons."
>
> There is no source.  Is it even true?  Well, I asked her, and it is
> true.  But there is no source.
>
> I hope the horse I am beating is still alive: we have to be absolutely
> ruthless about removing "I think I heard it somewhere"
> pseudo-information from Wikipedia, and especially from biographies.
>
> People who are fighting the good fight here are sometimes threatened
> with a trip to ArbCom.  They need our support, though.
>
> --Jimbo

It would help if we could get people to agree that subjects themselves are
suitable sources for non-controversial bio information.

Mgm


body:
On 3/29/07, Nick Wilkins <nlwilkins at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> The statement that she is related to Bernard Fanning was added at the same
> time as two external links.  In this case, insta-reverting unsourced stuff
> wouldn't have done any good.  You would have actually had to have checked
> the sources (neither of which mention Bernard Fanning, incidentally).  One
> of them, however, does provide a source for her being married with one
> son.

She's married to her son? That doesn't sound right.

Mgm


body:
Guy Chapman aka JzG wrote:
> On Fri, 30 Mar 2007 09:36:39 -0600, Bryan Derksen
> <bryan.derksen at shaw.ca> wrote:
>
>> In this case the reference is a primary source that says "these people
>> go to this university." A perfectly good reference to cite when saying
>> "this person goes to this university." That's hardly a creative act of
>> information synthesis.
>
> *Provided* there is only one person in the world with that name, and
> provided that the source actually does say they go to that university
> rather than being, say, a bare list of names.  Oh, hey!  It's a bare
> list of names that doesn't actually say they are studying there.
> Helloooo novel synthesis :o)

I assume you're also one of the folks who supports removing Angela
Beesley's birthdate from her article because although the birth register
for her hometown's hospital listed an Angela Beesley born on the same
date she claimed was her birthdate, there could have been _another_
Angela Beesley born on the same day and in the same hospital as her?
This level of synthesis is not a novel creative act, IMO.

Besides, the basis of this particular subthread is that the source
didn't actually support the statement, so whether it's original research
is moot. We don't need more stringent policies on sources to deal with
it, just people who actually click the links and _check_ them.


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Be-x-old

body:
almost unbroken lie and all-around NPOV from worshippers of so called
"normative" Belarusian orthography


body:
geni wrote:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_%28news%29#Robert_Mugabe.27s_daughter_-_news_story_originating_from_Wikipedia.3F

So that's the best example I have seen in a while.


body:
Hi, Mohamed. Thank you very much for your answer.

If I access:
http://wiki.foo.com/index.php/Special:Preferences
I get this message:
"Debes entrar para cambiar las preferencias de usuario."
What does it mean?

On 3/30/07, Mohamed Magdy <mohamed.m.k at gmail.com> wrote:
> thomas Armstrong wrote:
> > Hi.
> >
> > Using MediaWiki 1.6.10, I installed it, but it always shows texts in
> > Spanish ('http://wiki.foo.com/index.php/Portada' URL, "art?culo",
> > "discusi?n", ...).
> >
> > - My webbrowser is not in Spanish (nor my OS),
> > - I deleted my webbrowser cache,
> > - I'm not a wiki registered user,
> > - $wgLanguageCode = "en";     (within 'LocalSettings.php')
> > - $wgContLanguageCode = 'en';    (within 'includes/Setup.php')
> >
> > How can I set to English?
> >
> > Thank you very much.
> >
>
> Try to set the language in Special:Preferences to English.
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l


body:
I tried to modify 'languages/MessagesEs.php'. I changed 'Donaciones'
by 'FooTest'.

I deleted my webbrowser cache, but when accessing my wiki, I see
'Donaciones' again.
I searched all my files, and I didn't find ANY file where 'Donaciones'
word is set.

Any suggestion?

On 3/30/07, thomas Armstrong <tarmstrong at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi.
>
> Using MediaWiki 1.6.10, I installed it, but it always shows texts in
> Spanish ('http://wiki.foo.com/index.php/Portada' URL, "art?culo",
> "discusi?n", ...).
>
> - My webbrowser is not in Spanish (nor my OS),
> - I deleted my webbrowser cache,
> - I'm not a wiki registered user,
> - $wgLanguageCode = "en";     (within 'LocalSettings.php')
> - $wgContLanguageCode = 'en';    (within 'includes/Setup.php')
>
> How can I set to English?
>
> Thank you very much.
>


body:
On 3/30/07, Slim Virgin <slimvirgin at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 3/29/07, Fred Bauder <fredbaud at waterwiki.info> wrote:
> > It needs to be clear up and down the line that the arbitration committee
> will support people who remove unsourced information, as long as they are
> nice about it. But these things should never come to us, people who resist
> removal of unsourced information should be clued in long before it comes to
> that.
> >
> The other solution is to stop publishing biographies of living
> persons, or at least to offer subjects deletion on request.
>
> By hosting living bios, and by inviting anyone in the world to edit
> them, we're encouraging bad editing in a quantity we have no hope of
> controlling.
>
> Sarah

Offering subjects to delete on request is a bad idea IMO. If they can't
handle sourced criticism, we can't possibly have neutral articles on anyone.
We should wait for stable versions and get some BIO patrol to vet new
content before it goes live to avoid unsourced stuff ever entering the
biography.

Mgm


from_name: Steve Bennett

body:
On 3/29/07, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> I hope the horse I am beating is still alive: we have to be absolutely
> ruthless about removing "I think I heard it somewhere"
> pseudo-information from Wikipedia, and especially from biographies.

This is a step up from what you have previously requested, namely that
we must be ruthless about removing *harmful* unsourced information
from biographies.

Which of these statements most closely matches what you want us to do:
1) Remove all unsourced[1] material from all articles
2) Remove all unsourced material from all biographies, and unsourced
harmful material from all articles
3) Remove all unsourced harmful or slightly dubious sounding material
from biographies and other articles
4) Remove all unsourced harmful or extremely dubious sounding material
from biographies, and unsourced harmful material from other articles
...etc.

If the claim made was not harmful (as I don't believe a fictitious
family member normally is), and was not implausible (I wouldn't have
known), then why would we have removed it? How would we have known?

Steve
[1] I don't even know how we determine if a claim is sourced, short of
tracking down and reading every source mentioned on the page and
looking for it.


body:
thomas Armstrong wrote:
> I tried to modify 'languages/MessagesEs.php'. I changed 'Donaciones'
> by 'FooTest'.
>
> I deleted my webbrowser cache, but when accessing my wiki, I see
> 'Donaciones' again.
> I searched all my files, and I didn't find ANY file where 'Donaciones'
> word is set.
>
> Any suggestion?
>
> On 3/30/07, thomas Armstrong <tarmstrong at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Hi.
>>
>> Using MediaWiki 1.6.10, I installed it, but it always shows texts in
>> Spanish ('http://wiki.foo.com/index.php/Portada' URL, "art?culo",
>> "discusi?n", ...).
>>
>> - My webbrowser is not in Spanish (nor my OS),
>> - I deleted my webbrowser cache,
>> - I'm not a wiki registered user,
>> - $wgLanguageCode = "en";     (within 'LocalSettings.php')
>> - $wgContLanguageCode = 'en';    (within 'includes/Setup.php')
>>
>> How can I set to English?
>>
>> Thank you very much.
>>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>

I think you have to refresh the language file..

Using your shell:

php maintenance/rebuildMessages.php --update


body:
The notability bar is controversial enough as it is.
Requiring the subject to have a published biography for example is a bad
idea.

We shouldn't be punishing the people who follow the rules by using other
reliable sources for the actions by people who refuse to follow the rules
and don't use ANY sources at all. We should simply make it easier to remove
or not post unsourced material in the first place and Stable versions will
help with that.

Mgm

On 3/30/07, Risker <risker.wp at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> I like the "raise the notability bar" idea that Doc has, and perhaps Slim
> Virgin's threshhold might be the right course.  I recently stumbled into a
> biography stub on a person I would certainly have thought was not
> particularly notable. The article required about five minutes of work to
> clean up - and thought that would be the end of it.  As it turns out, it
> was
> loaded with commercial links and open proxy editors (some of whom were
> apparently being paid to add the commercial links). So what started out to
> be a five minute project took several hours of work. I am sure there are
> thousands of articles like this, and it is demotivating to editors to have
> to work this hard to clean up an article that is of questionable value in
> the first place.
>
> Risker
>
>
>
> On 3/29/07, Stan Shebs <stanshebs at earthlink.net> wrote:
> >
> > Slim Virgin wrote:
> > > On 3/29/07, Fred Bauder <fredbaud at waterwiki.info> wrote:
> > >
> > >> It needs to be clear up and down the line that the arbitration
> > committee will support people who remove unsourced information, as long
> as
> > they are nice about it. But these things should never come to us, people
> who
> > resist removal of unsourced information should be clued in long before
> it
> > comes to that.
> > >>
> > >>
> > > The other solution is to stop publishing biographies of living
> > > persons, or at least to offer subjects deletion on request.
> > >
> > > By hosting living bios, and by inviting anyone in the world to edit
> > > them, we're encouraging bad editing in a quantity we have no hope of
> > > controlling.
> > >
> > Wouldn't really work though, because people would just add the
> > problematic material in other articles. I don't have any bios on my
> > watchlist these days, but still see additions of hearsay about celebs
> > visiting cities and national parks, music video shoots in the desert,
> > and the like.
> >
> > Stan
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > WikiEN-l mailing list
> > WikiEN-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> > To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> > http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
> >
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


body:
Thank you for your answer (Google rocks ;) ).

I want wiki users see English texts without be logged.

I tried with several browsers on two different computers, and I see
always Spanish texts.
If I tell my users to log in the wiki, they are to access a form where
they see "Tu nombre de usuario", "Tu contrase?a", ... very confusing.

> It says (gtrans) you have to be logged-in in order to change your
> preferences..
>


body:
Anthony wrote:
> On 3/30/07, Anthony <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
>> With that in mind, I do think we have the resources, and accomplishing
>> it would be really simple.  Just set a hard and fast rule that
>> everything in an article must be sourced, and then make it clear that
>> removal of unsourced statements is exempt from the three revert rule.
>>
> OK, apparently this is already the case, at least for biographies of
> living people, according to wp:3rr.
>
> So I guess I'm wrong.

And also in this particular instance the false information _was_ sourced. :)


from_name: christoph.huesler at css.ch

subject:
[Wikitech-l] Antwort: Re: Unable to set my wiki in English (en)...
	always	Spanish (es)

body:
You have to rebuild your message cache. The files in the file system are
not read for handling messages.

Just run "php maintenance/rebuildMessages.php" on a shell.

-- chris

wikitech-l-bounces at lists.wikimedia.org schrieb am 30.03.2007 10:12:14:

> I tried to modify 'languages/MessagesEs.php'. I changed 'Donaciones'
> by 'FooTest'.
>
> I deleted my webbrowser cache, but when accessing my wiki, I see
> 'Donaciones' again.
> I searched all my files, and I didn't find ANY file where 'Donaciones'
> word is set.
>
> Any suggestion?
>
> On 3/30/07, thomas Armstrong <tarmstrong at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Hi.
> >
> > Using MediaWiki 1.6.10, I installed it, but it always shows texts in
> > Spanish ('http://wiki.foo.com/index.php/Portada' URL, "art?culo",
> > "discusi?n", ...).
> >
> > - My webbrowser is not in Spanish (nor my OS),
> > - I deleted my webbrowser cache,
> > - I'm not a wiki registered user,
> > - $wgLanguageCode = "en";     (within 'LocalSettings.php')
> > - $wgContLanguageCode = 'en';    (within 'includes/Setup.php')
> >
> > How can I set to English?
> >
> > Thank you very much.
> >
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>


body:
Steve Bennett wrote:
> Which of these statements most closely matches what you want us to do:
> 1) Remove all unsourced[1] material from all articles
> 2) Remove all unsourced material from all biographies, and unsourced
> harmful material from all articles
> 3) Remove all unsourced harmful or slightly dubious sounding material
> from biographies and other articles
> 4) Remove all unsourced harmful or extremely dubious sounding material
> from biographies, and unsourced harmful material from other articles

It's a question of priorities, isn't it?  It's also a question of
default attitudes around various interesting questions.

Clearly, our goal should be to source just about everything.  Granted
that it would be impossible to do that in one fell swoop.  Therefore,
the quality of Wikipedia will improve in stages.

The key is that the community of good editors needs to give good strong
firm social support to people who are doing this.

Imagine there is a small wikipedia out there which is just starting up,
an important language in the developing world which is just getting a
community.  They might choose to be incredibly tolerant of someone who
would write something like "Tokyo is the largest city in Japan with a
population of 40 million."  It is not a harmful statement, but it is
wrong.  But it is better than nothing.

English Wikipedia is not at that stage anymore.  We should not accept
random "I heard it somewhere" information nearly as easily as we would
when we were young... even information that is not harmful per se.


body:
Yep, it works!

I didn't know that option... When was it created?

Thank you very much, Mohamed!!!

On 3/30/07, Mohamed Magdy <mohamed.m.k at gmail.com> wrote:
> thomas Armstrong wrote:
> > I tried to modify 'languages/MessagesEs.php'. I changed 'Donaciones'
> > by 'FooTest'.
> >
> > I deleted my webbrowser cache, but when accessing my wiki, I see
> > 'Donaciones' again.
> > I searched all my files, and I didn't find ANY file where 'Donaciones'
> > word is set.
> >
> > Any suggestion?
> >
> > On 3/30/07, thomas Armstrong <tarmstrong at gmail.com> wrote:
> >> Hi.
> >>
> >> Using MediaWiki 1.6.10, I installed it, but it always shows texts in
> >> Spanish ('http://wiki.foo.com/index.php/Portada' URL, "art?culo",
> >> "discusi?n", ...).
> >>
> >> - My webbrowser is not in Spanish (nor my OS),
> >> - I deleted my webbrowser cache,
> >> - I'm not a wiki registered user,
> >> - $wgLanguageCode = "en";     (within 'LocalSettings.php')
> >> - $wgContLanguageCode = 'en';    (within 'includes/Setup.php')
> >>
> >> How can I set to English?
> >>
> >> Thank you very much.
> >>
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Wikitech-l mailing list
> > Wikitech-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> > http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
> >
>
> I think you have to refresh the language file..
>
> Using your shell:
>
> php maintenance/rebuildMessages.php --update
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l


body:
Bryan Derksen wrote:
> But even you, even now in this very instance you're using as an example
> of what you think should be done, _didn't_ ruthlessly remove the
> unsourced information. If you really believe that we have to be
> absolutely ruthless about removing all unsourced information why did you
> deliberately leave the married-with-two-young-sons thing in?

I asked her personally and she said it was true, and at that moment I
assumed we can find a source quickly enough and and I know that bringing
the section in question to the attention of good editors will bring
about quick positive change.

I am not advocating some kind of weird radical knee jerk attempt to take
out every single thing in Wikipedia TODAY that does not have a source.

I am advocating that we give stronger support to people who are fighting
the good fight on quality issues.

> I think the reason is that our one truly fundamental goal is to write a
> good, free encyclopedia, and that while attempting to source everything
> is a good means to that goal if we were to take it to the extreme it
> would actually start to move us farther away from it. If we were to
> actually follow through with the absolute full extent of the
> only-sourced-statements ideal it would devastate Wikipedia's current
> contents and IMO raise such a barrier to editing that new work would
> slow to a crawl. We have to consider these costs and find a compromise
> position that tries to minimize them.

Well, yes, of course I agree with that.

--Jimbo


list: foundation-l

from_name: The Cunctator

subject: [Foundation-l] Language Prevention Committee created

body:
On 3/29/07, GerardM <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hoi,
> We do not like to bang on the drums of what we have achieved. We do not even
> mind when when it is not perceived that we have achieved anything at all. If
> things go well, it should not really matter because it detracts from what
> our organisation is there for; ie creating and providing free content.

Wow. It's like listening to Donald Rumsfeld.

Are you actually arguing that not achieving the stated purpose of your
committee should be considered a sign of success?


list: wikimedia-l


body:
On 3/30/07, Slim Virgin <slimvirgin at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 3/29/07, Fred Bauder <fredbaud at waterwiki.info> wrote:
> > If the information does not have a specific source attached to it such
> as a page in a book or the equivalent, it is unsourced. You are not
> obligated to read whole books when no page is given. The priority needs to
> go to 4) Remove all unsourced harmful or extremely dubious sounding material
> > >from biographies, and unsourced harmful material from other articles
> and probably extends to removing such material when that is all that is in
> the article, even if it is sourced.
> >
> The problem with living bios goes beyond unsourced material.
> Everything in a bio could be sourced and it might still be an unfair
> portrait of the person. Then there's the problem of Wikpedia editors
> hunting down every tiny bit of published material from decades ago,
> thereby reviving stories that were long dead, or posting something
> that was published only in a local newspaper, thereby turning it into
> an international story.
>
> But if you try to remove material like that from a bio, or delete a
> bio entirely because it's inherently unfair, a great hue and cry goes
> up about censorship, and a revert war begins.
>
> Sarah

In that case we should find some way to attach a different weight to
material that some consider unfair. Material from international sources over
national sources which in turn are more weighty than local sources. People
tend to give more attention to controversy and accusations, which unless
that's what a person is primarily known for, should be kept to a reasonable
size within the article.

Mgm


body:
Mark Ryan wrote:
> Are we sure the inaccuracy wasn't inserted by Fanning herself, in
> order to find something to complain about in the interview?

I think that's more or less irrelevant and not a very helpful line of
inquiry in either the current case or with respect to the broader issue.

I chatted with her, on the air, and on the phone afterwards.  She was
friendly and funny and a bit bemused by it.  So, I am sure she did not
add it herself.  And I think trying to cast doubt back on her is not at
all what we should be doing here: the error was ours.

--Jimbo


from_name: Cary Bass

body:
The Cunctator wrote:
> On 3/29/07, GerardM <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Hoi,
>> We do not like to bang on the drums of what we have achieved. We do not even
>> mind when when it is not perceived that we have achieved anything at all. If
>> things go well, it should not really matter because it detracts from what
>> our organisation is there for; ie creating and providing free content.
>>
>
> Wow. It's like listening to Donald Rumsfeld.
>
> Are you actually arguing that not achieving the stated purpose of your
> committee should be considered a sign of success?
>
>
Please be respectful of other users on this email list.

Cary Bass


from_name: David Gerard

body:
On 30/03/07, MacGyverMagic/Mgm <macgyvermagic at gmail.com> wrote:

> Instead of giving subjects the option to have their article deleted, we
> should focus on developing rules about irrelevant unduly weighted criticism
> of the type you describe here.

We have them - they're called [[WP:BLP]]. If people aren't following
an existing rule, adding another rule isn't going to change that.

- d.


body:
On 3/30/07, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
>
> Bryan Derksen wrote:
> > But even you, even now in this very instance you're using as an example
> > of what you think should be done, _didn't_ ruthlessly remove the
> > unsourced information. If you really believe that we have to be
> > absolutely ruthless about removing all unsourced information why did you
> > deliberately leave the married-with-two-young-sons thing in?
>
> I asked her personally and she said it was true, and at that moment I
> assumed we can find a source quickly enough and and I know that bringing
> the section in question to the attention of good editors will bring
> about quick positive change.
> --Jimbo

That's an odd assumption. I've come across plenty of facts I knew to be
true, but at some point the source that backs them up disappears without
ever returning.
And naturally those are the sources that aren't archived by the internet
archive.

Mgm,


from_name: Oldak Quill

body:
On 30/03/07, MacGyverMagic/Mgm <macgyvermagic at gmail.com> wrote:
> Gregory Kohs (of MyWikiBiz) emailed me to tell about his attempts to get an
> article fixed.
> I can speak from my own experience (and his) that OTRS can easily get
> clogged which means posts to that list take a long time to be responded to.
> So that makes me think. What other email addresses can banned people write
> to in order to get something fixed without posting to the wiki?
>
> Mgm

My point was that articles can be dealt with more effectively if they
are dealt with on wiki by Wikipedians. The fact that other routes are
open to users doesn't nullify this.

--
Oldak Quill (oldakquill at gmail.com)


from_name: MacGyverMagic/Mgm

body:
On 3/30/07, John Lee <johnleemk at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 3/30/07, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> >
> > geni wrote:
> > >
> >
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_%28news%29#Robert_Mugabe.27s_daughter_-_news_story_originating_from_Wikipedia.3F
> >
> > So that's the best example I have seen in a while.
>
>
> Wow. Just wow. This is both exhilarating and frightening - exhilarating in
> that what we do on WP can have a tremendous effect on the world, and
> frightening in that in cases like this, this can be a tremendous negative
> effect.
>
> I think raising the notability bar without moving our bios of living
> people
> offWP will be far too controversial and chaotic. I would be in favour of
> doc's proposal to create a separate wiki for living people - it could be a
> Wikia wiki or something run by WMF. The point is to divert this offWP so
> as
> to get people specialising in this sort of thing to make the policies for
> articles on living people. (Specialisation of labour seems to be a good
> idea
> here.) Then we will be free to raise the notability bar on WP as
> arbitrarily
> as we like without worrying that we will be getting rid of useful
> information.

How do you figure that raising the notability bar will not get rid of useful
information? Raising the bar will lose useful articles depending on the
criteria that are being used. It doesn't matter if it's located on WP or
elsewhere.

Mgm


from_name: Matthew Brown

subject: [WikiEN-l] Bruce McMahan

references:
<grsl03tvq058c3anqijb6bt1tqkv592tqr@4ax.com>
	<79F48F7E-1A56-4540-A993-E28AE456F908@gmail.com>
	<0rtm035qqrihehpr920clatnqpgd0v2gpv@4ax.com>
	<165821F0-1F67-4B0F-BF02-B788CE60F929@gmail.com>
	<mesn03dsvnennoajpklmfer1vb0tpb2pnd@4ax.com>
	<D566EB4C-0F22-4444-8DAF-80BF49F3857D@gmail.com>
	<m60o035nfl688ukj3a06la90rihp49ckjp@4ax.com>
	<B00892B7-B2E0-408F-910B-F76E5D5420D6@gmail.com>

body:
On 3/29/07, Phil Sandifer <Snowspinner at gmail.com> wrote:
> I'm troubled here by the shifting argument. First it's from a
> tabloid. Except it's not from a tabloid - it's from a reputable paper
> that did original research. But then when it's pointed out that NOR
> isn't relevant to this either it becomes insignificant.
>
> Still not the case - if we're having an article on the guy, this is a
> sensible thing to put in it.

I wholly agree.  We don't have a policy of avoiding scandalous or
unfavorable information about living persons - we have a policy about
being strict about our sourcing.

This story was published by a paper that yes, is alternative and local
- but not a tabloid by any means - and was republished by other
alternative-press papers including the Village Voice.  These are
sources that exercise editorial judgment and fact-checking, and they
are big enough to be vulnerable to lawsuits if they publish libellous
untruths, just like the major press.

Stories like this rarely make the major press simply because they are
not the kind of stories they're interested in.  In my experience,
personal scandal like this is generally not reported in the local
mainstream press unless real-world consequences occur - criminal
prosecutions or dismissals, for instance - and even more rarely in the
national or financial press unless the individual is of national
significance and the scandal has grown to have substantial real-world
consequence.  The tabloid and celebrity press is generally not
interested in businessmen unless they're stupendously rich or a media
whore a la Donald Trump.

IMO, this is using BLP as a hammer to beat scandal and negative
stories out of Wikipedia, even a well-sourced one, and I suspect that
it is done out of a belief that Wikipedia should not be reporting on
such - that it is 'unencyclopedic'.  I don't think that point of view
has strong consensus.

-Matt


body:
This is the best comment in this thread I read so far. :)

On 3/30/07, Sheldon Rampton <sheldon at prwatch.org> wrote:
>
> Stan Shebs wrote:
>
> > Isn't it interesting how nobody ever complains
> > about inaccuracies in articles other than the ones about themselves?
> > Egos, geez...
>
> Actually, people *do* complain about inaccuracies in other types of
> articles. Moreover, there are good reasons other than ego for people
> to notice the inaccuracies in articles about themselves. For one
> thing, we all know our own biographies in a lot more detail than
> other people. I'm willing to bet that no one on WikiEN-l other than
> myself knows off the top of their head what city I was born in or my
> date of birth. If someone other than myself were to read that I was
> born in 1961 in Toledo, Ohio, it's unlikely that they'd know it was
> incorrect, whereas I'd notice the error immediately.
>
> In any case, the people who complain about inaccuracies in articles
> are doing Wikipedia a favor, not a disservice. Complaints help
> Wikipedia learn about errors and improve. It may be momentarily
> embarrassing for Jimbo to have an error pointed out to him during a
> TV interview, but that's a small price to pay for useful feedback.
>
> Slim Virgin wrote:
>
> > The other solution is to stop publishing biographies of living
> > persons, or at least to offer subjects deletion on request.
> >
> > By hosting living bios, and by inviting anyone in the world to edit
> > them, we're encouraging bad editing in a quantity we have no hope of
> > controlling.
>
> Actually, hosting living bios probably helps improve fact-checking
> and accuracy more than publishing other types of articles. If there's
> an error in an article about some dead guy, he's NOT going to point
> out the error. Without the feedback from live people, Wikipedia would
> know less than it knows now about the accuracy of its articles and
> the validity of its editorial policies.
>
> --------------------------------
> |  Sheldon Rampton
> |  Research director, Center for Media & Democracy (www.prwatch.org)
> |  Author of books including:
> |     Friends In Deed: The Story of US-Nicaragua Sister Cities
> |     Toxic Sludge Is Good For You
> |     Mad Cow USA
> |     Trust Us, We're Experts
> |     Weapons of Mass Deception
> |     Banana Republicans
> |     The Best War Ever
> --------------------------------
> |  Subscribe to our free weekly list serve by visiting:
> |  http://www.prwatch.org/cmd/subscribe_sotd.html
> |
> |  Donate now to support independent, public interest reporting:
> |  https://secure.groundspring.org/dn/index.php?id=1118
> --------------------------------
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


body:
On 3/30/07, Travis Mason-Bushman <travis at gpsports-eng.com> wrote:
>
> On 3/30/07 1:13 AM, "MacGyverMagic/Mgm" <macgyvermagic at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Offering subjects to delete on request is a bad idea IMO. If they can't
> > handle sourced criticism, we can't possibly have neutral articles on
> anyone.
>
> The problem often is not that "they can't handle sourced criticism." The
> problem is that an article about a borderline-notable person consists of a
> stub written by a detractor, which contains nothing but negative minor
> minutia about their marriage or the one time they had a DUI, rather than
> what the person's actually done to be encyclopedic.

Instead of giving subjects the option to have their article deleted, we
should focus on developing rules about irrelevant unduly weighted criticism
of the type you describe here.


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Be-x-old

body:
On 30/03/07, Jan Marozau <janmarozau at gmail.com> wrote:
> First, slogan was to vote against communist orthography, not communists.
>  and it was just an element of PR-technology, not symbol of hate.
Excuse me, I should think of it as about PR and pray for your god for
abusing me. It was just a joke, wasn't it?
> Second, the only aim of voting against was not to tolerate the split of one
> unified and whole Belarusian Wikipedia.
Oh yeah. That sounds really good. Especially if you would remind that
the slogan was "Say no to communist spelling in Wikipedia". No
compromise. Just a big brother's love. That sounds really tolerant.
>
> 2007/3/30, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com>:
> >
> > Don't think I haven'tr seen the livejournal posts about "coming to
> > vote against the communists".
> >
> > Mark
> >
> >
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] Light entertainment

body:
On 3/30/07, Rory Stolzenberg <rory096 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> To the contrary, WP:POINT doesn't prohibit all makings of points, it only
> prohibits disruption to make a point, so this doesn't violate anything.
> Also, discussion of why something is wrong is the first step to fixing it,
> so discussion is certainly a good thing.

Making of points is a problem if it is disruptive, I made the same point
several times yesterday.
I consider a big row on an RFA nomination disruptive. Discussions should be
done on talk or proposal pages, not in a nomination,
that's why I think it's a problem.

Mgm


subject: [WikiEN-l] Light entertainment

body:
On 3/30/07, Jake Nelson <duskwave at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> I share MGM's concerns, but do appreciate your take on the matter.
>
> Let me put it this way. Here's my RFA:
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Wikipedia:Recently_created_admins&oldid=1819982#Jakenelson
>
> At the time, I had ~400 edits and had been on Wikipedia ~2 months.
>
> -- Jake Nelson
> [[en:User:Jake Nelson]]

Back then the project was merely two years old. We could afford to be less
picky about admins back then.
Some people have gone over the top in their requirements, but how can we
address that without affecting the fact the entire community has a voice in
the process?

Mgm


body:
That was exactly my point. If someone is primarily known as a geologist,
their sex life has no relevance to the article.

On 3/30/07, Travis Mason-Bushman <travis at gpsports-eng.com> wrote:
>
> On 3/30/07 1:24 AM, "MacGyverMagic/Mgm" <macgyvermagic at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > People
> > tend to give more attention to controversy and accusations, which unless
> > that's what a person is primarily known for, should be kept to a
> reasonable
> > size within the article.
>
> They should be omitted entirely unless that "controversy and accusations"
> can be shown to have a reasonable basis in fact or public interest, or
> that
> controversy is what the person is primarily known for. It is far too easy
> to
> create "controversy and accusations."
>
> Example: If geology professor Jon Dough is accused of adultery in divorce
> papers, does that fact belong in his Wikipedia article? What does it add
> to
> our knowledge of Dr. Dough's work in geology? What does it add to our
> knowledge of the universe that some geologist's wife accused him of
> sleeping
> around, and thus wants Splitsville?
>
> The answer, of course, is nothing. It's not relevant to his life and work
> as
> a geologist and there's no public interest in what his wife said in a
> court
> document in yet another divorce case.
>
> It might be an accusation and it might be "controversial," but should we
> be
> in the business of simply repeating every single accusation ever made
> about
> every person? Is that really a "biography" or is it simply a scandal
> sheet?
>
> -Travis Mason-Bushman
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Be-x-old

body:
I see no point to rebut your populism and stormy emotions.

OK, you're holy right, tarashkevica-users are angry villains, terrorists and
fascism propagandists,
who hate Belarus and belarusians
and tarashkevica has nothing common with "real" Belarusian language.
So damn them and all that!
You winners, let be-x-old die.
it would be logical and natural conclusion of war
:(

2007/3/30, Ihar Hrachyshka <ihar.hrachyshka at gmail.com>:
>
> On 30/03/07, Jan Marozau <janmarozau at gmail.com> wrote:
> > First, slogan was to vote against communist orthography, not communists.
> >  and it was just an element of PR-technology, not symbol of hate.
> Excuse me, I should think of it as about PR and pray for your god for
> abusing me. It was just a joke, wasn't it?
> > Second, the only aim of voting against was not to tolerate the split of
> one
> > unified and whole Belarusian Wikipedia.
> Oh yeah. That sounds really good. Especially if you would remind that
> the slogan was "Say no to communist spelling in Wikipedia". No
> compromise. Just a big brother's love. That sounds really tolerant.
> >
> > 2007/3/30, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com>:
> > >
> > > Don't think I haven'tr seen the livejournal posts about "coming to
> > > vote against the communists".
> > >
> > > Mark
> > >
> > >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > Wikipedia-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> > http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> >
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


from_name: Stephen Bain

body:
On 3/30/07, Ron Ritzman <ritzman at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> What I want to know is why they don't just open up checkuser to more
> admins? Anybody who is trusted with tools that allow him to make pages
> go away (including the main page) and keep anybody they want from
> editing would not be trusted with checkuser. Or is it a matter of the
> technical knowledge needed to properly interpret checkuser results?

CheckUser involves access to sensitive, confidential information, and
involves a drastically higher level of trust than is required of an
admin. Page protection and deletion are reversible actions, the
release of private information is not.

Note that appointment by the ArbCom is the proper method for granting
CheckUser access on a project with an ArbCom:

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/CheckUser_policy

--
Stephen Bain
stephen.bain at gmail.com


from_name: Ihar Hrachyshka

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Be-x-old

body:
On 30/03/07, Jan Marozau <janmarozau at gmail.com> wrote:
> I see no point to rebut your populism and stormy emotions.
>
> OK, you're holy right, tarashkevica-users are angry villains, terrorists and
> fascism propagandists,
> who hate Belarus and belarusians
> and tarashkevica has nothing common with "real" Belarusian language.
If I would think so I wouldn't spend my time here.
I say: you don't want to miss be-x-old. I say: we don't want to miss
be-x-old. What's the problem?
> So damn them and all that!
> You winners, let be-x-old die.
> it would be logical and natural conclusion of war
Make love, not war. Just stop to blame all the people around who
doesn't support your efforts to draw our hard work in Incubator and on
Meta in black (and "red") colours.
> :(
>
> 2007/3/30, Ihar Hrachyshka <ihar.hrachyshka at gmail.com>:
> >
> > On 30/03/07, Jan Marozau <janmarozau at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > First, slogan was to vote against communist orthography, not communists.
> > >  and it was just an element of PR-technology, not symbol of hate.
> > Excuse me, I should think of it as about PR and pray for your god for
> > abusing me. It was just a joke, wasn't it?
> > > Second, the only aim of voting against was not to tolerate the split of
> > one
> > > unified and whole Belarusian Wikipedia.
> > Oh yeah. That sounds really good. Especially if you would remind that
> > the slogan was "Say no to communist spelling in Wikipedia". No
> > compromise. Just a big brother's love. That sounds really tolerant.
> > >
> > > 2007/3/30, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com>:
> > > >
> > > > Don't think I haven'tr seen the livejournal posts about "coming to
> > > > vote against the communists".
> > > >
> > > > Mark
> > > >
> > > >
> > > _______________________________________________
> > > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > > Wikipedia-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> > > http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> > >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > Wikipedia-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> > http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> >
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


from_name: Marc Riddell

body:
on 3/30/07 10:21 AM, Stan Shebs at stanshebs at earthlink.net wrote:

> On the
> contrary, the personal lives of famous scientists have always been
> interesting to historians, and they've spent many hours in parish
> registers and city archives to get the particulars.

Parish registers and city archives will only give you the what. The problems
begin when amateur psychologists try to come up with the why.

Marc Riddell


body:
On 3/30/07, Cary Bass <cbass at wikimedia.org> wrote:
>
> The Cunctator wrote:
> > On 3/29/07, GerardM <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >> Hoi,
> >> We do not like to bang on the drums of what we have achieved. We do not
> even
> >> mind when when it is not perceived that we have achieved anything at
> all. If
> >> things go well, it should not really matter because it detracts from
> what
> >> our organisation is there for; ie creating and providing free content.
> >>
> >
> > Wow. It's like listening to Donald Rumsfeld.
> >
> > Are you actually arguing that not achieving the stated purpose of your
> > committee should be considered a sign of success?
> >
> >
> Please be respectful of other users on this email list.
>

I am respectful of other members on the list.

Would you like me to refer to particular quotations by Donald Rumsfeld that
Gerard's statement resembles?

Do you think it is disrespectful to criticize the actions of people acting
in an official capacity for the project?

Or do you just think it's disrespectful to compare people to Donald
Rumsfeld?

At least that I can understand.


from_name: Earle Martin

subject: [WikiEN-l] Light entertainment

body:
On 30/03/07, MacGyverMagic/Mgm <macgyvermagic at gmail.com> wrote:
> I added a question to the RFA.

I've answered. I hope you don't consider it soapboxing, but it
explains my feelings on the matter as best I can.

> Your comment that it's "pleasing" that it's turning into a debate on the
> system rather than your nomination worries me a bit because it means your
> nomination could be considered a violation of WP:POINT to get this
> discussion going, but I'll assume good faith for now. If you think the
> current RFA process doesn't work, I believe submitting a new process rather
> than nominating yourself using the process you dislike is the way to go,
> IMO.

My intention in starting this RfA was to genuinely apply for
adminship, albeit in my own fashion, because I am not afraid of openly
stating what I believe in.

What I referred to as "pleasing" is that the RfA hasn't sunk like a
sack full of WP:SNOWBALLs[1], but rather has demonstrated that there
is a significant part of the group of RfA participants that share my
sentiments, and have taken this opportunity to express themselves. To
my eye, within the context of a (bona fide) RfA is the ideal place for
the RfA system to examine itself, and I don't appear to be the only
one who thinks so.

[1] I should apologize for my terrible habit of mixing metaphors.

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


body:
On 3/30/07, Marc Riddell <michaeldavid86 at comcast.net> wrote:
>
> on 3/30/07 10:21 AM, Stan Shebs at stanshebs at earthlink.net wrote:
>
> > On the
> > contrary, the personal lives of famous scientists have always been
> > interesting to historians, and they've spent many hours in parish
> > registers and city archives to get the particulars.
>
> Parish registers and city archives will only give you the what. The
> problems
> begin when amateur psychologists try to come up with the why.

I just hate it when amateurs get involved with things.


from_name: Reid Priedhorsky

subject:
[Wikitech-l] Article hit rates -- research at the University
	of	Minnesota

body:
Steve Bennett wrote:
> On 3/30/07, Oldak Quill <oldakquill at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Just a small aside: please keep us up-to-date on the outcome of the
>> research over on the Wiki-research-l mailing list. It's always
>> interesting (and potentially useful) to see how Wikipedia is used.
>
> Yes, I second this. We seem to get quite a few posts of the type "We
> have been intensively researching some feature of Wikipedia for the
> last 2 years, and we just need one detail to continue our research".
> And that's the last we hear of them. I'd love to hear the results of
> it - it would benefit our project a lot to have some hard
> statistics.[1]

Certainly. Our goal is to publish in a standard HCI venue, and those
publications are public info. I've put it on my to-do list to send a
note to wiki-research-l when our results are available.

Take care,

Reid

p.s. Thanks for the pointer to that list -- I wasn't aware of it, and
its content looks quite interesting.


body:
On 3/28/07, Denny Colt <wikidenny at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 3/28/07, jayjg <jayjg99 at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > Without commenting on the issue per se, it's not appropriate that four
> > (and perhaps all) of the editors reverting you, Samboner, Venus Envoi,
> > Kangaroo Courtier, and Weena Eloi, are all sockpuppets of User:Jon
> > Awbrey.
>
> So the concensus was just one banned person...? I don't know who that is,
> unfortunately.

I don't think Jon Awbrey is actually banned - at least, I can't recall
it.  Rather, he 'left the project' rather volubly (on this mailing
list especially, to the point of getting moderated) and then, like
many 'departed' users, returned under different names.  I'm not sure
of the specifics.

-Matt


from_name: Rich Holton

body:
Ray Saintonge wrote:
> Seth Finkelstein wrote:
>
>>> Vee
>>> Brandt is not being given a 'free pass' to edit, he is being allowed
>>> to make useful comments about concerns he has about his own article. I
>>> am certain that if he were to make any abusive edits to
>>> [[Talk: Daniel Brandt]], they would be reverted. However, reverting
>>> his edits to the _talk page_ of the article about *himself* when he's
>>> merely expressing concerns about an article that could affect his
>>> PERSONAL LIFE directly is simply unfair and isn't going to help anybody.
>>>
>>>
>> 	I endorse this viewpoint.
>>
>> 	Just call it the exception WP:HUMANITARIANGROUNDS
>>
>> 	It is the right thing to do morally, as it violates very basic
>> standards of fairness to discuss a person so directly, yet deny them
>> the opportunity to defend themselves *in the same forum*.
>>
>> 	It is the right thing to do pragmatically, as otherwise
>> accusations of sockpuppetry fly back and forth.
>>
>> 	It is the right thing to do from the standpoint of dispute
>> resolution, as it allows at least the (admittedly small) chance of
>> developing some mutual understanding from the discussion.
>>
>> 	It is the right thing to do from the standpoint of minimizing
>> harm, as otherwise the situation looks like something out of Kafka
>> ("Anyone can write accusations against you, but *you* aren't even allowed
>> to speak in your defense, since we don't like you and we 0wnz ur bi0").
>>
>> 	If nothing else, the obvious ill-will that is generated from
>> not even being able to defend oneself should make the choice clear.
>>
> I too endorse this well-expressed view.
>
> This is not about Brandt or the bloody-minded obsession that some have
> expressed about Brandt.  This place is about building an encyclopedia,
> and that should take precedence over who happens to have made the edit.
>
> I am often appalled by the lack of understanding for principles of
> fundamental justice in some people's attitudes.  A person whose
> character is questioned in a public forum needs to have an equivalent
> right to defend himself in an equally public forum.
>
> Ec
>

Agreed as well. Of course, the banned user will have a *very short*
leash even on the talk page about them. But they must be allowed to
speak on their own behalf to correct a clear error on a page about them.

-Rich


body:
On 3/30/07, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> English Wikipedia is not at that stage anymore.  We should not accept
> random "I heard it somewhere" information nearly as easily as we would
> when we were young... even information that is not harmful per se.

Does that apply only to [[Tokyo]] or does it apply equally to
[[Bumsville]], a tiny town of 300 people which has the highest
per-capita rate of hamburger consumption in Canada?

I don't think that *all* of English Wikipedia has now matured in the
way you describe. The core has. We would not accept crap in an article
about a major, major city. But I think we do still accept crap in new
stubs, although we could change that.

Steve


subject:
[Wikitech-l] Article hit rates -- research at the University of
	Minnesota

body:
On 3/30/07, Oldak Quill <oldakquill at gmail.com> wrote:
> Just a small aside: please keep us up-to-date on the outcome of the
> research over on the Wiki-research-l mailing list. It's always
> interesting (and potentially useful) to see how Wikipedia is used.

Yes, I second this. We seem to get quite a few posts of the type "We
have been intensively researching some feature of Wikipedia for the
last 2 years, and we just need one detail to continue our research".
And that's the last we hear of them. I'd love to hear the results of
it - it would benefit our project a lot to have some hard
statistics.[1]

Steve
[1] Is that an oxymoron?


from_name: Erik Moeller

subject:
[Foundation-l] Robert Mugabe's daughter - news story
	originating from Wikipedia?

body:
On 3/29/07, Carl F?rstenberg <azatoth at gmail.com> wrote:
> "Can the Minister confirm that [[Robert Mugabe]]'s daughter, Bona
> Mugabe, is currently studying at the London School of Economics, and
> if so, can he say who is paying?"

If this did indeed play out this way, it is deeply concerning and
reminiscent of ''The Onion's'' parody of Wikipedia:
http://www.theonion.com/content/node/50902

I can only repeat what is already known; the implementation of a
community approval method for article revisions is underway with the
help of a contractor (some volunteers have recently jumped in).
Progress is slower than I would like.

Even if we succeed and take a demo live soon, this will not be a magic
bullet, as the actual processes of approval (and their scalability)
will be the real challenge. Given the continuing damage to Wikipedia's
reputation done by our inability to reliably distinguish useful
content from rubbish, I'm almost inclined to support switching the
site into a GMail style invite-only lockdown until we have a proper
solution. Necessity, after all, is the mother of invention.
--
Peace & Love,
Erik

DISCLAIMER: This message does not represent an official position of
the Wikimedia Foundation or its Board of Trustees.

"An old, rigid civilization is reluctantly dying. Something new, open,
free and exciting is waking up." -- Ming the Mechanic


body:
On 30/03/07, Nick Wilkins <nlwilkins at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 3/30/07, MacGyverMagic/Mgm <macgyvermagic at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > She's married to her son? That doesn't sound right.
>
>
> The direct quote from the source is "She is married with a young son."  I
> would imagine that a more up-to-date version would add bigamy to the various
> things wrong with being married to your own young child...

I think you just made my day. The funniest post to this mailing list
in a long time - a relief considering the amount of tension that
builds up here.

--
Oldak Quill (oldakquill at gmail.com)


from_name: Andrew Gray

body:
On 30/03/07, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:

> Nyet. We have our deletion policies. The people dealing with BLP are
> known to ignore them. While doing this as a one off may not be a
> problem doing this on any scale is.

If our deletion policies are regularly ignored with good reason, we
need to rewrite the deletion policies to describe reality.

--
- Andrew Gray
  andrew.gray at dunelm.org.uk


from_name: geni

body:
On 3/30/07, doc <doc.wikipedia at ntlworld.com> wrote:
> I'm sorry, with due respect to Geni, this is the type of myopic response
> that drives me crazy. Let's worry about our policies, in house-rules,
> and that the rights of Wikipedians are respected - because that's
> obviously more important than doing the Right Thing, unharming real
> people, or otherwise focusing on article quality? (That was sarcasm).
>

Wikipedians are real people. You are not an infallible judge of what
would improve an article. The community at the present time has not
indicated a willingness to trust you in that sense and you should
respect this.

Memento mori

> The problem with deletion process is that people tend to !vote "ah,
> she's sort of notable so keep - the POV problems are a matter for
> clean-up not deletion" and then walk away. This eventualism is useless
> for BLP. Often we need to say - "unless someone cleans up this bio RIGHT
> NOW it must die." If it is just a matter of removing a bit, then OTRS
> folk can do that, but often the thing is intrinsically POV and the
> sources are all biased.

I belive the correct place to debate that kind of policy change would
be [[WP:VPP]] ot [[WT:CSD]].

--
geni


from_name: GerardM

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Be-x-old

body:
Hoi,
There is no chance of getting a second ISO-639-3 code for Belarus. People do
however get hot under the collar about things like orthographies. In the
Netherlands there are two opposing orthographies .. one of them is official
the other is used by newspapers etc.
Thanks,
    GerardM

On 3/30/07, Jan Marozau <janmarozau at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> But WHY to get the different ISO-code for one and the same language?
> it's just orthography!
>
> Hoi!
> >
> > >I don't know anything about Linux locale, but this wiki is just one of
> > >thousands resources in this orthography.
> > None of them is an ISO code.
> >
> > > It is not recognized by ISO
> > Exactly, It's just as you say. Why it's not recognized is none of our
> > problems. We don't aim to become a power centre capable to deliver
> > international recognition. Your problem must be dealt with at ISO level.
> >
> > B?rto 'd S?ra
> > Personagi dl'ann 2006 p?r l'arvista american-a Time (tanme tuti
> voj?otri)
> > http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1569514,00.html
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > Wikipedia-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> > http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> >
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


body:
On 3/30/07, Anthony <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
> On 3/29/07, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 3/29/07, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> > > I hope the horse I am beating is still alive: we have to be absolutely
> > > ruthless about removing "I think I heard it somewhere"
> > > pseudo-information from Wikipedia, and especially from biographies.
> > >
> >
> > We don't have the resources to this without straight deleting about
> > 95%+ of bios. <i>And that still wouldn't solve the problem</I>
> >
> Why wouldn't it solve the problem?
>

Because there would still be problems in the remaining bios and plenty
of false stuff about people in articles on towns and schools.

>
> So you think it's possible to remove "95+ of bios" without violating
> the three revert rule?  Yeah right.

Given the number of images removed without hitting the 3RR yes.
--
geni


from_name: Mark Williamson

body:
> The simple fact is that no new language Wikipedias have been created since
> the establishment of the language subcommittee, whereas before the
> subcommittee new language Wikipedias were regularly generated. Furthermore,
> if what people have been saying in this thread is correct, there are several
> languages that are ready and have been ready for establishment.

Yes. Kabyle = http://incubator.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wp/kab (over 200
pages already), Lower Sorbian =
http://incubator.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wp/dsb (approx. 300 pages
already), Saterlandic = http://incubator.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wp/stq
(approx. 300 pages already), Latgalian =
http://incubator.wikimedia.org/wiki/Test-wp/bat-ltg (approx. 150 pages
already), Crimean Tatar = http://incubator.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wp/crh
(approx. 100 pages already), Dolomitic Ladin =
http://incubator.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wp/lld (over 40 pages), Karakalpak
= http://incubator.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wp/kaa (unfortunately only 15
pages).

I personally support the creation of all of those except for Dolomitic
Ladin and Karakalpak because those two so far, despite unopposed
requests, have not gotten many pages and it seems their supporters
either left or have abandoned the test-wikis at an early stage.

> The reasonable assumption is that something in the process is broken.
>
> The nature of the response from committee members serves to support that
> assumption.
>

Yeah, no kidding.

--
Refije dirije lanm? yo paske nou posede pw?p bato.


body:
I should add that these are not all minor languages: Kabyle is spoken
by between 3 million and 7 million people worldwide.

Mark

On 30/03/07, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com> wrote:
> > The simple fact is that no new language Wikipedias have been created since
> > the establishment of the language subcommittee, whereas before the
> > subcommittee new language Wikipedias were regularly generated. Furthermore,
> > if what people have been saying in this thread is correct, there are several
> > languages that are ready and have been ready for establishment.
>
> Yes. Kabyle = http://incubator.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wp/kab (over 200
> pages already), Lower Sorbian =
> http://incubator.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wp/dsb (approx. 300 pages
> already), Saterlandic = http://incubator.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wp/stq
> (approx. 300 pages already), Latgalian =
> http://incubator.wikimedia.org/wiki/Test-wp/bat-ltg (approx. 150 pages
> already), Crimean Tatar = http://incubator.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wp/crh
> (approx. 100 pages already), Dolomitic Ladin =
> http://incubator.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wp/lld (over 40 pages), Karakalpak
> = http://incubator.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wp/kaa (unfortunately only 15
> pages).
>
> I personally support the creation of all of those except for Dolomitic
> Ladin and Karakalpak because those two so far, despite unopposed
> requests, have not gotten many pages and it seems their supporters
> either left or have abandoned the test-wikis at an early stage.
>
> > The reasonable assumption is that something in the process is broken.
> >
> > The nature of the response from committee members serves to support that
> > assumption.
> >
>
> Yeah, no kidding.
>
> --
> Refije dirije lanm? yo paske nou posede pw?p bato.
>

--
Refije dirije lanm? yo paske nou posede pw?p bato.